I was playing in somekind of community server otherday. There was this one guy. He communicated a lot with team but basicly he was on rambo mission. I followed him almost whole game. We did pretty good on kills and map control, dunno what other half of team got done. But end of match, i was second on scoretable, but this oneguy had three times more points and kills. This continued about 3 matches. Who wants to play against those if others are casual? And we didnt win all games, just wondered those killstreaks what he performed.
Game definiatly needs vets servers. I would join to get awesome i'm so shitty feelings. And maybe learn something. Now it's more like 1-2 godlike players stomping casuals.
So true, we need "color vet" in scoreboards too for the player with more than 100-200 hours. I don't think it will segregate the game, just make easier the team balance.
2) Rounds often take quite long after it is clear which team wins (which is often decided within the first 5 minutes)
3) there is no match-making
Some time ago I made a thread stating that the main reason for people leaving NS2 is, that is is extremely painful and unfun to loose. This is because loosing in NS2 most of the times means getting roflstomped&one-shotted repeatedly for several minutes. In addition, most games are decided within the first few minutes and the rest in 80% of cases is just plaing out the obvious.
Back then people kind of agreed mostly but pointed out that there are games that are widely played where loosing is equally painful and drawn-out. LoL and similar come to mind.
Also, in many games early advantages often result in sure wins. Think of an unharassed early expansion in SC2.
But I claim that there is no widely played game where all three of these points are applicable. Sure, in LoL, Starcraft and so on loosing is painful and in LoL you cant just gg out.
But the matchmaking system effectively keeps you on a 50-50 win/loose ratio. If you suck, you get worse enemies. If you are too good, you get better enemies.
Even a very good SC2 player will not get 10 wins in a row often while a very good NS2 player basically can clean out 10 entire servers in a row by just pwning everything himself.
Other games like BF3 have no match making. But losing or winning is kind of irrelevant in BF3 because except for the very worst baserape scenarios you still can have fun.
I basically quit NS2 because with my 300 hrs of experiance I could tell the outcome of >80% of all games I joined after less than 3 minutes. This is frustrating when on the winning side, because "going through the moves" might be fun 100 times but gets boring eventually and it becomes soul crushingly sad when on the losing side.
Sure, there is the occasional comeback but lets be honest here: most matches will end in a standard snowball win for one team.
I will even go further and say that most games' outcome I could predict before it even started because of which name is on what team. And the worst part of it: As a normal player I can do absolutely nothing about it. Regardless of what Team I join, the good players will play it out between them. Why do I even bother playing?
If we had a decent MM System from the start I think the game never would have become so frustrating to "normal" players. Sure you would have gotten pwned by the pros but the MM would have ensured you get pwned only 50% of the time and with 5k people playing there would have been a good chance for casual players to play several rounds without even seeing the "good" players.
Also, this would have brought more constant players to the game. As I pointed out before: Of the 4 people I got to buy the game, not one of them played more than 10 games because they hated getting roflstomped continuously. They all loved the concept of the game and I'm sure would have played ALOT more if the game made liking it not so damn hard....
I think by now you can't rectify this problem with NS2 because let's face it: there are not enough people left for a decent MM System.
And for the people saying that people have to "deal with it":
Back in the day I as well played Q3 and was kind of a die-hard fanboy. But let's face it: This kind of game will never again get this kind of audience and will never again be successfull. Back then there were 2 or 3 good multiplayer games and people wanting to play online just had to deal with the sick skill difference.
Today they don't. Actually I as a former good Q3 player don't deal with insane skill differences anymore. Why should I? There is much fun to be had without a 200 hrs learning phase of pure suck and unfun!?!
Your attitude is very much like saying: Modern cars don't need A/C, the old ones did not have it either. Everyone who wants a A/C is a whimp and should not buy a car in the first place...
I think that at this point the devs need to step out of the game world for a bit and revisit the addictive aspects of the human brains reward system.
Then design game mechanics around that. It seems like they are removing a lot of the rewards of taking gambles in gameplay in the quest for better balance. I feel like this is taking a toll on the psychological addictiveness of the game as a whole.
NS2 may have a rewards system already, but it's not nearly as apparent as it needs to be to keep people addicted.
Cause we are somewhere between alpha and beta. UWE has changed this game more since release then they did in beta testing, if they change the entire way an ability or upgrade works then all the bug fixes and patches they did in beta were meaningless.
