very well done ! for everyone who hasnt tried the BT mod yet and is new to this: PLAY IT before you talk bad about it ! That's the exact mistake i did.. played it for like 15 minutes once - hated it - never played it again and always talked about how bad it is .__. damn i was a dumbass after playing it a bit more with my team and in the pubs i learned how to play it and LOVE it :P
give it a try !
movement tutorials for newbies to this :P lil bit outdated but the movement is the same, it just requires a bit more skill now to keep that speed up.
Before you cry about movement: Go NS2. Click steam overlay. Pick ns2 guides. Select classes. Roll down until you see build 250 beginner/advanced skulk/fade movement. Watch. Practise.
Not liking the removal of the ability of macs and drifters to attack. It isn't used much in pub games but rarely a comm on a losing team would spam them to the amusement of the team. Overall I prefer the way the game was before the BT as it seems to pander too much towards tweaking for competition play (as competition "pros" seem to be the biggest whiners on these forums) and not for large public games that quite a bit of the community like to play on. /pubnub
Since you can echo harvesters now, it might be good idea to teleport harvester from main base to freshely infested area, so you don't need to send drifter in there and let harvester grow at safe location instead. In addition, echoed harvester is at full health, even if you failed at scouting and there are marines, it will take them much longer to kill it.
Not liking the removal of the ability of macs and drifters to attack. It isn't used much in pub games but rarely a comm on a losing team would spam them to the amusement of the team. Overall I prefer the way the game was before the BT as it seems to pander too much towards tweaking for competition play (as competition "pros" seem to be the biggest whiners on these forums) and not for large public games that quite a bit of the community like to play on. /pubnub
You do realize that everyone who plays this game is a competitor, this game revolves around competition, they are no causal players in this types of games, the developers intended this game to be played competitively.
I think a more precise way to look at things is skill level, but I guess saying casual is a nice way of saying low skilled.
Not liking the removal of the ability of macs and drifters to attack. It isn't used much in pub games but rarely a comm on a losing team would spam them to the amusement of the team. Overall I prefer the way the game was before the BT as it seems to pander too much towards tweaking for competition play (as competition "pros" seem to be the biggest whiners on these forums) and not for large public games that quite a bit of the community like to play on. /pubnub
Can you explain what change makes you feel that way?
I mean the removal of mac and drifter attack is a hard blow for the comp seen as well. I don't know how anyone could have fun again in a comp game without the joys of drifters and macs hunting a player down. It also breaks the balance of 2vs2 games.
AiorosJoin Date: 2003-03-24Member: 14850Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2013
sewlek made most of the changes to the feedback of public players.
when his mod started he had 90% rookies on the server, thanks to the freetoplay weekend.
He said that 70% of all the changes are from Pub players and their experience.
the majority of the comp players would change a lot of the current balance mod.
so @Vitri0l please dont put up an argument you just made up for yourself.
so many changes are made for Pub/Casual players:
Hive can drop eggs now, without going shift first (so public server dont have to go shift first all the time)
You can change your upgrades now as alien, switch (omg i missclicked and got XY fade)
Shotgun got nerfed against skulk and buffed vs fades (casuals flamed about the SG being to strong against skulks)
Gorge cost reduced to 5 res (casuals love to play gorge)
GL and Flamer are now usefull (casuals got more weapons to have fun playing with)
supply limit (against mass turrets everywhere, was made for casual players)
arcs are moving slower (complains from the casual players about arcs being to fast and got to high mobilitiy)
infestion is gone faster (casual flame a lot about waiting ages for infestion to be gone befor they could build something) + build on infestion
glancing bites removed (improvement for both sides, explain a casual players why he does 25 50 and 75 dmg and how many times he needs to bite a marin)
Biomass is a nice way to buff skulk in the lategame so casual players who lost their fade or onos pretty quick, still got fun to play skulks
Armory dont weld armor, in vanilla i saw no marin on any public using welders to weld armor in battle. Thanks to this change i see casual players running arround with a welder all the time.
Welding teammates and buildings, so the overall gameplay and the feel of teamplay is much higher. If a casual feels like playing as one big grp they stay and enjoy the game more.
