So.... Am I the only one who likes descent? I personally find it to be fine. Drone bay is cramped, but other than that, no complaints. Plaza in particular seems well designed.
Those stats are showing a heavy alien win rate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the majority of the Docking changes were pro-alien. Marines lost their natural expansion, aliens have an easier time defending their two main weaknesses (stab and maintenance), and generator has moved so far away it's practically impossible for marines to even reach, especially when a gorge can set up a deathtrap practically anywhere in those tunnels.
and court just got a while lot more marine friendly too.
Excuse me what? The new courtyard is an absolute deathtrap for marines.
Agreed. Marines can't get through courtyard regardless of alien spawn, they can't get through east wing on a departure spawn, and they don't have caf side as a fallback. Basically means they are locked to an uphill battle from a single tech from the get go.
For future reference to UWE mappers, try to keep changes SMALL. When you change as much as docking just did at once, people feel like it's a whole new map. Not only do they need to learn it all over again (whether good or bad), but they've also lost the original, so you are fighting both nostalgia and the fear of unknown even if the changes are perfect. If you do things one change at a time though you end up with a theseus paradox and no one ever feels like its a "new map" even after every last detail has been altered.
So.... Am I the only one who likes descent? I personally find it to be fine. Drone bay is cramped, but other than that, no complaints. Plaza in particular seems well designed.
Those stats are showing a heavy alien win rate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the majority of the Docking changes were pro-alien. Marines lost their natural expansion, aliens have an easier time defending their two main weaknesses (stab and maintenance), and generator has moved so far away it's practically impossible for marines to even reach, especially when a gorge can set up a deathtrap practically anywhere in those tunnels.
and court just got a while lot more marine friendly too.
Excuse me what? The new courtyard is an absolute deathtrap for marines.
Agreed. Marines can't get through courtyard regardless of alien spawn, they can't get through east wing on a departure spawn, and they don't have caf side as a fallback. Basically means they are locked to an uphill battle from a single tech from the get go.
For future reference to UWE mappers, try to keep changes SMALL. When you change as much as docking just did at once, people feel like it's a whole new map. Not only do they need to learn it all over again (whether good or bad), but they've also lost the original, so you are fighting both nostalgia and the fear of unknown even if the changes are perfect. If you do things one change at a time though you end up with a theseus paradox and no one ever feels like its a "new map" even after every last detail has been altered.
no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
I'm confused at this superior need to have every map perfectly balanced 50/50 for each side. When I play other games, it's rare I find each team which is different in some way, has a 50/50 chance.
Take CS, I know de_nuke is CT loaded and de_dust2 is T loaded. Inferno is probably 60/40 but sometimes more 50/50. It's important to have unloaded maps, particularly for competitive play.
Still can't really see Docking working in a competitive standpoint. The north of the map is extremely small and cluttery and extremely easy for marines to access while the south of the map is wide open and awkwardly removed from all of the action.
7-1 in marines favour so far, I think gorges make or break aliens ability to hold this map, fast hive in locker for the only alien win, the other 7 were total marine stomps.
North side of the map feels cramped which is great for hydras but horrible for skulk play as there's very little cover, almost no cover at all from east wing-departures-stab mon, rooms have a great feel to them but play horribly for that reason.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
edited June 2013
Think marines have too easy access from terminal which has always been a problem. Landing pad should be made the marine start as was intended when map was designed (before 5 TP became norm) and this would also solve the flow issues that exist with bar and cafe when moving from terminal westwards.
Starting in lockers as Aliens is so friggin hard now. From the start marines just hit Maintenance and stopped us from expanding anywhere. By the time we managed to take control of Maintenance gen was locked down and was gg from there. I like the other changes on the map but think that extra tech point is needed so Aliens can atleast make level 2.
5 Controlpoint map is anyway better for balancing, as if a slightly better team is capable of defending 3 Techs, it is most of the time not able to defend 4 Points, ie letting the slightly weaker team a chance of changing the situation.
