Spinning that further, if that is enabled on a server, as a player you'll target the enemie's rookie as he's become their shining star. I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I think something as described in the video - some mechanic/role that is easy to learn for new players, and has decent power to help out their team - could have helped player retention.
On aliens it is kind of okay with the gorge. Gorge is very easy to learn, you can evolve into it right at the start (not like Onos), you can make a difference (well placed tunnels, spitting vs. no-med comms, building shit).
But on marines, you are completely lost as a beginner. Even if you have super great skill in FPS games, chances are you suck at RTS and tactics and therefore get rekt. Of course you could play the (important) role of re-capper, but that is boring as hell.
Most marine rookies are completely useless for me as a comm (I dont even med them during fights, only if they survive)
I wonder if there is a way to give rookies more roles in NS2 (esp. marines), which make them more useful. Maybe some support role (medic with combat shield to block bites or something like that).
building stuff
welding stuff
using a noob tube/flamethrower
I wonder if there is a way to give rookies more roles in NS2 (esp. marines), which make them more useful. Maybe some support role (medic with combat shield to block bites or something like that).
They would find it if they were to watch some videos or tutorials... A lot of bad things happening to players in the video can be solved by simply getting information (especially SC2). Yeah i know 'RTFM' but that's damn right to do so (any games).
The critical problem with NS2 is not learning curve, not lack of skill nor balancing. It is gratification.
1. The game is heavy. This with a fast FPS makes a bad/frustrating gaming experience.
2. The maps (not the balacing) are rubbish from a new player gratification POV, very unforgiving. The result is severe task repetition and a helplessness feeling.
All NS2 maps are a flavor of the following structure:
My assertion: Once a team randomly hold the middle and/or control (not hold) one side of the enemy SP's RT, it's a painful downhill. I speculate the 1-sigma "point of no reversal" in a regular(pub) game is 1 minute in this condition, with the game lasting 6 minutes.
I wonder if decoupling some resource from map control would improve gameplay for them. For example removing the middle level RT's, and doing a proper room design for the SP side RTs.
For comp games this is almost not an issue. There are a couple of strats/tools/moments during the game to revert this situation.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@NovoRei I'd agree with your assessment in regards to the emotional reception from playing NS2, but the source of where it originates is not with map layouts.
It's much more of a fundamental game design issue, thanks to the combination of variety & complexity of mechanics (difficult to learn) and slippery slopes (unforgiving) from RTS elements.
A recent thread that became a bit too nuanced to read through fully, involved some ideas to try to lesson the second offender there... but solving the complexity aspect is a tad difficult without a complete redesign and concern over "watering it down".
I dream of an NS3 that's more in line with a long round of CSGO, as far as design simplicity and non-invested gameplay goes. Basically 80% FPS and 20% RTS, removal of commanders and loss of higher lifeforms etc.
(No, not NS2 combat. I'd love to see gameplay objectives still, and have no love for Resources for Kills or other slippery slope mechanics)
I will agree with you that the "balance from the top down" is wrong, I've always thought so.
Especially, because in a competitive game, balance isn't actually a huge problem - provided that both teams get to play both sides. On de_nuke in cstrike, a 4/11 score is a good round for T - that doesn't exactly spell "balance", but it's a popular map regardless. And it works because both teams play both sides.
Balance is such an fleeting thing anyway, a game can be considered "balanced" until somebody comes up with the idea of stacking something that nobody stacked before with the end result being broken in a very specific context.
But don't pretend that every suggestion of features and gamemodes were discarded simply because of comp players demanding balance. The reasons are far more complex than that. It takes a considerable amount of time and resources to build a new game mode or a new piece of content.
I'm sure, if you give a concrete example of where you think balance was prioritized over fun, it would be easier to give you a concrete response as well.
Not every single suggested feature or gamemode, but a lot of them didn't even get considered for the fear of the impact they might have had on the "competitive scene". Even suggestions that would have accounted for that, and allowed for more varied gameplay in the pub environment, like for example introducing a "comp config" that could allow for different balance goals, got shouted down because it would "split the community", a community that pretty much has always been split to some degree or another.
