I guess.... am I not welcome? Casual player here
SmellyTerror
Join Date: 2011-08-22 Member: 118027Members
Join Date: 2011-08-22 Member: 118027Members
I'm an old player. Been around since, well, honestly, NS1 pre-release fan fiction. Now I play once or twice every couple of months for a solid night of 8 hours.
I'm confused. How do I know I'm playing a mod? I enter a game, and only after I've committed to a minute or two of loading time do I see what mods are attached. What are they? What do they do? No idea. How do I just join a regular, vanilla game without two minutes of sitting around? ARE there any vanilla games? I don't know.
Every game I've joined lately has taken about 5 minutes before working out who's won. I have no idea why. Did something happen? Did one person turn out to be really good with a shotty? But pretty quickly one side or the other starts dropping, and begging the remainders to quit. I've been on the winning side, the remainders, and the quitters. None of them are fun.
Is there a setting I've missed that says I'm casual? Is it a UI thing, or a dopey-me thing? One of the servers I joined tonight where teams were rolled, and rolled, and rolled, was a newbie-friendly server. What else can I do to find a game?
I'm not even bad. I score highly, or, just as good, I work for the team and score terribly. I'm ok with that. But I see teams lose or win and I can't see a reason.
Well except: if marines are good shots, at least a couple of them, they win. If there aren't enough marines who are good shots, they lose. Everything else seems like sponge and padding, fire and noise. The game was already decided by that mix.
I don't know the game well enough to offer any solutions. I can only say that, lately, it's no fun for me. And I want it to be fun. This is my kind of game. Seriously, *this morning*, I told a friend about a scene where I'm covering a buddy with a welding torch, trying to fix the lighting, and in the flashing, intermittent light, I can hear the tick tickah tick of something moving in the shadows. Memorable scenes, strong emotions, that's what gaming is for.
But tonight I saw game after game where one side got rolled. Everyone was bored, resigned, frustrated. It's not fun.
Maybe it's not worth fixing. I *love* a game I can sink my teeth into, and maybe I just have the wrong expectations of NS2. Maybe its FOR the people who can spend hours researching. But I *used* to love it. And I hope I can love it again. Maybe it can be for all of us?
So maybe other people have suggestions. I don't. I wish I did. I don't know anything, other than what I feel.
So there it is.
I'm confused. How do I know I'm playing a mod? I enter a game, and only after I've committed to a minute or two of loading time do I see what mods are attached. What are they? What do they do? No idea. How do I just join a regular, vanilla game without two minutes of sitting around? ARE there any vanilla games? I don't know.
Every game I've joined lately has taken about 5 minutes before working out who's won. I have no idea why. Did something happen? Did one person turn out to be really good with a shotty? But pretty quickly one side or the other starts dropping, and begging the remainders to quit. I've been on the winning side, the remainders, and the quitters. None of them are fun.
Is there a setting I've missed that says I'm casual? Is it a UI thing, or a dopey-me thing? One of the servers I joined tonight where teams were rolled, and rolled, and rolled, was a newbie-friendly server. What else can I do to find a game?
I'm not even bad. I score highly, or, just as good, I work for the team and score terribly. I'm ok with that. But I see teams lose or win and I can't see a reason.
Well except: if marines are good shots, at least a couple of them, they win. If there aren't enough marines who are good shots, they lose. Everything else seems like sponge and padding, fire and noise. The game was already decided by that mix.
I don't know the game well enough to offer any solutions. I can only say that, lately, it's no fun for me. And I want it to be fun. This is my kind of game. Seriously, *this morning*, I told a friend about a scene where I'm covering a buddy with a welding torch, trying to fix the lighting, and in the flashing, intermittent light, I can hear the tick tickah tick of something moving in the shadows. Memorable scenes, strong emotions, that's what gaming is for.
But tonight I saw game after game where one side got rolled. Everyone was bored, resigned, frustrated. It's not fun.
Maybe it's not worth fixing. I *love* a game I can sink my teeth into, and maybe I just have the wrong expectations of NS2. Maybe its FOR the people who can spend hours researching. But I *used* to love it. And I hope I can love it again. Maybe it can be for all of us?
So maybe other people have suggestions. I don't. I wish I did. I don't know anything, other than what I feel.
So there it is.
Comments
It sounds like though you have been playing games where 1 team is just stacked. With the low player population you are going to run across higher skilled players more and more and the skill discrepancy is generally quite high so its easy to get imbalanced teams by simply whichever team 1 or 2 players join. For example in my area 2 nights ago there was exactly 6 servers with players in them that I got under 100 ping in and half of them are "rookie friendly" so at this point players tend to play where they can play.
The days of 90 min ns1 style games is over...most of your rounds will last under 30 min, even balanced games.
That's fair enough, but I (Australia time) don't have a lot of options. There are only 3 or 4 valid servers (I'll take a ping up to 300). Still, it's worked ok, until at least a couple of months ago, and second, surely the experienced players would be almost the whole population in these three-server time periods. So either they're stacking or it just comes down to a certain skill mix that dominates the game. I don't mind if I lose! As long as there was a chance I'd win...
