Either Get Good, Or Get Killed.
Sabuki_FourEightySix
Join Date: 2004-05-18 Member: 28740Members
Join Date: 2004-05-18 Member: 28740Members
<div class="IPBDescription">An NS noobs two cents.</div> I've been an active part of the Half Life community since it's release, mapping and modeling has always been my thing but i've never really played many mods especially outside of counterstrike and team fortress classic. So a few months ago i decided to get out there and play some different mods, i thought it would be great to be new at something again!
Friends suggested hundreds of mods to me, but the one that appealed to me the most was of course Natural Selection mainly because of the RTS style of play. Not to mention the fact it looked brilliant, and it was more varied than most of the conventional mods out there.
I was taken back by doing something as simple as setting up the controls, but it was exciting to see all of the different commands you could use. Already it seemed like the mod i was looking for as there seemed to be so much to learn, and as i set off to play my first game of Natural Selection i was as many of you were when you first played, excited.
I did the typical newbie things like asking people "Holy crap how do you do that" or "How do I upgrade?", when i finally felt I was comfortable playing the game it was great. Being a newbie is hard on any mod but it can be a real pain in the **** on NS. It only took a few weeks for the happy feeling to fade away....
My reasons for posting are not to tell you about how great NS is or how happy i was when i found out something, but to tell you the way in which new players are treated on NS. Yeah yeah i'm probably gonna whine about things that you already know but i'm honest in telling you that i'm totally new to Natural Selection. Hopefully this post will give you some insight on the way that NS is heading. Please note however that this is my view, it is not the way things are in the whole entire NS community, it's just one persons experience.
I found a good server to play NS on (which i won't name so i don't offend the owner) rather than going to server to server, i liked the place it was fast paced with a good map cycle and a healthy amount of players. I played there for three weeks, and one afternoon i joined a game. Little did i know that when i did join the game i ended a round on an NS map the people on the server had been playing all afternoon. It was total accident, i apologised but the server admins ganged up on me and insulting me. I sensed the mood and left, hoping things would calm down. Half an hour later i re-joined on a combat map, stacking up a healthy amount of frags and saving a fellow new player twice. Then three server admins started threating me and one said they were going to ban me, instead they slow-hacked me. I noticed right away it was going on so not too much damage was done, and i left the server.
I wasn't angry i just had this sort of empty feeling inside, with a heavy heart i began migrating from server to server again. It was this that made me realise something about many NS servers and new people, new people aren't welcome. Even on supposed newbie friendly servers i found myself a scapegoat when anything went wrong, an excuse for a team losing, the reason why the marines have no res. On one map i manged to divert attention to the commanders amazing lack of a brain by attacking a nearby hive on my own, even though it was suicide. Amazingly on one server when i helped someone by jumping in the command chair and saving his life more times than i can remember and building everthing the vet asked while holding off aliens....he later told me i was a useless waste of res and i had no idea what i was doing.
I'm not trying to paint everybody with the same brush, there were a lot of good players out there who really helped me out. The sad thing is that vets don't like new players 90% of the time, which not only gets good players bad reputations it makes the natural selection community look bad. Server admins are the worst, i mean i've never seen such widespread abuse of admin rights when playing cs or tfc or any mod for that matter. But hey you guys probably know this already, at least i'm here to remind you it's still going on, this is my experience and it was a bad one no doubt. But I won't give up hope, this mod is too good to give up on. Maybe one day i'll look back on this and laugh, it seems sad that a person should be driven from a mod, or even the community after a bad experience.
The only message I can deliver to those who have similar experiences is:
Either get good, or get killed.
Thanks for reading.
(PS: Please not that this is one NS players experience, please don't post with messages like "you like CS more than NS" etc etc. I'm only telling you an experience of a new player so that maybe these problems can be addressed.)
Friends suggested hundreds of mods to me, but the one that appealed to me the most was of course Natural Selection mainly because of the RTS style of play. Not to mention the fact it looked brilliant, and it was more varied than most of the conventional mods out there.
I was taken back by doing something as simple as setting up the controls, but it was exciting to see all of the different commands you could use. Already it seemed like the mod i was looking for as there seemed to be so much to learn, and as i set off to play my first game of Natural Selection i was as many of you were when you first played, excited.
I did the typical newbie things like asking people "Holy crap how do you do that" or "How do I upgrade?", when i finally felt I was comfortable playing the game it was great. Being a newbie is hard on any mod but it can be a real pain in the **** on NS. It only took a few weeks for the happy feeling to fade away....