At what point did they decide to model the alien’s tech after marine’s tech? Aliens evolve and actually have to spend their p-res on abilities, then why does it happen that if aliens lose their shells or what not they lose their abilities they spend their own p-res on? Same way as marines losing power or an arms lab.
At what point did UWE decide to limit buildings, oh at the point when they realized their game engine sucks. Since mass building never really happens on competitive games it won’t matter even though it will kill pub games but oh whatever. Besides the game was never meant for anything more than a 6v6 match (strange though how the 24 and 32 man servers are almost always full).
If we are going back to the changes that happened in beta let’s put the bile bomb back on the lerk and see how that works?
I love this game but I hardly play any more because all the pub games I join are stomp or be stomped and there are only ever 2 servers to choose from if you don't want to play a 20+ player cluster fuck so it's not like you can just leave and find another server. Really frustrates me as this used to be my favourite MP shooter.
I dislike killing resource towers. Especially as aliens. I'd like to see the entire resource model reworked, but especially harassment and attacking of resource towers. It seems like a very core part of the game that is not fun for me.
I dislike killing resource towers. Especially as aliens. I'd like to see the entire resource model reworked, but especially harassment and attacking of resource towers. It seems like a very core part of the game that is not fun for me.
biting an RT is supposed to be boring. that's how the game is designed
everything around it is supposed to keep it interesting and dynamic
there should always be more stuff to think about than you have time for
how do you choose where to focus your attacks?
how do you get in position to the RT?
how do you fit these decisions in your team's overall plan?
how do you adapt your plans based on enemy behavior?
how do you weigh the benefit of your actions against the risk of leaving another spot undefended?
do you keep biting until marines kill you or serve as a distraction?
the game design allows for some interesting decisions, but the matchmaking and complete lack of balance makes it impossible to realize them
I dislike killing resource towers. Especially as aliens. I'd like to see the entire resource model reworked, but especially harassment and attacking of resource towers. It seems like a very core part of the game that is not fun for me.
biting an RT is supposed to be boring. that's how the game is designed
Why would you ever intentionally design something to be boring?
Rarely do you ever bite down an rt from full to 0 without a marine coming around. I personally feel that it is rather suspenseful. You constantly are watching and hoping a marine doesn't pop around a corner and drop you before you have time to react.
Anyway, if you get bored that easily, I heard Battlefield 3 has airplanes n shiit.
It's crazy to me, a lot of people here played 500+ hours, and they wonder why player counts are going down. How can you expect more out of a game? What can be done to retain players who have already logged that much time? NS2 isn't permanent and it's not the game you are going to play for the rest of your life. Just enjoy it now while there is a decent player base because nothing lasts forever.
AFAIK, ppl still play the original COD and TONS of ppl still play TF2. So in essence, your comment is WRONG. Any game can go for virtually forever but classics often retain even more than the other games (not saying other games dont get any players though)
Rarely do you ever bite down an rt from full to 0 without a marine coming around. I personally feel that it is rather suspenseful. You constantly are watching and hoping a marine doesn't pop around a corner and drop you before you have time to react.
Anyway, if you get bored that easily, I heard Battlefield 3 has airplanes n shiit.
TL;DR: There is already pseudo-matchmaking, it doesnt solve the problem.
Just want to point out that there is already (kind of) a matchmaking system available. If you have NS2Stats installed, you can enforce teams reordered by their ELO rating. I dont know exactly how the ratings are calculated, but in my experience, those team shuffles work out pretty good.
The only server I know that uses it is the "Heidis Ziegenfarm" (HBZ pub server), which happens to be one of the most popular EU-servers (coincidence?).
I have surely played 100+ Elo-based rounds there now, and know most of the player names and their skill-levels, and I can say that most of the time the ordering happens in a way that I would say seems fair.
BUT - While I would say you get better games with MM / ELO-ordering, there is still a fair share of one-sided stomps and drawn-out but 90%-predictable games.
Which leads to the thought that maybe the game design itself is in a way that it does not allow many chances for comebacks.
Instead of implementing MM, UWE should maybe try to implement some comeback-mechanics. High risk/reward strategies come to mind as well as something similar to Starcraft "timing-attacks", which are often All-Ins (selling the low future win-chances for a high present win-chance).