Either way, as a casual player, this isn't fun. At all.
If I could switch my filter to say: damn the ping (within 4-ish-00), just give me fellow casuals... But I can't. That's not an option. Instead I'm in servers which are apparently neutral (if hard) but in which some of us have no place.
But then I guess anyone who works out the casual-vs-pro fight in any game will be rich and famous, huh?
In the server browser you can see what mods are running on the server by clicking on the details button below. Most of the "mods" are just administrator tools, custom maps, cross spawns, NS2stats, stuff like that which don't actually affect gameplay. If the server runs a mod that makes changes to the NS2 vanilla gameplay, you will see a specific game mode mentioned in the server browser next to the server name. NS2 will be plain vanilla, and then you have mods like faded, combat, NS2 BT... You can use the filters too.
Most the servers will still ping 240-280 at night time, it's not that bad, hell the 32p onos server if you've got a decent net connection that can handle it is easily the best NS2 experience you can find nowadays, it's literally fucking impossible to stack a 16v16 like you can a 12v12 or 8v8.
Avoid Mavicks (US) and Monash (AU) like the plague, unless you enjoy hour in hour out team stacking and questionable players playing 24/7 marines/lerks.
Honestly only mods still going are Combat (co) which is sometimes popular in Australia, maybe you'll find a Faded every now and then...every other server runs non game changing mods, shouldn't be an issue.
Beautifully listed for your reading pleasure.
Pro tip: Open the console, enter <disconnect> and off you go.
I noticed something similar. NS2 turns into a single player game and by that I mean that you have 1 guy on the server that shoots 35:0, thus scoring more kills than ALL the members on the opposing team combined. Naturally they don't get a foot on the ground, rarely get more than 2 RTs working and never see a 2nd hive or comm chair. Needless to say that these single player games are boring everyone to death in their predictability and usually end in an empty server because nobody wants to play a game that's decided at minute mark 2 that drags on like a zombie without any hope of recovery.
I've also noticed quite a bit lately that NS2 is turning into a "who quits first" rather than "winner/loser".
it's more like who cuts the map in half first wins - but yes, most rounds are decided at the 5 minute mark
marines usually have the upper hand in this one because they can build everywhere.
also, marines being on the weaker side is absolute bullshit, i haven't got more than 15% win rate as alien regardless of team composition ( randomized, elo based randomized, scrambled teams )
please, someone redirect me to a server where aliens actually win
Perhaps I am just lucky, but just yesterday, I played a 40 minute game last night that wasn't decided until the last minute or two. Despite the fact that my team lost, that was some of the most fun that I have had in a long time, as the marines scrambled desperately between phase gates to combat the gorges and their fade escorts.
The amount of res towers and tech points a team is holding doesn't tell enough of the prevalent situation, you need to be able to see past them. That being said, marines on 2 tech points and 3 res nodes anywhere past early game is a really hairy situation to be in. There's little you can do against aliens who are boasting 3 hives, 7 res nodes and a team full of higher lifeforms. Then again, the situation might only be temporary, and there still is a chance to gain foothold elsewhere.
The next time people start conceding in a 2-tech-point situation, try to take into account the following things:
-do the aliens hold the rest of the map, and if yes, for how long have they held it?
-do the aliens still have a second/third hive up?
-what is the state of the current marine tech, i.e. what upgrades you have and what's in the immediate pipeline?
-are the marines the ones trying to apply pressure, or are they just reacting to alien harassment?
-is your team capable of killing fades, or are your groups of shotgunners getting dominated?
-how many higher lifeforms (fade, onos) do the aliens have?
Holding two tech points with w2a2, jetpacks on the way and skillful players to wield them with the fades only just starting to emerge at 12:00 and the third hive not dropped yet is an entirely different scenario from being stuck at the same tech points with w1a1, fades and onoses everywhere the alien team having held 6-7 harvesters for the past 10 minutes at 20:00 with not a single harvester killed since the early game.
'Tis sad.
Ah Australia, well there's your problem.
I sank a few hundred hours in to ns2 over summer but lost interest just after gorgeous came out. A leading factor in why I haven't come back to NS2 was the lack of servers to choose from in Australia, and what little servers there were often had clan stacks. Not much fun playing games that are decided prior to the round starting. These stacks were rather amplified by the brick skulks which was the other reason I left and I suspect still isn't fixed.
I'm interested to give it another shot in light of performance improvements I noticed posted on the Facebook today. Hopefully a few others might come back so there are more servers populated.
(Oh, and listing the names of the mods on the loading screen isn't much help, since it doesn't say what they do. There seems to be a LOT of room on that loading screen - couldn't there be a quick sentence per mod to say what it is?)
People do not intentionally stack on Monash. For a long time Monash was the only server that had 30 tickrate mid-late game, competitive people hence flock to this type of server. The skill level is generally higher, as a result you get a combination of people wearing tags / aliasing.
I would suggest playing on the 'for the stomp' server if you need a more rookie friendly server.
