It is time to bring combat back to ns2

tallhotblonde

Combat standalone was a massive flop - It will NEVER be successful, we will never see over 100 (or even 10) concurrent players.

Bring it back to ns2, and give people who wasted their money on it a skin or badge.

The possible player retention value that combat mode would have could be enormous, UWE needs to address the fact that they truly fuck ed up by trying to make it a standalone.
I dont know anything that could have a bigger impact to ns2 than more game modes, and combat has always been the most popular alternative mode.

If anything, having the combat standalone on the steam store with unbelievably negative reviews is damaging to the natural selection brand.

Give faultline $1000 (more than they will get from sales over the next 10 years) and bring it back.

Mephilles

also faultline games could contribute to development of ns2 aswell

Tux0r

I can't agree with this enough. Combat was great when you are trying to build up a server, or when you are feeling like playing some NS2, but are feeling "pub fatigued"

MaxAmus

What i always enjoyed, as Tux0r said, when a server was only filling up, you had the option to play combat until the server voted not only to change map but to change the gamemode to Classic, was always fun, servers would fill quite quickly. Being able to switch between those game modes was always great.

SamusDroid

http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2265701/#Comment_2265701

Pelargir

Combat developers are still quite active actually. Although they need to organize some public sessions to have some games, they've been adding a couple of things those last months. Their knowledge of the game and ability to model stuff is awesome.

Examples: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=595573850
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=581341978

Those are things that are available on the NS2 Steam Workshop, what they're doing on Combat is even more awesome.

Too bad we don't see some sort of partnership between the current NS2 team and Fautline Games, NS2 would be so much better.

GhoulofGSG9

Related thread: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/139406/why-cant-you-combine-ns2-combat-into-the-game-give-some-love-to-it

GhoulofGSG9 wrote: »

As explained multiple times before NS2 and NS2:Combat have been developed by two different game studios.

The developers of Combat made a publisher deal with UWE.

That deal specifies that NS2:Combat is handled independent from NS2 and is a standalone.

Even if that contract would not exist merging NS2:Combat back into NS2 would be a lot of work because combat is based on the code of almost 1.5 years ago. So someone would have to adjust and polish it to the today's NS2 code base and standards.

To add onto that the CDT is already busy enough with maintaining the NS2 code base, maintaining just another project would be over our heads.

As nice as it might be those two reasons make it legally and technically very unlikely that Combat ever gets merged into NS2.

For the CDT imho it would be easier and faster to create a similar mode to Combat than porting it.

Same applies for the current dev team. I think our own projects like Last Stand have a greater potential to get merged into Vanilla.

Kasharic

This topic comes up so often... its like people don't know how to use the search function

As ghoul said above... too much work... would require 2 studios to be in agreement and work side by side to make it work... other things have a better chance of working in NS2 at the moment.

meatmachine

It's a shame because Last Stand does not remotely fill the gap that combat left behind.
Last stand is fun for sure, but it's not combat, and does not come close to providing the needs that were met by combat's niche.

tallhotblonde

We dont need combat to have all the bells and whistles as NS2:combat has right now. Just like in ns1 we simply need the maps, the balance tweaks and the player progression/leveling system.

Where does all this extra work come from? Combat mod was made by people in their spare time and it was working great near the end apart from being broken every time UWE released a new build.

Kasharic wrote: »

This topic comes up so often... its like people don't know how to use the search function

As ghoul said above... too much work... would require 2 studios to be in agreement and work side by side to make it work... other things have a better chance of working in NS2 at the moment.

The topics are nearly always started by me :] and i cant see all this required work needed by 2 studios when combat mod and the maps are already out there somewhere.

Kouji_San

Yeah, Last Stand is kinda a lite version of Combat, also stripping out the progression elements. It is mostly a game mode that should be seen as a horde mode, which most games usually have... With zombies...

But the fact is, NS2 does need these "drop in, no obligations, drop out" modes. I'm just very worried it's too little too late, I hope I'm very wrong as well


I've always been wary of the separation of the Combat mod -> Ns2:Combat standalone. I would love to see it come back into the latest Spark version and more importantly visible in the NS2 server browser, without having to boot up a separate Spark. But the chances of that are nill to nope to nada, I'm afraid...

And I'd love to see Combat not being so dependent on the NS2 lua (It is dependent on that for a lot of stuff right?), so every NS2 build still would have potential to break a mod that does this. I dunno, just asking here

And there's that annoying little tidbit about Steam Workshop not allowing filesizes for mods, beyond 100Mb total mod size IIRC... I could be wrong though, I think I've seen bigger mods on there...