I dislike killing resource towers. Especially as aliens. I'd like to see the entire resource model reworked, but especially harassment and attacking of resource towers. It seems like a very core part of the game that is not fun for me.
biting an RT is supposed to be boring. that's how the game is designed
Why would you ever intentionally design something to be boring?
because game design is hard. how do you make the mechanics of economy interesting?
collecting armors and counting to 25 is boring too, but people still play Quake
telling a worker to go gather minerals is boring, but people still play Starcraft
pressing buttons in menus is boring, but people still play Civilization
Why is this game dying? because the developers are too pretentious and think everyone wants a watered down casual game, that the public isn't smart enough. Its kind of insulting really, but don't take my word for it, casual and pro gamers still play brood war for a reason.
I dislike killing resource towers. Especially as aliens. I'd like to see the entire resource model reworked, but especially harassment and attacking of resource towers. It seems like a very core part of the game that is not fun for me.
biting an RT is supposed to be boring. that's how the game is designed
Why would you ever intentionally design something to be boring?
Playing combat modes really highlights imbalances within Aliens/Marines at certain parts of the game.
When we all spawn the key difference between Aliens and Marines is agility. Aliens are quicker, can climb walls and smaller to fit in vents etc. As a result you find that as soon as any game begins everyone explodes off in a different direction. Marines tend to bunch up due to their slower/bigger/clunkier nature.
This is a nice balance because the Marines obviously can shoot instead of needing to be close. The problem comes in however that a single Alien vs a pack of Marines is very very difficult irrelevant of skill (Nevermind some very biased maps where Aliens can't hide anywhere!).
At the start of a round, ive seen so many games that are nearly lost before any Alien can upgrade because a pack of re-supplying marines camping outside the hive will simple destroy you. Then they get SG's & GL's and people get pissed off. I will regularly have a negative KD ratio at this part of the game but it matters not, if it doesn't end there and then. 2 upgrades later and i'm a Lerk with a fighting chance of getting kills a bit easier.
The start is very marine based and puts people off working as an Alien at all. Ive even seen people going marine for a few levels of XP then switching
As I said previously though, soon enough I will go Lerk without any other upgrades and as soon as possible I will go fade. At this stage ill work toward filling up on Adrenaline/Carapace/Celerity/Regen/etc. Between Lerk/Fade phase of the game 'The mid-point' we find that the tables turn quickly and harshly. My negative score will reverse and you can go from 1:10 to 30:15 in a short period of time.
This part of the game is an Alien killing ground on Marines.
As both sides advance, it begins to swing back towards Marine again.. mainly due to 2 things in my experience;
1. Lack of Focus (Fade vs non-Exeo Marine can take 4 swipes, that isn't newbie friendly, heck its hard on a lot of regular's who aren't the best on Fade. Lerk is too easily killed later in the game to bother with it IMO)
2. Regen is woeful. Honestly sometimes ill just die because I can't be bothered going back to the hive to wait for a minute for HP. In that time I could have spawned with full health and killed another 5 marines.
Once the Exeo's come out then it takes teamwork on Alien behalf which is rare in public games, especially combat games.
I apologise for this large block of text. What im really getting at is that at certain parts of games you are the hunter and others, you're just bait with little chance of survival. This lack of opportunity from both sides during any game gets visibly irritating to some and anyone who is a swaying vote to stay with the game tends to give up.
I'm not sure how to fix this, perhaps just making re-gen a useful upgrade and adding focus while adding the HMG might do it. Means that everyone gets more toys and also means that everyone gets a bit stronger, hopefully evening out the inequality in parts.
Are you seriously complaining about the ns2 combat mod here? Seriously, this is a mod and it is fun to play. It is not even meant to be perfectly balanced (i think some time ago, aliens won after the time expired compared to the overtime thing). Marines only own the early game if the aliens are too stupid to camp as a team. To pull that off in the small combat maps with hundreds of camp spots, you need lots of walking suicide skulks.
^^ That's exactly how I'd expect it to work. The advantages swing back and forth in a very similar manner in regular (non-combat) games- its just rather than "get as many kills as you can while you can", you need to choose to capitalise on these moments of advantage by destroying some assets like upgrades, harvesters, hives etc. That's how the game plays- it's not a sign of imbalance but rather part of the essence of a strategy game in that you (and the other team) have opportunities to win at several points throughout a game.
