For example, if you don't like alien vision now, be thankful you didn't see how an earlier "possibility" turned out - again, the devs made a judgement call on its' usage, and we made our opinions known. Thankfully they listened ;-)
the last line implied that you're okay with the Nerf to alien vision in both on and off states. please tell me this is not the case and testers protested the changes too.just because it's better than a worse option doesn't mean it's ok. also, don't tell me nobody noticed the skulk.movement bug. I noticed it within 30 seconds of jumping around.
We don't get to have the final say - the devs make that call, and although we may disagree at times, we have to respect their vision for the game.
Alien vision was never really intended to be a "permanently on to play" feature per the devs, and I admit that's the way I played a lot of the time - so they had a think, and they tried to come up with some way of limiting its' use in general play.
It would be a shame to see people blatantly ignoring all the hard work they put into the lovely artwork and textures, just to run around with AV blocking it all the time :-p
What I will say is it's infinitely more playable now than it was (in versions the public didn't see), and I can live with that, even though I might have preferred another.
It pays their wages, whereas for me, it's "just" a chance to get a better insight into game development, while at the same time enjoying playing around with stuff and trying to break it :-)
Cory, truth be told your explanation was a borderline insult to anyone that purchased the game up to this point. Not to mention that most of the glaring problems people seem to have have can be found within 5 minutes of booting up the game. I simply don't believe that NONE of your testers reported any of them.
I still think you guys are stuck in the NS1 "free mod" mentality. I wont even go into the whole "Fall 2009" and minimum specs thing, but lets just say that throwing your paying customers a buggy build just so that you can do some wider testing and "not look bad when you advertise" is right up there.
I stress the word "customers".
The majority of people you guys seem to treat like free workforce are your "CUSTOMERS" Cory, C U S T O M E R S.
I'm pretty sure this will go right over your heads, but there's still that silly little part of me that's hoping that this crazy concept will finally sink in.
I do applaud you for continuing to work on the game, but at the same time it wouldn't need all the maintenance if it didn't have so many issues in the first place.
Bottom line, this isn't a free mod. You have a team of competent testers and there was absolutely no need to rush this out in the state its currently in.
I've been saying this for a fucking year now. They don't get it. I brought this back up again after gorgeous, and around the time of BT mod. They think because they don't charge you for dlc, and you only paid for the original game, that they're doing you some kind of a favor. They also don't seem to understand that they have basically taken away the game that most of us bought and replaced it with something different.
This whole "we have to respect the dev's vision" thing is fucking bullshit. That's something you can say all you want during a beta, but when you sell a game, people are buying the game you're selling, and not anticipating it to be completely changed after release.
UWE *do* care about customers, as you might have noticed with their constant attempts to improve / fix / maintain the game. If you'd be so kind as to point to any other developer who releases big "DLC" content for *free* like UWE, I'll gladly look at buying their software.
CDP Red (Witcher series), off the top of my head.
As for the rest, while I certainly see what you're trying to say, to me its not quite as clear cut as you make it out to be:
NS2 is strictly a multiplayer game, therefore it requires an active user base to continue to sell (as there is no appeal in a dead mp game). With that comes the necessity of constant maintenance, especially if the game is released in an unpolished state (performance problems etc.).
This brings me to the second point, and that's content updates. Free content updates aren't as much a courtesy as they are a necessity. NS2's competitive nature makes microtransaction model almost impossible to pull off without upsetting the balance (even if kept purely cosmetic) and the community is simply too small to sustain an active player base split by paid DLC.
This brings us full circle to the active user base, and the need for constant maintenance, tweaks and content updates to keep the community going.
A potential argument you could make is that the UW team could simply abandon NS in the state its in and move on, but consider this: Whats a more lucrative option:
continued development of an already known product with an established community, which still has a large untapped potential customer base, or development and promotion of a brand new IP (or next iteration in the NS series) while their engine is still in a state of constant development?
