Remember Back When Ns Was Awesome...
Redcap
Join Date: 2003-03-13 Member: 14457Members
Join Date: 2003-03-13 Member: 14457Members
<div class="IPBDescription">My thoughts on 3.0 beta 4</div> Not trying to insult anyone, honestly. I just came back to the game after a leave of absence, and I have to say that things have changed, too much. I'm just wondering if I'm all alone here. I remember back when I first started playing NS, I think it was version 1.03 and it was actually fun. I didn't find my experiences with 3.0 beta 4 very fun at all for the following reasons.
1) The only alien wins I experienced on any servers I played were in the new Combat mode, and those we seemed to win everytime, but it sucked, so I didn't care.
2) Onos and Fade are both so weak now as to be basically a joke, resulting in #1.
3) Majority of alien upgrades seem to be worthless, resulting in #1.
4) Even with a large percentage of the alien team dropping Res at game start, Res comes so slowly that no one can build anything to defend the Res. Most of the res towers get taken out while the people who dropped them are trying to kill enough people to get enough res to defend them. This means the majority of them get killed while defenceless, resulting in #1.
It seems to me like every release of NS gets less fun to play. I guess I'll go download 2.1 and see if there are any servers up, because while it wasn't as fun as 1.4, I recall it being a whole lot more fun than the current 3.0 beta 4. I don't know though, maybe I'm all alone and everyone else loves it. Anyway, if you read this far and have found anything I said upsetting, I'm sorry. My experience with the "new" NS has just left me with a deep feeling of dissapointment and confusion.
1) The only alien wins I experienced on any servers I played were in the new Combat mode, and those we seemed to win everytime, but it sucked, so I didn't care.
2) Onos and Fade are both so weak now as to be basically a joke, resulting in #1.
3) Majority of alien upgrades seem to be worthless, resulting in #1.
4) Even with a large percentage of the alien team dropping Res at game start, Res comes so slowly that no one can build anything to defend the Res. Most of the res towers get taken out while the people who dropped them are trying to kill enough people to get enough res to defend them. This means the majority of them get killed while defenceless, resulting in #1.
It seems to me like every release of NS gets less fun to play. I guess I'll go download 2.1 and see if there are any servers up, because while it wasn't as fun as 1.4, I recall it being a whole lot more fun than the current 3.0 beta 4. I don't know though, maybe I'm all alone and everyone else loves it. Anyway, if you read this far and have found anything I said upsetting, I'm sorry. My experience with the "new" NS has just left me with a deep feeling of dissapointment and confusion.
Comments
2) Fade weak <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo--> Not in the right hands, onos with stomp = awesome
3) WTH <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
4) Server was too big, or you lost RTs early cos Aliens sucked.
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IT'S ONLY A BETA TEST.............
3) Redemption is useless, do to the change in the armor system. The rest of the upgrades are fine.
4) As Smooth said, it was either too big a server, or the teams were marine stacked. Or aliens may have placed more res than they could possibly hope to defend.
WTH? One single skilled fade appearing early in the game will usually end the game in favour of the aliens allmost single handedly, they are simply the single most over- powered units in NS by a very very wide margin.
2) Both Fade and Onos as close combat units just bugs the heck out of me honestly, and they both seem to die faster than I remember. Alot faster. Marines aren't even scared of Onos anymore. The one time I bothered going Onos I swear I could feel them laughing at me. Stomp is useless, lasts like a second now. Basically, in the past, Fade was a ranged assault unit, Onos was a tank. Now the fade is a hit and run melee unit, and the onos is a slow hit and run melee unit. I don't know, I don't feel like I'm explaining it very well and I apologize for that.
3) Quite a few upgrades seemed to be pretty useless to me. Don't know how else to put it. Redemption hardly ever seemed to grab me when I tried it. Carapace worked the same, but everyone still seemed to die faster. Regen was the only d upgrade that did anything for fades/onos. I never actually experienced sensory going up, since I'm sure the Onos and Fade players would have wailed and nashed their teeth at the thought of it before the third hive. Movement seemed basically the same as 2.1, which is to say, celerity should be faster, silence is useless because by the time movement goes up they have motion tracking, and adrenaline is the only real choice.
4) As I said, all the servers seem big to me now. With 12+ people per side, the comms just kept sending out people to kill Res all over the map. I don't feel like the alien teams were playing terrible, with the exception of one server that I'm not really including in my judgement, since bad players can ruin the game for anyone. No, I played on probably 4 different servers and experience the same thing on all of them.