I think the biggest problem is one that's difficult to fix - there's a very high skill ceiling in NS2, so there are some people that are really stinking good. In a game where map control and resources are crucial, one-to-two great players can drastically alter the game by controlling one area of the map. The easy response of course is better communication. Even teamwork and good communication is inadequate at times. It's not so much an imbalance between the two sides, as it is an imbalance when one or two really good players are able to dominate a game.
And it's happening frequently, more frequently than any other game I've played online.
Its funny because this year is the 10th anniversary of WolfET which was one of the best MP games on PC for a time and I played it for few years, it still has players and I gave it a go the other day for nostalgia and I realised how despite being dated now nothing has ever really bettered it to this day.
I mention this as I find myself playing a bit of a HL2 mod called Fistful of Frags atm which is similar in gameplay with match limited experience/upgrades, It has a handful of players but importantly is alot of fun and often the game/map devs are playing so you can ask/give feedback all the time, most satisfactory.
Anyway gnoarch got it in one further up with that post, I haven't played ns2 properly in many weeks but still keep an eye on here, give biodome update a shot and be nice to get back in but otherwise I am done I think, if you cease playing frequently getting back in feels too hard coupled with the fact the games likely been changed yet again though with the same issues & problems from day 1 still there.
Incentive. People want a reason to return to a game. Could be achievements / ranks etc. Yes the hardcore playerbase of NS2 think this is no good, but the simple fact is that this generation of gamers want stuff when they put the time into a game. This is how most of them think :
"I want to play a game...hmmm. NS2 rocks the big one...but I still need to get that achievement for Killing Floor. And I need to remap my Guild Wars 2 character, cous I just got to level 80 and I want to explore a bit more. And I need to play some more TF2, cous that pirate hat looks so cool! Ah I see my friend outranks me in PlanetSide 2, and I heard there was a sale this weekend with double XP!"
You want more players? Create incentive to make them return to the game. You can do this subtle, and just create a basic ranking system that does not influence the gameplay.
Achievements/Ranks/Trading Cards etc is what makes the new generation return to games. AVP2010 was a terrible game, but was still played to death because of the ranking system.
This is a graphic of our AVP2010 server from last month. Not bad for such an old mediocre game, eh? And NS2 is miles and miles and miles and miles better then AVP2010.
Not sure if an incentive system that is launched so late will do any good though. Usually these work best when the game is released with them.
EDIT : Ironic...I just got a badge for 10 posts on the forums. If the forums can do it lol...
I played NS1 years ago, and pre-ordered NS2 hoping that it would be a lot of fun. I was wrong.. It seems that 90% of the time you can tell who is going to win in the first 3 minutes. Then its just a stomp.
It's not fun to play and very frustrating, even when you win it's mostly frustrating. Lots of casual players do not want to send hours on the game getting stomped over and over again. Along with the 'pro' players that are 30:1 KDR that constantly say that the problem is that you suck. Reminds of my L4D and how its only fun if you are good and the newbies never want to play again because they get raped so badly and don't get a chance to improve.
-The lack of a simple, interactive tutorial mode to prep new players.
-Patching and balancing for the Competitive game that is ruining Pub play, and in turn, the community.
-A nose-in-the-air development team that doesn't listen to criticism.
-Balancing and playtesting farmed out to third parties who have no idea what they're doing.
-Fanboys that vehemently defend said devs, who will bury this post because: OMG NS2 ROX
I am a fanboi, I do generally defend the devs, but that's not the reason I disagree with you. I would bury your post because significant parts of it are factually incorrect, and that annoys me.
I am a fanboi, I do generally defend the devs, but that's not the reason I disagree with you. I would bury your post because significant parts of it are factually incorrect, and that annoys me.
I have to say though, that the game mechanics are really quite counter-intuitive, at least on the aliens' side of things. I mean, what in-game hint is there that the skulk gains speed from bouncing off walls? It's the sort of stuff that the game provides no information of. It's an example of putting the cart before the horse in terms of design - it's supposed to encourage skulks to move off the ground, but that encouragement is only seen if the player moves in the desired manner first, in which case... why? o.O
^^ That's exactly how I'd expect it to work. The advantages swing back and forth in a very similar manner in regular (non-combat) games- its just rather than "get as many kills as you can while you can", you need to choose to capitalise on these moments of advantage by destroying some assets like upgrades, harvesters, hives etc. That's how the game plays- it's not a sign of imbalance but rather part of the essence of a strategy game in that you (and the other team) have opportunities to win at several points throughout a game.