As well as less marin turtle action. Armory camping isnt that useful, biomass will overwhelm marins in late game and so on.
Exosuits are faster and cheaper to get, the basic casual players got max 1 exo and then lost it after a few minutes. With the BT mod he is able to get at least 2-3 Exos campared to only 1 in vanilla. And marins which mostly use welders now, weld the exosuit as well !
Lmg spread of 3 degrees (marins cant snip aliens on long range but got easier target on sulk in close combat. This change is hated by most comp players, its basicly in for the casuals)
And thats just a little snapshot of all the changes made for CASUAL players.
so for the love of god or anything u belive in ... stop posting such stuff without even thinking a few seconds.
Man I was really expecting a lot more rage on 250, but I'm glad there isn't Good work guys.
Some people have asked by biomass increases alien hp; as the game progresses marine [should] be getting armor and weapon upgrades, so it makes sense that the alien life form you see 85% of the game (skulk) will get MINOR buffs as they get hives, and their commander spends huge amounts of resources to increase biomass. All it really means is that if teams are preforming evenly you'll likely need the same 10 bullets throughout to kill a skulk at worst; 14 if they have cara.
As for fades, they just play a bit differently now, but the same golden rule applies - if the marine gets a good hit on you; gtfo.
Well, I've only played about in BT a few times, and whilst I wasn't the hugest fan on the alien movement changes (skulks seemed to just fly past their targets), I'm willing to give it a few more tries before I state my final opinion. Definitely am excited about getting used to this new fade movement... sounds tricky, but from what I've played so far, the constant energy management is a real adrenaline rush!
The only thing I've noticed whilst playing Commander in BT (again, I haven't played that much) is that the Alien tech tree seems very expensive? Maybe it's just me, but I felt like I was buying biomass constantly, with no res to do anything else! What is the average Extractor:Harvester ratio gained in public play BT? And what would you say is needed for equal tech progression? Is it still 3:2 like previous builds? Because I'm used to Marines holding 5-6 RTs with Aliens holding 3-4, but I think at those figures Marines will wildly out-tech Aliens?
The first thing I noticed when watching the new fades was too many fades still have the Shadow Step Fade mentality. The fade is no longer a unit that can nearly stop to attack some marines. At least that was what I believed there mistake was. When I faded the first thing I made sure I never did was stop moving, ever. Even so I had a few close calls and since it was one of my first attempts at the new fade, of course I didn't get any kills. I'm not quite sure how to land a kill safely with this new fade to be honest. Stopping to be more accurate, in my opinion, is a deathwish, so perhaps I should use blink to aim my strikes instead of jumping around hoping I'll eventually get him in my line of sight? Not raging just trying to figure out how to work my favorite class. ^_^
Not liking the removal of the ability of macs and drifters to attack. It isn't used much in pub games but rarely a comm on a losing team would spam them to the amusement of the team. Overall I prefer the way the game was before the BT as it seems to pander too much towards tweaking for competition play (as competition "pros" seem to be the biggest whiners on these forums) and not for large public games that quite a bit of the community like to play on. /pubnub
Can you explain what change makes you feel that way?
I mean the removal of mac and drifter attack is a hard blow for the comp seen as well. I don't know how anyone could have fun again in a comp game without the joys of drifters and macs hunting a player down. It also breaks the balance of 2vs2 games.
Using Drifter to assist skulks was actually pretty fun as alien commander. Since they have now lost invis and some hp it would be much less effective anyway.
Not liking the removal of the ability of macs and drifters to attack. It isn't used much in pub games but rarely a comm on a losing team would spam them to the amusement of the team. Overall I prefer the way the game was before the BT as it seems to pander too much towards tweaking for competition play (as competition "pros" seem to be the biggest whiners on these forums) and not for large public games that quite a bit of the community like to play on. /pubnub
Can you explain what change makes you feel that way?
I mean the removal of mac and drifter attack is a hard blow for the comp seen as well. I don't know how anyone could have fun again in a comp game without the joys of drifters and macs hunting a player down. It also breaks the balance of 2vs2 games.
Using Drifter to assist skulks was actually pretty fun as alien commander. Since they have now lost invis and some hp it would be much less effective anyway.