Comp mod, the way I look at it at least, was far more an attempt at shaking up the game to be more fun, than it was to re-balance the game. The game was in fact fairly balanced at the time - it was just getting stale. Nobody in their right mind, would look at the NS2WC and say to themselves "You know, I think it would be more balanced if Marines had an HMG".
Years later we have an unofficial "comp mod", so the same thing like an "comp. config" still came to fruition but without any official support and without accounting for the needs of the "non comp." playerbase. The last thing being the biggest sticker for me: The assumption that every single NS player wants the same out of the game, that every single player is supposed to enjoy the "competitive experience" sooner or later and if not they are "doing something wrong".
Imho that's been one of the biggest misconceptions around here, the idea that NS is "that one thing" and just that, but it's not and it never had been. NS is a competitive game, NS is a sandbox, NS is an social experience, NS is many things and none of them exclusively! It feels like we forgot this somewhere at some point when the only thing that mattered had been "competitive balance" no matter the price.
it's the effect of the inclusion of alien comm and cysts. ns1 was much more fluid in territory because the maps were bigger/travel time between locations was longer, and the aliens could set up bases wherever they pleased.
it's the effect of the inclusion of alien comm and cysts. ns1 was much more fluid in territory because the maps were bigger/travel time between locations was longer, and the aliens could set up bases wherever they pleased.
The current gorgetunnel system works as a pretty good alternative.
But i think it would be cool and rookie-friendly if solo gorges had more to do in NS2, building wise. Right now its tunnel, 3 hydras and you basicly done building. In ns you could spend a whole game in 1 room to make it a perfect marine-hell. Almost minecraft / sandbox style, you know.
it's the effect of the inclusion of alien comm and cysts. ns1 was much more fluid in territory because the maps were bigger/travel time between locations was longer, and the aliens could set up bases wherever they pleased.
The current gorgetunnel system works as a pretty good alternative.
But i think it would be cool and rookie-friendly if solo gorges had more to do in NS2, building wise. Right now its tunnel, 3 hydras and you basicly done building. In ns you could spend a whole game in 1 room to make it a perfect marine-hell. Almost minecraft / sandbox style, you know.
Hey, if there's one thing we know for sure from the current climate of successful game releases, it's that people don't go for open-end ended sandbox experiences that aren't arbitrarily limited to linear progression through game-mechanics specifically meant to limit player choice.
Wait..
I do agree though, let's remove cysting's tie to building, and the same with power nodes. If only they had their own identity instead..
@NovoRei I'd agree with your assessment in regards to the emotional reception from playing NS2, but the source of where it originates is not with map layouts.
It's much more of a fundamental game design issue, thanks to the combination of variety & complexity of mechanics (difficult to learn) and slippery slopes (unforgiving) from RTS elements.
A recent thread that became a bit too nuanced to read through fully, involved some ideas to try to lesson the second offender there... but solving the complexity aspect is a tad difficult without a complete redesign and concern over "watering it down".
I dream of an NS3 that's more in line with a long round of CSGO, as far as design simplicity and non-invested gameplay goes. Basically 80% FPS and 20% RTS, removal of commanders and loss of higher lifeforms etc.
(No, not NS2 combat. I'd love to see gameplay objectives still, and have no love for Resources for Kills or other slippery slope mechanics)
enemy territory.
there's your answer.
mapper specified team limits, like 1 onos/ 1 exo per side.
team based objectives, "clog the vents" etc, plant the dyno yada yada.
or do a BGH version of popular maps.
basically, seige mod without the seige limit. make resources easier to defend and control for both sides, to gaurantee some access to late game tech.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@amoral I agree with the ET approach to a degree, however I think the classes should be unlocked over time in stages, so that you have a super stable early game that is forgiving eventually leading to an inevitably unstable late game with impactful hero roles / higher lifeforms - this also adds variation to each round. NS2 came close to this, but tying them to finite accrued resources is what allows things to snowball, as well as create overly punishing gameplay. (lost your fade 5 seconds out of the egg? GG)
Of course the downside to such an approach is not feeling like you are making such a large impact on the enemy team, in regards to individual vs individual, which is why the objectives are paramount to focus on.
