NS2News.org Poll: How important are mods to your everyday NS2 game?

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Comments

  • Sgt_SassSgt_Sass Join Date: 2016-02-13 Member: 213004Members
    I'm only missing the default alien vision being set to 'On' and the custom hitsounds. I might be able to circumvent that second one with a personal mod though so no biggie.

    I have noticed the holograms becoming a valid ambush point since the patch though. Skulking around in the holograms is reasonably effective (for now ...)
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    Calego wrote: »
    Shine wins the award for the most taken-for-granted mod on the workshop... Wonder what would happen if it disappeared for a few days (hint: It wouldn't be pretty).

    EDIT For Scope:

    - No more Server Permissions (at least, they're no longer easy, but then, there's no more commands worth running without Shine either...)
    - No more Forced Balance
    - No Mapvotes
    - No Admin panels
    - No AFK Kick (I'm pretty sure this isn't vanilla)
    - No Reserved Slots
    - Basically no other server-side mods, since the vast majority are built on Shine (TGNS, TF, DMD should confirm though)
    - Half of the bans would be gone
    - No more Pregame
    - Conceed vote is locked at 10 minutes (IIRC)
    - No more Unstuck (at least no button, there's a console command in game?)
    - No more workshop update notifications (lol, as if we'd still need them).
    - No custom badges

    That's just Base SHINE, if we take into account the Epsilon package:
    - No PregamePlus
    - No VACPlus
    - No Custom Spawns
    - No Enforced Team Sizes (for those of us on 8v8/7v7 servers)
    - No ExtraIps (idk if anyone other than Medi's server runs this though).

    All in all. What little is left would not be friendly. Vanilla is truly lacking.

    ^ You make a good point there.. Now that I think about it I probably wouldn't play ns2 at all anymore if shine was gone.
  • CalegoCalego Join Date: 2013-01-24 Member: 181848Members, NS2 Map Tester
    Oh shit. I totally forgot the Chatbox. Wtf isn't that in vanilla?
    xDragon wrote: »
    Erm I mean shine certainly adds a lot (much of it behind the scenes stuff you didnt list), but you listed a lot of features that are actually in vanilla lol.
    lol. Even I don't remember what the differences are... I run shine on my listen servers. It should expound on that though:

    There is "map voting" of a sort, whereby one person selects one map and everyone says yes or no (what SupaFred said about it being better in Shine)

    Bans do exist in vanilla, but how they were instated on the server determines if shine is the breakpoint (this did always confuse me with my server though, unsure if this was changed, I know i was able to join a server I was banned from when Shine didn't load so there's that anecdotal evidence)

    Balance does exist, but it's that Force Even Teams thing. I don't think it locks people into their team, which Shine can do, even if a lot of servers don't enable that.

    I think there are reserved slots in vanilla, but you didn't have much control over them IIRC in that it was unclear how they affected the displayed player number. Also going back to permissions, they're clunky to set up for large groups.

    In-game Admin Panel is Shine, everything's console (hardcore mode) otherwise. Pregame is Shine. IDK what VACPlus is, but it's listed in Epsilon as a thing.

    And then yeah, all the cody mumb-ojumbo that I definitely don't understand that probably makes modder's lives much easier.
  • RevanCoranaRevanCorana Join Date: 2015-08-14 Member: 207125Members
    Most options added by these 2 mods (NS2+, compmod) aren't really necessary because vanilla isn't nearly as bad as some make it sound to be
    but some other features clearly could (should?) have been added to vanilla a long time ago,

    things like a toggleable accuracy box, friendly fire, disabling viewmodels, resizable UI parts etc.
  • sotanahtsotanaht Join Date: 2013-01-12 Member: 179215Members
    Calego wrote: »
    Shine wins the award for the most taken-for-granted mod on the workshop... Wonder what would happen if it disappeared for a few days (hint: It wouldn't be pretty).

