Update 323 - Shadow Onos Roars into Play - Natural Selection 2

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  • AdambeanAdambean Cardiff, South Wales Join Date: 2005-06-03 Member: 53038Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited June 2018
    Just wondering what the skill rank boundaries are?

    So far I've observed that frontiersman (2/silver) is 550, team leader (3/gold) is 1000ish, veteran (4/white) is 1600ish, and special ops (6/shadow) is 3000ish. Not sure where the rest are. :)
  • Deck_Deck_ Join Date: 2014-07-20 Member: 197526Members
    edited June 2018
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    Vetinari wrote: »
    You can still go silent by pressing shift.

    Oh really? Can you now?

    I would love for you to show me how to heal/build silently as Gorge by pressing shift..

    That was the #1 best use for silence = silent Gorges.

    They claim it was removed because silence was too frustrating to play against... Yet cloaking is infinitely more frustrating. I never ever cared about silent aliens when on marine, but when they have cloak I just give up because I can't see them with my crappy monitor.

    Silent gorges and quick gorge tunnels was nerfed in this build. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps if you're a gorge that doesn't play near your team or goes for sneaky tunnels. It's definitely a nerf to gorges, but it forces the team to play together more. It's still a minor nerf compared to other things talked about...tunnels needing infestation. Let's see it play out.
  • Deck_Deck_ Join Date: 2014-07-20 Member: 197526Members
    edited June 2018
    Servilcat wrote: »
    So even more of a asymmetry between the two sides removed?

    Focus and Silence are meant to be strong upgrades; what makes them a hard choice is the power of the upgrades they should be exclusive with.

    It seems like every version seems to bring us closer to the same two teams fighting one another, which is exactly the opposite of what made NS popular in the first place.

    I would take what you said and change it to: focus and silence were really strong, so the nerf to those makes the game more fair and interesting. Focus before allowed for really easy clears. Now...as skulk, if the marine has 0 armor left, you can focus bite and add a parasite to get the frag in the current build. The focus nerf is a strong nerf to the focus fade, which was OP!

    Making the point that the game is now aliens and marines being closer to the same...is going to an extreme argument, right? Sure Focus and silence were strong upgrades, that's why they were looked at. Aliens have to work together and communicate more in this build to win. I'm enjoying it, but maybe it depends on the people in the server. I haven't felt like the late game has been this fair in a pub since I can remember.
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    edited June 2018
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    That was the #1 best use for silence = silent Gorges.

    It really wasn't. If anything that's a good change, too, because it makes cheesy tunnel rushes harder. The fact that the patchnotes explicitly mention trying to nerf those tunnels puts it in line with the intent of the patch.
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    They claim it was removed because silence was too frustrating to play against... Yet cloaking is infinitely more frustrating. I never ever cared about silent aliens when on marine, but when they have cloak I just give up because I can't see them with my crappy monitor.

    This is, pardon my directness, because you're a bad player. Silence allowed skulks to pull of moves they just shouldn't be able to, including unnoticeably flying across the map if no one had direct line of sight to them. If you didn't find silence frustrating you honestly can't have been using your ears.
    Adambean wrote: »
    Just wondering what the skill rank boundaries are?

    So far I've observed that frontiersman (2/silver) is 550, team leader (3/gold) is 1000ish, veteran (4/white) is 1600ish, and special ops (6/shadow) is 3000ish. Not sure where the rest are. :)

    As far as I can tell shadow is more like ~3300, not taking variance into account.
  • AdambeanAdambean Cardiff, South Wales Join Date: 2005-06-03 Member: 53038Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    Ah are the boundaries dynamic based on a proportion of the players? (e.g. level 7 is always the top 1% of active players no matter what skill figure the lowest of that top 1% is)
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    Adambean wrote: »
    Ah are the boundaries dynamic based on a proportion of the players? (e.g. level 7 is always the top 1% of active players no matter what skill figure the lowest of that top 1% is)

    I assume so, from the way the blog post is phrased. It also makes the most sense, otherwise a longterm shift in hive score values across players could lead to some skill groups becoming meaningless.
  • XaleXale Paris / France Join Date: 2003-12-26 Member: 24767Members
    edited June 2018
    Removed Silence

    Great. Now every skulk takes Camouflage.


