Old Gamer Revisits
Cafuddled
Join Date: 2009-08-12 Member: 68438Members
Join Date: 2009-08-12 Member: 68438Members
<div class="IPBDescription">An old gamer reflecting on the time he had in the good old days</div>Hi everyone, I have never posted on here, nor have I played the game in at least 2 years. I have some questions I want to ask about the game as it is and the way the game is going with the new development of Natural Selection 2.
I used to play back in the day when the first NS was released in the beta stages, when it seemed as not a day would go by before a patch was released and things were updated. I’ll lay my cards on the table right now and save everyone some time (please note that this is from my point of view, I want to know if other people agree with the way I feel). I stopped playing NS when the games were made shorter, when the almost constant stalemate type marathon games that were undeniably assured at the start of each game were taken away from us.
For me the most memorable moments of the old NS were when you would be down to your last resource node after an hour long game with a full tech tree and you would fight to the bone to keep that other team from penetrating your defences and wiping you out. The games end would take almost 20 minutes to end if not more and you where nonstop franticly killing everything you can see. Using real skill and real endurance to keep your team alive and hopefully (by some miracle) break out of this almost one-sided stale mate to take out the other team and win the unwinnable battle.
But all that ended around the same time the 2.0 patch (I believe it was called) was released, with games mealy lasting 20 minutes if you were lucky and near stalemates never happening as the balancing of each team became needle thin, one mistake and it was all over (whatever happened to being 3 nodes down and still winning?). For me it seemed that what made this game different from all the other hordes of HL mods that were being released at the time, was somehow taken away with that patch.
So I am here to ask the question, does anyone else feel that way, have things changed? Are things going back to the way that made NS great to begin with? Or is the same new game just being given a facelift?
Would a marathon type ‘game option’ be an option for the new NS to give gamers who like to play a game of FPS chess more of the thrill that they crave?
Thanks for taking the time to read this
Just an old gamer reflecting on good memories past.
Happy Gaming.
I used to play back in the day when the first NS was released in the beta stages, when it seemed as not a day would go by before a patch was released and things were updated. I’ll lay my cards on the table right now and save everyone some time (please note that this is from my point of view, I want to know if other people agree with the way I feel). I stopped playing NS when the games were made shorter, when the almost constant stalemate type marathon games that were undeniably assured at the start of each game were taken away from us.
For me the most memorable moments of the old NS were when you would be down to your last resource node after an hour long game with a full tech tree and you would fight to the bone to keep that other team from penetrating your defences and wiping you out. The games end would take almost 20 minutes to end if not more and you where nonstop franticly killing everything you can see. Using real skill and real endurance to keep your team alive and hopefully (by some miracle) break out of this almost one-sided stale mate to take out the other team and win the unwinnable battle.
But all that ended around the same time the 2.0 patch (I believe it was called) was released, with games mealy lasting 20 minutes if you were lucky and near stalemates never happening as the balancing of each team became needle thin, one mistake and it was all over (whatever happened to being 3 nodes down and still winning?). For me it seemed that what made this game different from all the other hordes of HL mods that were being released at the time, was somehow taken away with that patch.
So I am here to ask the question, does anyone else feel that way, have things changed? Are things going back to the way that made NS great to begin with? Or is the same new game just being given a facelift?
Would a marathon type ‘game option’ be an option for the new NS to give gamers who like to play a game of FPS chess more of the thrill that they crave?
Thanks for taking the time to read this
Just an old gamer reflecting on good memories past.
Happy Gaming.
Comments
Hopefully in NS2 they re-think how turrets and OCs operate so they are useful and not a waste of res, but they're are hard counters to it (like the onos bone shield). Marine turrets in NS are pretty much useless right now whereas mines usually do a better job for a lot cheaper.
1.04 --> 2.0 was obiviously huge. Nevertheless, even in 1.04 era the games were short and insanely marine biased if they knew what to do (mostly optimizing the tech path to JP + HMG).
I think somewhere between 1.0 and 1.03 the turret (and probably OC) HPs got a lot lower and most of the eternal DC vs Siege fights were patched out. Everything was also more expensive in the early versions.
So, it's a combination of quite bad game design (I couldn't kill a single turret from a farm with onos in 1.0 without being forced to heal up, even if there were just turrets firing at me) and terrible NS play. I don't think recreating the exact 1.0 era is going to create that many epic games nowaydays. With some rebalancing and such it might be possible though.
Same...
but I understand that that's not accessible. You can't really target such a 'hardcore' niche for a first commercial game. Hopefully we'll be able to mod up various changes to make a "EPIC NS2" or whatever heh.
I guess I just don’t like the more accessible ‘as someone put it’ gameplay, I would love an epic mode of gameplay that could feed some gamers needs.
Also 1.03 sounds about right for when it was good for me, 2.0 was when I stopped playing I think. But the way it seemed from memory was that turrets played a much bigger part of the game. They were actually useful, with the one weakness of allowing the control unit to be destroyed and the turrets becoming useless.
It just seemed that mistakes could be made and the whole game would not completely shift because of them. It just seems to me that the course of a game just got too delicate and you felt very soon from that start that it was pointless playing on as you knew in the back of your mind it was impossible to shift the play of the game for a win.