I've been holding off commenting on the docking changes for now until I've had a chance to play it. Unfortunately, I've only had a chance to play it as aliens and only one map, so I won't comment on balance (we won, it was a tough but fair game, but n=1).
My main concern is that docking appears to have dropped off so many of the server map cycles. From what I played on it the other day, it was actually a lot of fun, and aliens stood a fighting chance (we had locker spawn, marines in terminal).
We had to keep defending maint, stability monitoring and trying to kick them out of departures a lot, too. A few marines attacked lockers from cafe/bar, but not very often - that area of the map seemed quite dead as it is. I like the ideas mooted in here to merge cafe and terminal tech points (or better, I think it was scatter mentioned returning the marine start to landing pad, which also makes for a nice 'story' reason for the spawn!).
As much as it's important to get the balance and layout right, it would also be nice to make it fit in as far as possible with the probable/possible layout of the station itself. At this point, I feel it still needs some work to make the bottom left of the map more useful, and take perhaps a little pressure off stability and maint for both teams. Moving locker further to the west, and moving terminal tech point to landing pad (and also decrease the distance then to east wing) might be a way to achieve this.
Overall, I'm not against the changes so far. I had a good fun game on it, but as I said earlier, n=1 so I'm withholding my formalised opinion until I've played more.
Docking I feel has one glaring issue and has had for the last few updates.
Courtyard offers marines too much map access, this is best illustrated with a terminal start.
The passageway to maintenance used to be a vent, its removal has simply allowed marines too much map control by being able to easily run to key areas.
Since turning it into a passage you could keep marines out of stab...or maintentance but rarely both.
Whilst a central hub might sound good..it creates a lot of issues...mainly that marines have too much access to the map.
Docking has been marine favoured from early beta days...to the point that terminal was only allowed marine spawn to due their dominance.
Whilst these changes are somewhat a step in teh right direction they overlook what is, in my opinion, the main cause of marine dominance.
If you have marines spawning in terminal and can somehow keep them out of courtyard aliens stand a good chance of winning as they dont have the ease of access to the rest of the map.
I like how there are more direct (or straight) pathways and corridors to be drawn between rooms around the map, especially around departures. Previously I did not like all the U shaped corridors and backtracking movement needed to navigate the map. Although, Back Ally between Bar and Lockers still has this backwards movement, and it is very cramped and cluttered, which I am not a big fan of for either team.
The new Maintenance is looking great. The larger room is much better for combat and the additional space between the rooms entrances is also an improvement. I also like the increased distance between maintenance and stability to make it harder to cover those areas quickly.
I think the short distance between the Stability Resource point, and the generator resource point was a bit strange. I don't think I have ever seen two RT points so close to each other without being a Double (like Nano-Grid). I wonder if Stability will still be the "go to point" for marine offensive pressure.
(Although it did not change in this version) The East Wing feels very isolated and overly linear to me. The area has plenty of cover and turning corridors, but I feel as though it requires an extra corridor or vent entrance to make it more accessible from other directions. Currently It is just a very long, 1-way part of the map that Just feels cut off from everything else with only 2 possible destinations.
Seem to drop to ~35 fps around the Generator area. When I brought up console had a message : "114 memory leaks in client world." Rest of the map was fine, just around Generator and Pressure seemed to plummet.
I know I’m only one of these little public server players who actually nobody cares about…
But I would like to say my unimportant opinion:
I’m very sad what happened to docking.
It was one of my favorite maps…
Before the last update/changes docking were one of the most played maps on public servers.
So many players where voting for docking that you thought “really? Docking? AGAIN?” …
Now we have the situation that everybody on the pub servers (where I’m playing) is initiating a map change when the cycle changes to the new docking, because this map is no fun anymore… I talked to nearly my whole ns2 contact list (all pub players) and I found nearly nobody liking the new map design.