I've always enjoyed the idea of specific successive capture points, which establish intuitive milestones in a round, increase tension as time goes on, and allow for multiple choke points / chances to turn the tables. I think this is something the battlefield series did right in regards to how the closer you were to reaching that last milestone, the map layout made it more difficult for the assaulting team.
At its core, NS has always been appealing to me personally for the melee vs ranged mechanics, as well as the high requirement on mechanical input (walljumping, dodging etc) ... the high level strategy stuff, while engaging, just goes over the head of 90% of players and seems to add "depth" only to the veterans who conquer the prior basic mechanical skills. This is ignoring the other obvious aspects such as the limited amount of build orders, fragility of commander role, and how depth can still be found even if the FPS elements were the only things implemented - as CSGO and others have demonstrated.
@amoral I agree with the ET approach to a degree, however I think the classes should be unlocked over time in stages, so that you have a super stable early game that is forgiving eventually leading to an inevitably unstable late game with impactful hero roles / higher lifeforms - this also adds variation to each round. NS2 came close to this, but tying them to finite accrued resources is what allows things to snowball, as well as create overly punishing gameplay. (lost your fade 5 seconds out of the egg? GG)
Of course the downside to such an approach is not feeling like you are making such a large impact on the enemy team, in regards to individual vs individual, which is why the objectives are paramount to focus on.
I've always enjoyed the idea of specific successive capture points, which establish intuitive milestones in a round, increase tension as time goes on, and allow for multiple choke points / chances to turn the tables. I think this is something the battlefield series did right in regards to how the closer you were to reaching that last milestone, the map layout made it more difficult for the assaulting team.
At its core, NS has always been appealing to me personally for the melee vs ranged mechanics, as well as the high requirement on mechanical input (walljumping, dodging etc) ... the high level strategy stuff, while engaging, just goes over the head of 90% of players and seems to add "depth" only to the veterans who conquer the prior basic mechanical skills. This is ignoring the other obvious aspects such as the limited amount of build orders, fragility of commander role, and how depth can still be found even if the FPS elements were the only things implemented - as CSGO and others have demonstrated.
well my thrust being that starcraft apparently was terribly balanced, but the mappers accounted for the imbalances by tweaking sizes, entrances, lane sizes etc.
wolf-et dragged asymmetry out of fundamentally symmetrical teams using nothing but good map design. can't we do something similar?
who said that spawn-points had to be randomized? maybe there's some middle ground between seige and vanilla that can be explored.
Unknown Worlds did a few things I disliked and a few I question with this game design but the one big factor that sent this game into its death spiral was releasing it with poor performance. I purchased 3 or 4 (it's been so long I forget) copies of this game for friends and family and each one of them had a common complaint: Performance.
There are so many things we could nit-pick but for me this is the biggest culprit. I mean look at Batman Arkham Knight's release; People are up in arms about a 30FPS 'lock' or what have you (as they should be) and this game was no different.
wolf-et dragged asymmetry out of fundamentally symmetrical teams using nothing but good map design. can't we do something similar?
It would be interesting to see big maps where the middle and sides had pretty much nothing but the top and bottom parts of the map had the RTs so that each fight didn't gain you control of a room for res/pressure, but gained you a position where if you won the next 2-3 fights, you would then be able to pressure res.
It might lessen the snowball effect or at least delay the snowball effect until late game tech comes out and then whoever starts to lose their exos/jp+sgs/onos starts to lose ground and the game.
wolf-et dragged asymmetry out of fundamentally symmetrical teams using nothing but good map design. can't we do something similar?
It would be interesting to see big maps where the middle and sides had pretty much nothing but the top and bottom parts of the map had the RTs so that each fight didn't gain you control of a room for res/pressure, but gained you a position where if you won the next 2-3 fights, you would then be able to pressure res.