Don't get me wrong, I respect the guys at UW and I absolutely love this game. Its sucked up a lot more of my life then Id care to admit and much ,much more then this forum account may suggest (Ive been around since 1.02 or so). My problem is that the guys at UW still have a similar approach to their playerbase like they did back when NS was just a free mod and the community was composed of fans, not customers. In some respect this mentality has been an asset. However, there are certain things you simply don't do when you sell a commercial product. This is one of them.
Worst update ever, thanks! Can't wait for the Build 253. A good commander was a guy able to put tunnels on the map, defend the first harvester near the hive, help a bilebomb rush, healing his shells or spurs. No you are stucked in your hive. Such a fantastic gameplay. I just see this as a way to standardize the way to command.
I have a friend who was on vacation since july and just came back last week. He had to re-learn literally everything. Lulz, he will have to do it again now.
"informal used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true:
I have received literally thousands of letters"
Trust the americans to redefine a word because they can't use it correctly.
literally is literally the only word in the english language which is immune to sarcasm?
I am not sure if xen is even being sarcastic. Though undoubtedly, as far as the game mechanics go, he will need to re-learn almost everything.
I do think it is irritating how people literally use literally literally all of the time. Literally. It's definitely an American thing because I've noticed my younger sister doing it increasingly - she watches a lot of American TV.
I do think ghostthree was being unfair, however. We change the meanings of words all of the time.
Thanks for the new content guys, really liking most of the ideas. Any problems, alien vision etc... will be sorted soon I'm sure. The big big disappointment for me is that we finally got the game running at a decent frame rate a patch or 2 ago and now it's back to crappy fps again.... I hope you guys can fix before the big release, you owe it to yourselves. GL UWE!!
but I don't see anything that fixes any fundamental issues with the game other than the potential for balance to be a bit better in a small fraction of matchups (it's still going to suck for most games because games are going to be decided in the first minutes and I don't see how marines will play that better now ignoring the silly netcode and alien vision stuff)
or is being able to run this game no a mac that won't even pull 20 fps a high-priority issue now? I must have missed something...
ok guys (and ladies ^^) after somes games , i m deciding to stop r@ge or trash talk... now i can give you a better opinion.
The aliens vision:
Well used it can be fun and "balanced". using it in the dark is nice and nice too with red lights. But with lights on, it's better too play without this aliens vision because it's too bright and the marine can't be easily spotted in close combat. and the normal vision have a effect if marine spotted ( a orange glow ). But please, it's really too bright and hurt eyes.
The skulk:
yep soz for my trash talk about it. He is still fast, move nice like before, but i feel like i need to be a little more accurate to hit someone. And you ?
The F@de:
OMG ";:!@#}" were my first word,effectively this lifeform is slower than before, and it's a good point. But a good fade player can always have fun with it. But take care adrenaline or you will be a chicken in front of one marine . The vortex is a nice idea, this one stop too bring a structure or enemy into shadow. now it work like a teleport (use vortex, move, use primary attack to bring back to the vortex.....) Do you smell backdorr attackkkk soon:p
Onos:
not played it
Gorgies:
Nice heal spray, and webs but babbler is too expensive (and why commander need a research for them :@)
Marines got nices grenades now . using them rights can really be an advantage (i really like the gas one.... 80 armor removed in 4sec aprox on my fade)
The double railgun:
BBbzzzz BZZZZZZbbbbbbzzzzzzz dead , a lot of damage, but fortunately we can't chage them at the same time. that not mean they are slow.
And about sounds now, UWE added new and changed somes sounds and they fit well to the game
I changed my mind, and really think the core game (as we know it) is still here .
ohhh i forgot something about the aliens vision. Alien start and RTs near the hive should start with red lights on. i don't think it will be a problem for marine because they still need to build node .
It's update copy NS1. In the NS1 , we got Grenade (classic) and web for gorge (but better for placement). But the boneshield of the onos is very good =D> . Now , it's important , we are waiting ... 30th august !
I like the new sound of the hive like a garden shop with birds in background ^^
I think there's a backend database that will be collating players' scores, and I think the way it will work is it will figure out the average "skill" of the players on the server. I'm sure more info will be revealed in the near future, but even as a playtester, it's not something we've been involved with.