    And marine have absolutely no real effective strategy counter to that

    Camouflage


    #bring motion-tracking back
  • Deck_Deck_ Join Date: 2014-07-20 Member: 197526Members
    Xale wrote: »
    Removed Silence

    Great. Now every skulk takes Camouflage.


    And marine have absolutely no real effective strategy counter to that

    Camouflage


    #bring motion-tracking back

    I haven't heard anyone say camouflage is OP. The old vamp was really hard to see in certain situations which made going shade hive first happen all the time on TA before this build. Wasn't fun to play against. I haven't seen anything be OP yet in current build. I would say the strongest thing in the game is 2 hive onos stomp but that takes awhile and moves the game along. You can also still win against it.
  • UncleCrunchUncleCrunch Mayonnaise land Join Date: 2005-02-16 Member: 41365Members, Reinforced - Onos
    Xale wrote: »
    Removed Silence
    Great. Now every skulk takes Camouflage.
    And marine have absolutely no real effective strategy counter to that

    You kidding right ?

    Camouflage is easy to spot. Actually it's worst because people think now they are now cloaked while moving so they move more. The thing is that it makes them more easy to spot.


    On a side note:

    The viability of the 3 Kharaas strategy can only be achieved with 100% full effect. Yes Cloaking as it was originally. But if no changes are made to the economy it becomes OP.

    The solution is to slower economy depending on the chamber chosen. As there will be no drastic changes in the Marine tech tree to create the dedicated counter upgrades (like motion tracking). It would be too much work and would break balance things for good.

    Crag economy should be fast, while Shade should be slower in order to let the Marine team cope with the threat. It's ONE single multiplication at the end of the res flow calculations.
    - Total res income * economy speed factor

    Ex :
    give it a base number like 0.8, add every hive "flavour" (Crag/Shift/Shade) if present.
    0.8 + 0.1 for 1 Shade hive -> 0.9
    0.8 + 0.3 for 1 Crag hive -> 1.1
    0.8 + 0.1 + 0.3 for 1 Crag & 1 Shade hive -> 1.2
    Of course it would require fine tuning but it will allow the upgrades to be quite effective instead of left overs. It would also encourage Kharaas to choose a strategy. I mean more than the single "all in" plan like a fast hive which basically kill the game if it succeed.

    Kharras need 3 equally viable options in all situation (number of slots etc..).

    Starting somewhere is better than never starting.






  • NordicNordic Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    I was having a hard time tracking the half cloaked lerks, or really anything half cloaked going in the vertical direction. A skulk coming at me head on is pretty easy to see and shoot.

    Also, the half cloaked skulks is creepy as hell. It made my neck tingle more than once.
  • Soylent_greenSoylent_green Join Date: 2002-12-20 Member: 11220Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    In what way is positional audio revamped? Just by reducing clutter and tweaking reverb?

    This is something that has irritated me since day one. Stock HL even without windows 98 and a delicious Aureal A3D 2.0 sound card has much clearer directional audio and it's not, AFAIK, doing anything particularly special. I've ascribed this to NS2 using more reverb and possibly some simple occlusion effect when you don't see the sound source directly and HL just outright ignoring walls and providing clear unfiltered positional audio always.
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    edited June 2018
    Vetinari wrote: »
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    They claim it was removed because silence was too frustrating to play against... Yet cloaking is infinitely more frustrating. I never ever cared about silent aliens when on marine, but when they have cloak I just give up because I can't see them with my crappy monitor.

    This is, pardon my directness, because you're a bad player. Silence allowed skulks to pull of moves they just shouldn't be able to, including unnoticeably flying across the map if no one had direct line of sight to them. If you didn't find silence frustrating you honestly can't have been using your ears.

    Oh make no mistake I am a terrible Marine player, but I honestly think that's besides the point.