It is very much meant to be doing this. Unfortunately it is doing it very poorly with build 250. I believe build 250 is a great update, that just needs more work. It's too late to do it all at once now, but there still needs to be some radical changes that give this game back its "back and forth" timing windows of opportunity. I know it's still here somewhat, but it's really just pre-fade and fade at this point.
Comments
So true, we need "color vet" in scoreboards too for the player with more than 100-200 hours. I don't think it will segregate the game, just make easier the team balance.
1) It is very painful & unfun to loose
2) Rounds often take quite long after it is clear which team wins (which is often decided within the first 5 minutes)
3) there is no match-making
Some time ago I made a thread stating that the main reason for people leaving NS2 is, that is is extremely painful and unfun to loose. This is because loosing in NS2 most of the times means getting roflstomped&one-shotted repeatedly for several minutes. In addition, most games are decided within the first few minutes and the rest in 80% of cases is just plaing out the obvious.
Back then people kind of agreed mostly but pointed out that there are games that are widely played where loosing is equally painful and drawn-out. LoL and similar come to mind.
Also, in many games early advantages often result in sure wins. Think of an unharassed early expansion in SC2.
But I claim that there is no widely played game where all three of these points are applicable. Sure, in LoL, Starcraft and so on loosing is painful and in LoL you cant just gg out.
But the matchmaking system effectively keeps you on a 50-50 win/loose ratio. If you suck, you get worse enemies. If you are too good, you get better enemies.
Even a very good SC2 player will not get 10 wins in a row often while a very good NS2 player basically can clean out 10 entire servers in a row by just pwning everything himself.
Other games like BF3 have no match making. But losing or winning is kind of irrelevant in BF3 because except for the very worst baserape scenarios you still can have fun.
I basically quit NS2 because with my 300 hrs of experiance I could tell the outcome of >80% of all games I joined after less than 3 minutes. This is frustrating when on the winning side, because "going through the moves" might be fun 100 times but gets boring eventually and it becomes soul crushingly sad when on the losing side.
Sure, there is the occasional comeback but lets be honest here: most matches will end in a standard snowball win for one team.
I will even go further and say that most games' outcome I could predict before it even started because of which name is on what team. And the worst part of it: As a normal player I can do absolutely nothing about it. Regardless of what Team I join, the good players will play it out between them. Why do I even bother playing?
If we had a decent MM System from the start I think the game never would have become so frustrating to "normal" players. Sure you would have gotten pwned by the pros but the MM would have ensured you get pwned only 50% of the time and with 5k people playing there would have been a good chance for casual players to play several rounds without even seeing the "good" players.
Also, this would have brought more constant players to the game. As I pointed out before: Of the 4 people I got to buy the game, not one of them played more than 10 games because they hated getting roflstomped continuously. They all loved the concept of the game and I'm sure would have played ALOT more if the game made liking it not so damn hard....
I think by now you can't rectify this problem with NS2 because let's face it: there are not enough people left for a decent MM System.
And for the people saying that people have to "deal with it":
Back in the day I as well played Q3 and was kind of a die-hard fanboy. But let's face it: This kind of game will never again get this kind of audience and will never again be successfull. Back then there were 2 or 3 good multiplayer games and people wanting to play online just had to deal with the sick skill difference.
Today they don't. Actually I as a former good Q3 player don't deal with insane skill differences anymore. Why should I? There is much fun to be had without a 200 hrs learning phase of pure suck and unfun!?!
Your attitude is very much like saying: Modern cars don't need A/C, the old ones did not have it either. Everyone who wants a A/C is a whimp and should not buy a car in the first place...
Then design game mechanics around that. It seems like they are removing a lot of the rewards of taking gambles in gameplay in the quest for better balance. I feel like this is taking a toll on the psychological addictiveness of the game as a whole.
NS2 may have a rewards system already, but it's not nearly as apparent as it needs to be to keep people addicted.
At what point did they decide to model the alien’s tech after marine’s tech? Aliens evolve and actually have to spend their p-res on abilities, then why does it happen that if aliens lose their shells or what not they lose their abilities they spend their own p-res on? Same way as marines losing power or an arms lab.
