Announcement: The Death Of Ns
King_Ubu
Join Date: 2003-08-21 Member: 20037Members
Join Date: 2003-08-21 Member: 20037Members
<div class="IPBDescription">NS is Dead! Long Live NS!</div> NS is dead.
This is bold statement, and many of you are saying, "if that's true, what was I playing for 2 hours last night?"
Ok, not really. You're probably saying something along the lines of, "WTH, f'in n00b!"
The NS that I'm speaking of is NS 1.04, and a new NS is born:
NS 2.0!
(soon to be 2.1)
The only point I want to make with this post is this:
<ul>
<li>Marines are losing because they play with strategies developed in 1.04
</ul>
The statement that 2.0 is an entirely different game can be summed up with this:
<ul>
<li>The focus of the game has shifted from controling hives to controling resource nodes.
</ul>
If you can't agree with this, feel free to ignore everything in this post (which most of you will anyway <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> )
The hook:
Have you noticed that the standard marine building to start are IP,IP,Armory,TF,Sentry, Sentry, (Sentry, Sentry...)?
This is so obvious, that person sugesting anything else must be a complete n00b and should be belittled/banned.
The outrageous statement that none of you are going to believe:
<ul>
<li>I win about 75% of my games as marines if I'm there at the start of the game
</ul>
On public servers in a pick up game. I don't care about clan matches. I don't care if you don't believe me. The point isn't my personal skill level.
(god, I hate this new email worm. this isn't really part of the post, but I've gotten 6 new email worms so far while composing this.)
The point is this:
If you thought about it, you know what the marines are going to do, are supposed to do, and what they should never do. And some things would be so "obvious" that it wouldn't even make it on your list. Same thing goes for aliens.
I wonder where you learned all that.
The anecdote:
We start a new game on ns_nothing and I immdiately leave the base and ask the comm to hold on to 20 res to build a RT for miasa walkway when I get there. And another marine voice chats back that I'm a f'ing n00b because I'm leaving the base before building anything. And I am stunned because I've been winning a lot by rushing the RTs and rather than see how what I'm doing turns out, he immdiately dismisses it based on what he knew to be "true". A TRUTH I AGREED WITH AT ONE TIME.
Luckily the comm is pretty new, so he's willing to listen to a marine who offers suggestions in a calm and respectful voice. Rather than sticking to plan X-Y-Z that used to work in 1.04, and it's too bad they broke the game balence in 2.0, which is obvious because I used to win a least some of the time when I did X-Y-Z, but now when I do X-Y-Z I lose, so obviously they've broken the game balence. What could be more obvious.
So we win, and it's pretty easy partially because at 4 minutes and 46 seconds the res count is 6 vs 2 and all the really "good" players leave, since they know their team sucks, since marines are out res'ing the aliens, and everyone knows that aliens get a lot more rts in 2.0, and if the marines have more then the alien team must suck. It's just so OBVIOUS.
And everyone knows that winning a game by breaking the spirt of the opponent and making him quit is not a *real* victory. A real victory has to have a lot of shooting and explosions, with Heavys and Grenade Launchers. Everyone knows that.
Here's the part where I admit that I lied. I don't really win 75% of the time. It's more like 90% approaching 100% when the comm is willing to play along with me. I just said 75% because I thought it was more believable. And I admit I quit the game if I see the comm spends the first few minutes sentry farming and wont listen to any of my requests. Of if the comm is yelling at me for going somewhere other than his waypoint and asking for a RT.
Comms have threatened to kick me from the server for trying to capture a res node they didn't ask for.
<i>kick me from the server for trying to capture a res node </i>
I wonder why the marines are losing so much these days?
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. It was something I had to get off my chest. I was really annoyed at all the people telling me how it was impossible to win as marines when I do it all the time.
See ya online.
This is bold statement, and many of you are saying, "if that's true, what was I playing for 2 hours last night?"
Ok, not really. You're probably saying something along the lines of, "WTH, f'in n00b!"
The NS that I'm speaking of is NS 1.04, and a new NS is born:
NS 2.0!
(soon to be 2.1)
The only point I want to make with this post is this:
<ul>
<li>Marines are losing because they play with strategies developed in 1.04
</ul>
The statement that 2.0 is an entirely different game can be summed up with this:
<ul>
<li>The focus of the game has shifted from controling hives to controling resource nodes.