My reasons for posting are not to tell you about how great NS is or how happy i was when i found out something, but to tell you the way in which new players are treated on NS. Yeah yeah i'm probably gonna whine about things that you already know but i'm honest in telling you that i'm totally new to Natural Selection. Hopefully this post will give you some insight on the way that NS is heading. Please note however that this is my view, it is not the way things are in the whole entire NS community, it's just one persons experience.
I found a good server to play NS on (which i won't name so i don't offend the owner) rather than going to server to server, i liked the place it was fast paced with a good map cycle and a healthy amount of players. I played there for three weeks, and one afternoon i joined a game. Little did i know that when i did join the game i ended a round on an NS map the people on the server had been playing all afternoon. It was total accident, i apologised but the server admins ganged up on me and insulting me. I sensed the mood and left, hoping things would calm down. Half an hour later i re-joined on a combat map, stacking up a healthy amount of frags and saving a fellow new player twice. Then three server admins started threating me and one said they were going to ban me, instead they slow-hacked me. I noticed right away it was going on so not too much damage was done, and i left the server.
I wasn't angry i just had this sort of empty feeling inside, with a heavy heart i began migrating from server to server again. It was this that made me realise something about many NS servers and new people, new people aren't welcome. Even on supposed newbie friendly servers i found myself a scapegoat when anything went wrong, an excuse for a team losing, the reason why the marines have no res. On one map i manged to divert attention to the commanders amazing lack of a brain by attacking a nearby hive on my own, even though it was suicide. Amazingly on one server when i helped someone by jumping in the command chair and saving his life more times than i can remember and building everthing the vet asked while holding off aliens....he later told me i was a useless waste of res and i had no idea what i was doing.
I'm not trying to paint everybody with the same brush, there were a lot of good players out there who really helped me out. The sad thing is that vets don't like new players 90% of the time, which not only gets good players bad reputations it makes the natural selection community look bad. Server admins are the worst, i mean i've never seen such widespread abuse of admin rights when playing cs or tfc or any mod for that matter. But hey you guys probably know this already, at least i'm here to remind you it's still going on, this is my experience and it was a bad one no doubt. But I won't give up hope, this mod is too good to give up on. Maybe one day i'll look back on this and laugh, it seems sad that a person should be driven from a mod, or even the community after a bad experience.
The only message I can deliver to those who have similar experiences is:
Either get good, or get killed.
Thanks for reading.
(PS: Please not that this is one NS players experience, please don't post with messages like "you like CS more than NS" etc etc. I'm only telling you an experience of a new player so that maybe these problems can be addressed.)
Comments
Perhaps this wasn't the desired effect, but hey.
Read the farking manual. Don't ask stupid questions, or you'll be flame bait.
I'm sorry, I try to help out new players. But when the same rank and file of them ask the same rank and file question, it begins to irritate somebody. In CS, all you do is buy guns and shoot people, in NS, if you don't do your job, you get blamed. Seeing as we don't know what exactly you did to attract such...unpleasantness, I really can't defend nor attack your actions.
But people need to know something, NS has a greater learning curve than most other games. Either read the manual, or keep your head down until you get the hang of the game. It's that simple.
........
Nice. Well, not where I play. New players should ask for help when they are unsure on what to do, instead of silently being confused. The manual is good, but by no means can it tell someone how to exactly play NS.
I dont mean to put a negative whirl on this topic already though, just wanted to point that out.
No one likes losing. Even more, no one wants to be the reason for the loss. Naturally, as in any other societal environment, there is going to be a scapegoat. A new player who isn't an integral part of the server community - whether or not he is good - will almost always bear the blame.
No one cares about nubs in CS, because they can die every round but one experienced player can win regardless. The weight of one man is far more diluted in NS, thus everyone becomes more necessary for the win. When the win doesn't happen, blame is quick to follow - whether accurate or not.
When you win, no one complains. Learn how to make wins happen, and your scapegoat days will be long gone.
Your post doesn't explain what you were doing in any of the cases you were "blamed" or ganged-up on...
Like "Little did i know that when i did join the game i ended a round on an NS map the people on the server had been playing all afternoon. It was total accident, i apologised but the server admins ganged up on me and insulting me"
Explain this? Did you crash the server? Destroy the hive in the middle of a fun game?
