Arguably, 24p servers have already skewed the image of ns2 in the eyes of the (few remaining) casual players. After all, which servers are populated?
(I'd like to note that 18p and 20p seem to be on the brink of extinction.)
And that's absolutely fine by me as 6x6 game is too hardcore (or competitive...) and you have too much responsibility for your every action. It's not fun and it requires too much sweat to achieve the victory. Not something I'd like to play after work, seriously, because it feels like I'm working again. But that's just me of course.
I also need to say, that performance on Wooza was more of problem when I still played on my toaster and before the CDT optimization. Not saying that hits are not felt anymore entirely. Just that with time and better hardware the problem is less impacting.
Arguably, 24p servers have already skewed the image of ns2 in the eyes of the (few remaining) casual players. After all, which servers are populated?
(I'd like to note that 18p and 20p seem to be on the brink of extinction.)
And that's absolutely fine by me as 6x6 game is too hardcore (or competitive...) and you have too much responsibility for your every action. It's not fun and it requires too much sweat to achieve the victory. Not something I'd like to play after work, seriously, because it feels like I'm working again. But that's just me of course.
I agree with you there - but I still feel like 24p is a clusterfuck. Especially on tram. Which for some inexplicably reason gets played on every other round even on these servers. (I mean, yeah, it's a great map - if the team size fits.)
Aliens are basically a time-bomb that goes off after the deadline passes. So a vet joined in the middle can bite RTs or put a sneaky tunnel but that's often not enough to win the game
Not sure if I agree here. Yes, aliens are definitely a time bomb, but in my experience it takes a lot more than one experienced marine joining to turn it around - after all, he can't kill all those oni alone. And currently it looks to me like the only thing aliens are doing from midgame on is waiting for onos and then steamrolling everything.
An experienced player joining aliens, on the other hand, will often accelerate this.
Still mostly agree with your overall points though.
And currently it looks to me like the only thing aliens are doing from midgame on is waiting for onos and then steamrolling everything.
Yep, but when onis are up, that's not a midgame already, more like the end of it. Midgame is the fade-fest and a skilled shotgun can seriously hinder their strength. Without fades onis would be vulnerable to jetpacks with shotguns. Sometimes lerks with spores/umbra may partially replace fades but they're even quicker to be shot by 'rines.
And if two vet friends stack for marines during the round helping each other... It requires a lot of efforts from aliens to kill that couple as they may block some passage for quite a while.
And currently it looks to me like the only thing aliens are doing from midgame on is waiting for onos and then steamrolling everything.
Yep, but when onis are up, that's not a midgame already, more like the end of it. Midgame is the fade-fest and a skilled shotgun can seriously hinder their strength. Without fades onis would be vulnerable to jetpacks with shotguns. Sometimes lerks with spores/umbra may partially replace fades but they're even quicker to be shot by 'rines.
Oh, I agree that that's endgame. But that's not what I meant. What I meant is that by midgame, aliens have gained so much pres and thus momentum that even an experienced player joining marines won't make that much of a difference - either marines have been playing well that round (depriving aliens of pres by killing harvesters) or they haven't; in the first case, they have good chances of winning (ofc the experienced player will tip this in their favor, but it's by no means solely to him), in the second case, the damage has been done, and the experienced player won't be able to do all that much. Onos are still going to go up, at best a little later.
Sadly, even without fades, jetpacks and shotguns often fail to hunt down onos in pub, in my experience. Frankly, I think late game needs to be rebalanced somehow.
edit: My point is, aliens basically just have to survive midgame, while marines have to win mid-to-lategame; otherwise it's gonna be very alien favored.
And if two vet friends stack for marines during the round helping each other... It requires a lot of efforts from aliens to kill that couple as they may block some passage for quite a while.
Well, yes, if that happens the whole balance goes down the drain anyway...
What I meant is that by midgame, aliens have gained so much pres and thus momentum that even an experienced player joining marines won't make that much of a difference - either marines have been playing well that round (depriving aliens of pres by killing harvesters) or they haven't
That is mostly true, I agree. But I played more than one round when aliens were clearly winning but somehow stopped pushing hard enough midway when a good (like, NSL-level) player joined marines and slowly aliens started to lose one point after another. In the end we were stomped and no one had a clear understanding of what happened and how we could fail in that situation. That player was on the top of the scoreboard (despite the lesser playtime) so the impact was obvious. Yeah, I'm aware that K/D ratio isn't that important in NS2 but still.