</ul>
If you can't agree with this, feel free to ignore everything in this post (which most of you will anyway <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> )
The hook:
Have you noticed that the standard marine building to start are IP,IP,Armory,TF,Sentry, Sentry, (Sentry, Sentry...)?
This is so obvious, that person sugesting anything else must be a complete n00b and should be belittled/banned.
The outrageous statement that none of you are going to believe:
<ul>
<li>I win about 75% of my games as marines if I'm there at the start of the game
</ul>
On public servers in a pick up game. I don't care about clan matches. I don't care if you don't believe me. The point isn't my personal skill level.
(god, I hate this new email worm. this isn't really part of the post, but I've gotten 6 new email worms so far while composing this.)
The point is this:
If you thought about it, you know what the marines are going to do, are supposed to do, and what they should never do. And some things would be so "obvious" that it wouldn't even make it on your list. Same thing goes for aliens.
I wonder where you learned all that.
The anecdote:
We start a new game on ns_nothing and I immdiately leave the base and ask the comm to hold on to 20 res to build a RT for miasa walkway when I get there. And another marine voice chats back that I'm a f'ing n00b because I'm leaving the base before building anything. And I am stunned because I've been winning a lot by rushing the RTs and rather than see how what I'm doing turns out, he immdiately dismisses it based on what he knew to be "true". A TRUTH I AGREED WITH AT ONE TIME.
Luckily the comm is pretty new, so he's willing to listen to a marine who offers suggestions in a calm and respectful voice. Rather than sticking to plan X-Y-Z that used to work in 1.04, and it's too bad they broke the game balence in 2.0, which is obvious because I used to win a least some of the time when I did X-Y-Z, but now when I do X-Y-Z I lose, so obviously they've broken the game balence. What could be more obvious.
So we win, and it's pretty easy partially because at 4 minutes and 46 seconds the res count is 6 vs 2 and all the really "good" players leave, since they know their team sucks, since marines are out res'ing the aliens, and everyone knows that aliens get a lot more rts in 2.0, and if the marines have more then the alien team must suck. It's just so OBVIOUS.
And everyone knows that winning a game by breaking the spirt of the opponent and making him quit is not a *real* victory. A real victory has to have a lot of shooting and explosions, with Heavys and Grenade Launchers. Everyone knows that.
Here's the part where I admit that I lied. I don't really win 75% of the time. It's more like 90% approaching 100% when the comm is willing to play along with me. I just said 75% because I thought it was more believable. And I admit I quit the game if I see the comm spends the first few minutes sentry farming and wont listen to any of my requests. Of if the comm is yelling at me for going somewhere other than his waypoint and asking for a RT.
Comms have threatened to kick me from the server for trying to capture a res node they didn't ask for.
<i>kick me from the server for trying to capture a res node </i>
I wonder why the marines are losing so much these days?
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. It was something I had to get off my chest. I was really annoyed at all the people telling me how it was impossible to win as marines when I do it all the time.
See ya online.
Comments
This is bold statement, and many of you are saying, "if that's true, what was I playing for 2 hours last night?"
Ok, not really. You're probably saying something along the lines of, "WTH, f'in n00b!"
The NS that I'm speaking of is NS 1.04, and a new NS is born:
NS 2.0!
(soon to be 2.1)
The only point I want to make with this post is this:
<ul>
<li>Marines are losing because they play with strategies developed in 1.04
</ul>See ya online. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nice to see someone other than me posting this <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
[edit]whoops. didn't mean to quote the whole thing <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->[/edit]
Played 6games with 6 wins on marines in a pub tonite
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
...
What, so the alien team just sat around doing nothing? You had the res to electrify/turret all those nodes? You never lost your undefended base to a skulk rush? If you have 6 nodes at the 4 minute mark, one of 2 things has occured. a) they are all hopelessly undefended and will likely be destroyed in the next 2 minutes b) the alien team really REALLY sucked. Sorry but that's undeniable. What you try has of course been used before and been tried in 2.0 by plenty of coms (I know, I've tried it, been on teams that try it, and been an alien defending against it). At most you'll be able to pull it off once thanks to the elemant of surprise, but it won't work 2 times in a row against decent aliens. It's also incredibly risky because you have an undefended base, and lots of undefended res nodes as opposed to a few well defended one.
