What is so horrible about the NS2 experience...
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Comments
You see marine teams with 6 or 7 RTs, and w2 a1 with shotties, but everyone wants to wait until jetpacks and w3, with 9 RTs and 3 command stations before they will end the game. In the same sense, marines will gain a powerful early game advantage, with phase gates and map control, but not know how to capitalize on it. Then the game becomes "mill around until the first Onos, vote concede".
On the other side, you'll see alien teams with 2 oni, lerks, fades and gorges vote to concede after losing 1 of 2 hives to a mediocre marine rush. Or they go for the super amazing all-in tunnel rush, because somehow the idea of using all of your life forms to re establish map control and res flow is incomprehensible.
Maybe it's the inability for 9/10 teams to muster any kind of coordinated effort, or maybe people can't move beyond a team-death-match thought process. Either way, it's really frustrating to see this kind of thing happen over, and over, and over again. Especially when you're playing with people with 100's or 1000's of hours who oughta damn well know better by now.
People aren't just bad at the game, they usually are bad at the game and utterly passive, not reacting to any communication attempts.
This leads to a mutually awful experience.
Even if there's a small chance of a comeback at any given point, the work involved is typically daunting and in itself demotivating, especially if you factor in the requirement of teamwork on top of that.
I've always wanted an NS2 that was engaging until the very last second - where there'd be no need for a concede feature.
I mean seriously when Marines are steamrolling through oni, fades, and lerks, what makes people suddenly think those same oni, fades and lerks will be able to start winning the engagements they've been losing all game..
Yes there are games that are conceded too soon, but it's far more common for a game to be over and people refuse to concede because "we have a chance guys!"
Just yesterday I played a game where aliens never had more than 2 rt's all game (most of the time they only had 1) and marines had full tech.. A3/W3, exos and jp.. against biomass 1 aliens with 2 spurs.. With 3 entire marine bases built.. And aliens we're refusing to concede because "we could still win"
If you ask me what makes NS2 horrible is unbalanced teams. (especially when it's just 1-2 guys carrying with double the kills of their entire team combined.. Which sadly happens far too often)
A gorge has a built a sneaky tunnel in preparation for a base rush. Calls for "everyone" to get in the tunnel are made. The need for overwhelming numbers is understood in this scenario. Why is the same concept not applied throughout the entire game? Why is it so difficult for the alien TEAM to make TEAM pushes to crush phase gates, deny rooms, etc? Instead of waiting for two more skulks, a lerk, and maybe a gorge to clear nano, super skulk decides to run in by himself against the 2-3 marines there. After his inevitable demise, the skulks that should have gone in with him decide to trickle in - after the marines reload of course - and face the same fate. Obviously it was the overpowered marines that were the problem here. Clearly it was the overpowered marines, unbalanced teams, etc, that resulted in 3 skulks dying to that single marine. Not the fact that they went single file into his shotgun.
That same kind of scenario repeats itself throughout a normal game, with different lifeforms. Why does the Onos choose to rush the system gate by himself, only to get focus fired out of the room by the 4 marines? Why not wait for the fades, gorge, lerks and skulks to bait/kills marines while they reload? The entire marine team is in nano, why are we even taking that engagement. Why are we not clearing res or going base? This is why alien lifeforms get wrecked: because they don't work together, and they take fights that they shouldn't; they are in places they shouldn't be at that moment in the game. For some reason, I usually see bigger groups of players moving around while on marines that I do while on aliens.
This is why I want a pack play element built into the game to help encourage team play for aliens.
How common is that for both team to happen to "concede at the same time"? My guess is .. never
What often happens however is teams being so stacked at the start of a game that the carry insta F4.
New players running around in large as possible lemmingpacks as marine but always engage alone as alien.
Find the reason behind this and you have the key for good pub balance.
Reason could be missing mini map on alienside or the fact that the aliens are much faster.
I think that is the mainreason why most games are horrible these days:
Multiple skulks running nonstop one by one against 2 marines to defend there only harvester and end up in an deathcycle.
Meanwhile rines capping whole map=gg.
Lemmingpack rines running from one room to another and dont care what happen behind them, losing all rts and repeat this process.