The real point of my post wasn't to try and point out specific problems, but just to say that it didn't "feel" nearly as fun as I remembered it being. The new one isn't as fun as version 2, and version 2 wasn't as fun as version 1.
Definitely wasn't my experience on the pubs I was on. I don't know, this is all from one evenings play and I'll admit that it may not be the most well thought out or researched critic around. I never saw a Fade turn the tide of a game. I remember that they used too, but they sure didn't seem to be tonight. On the other hand, they did seem to survive, on average, longer than the Onos. Of course, I haven't played a game where anyone got enough res to go fade early enough to really be considered early either. I haven't read changelists, I don't know how much of what I thought I experienced was real or not, I just know how it seemed to me. Res was to slow coming, alien upgrades were always behind the marines and just barely holding on long enough to force them to work for it, a little, and the higher aliens didn't really seem to be worth their cost in res. Of course, most of all, it didn't seem to be very fun.
Find a good 16-18 man server and stay there, any higher than that and games are highly bias in marines favour. Hopefully this will be sorted soon see here:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=64650&st=0&#entry964736' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=0&#entry964736</a>
NS atm seems perfectly balanced at around 6vs6
1) The only alien wins I experienced on any servers I played were in the new Combat mode, and those we seemed to win everytime, but it sucked, so I didn't care.
2) Onos and Fade are both so weak now as to be basically a joke, resulting in #1.
3) Majority of alien upgrades seem to be worthless, resulting in #1.
4) Even with a large percentage of the alien team dropping Res at game start, Res comes so slowly that no one can build anything to defend the Res. Most of the res towers get taken out while the people who dropped them are trying to kill enough people to get enough res to defend them. This means the majority of them get killed while defenceless, resulting in #1.
It seems to me like every release of NS gets less fun to play. I guess I'll go download 2.1 and see if there are any servers up, because while it wasn't as fun as 1.4, I recall it being a whole lot more fun than the current 3.0 beta 4. I don't know though, maybe I'm all alone and everyone else loves it. Anyway, if you read this far and have found anything I said upsetting, I'm sorry. My experience with the "new" NS has just left me with a deep feeling of dissapointment and confusion. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you’re coming from the 1.03 days then yes the fade is much less powerful. Fades then had acid rocket 2nd hive which basically tore everything that met its path apart. Obviously this was an imbalance and has changed since. Onos is actually more powerful imo, then 1.03 so I'm not to sure why you think its weak but that’s just my opinion (Stomp is much better then paralyze + they have devour now).
Combat seriously shouldn’t be taken to seriously as this is a beta, the respawn system is in the works and it does kind of screw over combat at the moment so just disregard it for now.
The alien upgrades are just as good if not better then 1.03, not sure where you got this. Except for carapace almost every upgrades has been beefed up such as focus, increased celerity speed, passive abilities etc.
I also don’t understand why you dislike the res system, you say you played 1.03 were there was a 1 gorge system and in fact you gained less res as an alien player then you would currently (Assuming your not the gorge), also marines had more dominance in 1.03 to kill your nodes as compared to today’s ns. I would suggest you play some more and get a better polling of what beta 4 has to offer, as I don’t think you got a good sense of the game comparing to 1.03.
What really counts is if you’re having fun though, if you really dislike b4 then you can download an old copy of version 1.04 and find some of the 5 servers that still host it. Although I think you'll like b4 much more once you give it some time and become familiar with its nuances.
Lagger, I think it really was the fact that game seems to be completely and utterly broken in favor of the marines for the size of games that the majority of servers seem to be running, combined with the fact that back in the 1.03 and 1.04 days the server max player limits tended to be, on average, lower. I started out in 1.03, but 1.04 came out soon after, and my favorite memories of the game are version 1.04, and while the fade was overpowered, the new no good ranged combat unit combined with an Onos that feels weaker to me still doesn't make sense. Atleast not to me. And I seem to remember paralyze giving me more time to dispatch the afflicted marine than the pathetic second that stomp seems to give. I remember stomp in version 2.0 not being as pathetic as it seemed tonight. Also, what exactly have they done to armor? Is it weaker? It definitely seemed weaker, but that may have been the they have lvl 3 weapons and we have cute smiles thing again.
As for the armor changes: All armor now absorbs 70% of the damage taken, and armor points are worth a varying amount of health. For aliens, the amount of health one armor point is worth depends on the hives - one hive, 2 HP = 1 AP, two hives 2.5 HP = 1 AP, and three hives 3 HP = 1 AP. For marines, I am almost certain that 2 HP is always = to 1 AP. It's worth noting that armor is in fact stronger than previous versions that you're used to, however the hitboxes of the aliens have been fixed (mostly) and now the Onos and Fade in particular are much, much easier to hit. Health and armor increases were made to correspond with the hitbox changes, but this is still a beta so things are being worked out.