Try this against a compitant alien side with plenty of veteran players. I'd be amazed if you got to 4 nodes before you were wiped out.
But you do have a point.
I agree that the game is unbalanced, as much as people will love to say stuff like "omg u have 2 adapt to tactics u nub ive been playing since beta... blah blah blah." The game is unbalanced due to insane alien expansion and there's nothing we can do.
That being said, while marines do have a learning process to go through, there still is an imbalance whether you choose to believe it or not. A game is only balanced when there is an equal amount of imbalance accusations and everyone knows that the aliens are overpowered (or marines are underpowered).
Gamers have had 3 weeks to adjust. Now balancing is needed and Flayra is making the appropriate changes.
Against a dedicated alien team, in 2.0, the marines will still get squashed, but the goof-ups and laziness now common to pubs really helps the marines.
Winning as an alien-expected
Winning as a marine-just shy of a miracle
you are correct, however, NS 1.04 is gone. All you comms boasting "100% jp/hmg victories (which means you never played on a server with aliens who learned how to combat it)" cannot do the same thing anymore, yet. We'll see how the changes affect us, and adapt. Anything less is not enough for a game with this much potential.
[edit]stupid typos. <b>Can anyone understand what this guy said below me???</b> I couldn't <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->[/edit]
if u think ur ideas are good, very much worth trying, just get in the com seat n do it... not let sumone else com n criticize their tactics, no matter how crap it is.
not cooperating with ur team is prob the worst tactic i can think of.
75% is a bit of a round number for someone who's been playing a lot... looks like you've played 4 games to me.
if u think ur ideas are good, very much worth trying, just get in the com seat n do it... not let sumone else com n criticize their tactics, no matter how crap it is.
not cooperating with ur team is prob the worst tactic i can think of. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Could you say that in english please?
Thanks
if u think ur ideas are good, very much worth trying, just get in the com seat n do it... not let sumone else com n criticize their tactics, no matter how crap it is.
not cooperating with ur team is prob the worst tactic i can think of. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Could you say that in english please?
Thanks <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
wouldnt dutch be more appropriate for you <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Next game (hera) was an alien win, EVENTUALLY. For the first fifteen minutes, we were once again falling behind in the res race. We had archiving and holoroom initially, but soon lost holo to a determined assault (marines had relocated to reception). After a huge fight over archiving (marines sieging, me sporing the crap out of them and suddenly finding myself with a hundred res), ended by me as an Onos finally killing their phasegate and turret factory (props to the healing Gorge and the umbraing Lerk), we finally turned the game around, but until then it had been a desperate fight that could have gone either way. Great game.
Edit: I'll still have to admit that 2.0 is a little hard on the marines. Making their job a little easier will go a long way toward putting the fun back into the game. Hell, I had fun as an alien in 1.04.
It's statement is becoming more and more true.
Problem is even though they told us to withhold our judgement on balance, the devs went ahead and nerfed aliens anyway (and not in the early res department... the one place they might have needed it... aliens aren't winning games because of, say, overpowered umbra). Right now in 2.0 games I can comm and lead the marines to victory over 50% of the time. You just need to know how to boost morale and keep your marines together. Also, being quick with the siege is key <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->.
Based on the 2.1 log, I'm sure that the marine win percentage will rise, throwing the game balance of of whack and promoting massive marine stacking a la 1.04. It seem like they won't be happy until most players completely give up playing aliens.
The dev's and vet's have admited that it is not balanced at the moment.
Alot of the imbalance early on was as a result of marines not knowing what todo.
The different styles or play for the 2 sides are difficult to balance.
The aliens can go out a get RT's on there own, where as the marines can probably split into 2 effective groups at the very max, maybe 3 at a push. Therefore the marines can be pushing through in one location, while fighting aliens there, aswell as having more aliens attacking their base at a different location.
Marines are slowly learning to fight against the imbalance just as aliens did in 1.0.
However marines are not supposed to be rambo's and just capture RT's they should go out in groups to capture them.