I really can’t understand why UWE is (in my opinion) destroying “old” funny maps instead of developing new ones? What is the point about this? Why are you doing it this way?
I mean the last “little” changes (east wing etc) where okay… but when you redesign a whole map (that it looks and feels like a complete new one) why not distribute it as “new map”? Like “ns_docking_2” or something like that?
It's so sad to see one of my favorite games take such a nosedive and getting detached from the commons. I had a lot of faith in you UWE, but you have proven over the last few months that you are not up to this task. Your game is dying and you are pressing all the wrong panic-buttons in a vein attempt at punching some life into it again. This is not meant specifically for docking, but just about every patch or change(or for that matter a lot of the forum posts by UWE themselves or others part of the team in some way, hence why I'm bringing this up here) in the last few months. Cocky over-the-top attitude picking on the little casual guy for being wrong in his opinion(wtf?), and the rest of the "i-love-you-UWE"-group joins in naturally, and you allow this. I see blatant ad homein go ignored because its in support of you, while other posts that touch sarcasm not in a really bad way gets slammed down hard. Anyways, drifting off the point:
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance). The few casuals you have left are leaving, hell I even had 4 people on my list delete the game after docking got out and the stuff about BT was announced, for them it was the famous drop. And I understand them, A LOT, as I've seen changes come about over the last few months that have gone so against what the "common word" on servers were, but instead because the competitive scene didn't like something.
There's nothing wrong with being a casual pub player who doesn't know every nuance of the game and cares more about fun than balance but still has an opinion which should be, and is, as respected as everyone else's.
There's everything wrong with coming to the forums with a hostile attitude and making rants of several paragraphs void of content which could all be summarised into "I don't like this and I don't know why, but screw you UWE and the alleged 'privileged ones' for not doing what I want even when I don't know myself what that is, and I think it's pretty safe to say that I speak for the majority because my friend agreed with me".
If you don't like something, justify your opinion with real arguments and facts. If you cannot, don't expect to be taken seriously. If you cannot, perhaps you should entertain the possibility that you're just afraid of change and getting out of your comfort zone.
There's nothing wrong with being a casual pub player who doesn't know every nuance of the game and cares more about fun than balance but still has an opinion which should be, and is, as respected as everyone else's.
There's everything wrong with coming to the forums with a hostile attitude and making rants of several paragraphs void of content which could all be summarised into "I don't like this and I don't know why, but screw you UWE and the alleged 'privileged ones' for not doing what I want even when I don't know myself what that is, and I think it's pretty safe to say that I speak for the majority because my friend agreed with me".
If you don't like something, justify your opinion with real arguments and facts. If you cannot, don't expect to be taken seriously. If you cannot, perhaps you should entertain the possibility that you're just afraid of change and getting out of your comfort zone.
First off, not a casual. Merely someone who has for the past few months talked to a lot of people on different severs around from time to time about changes done to the game, what could be done etc. Strangely just about every change done contradicts what I "learned" from these talks, while it fits snugly in with the feedback from competitive players.
Secondly it is not as respected as everyone else, as is evident by just about every single change to the game done lately(And the exodus to follow).
Thirdly why should I give constructive feedback? That has been done for months by others with no result to show for it expect the game running its same old path catering to the competitive scene(In more than one instance, and BT can quickly turn out to be another one of them), and sometimes even against their will.
Fourth read the little TL;DR i left there, I was well aware it was a rant. However thank you for saving the day.
You've yet to slam any facts to the table, claiming in multiple instances that all the changes have been made in favor of the competitive players. Could I get some examples?
To not steer too far to the waters of off-topic, just name one thing that made the new Docking more unfriendly for casual players and can be considered 'picking on the little casual guy'. I've yet to hear anything other than "but it's not the same map", which is not really an argument. If the new map is better, why cry? If the new map is worse, why not tell us why exactly is it worse other than fear of change?