    Before when I would notice they had silence, I could just adjust my playstyle accordingly = keeping my back to walls and back checking way more often... Thus I never felt frustrated because 9 times out of 10 I'd still see them coming... (and even when they did get the drop on me, It was never frustrating or irritating the way being killed by cloaked skulks is)

    On the flip side with cloaking there is no way for me to adapt or adjust because I simply cannot see most cloaked aliens the way some others can... Yeah I can use my ears, but that doesn't help when I walk right past them and they can just shift walk a couple steps forward for a super ez kill.. (sometimes I've even had them shift walk right up in front of me and I can't see them until they attack)

    For certain people a cloaked skulk is super super easy to see, but for others like myself they are so hard to spot that it's as if their player models aren't even being rendered... Which is why cloaking has always been by far the worst part of playing Marine for me.




    After more time playing though the real concerning issue is the overkill with nerfing Gorges... Particularly the combination of both tunnels and adrenaline...

    Tunnels taking over twice as long to build has the side effect of taking just over half your energy to build them...

    Couple this with adrenaline basically doing nothing for Gorge now, and you have a problem. I switched from celerity to adrenaline to do some healing support in a push.. Literally saw no difference at all in the rate of energy regeneration. It was just as slow with adrenaline as it was with celerity. If adrenaline still does anything for Gorge it is too minor to be noticeable.



    The silence changes are important: aliens already have a speedy sneak ability, and it needs to be used.

    What speedy sneak ability???? Surely you can't be talking about shift walking because that's slow as hell?

    /confused
  • HamletHamlet Join Date: 2008-08-17 Member: 64837Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited June 2018
    The DX11 memory leak is alive and well.
    I just tested it and the game stuffs itself with RAM in DX11 mode until it crashes (triggered it by alt-tabbing to desktop - even took Steam with it).
  • AdambeanAdambean Cardiff, South Wales Join Date: 2005-06-03 Member: 53038Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited June 2018
    ^ That, also hold CTRL (crouch) to move silently as gorge. I remember silence coming in build 250 when NS2 took a big step back towards NS1, very glad it's gone (again) now.

    Spotting cloaked aliens is usually easier with the highest gamma setting and your flashlight on. Having a monitor with high brightness will also help. The shimmering light becomes visible enough when you're pointing at them. Skulks also tend to sit in the same usual convenient "snug fit" spots too, so once you know shade hive is available, you can turn on your mindset to predict where the skulks will be invisibly waiting for you.

    --

    I too am definitely seeing more marine wins (though not disproportionately more) over this weekend, and a lot less games ending with the classic sneaky tunnel by marine main base.

    --
    Vetinari wrote: »
    I assume so, from the way the blog post is phrased. It also makes the most sense, otherwise a longterm shift in hive score values across players could lead to some skill groups becoming meaningless.

    Makes sense. I like that. (If it really is like that.) I don't think I'll ever make it to Sanji Survivor (and have probably fluked my way to Special Ops), but at least it'll be limited for the real top 1%.

    --

    Finally not sure if it's been noticed amongst many of you, but I'm also seeing many more server crashes with build 323. Today I've experienced 5, and yesterday experienced 2, across different servers. (8-Bit, survival of the fattest, and lost in space.) Not always late game either, one of them today was only 2 minutes into Veil.
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    Plebs, the only way to move as a Gorge is belly slide drifting!
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    Great writeup by Nouse, especially how the perception of gorge tunnels changed over time.
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    Oh make no mistake I am a terrible Marine player, but I honestly think that's besides the point.

    Before when I would notice they had silence, I could just adjust my playstyle accordingly = keeping my back to walls and back checking way more often... Thus I never felt frustrated because 9 times out of 10 I'd still see them coming... (and even when they did get the drop on me, It was never frustrating or irritating the way being killed by cloaked skulks is)

    Bit of a misunderstanding here: You as a marine are only a secondary objective to a silenced skulk. It really just wants to get past you to your RTs, and it's perfectly fine if you sit somewhere in a corner and wait for it to pass, because there's always another way around. With silence you can be an absolute pain in the ass running circles around marines and keeping their RTs down, and I've done so in the past many times.