    EDIT For Scope:

    - No more Server Permissions (at least, they're no longer easy, but then, there's no more commands worth running without Shine either...)
    - No more Forced Balance
    - No Mapvotes
    - No Admin panels
    - No AFK Kick (I'm pretty sure this isn't vanilla)
    - No Reserved Slots
    - Basically no other server-side mods, since the vast majority are built on Shine (TGNS, TF, DMD should confirm though)
    - Half of the bans would be gone
    - No more Pregame
    - Conceed vote is locked at 10 minutes (IIRC)
    - No more Unstuck (at least no button, there's a console command in game?)
    - No more workshop update notifications (lol, as if we'd still need them).
    - No custom badges

    That's just Base SHINE, if we take into account the Epsilon package:
    - No PregamePlus
    - No VACPlus
    - No Custom Spawns
    - No Enforced Team Sizes (for those of us on 8v8/7v7 servers)
    - No ExtraIps (idk if anyone other than Medi's server runs this though).

    All in all. What little is left would not be friendly. Vanilla is truly lacking.

    No more Server Permissions (at least, they're no longer easy, but then, there's no more commands worth running without Shine either...)
    I don't know what kind of permissions most servers are running through shine, but this doesn't seem like something that affects me

    No more Forced Balance
    pretty sure hive-based force-even is part of vanilla. What ends up on most servers through shine is still just derivative of that, and not much better if at all

    No Mapvotes
    No one votes anyway, or they all just vote for the first thing anyone suggests. I could go back to fixed rotations, might actually see more play on some maps.

    No Admin panels
    I wouldn't know what features these offer, but admins seldom do anything in the games that I've played. Pretty sure all the essentials, eg rebooting the server or banning someone are somewhere in vanilla

    No AFK Kick (I'm pretty sure this isn't vanilla)
    There's always votekick. We pretty much have to use that anyway on many servers.

    No Reserved Slots
    Completely untrue. The server browser was updated to support reserve slots at a base-game level about two years ago, so unless the base game is relying on and expecting a mod there obviously must be some kind of reserved slot built in

    Basically no other server-side mods, since the vast majority are built on Shine (TGNS, TF, DMD should confirm though)
    None of which are more important than shine itself. Or NS2+ for that matter. Many I would rather avoid outright

    Half of the bans would be gone
    Considering how easy it is to smurf through family sharing or change an IP, I doubt it matters.

    No more Pregame
    I play on servers without pregame at all, no big loss.

    Concede vote is locked at 10 minutes (IIRC)
    Pretty sure this was updated to 7 minutes at some point in vanilla. Many servers still leave it there.

    No more Unstuck (at least no button, there's a console command in game?)
    It would definitely be missed, but it only comes into play one in one hundred games if that.

    No more workshop update notifications (lol, as if we'd still need them).
    Well if we don't need it...

    No custom badges
    Just trash.

    No PregamePlus
    Didn't we already mention this? Not a big loss

    No VACPlus
    Might be a problem? I have no idea what this does really.

    No Custom Spawns
    Trash

    No Enforced Team Sizes (for those of us on 8v8/7v7 servers)
    Only one server worth playing uses that. Hellrunner can go suck a lemon

    No ExtraIps (idk if anyone other than Medi's server runs this though).
    I don't know what this is, but if its only on one server I've probably never encountered it and wouldn't miss it.



    Mostly, the lack of Shine would be a pain for server admins. Because that's what shine is, an admin plugin. For the rest of the users we would barely even notice unless a horde of hackers just suddenly showed up upon learning they were no longer banned. It has a few nice features that trickle down to the player experience, but nothing essential.
  • CalegoCalego Join Date: 2013-01-24 Member: 181848Members, NS2 Map Tester
    edited March 2016
    sotanaht wrote: »
    Mostly, the lack of Shine would be a pain for server admins. Because that's what shine is, an admin plugin. For the rest of the users we would barely even notice unless a horde of hackers just suddenly showed up upon learning they were no longer banned. It has a few nice features that trickle down to the player experience, but nothing essential.