Sadly, even without fades, jetpacks and shotguns often fail to hunt down onos in pub, in my experience. Frankly, I think late game needs to be rebalanced somehow.
edit: My point is, aliens basically just have to survive midgame, while marines have to win mid-to-lategame; otherwise it's gonna be very alien favored.
The problem in pubs is that marines struggle lane blocking and sometimes even killing skulks. So the aliens don't even feel the need to learn how to lerk or fade. They just need to resbite and wait until onos time because it is much easier to play and much more game-changing at this level of skill
If you reduce Gore damage to 90 then onos play becomes a little more challenging in pubs. In that situation the commander only needs to out-med a couple good marines to make them kill an onos (or at least make him run away like hell)
Besides, one of the most frustrating things in this game is to be 1-hit killed by an onos when you have a jetpack and you think that you are out of his range... but then latency compensation kicks in and you are dead.
What I meant is that by midgame, aliens have gained so much pres and thus momentum that even an experienced player joining marines won't make that much of a difference - either marines have been playing well that round (depriving aliens of pres by killing harvesters) or they haven't
That is mostly true, I agree. But I played more than one round when aliens were clearly winning but somehow stopped pushing hard enough midway when a good (like, NSL-level) player joined marines and slowly aliens started to lose one point after another. In the end we were stomped and no one had a clear understanding of what happened and how we could fail in that situation. That player was on the top of the scoreboard (despite the lesser playtime) so the impact was obvious. Yeah, I'm aware that K/D ratio isn't that important in NS2 but still.
Not saying it can't happen - just saying it's not all that common.
Sadly, even without fades, jetpacks and shotguns often fail to hunt down onos in pub, in my experience. Frankly, I think late game needs to be rebalanced somehow.
edit: My point is, aliens basically just have to survive midgame, while marines have to win mid-to-lategame; otherwise it's gonna be very alien favored.
The problem in pubs is that marines struggle lane blocking
Yes. It's infuriating. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fix this :I
If you reduce Gore damage to 90 then onos play becomes a little more challenging in pubs. In that situation the commander only needs to out-med a couple good marines to make them kill an onos (or at least make him run away like hell)
Besides, one of the most frustrating things in this game is to be 1-hit killed by an onos when you have a jetpack and you think that you are out of his range... but then latency compensation kicks in and you are dead.
Can't agree enough with this. I'd love to see that change tested.
Woozas combination of high player count and low skill actually give it nearly a 50/50 win rates. The thirsty onos is marine sided, and tactical gamer is alien sided. You can check this on their respective wonitor pages.
There's a good deal of stack-age that goes on, and I'm not sure of servers with spectator slots....
Should they be white listed for the hive? I don't think so...
I'm certain ghosting has located me at times; it is the uncertainty that kills the fun. People who have tried to defend spectator slots, have even tried to say the ghosts could just join the other team, but that takes more pretending and sacrifice.
already mentioned, 24 is large, the definition of large should be re-evaluated.
Wouldn't it all be better to not have any hive score?
Using active admins are really the only way to stop smurfs, imbalance, and the miss-informers.
Some problems just can't be solved with an algorithm. Other problems arise from such rankings.
the aliens don't even feel the need to learn how to lerk or fade. They just need to resbite and wait until onos time because it is much easier to play and much more game-changing at this level of skill
The thirsty onos is marine sided, and tactical gamer is alien sided. You can check this on their respective wonitor pages.
I would say win rates are close to 50% on The Thirsty Onos servers. Marines have won 51.7% of the rounds on TTO20 and 54,6% on TTO24. TTO18 is my rookies only server but I started collecting stats from it just a couple of days ago.
it just occured to me that this could be the first steps froma fps-rts hybrid towards a fps-rts-rpg-hybrid. Let all players in the hive evolve individually and claim these upgrades through getting these weird clogs (with a setback in some other area) and viola! Ns2 is also part rpg
So now that we have seen these collectibles in action, I can't help but wonder... why were these implemented at all at this point? They do not seem to serve a purpose other than "collecting them", and collecting them happens automatically during play - ensuring that eventually, you'll get a limitless supply of each of them. (Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it doesn't seem like there is a maximum amount of drops. I asked Zavaro, too.)