Hope that clears a few things up.
Lagger, I think it really was the fact that game seems to be completely and utterly broken in favor of the marines for the size of games that the majority of servers seem to be running, combined with the fact that back in the 1.03 and 1.04 days the server max player limits tended to be, on average, lower. I started out in 1.03, but 1.04 came out soon after, and my favorite memories of the game are version 1.04, and while the fade was overpowered, the new no good ranged combat unit combined with an Onos that feels weaker to me still doesn't make sense. Atleast not to me. And I seem to remember paralyze giving me more time to dispatch the afflicted marine than the pathetic second that stomp seems to give. I remember stomp in version 2.0 not being as pathetic as it seemed tonight. Also, what exactly have they done to armor? Is it weaker? It definitely seemed weaker, but that may have been the they have lvl 3 weapons and we have cute smiles thing again. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Onos hitbox was fixed. Before the hitbox was very smallcompared to the actuall model so people would miss alot. Your health goes down faster because people hit more.
Another note on fixed hitboxes. You can pretty much hit something where you can see it, and nowhere else. That means you can actually shoot through a marine rt to kill skulks chomping on it, unless they do a really good job of hiding behind it.
2) Onos and Fade are both so weak now as to be basically a joke, resulting in #1.
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I think 99.9% of NS players will disagree with you here. Fade/onos in the hands of someone who knows what there doing. Pack your bags ladies, the game is over.
Which sucks.
I recon now that it is a FACT that steam has completely ruined full access to features, and as we know steam has ruined the games online gaming to a poor and very laggy state.
Steam was a good idea, that should have placed last and never come first in sierra's eyes.
The beta Combat isnt as good as thought since most users prefer to find 3.0 servers that have NS maps only and not CO, as do i.
The beta has also ruined some layouts of maps we though were already good enough to keep. Altthough i did like the grenade and graphics enhancement on the beta. But as for me,
im sticking with 2.0 and thats all i have to say.
And besides, there are too many people hacking over 3.0, eg
almost everyone i see as onoses are devouring marines at a rate of 100% success whilst in a charge mode, which you should know is bull****.
Sorry beta, i dont reccomend you at all.
lol
becuase 3.0 is just a pain in the **** now
If you like Combat then go play Counterstrike, cos NS is a Strategic game, not in your fast blasting all the time. With NS (not combat) you have to think to win as well as kill, and thats the beauty of it.
I think that every game from NS 2.0 and below are way better than 3.0 or anything higher.
1) I think it's the matter of teamplay that's going on. With each balance, we're seeing more focus on what certain aliens can do (aka fade, or pancake lerks recently) which makes players specialized on those certain forms.
It's not a bad thing, but consider way back during 1.0X reign where a lone alien equals a dead alien against a group of marines. Well, it's not exactly true, but you can get the general gist. <i>Rather than seeing a force of alien teamplay to win, the game is dribble down to key players with certain forms who can win the game.</i> And it's all about getting to those positions (aka 4 minute fades, onos, etc) then picking the marines off. Right now the restriction of forms is res, and with RPK... well, that's for a different topic. I won't get into the marine teamplay, since the structure is generally the same (commander and marines).
2) Pace of game. This is THE biggest factor of funnage in my opinion. Throughout the game, it's tension throughout and everyone has to do their part. Or the team just doesn't care and leave it to the individuals to win. NS regular game is just too quick. There's no chance for a backup plan (unless the other team is stupid). If one tactic fails, then the team is far behind. With hives able to build around the 3-4 minute range, along with fade/lerk support, the marines have to hit the ground running hard.
What happened to gorge sucking on nodes? What happened to 30 seconds delay before res nodes starts getting income after they're built (don't answer those questions)? These things I was hoping for during NS2.0 to keep the pace of the game down. But eh... a lot of the fun is taken away by making the pace hectic.
Again, these are my opinions. I totally agree with Redcap's remarks that the newer improvements are making the game less desireable to play. I know they're beta and everything but eh... all I hope that things will eventually improve. Hopefully.
As a side note, now that betas are making NS:C faster in rounds, does that mean NS regular would start to lengthen their games?
and ya, i think it's sad that a regular combat game is equally long or longer than a regular ns game. it's just not right.