For the purposes of keeping my own morale up, I will be only reading posts from @Roobubba. Please make an effort to help @Roobubba summarise what needs to be done!
Wait, wait, so we need to use someone as a go-between between us and the company's PR guy?
He means he wants constructive, non-trash talking posts; because those lower his self esteem and he just wants to help -aka just list the things you want fixed and info about them, with none of the 'it's been x amount of time and this still isn't fixed etc etc"
That is ridiculous. If you're dealing with user feedback you need to look past the offensive stuff (which there's not much of in this thread, I've seen much MUCH worse elsewhere) and just read the actual feedback. If you isolate yourself from your community you'll end up looking out of touch with what people expect of the company. This just looks bad and it just adds to the list.
For the purposes of keeping my own morale up, I will be only reading posts from @Roobubba. Please make an effort to help @Roobubba summarise what needs to be done!
Wait, wait, so we need to use someone as a go-between between us and the company's PR guy?
He means he wants constructive, non-trash talking posts; because those lower his self esteem and he just wants to help -aka just list the things you want fixed and info about them, with none of the 'it's been x amount of time and this still isn't fixed etc etc"
That is ridiculous. If you're dealing with user feedback you need to look past the offensive stuff (which there's not much of in this thread, I've seen much MUCH worse elsewhere) and just read the actual feedback. If you isolate yourself from your community you'll end up looking out of touch with what people expect of the company. This just looks bad and it just adds to the list.
I am drafting a response and appreciate all feedback in this thread. Go between or not, frankly whatever it takes to get this moving is what will happen.
I have real life things to deal with right now but will be back to deal with this asap.
I am drafting a response and appreciate all feedback in this thread. Go between or not, frankly whatever it takes to get this moving is what will happen.
I have real life things to deal with right now but will be back to deal with this asap.
If you can't see why such posts shoot yourselves in the foot, then you need not give it another thought and cease posting in a thread where the OP is apologizing for you.
UWE is under zero obligation to communicate with you. Zero. Try to keep that in mind whenever you attempt to justify the poor manner in which you communicate.
I don't want them to communicate with me. I want them to listen to feedback wherever this feedback is. Not ignore it because of the wording. I don't need a reply, I want actions taken to address the existing issues.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Great!
Then all you need to do is what Roobubba and others have asked of you :
Simply provide the talking points you want addressed and leave any personal content / angry wording you'd have to add, out of the conversation.
You just witnessed exactly what occurs when you can't follow those instructions.
I'm amazed any of you continue to even attempt defending that method, after you are given example after example of it backfiring.
I amazed that people are still stupid enough to think that only one side uses that 'method'.
Or should i drag up old PMs and teamspeak recordings, maybe even some chatroom discussions?
We are just supposed to sit here and act like angels while everyone in multiple groups tears us apart? Do you realize how much of a hypocrite you are? The comp scene has been villainized since NS1, NOTHING has changed in the 10 years since it started, and it never will.
Ive tossed idea's to people that are tied pretty close to Hugh (UWE). And also asked Hugh to talk with me on ts3. And i get that "write them down and send them to me." I would love to do that if i knew they would get a honest chance. But history has shown us that alot of the great idea's from comp players will get over looked. As soon as you are black listed as a issue, you will get overlooked. Most of us are in this thread now. The big sad part is how many players/teams have left due to so many issues that have been given to them. Lets hope these pubs can keep the game going......
For the purposes of keeping my own morale up, I will be only reading posts from @Roobubba. Please make an effort to help @Roobubba summarise what needs to be done!
Wait, wait, so we need to use someone as a go-between between us and the company's PR guy?
He means he wants constructive, non-trash talking posts; because those lower his self esteem and he just wants to help -aka just list the things you want fixed and info about them, with none of the 'it's been x amount of time and this still isn't fixed etc etc"
That is absolutely untrue and super dangeroous since you are basically misaligning the people who are actually being constructive. It's clear Hugh doesn't want constructive and non-trash talking posts. What he actually wants are posts worded with the voice of an angel. I could make an extremely constructive post yet word it with an incredibly negative tone and Hugh would simply dismiss it (as he has with many posts in this thread that are not even anywhere near being disaster posts). Don't twist the situation around to reflect something that it is not.
