I'm a little saddened by the re-increase in rt hp. It almost seems harder to take down rts in 3.2 than it does in 3.1 (as a skulk) even with the reduction in hp, since all marines get flashy minimap icons to alert them even without the comm. (I speak of pubs, of course)
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/lerk.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::lerk::" border="0" alt="lerk.gif" /> the increase in lerk climb speed is not the problem with the current lerk. I thought it made sense to reduce this. What bothered me about beta 2 was the huge decrease in celerity lerk speed.
Pretty much all the other changes are great. Finally a useful hud minimap! I love the changes to ns_origin. I always hated how an onos had to take ridiculous detours to get to most parts of the map, often through marine start, turret farms, and vents. I'm interested in seeing how the biodome stairs work.
<!--quoteo(post=1609835:date=Feb 27 2007, 10:30 PM:name=gumhat)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gumhat @ Feb 27 2007, 10:30 PM) [snapback]1609835[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I'd like to see marines get the shaft for once is what i'm saying <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> they did get shafted, in 3.1
By losing most rounds? The early lerk was a game breaker and the two hive armour meant weapons 2 and HMGs were an absolute requirement should a second hive go up, if they went DC then you'd need weapons 3 to make your weapons upgrades actually count.
Also, care to notice that aliens now basically have 3 viable chambers and are no longer constricted to movement because of it's teleport to an attacked hive ability.
aliens were overpowered until 3.2 beta 2, that was obvious to everyone, which is why there were changes to hive armor and webs. im not sure of the balance of beta 2, but it seems a little skewed toward marines, not much tho. and people join marines on pubs cause theyre prolly new and havent learned aliens.
3.2 just feels nice to me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
The only "issue" i have (more of a pub gameplay thing than a real issue) is the gap between vanilla marines and skulks in effectiveness. Pretty much every night i play 3.2, theres always those players that rarely go alien, and rack up 10 - 0 kills as marine within a couple of minutes. It only takes a couple of these guys on marines and you can tell its GG just a few minutes into gameplay. It's just so much harder to be an effective skulk than an effective vanilla marine.
But as i say, this is probably just a pub play thing. If it's even in competitive play i guess the rest of us will just have to "deal with it".
The fact is, and will always remain, that you simply can't get better on a 40 minute combat server with extralevels and xmenu. Believe me, you may think you're racking up the kills as a 100 upgrade fade, but there really isn't any improvement. Play on those plugin-free 10 minute combat servers, or play NS. It makes the game last much longer, and is a lot more fun if you get into it.
So this one player soloing with a JP/SG can some how dodge 15 aliens and 40 OC's and manage to win the game for the marines. That is very very sad and whoever is playing on the alien team need to look deep in their hearts and learn how to play the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1610149:date=Feb 28 2007, 08:45 PM:name=gumhat)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gumhat @ Feb 28 2007, 08:45 PM) [snapback]1610149[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> it might have been obvious to everyone who plays in 20 person or 10 person servers, but in 30 person servers aliens pretty much lose every game once JP research is finished, i've seen aliens lose many games that look like this just because the marines have one super JPer who has a score like 50 and 4 and its pretty sad to me that marines can survive that long off 1 rt and then push out and win but you almost never see aliens able to do that so I apologize if it seems like there's a marine bias in this game <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Game balance means virtually nothing in a 15v15 game to begin with, although I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the game has never been balanced with such huge teams in mind. On servers like that the games are all determined by which team is lucky enough to have the most decent players. One JP is certainly no more game-deciding than one Fade.
For some good randomness, I miss 2.1 lerks. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
You lost that round? Dude, you suck. PS this is why no one listens to public players all their feedback is like "I played this one game and this one player did this one thing and we lost that one round so I think you should change everything please."
It is very hard to balance a game like ns because the aliens and the marines are just too different. you cannot really compare good aliens to good marines and they theyre equally skilled because the result of the game is random.