At what point did UWE decide to limit buildings, oh at the point when they realized their game engine sucks. Since mass building never really happens on competitive games it won’t matter even though it will kill pub games but oh whatever. Besides the game was never meant for anything more than a 6v6 match (strange though how the 24 and 32 man servers are almost always full).
If we are going back to the changes that happened in beta let’s put the bile bomb back on the lerk and see how that works?
biting an RT is supposed to be boring. that's how the game is designed
everything around it is supposed to keep it interesting and dynamic
there should always be more stuff to think about than you have time for
how do you choose where to focus your attacks?
how do you get in position to the RT?
how do you fit these decisions in your team's overall plan?
how do you adapt your plans based on enemy behavior?
how do you weigh the benefit of your actions against the risk of leaving another spot undefended?
do you keep biting until marines kill you or serve as a distraction?
the game design allows for some interesting decisions, but the matchmaking and complete lack of balance makes it impossible to realize them
Why would you ever intentionally design something to be boring?
Anyway, if you get bored that easily, I heard Battlefield 3 has airplanes n shiit.
AFAIK, ppl still play the original COD and TONS of ppl still play TF2. So in essence, your comment is WRONG. Any game can go for virtually forever but classics often retain even more than the other games (not saying other games dont get any players though)
Good point, time to go play battlefield.
Just want to point out that there is already (kind of) a matchmaking system available. If you have NS2Stats installed, you can enforce teams reordered by their ELO rating. I dont know exactly how the ratings are calculated, but in my experience, those team shuffles work out pretty good.
The only server I know that uses it is the "Heidis Ziegenfarm" (HBZ pub server), which happens to be one of the most popular EU-servers (coincidence?).
I have surely played 100+ Elo-based rounds there now, and know most of the player names and their skill-levels, and I can say that most of the time the ordering happens in a way that I would say seems fair.
BUT - While I would say you get better games with MM / ELO-ordering, there is still a fair share of one-sided stomps and drawn-out but 90%-predictable games.
Which leads to the thought that maybe the game design itself is in a way that it does not allow many chances for comebacks.
Instead of implementing MM, UWE should maybe try to implement some comeback-mechanics. High risk/reward strategies come to mind as well as something similar to Starcraft "timing-attacks", which are often All-Ins (selling the low future win-chances for a high present win-chance).
Just my 2 res.
because game design is hard. how do you make the mechanics of economy interesting?
collecting armors and counting to 25 is boring too, but people still play Quake
telling a worker to go gather minerals is boring, but people still play Starcraft
pressing buttons in menus is boring, but people still play Civilization
I guess you've never played an MMO.
When we all spawn the key difference between Aliens and Marines is agility. Aliens are quicker, can climb walls and smaller to fit in vents etc. As a result you find that as soon as any game begins everyone explodes off in a different direction. Marines tend to bunch up due to their slower/bigger/clunkier nature.
This is a nice balance because the Marines obviously can shoot instead of needing to be close. The problem comes in however that a single Alien vs a pack of Marines is very very difficult irrelevant of skill (Nevermind some very biased maps where Aliens can't hide anywhere!).
At the start of a round, ive seen so many games that are nearly lost before any Alien can upgrade because a pack of re-supplying marines camping outside the hive will simple destroy you. Then they get SG's & GL's and people get pissed off. I will regularly have a negative KD ratio at this part of the game but it matters not, if it doesn't end there and then. 2 upgrades later and i'm a Lerk with a fighting chance of getting kills a bit easier.
The start is very marine based and puts people off working as an Alien at all. Ive even seen people going marine for a few levels of XP then switching
As I said previously though, soon enough I will go Lerk without any other upgrades and as soon as possible I will go fade. At this stage ill work toward filling up on Adrenaline/Carapace/Celerity/Regen/etc. Between Lerk/Fade phase of the game 'The mid-point' we find that the tables turn quickly and harshly. My negative score will reverse and you can go from 1:10 to 30:15 in a short period of time.
This part of the game is an Alien killing ground on Marines.