It's update copy NS1. In the NS1 , we got Grenade (classic) and web for gorge (but better for placement). But the boneshield of the onos is very good =D> . Now , it's important , we are waiting ... 30th august !
To badly paraphrase something from Jurassic Park, "dates in the calendar may be closer than they appear".
I am not even going to touch how amateur UWE has looked in the past year. I really do think Cory is a talented artist, and that their guys have programming talent. However, just because you are working super hard doesn't directly translate into results. I could constantly be going 100mph, but if I change direction 7 different times, I may only end up slightly further from where I started.
I don't know if its cause Charlie no longer oversees the design development of NS2, but it just feels like you guys go into a meeting, throw ideas against a wall, and hope something sticks. Adding a new feature to fix any underlying problem while not understanding the root cause seems like awful game design/management to me.
On a side note, I still love how phasegates still make the bile bomb noise sometimes. I think we should be allowed to call that bug a "feature" by now.
It's the nanites causing the bile splash sound - it's not actually bile, it's the bitter tears of people who prefer to play the Sims, but got NS2 instead for their birthday, and they're getting pulled in with their player character as they phase through :-}
I also have the same problem since the days of a build my 252 Tri-fire AMD 6970 no longer works, only one card is recognized games.
The thank you frankly the NS2 DEV of anything, should test a product before putting it in days
It's not like CrossFireX works in NS2 anyway, it's not gonna make any difference for the worse.
And honestly, you're gonna have to make some change to alienvision, if you don't have high FPS it's nigh impossible to track anything without it, even with the outline. It' needs to be full orange. You're only making it hard for low comps that's alrdy struggling with performance and it's one of the main reasons you got low player base.
I love how DX11 runs better of my system than DX9 did. + With an AMD card running PhysX and having no issue's at all 50 - 80fps. Thats a very good improvement to the game
How do you get physx to run on an AMD card? I thought it was NVIDIA property...
It's currently a button that does nothing as the feature wasn't finished in time for 252. Should be done in 253, won't do anything on AMD cards (might not even be available option).
Will the build on Friday support Mac OS X? It's been stated numerous times that it will eventually support Linux and OS X. Why not OS X?
The build on Friday will not support Mac OS, there is still more work to be done for that, but all the work done to get it on Linux has brought us much closer to running on Mac. Should not be long now.
I miss the old AV. I understand that the Art Designers probably felt like aliens missed out on the fantastic aesthetics but that's what marine is for, to appreciate all the lovely design elements as you are being ripped apart from the knees down. Please don't take away the only thing that gave me some semblance of playing ability!
I am not even going to touch how amateur UWE has looked in the past year. I really do think Cory is a talented artist, and that their guys have programming talent. However, just because you are working super hard doesn't directly translate into results. I could constantly be going 100mph, but if I change direction 7 different times, I may only end up slightly further from where I started.
I don't know if its cause Charlie no longer oversees the design development of NS2, but it just feels like you guys go into a meeting, throw ideas against a wall, and hope something sticks. Adding a new feature to fix any underlying problem while not understanding the root cause seems like awful game design/management to me.
On a side note, I still love how phasegates still make the bile bomb noise sometimes. I think we should be allowed to call that bug a "feature" by now.
i always assumed that was a local problem, i've started to ignore the sound of bile when going through phase gates... which is probably not a good adaptation to have.
It's days like today that I resent being addicted to NS... 1600+ hours ns2 and probably 2-3 times that of NS1... Iv struggled to understand some of the directions and decisions UWE has gone, so I guess I'll just hope things change (a lot) on Friday...
AV, beaconingExo, drifter price, comm res, gorge in general...
These changes seem pretty all-encompassing, that's when we would want a change log the most. Now all my knowledge of the game is forfeit until test every facet of the game again. I can't know that every bit of knowledge that I had about the game isn't wrong now, pulled out from under my feet in combat or while commanding. Isn't this a list you make *as you add the changes* and thus be impossible to neglect?
Webs costing resources kind of take the fun out of it but it is still a super fun, super welcome addition. Weird to use it out of the build menu, why not instead have it as a charged version of spit? Also I'm finding I can use it IN combat to immobilize fully aware marines, I'm not sure this is intended behavior. They look much cooler btw!