.
Thirdly why should I give constructive feedback? .
And the penny drops.
Don't feed him.
He's copy /pasting the same rant in multiple threads now, has no actual feedback to give and seemingly just wants to illicit reactions so that he can point to his rant as being validated.
One important thing to note about the 4 techpoint change: With the new BT coming this won't be as big of an issue for marines (aliens is debatable, depending on how effective/needed each hive type is when it is released).
I know I’m only one of these little public server players who actually nobody cares about…
But I would like to say my unimportant opinion:
I’m very sad what happened to docking.
It was one of my favorite maps…
Before the last update/changes docking were one of the most played maps on public servers.
So many players where voting for docking that you thought “really? Docking? AGAIN?” …
Now we have the situation that everybody on the pub servers (where I’m playing) is initiating a map change when the cycle changes to the new docking, because this map is no fun anymore… I talked to nearly my whole ns2 contact list (all pub players) and I found nearly nobody liking the new map design.
I really can’t understand why UWE is (in my opinion) destroying “old” funny maps instead of developing new ones? What is the point about this? Why are you doing it this way?
I mean the last “little” changes (east wing etc) where okay… but when you redesign a whole map (that it looks and feels like a complete new one) why not distribute it as “new map”? Like “ns_docking_2” or something like that?
Sorry for my bad English.
Best Regards
What do you dislike about the new map? Seems are disliking it simply because what you previously enjoyed was changed.
Also if the game didn't have public players it wouldn't around at this point so to say your opinion isn't wanted isn't quite true. The opinions that go like "I don't like docking because it's a 4 tech-point map!" me-what about 4 do you dislike? Them "it's not 5!"...those are generally the ones that carry the least weight...
You've yet to slam any facts to the table, claiming in multiple instances that all the changes have been made in favor of the competitive players. Could I get some examples?
To not steer too far to the waters of off-topic, just name one thing that made the new Docking more unfriendly for casual players and can be considered 'picking on the little casual guy'. I've yet to hear anything other than "but it's not the same map", which is not really an argument. If the new map is better, why cry? If the new map is worse, why not tell us why exactly is it worse other than fear of change?
If you have yet to see any actual argument for why the map is far worse than it used to be, then you clearly have yet to actually open your eyes.
people hate losing stuff they bought (mainly alien lifeforms) without being able to use it
a lot of players are just dying as they blindly run around corners or get trapped in corridors
you can blame the player and you'd be right, but that isn't exactly the point...
the corners/corridors are a lot worse in the newer version
the high player counts / low skill of pub play turn into a fortified battlefield instead of a dynamic arena
You've yet to slam any facts to the table, claiming in multiple instances that all the changes have been made in favor of the competitive players. Could I get some examples?
To not steer too far to the waters of off-topic, just name one thing that made the new Docking more unfriendly for casual players and can be considered 'picking on the little casual guy'. I've yet to hear anything other than "but it's not the same map", which is not really an argument. If the new map is better, why cry? If the new map is worse, why not tell us why exactly is it worse other than fear of change?
If you have yet to see any actual argument for why the map is far worse than it used to be, then you clearly have yet to actually open your eyes.
I've yet to hear any positive comments on the new docking in game. I have heard plenty of complaints about it. Take that as you wish, but to me the majority of players who don't post here don't seem to agree with the changes.
Personally I don't think the changes were particularly good, for reasons already posted by others, but then again it's not the end of the world that the BT mod is threatening to be. (Hyperbole!)
You've yet to slam any facts to the table, claiming in multiple instances that all the changes have been made in favor of the competitive players. Could I get some examples?
To not steer too far to the waters of off-topic, just name one thing that made the new Docking more unfriendly for casual players and can be considered 'picking on the little casual guy'. I've yet to hear anything other than "but it's not the same map", which is not really an argument. If the new map is better, why cry? If the new map is worse, why not tell us why exactly is it worse other than fear of change?