It might lessen the snowball effect or at least delay the snowball effect until late game tech comes out and then whoever starts to lose their exos/jp+sgs/onos starts to lose ground and the game.
yeah, or you know shifting spawn points depending on progress. but that was kind of what i meant with the "middle-ground between vanilla and seige"
don't have to make it late game tech vs late game tech like seige more or less is.
make it so that you've got some awesome base res/ natural res, and some non-res related position enhancing goals along the way.
something like, hive locations for cheap forward spawning. or powered rooms with defendable power nodes, and most rooms have power with like. 100 health. constant fight over light and darkness.
It would be interesting to see big maps where the middle and sides had pretty much nothing but the top and bottom parts of the map had the RTs so that each fight didn't gain you control of a room for res/pressure, but gained you a position where if you won the next 2-3 fights, you would then be able to pressure res.
It might lessen the snowball effect or at least delay the snowball effect until late game tech comes out and then whoever starts to lose their exos/jp+sgs/onos starts to lose ground and the game.
Balance was really a secondary issue. Let's be honest though if anything it would have been the finishing blow to the game. We all know performance is what drove everyone people away as only the people with top tier pcs could compete and by the time everyone left it was just the usual people stacking but these guys exist in every game. NS2 just needed to run well before we could start seeing the effects of balance across a large number of players. Either way I could adapt to the changes in time but you can really adapt to lack of a playerbase where you had to pay for slots or queue for a while only to find stacked teams and everyone leaving.
That said I still hope there is a NS3 since it would have a full playerbase again for a while.
You actually get really decent performance if you play with low settings. Fixes the Fps disadvantage you have in engagements and how you read the environment. I guess in most competitive fps you have to run the game with low settings to have the better performance you can get from the game
You actually get really decent performance if you play with low settings. Fixes the Fps disadvantage you have in engagements and how you read the environment. I guess in most competitive fps you have to run the game with low settings to have the better performance you can get from the game
The only low settings are for graphic details.
Clearly with my old PC @ 20fps on NS2; I had no difference running it with high graphic detail. 2~3 FPS at most. Not a big deal. The issue was CPU. AMD FX6000+ wasn't enough at the time. It's probably not true anymore but I can understand the frustration of the typical player at the time. Lucky me I was on the verge of changing my PC for other reasons. I assume that it was not possible for others. So they left. Who can blame them?
Balance was really a secondary issue. Let's be honest though if anything it would have been the finishing blow to the game. We all know performance is what drove everyone people away as only the people with top tier pcs could compete and by the time everyone left it was just the usual people stacking but these guys exist in every game. NS2 just needed to run well before we could start seeing the effects of balance across a large number of players. Either way I could adapt to the changes in time but you can really adapt to lack of a playerbase where you had to pay for slots or queue for a while only to find stacked teams and everyone leaving.
That said I still hope there is a NS3 since it would have a full playerbase again for a while.
I go from around a fluctuating 60 in high settings to quite stable 140 fps with low settings (except on badly optimized rooms, maps, and end game).
The difference is massive
I go from around a fluctuating 60 in high settings to quite stable 140 fps with low settings (except on badly optimized rooms, maps, and end game).
The difference is massive
Remove Bloom and Ambient Occlusion (stupid FPS killers that add close to nothing). Other than these 2 you can push all at high (atmospheric, infestation etc) / min to check the difference. I do that. High or low detail is the same FPS rate (I did DX9 / DX11).
I don't understand why those 2 where implemented. I really don't see the difference. And when you can see it (close to a wall) it's buggy/ugly.
Game died due to performance issues and infamous Fall 2009 release date following a ridiculous long "early access" phase where simply nothing improved much. DayZ syndrome.
NS1 held people much much longer than this iteration of a fantastic franchise. They should have so much gone for the source engine back then, but sadly some megalomaniacs a.k.a. Flayra thought their own engine is so much better suited for this piece.
Source engine was, at the time, far from fitting the bill concerning the game engine market. Cry engine, unreal engine and probably a handfull of others (free ones) were already far beyond on many aspects. In fact the Source engine would have been the worst choice.
Source engine was, at the time, far from fitting the bill concerning the game engine market. Cry engine, unreal engine and probably a handfull of others (free ones) were already far beyond on many aspects. In fact the Source engine would have been the worst choice.