I can see where you want to go with this (TF2 style, possibly), and that this may be more of a proof of concept implementation, but that still doesn't explain why this was actually pushed to the public. Since it serves no purpose right now, it seems tacked on and utterly incomplete, and frankly it looks to me like it was released just to release something. (Is this what rapid iteration is about? No, I won't shut up about this)
Please, don't release something just for the sake of it. At least establish a barebones (but more or less feature complete) system that you can expand on later on.
It's hard to casually play fade on a 24-player server, yes. Because every room you blink in to has a half dozen Marines standing in it.
I am no Fade/Lerk expert, but I primarily try and find 8v8 servers (or close as possible), and it's great - you need to be really unlucky/stupid to lose a Fade quickly on those. Much more room to breathe.
Comments
I agree with you there - but I still feel like 24p is a clusterfuck. Especially on tram. Which for some inexplicably reason gets played on every other round even on these servers. (I mean, yeah, it's a great map - if the team size fits.)
Not sure if I agree here. Yes, aliens are definitely a time bomb, but in my experience it takes a lot more than one experienced marine joining to turn it around - after all, he can't kill all those oni alone. And currently it looks to me like the only thing aliens are doing from midgame on is waiting for onos and then steamrolling everything.
An experienced player joining aliens, on the other hand, will often accelerate this.
Still mostly agree with your overall points though.
And if two vet friends stack for marines during the round helping each other... It requires a lot of efforts from aliens to kill that couple as they may block some passage for quite a while.
Oh, I agree that that's endgame. But that's not what I meant. What I meant is that by midgame, aliens have gained so much pres and thus momentum that even an experienced player joining marines won't make that much of a difference - either marines have been playing well that round (depriving aliens of pres by killing harvesters) or they haven't; in the first case, they have good chances of winning (ofc the experienced player will tip this in their favor, but it's by no means solely to him), in the second case, the damage has been done, and the experienced player won't be able to do all that much. Onos are still going to go up, at best a little later.
Sadly, even without fades, jetpacks and shotguns often fail to hunt down onos in pub, in my experience. Frankly, I think late game needs to be rebalanced somehow.
edit: My point is, aliens basically just have to survive midgame, while marines have to win mid-to-lategame; otherwise it's gonna be very alien favored.
Well, yes, if that happens the whole balance goes down the drain anyway...
The problem in pubs is that marines struggle lane blocking and sometimes even killing skulks. So the aliens don't even feel the need to learn how to lerk or fade. They just need to resbite and wait until onos time because it is much easier to play and much more game-changing at this level of skill
If you reduce Gore damage to 90 then onos play becomes a little more challenging in pubs. In that situation the commander only needs to out-med a couple good marines to make them kill an onos (or at least make him run away like hell)
Besides, one of the most frustrating things in this game is to be 1-hit killed by an onos when you have a jetpack and you think that you are out of his range... but then latency compensation kicks in and you are dead.
Not saying it can't happen - just saying it's not all that common.
Yes. It's infuriating. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fix this :I
Can't agree enough with this. I'd love to see that change tested.
Should they be white listed for the hive? I don't think so...
I'm certain ghosting has located me at times; it is the uncertainty that kills the fun. People who have tried to defend spectator slots, have even tried to say the ghosts could just join the other team, but that takes more pretending and sacrifice.
already mentioned, 24 is large, the definition of large should be re-evaluated.
Wouldn't it all be better to not have any hive score?
Using active admins are really the only way to stop smurfs, imbalance, and the miss-informers.
Some problems just can't be solved with an algorithm. Other problems arise from such rankings.
Yes, It's hard to casually learn to play fade.
I would say win rates are close to 50% on The Thirsty Onos servers. Marines have won 51.7% of the rounds on TTO20 and 54,6% on TTO24. TTO18 is my rookies only server but I started collecting stats from it just a couple of days ago.
Thirsty Onos wonitor stats
I can see where you want to go with this (TF2 style, possibly), and that this may be more of a proof of concept implementation, but that still doesn't explain why this was actually pushed to the public. Since it serves no purpose right now, it seems tacked on and utterly incomplete, and frankly it looks to me like it was released just to release something. (Is this what rapid iteration is about? No, I won't shut up about this)
Please, don't release something just for the sake of it. At least establish a barebones (but more or less feature complete) system that you can expand on later on.
It's hard to casually play fade on a 24-player server, yes. Because every room you blink in to has a half dozen Marines standing in it.
I am no Fade/Lerk expert, but I primarily try and find 8v8 servers (or close as possible), and it's great - you need to be really unlucky/stupid to lose a Fade quickly on those. Much more room to breathe.