Yes, but that was the whole point of removing the attack ability. You just can't see shit with a drifter clipping inside you. You can still assist with drifters, but now you have to micro them youselves.
The movement tutorials are great and all, but in all honesty I would like to see someone use the new movement codes in fights so we can see how to do so as well. Pre 250 it was the Shadow-Step Dance of Blades for the fade. I'm not sure how to fight effectively with the skulk, lerk or fade now. Seeing someone use these new movement mechanics in battle and winning might go along way in helping players adjust considering combat is kinda important in this game *just a wee little bit*
Go marine comm and immediately research AA, hold a few RTs for a while and get an Obs so you can beacon, then once advanced weapons are up buy 1 or 2 GLs and a bunch of flamers and rush the main hive.
I bet you can win about 90% of pub games this way. There is virtually no counter to it unless marines are extremely incompetent.
Go marine comm and immediately research AA, hold a few RTs for a while and get an Obs so you can beacon, then once advanced weapons are up buy 1 or 2 GLs and a bunch of flamers and rush the main hive.
I bet you can win about 90% of pub games this way. There is virtually no counter to it unless marines are extremely incompetent.
Nerf GLs and flamers. Seriously.
Yup. Everyone can command now, it's as easy as snb says.
sewlek made most of the changes to the feedback of public players.
when his mod started he had 90% rookies on the server, thanks to the freetoplay weekend.
<snip>
And thats just a little snapshot of all the changes made for CASUAL players.
so for the love of god or anything u belive in ... stop posting such stuff without even thinking a few seconds.
I for one would have loved a bit more story behind this update. The site is basicly listing not a single reason as to why NS2 got a complete overhoul.
Seriously wth are you guys thinking, no video, no explanation, just updated tutorials which aren't even mentioned..... You guys should at Least have wait until hugh got back or something....
I mean I for one have had it with updates at this point. It's like with 249, why on heavens earth did you guys introduce a grenade launcher change in that build when 2 weeks later everything get's changed again?!?
I know this update is "Good" but for crying out loud next time you do balance chance (even minor ones) please do them like once a 2 months or so preferable even less.... Frequent updates should be bugfixes, and bugfixes only.
This many large changes to alien movement and abilities are a one time thing. From here on there will of course be some tweaking and polishing, but don't expect another huge rework of, say, the Fade, in a few months.
Lol seriously? A one time thing? I've been relearning how to skulk a thousand times since launch. And quite frankly i'm rather close on just giving up this game because of it.... What good do I have in learning a game, or starting competitive when I have to re-learn the game every 2 months.....
And if it's not the game mechanics I have to relearn it's some 10th refurbish of docking which totally flips me off.
Go marine comm and immediately research AA, hold a few RTs for a while and get an Obs so you can beacon, then once advanced weapons are up buy 1 or 2 GLs and a bunch of flamers and rush the main hive.
I bet you can win about 90% of pub games this way. There is virtually no counter to it unless marines are extremely incompetent.
Nerf GLs and flamers. Seriously.
I haven't seen this as much as I was expecting probably because people still don't know about it or just want to try out different things. Honestly I'm mostly ok with the strength of early flamer/gl but it's too much of an all-in strat with a high success rate unless the alien team does a very good job of preventing it. Just tone down the damage by 20%ish and then let it scale with upgrades. It's not like it's impossible to make flamers and GLs useful without being OP. If necessary, make them cheaper as well as nerfing them so that they can be used more for their situational strength.
I noticed that the explore mod is still not updated. Tooltips tell me that drifters are cloaked scouts and that armories heal armor, and the new alien upgrades don't seem to be working. The explore mod is really the only playground this game has for new players testing stuff out and old players wanting to see the changes, and at the moment it's full of complete bull.
I noticed that the explore mod is still not updated. Tooltips tell me that drifters are cloaked scouts and that armories heal armor, and the new alien upgrades don't seem to be working. The explore mod is really the only playground this game has for new players testing stuff out and old players wanting to see the changes, and at the moment it's full of complete bull.
Patch 9/10
Introduction 2/10
Like I said. They should have waiting till hugh got back so that we could have gotten a decent explanation and preferably a video. I mean you guys created a video for onos introduction but not for a patch like this?!? I just seems as some rushed attempt to satisfy new players / pubbers.