Once again... monash server is not stacked. People simply play what they want to play, if that means a few guys with a clan tag jump on a team then thats the result. You can't stop people playing the team they want, nor put an expectation on them thats its their responsibility to analyse the skill levels of each player in a server and join a team accordingly.
Like being at the top of the 2nd grade in a sport - you can thrash everybody around you, but stepping up to the bottom of the next division gets you smacked around.
Lol. Can't recall the number of time's:
1) A games ended with one team getting raped only to check the recent player list and see 3, 4 or even 5 players aliased who were clanned players that were playing on the same team.
2) A server getting emptied after repeated rounds of mad stacks.
3) The ready room F1, F2 button mash, put your body-in put your body out of the marine/alien join area game lasting longer than the actual game lasts.
4) 2 clanned marines with comm back-up walk from marine spawn into alien spawn and egg lock 1 minute into the game.
I don't know how long you haven't been playing for, but if some of these people got out of mumble and interacted with other players in game you might think a bit differently.
Monash has been getting stacked for yonks. It's not as often now since all the clans have disbanded and a majority of the casual players seemed to have quit for some unknown reason.
The greatest mystery of them all.
monash server is not stacked
few guys with a clan tag jump on a team
not stacked
few guys clan on a team
stacked
WW@Mumble bros, gotta stomp those noobs and stack to be relevant.
STACKING TO BE RELEVANT.
Nobody keeps a binder full of pub & competitive players names, all their known aliases, relative skill levels in various lifeforms and teams, and their ability to work with other people on the team - then cycles through the information, performs an expert analysis on the data at hand using cutting-edge algorithms, and makes an informed decision on the matter at hand as to which team you should join to maximise the chances that teams are even. And sometimes teams ARE even (purely skill-wise), but an evenly matched game still doesn't take place for whatever reason (teamwork, strategy, people having off-games or fucking around etc.).
Random teams usually produce just as many one-sided matches as non-random teams. So you gotta wonder just how much power players really have in ensuring even matches by picking the right team. And whether people pick a side with people they prefer to play with (or pick a team that doesn't have people they don't want to play with), or they pick a team they prefer, or need practice in, or pick a random team to join, or pick based on what team they think is the weakest, or what team they think is the strongest - it doesn't seem to matter all that much as to ensuring an even game. Sure if half the players on a team belong to one of the top clans in the competitive scene and the other team is all green, then perhaps this is the kind of intentional stack that can be avoided. But how often does that happen, really?
I don't think there's a lot of stacking (well, intentional stacking). Uneven teams and uneven games happen a lot. It's just the nature of the game - too many variables effect the outcome of any given match. And whether people join a team with the 'stack' or against the 'stack' or with no regard to a stack usually doesn't make any difference. People will still complain as if the majoity of ns2 players are villainous malevolant people trying to fulfil some sort of stacking agenda, which is ridiculous because it just makes the game less fun no matter what side you're on (and whilst winning is more fun than losing, winning by a large margin is less fun than losing or winning by a small one).
Australian community is very small. In most pubs, half the slots are comprised of competitive players, so i'm not surprised that you'll see 3-5 of them on one team (chances are there are 3-5 on the other too, whether they're aliasing, wearing tags, or not wearing tags). Also there are plenty of really good pub players too that shift the balance.
2 players on an 18-24 player server do not equal a stack. And letting 2 marines waltz into your spawn willy-nilly and egg-lock you - no matter how good they are - is a result of failure by your team as a whole rather than being the victims of a stacked server. Either no communication is happening that you don't know about the egg-lock until the whole team is dead. Or the commander doesn't place any drifters so it can be anticipated. Or you're engaging these 2 marines in single file rather than using the smallest amount of teamwork.
edit: removed reply to point 3. Misunderstood it.
Sure you can.
Although enforcing those rules could lead to said players not visiting that server frequently, or ever.
No reasons... i beg to differ.
Everybody now have a love/hate relation with this game. Some of many example:
-Key binding ... do i have to explain? No secondary key setup. mouse-wheel locked. hard coded commander key. No dedicated keybinding for each role/lifeforme. Any other shitty game does better than that.
-Default skulks are bricks. A skulk can't even cope with a running marine. The more dev change things the more it's UN-natural. Marine side included.
-Need a good PC to play with proper FPS.
-Shitgun...
-Common logic isn't part of the game.
-Balance is made for 6vs6 (as they say) which is only played by clan it seems. But most teams play Carapace 1st now. How original ? Servers are more 16 to 24 players.
And the list goes on forever. I see more empty servers than anything on my side of the world. Combat stays as it is more casual or a cheap game type. I do love NS as it is a great concept and have a huge potential. Anybody i talk about that see the potential and say something like that. The potential is clearly underused to hide many technical issues.
The numbers are up just because ppl get in and then get off. This title is agonizing like the games you play. We know the end already.
Even when people voted random, some players just F4 out and wait to join "the winning side".
Did you try last build ?
You sure that's an Australian server? I'm in NZ and the lowest ping I see on a server is 200.