Also stop putting words into peoples mouths. Wow, absolutely no one was focusing on whining about something not being fixed in x past time - most every post in here has been forward looking. I mean, the entire point of the thread was to get issues fixed going forward, which would be pretty stupid of anyone to suggest that it wasn't a common interest.
If someone can't take feedback that is even slightly constructively negative, maybe PR isn't for that person. Why do we as customers have to pussy foot around (the opposite of efficient and constructive action) in order to get issues fixed in a product we have spent money on? Some of us $100 or more. Money speaks loudly about vested interest. Mind boggling concept right?
Ive tossed idea's to people that are tied pretty close to Hugh (UWE). And also asked Hugh to talk with me on ts3. And i get that "write them down and send them to me." I would love to do that if i knew they would get a honest chance. But history has shown us that alot of the great idea's from comp players will get over looked. As soon as you are black listed as a issue, you will get overlooked. Most of us are in this thread now. The big sad part is how many players/teams have left due to so many issues that have been given to them. Lets hope these pubs can keep the game going......
My understanding going from past history is that anything of this nature that gets sent to Hugh, has a tendency to get 'lost'. Best to email sewlek.
For the purposes of keeping my own morale up, I will be only reading posts from Roobubba. Please make an effort to help Roobubba summarise what needs to be done!
May I point out the fact that the community of a game needs a representative to be acknowledged by the game's company pr guy? Honestly, to just dismiss us as noise and require our voices to be forwarded to someone else for the sake of keeping your own morale up is completely unwarranted. If anything, treating us as gremlins is causing the forum atmosphere to become even more toxic than it already is. You aren't even communicating with the community at this point, only getting a construed playback version from people you want to listen to and can alter it to their own agenda.
I have the utmost respect for what you do and I'm glad to see such love for the game we all are here for, but we need to understand that we all share different opinions on what we think should be done and we should be able to hear each other out on these things. There has been a noticeable silence from UWE on these matters and it is really starting to affect our community.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited November 2013
Maybe if people wouldn't make false accusations saying they don't do anything, and that they have never done anything and that they never do anything the community asks them to, they would be more apt to look here. But seriously, what dev would want to look at threads like there where it is mostly full of people bitching how nothing ever gets done and that UWE are doing absolutely nothing except watching the grass grow during office hours.
Yes because people here have said UWE doesn't do anything and would rather watch the game die? Not one person posting in this thread thinks UWE is lazy or doesn't care about the game... What UWE has managed to create from such a small team is no small feat, and obviously was a lot of hard work... But that doesn't mean that intelligent and supportive community members haven't been ignored all along, or that multiple think groups have been supported, only to have their input completely ignored.
I dont even understand why I am wasting my time in this thread anymore, any changes that come for the WC will be done through other channels, nothing will come from this anymore... Especially when people are going to try to bring arrogance or self righteousness into this.
@Roobubba, I have set the necessary wheels turning for SamusDroid's fixes to make it into NS2. Because these fixes are now being applied to the released game, it is possible that not all of them will make it in. Unforeseen dependencies, cascading bugs, and other real world problems may turn up in formal testing that mean they go back to the drawing board. However, changes should start popping up in build 261.
Awesome!. Of course it's understandable that there may be limitations depending on what code plays nicely with other code, that's to be expected.
The tickrate question remains extremely unlikely, but I will persue it as far as it can be persued.
We shall await your response on this when you've followed up with your colleagues. In order to help you in your discussions with them, here's some more specific info on what it is we're after (thanks xDragon):
Allow servers to configure client update rate (currently hardcoded at 20/s).
Allow servers to configure maximum amount of data sent to each client per second (max currently possible 20k, for reference CS:GO uses 80 - 128k). - This (along with the client update rate change) would allow the interpolation to be adjusted outside the range of 70-100ms using the NSL Mod.
That's the basics for the netcode/performance changes that would help, this one would also be nice but is much less important:
Networking of basic shared variables (enable cheats on a dedicated server and then join as a client and your client doesn’t know cheats are enabled). - That one is so the commands don't need to be set every time a player joins.
The replay system is not possible within the NS2WC timeframe and there are no plans to introduce one at any stage.