As both sides advance, it begins to swing back towards Marine again.. mainly due to 2 things in my experience;
1. Lack of Focus (Fade vs non-Exeo Marine can take 4 swipes, that isn't newbie friendly, heck its hard on a lot of regular's who aren't the best on Fade. Lerk is too easily killed later in the game to bother with it IMO)
2. Regen is woeful. Honestly sometimes ill just die because I can't be bothered going back to the hive to wait for a minute for HP. In that time I could have spawned with full health and killed another 5 marines.
Once the Exeo's come out then it takes teamwork on Alien behalf which is rare in public games, especially combat games.
I apologise for this large block of text. What im really getting at is that at certain parts of games you are the hunter and others, you're just bait with little chance of survival. This lack of opportunity from both sides during any game gets visibly irritating to some and anyone who is a swaying vote to stay with the game tends to give up.
I'm not sure how to fix this, perhaps just making re-gen a useful upgrade and adding focus while adding the HMG might do it. Means that everyone gets more toys and also means that everyone gets a bit stronger, hopefully evening out the inequality in parts.
Combat isn't an official game mode. You can't balance vanilla NS2 based on observations made in the Combat mod.
Having said that, I liked focus and the HMG in NS1, and I hope it finds it's way back into NS2 as well.
And it's happening frequently, more frequently than any other game I've played online.
I mention this as I find myself playing a bit of a HL2 mod called Fistful of Frags atm which is similar in gameplay with match limited experience/upgrades, It has a handful of players but importantly is alot of fun and often the game/map devs are playing so you can ask/give feedback all the time, most satisfactory.
Anyway gnoarch got it in one further up with that post, I haven't played ns2 properly in many weeks but still keep an eye on here, give biodome update a shot and be nice to get back in but otherwise I am done I think, if you cease playing frequently getting back in feels too hard coupled with the fact the games likely been changed yet again though with the same issues & problems from day 1 still there.
"I want to play a game...hmmm. NS2 rocks the big one...but I still need to get that achievement for Killing Floor. And I need to remap my Guild Wars 2 character, cous I just got to level 80 and I want to explore a bit more. And I need to play some more TF2, cous that pirate hat looks so cool! Ah I see my friend outranks me in PlanetSide 2, and I heard there was a sale this weekend with double XP!"
You want more players? Create incentive to make them return to the game. You can do this subtle, and just create a basic ranking system that does not influence the gameplay.
Achievements/Ranks/Trading Cards etc is what makes the new generation return to games. AVP2010 was a terrible game, but was still played to death because of the ranking system.
This is a graphic of our AVP2010 server from last month. Not bad for such an old mediocre game, eh? And NS2 is miles and miles and miles and miles better then AVP2010.
Not sure if an incentive system that is launched so late will do any good though. Usually these work best when the game is released with them.
EDIT : Ironic...I just got a badge for 10 posts on the forums. If the forums can do it lol...
It's not fun to play and very frustrating, even when you win it's mostly frustrating. Lots of casual players do not want to send hours on the game getting stomped over and over again. Along with the 'pro' players that are 30:1 KDR that constantly say that the problem is that you suck. Reminds of my L4D and how its only fun if you are good and the newbies never want to play again because they get raped so badly and don't get a chance to improve.
-The lack of a simple, interactive tutorial mode to prep new players.
-Patching and balancing for the Competitive game that is ruining Pub play, and in turn, the community.
-A nose-in-the-air development team that doesn't listen to criticism.
-Balancing and playtesting farmed out to third parties who have no idea what they're doing.
-Fanboys that vehemently defend said devs, who will bury this post because: OMG NS2 ROX
I am a fanboi, I do generally defend the devs, but that's not the reason I disagree with you. I would bury your post because significant parts of it are factually incorrect, and that annoys me.
I have to say though, that the game mechanics are really quite counter-intuitive, at least on the aliens' side of things. I mean, what in-game hint is there that the skulk gains speed from bouncing off walls? It's the sort of stuff that the game provides no information of. It's an example of putting the cart before the horse in terms of design - it's supposed to encourage skulks to move off the ground, but that encouragement is only seen if the player moves in the desired manner first, in which case... why? o.O
It is very much meant to be doing this. Unfortunately it is doing it very poorly with build 250. I believe build 250 is a great update, that just needs more work. It's too late to do it all at once now, but there still needs to be some radical changes that give this game back its "back and forth" timing windows of opportunity. I know it's still here somewhat, but it's really just pre-fade and fade at this point.