And this "Half an hour later i re-joined on a combat map, stacking up a healthy amount of frags and saving a fellow new player twice. Then three server admins started threating me and one said they were going to ban me, instead they slow-hacked me. I noticed right away it was going on so not too much damage was done, and i left the server."
Define Slow-hack? Why were the admins threatening you, for killing them?
This "On one map i manged to divert attention to the commanders amazing lack of a brain by attacking a nearby hive on my own, even though it was suicide."
Part of NS, is understanding the commander is the only one who can oversee the entire map and therefore knows what's going on, if you stay with your unit and build where the comm tells you, instead of ramboing off and attacking an objective that the commander didn't need you attacking you will run into less issues. Perhaps for example, he was building a PG on the other side of the hive from where you entered and you attacking the hive brought every alien on the map to your location (thereby giving theirs away).
I've read your post several times now, and I'm not sure what to think. One side of me is sad that you feel like you were treated this way, the other side of me wonders how much of this is because you weren't listening, or paying attention.
NS is not a game like CS or TFC, you don't spawn and immediately begin fragging, NS is a game that is complex at it's most fundemental levels (while playing classic) and there are a lot of places to go wrong initially. Some of this will be dealt with, with the advent of the updated manual (which is coming), but some of it is "paying dues".
People don't like to lose, is this an excuse for name-calling, or attitude? Of course not, but some people take this game way too seriously....
Add me to your friends list in Steam (gamespy@aptiris.com) I would be happy to join a server with you and see if I could help you..
-Z
Maybe finally some good admin enabled script blocking <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Yes there are servers with abusive admins on their own.
There aint that much servers with 20 players because ns servers eat way more bandwidth with all the buildable objects.
You either get a good server or a full one most times <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
No its not that bad, you can switch to another server anytime!
I'm also brand new to NS, and half-life in general. And I also was disappointed by the unfriendliness I've encountered in the pub community.
Not everything is in the manual. I didn't find out that stacking OC's was bad until I had 4 people screaming at me and cussing me out over voice for doing it. I don't know every door/switch on every map that I should/shouldn't open. I get yelled at so often for flipping switches that I'm terrified of doing it now <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> I don't know the name of every single area of every map yet (only been playing for 3 weeks), and I get flamed by my teammates for not going straight to "data processing" when I have no clue where that is. It's very nerve-wracking for a new player.
It also doesn't help that in the vast majority of games, I notice that icon players (presumably vets?) tend to stack the teams, so it's rare for me to get in a good game where I can really observe good players and learn from them.
The former are reliable in answering many questions, and (often but not always) have the patience to point out to a new player generally what to do and what not to do.
The latter... well, they're clanners. You never know what to expect from them. They can be increadably self-centered, greedy, and bullies, or they can be the exact opposite. But generally (sorry) <i>they hate to lose</i>.
Then there is a third party, the Donators. They have given a small portion of their cash to Flayra and co, so that natural selection can continue to be developed. They can be exactly like anyone else, but they might have a bigger ego then others. (No, they dont get anything "super good" from donating except some assurance the next version WILL come out; maybe not faster, but it'll come out)
I was here before pre-release, and will gladly answer any questions you shoot towards me.
Enjoy your stay; ignore the asshats...
I know however that I did not kill any admins upon my return, threaten them or anything else. To define the slow hacking they basically got half way through unbinding my controls before they hit the really obvious controls and noticed what was going on, the unobvious ones were things I didn't use much but could tell I had assigned a seperate key too. The thing that gave the game away was changing the setting that the mouse wheel had to flick though weapons. Before you enquire if I did this myself by accident, say pressing default, that was not the case as the controls that were definded were very different from the defaults.
I respect what you said about the commander, i know that's a hard job. In this case the commander was sending the marines on suicidal missions across the map to build structures that were pointless, he also built many turret factories but built no turrets. Understand that I am not disrespecting the role of commander, merely those who do not know what they are doing dispite the objections of the players they are commanding. The result of my kamikaze missions to the hive had no bearing on the end result, i was the only one attacking the hive. Everyone else was either arguing or going to the waypoint of doom.
I know Natural Selection is different from Team Fortress Classic and Counterstrike, which despite the experience is why I love it. Thats why I played it, I knew what I was getting into and knew that the gamplay was different from conventional "frag everything" mods. I agree that it is totally different and there are a lot of places to go wrong, there are also a lot of bad things about it the same with any mod which I touched on slightly.