Okay thanks for the clarification. There may be alternative ways around this now with the emergence of (eg) ShadowPlay, which has extremely limited impact on system performance. I'm sure inventive community members can make the most of this. At the finals themselves, there may be scope to use shadowplay recordings to compile detailed first-person analyses after each round, which would be very cool.
Something that might not make immediate and obvious sense in the context of what you know about how NS2 works and resources available could have one of two attributes: #1. It just doesn't make sense, and UWE has missed something #2. Your knowledge of how NS2 works and the resources available to change it is incomplete. I offer it to you that tickrate & replay systems are #2. I wish I could give you all the information that would make it make sense, but that's beyond the scope of this thread and would probably result in those individuals bent on trolling my face off in here having a total field day. If you think you are so damn smart that #1 is the case, well then bully for you. Though I would question how you could make those assumptions without access to the Spark source code, and access to the production schedules of all UWE employees.
I'm trying to stay positive and constructive, so we'll leave this here and not mention it again. For the record, I do not consider myself 'so damn smart.'
Client performance. Progress already has been made, and I'm sure this is a running feature of UWE discussions. Still need to run _nsl_ map versions so more progress welcome. - This issue is too broad to be effectively distilled into action that can be taken during the NS2WC timeframe
Server performance. Took a blow recently compared to some older builds. Probably higher priority than client performance right now. - This issue is too broad to be effectively distilled into action that can be taken during the NS2WC timeframe
My original intention was to get this thread set up as a full discussion with the community before putting this to you, but I failed to discuss everything and edit prior to getting you in here - that was my bad. What would still be helpful is a general comment about whether or not there is work ongoing to improve (especially server) performance currently. It is possible that being able to tweak network performance may alleviate some of the issues (due to the 'fixed' 100ms interp and max 20kbps data rate).
Matchmaking. Hive is sort of running, and this is obviously being worked on... - It was initially hoped that Hive would be used to run the NS2WC. Unfortunately this will no longer happen. Matchmaking progress will be made within the next two months, but I cannot promise a specific level of nationality within the NS2WC timeframe
Excellent, thanks for the feedback, this is exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping for! Any progress is very welcome.
Net Code: Please see above for the specifics on what it is we're after. Hopefully that helps, if not please get back to me and I'll see what I can do!
Collision code. Being worked on already? - This is not an identification of a specific issue and I cannot take action on it
As I understand it, Sewlek has been looking into this and has already made improvements to the movement code regarding collisions between aliens and marines. Unless anyone objects, I can strike this off as a specific point for this thread.
Support for replays. Big task but would be extremely beneficial - See above
First Person spectate performance. Switching is still fairly slow; we could really use an HLTV-type client but I realise this is a very big ask to implement. - Efforts will be undertaken to determine if there are ways to reduce switching lag to improve FPS spectate performance during the NS2WC
Replay comments above, that's dealt with. Good to hear that the switching lag for first person spec is on your list!
Anti Cheat features. This has been raised by eg Gliss and others. More details needed from those better informed than me. - Please introduce any concrete suggestions made into this thread. Efforts that make use of existing systems, but improve on them, have the highest chance of getting implemented
There has been some limited feedback in this thread, but no specifics. If any of the community wants to comment further on this point, please do so!
UI clutter. Options to reduce this? - Efforts will be undertaken to reduce UI clutter. Please give specific examples of things that are giving you the shits, and ideally branch off into a specific thread - Please help me understand the improvements cHUD makes
Mendasp's mod to clean up the HUD extends the menu system with options to do the following:
Custom HUD Commands:
chud_score: Disables score popup (+5)
chud_wps: Disables all waypoints except Attack orders (waypoints can still be seen on minimap)
chud_minwps: Removes all text/backgrounds and only leaves the waypoint icon
chud_rtcount: Removes RT count dots at the bottom and replaces them with a number
chud_mingui: Removes backgrounds/scanlines from all UI elements (still not finished)
chud_minimap: Removes the entire top left of the screen for the marines (minimap, comm name, team res, comm actions)
chud_showcomm: Forces showing the commander and resources when disabling the minimap
chud_unlocks: Removes the research completed notifications on the right side of the screen
chud_blur: Removes the background blur from menus/minimap
chud_hpbar: Removes the health bars from the marine HUD
chud_banners: Removes the banners in the center of the screen ("Commander needed", "Power node under attack", "Evolution lost", etc.)
chud_minnps: Removes building names and health/armor bars and replaces them with a simple %
chud_smallnps: Makes fonts in the nameplates and the damage numbers smaller
Now comes the discussion with the community.