I never liked hand grenades in NS1, it punished skulks for being sneaky, or when they are harassing and being evasive. Now I feel as a skulk, I can't leverage stall tactics as much (can't do as much vent play, can't LOS around a pillar as much). Still, they make marines more unique and interesting now, so maybe they will help marines to be as fun and interesting as aliens.
I'd comment on more of the features but..... again I have no idea what they are....
Do you really think it's fun and satisfying to play as aliens now?
More than before, yes. The fade WAS very overpowered in B251, even if there was just 1 of them. If you liked aliens before and not now, that probably means you just like to win every single game.
I typically don't like to see nerfs that penalize really good players, but I think the Fade was getting a little too out of hand.
I don't think it does. It makes it more difficult, but not so much good players wont be able to adapt. When B250 came out what i saw was marines winning most games, up until people learnt to play the new fades, which made aliens win every game if they had 2-3 good fades.
Comments
We don't get to have the final say - the devs make that call, and although we may disagree at times, we have to respect their vision for the game.
Alien vision was never really intended to be a "permanently on to play" feature per the devs, and I admit that's the way I played a lot of the time - so they had a think, and they tried to come up with some way of limiting its' use in general play.
It would be a shame to see people blatantly ignoring all the hard work they put into the lovely artwork and textures, just to run around with AV blocking it all the time :-p
What I will say is it's infinitely more playable now than it was (in versions the public didn't see), and I can live with that, even though I might have preferred another.
It pays their wages, whereas for me, it's "just" a chance to get a better insight into game development, while at the same time enjoying playing around with stuff and trying to break it :-)
I've been saying this for a fucking year now. They don't get it. I brought this back up again after gorgeous, and around the time of BT mod. They think because they don't charge you for dlc, and you only paid for the original game, that they're doing you some kind of a favor. They also don't seem to understand that they have basically taken away the game that most of us bought and replaced it with something different.
This whole "we have to respect the dev's vision" thing is fucking bullshit. That's something you can say all you want during a beta, but when you sell a game, people are buying the game you're selling, and not anticipating it to be completely changed after release.
CDP Red (Witcher series), off the top of my head.
As for the rest, while I certainly see what you're trying to say, to me its not quite as clear cut as you make it out to be:
NS2 is strictly a multiplayer game, therefore it requires an active user base to continue to sell (as there is no appeal in a dead mp game). With that comes the necessity of constant maintenance, especially if the game is released in an unpolished state (performance problems etc.).
This brings me to the second point, and that's content updates. Free content updates aren't as much a courtesy as they are a necessity. NS2's competitive nature makes microtransaction model almost impossible to pull off without upsetting the balance (even if kept purely cosmetic) and the community is simply too small to sustain an active player base split by paid DLC.
This brings us full circle to the active user base, and the need for constant maintenance, tweaks and content updates to keep the community going.
A potential argument you could make is that the UW team could simply abandon NS in the state its in and move on, but consider this: Whats a more lucrative option:
continued development of an already known product with an established community, which still has a large untapped potential customer base, or development and promotion of a brand new IP (or next iteration in the NS series) while their engine is still in a state of constant development?
Don't get me wrong, I respect the guys at UW and I absolutely love this game. Its sucked up a lot more of my life then Id care to admit and much ,much more then this forum account may suggest (Ive been around since 1.02 or so). My problem is that the guys at UW still have a similar approach to their playerbase like they did back when NS was just a free mod and the community was composed of fans, not customers. In some respect this mentality has been an asset. However, there are certain things you simply don't do when you sell a commercial product. This is one of them.
I won't tell anything about the alien vision..
I am not sure if xen is even being sarcastic. Though undoubtedly, as far as the game mechanics go, he will need to re-learn almost everything.
I do think it is irritating how people literally use literally literally all of the time. Literally. It's definitely an American thing because I've noticed my younger sister doing it increasingly - she watches a lot of American TV.