so, what i want to say is that there will always be someone or a more or less large group of people complaining about the "unbalanced" gameplay of ns <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tiny.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::onos::" border="0" alt="tiny.gif" />
it is balanced if you can encounter the play style of your opponent, example: my clan has quite a strong alien round and a weak marine round the opponent we fear most is saunamen because they have a very strong marine round (and are therefore very often able to defeat us) and they have a decent alien round, so they generally would win against us
same on public, you can have only 1 very good alien and 3 good marines in the opponent team and you can still win if you have: either teamplay or the good player becomes fade in time and his team has actually done something useful (building chambers,rts maybe hive)
so: balance is too subjective in a game where the teams are totally different
puzlThe Old FirmJoin Date: 2003-02-26Member: 14029Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
edited March 2007
<!--quoteo(post=1610242:date=Mar 1 2007, 09:28 AM:name=MrBen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MrBen @ Mar 1 2007, 09:28 AM) [snapback]1610242[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> PS this is why no one listens to public players all their feedback is like "I played this one game and this one player did this one thing and we lost that one round so I think you should change everything please." <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We listen to public players. It is a myth that we make changes purely for competitive NS, and that the game is balanced specially for 6v6. We balance the game primarily for 12-18 players and we take feedback from all facets of the community. Almost every patch we are accused of victimising both public and competitive players by a significant portion of each. So 3.2 contains some changes that were not needed or wanted by public players, and some changes that were not needed or wanted by competitive players. We hope that most of the changes are wanted by both. We usually ignore these accusaitons against us because there just is no reasoning with people who see conspiracies where there are none. I remember when we got flamed for putting the guard on f4 to prevent accidental readyroom as 'dumbing down the game for the pub nubs' and we've also been accused of pandering to competitive players for putting the new crosshairs into 3.2 ( which is daft, because every competitive player already has accurate crosshairs, and only casual players will really benefit from that change ).
I'm not even attempting to suggest that anyone who feels their play style is being marginalised is some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist, but I'm just explaining why we don't engage in this discussion on a regular basis. If we respond to every "Change X in NS makes baby jesus the (clanner|pubber) cry" topic we'd never get any work done.
So, to address your specific point Ben. Pubbers are a great source of feedback on NS. Not only because many of them are very good at the game and understand it, but because many of them still have "beginner's mind" and can view changes outside of their personal frame of reference ( this is also very true of many competitive players ).
The truth is, when we get feedback, we really don't care who it is from. We read the feedback, try to understand what is motivating the person to reach these conclusions, try to understand what the intended improvement the person is looking for is, but we rarely worry about whether the guy has won competitions or not. If the observations and reasoning are sound, they will stand up to scrutiny, and the collected experience of the person will factor into the observations and conclusions at a very early stage.
<!--quoteo(post=1610094:date=Feb 28 2007, 05:53 PM:name=Reeke)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Reeke @ Feb 28 2007, 05:53 PM) [snapback]1610094[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> 3.2 just feels nice to me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
The only "issue" i have (more of a pub gameplay thing than a real issue) is the gap between vanilla marines and skulks in effectiveness. Pretty much every night i play 3.2, theres always those players that rarely go alien, and rack up 10 - 0 kills as marine within a couple of minutes. It only takes a couple of these guys on marines and you can tell its GG just a few minutes into gameplay. It's just so much harder to be an effective skulk than an effective vanilla marine.
But as i say, this is probably just a pub play thing. If it's even in competitive play i guess the rest of us will just have to "deal with it". <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I totally agree you. 1 or 2 marines with proficient aiming can dominate classic NS. The game can be decided within 2 minutes when marines have 3/4's of the RT. How often have we all seen the "Have the best marine player spawn camp the hive" tactic so far?? The common response to such players is to evolve, which I think is silly. Whether it's a "pub play" thing or not, it's still an issue.
I would not go as far as saying that skulks are utterly unbalanced, but on certain maps, a good marine can control early game without a hitch. Then again, I have seen plently of games where avg marine players simply get overwhelmed by clever skulking. Still, my gut feeling says that the skulk is slightly behind in balancing. And it only gets worse as the game progresses becuase of the marine ugprades.
PS: It's re-assuring to know that devs are not completely catering competitive ns players. Keep up the good work!
<!--quoteo(post=1610761:date=Mar 3 2007, 01:17 AM:name=Giorgio)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Giorgio @ Mar 3 2007, 01:17 AM) [snapback]1610761[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> i found first BUG... in the main page is write:
alex, note the thread (currently) directly below this one... called 'what happened to ns_prometheus'... honestly how could you miss it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1609737:date=Feb 27 2007, 01:37 PM:name=IHOP7)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(IHOP7 @ Feb 27 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]1609737[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> The lerk was Walking:175 units/sec, Flight: 524 units/sec. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Lerk speed in 3.2 with celerity is higher than Lerk speed in 3.1 with celerity?
Also, does the 3% health of DC heals the total of armor and health combined?
About the balance discussion. Even in large servers(30 player), I found aliens won quite a bit and the only times alien lost was when half the team was AFK or ramboing and not defending the second hive when it was under attacked for 10 minutes.