I think we can all agree that Spark was the worst choice. I can't even imagine developing that engine and all the headache still associated with it costs less than a license back when.
Comments
Spinning that further, if that is enabled on a server, as a player you'll target the enemie's rookie as he's become their shining star. I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes.
building stuff
welding stuff
using a noob tube/flamethrower
They would find it if they were to watch some videos or tutorials... A lot of bad things happening to players in the video can be solved by simply getting information (especially SC2). Yeah i know 'RTFM' but that's damn right to do so (any games).
1. The game is heavy. This with a fast FPS makes a bad/frustrating gaming experience.
2. The maps (not the balacing) are rubbish from a new player gratification POV, very unforgiving. The result is severe task repetition and a helplessness feeling.
All NS2 maps are a flavor of the following structure:
My assertion: Once a team randomly hold the middle and/or control (not hold) one side of the enemy SP's RT, it's a painful downhill. I speculate the 1-sigma "point of no reversal" in a regular(pub) game is 1 minute in this condition, with the game lasting 6 minutes.
I wonder if decoupling some resource from map control would improve gameplay for them. For example removing the middle level RT's, and doing a proper room design for the SP side RTs.
For comp games this is almost not an issue. There are a couple of strats/tools/moments during the game to revert this situation.
It's much more of a fundamental game design issue, thanks to the combination of variety & complexity of mechanics (difficult to learn) and slippery slopes (unforgiving) from RTS elements.
A recent thread that became a bit too nuanced to read through fully, involved some ideas to try to lesson the second offender there... but solving the complexity aspect is a tad difficult without a complete redesign and concern over "watering it down".
I dream of an NS3 that's more in line with a long round of CSGO, as far as design simplicity and non-invested gameplay goes. Basically 80% FPS and 20% RTS, removal of commanders and loss of higher lifeforms etc.
(No, not NS2 combat. I'd love to see gameplay objectives still, and have no love for Resources for Kills or other slippery slope mechanics)
Balance is such an fleeting thing anyway, a game can be considered "balanced" until somebody comes up with the idea of stacking something that nobody stacked before with the end result being broken in a very specific context.
Not every single suggested feature or gamemode, but a lot of them didn't even get considered for the fear of the impact they might have had on the "competitive scene". Even suggestions that would have accounted for that, and allowed for more varied gameplay in the pub environment, like for example introducing a "comp config" that could allow for different balance goals, got shouted down because it would "split the community", a community that pretty much has always been split to some degree or another.
Years later we have an unofficial "comp mod", so the same thing like an "comp. config" still came to fruition but without any official support and without accounting for the needs of the "non comp." playerbase. The last thing being the biggest sticker for me: The assumption that every single NS player wants the same out of the game, that every single player is supposed to enjoy the "competitive experience" sooner or later and if not they are "doing something wrong".
Imho that's been one of the biggest misconceptions around here, the idea that NS is "that one thing" and just that, but it's not and it never had been. NS is a competitive game, NS is a sandbox, NS is an social experience, NS is many things and none of them exclusively! It feels like we forgot this somewhere at some point when the only thing that mattered had been "competitive balance" no matter the price.
Yes, we did have a very broken and incomplete mod of combat.. until UWE decided to charge extra for that limiting the variety in gameplay even further
I can't think of any way that whole combat debacle could have ended up any worse..
The current gorgetunnel system works as a pretty good alternative.
But i think it would be cool and rookie-friendly if solo gorges had more to do in NS2, building wise. Right now its tunnel, 3 hydras and you basicly done building. In ns you could spend a whole game in 1 room to make it a perfect marine-hell. Almost minecraft / sandbox style, you know.
Hey, if there's one thing we know for sure from the current climate of successful game releases, it's that people don't go for open-end ended sandbox experiences that aren't arbitrarily limited to linear progression through game-mechanics specifically meant to limit player choice.
Wait..