This mod is fantastic as is gives the user total flexibility over which HUD elements to modify and which not. I'd personlly love to see these options built into the vanilla game, but the question I have is this: is that necessary? As a mod it works very well, and could (should) be incorporated into the NSL mod. Is there actually a burning need for this to be in vanilla by default? If yes, please forgive my ignorance and do enlighten me!
Now comes the other part of the "UI Clutter" argument, and that's the visual obstructions. As a comp community, we are constantly battling against vision obstruction in NS2, which while great for those seeking total immersion, isn't conducive to high-level, fast-paced competitive play.
Things like heal spray, rupture, spike trails, mucous membrane, enzyme, spores and umbra, grenade effects, elaborate death animations for all structures (the list could go on), look lovely, but cause problems. An option to at least reduce these effects, if not totally remove their visual components, would be very strongly welcomed by the comp community. My question to the community on this is: can this be achieved with a mod, as well?
Key configuration support. For commanders and players with different keyboard and language layouts. - We will investigate the introduction of a system that stops messing up non-US keyboard play. Due to the way key configs work in Spark, this may not be possible within the NS2WC time frame
I will continue to visit this thread to update my knowledge of priorities for NS2WC improvements, continue to attempt to align the NS2 work priorities of UWE with yours, and continue to attempt to keep you informed of the progress of that alignment.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited November 2013
Roobubba, the voice of the people.
Also, server performance isn't a problem of just the competitive community. The only major provider of Natural Selection 2 servers (Multiplay) cannot run your game at a stable 30 ticks. All official servers stutter and rubberband into the late game. Likewise with the NSL servers and anyone else that rents a server through them. It's unacceptable.
Because we appear to be incapable of speaking with constructive words, similar to that of my Nieces... I will translate the grunts these two are forcing out. Have we not considered that posts like these are the reason why we can't have civil discussions?
@roobubba
When it comes to drifter abilities, they seemed to be designed for looking at from above, and can be considerably difficult to see through from the ground. It might be a good idea to reduce the particles for players, but not for commanders. Another idea to look into drifter-spam causing difficulty seeing ahead is to include a cooldown for drifter abilities, forcing the alien commander to only be able to use one mucus membrane per second, instead of near constantly until his fingers get tired. :P We'd need to keep the abilities cooldown specific to that ability though, so the alien commander can deploy multiple abilities very quickly.
Mendasp was kind enough to display a few images showing off the effects of Drifter-spam.
We've also noticed that the Nerve Gas grenades can make things difficult to see. Can we also look into increasing the transparency of of the nerve gas? Somewhere around 64 might work, but requires testing.
In terms of Server Performance, I've noticed that it's largely aliens that cause the server performance issues. Is it possible that the Alien buildings all have their own AI, and check their local area rather often? Perhaps if we reduce how often structures check their surroundings, like the Craig and the Shift, to apply buffs and healing, this may alleviate the issue somewhat. Once every 500ms? 750ms? How often do they check now?
Because we appear to be incapable of speaking with constructive words, similar to that of my Nieces... I will translate the grunts these two are forcing out. Have we not considered that posts like these are the reason why we can't have civil discussions?
It's not meant to be a discussion, it was my opinion on the quoted subject matter. I can express that however I want, if I was trying to come up with an argument for something I'd phrase it more articulately.
Honestly, it's not hard to figure out what is cluttering the UI on your own just playing for a short time. Even playing for 5 minutes and the green players are getting annoyed at me spamming the 'red flares' because they 'can't see shit'.
Then to name a few, there's
- Bilebomb simply being 9000 copy pastes of the same cinematic effect so it's more like a smoke/flash bomb.
- An unholy amount of copy paste of the same smoke effect in every structure death cinematic.
- Babbler deaths being mini flash bangs
- Powernode sounds that are trying to emulate the creation of the universe
- Build structure waypoints from the other side of the map.
- Trolling people by spamming waypoints and exclamation marks around the skulk they are trying to kill.
- Awful, useless minimap squares and dots not showing building or lifeform icons. Coz that matches so well with a big minimap that does...