Now that the explore mode isn't even working my wtf moment is getting even bigger.
Introduction: 1.
I for one would have loved a bit more story behind this update. The site is basicly listing not a single reason as to why NS2 got a complete overhoul.
Seriously wth are you guys thinking, no video, no explanation, just updated tutorials which aren't even mentioned.....
They balance mod was in testing for months, it has been the biggest thread on the forums for months, there have been several posts on the unkownworlds.com/ns2 site about the balance test, what it is and how to play it so you can give feedback before it goes live. These same posts are also right there on the inital screen when you launch the game. Unless you have been living under a rock and dont read anything you cant claim there has been no warning/explanation or anything about these changes.
Also as was stated in the first line of the patch notes "Hugh normally writes up these posts, but is on a plane from Toronto right now, having visited Torn Banner Studios. So until he lands to tell you more, here is the raw changelog:". Its not really feasible to hold back a patch just because someone who writes the formal patch notes is busy for a day. As UWE said, he will tell you more with pretty pictures and explanations, this changelist is in a raw format so people actually know what has been changed.
The patch is not perfect, and I'm sure quite a few things will change coming out of it with balance, but here is a few things to keep in mind while playing the new patch:
1 - Balance will be virtually non existant until the majority people have learned all of the changes. Especially with the movement changes to alien. Most players picking up this version of the game having not tried BT will be nowhere near as effective on aliens as they were pre 250.
2 - Dont get mad just because you arent as good as you were on pre 250. Keep playing, learn the changes and give it a reasonable amount of time before raging out.
3 - If you dont like something about the patch, make a well constructed post on why, if you truly think something is a bad change saying "the build sucks, UWE ruined the game, change it back or I quit" isnt a very effective way of getting your opinion across.
Many of the changes are good. The RTS-level changes, I like.
The movement, I hate. I have it down, I can move at panting speed (so I'm told by others, more below) around the map, and can blink-once rabbit-fade around the map at top speed, too.
I just find the movement so boring, already. It's just bounce bounce bounce bounce. Yes, you can go very fast. Yes, that's fun for the first 5 minutes. No, this is not a skill-based movement system with any serious depth. Wall jump came under a lot of fire for being a boring, shallow mechanic. Are you people honestly telling me that the walljump with a+d pseudobunnyhop-to-retain-momentum isn't also shallow? Massive opportunity missed to come up with a real skill based movement system, I feel this was just a ploy to get something akin to bunnyhop in the game to quieten the pro-BH voices.
In combat, I find tracking with the skulk harder now. It's not fun to play AT ALL if you're against half-decent marines, which at the moment you are because of team stacking, with marines winning more and being the easier to play right now.
I actually don't understand the need for the changes that have been made to the fade. The blink-BH mechanic is no more demanding than SS-jump, and if anything I find it quite a lot shallower and less interesting. If the fade needed a nerf, why couldn't that have been achieved with small tweaks to the hp/armour/damage values of vanilla fade? Instead, almost every single player I've seen in b250 servers is now saying that they hate the new fade (though I suspect many of them haven't worked out the movement yet, and if you don't do blink-BH, then the fade is absolutely useless and will die if it ever makes it as far as a marine).
My main complaint about the fade though may be bug-related. The fade is currently too sticky in combat. Twice now I've died as fade, and *both times* it was because I was next to marine, and I couldn't blink away even with >1/3 energy left: I was just left bouncing up and down like a useless rabbit in front of the marines, and the blink sound/visuals didn't even play. Yes I had at least 1/3 energy left. This happened twice so far. There's some very serious clipping/sticking issue there.
Is there a sound bug? I never ever hear the panting sound as alien (on other aliens or myself), but I hear it as marine. Other aliens told me they heard the panting sound I was making (and they were slower than me at the time).
Positives (amongst others I've forgotten):
Biomass making 1-hive lifeforms more viable.
Armour/building changes good.
Usefulness or flamers and GLs increased, good (but too far, these need pegging back).
More diversity in upgrade choice (for now).
Ability to drop crags/shifts/shades on 1 hive.