    So just because you don't see it, it doesn't affect you?

    I don't know what servers you play on, if you play on ones where the admins don't mind having limited control over a lot of the way the server operates, more power to ya. But I also don't know of any servers off the top of my head that don't run Shine (IBIS was still running DAK for a while, and might still be, usure). And if they're running Shine, they're probably making use of some of its components. Even if it's just "adverts" or "MOTD" (both items I didn't include in my list because they don't affect much on the user-side, but are still nice to have as a Server Op).

    I did go back later and explain a few of the less-than-completely-honest entries on that list, but basically what NS2+ does for Players, Shine does for Admins. There's a lot more fine-control over things like Balance, mapvotes, permissions, etc.

    There's a fair chance that if the admin tools were to disappear, so would a fair number of servers.

    I admire your stoicism. Perhaps we should have you run all of the servers in our post-modpacalyptic theoretical universe. Have fun syncing the configurations and permissions and bans across your servers (also something Shine can do on the backend).
  • sotanahtsotanaht Join Date: 2013-01-12 Member: 179215Members
    My point was that its still very playable. That was the question in the thread. "Would you play without mods". There are no features in Shine that are necessary for me to want to play that cannot be worked around if the admins are willing to do the work. Of course, if the servers shut down then I COULDN'T play, but that's not the question here.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @Sgt_Sass
    Sgt_Sass wrote: »
    I'm only missing the default alien vision being set to 'On' and the custom hitsounds. I might be able to circumvent that second one with a personal mod though so no biggie
    You can circumvent both actually, if you are willing to accept the best AV out there, Huze's Minimal AV (Always On).
    It's pretty similar to the vanilla AV, considering that's what vanilla's was roughly adjusted to over the years.
  • _INTER__INTER_ Join Date: 2009-08-08 Member: 68392Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
    As long as these two or three major mods are on every server there's no incentive to add features to vanilla.
  • ShaMedicShaMedic USA Join Date: 2016-01-14 Member: 211366Members
    IMO They help the overall experience, but at the end of the day vanilla NS2 is still great.
  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    edited March 2016
    sotanaht wrote: »
    For the rest of the users we would barely even notice .... It has a few nice features that trickle down to the player experience, but nothing essential.

    Are you talking about NS2+ here?
    Cause im sure 80% of the players have never checked the extra option entry that suddenly appear after connecting to a NS2+ server.
  • MendaspMendasp I touch maps in inappropriate places Valencia, Spain Join Date: 2002-07-05 Member: 884Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Retired Community Developer
    dePARA wrote: »
    sotanaht wrote: »
    For the rest of the users we would barely even notice .... It has a few nice features that trickle down to the player experience, but nothing essential.

    Are you talking about NS2+ here?
    Cause im sure 80% of the players have never checked the extra option entry that suddenly appear after connecting to a NS2+ server.

    This would be a valid point if NS2+ was just options, however, there's extra features and QoL stuff in there. The most obvious to players are the stats, then there's things that might seem like they are in vanilla but are not, like the colored wrenches... etc.

    For servers for example it has the mod update checker, which I added because the one in shine didn't even work at the time, and currently shine's works exactly like mine. Still talking about server-side, there's a player name change rate limiter... etc, it's lots of little things that in the end pile up...
  • FrozenFrozen New York, NY Join Date: 2010-07-02 Member: 72228Members, Constellation
    Colored Wrenches are seriously important to decision making
  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    Ah and btw @sotanaht
    I could make exact the same list like yours about how useless the NSL mod and compmod are for most players.

    A admin mod is useless while a client mod where you can change the color of alienvision is essential?
    Did you realize that your clientchanges are kinda useless without a server?

    Person8880 did the same amazing work like Mendasp and xDragon, looks like some forgetting this here.
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