This was just an experience albeit a bad one, i'm glad that you asked these questions Zunni. Perhaps the grim reality is that every mod has something wrong with it, something that bites at you and annoys you but you can't do anything about it. Perhaps that something wrong varies from player to player, and I are just another example of a mod player who had a bad experience because of a number of reasons. For me it was servers and players, for someone else it was the crosshairs or the gameplay. This is why I posted my message because I wanted to make my feelings heard, not to begin an arguement about CS vs NS or anything like that. Not that i'm saying you are Zunni.
Thanks for your input.
Either get good, or get killed. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that hold true for any and every FPS, RTS, and (for the non-roleplaying ninnies) RPG?
69.13.246.5:27015 Lords of Chaos NS3.0B4a Classic
However, if you ask things like, "What does this prototype lab do?", I'm going to castrate you.
I personally love to see new players who ask important questions and learn the game; it reassures me that this game is indeed expanding. However, it just takes one whiny kid with massive ADD to ruin your perception of new players for a long time. We all have our frustration limits; some are more accomadating than others, and it's just bad luck if you ask one with a short fuse.
I don't understand how you ended the game just by joining the server either, you either misunderstood them or they are just a**holes, and a**holes are everywhere, not just on NS servers. You're gonna have to deal with them.
Which brings me to my next comment. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you're older than a high-schooler, but whatever the case may be the point is that if you remember what high schoolers were like, that's pretty much how all a**holes act. If they insult you, sometimes the best thing to do is to stand up and say something right back at them. If the admin is abusing you, either report him if possible or just leave. Remember, THEY CAN'T HURT YOU! THE WORST THEY CAN DO IS BAN YOU! THEIR THREATS ARE MEANINGLESS!
Thoose 2 did:
Drop 3 TFs and key locations, not the best placed ones, never electrified or build turrets cus he gave the res away for mt and argued "i never electrify". He kept moaning about us having no res for getting medpacks and stuff while aliens chewed away undefended tfs. Kept moaning about marines not following orders, but we did, just didnt make much sense low on health and ammo. I asked what he payed for his admin icon because he could obviously not "deserve" it, made him a little angy.
He Kept calling me noob not knowing anything of the game but moaning about him being comm.
I suggested him to play ns_origin, he made a vote for for ns_eclipse, I replied that id prefer maps that credits me. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> He didnt get that wink.
Then in eclipse everyone running away fom the cc, I went in drpped 2 ips and armory, they got build, heared a shoud "Eject", got ejected. That comm recycled and forced us to relocate to eclipse hive.
We even got Computer core with that but not enough rts to stay alife too long.
Then a good alien player (30 1) kept moaning about getting killed due lag, okay pings could have been better.
Still a lame excuse but even funnier was that admin (same comm from last match) swearing how cheap the monthly price for being admin is. He got counted by, yeah paying for a laggy server.
The games were still quite funny allthough we got owned by admin power that were still at 1.04 tactics!
That's a bit inaccurate, and not always a good basis to go by. I've been playing since 1.00, but I myself was a late joiner to these forums.
I would recommend setting your config to read only. Most admins that have a server they care about won't do such things, but the rest are not to be trusted. At least this way they can not permanently screw anything up. Sure it is a pain if you want to change something, but I think its worth it.
Other servers are slightly friendlier however will still be competative and thus flame you for being crap. Find a server, call urself NSPlayer, tell them ur all nub and want to learn how to play. The response you get will 9times out of 10 be "omg, hi asl?" j/k
They will tell u go marines and kill stuff.
gl hf
Definately a good server unless you become good at NS, then your playing priveledges are removed =(
First time i tried ns while it was downloading, i read the instruction manual.
First time, i just didn't know i needed to press use to build...and the way the manual sounded, rts only build up res if you press use on them all the time!!! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Anyway, thx to all manual ****, and noooooo not because of players, i became very good after one hour of play. I even went commander and won on my first day!
I loved that 'noob' feeling you know the time that you relize
"I'm right infront of him and he cant see me <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->" that was back in the days where u couldn't move while cloaking and the SC's parasited marines lol
Second ask for help, see if there is anyone willing to help. I think anyone who screams rtfm is being a bit short tempered tbh. Most important find a decent server. Sticking with it and getting good is worth it. There is alot of satisfaction from being an asset to your team.