If you have yet to see any actual argument for why the map is far worse than it used to be, then you clearly have yet to actually open your eyes.
Comments
Excuse me what? The new courtyard is an absolute deathtrap for marines.
Those stats are showing a heavy alien win rate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the majority of the Docking changes were pro-alien. Marines lost their natural expansion, aliens have an easier time defending their two main weaknesses (stab and maintenance), and generator has moved so far away it's practically impossible for marines to even reach, especially when a gorge can set up a deathtrap practically anywhere in those tunnels.
Agreed. Marines can't get through courtyard regardless of alien spawn, they can't get through east wing on a departure spawn, and they don't have caf side as a fallback. Basically means they are locked to an uphill battle from a single tech from the get go.
For future reference to UWE mappers, try to keep changes SMALL. When you change as much as docking just did at once, people feel like it's a whole new map. Not only do they need to learn it all over again (whether good or bad), but they've also lost the original, so you are fighting both nostalgia and the fear of unknown even if the changes are perfect. If you do things one change at a time though you end up with a theseus paradox and no one ever feels like its a "new map" even after every last detail has been altered.
no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
Take CS, I know de_nuke is CT loaded and de_dust2 is T loaded. Inferno is probably 60/40 but sometimes more 50/50. It's important to have unloaded maps, particularly for competitive play.
North side of the map feels cramped which is great for hydras but horrible for skulk play as there's very little cover, almost no cover at all from east wing-departures-stab mon, rooms have a great feel to them but play horribly for that reason.
My main concern is that docking appears to have dropped off so many of the server map cycles. From what I played on it the other day, it was actually a lot of fun, and aliens stood a fighting chance (we had locker spawn, marines in terminal).
We had to keep defending maint, stability monitoring and trying to kick them out of departures a lot, too. A few marines attacked lockers from cafe/bar, but not very often - that area of the map seemed quite dead as it is. I like the ideas mooted in here to merge cafe and terminal tech points (or better, I think it was scatter mentioned returning the marine start to landing pad, which also makes for a nice 'story' reason for the spawn!).
As much as it's important to get the balance and layout right, it would also be nice to make it fit in as far as possible with the probable/possible layout of the station itself. At this point, I feel it still needs some work to make the bottom left of the map more useful, and take perhaps a little pressure off stability and maint for both teams. Moving locker further to the west, and moving terminal tech point to landing pad (and also decrease the distance then to east wing) might be a way to achieve this.
Overall, I'm not against the changes so far. I had a good fun game on it, but as I said earlier, n=1 so I'm withholding my formalised opinion until I've played more.
Courtyard offers marines too much map access, this is best illustrated with a terminal start.
The passageway to maintenance used to be a vent, its removal has simply allowed marines too much map control by being able to easily run to key areas.
Since turning it into a passage you could keep marines out of stab...or maintentance but rarely both.
Whilst a central hub might sound good..it creates a lot of issues...mainly that marines have too much access to the map.
Docking has been marine favoured from early beta days...to the point that terminal was only allowed marine spawn to due their dominance.
Whilst these changes are somewhat a step in teh right direction they overlook what is, in my opinion, the main cause of marine dominance.
If you have marines spawning in terminal and can somehow keep them out of courtyard aliens stand a good chance of winning as they dont have the ease of access to the rest of the map.
The new Maintenance is looking great. The larger room is much better for combat and the additional space between the rooms entrances is also an improvement. I also like the increased distance between maintenance and stability to make it harder to cover those areas quickly.
I think the short distance between the Stability Resource point, and the generator resource point was a bit strange. I don't think I have ever seen two RT points so close to each other without being a Double (like Nano-Grid). I wonder if Stability will still be the "go to point" for marine offensive pressure.