    I like the current version of cloak much better. It's easier to see, thanks to a bugfix where some parts of aliens would apparently become perfectly invisible, and marines can deal with it using all of their senses.
    It's primary use now seems to be being harder to spot at long ranges and being harder to track during engagements. In a chaotic engagement with distractions, try switching to shift walking while behind some cover; that happened to me today and it really threw me off. I actually enjoyed fighting against it so far.
  • HandschuhHandschuh Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
    I think it is an issue, if less players go Lerk. We don't need a Lerkarmy but, if you play 12vs12 and you don't have instantly at least 2 Lerks it gives the Marines quite the Air to breath, because even a bad lerk that soaks a bit of bullets for Skulks can help a lot.
  • antouantou France Join Date: 2016-07-24 Member: 220615Members
    Woohoo Shadow Onos ! Always happy to give NS2 the money I made by selling PUBG crates ;)
    Nice changelog !
  • Deck_Deck_ Join Date: 2014-07-20 Member: 197526Members
    I think the game plays very even late game now. The issue is, it’s very hard for aliens to clear the marine pres. You see marines with 60-100 pres so often. It’s annoying that aliens can play a good round. Make some good plays but marines just have too much stuff and eventually win. I’m proposing to nerf the marine pres rate. I don’t think both teams need identical rates. It doesn’t play well with marines always having a ton of res.
  • FoxyFoxy United Kingdom Join Date: 2014-08-19 Member: 198032Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow
    Deck_ wrote: »
    I think the game plays very even late game now. The issue is, it’s very hard for aliens to clear the marine pres. You see marines with 60-100 pres so often. It’s annoying that aliens can play a good round. Make some good plays but marines just have too much stuff and eventually win. I’m proposing to nerf the marine pres rate. I don’t think both teams need identical rates. It doesn’t play well with marines always having a ton of res.

    Nerf the marine PRes rate but increase the TRes rate to match.
  • McGlaspieMcGlaspie www.team156.com Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
    Hamlet wrote: »
    The DX11 memory leak is alive and well.
    I just tested it and the game stuffs itself with RAM in DX11 mode until it crashes (triggered it by alt-tabbing to desktop - even took Steam with it).

    If you're on Windows 10, please take a look at this thread: https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/154778/disable-windows-10-focus-assist-if-youre-having-issues
  • SquishpokePOOPFACESquishpokePOOPFACE -21,248 posts (ignore below) Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165262Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Shadow Onos is tall enough to clip through the hanging vats in Refinery. Should probably fix that
  • _INTER__INTER_ Join Date: 2009-08-08 Member: 68392Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
    Spotting cloaked aliens is usually easier with the highest gamma setting and your flashlight on. Having a monitor with high brightness will also help.
    A game mechanic should never rely on settings and especially not the hardware (well excluding FPS).
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited June 2018
    _INTER_ wrote: »
    Spotting cloaked aliens is usually easier with the highest gamma setting and your flashlight on. Having a monitor with high brightness will also help.
    A game mechanic should never rely on settings and especially not the hardware (well excluding FPS).

    Ah the memories of the good ol' NS RivaTuner gamma "hax" :tongue:
  • IeptBarakatIeptBarakat The most difficult name to speak ingame. Join Date: 2009-07-10 Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited June 2018
    Kouji_San wrote: »
    _INTER_ wrote: »
    Spotting cloaked aliens is usually easier with the highest gamma setting and your flashlight on. Having a monitor with high brightness will also help.
    A game mechanic should never rely on settings and especially not the hardware (well excluding FPS).

    Ah the memories of the good ol' NS RivaTuner gamma "hax" :tongue:

    We've clearly gone full circle, you know what that means.

  • ArchieArchie Antarctica Join Date: 2006-09-19 Member: 58028Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter
    people using third party gamma hacks geyting banned for lambert hack :D herea me with my viewsonic 17ps loling because I didn't need that garbage
  • AdambeanAdambean Cardiff, South Wales Join Date: 2005-06-03 Member: 53038Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    Hahaha that's exactly what I did in ns1, might as well have been cel shaded
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    _INTER_ wrote: »
    Spotting cloaked aliens is usually easier with the highest gamma setting and your flashlight on. Having a monitor with high brightness will also help.
    A game mechanic should never rely on settings and especially not the hardware (well excluding FPS).

    Thank you!! At least one other person gets it...

    For the record I do have the gamma maxed out and even with the flashlight on I still can't spot 9 out of 10 cloaked aliens.
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