Anti_Boson

@tallhotblonde The stand alone version of Combat was made by the same people who made the mod, most of who have moved on from any NS2 related game/work. It took the original mod team nearly half a year to create the original Combat mod for ns2. Long story short, NS2: Combat was and still is being developed by the company those modders founded. The copyright to Combat is contractually shared between UWE and FLG, so it would take an agreement between both parties to merge it with vanilla NS2, something I highly doubt will ever happen. Even if there weren't any legal issues, the amount of work to merge and maintain both games would be astounding, whether or not you or anyone else realizes it.

SantaClaws

Forget about combat, that ship has sailed. If you really want to fill the hole that combat left, then brainstorm a new gamemode, that doesn't carry on all the inherent problems that combat had.

I'd like to see, basically a game mode exactly like vanilla NS2, except the commander is replaced with an AI. Make the AI's build structures, including the forward resource nodes.

Now all that's left, is for each team to focus on the combat and the map control, while retaining a progression system.

You can still have the personalized buy menu. Maybe one player would rather have fast shotgun, while another wants armor 2.

Benefits this would have over combat include, and are not limited to:

You don't have this inherent snowball effect, of the top-fraggers getting better and better gear, to make more frags, to get better gear, repeat. I have broken the 100/0 K/D in combatmod several times abusing this mechanic.

Everyone on the team will get the same amount of points, based on how well the team is doing. This carries over the spirit of vanilla NS2 and will arguably be a better training for rookies.

It will encourage team work, while still making room for individual play styles and upgrade paths.

It would help disperse the action a little bit, allowing for bigger maps (if that is desired). On most of the combatmod maps I played, it was easy for aliens to just slip through the marines through the vents, and go bite their base. Because non of the marines were ever focused on laneblocking at all, they always just rushed the hive, to get the spawnfrags + hivedamage points.

If there's no bonus for hitting structures or frags, then the players will have to shift the focus on sabotaging the other team, by killing their res nodes. Exactly like we want them to in vanilla.

And perhaps best of all; it won't overly punish you for dying, by the silly 'feeding' mechanic, giving exp to the enemy or losing all of your gear: Rookie friendly!

Frozen

Now before I say this I need to be clear. I absolutely hate the Tactical Gamer server, and have for 12-13 years.

I played a map there once where you just had to stand on a middle platform and hold it till the other team ticks to zero. So king of the hill. It wasn't fully or appropriately balanced yet, but it was more fun than I ever had in ns1 combat, combat mod, and ns2:combat put together.

Saffron_baker

What about a run from the Onos gamemode?
(Should i give it a try?)

Nordic

Saffron_baker wrote: »

What about a run from the Onos gamemode?
(Should i give it a try?)

There is the hungry hungry onos mod similar to that.

Saffron_baker

Nordic wrote: »

Saffron_baker wrote: »

What about a run from the Onos gamemode?
(Should i give it a try?)

There is the hungry hungry onos mod similar to that.

im thinking something difrent
more like a parkour map kinda.....
like a incredible long corridor and you need to jump on all kinds of stuff to get out of there!

meatmachine

Saffron_baker wrote: »

Nordic wrote: »

Saffron_baker wrote: »

What about a run from the Onos gamemode?
(Should i give it a try?)

There is the hungry hungry onos mod similar to that.

im thinking something difrent
more like a parkour map kinda.....
like a incredible long corridor and you need to jump on all kinds of stuff to get out of there!

Ever play the CS zombiemod mod, Zombie Escape?
the maps were basically a 5k marathon of running, running, obstacle courses and skilljumps to reach some kind of evacuation/escape helicopter/boat/etc at the far end of the course. Everyone spawns CT and within 30 seconds one or two randoms get zombified- a single knife brings a CT to the zombie team.
Something like that in NS2 could be absolutely epic.

Calego

Frozen wrote: »

I played a map there once where you just had to stand on a middle platform and hold it till the other team ticks to zero. So king of the hill. It wasn't fully or appropriately balanced yet, but it was more fun than I ever had in ns1 combat, combat mod, and ns2:combat put together.

ns2_tgns_arclight

I agree that a KOTH style gamemode could work with a system similar to this. Perhaps even branching out to have several Cap points on a map (3 capture points, team score goes up depending on how many you hold type thing -- standard in several other games).

I also agree with @SantaClaws, we should let Combat be and make up something new and less-pressure.

Seige is an alright gamemode, IMO it's strayed a bit too far from vanilla, but if the general principle could be applied to a more true-to-vanilla lifeform and map style it could be excellent.


The main thing between vanilla and any other mode is the progression system, as far as I know, both Arclight and Seige use a hacky way of just giving both teams a ton of RTs off the bat and that pacing determines the progression. Removing this, we'd need some other way of progressively making each team stronger. OR else both teams have full tech automatically, and it just becomes a clusterchuck of a battle between fully tricked out teams.

IMO I'd rather there be some progression to help people joining these gamemodes learn a bit about skulking before jumping right to the other lifeforms.

Soul_Rider

I would also very much keep an eye on @Scatter He is doing some cool things down under....

http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/139456/ns2-assault-alpha