Calling the mod 'balance test' and emphasising balance in the changenotes was a big mistake. The game before 250 was actually pretty well balanced (if stale, hence the need for changes, I agree). However, it's now not AT ALL balanced. We shall see what the stats look like after a week or two, but my prediction will be marines having >60% winrate. I hope I'm wrong.
TL;DR:
Overall there IS a lot of good stuff in b250, and I'm not against the majority of the changes, so for that, well done.
Movement system is not skill-based with depth, so what have all the movement changes actually achieved other than alienating a large portion of the playerbase? Bouncing gets boring quickly and looks ridiculous. Fades = Rabbits now.
Fade clipping against marine disables blink -> FIX!
I will come back to try out this new patch. Nothing more boring than playing the same game repeatedly again and again. People should really learn, that the way is the goal when we talk about games. It's more fun to learn a new game than to play a game for the 1000nds time. The player count of nearly every game in the history of pc gaming is proof of that.
In regards to this, I think it's the best that could happen to NS2. To sad steamgraphs has no real values about the player count of NS2 anymore. Would be interesting to watch the changes in the next week.
Comments
Took me half an hour to learn to get a constant 10+ speed with the skulk and navigate through the whole map with the fade with one use of blink.
I have no compassion for people who cannot learn these movement mechanics.
give it a try !
movement tutorials for newbies to this :P lil bit outdated but the movement is the same, it just requires a bit more skill now to keep that speed up.
Edit: SwissPav was faster than me!
hopefully will be back soon !!!
You do realize that everyone who plays this game is a competitor, this game revolves around competition, they are no causal players in this types of games, the developers intended this game to be played competitively.
I think a more precise way to look at things is skill level, but I guess saying casual is a nice way of saying low skilled.
In those tutorials, bunnyhopping gains were large and wallpjumping had a very large cooldown between jumps so you could only use it occasionally.
Can you explain what change makes you feel that way?
I mean the removal of mac and drifter attack is a hard blow for the comp seen as well. I don't know how anyone could have fun again in a comp game without the joys of drifters and macs hunting a player down. It also breaks the balance of 2vs2 games.
when his mod started he had 90% rookies on the server, thanks to the freetoplay weekend.
He said that 70% of all the changes are from Pub players and their experience.
the majority of the comp players would change a lot of the current balance mod.
so @Vitri0l please dont put up an argument you just made up for yourself.
so many changes are made for Pub/Casual players:
Hive can drop eggs now, without going shift first (so public server dont have to go shift first all the time)
You can change your upgrades now as alien, switch (omg i missclicked and got XY fade)
Shotgun got nerfed against skulk and buffed vs fades (casuals flamed about the SG being to strong against skulks)
Gorge cost reduced to 5 res (casuals love to play gorge)
GL and Flamer are now usefull (casuals got more weapons to have fun playing with)
supply limit (against mass turrets everywhere, was made for casual players)
arcs are moving slower (complains from the casual players about arcs being to fast and got to high mobilitiy)
infestion is gone faster (casual flame a lot about waiting ages for infestion to be gone befor they could build something) + build on infestion
glancing bites removed (improvement for both sides, explain a casual players why he does 25 50 and 75 dmg and how many times he needs to bite a marin)
Biomass is a nice way to buff skulk in the lategame so casual players who lost their fade or onos pretty quick, still got fun to play skulks
Armory dont weld armor, in vanilla i saw no marin on any public using welders to weld armor in battle. Thanks to this change i see casual players running arround with a welder all the time.
Welding teammates and buildings, so the overall gameplay and the feel of teamplay is much higher. If a casual feels like playing as one big grp they stay and enjoy the game more.
As well as less marin turtle action. Armory camping isnt that useful, biomass will overwhelm marins in late game and so on.
Exosuits are faster and cheaper to get, the basic casual players got max 1 exo and then lost it after a few minutes. With the BT mod he is able to get at least 2-3 Exos campared to only 1 in vanilla. And marins which mostly use welders now, weld the exosuit as well !