I can also remember in the patch that did this it was stated all over the readme.txt that they have sped up the pace of the game, so it seemed that it was the soul reason for this patch being released if that helps pinpoint it.
Likewise. I would prefer one really good 4 hour game where me and my team have the band of brothers experience of bonding together against the other side in an epic battle, rather than 8 half hour wham bam thank you maam quick matches. I wasn't even too bothered losing after an epic battle as the joy was in the game not the result.
I know people tend to have attention spans measured in miliseconds these days, but surely quick non-team bonding games is NOT what NS is supposed to be about. For me it was about the immersion in the world and fighting as a team.
The changes to the feel of the game were definitely in design and not just increased player knowledge. To be completely honest, I think that the changes to make the game more 'accessible' caused its gradual degradation, and disenfranchised much of the fanbase in favor of a broader audience. Things like removing falling damage for JP wearers, combat style maps, and - here's my favorite bit of absurdity - changing Fade Blink from a (admittedly finicky) short range teleport into Superman-like flight. There were a lot of changes that just stripped away elements of finesse or skill and replaced them with heavy-handed 'accessible' alternatives that made it great for all the counter-strike scriptkiddies and bunnyhoppers that joined up and, in my opinion, ruined the game for a lot of us.
It was a long, slow death for me and for my clan. I remember stretches of several days at a time in the 2.0 era where nobody would even join the server, and it didn't take much to pull us away in the end. For my part, I do not want Natural Selection to play like Quake or Counter-Strike. I've clocked a lot of hours in both of those games, and I still have the option to any time I feel like it, but that's not what I crave. I want NS to be good again, and I worry that the sequel will be more of the same 2.0/3.0 sadness.
IF the final result were 2.whatever or 3.whatever would be nice. I'm afraid this is actually even worse than that, just check out the new "skulk" or the "onos" or the teaser threads. Those threads deserves tears.
I want a refund. This is fraud.
Here is the patch that changed the game time and boasted about it: <a href="http://4.games.bigpond-images.com/news/read.php/1609300" target="_blank">http://4.games.bigpond-images.com/news/read.php/1609300</a> don't know about you but even though it says 'epic game still possible' I don't think I seen much after this patch.
I've accepted at this stage that people like to be big game hunters. I've seen it happen in every game I like.. starcraft bgh maps, wc3 dota, ns siege maps etc.. to me, the infinite res maps ruined starcraft, and I personally gave up playing it at lan parties when those maps became the staple. Games lose their finesse when played in 'maxed out mode'. In my opinion, NS has become a much better tuned game and in general I enjoy the 3.x games more than any other release, however I do remember how much fun we had with 1.04 - my problem is I'm not sure how much of that was due to the newness of it, and how much was due to the games being long.
I've accepted at this stage that people like to be big game hunters. I've seen it happen in every game I like.. starcraft bgh maps, wc3 dota, ns siege maps etc.. to me, the infinite res maps ruined starcraft, and I personally gave up playing it at lan parties when those maps became the staple. Games lose their finesse when played in 'maxed out mode'. In my opinion, NS has become a much better tuned game and in general I enjoy the 3.x games more than any other release, however I do remember how much fun we had with 1.04 - my problem is I'm not sure how much of that was due to the newness of it, and how much was due to the games being long.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That summed up my points of view better than I ever could have. For me 3.2 was one of the best NS updates ever and I couldn't have asked a better finish for the game's development.
I'm not sure about the implementation of dramatic endings though. Can you give any examples of games doing this? NS grows tension nicely all the way into 2 hive vs proto fights, but finishing the game in a dramatic way seems difficult in a game where the slippery slope exists. Most RTS games have adressed this by allowing the player to give up easily, but apart from that I can't think of any good solutions. Shorter useless endgame is a big improvement of course, but I don't think it directly dramatizes the ending.
Here is the patch that changed the game time and boasted about it: <a href="http://4.games.bigpond-images.com/news/read.php/1609300" target="_blank">http://4.games.bigpond-images.com/news/read.php/1609300</a> don't know about you but even though it says 'epic game still possible' I don't think I seen much after this patch.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Check out Bry's 1.04 pack. It lets you install it by tweaking a current NS install and replacing all the dlls.
Frankly, I went and tried it and while I did enjoy the atmosphere of the maps and some of the interesting gameplay, I also very much appreciate the polish that has been added since. For example, being able to walk over a PG. 3.0 saw PG telefragging (which I always thought was kinda epic, though I had to keep telling people to get off the PG once they phased in so I wouldn't kill them), and then they added in PG pushback, which is all sorts of awesome sauce. Also, I much prefer the current Fade blink. couldn't judge distances properly with 1.04.
I will admit that it's become very high strung. The balance can be shifted by a few poor players, we often end up with close to formulatic games, and while with friends we often have some epic games (comming 2+ hours is intense, but awesome) it's much more rare today. It's partially the skill gap as the higher level players now know the very minute things that can tip the scales. It's partially the often jarring jumps in tech and ability. Plus zomg scaling team sizes. However, I'm hopeful that NS2 will be able to provide us with casual killing as well as epic wars. I can see the market for both. If I want to relax, I've stopped reaching for NS. But it's still my favorite FPS game.