ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Bottom line for me is that NS2 is a game that's hard to have fun by playing casually. That means it excludes many people who may only have 30-60 min to play games each day. Any reasonable solution would need to make it easier for someone with limited time and skills to get enjoyment out of the game.
You realize in ns2, without RFK, the only thing that happens on the typical large public server to new players is that they sit in a spawn queue to endlessly zerg to their death from shift spawned eggs. By making new player death's less and less meaningful you're just encouraging them to be dead more often and reinforcing being dead as irrelevant. Try to pretend for a moment this would even be attempted if there were RFK in the game and how much less new players would be forced to constantly respawn and die to sit in the spawn queue for a much greater period of time.
So hypothetical good player gets a lerk/fade earlier and dominates like he/she was going to dominate independent of RFK and accumulate a pool of res he/she has nothing to invest in as he/she is already using the lifeform desired. That's a pretty weak snowball effect in that it doesn't snowball into anything or become significantly unfair to anyone.
You realize in ns2, without RFK, the only thing that happens on the typical large public server to new players is that they sit in a spawn queue to endlessly zerg to their death from shift spawned eggs. By making new player death's less and less meaningful you're just encouraging them to be dead more often and reinforcing being dead as irrelevant. Try to pretend for a moment this would even be attempted if there were RFK in the game and how much less new players would be forced to constantly respawn and die to sit in the spawn queue for a much greater period of time.
So hypothetical good player gets a lerk/fade earlier and dominates like he/she was going to dominate independent of RFK and accumulate a pool of res he/she has nothing to invest in as he/she is already using the lifeform desired. That's a pretty weak snowball effect in that it doesn't snowball into anything or become significantly unfair to anyone.
RFK does so much more to the game and very little of it is positive. It encourages turtling, and doesn't work well as a method of rewarding skill. It rewards defensive postures, and NS is about aggression. IE:
Real reason: terrible performance on anything remotely close to the recommended system requirements. Most people don't have the latest CPUs, and the requirements are misleading cusomers into thinking older processors will still work.
I was comm on Docking and lost much of Terminal late game. Arms lab gone, IPs gone, Adv Armory gone, Proto Lab gone. Basically everything but the CC.
We were able to redrop in Cafe then from there made an all out thrust to Generator and killed the hive and harassed Departures from there. Took a while to redrop the Proto lab, but once it was down we got some Exos and took Locker.
Anyway, big setback... long game, rare Marine win. Proud of my team. I was almost ready to concede once losing Terminal.
PS: Why do Marines always start in Terminal while the Alien base is randomized?
I think I was on your side that game, I remember your story as one of mine
You realize in ns2, without RFK, the only thing that happens on the typical large public server to new players is that they sit in a spawn queue to endlessly zerg to their death from shift spawned eggs. By making new player death's less and less meaningful you're just encouraging them to be dead more often and reinforcing being dead as irrelevant. Try to pretend for a moment this would even be attempted if there were RFK in the game and how much less new players would be forced to constantly respawn and die to sit in the spawn queue for a much greater period of time.
Anything over 18 man doesn't count, as the game is pretty much unplayable due to the spam.
So hypothetical good player gets a lerk/fade earlier and dominates like he/she was going to dominate independent of RFK and accumulate a pool of res he/she has nothing to invest in as he/she is already using the lifeform desired. That's a pretty weak snowball effect in that it doesn't snowball into anything or become significantly unfair to anyone.
We already have 5 minute lerks, and 10 minute fades.
Real reason: terrible performance on anything remotely close to the recommended system requirements. Most people don't have the latest CPUs, and the requirements are misleading cusomers into thinking older processors will still work.
Stop crying about that already.
I built my computer 4 years ago, I get low but playable FPS.
Your computer is worse than mine is, and I wasn't expecting to be able to run NS2 as well as I do.
My friend who bought it for me says that my rig runs it "suspiciously well.", that is, he has a QuadCore OC'd to 3.5ghz, with a GeForce GTX 560 and I get about the same frame rates that he does.