- Assist points popping up for everything
- Flamethrowers blocking everyone (both alien and marine) from seeing anything.
- Oh god, and commanders trolling people with defend waypoints set to themselves that are like the biggest itch you cannot scratch. Good times.
What graphical settings are you using in which any of these are an issue? None of them are even remotely view-obstructing to me...
@Ghosthree3
I'd never knock you for expressing your opinion, just bear in mind that you will be treated like an intelligent person if you express it as an intelligent person. Vice-versa as well, of course.
"UI Clutter" argument, and that's the visual obstructions
...
As justified some of your arguments are, I'd like to ask you not to take it too far. The game is loosing more and more of the fun, that once (long long time ago) was its selling point: Atmosphere. Understandable that "atmosphere" gets lost over time for the competitive players and they feel their enjoyment elsewhere. However many players don't feel that way. We don't want the game to become some fast-paced, high-skill, jumpy comp game on steroids. (See how far it already has gone?)
When it comes to drifter abilities, they seemed to be designed for looking at from above, and can be considerably difficult to see through from the ground. It might be a good idea to reduce the particles for players, but not for commanders. Another idea to look into drifter-spam causing difficulty seeing ahead is to include a cooldown for drifter abilities, forcing the alien commander to only be able to use one mucus membrane per second, instead of near constantly until his fingers get tired. :P We'd need to keep the abilities cooldown specific to that ability though, so the alien commander can deploy multiple abilities very quickly.
Mendasp was kind enough to display a few images showing off the effects of Drifter-spam.
We've also noticed that the Nerve Gas grenades can make things difficult to see. Can we also look into increasing the transparency of of the nerve gas? Somewhere around 64 might work, but requires testing.
If nothing else, it'd be nice if the AOE effects stayed as a low fog
However many players don't feel that way. We don't want the game to become some fast-paced, high-skill, jumpy comp game on steroids. (See how far it already has gone?)
This is actually something I forget sometimes, but that doesn't change my opinion that it's awful and I want it gone. I disagree with your statement "See how far it already has gone?" though. Personally I think the game is less fast paced and skilled than it used to be.
Thats why I put the statement in brackets, can't stand fully behind it.
Off-topic:
The current gameplay is not bad at all. It even got better again, compared to when Reinforced came out. Still it feels like 249 or so was more enjoyable, but my memory could betray me there and I was relatively fresh joining NS2. Just these days I see a playstyle that I don't find too appealing: Everyone spreading out super-aggressively shutting down the enemy team completely or sneaky GT / PG deciding the outcome immediately. Instead of the "staying-together" steady worm of destruction. I remember a some really exciting long games (mostely on Refinery) where both teams did a full circle of Hive / CC location xD, never saw this happen after Reinforced.
Please guys, the extra posts in here aren't particularly helpful. I really want to keep this thread clean and tidy and specifically about the factors we as a community feel UWE should be prioritising. I do very much welcome comments/feedback on my previous post to @Hugh, which is on page 4 of this thread.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
being 'only' a div 3 comp player.. I will state I love atmosphere in this game. I never had issues with blinding effects and see them as part of the game. Its up to the player to work around those.
*prepares to get flamed*
As for anticheat. I imagine a function checking which additional dll's are loaded into ns2s executable may be a way to stop some cheats. Problem is that 'good' ones like emet & many antivirus are also hooked onto the exe.
Such a path should be taken with great care.
Just force random screenshots or something imo. Find some way to do it mid round at random too. Aimbots are pretty easy to notice without evidence so anyone using one would be under scrutiny immediately.
Comments
That is ridiculous. If you're dealing with user feedback you need to look past the offensive stuff (which there's not much of in this thread, I've seen much MUCH worse elsewhere) and just read the actual feedback. If you isolate yourself from your community you'll end up looking out of touch with what people expect of the company. This just looks bad and it just adds to the list.
So in short, you mean valve
I have real life things to deal with right now but will be back to deal with this asap.
Without you, Hugh would be lost. Godspeed.
UWE is under zero obligation to communicate with you. Zero. Try to keep that in mind whenever you attempt to justify the poor manner in which you communicate.
Then all you need to do is what Roobubba and others have asked of you :
Simply provide the talking points you want addressed and leave any personal content / angry wording you'd have to add, out of the conversation.