Lmg spread of 3 degrees (marins cant snip aliens on long range but got easier target on sulk in close combat. This change is hated by most comp players, its basicly in for the casuals)
And thats just a little snapshot of all the changes made for CASUAL players.
so for the love of god or anything u belive in ... stop posting such stuff without even thinking a few seconds.
Some people have asked by biomass increases alien hp; as the game progresses marine [should] be getting armor and weapon upgrades, so it makes sense that the alien life form you see 85% of the game (skulk) will get MINOR buffs as they get hives, and their commander spends huge amounts of resources to increase biomass. All it really means is that if teams are preforming evenly you'll likely need the same 10 bullets throughout to kill a skulk at worst; 14 if they have cara.
As for fades, they just play a bit differently now, but the same golden rule applies - if the marine gets a good hit on you; gtfo.
I've heard far more complaints in-game than in the forum.
The only thing I've noticed whilst playing Commander in BT (again, I haven't played that much) is that the Alien tech tree seems very expensive? Maybe it's just me, but I felt like I was buying biomass constantly, with no res to do anything else! What is the average Extractor:Harvester ratio gained in public play BT? And what would you say is needed for equal tech progression? Is it still 3:2 like previous builds? Because I'm used to Marines holding 5-6 RTs with Aliens holding 3-4, but I think at those figures Marines will wildly out-tech Aliens?
Using Drifter to assist skulks was actually pretty fun as alien commander. Since they have now lost invis and some hp it would be much less effective anyway.
Yes, but that was the whole point of removing the attack ability. You just can't see shit with a drifter clipping inside you. You can still assist with drifters, but now you have to micro them youselves.
Go marine comm and immediately research AA, hold a few RTs for a while and get an Obs so you can beacon, then once advanced weapons are up buy 1 or 2 GLs and a bunch of flamers and rush the main hive.
I bet you can win about 90% of pub games this way. There is virtually no counter to it unless marines are extremely incompetent.
Nerf GLs and flamers. Seriously.
Having to weld for armor sounds great. Too bad grenade-spam-shield is still in.
Playing...
Yup. Everyone can command now, it's as easy as snb says.
I for one would have loved a bit more story behind this update. The site is basicly listing not a single reason as to why NS2 got a complete overhoul.
Seriously wth are you guys thinking, no video, no explanation, just updated tutorials which aren't even mentioned..... You guys should at Least have wait until hugh got back or something....
I mean I for one have had it with updates at this point. It's like with 249, why on heavens earth did you guys introduce a grenade launcher change in that build when 2 weeks later everything get's changed again?!?
I know this update is "Good" but for crying out loud next time you do balance chance (even minor ones) please do them like once a 2 months or so preferable even less.... Frequent updates should be bugfixes, and bugfixes only.
Lol seriously? A one time thing? I've been relearning how to skulk a thousand times since launch. And quite frankly i'm rather close on just giving up this game because of it.... What good do I have in learning a game, or starting competitive when I have to re-learn the game every 2 months.....
And if it's not the game mechanics I have to relearn it's some 10th refurbish of docking which totally flips me off.
I haven't seen this as much as I was expecting probably because people still don't know about it or just want to try out different things. Honestly I'm mostly ok with the strength of early flamer/gl but it's too much of an all-in strat with a high success rate unless the alien team does a very good job of preventing it. Just tone down the damage by 20%ish and then let it scale with upgrades. It's not like it's impossible to make flamers and GLs useful without being OP. If necessary, make them cheaper as well as nerfing them so that they can be used more for their situational strength.
Patch 9/10
Introduction 2/10
Like I said. They should have waiting till hugh got back so that we could have gotten a decent explanation and preferably a video. I mean you guys created a video for onos introduction but not for a patch like this?!? I just seems as some rushed attempt to satisfy new players / pubbers.
Now that the explore mode isn't even working my wtf moment is getting even bigger.
Introduction: 1.
They balance mod was in testing for months, it has been the biggest thread on the forums for months, there have been several posts on the unkownworlds.com/ns2 site about the balance test, what it is and how to play it so you can give feedback before it goes live. These same posts are also right there on the inital screen when you launch the game. Unless you have been living under a rock and dont read anything you cant claim there has been no warning/explanation or anything about these changes.