I do think ghostthree was being unfair, however. We change the meanings of words all of the time.
but I don't see anything that fixes any fundamental issues with the game other than the potential for balance to be a bit better in a small fraction of matchups (it's still going to suck for most games because games are going to be decided in the first minutes and I don't see how marines will play that better now ignoring the silly netcode and alien vision stuff)
or is being able to run this game no a mac that won't even pull 20 fps a high-priority issue now? I must have missed something...
The aliens vision:
Well used it can be fun and "balanced". using it in the dark is nice and nice too with red lights. But with lights on, it's better too play without this aliens vision because it's too bright and the marine can't be easily spotted in close combat. and the normal vision have a effect if marine spotted ( a orange glow ). But please, it's really too bright and hurt eyes.
The skulk:
yep soz for my trash talk about it. He is still fast, move nice like before, but i feel like i need to be a little more accurate to hit someone. And you ?
The F@de:
OMG ";:!@#}" were my first word,effectively this lifeform is slower than before, and it's a good point. But a good fade player can always have fun with it. But take care adrenaline or you will be a chicken in front of one marine
Onos:
not played it
Gorgies:
Nice heal spray, and webs
Marines got nices grenades now
The double railgun:
BBbzzzz BZZZZZZbbbbbbzzzzzzz dead
And about sounds now, UWE added new and changed somes sounds and they fit well to the game
I changed my mind, and really think the core game (as we know it) is still here
I like the new sound of the hive like a garden shop with birds in background ^^
To badly paraphrase something from Jurassic Park, "dates in the calendar may be closer than they appear".
I don't know if its cause Charlie no longer oversees the design development of NS2, but it just feels like you guys go into a meeting, throw ideas against a wall, and hope something sticks. Adding a new feature to fix any underlying problem while not understanding the root cause seems like awful game design/management to me.
On a side note, I still love how phasegates still make the bile bomb noise sometimes. I think we should be allowed to call that bug a "feature" by now.
I also have the same problem since the days of a build my 252 Tri-fire AMD 6970 no longer works, only one card is recognized games.
The thank you frankly the NS2 DEV of anything, should test a product before putting it in days
I also have the same problem since the days of a build my 252 Tri-fire AMD 6970 no longer works, only one card is recognized games.
The thank you frankly the NS2 DEV of anything, should test a product before putting it in days
It's not like CrossFireX works in NS2 anyway, it's not gonna make any difference for the worse.
And honestly, you're gonna have to make some change to alienvision, if you don't have high FPS it's nigh impossible to track anything without it, even with the outline. It' needs to be full orange. You're only making it hard for low comps that's alrdy struggling with performance and it's one of the main reasons you got low player base.
It's currently a button that does nothing as the feature wasn't finished in time for 252. Should be done in 253, won't do anything on AMD cards (might not even be available option).
i always assumed that was a local problem, i've started to ignore the sound of bile when going through phase gates... which is probably not a good adaptation to have.
AV, beaconingExo, drifter price, comm res, gorge in general...
Webs costing resources kind of take the fun out of it but it is still a super fun, super welcome addition. Weird to use it out of the build menu, why not instead have it as a charged version of spit? Also I'm finding I can use it IN combat to immobilize fully aware marines, I'm not sure this is intended behavior. They look much cooler btw!
I never liked hand grenades in NS1, it punished skulks for being sneaky, or when they are harassing and being evasive. Now I feel as a skulk, I can't leverage stall tactics as much (can't do as much vent play, can't LOS around a pillar as much). Still, they make marines more unique and interesting now, so maybe they will help marines to be as fun and interesting as aliens.
I'd comment on more of the features but..... again I have no idea what they are....
Moving the outlines to alien-vision-off-mode is a welcomed addition.
I played the game, and the fade feels like an agile, stealthy assassin.
More than before, yes. The fade WAS very overpowered in B251, even if there was just 1 of them. If you liked aliens before and not now, that probably means you just like to win every single game.
I don't think it does. It makes it more difficult, but not so much good players wont be able to adapt. When B250 came out what i saw was marines winning most games, up until people learnt to play the new fades, which made aliens win every game if they had 2-3 good fades.