I find it a lot easy as a vanilla skulk than a vailla marine most of the time. While it is true a marine can easily defeat skulks if the marine player has at least decent aim<i>(In a head to head combat in a hallway or so)</i>, skulks are all about sneaking up and ambushing marines, and killing them before they even land a hit on you.
Like many others have said, NS is hard to balance but NS is balanced enough.
There are many factors that make it hard to balance NS and here are some examples: Differences in the amount of players in a game, public games versus competitive, totally difference teams and playing styles(Obviously), amount of teamwork needed for each team, etc.
One thing we should do is give the new versions a chance before giving up on it. Many times have players complained that one thing was too powerful or weak before even testing it, then it turns out it wasn't too powerful or weak.
You have to hand it to the devs, it is hard to balance a game like NS and please everyone but they are trying their best.
NS isn't counter-strike where you only need to just balance the weapons and even if the weapons are not balanced in CS, at least both teams can use almost every single weapon the other team can.
Remember to give the new versions a chance before giving up on it.
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
OMG just played 3.2 and it's so imba and everything is overpowered and yeah
Any bets when the first 3.2 imba thread arrives? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
... haven't been here for a long while... hey new folks: hope you enjoying it being a part of a gentle community that helps each other...
waiting impatiently for the 3.2 download to be ready.... ah done - being curious about the game...
have fun, more in the near future? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
Comments
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/lerk.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::lerk::" border="0" alt="lerk.gif" /> the increase in lerk climb speed is not the problem with the current lerk. I thought it made sense to reduce this. What bothered me about beta 2 was the huge decrease in celerity lerk speed.
Pretty much all the other changes are great. Finally a useful hud minimap!
I love the changes to ns_origin. I always hated how an onos had to take ridiculous detours to get to most parts of the map, often through marine start, turret farms, and vents. I'm interested in seeing how the biodome stairs work.
I'd like to see marines get the shaft for once is what i'm saying
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
they did get shafted, in 3.1
Also, care to notice that aliens now basically have 3 viable chambers and are no longer constricted to movement because of it's teleport to an attacked hive ability.
The only "issue" i have (more of a pub gameplay thing than a real issue) is the gap between vanilla marines and skulks in effectiveness. Pretty much every night i play 3.2, theres always those players that rarely go alien, and rack up 10 - 0 kills as marine within a couple of minutes. It only takes a couple of these guys on marines and you can tell its GG just a few minutes into gameplay. It's just so much harder to be an effective skulk than an effective vanilla marine.
But as i say, this is probably just a pub play thing. If it's even in competitive play i guess the rest of us will just have to "deal with it".
it might have been obvious to everyone who plays in 20 person or 10 person servers, but in 30 person servers aliens pretty much lose every game once JP research is finished, i've seen aliens lose many games that look like this just because the marines have one super JPer who has a score like 50 and 4 and its pretty sad to me that marines can survive that long off 1 rt and then push out and win but you almost never see aliens able to do that so I apologize if it seems like there's a marine bias in this game <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Game balance means virtually nothing in a 15v15 game to begin with, although I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the game has never been balanced with such huge teams in mind. On servers like that the games are all determined by which team is lucky enough to have the most decent players. One JP is certainly no more game-deciding than one Fade.
you cannot really compare good aliens to good marines and they theyre equally skilled because the result of the game is random.
so, what i want to say is that there will always be someone or a more or less large group of people complaining about the "unbalanced" gameplay of ns
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/asrifle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::asrifle::" border="0" alt="asrifle.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tiny.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::onos::" border="0" alt="tiny.gif" />
it is balanced if you can encounter the play style of your opponent, example:
my clan has quite a strong alien round and a weak marine round
the opponent we fear most is saunamen because they have a very strong marine round (and are therefore very often able to defeat us) and they have a decent alien round, so they generally would win against us
same on public, you can have only 1 very good alien and 3 good marines in the opponent team and you can still win if you have: either teamplay or the good player becomes fade in time and his team has actually done something useful (building chambers,rts maybe hive)
so: balance is too subjective in a game where the teams are totally different
PS this is why no one listens to public players all their feedback is like "I played this one game and this one player did this one thing and we lost that one round so I think you should change everything please."