I'm just slightly above the recommended.
I expect anyone on minimum settings probably has a slide show.
I've often wished that as the Marines on Docking, Summit, or even Veil that we could fire up the ship we arrived in and just leave. The whole premise here is that aliens invade and we're supposed to beat them back as marines right? So at a certain point declaring a station/outpost lost beyond the point of recoverability is within reason.
Maybe the dropship is the key to a "way out" for marines at least. As long as there's a drop ship in the level, make it an alternate ending objective to push for the location of the ship, clear it of any and all obstructions, fire it up, and evacuate.
On Docking, this would be simply a push into Landing Pad and turtle there for a time. Summit, push and hold Flight Control. Veil, push and hold Cargo. As far as the other maps without the dropship in them, I'm sure there's a lore-friendly way to explain how the marines got there and how they can get out.
I've no clue how to explain an alien retreat. But I'm sure it could be done.
Idea being to provide a last-ditch effort that becomes available under certain conditions that allows a team to "tactically retreat."
You realize in ns2, without RFK, the only thing that happens on the typical large public server to new players is that they sit in a spawn queue to endlessly zerg to their death from shift spawned eggs. By making new player death's less and less meaningful you're just encouraging them to be dead more often and reinforcing being dead as irrelevant. Try to pretend for a moment this would even be attempted if there were RFK in the game and how much less new players would be forced to constantly respawn and die to sit in the spawn queue for a much greater period of time.
Anything over 18 man doesn't count, as the game is pretty much unplayable due to the spam.
So hypothetical good player gets a lerk/fade earlier and dominates like he/she was going to dominate independent of RFK and accumulate a pool of res he/she has nothing to invest in as he/she is already using the lifeform desired. That's a pretty weak snowball effect in that it doesn't snowball into anything or become significantly unfair to anyone.
We already have 5 minute lerks, and 10 minute fades.
Do you want 2 minute lerks, and 5 minute fades?
you can actually get fades in under 4 minutes rather easily. i do it in pubs sometimes
Real reason: terrible performance on anything remotely close to the recommended system requirements. Most people don't have the latest CPUs, and the requirements are misleading cusomers into thinking older processors will still work.
Stop crying about that already.
I built my computer 4 years ago, I get low but playable FPS.
Your computer is worse than mine is, and I wasn't expecting to be able to run NS2 as well as I do.
My CPU is 1ghz faster then yours and my GPU a generation ahead, late game FPS is 5-20. Might be fine for some, but you are the first I've heard.
Exos as they currently are, are barely worth the res to research.
They're slow, they require an escort, and they die way too easily.
Exos are currently the fastest, most efficient and most economical way to destroy hives and target structures. They are also the unit with the highest force multiplier when defending a fortified location, bar none.
But yes, when people try to use them as anything other than siege or defensive units, they don't do too well.
The #1 reason is performance, I have many friends with low-mid computers that can't run this game with decent FPS, the majority of them are comp players from other games, needless to say they hate playing like its a slide show.
That's really unfortunate though, this game is probably the best FPS I have ever played in many years (Never played NS1).
Exos are currently the fastest, most efficient and most economical way to destroy hives and target structures. They are also the unit with the highest force multiplier when defending a fortified location, bar none.
But yes, when people try to use them as anything other than siege or defensive units, they don't do too well.
8v8
all marines except the comm get JPs, they all fly to the same hive.
They all focus fire it down, while the com liberally drops Medpacks/ammo.
The #1 reason is performance, I have many friends with low-mid computers that can't run this game with decent FPS, the majority of them are comp players from other games, needless to say they hate playing like its a slide show.
I like this game and play in very low resolution (640x480 with my small fonts) and in very low graphics quality - I get playable FPS (15-30 in hot battles, 40-60 in start of the round) in my laptop (hp pavilion dv6-3305er). My CPU is always automatically overclocked to 3 GHZ due the TurboBoost and my laptop never overheats so I get stable 3 GHZ.