I know however that I did not kill any admins upon my return, threaten them or anything else. To define the slow hacking they basically got half way through unbinding my controls before they hit the really obvious controls and noticed what was going on, the unobvious ones were things I didn't use much but could tell I had assigned a seperate key too. The thing that gave the game away was changing the setting that the mouse wheel had to flick though weapons. Before you enquire if I did this myself by accident, say pressing default, that was not the case as the controls that were definded were very different from the defaults.
I respect what you said about the commander, i know that's a hard job. In this case the commander was sending the marines on suicidal missions across the map to build structures that were pointless, he also built many turret factories but built no turrets. Understand that I am not disrespecting the role of commander, merely those who do not know what they are doing dispite the objections of the players they are commanding. The result of my kamikaze missions to the hive had no bearing on the end result, i was the only one attacking the hive. Everyone else was either arguing or going to the waypoint of doom.
I know Natural Selection is different from Team Fortress Classic and Counterstrike, which despite the experience is why I love it. Thats why I played it, I knew what I was getting into and knew that the gamplay was different from conventional "frag everything" mods. I agree that it is totally different and there are a lot of places to go wrong, there are also a lot of bad things about it the same with any mod which I touched on slightly.
This was just an experience albeit a bad one, i'm glad that you asked these questions Zunni. Perhaps the grim reality is that every mod has something wrong with it, something that bites at you and annoys you but you can't do anything about it. Perhaps that something wrong varies from player to player, and I are just another example of a mod player who had a bad experience because of a number of reasons. For me it was servers and players, for someone else it was the crosshairs or the gameplay. This is why I posted my message because I wanted to make my feelings heard, not to begin an arguement about CS vs NS or anything like that. Not that i'm saying you are Zunni.
Thanks for your input. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
First Part: Sounds like the other team F4, They gave up.
Second part Sounds like admin abuse, I can think of no reason to unbind all the bindings of a player. I think making the config.cfg fead only can stop this.
Sounds more like you where playing with bad players that F4 and Abuse any power they have.
Maybe finally some good admin enabled script blocking<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nah it's just a bunch of silly execlient commands, such as setting fps_max to 10 and setting your rates to garbage to make you lag. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I think a big reason that old timers hate newbies is all the "omg hax", "omg BS", "OMG script"(like it's that hard to press 3 adjacent buttons within half a second to leap and bite or blink and swipe...), "omg focus noob"(newbies are the ones who usually spam the chat with this ironically), "omg bunnyhopping"(I've been "accused"(I'd rather take it as a compliment and point them to the NS boards to learn how to or let them whinge there though) of bunnyhopping as a lerk(this was in b3 when flight cost even more energy so I certainly wasn't flapping like mad either)... that about says it all) etc.
I find combat hardly playable at all due to all the annoying newbies(I'm more than happy to help out the non-annoying ones, and there is quite a bunch of these too.).
I think you gotta find a decent server with good admins that only strike when you don't follow the rules. Reading the manual although i think it's outdated at the moment helps alot too.
And listen to Redford, lunixmonster is a very good server with loads of admins on as long as you stick to the rules. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
It is of course refreshing to see any compassion towards new gamers, whatever the mod may be. I tried NS, had problems and came here for help. Needless to say I recieved that help, from people who clearly aren't trying to put newbies down or abuse there server rights etc etc...
I hope to get a little better at NS because the mod really is excellent, just like the community! (okay thats enough butt kissing)
I'd hate to turn this into a noob asks questions, noob gets answers post but has anyone ever had that problem where you lose the connection to the server when the map ends? I experienced this on Spyders nest, which is quite a good server by the way.
I really can't thank you all enough, I think you've restored my faith in NS. It's like the few were spoiling the reputation of the many in my experience
Thank you all.
(PS: Has anyone played codename gordon yet?)
It is of course refreshing to see any compassion towards new gamers, whatever the mod may be. I tried NS, had problems and came here for help. Needless to say I recieved that help, from people who clearly aren't trying to put newbies down or abuse there server rights etc etc...
I hope to get a little better at NS because the mod really is excellent, just like the community! (okay thats enough butt kissing)
I'd hate to turn this into a noob asks questions, noob gets answers post but has anyone ever had that problem where you lose the connection to the server when the map ends? I experienced this on Spyders nest, which is quite a good server by the way.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've had that happen a few times, and I'm not sure if it's server -related (I play Spyders a fair bit myself), or if it's Steam related, simply bring your console up (~ key) and type retry and you will reconnect without having to re-use all the menus.
Hope you are having a better time, my invite to play still stands...