You just witnessed exactly what occurs when you can't follow those instructions.
I'm amazed any of you continue to even attempt defending that method, after you are given example after example of it backfiring.
The only "improvement" that is needed is reverting back to 249. (more like removing a disaster than an improvement though)
You have a severe case of the broken records.
Though I am finding that RIGHT NOW, THIS build, I'm kind of wishing I was playing 249 too. However 251 I wasn't thinking that.
Srsly tho fk off with the spam.
Or should i drag up old PMs and teamspeak recordings, maybe even some chatroom discussions?
We are just supposed to sit here and act like angels while everyone in multiple groups tears us apart? Do you realize how much of a hypocrite you are? The comp scene has been villainized since NS1, NOTHING has changed in the 10 years since it started, and it never will.
Also stop putting words into peoples mouths. Wow, absolutely no one was focusing on whining about something not being fixed in x past time - most every post in here has been forward looking. I mean, the entire point of the thread was to get issues fixed going forward, which would be pretty stupid of anyone to suggest that it wasn't a common interest.
If someone can't take feedback that is even slightly constructively negative, maybe PR isn't for that person. Why do we as customers have to pussy foot around (the opposite of efficient and constructive action) in order to get issues fixed in a product we have spent money on? Some of us $100 or more. Money speaks loudly about vested interest. Mind boggling concept right?
My understanding going from past history is that anything of this nature that gets sent to Hugh, has a tendency to get 'lost'. Best to email sewlek.
May I point out the fact that the community of a game needs a representative to be acknowledged by the game's company pr guy? Honestly, to just dismiss us as noise and require our voices to be forwarded to someone else for the sake of keeping your own morale up is completely unwarranted. If anything, treating us as gremlins is causing the forum atmosphere to become even more toxic than it already is. You aren't even communicating with the community at this point, only getting a construed playback version from people you want to listen to and can alter it to their own agenda.
I have the utmost respect for what you do and I'm glad to see such love for the game we all are here for, but we need to understand that we all share different opinions on what we think should be done and we should be able to hear each other out on these things. There has been a noticeable silence from UWE on these matters and it is really starting to affect our community.
I dont even understand why I am wasting my time in this thread anymore, any changes that come for the WC will be done through other channels, nothing will come from this anymore... Especially when people are going to try to bring arrogance or self righteousness into this.
Awesome!. Of course it's understandable that there may be limitations depending on what code plays nicely with other code, that's to be expected.
We shall await your response on this when you've followed up with your colleagues. In order to help you in your discussions with them, here's some more specific info on what it is we're after (thanks xDragon):
- Allow servers to configure client update rate (currently hardcoded at 20/s).
- Allow servers to configure maximum amount of data sent to each client per second (max currently possible 20k, for reference CS:GO uses 80 - 128k). - This (along with the client update rate change) would allow the interpolation to be adjusted outside the range of 70-100ms using the NSL Mod.
That's the basics for the netcode/performance changes that would help, this one would also be nice but is much less important:Okay thanks for the clarification. There may be alternative ways around this now with the emergence of (eg) ShadowPlay, which has extremely limited impact on system performance. I'm sure inventive community members can make the most of this. At the finals themselves, there may be scope to use shadowplay recordings to compile detailed first-person analyses after each round, which would be very cool.
I'm trying to stay positive and constructive, so we'll leave this here and not mention it again. For the record, I do not consider myself 'so damn smart.'
My original intention was to get this thread set up as a full discussion with the community before putting this to you, but I failed to discuss everything and edit prior to getting you in here - that was my bad. What would still be helpful is a general comment about whether or not there is work ongoing to improve (especially server) performance currently. It is possible that being able to tweak network performance may alleviate some of the issues (due to the 'fixed' 100ms interp and max 20kbps data rate).
Excellent, thanks for the feedback, this is exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping for! Any progress is very welcome.
Net Code: Please see above for the specifics on what it is we're after. Hopefully that helps, if not please get back to me and I'll see what I can do!
As I understand it, Sewlek has been looking into this and has already made improvements to the movement code regarding collisions between aliens and marines. Unless anyone objects, I can strike this off as a specific point for this thread.
Replay comments above, that's dealt with. Good to hear that the switching lag for first person spec is on your list!