An interesting idea would be to try for a not-quite-loss; once one side realizes they can't win, they can call for a retreat which starts a timer; if they are still alive once the timer expires, its considered a not-quite-loss/draw. Marines can call for an evacuation ship, the aliens ... well, their last hive can mutate into an escape-pod or something.
I like this idea and I think it should be experimented. This would give the loosing team one option of second coming by avoiding from being entirely wiped out of the game. In a real world sense they would just tactically retreat to safer place to plan a new assault and resupply. When this evacuation option is activated it would change the strategy immediately for both teams and could open up new tactical options. The losing team would begin to fortify their positions and could get some defensive bonuses like mannable ARC's which can now aim also at aliens but only in LOS. There could be maps that allow this evacuation option while some maps do not allow it. Many more wild ideas come to mind but I'll leave it at that.
I also don't agree with the premise (low retention rate). Forseen aliens losses are a bit tough to swallow.
I always liked F4 over Surrender/Concede. Players just leave the game, and maybe spectate. The fight-to-the-bitter-end crowd can add to the opponents score.
We hear you all on the performance. We're doing our best to improve it, and we all agree it needs to be better. It will be better for future NS2 updates, and certainly for our next game - promise
Exos are currently the fastest, most efficient and most economical way to destroy hives and target structures. They are also the unit with the highest force multiplier when defending a fortified location, bar none.
But yes, when people try to use them as anything other than siege or defensive units, they don't do too well.
8v8
all marines except the comm get JPs, they all fly to the same hive.
They all focus fire it down, while the com liberally drops Medpacks/ammo.
A valid strategy that can often work. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Mmm... one of the problems is that once you have the advantage, there is no real hurry - you might as well wait until you have 5 Onoses up, or 7 ARCs+Exos and then casually walk in and kill the enemy - which takes a while.
An interesting idea would be to try for a not-quite-loss; once one side realizes they can't win, they can call for a retreat which starts a timer; if they are still alive once the timer expires, its considered a not-quite-loss/draw. Marines can call for an evacuation ship, the aliens ... well, their last hive can mutate into an escape-pod or something.
Puts some pressures on the winning team to finish things off, and a reason for the defenders to keep up the fight.
that is an awesome idea and I totally want to see that in NS2! but I think this should only be an option for pub matches, in other words: this should be a ruleset option so you could turn it of for competitive plays.
We hear you all on the performance. We're doing our best to improve it, and we all agree it needs to be better. It will be better for future NS2 updates, and certainly for our next game - promise
Is there any way one can help? The LUA game logic is practically Open Source. Do you accept third-party contributions?
8v8
all marines except the comm get JPs, they all fly to the same hive.
They all focus fire it down, while the com liberally drops Medpacks/ammo.
1 alien attacks main base power, marines lose.
The reason why losing is so frustrating is because you die a myriad of deaths and you cant do anything about it. Coupled with the insane fast respawn rate, it gives you the feeling of "Why am I playing? All I do is die." I think the fast spawnrate effectivly turns the game into more of a player vs structure game: Killing players is meaningless so you have to attack structures to hurt the enemy. The most effective way to do that is when no enemys are around, killing enemy base units is entirely pointless.
As for RFK benefiting turtling, what do we have now? As soon as the marines try to defend their rts, they are losing the game. The skulks harass rts and throw their life away to distract the marines from making a push on their hive until they have enough res to go onos. It is like devour, but instead of sitting in an onos' belly, you run around the map chasing a skulk that will respawn faster than you can reach the next rt.
RFK does so much more to the game and very little of it is positive. It encourages turtling, and doesn't work well as a method of rewarding skill. It rewards defensive postures, and NS is about aggression. IE:
See why NS1 died.
The NS1 RFK favours defensive play when the res model goes totally bonkers on huge pub servers. The res towers are meant to be the consistent backbone of the income, but they aren't working as such when the team size goes past 12 or so.
In 12-24 player games the marines are pushing out due to the res model working as it's supposed. As a result, the RFK actually generates variation in res peaks, adds extra possibilities to alien play. If anything, I'd say RFK rewards engaging and trading in such gameplay.