I do agree though, let's remove cysting's tie to building, and the same with power nodes. If only they had their own identity instead..
enemy territory.
there's your answer.
mapper specified team limits, like 1 onos/ 1 exo per side.
team based objectives, "clog the vents" etc, plant the dyno yada yada.
or do a BGH version of popular maps.
basically, seige mod without the seige limit. make resources easier to defend and control for both sides, to gaurantee some access to late game tech.
Of course the downside to such an approach is not feeling like you are making such a large impact on the enemy team, in regards to individual vs individual, which is why the objectives are paramount to focus on.
I've always enjoyed the idea of specific successive capture points, which establish intuitive milestones in a round, increase tension as time goes on, and allow for multiple choke points / chances to turn the tables. I think this is something the battlefield series did right in regards to how the closer you were to reaching that last milestone, the map layout made it more difficult for the assaulting team.
At its core, NS has always been appealing to me personally for the melee vs ranged mechanics, as well as the high requirement on mechanical input (walljumping, dodging etc) ... the high level strategy stuff, while engaging, just goes over the head of 90% of players and seems to add "depth" only to the veterans who conquer the prior basic mechanical skills. This is ignoring the other obvious aspects such as the limited amount of build orders, fragility of commander role, and how depth can still be found even if the FPS elements were the only things implemented - as CSGO and others have demonstrated.
well my thrust being that starcraft apparently was terribly balanced, but the mappers accounted for the imbalances by tweaking sizes, entrances, lane sizes etc.
wolf-et dragged asymmetry out of fundamentally symmetrical teams using nothing but good map design. can't we do something similar?
who said that spawn-points had to be randomized? maybe there's some middle ground between seige and vanilla that can be explored.
There are so many things we could nit-pick but for me this is the biggest culprit. I mean look at Batman Arkham Knight's release; People are up in arms about a 30FPS 'lock' or what have you (as they should be) and this game was no different.
It would be interesting to see big maps where the middle and sides had pretty much nothing but the top and bottom parts of the map had the RTs so that each fight didn't gain you control of a room for res/pressure, but gained you a position where if you won the next 2-3 fights, you would then be able to pressure res.
It might lessen the snowball effect or at least delay the snowball effect until late game tech comes out and then whoever starts to lose their exos/jp+sgs/onos starts to lose ground and the game.
yeah, or you know shifting spawn points depending on progress. but that was kind of what i meant with the "middle-ground between vanilla and seige"
don't have to make it late game tech vs late game tech like seige more or less is.
make it so that you've got some awesome base res/ natural res, and some non-res related position enhancing goals along the way.
something like, hive locations for cheap forward spawning. or powered rooms with defendable power nodes, and most rooms have power with like. 100 health. constant fight over light and darkness.
i don't think that would fix anything.
well he is doing his job right then :P
That said I still hope there is a NS3 since it would have a full playerbase again for a while.
The only low settings are for graphic details.
Clearly with my old PC @ 20fps on NS2; I had no difference running it with high graphic detail. 2~3 FPS at most. Not a big deal. The issue was CPU. AMD FX6000+ wasn't enough at the time. It's probably not true anymore but I can understand the frustration of the typical player at the time. Lucky me I was on the verge of changing my PC for other reasons. I assume that it was not possible for others. So they left. Who can blame them?
I run NS2 fine on a 4+ year old laptop =P
Average 60-75 fps (vsync locks it to 75)
Except kodiak, that map has inefficient fires.
The difference is massive
Remove Bloom and Ambient Occlusion (stupid FPS killers that add close to nothing). Other than these 2 you can push all at high (atmospheric, infestation etc) / min to check the difference. I do that. High or low detail is the same FPS rate (I did DX9 / DX11).
I don't understand why those 2 where implemented. I really don't see the difference. And when you can see it (close to a wall) it's buggy/ugly.
NS1 held people much much longer than this iteration of a fantastic franchise. They should have so much gone for the source engine back then, but sadly some megalomaniacs a.k.a. Flayra thought their own engine is so much better suited for this piece.
Haha.
Angry German detected.
Agree though.
I think we can all agree that Spark was the worst choice. I can't even imagine developing that engine and all the headache still associated with it costs less than a license back when.