Update 289 Now Live! - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Update 289 Now Live! - Natural Selection 2
Hi everyone! It seems like only yesterday that we released update 288, wait a minute?!? It was (almost). Hot off the heels of one update comes yet another. This time...
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What's the base score you get for killing a player with various loadouts? Is it still the same?
Weapons and Upgrades cost pres
*"Swapped Gorge and Skulk positions in the evolve menu so new players are less likely to think the Gorge is “better”"
The Gorge is superior lifeform to skulk, there is no question about it. It's just not a raw combat unit. This change will probably force players to get used to a new menu with little to no gain.
*"Dynamic lightning in areas"
There should be a option to disable this function. Players that want to be immersed can have it on while the players that are playing the game for gameplay quality can turn it off.
*"Not being able to build powernodes to 100% without a structure in the area)"
In many cases its better to build the node to 100% rather than 99%. But now the game prevents me from doing that because powernodes are to much of a beginner trap.
It has been said before and I say it again - Power nodes add nothing of value to the game and the game would be better off with them removed. Dynamic lightning is better at showing who owns an area than powernodes do for new players.
Fixing late game alien abilities will make the last siege not an issue.
The only thing powernodes add to the game today is unnecessary timesync, limit marine creativity in structure placement and waste time for for new players.
What worries me more is that performance seems to be getting worse and random bugs have started appearing in the recent patches - such as floating guns, I'll let @Mendasp explain in this high quality video:
As much I like seeing patches every 2-3 days I think its also important to not get ahead of yourself and keep the groundwork clean. We can't sacrifice hitreg, performance and other little things while adding new stuff. At some point it will bite you in the ass and it will be hard to fix it since so many things have been build on top of the code causing it.
I don't know how it works currently(so pardon my ignorance), but would it be possible for the devs to make the main gamemode run as a "mod" off a base in which this foundation for all gamemodes to run off of be relatively untouched so other gamemode devs don't have to worry about it breaking as often?
Mods of mods would still have their issue, but for things like Last Stand, Assault, Faded, and potentially even Combat could have longer operational times without having to be updated as frequently.
(Also I think the twitter feed on the website is broken.)
That's already how it works!
Have a look into your NS2 install folder and you'll notice that there is a "core" folder, a "ns2" folder and folders like "tutorial".
The real issue comes down to that the engine API was changed drastically in the past without giving a damn about backward compatibility (we try to avoid running into similar issues).
Or that mods just depend too much onto the NS2 code base (but that's something modders can avoid).
I think there's more to the perceived progression in the menu than most of us realize. Skulk is what I start as, and then there's all those other things that cost progressively more, they have to be "better"!
Moving the Gorge to the side breaks this flow at will at least make rookies ask before everyone goes gorge only to realize that they're now a support class.
If Gorges were better by definition, having an entire team of them wouldn't be a bad thing. Thing is that every lifeform is better than something else at some things, but not others. Ideally the menu will turn into a radial menu, removing it's implications of progression. This is a step in the right direction though.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
A more efficient way of doing this would be adding clear markings on the gorge icon so you would see it's a more supportive type unit. Even with the gorge on the far left that kind of icon should be added, it's way more intuitive.
Skulk in the middle, everything else around it. (Maybe with the Onos at the top. It kinda is the ultimate alien lifeform, after all, or at least presented as such. Yes, fades, yadda yadda, let's not argue)
I could definitely see this helping a lot.
Gorge could be a "Red Cross" Medic type thing.
Lerks could be something more generic "assault" type (not sure how to best represent somethinga s diverse as a lerk).
Fades are spikey/assasiny.
Onos could be a tank type thing, Shield.
So I think something like this.(As in how the lifeforms would go around the evolve menu) would be better.
If you want to resolve the issue of rookies assuming higher lifeforms are better then their roles need to be clearly and concisely explained - possibly along with a radial menu.
Swapping one lifeform placement does none of this, it keeps the same degree of lack of information in the descriptions regarding the roles, and if anything upsets the rest of the menu for little to no gain, further confusing the issue.
Out of all the changes lately this one makes the least amount of sense to me.
This is something I suggested a long time ago now on the userreports website. It is nice to see they do take ideas from there.