It also rewards well coordinated play where the right players are feeding on the RFK at the right time. That adds quite a bit of finesse to the teamwork and engamenets. An engagement gets much more diverses outcome than just a game of counting casualties and resetting the enemy back to spawn queue.
---
I by no means want the 32 player turtle RFK into NS2. At that point it's a horrible feature.
However, things like watching a top team set up their hive getter skulk some frags for faster 2nd hive or a fade setting up skulks for efficient RFK usage are still some of the most awesome moments I've seen in any FPS.
We hear you all on the performance. We're doing our best to improve it, and we all agree it needs to be better. It will be better for future NS2 updates, and certainly for our next game - promise
Is there any way one can help? The LUA game logic is practically Open Source. Do you accept third-party contributions?
They do and did in the past. The spectator UI for example is a third-party contribution. If you can speed up some .lua-code, the community would love you.
However, things like watching a top team set up their hive getter skulk some frags for faster 2nd hive or a fade setting up skulks for efficient RFK usage are still some of the most awesome moments I've seen in any FPS.
This is one aspect that makes Dota so much fun: Good teams have one Carry who is supposed to get all the kills and get as much gold as fast as possible.
However, things like watching a top team set up their hive getter skulk some frags for faster 2nd hive or a fade setting up skulks for efficient RFK usage are still some of the most awesome moments I've seen in any FPS.
This is one aspect that makes Dota so much fun: Good teams have one Carry who is supposed to get all the kills and get as much gold as fast as possible.
What I found wonderful in NS1 is how the guy who's supposed to be helped is quite situational. First you want your lerk and fade out. Once the fade and lerk are out, they're often better off giving the RFK to skulks whenever possible and returning the favour.
Dota carry is a top priority most of the round and supports usually get what's left after the high priority guys are done eating (the Chinese 1-5 position system from hard carry (1) to full support (5)). In NS it's a lot more about having the right guy fragging at the right time.
Obviously in pubs most people don't do much niceties like this, but it's definitely something I do whenever I feel the team is worth helping.
This is easily solved by switcing servers. if you want balance, you cant hope to achieve it with uneven skilled players. keep hopping until you find something worth playing. tis what I do and it works
Comments
So hypothetical good player gets a lerk/fade earlier and dominates like he/she was going to dominate independent of RFK and accumulate a pool of res he/she has nothing to invest in as he/she is already using the lifeform desired. That's a pretty weak snowball effect in that it doesn't snowball into anything or become significantly unfair to anyone.
RFK does so much more to the game and very little of it is positive. It encourages turtling, and doesn't work well as a method of rewarding skill. It rewards defensive postures, and NS is about aggression. IE:
See why NS1 died.
I think I was on your side that game, I remember your story as one of mine
We already have 5 minute lerks, and 10 minute fades.
Do you want 2 minute lerks, and 5 minute fades?
I built my computer 4 years ago, I get low but playable FPS.
Your computer is worse than mine is, and I wasn't expecting to be able to run NS2 as well as I do.
My friend who bought it for me says that my rig runs it "suspiciously well.", that is, he has a QuadCore OC'd to 3.5ghz, with a GeForce GTX 560 and I get about the same frame rates that he does.
I'm just slightly above the recommended.
I expect anyone on minimum settings probably has a slide show.
Maybe the dropship is the key to a "way out" for marines at least. As long as there's a drop ship in the level, make it an alternate ending objective to push for the location of the ship, clear it of any and all obstructions, fire it up, and evacuate.
On Docking, this would be simply a push into Landing Pad and turtle there for a time. Summit, push and hold Flight Control. Veil, push and hold Cargo. As far as the other maps without the dropship in them, I'm sure there's a lore-friendly way to explain how the marines got there and how they can get out.
I've no clue how to explain an alien retreat. But I'm sure it could be done.