Also as was stated in the first line of the patch notes "Hugh normally writes up these posts, but is on a plane from Toronto right now, having visited Torn Banner Studios. So until he lands to tell you more, here is the raw changelog:". Its not really feasible to hold back a patch just because someone who writes the formal patch notes is busy for a day. As UWE said, he will tell you more with pretty pictures and explanations, this changelist is in a raw format so people actually know what has been changed.
The patch is not perfect, and I'm sure quite a few things will change coming out of it with balance, but here is a few things to keep in mind while playing the new patch:
1 - Balance will be virtually non existant until the majority people have learned all of the changes. Especially with the movement changes to alien. Most players picking up this version of the game having not tried BT will be nowhere near as effective on aliens as they were pre 250.
2 - Dont get mad just because you arent as good as you were on pre 250. Keep playing, learn the changes and give it a reasonable amount of time before raging out.
3 - If you dont like something about the patch, make a well constructed post on why, if you truly think something is a bad change saying "the build sucks, UWE ruined the game, change it back or I quit" isnt a very effective way of getting your opinion across.
The movement, I hate. I have it down, I can move at panting speed (so I'm told by others, more below) around the map, and can blink-once rabbit-fade around the map at top speed, too.
I just find the movement so boring, already. It's just bounce bounce bounce bounce. Yes, you can go very fast. Yes, that's fun for the first 5 minutes. No, this is not a skill-based movement system with any serious depth. Wall jump came under a lot of fire for being a boring, shallow mechanic. Are you people honestly telling me that the walljump with a+d pseudobunnyhop-to-retain-momentum isn't also shallow? Massive opportunity missed to come up with a real skill based movement system, I feel this was just a ploy to get something akin to bunnyhop in the game to quieten the pro-BH voices.
In combat, I find tracking with the skulk harder now. It's not fun to play AT ALL if you're against half-decent marines, which at the moment you are because of team stacking, with marines winning more and being the easier to play right now.
I actually don't understand the need for the changes that have been made to the fade. The blink-BH mechanic is no more demanding than SS-jump, and if anything I find it quite a lot shallower and less interesting. If the fade needed a nerf, why couldn't that have been achieved with small tweaks to the hp/armour/damage values of vanilla fade? Instead, almost every single player I've seen in b250 servers is now saying that they hate the new fade (though I suspect many of them haven't worked out the movement yet, and if you don't do blink-BH, then the fade is absolutely useless and will die if it ever makes it as far as a marine).
My main complaint about the fade though may be bug-related. The fade is currently too sticky in combat. Twice now I've died as fade, and *both times* it was because I was next to marine, and I couldn't blink away even with >1/3 energy left: I was just left bouncing up and down like a useless rabbit in front of the marines, and the blink sound/visuals didn't even play. Yes I had at least 1/3 energy left. This happened twice so far. There's some very serious clipping/sticking issue there.
Is there a sound bug? I never ever hear the panting sound as alien (on other aliens or myself), but I hear it as marine. Other aliens told me they heard the panting sound I was making (and they were slower than me at the time).
Positives (amongst others I've forgotten):
Biomass making 1-hive lifeforms more viable.
Armour/building changes good.
Usefulness or flamers and GLs increased, good (but too far, these need pegging back).
More diversity in upgrade choice (for now).
Ability to drop crags/shifts/shades on 1 hive.
Calling the mod 'balance test' and emphasising balance in the changenotes was a big mistake. The game before 250 was actually pretty well balanced (if stale, hence the need for changes, I agree). However, it's now not AT ALL balanced. We shall see what the stats look like after a week or two, but my prediction will be marines having >60% winrate. I hope I'm wrong.
TL;DR:
Overall there IS a lot of good stuff in b250, and I'm not against the majority of the changes, so for that, well done.
Movement system is not skill-based with depth, so what have all the movement changes actually achieved other than alienating a large portion of the playerbase? Bouncing gets boring quickly and looks ridiculous. Fades = Rabbits now.
Fade clipping against marine disables blink -> FIX!
In regards to this, I think it's the best that could happen to NS2. To sad steamgraphs has no real values about the player count of NS2 anymore. Would be interesting to watch the changes in the next week.
Loving the new patch UWE, thanks for your time