It's actually. You just need to be in the right place at the right time. An Onos, a gorge or even a freaking skulk taking advantage of, say, a beacon can make all the difference in the world.
Unfortunately most pub players are incredible bad at this, and if something like this works out it's mostly due to luck.
Had a match yesterday where I managed to keep half the marine team engaged as a single Onos and they left half of the map open. No one did anything with it :I
Pretty sure that this has been discussed and essentially boiled down to PvP comeback mechanics are the most fun and fairest way to keep games interesting. The issue being that if you're worthless against skulks, you're going to be worthless against lerks. If you're worthless against marines, you're going to be worthless against upgraded marines.
This then also heavily ties into having separated skill levels in servers.
- lack of gameplay knowledge (no, not just hidden mechanics but also obvious ones)
- no communication
- 4 rambos out of 7 players, who run around alone on both sides going only for the kills, while ignoring the RTS aspect completely
-Much bigger consequences for dieing, compared to other games
Not necessarily. Lots of players, that are worthless against marines, correctly wait for Onos or Fades and immediately become, not entirely useless, even against the same, but upgraded, marines.
There are a lot of different reasons for people to attempt to concede. Some of which has nothing to do with having a horrible experience.
In the instance of both teams trying to concede at the same time, it could be that the winning team is trying for a victory concede. If we are strictly talking about having a horrible experience, it mostly boils down to having no faith (for whatever reason, justified or not) in your team to win. Or there might just be selfish pricks who have no more pres and are not looking forward to spending time playing against upgraded opponents in that situation.
These players didnt realize that NS2 is assymetric, so its ok to have only 2 harvesters as long marines losing RTs.
So concede on both sides happen if aliens have only 1 or 2 harvesters AND the rines losing RTs nonstop.
So both sides thinking they have already lost.
Because it's an Onos - the most expensive lifeform in the game. You shouldn't need support or have to play defensive with it.
Lack of game understanding. A UI redesign would help with some type of swing meter of "known enemy RT's" and your own RT's. Dots in the bottom right corner aren't going to cut it.
Most powerful lifeform in the game? Yes. Invincible? No. Every other lifeform has to be aware of when to enter and leave a room, and can't accomplish everything alone. The onos is no exception just because it can absorb significantly more damage.
In terms of my example, I meant to suggest that the onos being forced out of the room while alone was tactically unsound because now, when the rest of the team arrives and wants to push, they are lacking an onos. At least until that onos can heal via gorge or hive, which wastes valuable time. And in the downtime, that group of aliens usually dissipates to tackle less important tasks.
It forcefully redirects focus fire, because if you don't shoot it it becomes dangerous. As a result other lifeforms can engage.
It crowd controls with stomp, to be able to kill or escape
The killers on the Alien team are the Skulk (early), Lerk (mid), Fade (mid/end)
All of this isn't communicated very well to the players (newbies)
Not saying you aren't right, but victory concede have basically disappeared after hive was introduced.
That "skill score" as a status symbol for "mah skillzors", I dunno man, I'd rather let me Weapons and Tactics* speak for themselves instead of an arbitrary numba yo
*and get called a haxor lamer %@#$@# !@!@$$ etc...
(BTW I dont agree that NS2 experience is horrible...
Oh, the success rate has lowered, but that doesn't stop people from trying to get it going. It is only a fraction of what it was before hive though, I suppose.
C&C Generals had a pack play element for multiple Chinese troops near one another. It gave them a change in rate of fire, I think. Maybe health. Not saying those are the answers, but I always liked that mechanic.
The limited number of teamplay abilities in such a strongly teamplay centric game has always puzzled me. Primal Scream was a favorite of mine, now replaced by bland and unimaginative buffs from the commander.
Maybe the implementation was bad but it didnt work as expected.
- Frenzy, basically gain health on kill
- Pack attack (not the name, but I forget), gain more attack bonus with multiple skulks
- We even tried damage levels like the marines have
- Gorge infestation patches to help out the commander (before cysts)
- Commander could infest by placing infestation, which had to be burned away by the flamer (only weapon able to do that