Idea being to provide a last-ditch effort that becomes available under certain conditions that allows a team to "tactically retreat."
fixed
My CPU is 1ghz faster then yours and my GPU a generation ahead, late game FPS is 5-20. Might be fine for some, but you are the first I've heard.
They're slow, they require an escort, and they die way too easily.
Exos are currently the fastest, most efficient and most economical way to destroy hives and target structures. They are also the unit with the highest force multiplier when defending a fortified location, bar none.
But yes, when people try to use them as anything other than siege or defensive units, they don't do too well.
That's really unfortunate though, this game is probably the best FPS I have ever played in many years (Never played NS1).
8v8
all marines except the comm get JPs, they all fly to the same hive.
They all focus fire it down, while the com liberally drops Medpacks/ammo.
I like this idea and I think it should be experimented. This would give the loosing team one option of second coming by avoiding from being entirely wiped out of the game. In a real world sense they would just tactically retreat to safer place to plan a new assault and resupply. When this evacuation option is activated it would change the strategy immediately for both teams and could open up new tactical options. The losing team would begin to fortify their positions and could get some defensive bonuses like mannable ARC's which can now aim also at aliens but only in LOS. There could be maps that allow this evacuation option while some maps do not allow it. Many more wild ideas come to mind but I'll leave it at that.
I always liked F4 over Surrender/Concede. Players just leave the game, and maybe spectate. The fight-to-the-bitter-end crowd can add to the opponents score.
A valid strategy that can often work. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Although if memory serves, that was a strat in NS1 as well.
that is an awesome idea and I totally want to see that in NS2! but I think this should only be an option for pub matches, in other words: this should be a ruleset option so you could turn it of for competitive plays.
Is there any way one can help? The LUA game logic is practically Open Source. Do you accept third-party contributions?
1 alien attacks main base power, marines lose.
The reason why losing is so frustrating is because you die a myriad of deaths and you cant do anything about it. Coupled with the insane fast respawn rate, it gives you the feeling of "Why am I playing? All I do is die." I think the fast spawnrate effectivly turns the game into more of a player vs structure game: Killing players is meaningless so you have to attack structures to hurt the enemy. The most effective way to do that is when no enemys are around, killing enemy base units is entirely pointless.
As for RFK benefiting turtling, what do we have now? As soon as the marines try to defend their rts, they are losing the game. The skulks harass rts and throw their life away to distract the marines from making a push on their hive until they have enough res to go onos. It is like devour, but instead of sitting in an onos' belly, you run around the map chasing a skulk that will respawn faster than you can reach the next rt.
In 12-24 player games the marines are pushing out due to the res model working as it's supposed. As a result, the RFK actually generates variation in res peaks, adds extra possibilities to alien play. If anything, I'd say RFK rewards engaging and trading in such gameplay.
It also rewards well coordinated play where the right players are feeding on the RFK at the right time. That adds quite a bit of finesse to the teamwork and engamenets. An engagement gets much more diverses outcome than just a game of counting casualties and resetting the enemy back to spawn queue.
---
I by no means want the 32 player turtle RFK into NS2. At that point it's a horrible feature.
However, things like watching a top team set up their hive getter skulk some frags for faster 2nd hive or a fade setting up skulks for efficient RFK usage are still some of the most awesome moments I've seen in any FPS.
They do and did in the past. The spectator UI for example is a third-party contribution. If you can speed up some .lua-code, the community would love you.
This is one aspect that makes Dota so much fun: Good teams have one Carry who is supposed to get all the kills and get as much gold as fast as possible.
What I found wonderful in NS1 is how the guy who's supposed to be helped is quite situational. First you want your lerk and fade out. Once the fade and lerk are out, they're often better off giving the RFK to skulks whenever possible and returning the favour.
Dota carry is a top priority most of the round and supports usually get what's left after the high priority guys are done eating (the Chinese 1-5 position system from hard carry (1) to full support (5)). In NS it's a lot more about having the right guy fragging at the right time.
Obviously in pubs most people don't do much niceties like this, but it's definitely something I do whenever I feel the team is worth helping.