There has been some limited feedback in this thread, but no specifics. If any of the community wants to comment further on this point, please do so!
Mendasp's mod to clean up the HUD extends the menu system with options to do the following:
Custom HUD Commands:
Now comes the discussion with the community.
This mod is fantastic as is gives the user total flexibility over which HUD elements to modify and which not. I'd personlly love to see these options built into the vanilla game, but the question I have is this: is that necessary? As a mod it works very well, and could (should) be incorporated into the NSL mod. Is there actually a burning need for this to be in vanilla by default? If yes, please forgive my ignorance and do enlighten me!
Now comes the other part of the "UI Clutter" argument, and that's the visual obstructions. As a comp community, we are constantly battling against vision obstruction in NS2, which while great for those seeking total immersion, isn't conducive to high-level, fast-paced competitive play.
Things like heal spray, rupture, spike trails, mucous membrane, enzyme, spores and umbra, grenade effects, elaborate death animations for all structures (the list could go on), look lovely, but cause problems. An option to at least reduce these effects, if not totally remove their visual components, would be very strongly welcomed by the comp community. My question to the community on this is: can this be achieved with a mod, as well?
Any progress will be very warmly welcomed.
Thank You
Roo
http://imgur.com/a/052mu
Such immersion, so good. Great gameplay.
Also, server performance isn't a problem of just the competitive community. The only major provider of Natural Selection 2 servers (Multiplay) cannot run your game at a stable 30 ticks. All official servers stutter and rubberband into the late game. Likewise with the NSL servers and anyone else that rents a server through them. It's unacceptable.
Because we appear to be incapable of speaking with constructive words, similar to that of my Nieces... I will translate the grunts these two are forcing out. Have we not considered that posts like these are the reason why we can't have civil discussions?
@roobubba
When it comes to drifter abilities, they seemed to be designed for looking at from above, and can be considerably difficult to see through from the ground. It might be a good idea to reduce the particles for players, but not for commanders. Another idea to look into drifter-spam causing difficulty seeing ahead is to include a cooldown for drifter abilities, forcing the alien commander to only be able to use one mucus membrane per second, instead of near constantly until his fingers get tired. :P We'd need to keep the abilities cooldown specific to that ability though, so the alien commander can deploy multiple abilities very quickly.
Mendasp was kind enough to display a few images showing off the effects of Drifter-spam.
We've also noticed that the Nerve Gas grenades can make things difficult to see. Can we also look into increasing the transparency of of the nerve gas? Somewhere around 64 might work, but requires testing.
In terms of Server Performance, I've noticed that it's largely aliens that cause the server performance issues. Is it possible that the Alien buildings all have their own AI, and check their local area rather often? Perhaps if we reduce how often structures check their surroundings, like the Craig and the Shift, to apply buffs and healing, this may alleviate the issue somewhat. Once every 500ms? 750ms? How often do they check now?
It's not meant to be a discussion, it was my opinion on the quoted subject matter. I can express that however I want, if I was trying to come up with an argument for something I'd phrase it more articulately.
I'd never knock you for expressing your opinion, just bear in mind that you will be treated like an intelligent person if you express it as an intelligent person. Vice-versa as well, of course.
As justified some of your arguments are, I'd like to ask you not to take it too far. The game is loosing more and more of the fun, that once (long long time ago) was its selling point: Atmosphere. Understandable that "atmosphere" gets lost over time for the competitive players and they feel their enjoyment elsewhere. However many players don't feel that way. We don't want the game to become some fast-paced, high-skill, jumpy comp game on steroids. (See how far it already has gone?)
Here some broad hints:
What happened to this game?
Another constructive way to make ns2 fun again
The community is killing this game.
If nothing else, it'd be nice if the AOE effects stayed as a low fog
This is actually something I forget sometimes, but that doesn't change my opinion that it's awful and I want it gone. I disagree with your statement "See how far it already has gone?" though. Personally I think the game is less fast paced and skilled than it used to be.
Off-topic:
*prepares to get flamed*
As for anticheat. I imagine a function checking which additional dll's are loaded into ns2s executable may be a way to stop some cheats. Problem is that 'good' ones like emet & many antivirus are also hooked onto the exe.
Such a path should be taken with great care.