(Although it did not change in this version) The East Wing feels very isolated and overly linear to me. The area has plenty of cover and turning corridors, but I feel as though it requires an extra corridor or vent entrance to make it more accessible from other directions. Currently It is just a very long, 1-way part of the map that Just feels cut off from everything else with only 2 possible destinations.
See I get that feeling for Caf because its such a wide open space with a single resource node far away from all the action.
I know I’m only one of these little public server players who actually nobody cares about…
But I would like to say my unimportant opinion:
I’m very sad what happened to docking.
It was one of my favorite maps…
Before the last update/changes docking were one of the most played maps on public servers.
So many players where voting for docking that you thought “really? Docking? AGAIN?” …
Now we have the situation that everybody on the pub servers (where I’m playing) is initiating a map change when the cycle changes to the new docking, because this map is no fun anymore… I talked to nearly my whole ns2 contact list (all pub players) and I found nearly nobody liking the new map design.
I really can’t understand why UWE is (in my opinion) destroying “old” funny maps instead of developing new ones? What is the point about this? Why are you doing it this way?
I mean the last “little” changes (east wing etc) where okay… but when you redesign a whole map (that it looks and feels like a complete new one) why not distribute it as “new map”? Like “ns_docking_2” or something like that?
Sorry for my bad English.
Best Regards
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance). The few casuals you have left are leaving, hell I even had 4 people on my list delete the game after docking got out and the stuff about BT was announced, for them it was the famous drop. And I understand them, A LOT, as I've seen changes come about over the last few months that have gone so against what the "common word" on servers were, but instead because the competitive scene didn't like something.
TL;DR: Random rant, fed up.
There's everything wrong with coming to the forums with a hostile attitude and making rants of several paragraphs void of content which could all be summarised into "I don't like this and I don't know why, but screw you UWE and the alleged 'privileged ones' for not doing what I want even when I don't know myself what that is, and I think it's pretty safe to say that I speak for the majority because my friend agreed with me".
If you don't like something, justify your opinion with real arguments and facts. If you cannot, don't expect to be taken seriously. If you cannot, perhaps you should entertain the possibility that you're just afraid of change and getting out of your comfort zone.
Secondly it is not as respected as everyone else, as is evident by just about every single change to the game done lately(And the exodus to follow).
Thirdly why should I give constructive feedback? That has been done for months by others with no result to show for it expect the game running its same old path catering to the competitive scene(In more than one instance, and BT can quickly turn out to be another one of them), and sometimes even against their will.
Fourth read the little TL;DR i left there, I was well aware it was a rant. However thank you for saving the day.
To not steer too far to the waters of off-topic, just name one thing that made the new Docking more unfriendly for casual players and can be considered 'picking on the little casual guy'. I've yet to hear anything other than "but it's not the same map", which is not really an argument. If the new map is better, why cry? If the new map is worse, why not tell us why exactly is it worse other than fear of change?
Don't feed him.
He's copy /pasting the same rant in multiple threads now, has no actual feedback to give and seemingly just wants to illicit reactions so that he can point to his rant as being validated.
What do you dislike about the new map? Seems are disliking it simply because what you previously enjoyed was changed.
Also if the game didn't have public players it wouldn't around at this point so to say your opinion isn't wanted isn't quite true. The opinions that go like "I don't like docking because it's a 4 tech-point map!" me-what about 4 do you dislike? Them "it's not 5!"...those are generally the ones that carry the least weight...
If you have yet to see any actual argument for why the map is far worse than it used to be, then you clearly have yet to actually open your eyes.
a lot of players are just dying as they blindly run around corners or get trapped in corridors
you can blame the player and you'd be right, but that isn't exactly the point...
the corners/corridors are a lot worse in the newer version
the high player counts / low skill of pub play turn into a fortified battlefield instead of a dynamic arena
I've yet to see, you've yet to provide.
Personally I don't think the changes were particularly good, for reasons already posted by others, but then again it's not the end of the world that the BT mod is threatening to be. (Hyperbole!)
Try reading past the first page.