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We listen to public players. It is a myth that we make changes purely for competitive NS, and that the game is balanced specially for 6v6. We balance the game primarily for 12-18 players and we take feedback from all facets of the community. Almost every patch we are accused of victimising both public and competitive players by a significant portion of each. So 3.2 contains some changes that were not needed or wanted by public players, and some changes that were not needed or wanted by competitive players. We hope that most of the changes are wanted by both. We usually ignore these accusaitons against us because there just is no reasoning with people who see conspiracies where there are none. I remember when we got flamed for putting the guard on f4 to prevent accidental readyroom as 'dumbing down the game for the pub nubs' and we've also been accused of pandering to competitive players for putting the new crosshairs into 3.2 ( which is daft, because every competitive player already has accurate crosshairs, and only casual players will really benefit from that change ).
I'm not even attempting to suggest that anyone who feels their play style is being marginalised is some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist, but I'm just explaining why we don't engage in this discussion on a regular basis. If we respond to every "Change X in NS makes baby jesus the (clanner|pubber) cry" topic we'd never get any work done.
So, to address your specific point Ben. Pubbers are a great source of feedback on NS. Not only because many of them are very good at the game and understand it, but because many of them still have "beginner's mind" and can view changes outside of their personal frame of reference ( this is also very true of many competitive players ).
The truth is, when we get feedback, we really don't care who it is from. We read the feedback, try to understand what is motivating the person to reach these conclusions, try to understand what the intended improvement the person is looking for is, but we rarely worry about whether the guy has won competitions or not. If the observations and reasoning are sound, they will stand up to scrutiny, and the collected experience of the person will factor into the observations and conclusions at a very early stage.
3.2 just feels nice to me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
The only "issue" i have (more of a pub gameplay thing than a real issue) is the gap between vanilla marines and skulks in effectiveness. Pretty much every night i play 3.2, theres always those players that rarely go alien, and rack up 10 - 0 kills as marine within a couple of minutes. It only takes a couple of these guys on marines and you can tell its GG just a few minutes into gameplay. It's just so much harder to be an effective skulk than an effective vanilla marine.
But as i say, this is probably just a pub play thing. If it's even in competitive play i guess the rest of us will just have to "deal with it".
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I totally agree you. 1 or 2 marines with proficient aiming can dominate classic NS. The game can be decided within 2 minutes when marines have 3/4's of the RT. How often have we all seen the "Have the best marine player spawn camp the hive" tactic so far?? The common response to such players is to evolve, which I think is silly. Whether it's a "pub play" thing or not, it's still an issue.
I would not go as far as saying that skulks are utterly unbalanced, but on certain maps, a good marine can control early game without a hitch. Then again, I have seen plently of games where avg marine players simply get overwhelmed by clever skulking. Still, my gut feeling says that the skulk is slightly behind in balancing. And it only gets worse as the game progresses becuase of the marine ugprades.
PS:
It's re-assuring to know that devs are not completely catering competitive ns players. Keep up the good work!
in the main page is write:
[ March 2nd, 2007 ] :: Natural Selection v3.3 released!(Flayra)
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
i found first BUG...
in the main page is write:
[ March 2nd, 2007 ] :: Natural Selection v3.3 released!(Flayra)
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Haha that's great
The lerk was Walking:175 units/sec, Flight: 524 units/sec.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lerk speed in 3.2 with celerity is higher than Lerk speed in 3.1 with celerity?
Also, does the 3% health of DC heals the total of armor and health combined?
About the balance discussion. Even in large servers(30 player), I found aliens won quite a bit and the only times alien lost was when half the team was AFK or ramboing and not defending the second hive when it was under attacked for 10 minutes.
I find it a lot easy as a vanilla skulk than a vailla marine most of the time. While it is true a marine can easily defeat skulks if the marine player has at least decent aim<i>(In a head to head combat in a hallway or so)</i>, skulks are all about sneaking up and ambushing marines, and killing them before they even land a hit on you.
Like many others have said, NS is hard to balance but NS is balanced enough.
There are many factors that make it hard to balance NS and here are some examples: Differences in the amount of players in a game, public games versus competitive, totally difference teams and playing styles(Obviously), amount of teamwork needed for each team, etc.
One thing we should do is give the new versions a chance before giving up on it. Many times have players complained that one thing was too powerful or weak before even testing it, then it turns out it wasn't too powerful or weak.
You have to hand it to the devs, it is hard to balance a game like NS and please everyone but they are trying their best.
NS isn't counter-strike where you only need to just balance the weapons and even if the weapons are not balanced in CS, at least both teams can use almost every single weapon the other team can.
Remember to give the new versions a chance before giving up on it.
Any bets when the first 3.2 imba thread arrives? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
waiting impatiently for the 3.2 download to be ready.... ah done - being curious about the game...
have fun, more in the near future? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
You have to have eyes at every corner to avoid "ninja PG".
This mobilize a good part of the alien team.