I initially thought of this change while trying out the game called Unvanquished, which is free. They have lifeforms with similar roles to ns2. In that game the gorge equivalent is behind the skulk equivalent in the menu. I thought this was extremely intuitive. They had it in a clockwise radial menu similar to what some are suggesting here.
The Polaris videos had many players go gorge, a lot, which was comical to us veterans. We see this in game fairly often. You will be in a server with rookies, and all the sudden you have 9 gorges.
A gorge costs 10 pres. To a rookie it seems like the gorge is an upgrade. This lifeform cost money, therefor it must be an upgrade. It is not just pres, but the order of the menu. In the upgrade menu, the lifeforms are shown Skulk, Gorge, Lerk, Fade, Onos. This order shows progression in a sense. This again shows that the gorge > skulk. In reality the gorge is a support unit side grade of sorts. That is not communicated well though.
If the alien upgrade menu is changed the alien upgrade menu order to Gorge, Skulk, Lerk, Fade, Onos it would visually look like a downgrade. Rookies would then not mistake gorges for an upgrade. This suggestion is only a visual change.
I like what @IeptBarakat has shown with the picture. That does not look like as simple as a change as just swapping skulk and gorge on the current menu. I suggested that because I thought it would have the least development time with similar if not the same results. Either way, the gorges role is better communicated.
All it's doing is intentionally confusing a rookie in hopes that it makes them question the whole menu layout??
Much rather have seen clearly defined roles and information instead (considering re doing the whole buy menu is probably out of the question at this point)
To illustrate the innate lack of role communication, the current in game description is :
"A Gorge can build offensive Hydras and defensive Clogs. Can evolve ranged bile bomb for attacking armor and structures."
Nothing about being support, healer, builder, tunnels etc.
We could always have something like this.
Not that I'm biased or anything.
They made that mistake more than once in the polaris video.
At this point it seems like a pointless change that was not needed, will simply complicate things for those of us who have been playing for 3 years while not actually adding any benefit for new players.
Tactical errors, such as the entire team of rookies becoming Gorge, is not a problem of confusion, but apathy and lack of gamesense. Again, I'll point to TF2 as a prime example. Low skill players are either playing for fun or to experiment. I did the same thing when I was a rookie. It's not until they are ready to make the mental switch from "l2p" to "l2win" that we will see an improvement of gameplay.
That said, a quick blurb over George's evolve icon certainly won't hurt anything. Worth a shot.
So I realised the changes in the log are for killing things. However it makes no sense you would "revamp" the scoring system to make it more obvious that doing these things is better and more rewarding.
While at the same time completely changing the building points for structures, every structure is +1 for building, that's a step backwards, this tells marines that building is not helpful before powernodes, rt's etc awarded +5 points for a full solo build, now it's 1, why?
They should earn you more score, maybe a flat +5 across the board on all structures built (similar to before?). +1 just seems counter intuitive to the entire plan of redoing the scoring system for rookies.
This is why something as small as the organization of options and categorization makes a huge difference in understanding things quickly. This is why there are entire companies devoted to such pursuits.
Showing people a wall of text anytime they want to click on something isn't going to help anything (How many of you have remember what the Armory says about a Shotgun for instance? There's text there, i think.). Iconography or a very basic statistics breakdown are most useful.
Perhaps showing some basic "stats" for each lifeform is a good idea (something like how racing games show you bars that indicate how well a certain car performs in different areas).
Mobility, PvP, PvE, Survivability Might be four good bars to have.
Skulks would run with basically mediocre stats on all of those (survivability would be down).
Gorges would take a major hit to Mobility and PvP, but would stay about the same (or puls a little) to PvE, and a small buff to Survivability.
Lerks would take a jump on the Mobility bar and a bit of a plus on PvP, with a minor hit to PvE, but suvivability would stay about the same.
Fades spike on the PvP and Mobility with a slight increase to survivability, but lose a lot on PvE.
Onos Take a big hit on Mobility but get a plus to all three of PvP, PvE (more PvE than PvP) and survivability.
Thinking about this more, a simple display of something like this would go a long way to clarifying the roles for each lifeform right off the bat.
Because as I said previously, it ruins every single 'standalone' mod that hasn't taken to explicitly looking for it and blocking it... And anytime something new is published you need to update that check.....
I mean I could simply block the address on my server, but that is hardly a good solution....