I must say I'm plesantly suprised with the responses. I was on a server playing a few minutes after the post and an enemy alien says, (waiting of course till his team has mortal lock on the game, wouldn't want to take any risks being wrong after all) "this going to be one of your 75% wins?"
I came back expecting every reply to be about the one thing I said was NOT the point. Its really nice to see quite a few people get what I was trying to say. Thanks.
Anyway, to reply to some stuff people said,
Cooperation? Cooperate with a comm playing out a strategy that is a losing strategy. That keeps losing even though people do it over and over. NO. I am obligated to not cooperate with someone trying to lead me over a cliff. Read "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau.
But that wasn't my point anyway. Notice the old comm/marine relationship, comms tells marines to do something, they do it. It worked well when you had to worry about 2 or 3 points, but managing 7,8,9 points is too much for one person.
75%? I just made that up. I have no idea what my win percentage is. The point is not the percentage, it's that you aren't going to believe it. I know that sounds obscure, but I'm being quite literal.
I'm actually excited about trying to figure out new marine strats to win, and I'm seeing some pretty cool stuff out there. those [MEDPACK] guys are crazy. They do an IP spam thing that leads to a really fun shoot'em up game. On the other hand its just depressing talking to all the people who are sure that marines can't win. They spend all their energy and time explaining why something that has never been tried couldn't possibly work. It just sucks the fun out of everything.
And of course here's another obligatory anecdote:
There are these two monks, and they are at the fishermans market. The younger one notices that all the crabs are in an open box. Asking the fisherman, "Won't they get out?" The fisherman laughs and says that the other crabs always pull them down so that none of them get out. The young monk is troubled by this and spends a lot of time thinking about it. On the way back to the monestery, the young monk asks the older one, "Do the crabs not want the others to be free?" The older monk replies, "No, it's much worse, they don't want there to be a freedom."
Happy Hunting!
You state that if the game isn't going your way you quit. If we all did this would most likley lead to 70-80% of games ending in the first 5 minutes, maybe more because -"omg they've got 4 res nodes and we only have 2, my team suxx0r!!!F4!!!F4!!"
When comming I almost always try aggressive strategies that involve the early claiming of res and strategic location.
Hera is a good example, dont allways rush for the double res. Yes you get to cut off Archiving hive (nearly) and 3 res towers but take a look, the map has been reworked. Take Ventillation and maintenence quickly and then push into Processing within the first 5 minutes and you just might win, thats 4 res towers and two hives you can control.
The problem is that skulks pwn marines at the start of the game. If all your marines are repeatedly slaughtered by a 3 skulk ambush on the way to the res tower then you cant get the res. You can switch tactics (and should) try heading the other way but with a good alien team against a good marine team currently aliens still have the edge.
Just because turrets are so cheap, doesn't mean you need to build them in base right at the begining of the game, in 1.0 if a TF went in base, you would see 5 turrets max, now a TF is built and tripple the turrets, costing roughly the same. Now in 1.04 (not 1.03 or before) a TF in base was considered "n00b" because "it wastes res". WELL here is the irony, in 2.0 early game 2 marines can protect the base fairly efficiently, Im not going to say TF in base is wrong for fear of all the "rigid" comms out there, but just think about it.
I have noticed a higher amount of marine wins now, IF aliens take sensory first and marines lock down the other two hives, sensory has a good global effect, but still helps in no way on attacking marine held locations, if the marine team is worth anything (I warned you all that overuse of sensory would mean EVERYONE would be able to counter it) and the comm simply gets MT and an obs at each key location.
If the aliens take either other chamber first, its a hard slog to win.
As it stands just now, I still dont see individual aliens overpowered, Its when the aliens actually co-operate that is un counterable, BUT perhaps this was the way it was meant to be?
Also more comms are giving out JPs now, alien teams havent seen these in a while, and you see onos' trying to jump and devour them and skulks and fades flee.
For all you who think his win ratio is lies, learn the shotgun, as just now, alien teams dont know how to counter it, however because of this, "ITS SUCH A LAME TACTIC"... heh
infact ive been called lame for killing skulks with LMG too..... what has the world of NS come too..
This is gonna come off as flame bait I gather, my post not your's. I haven't been on the forums for a while because of a personal loss. And I haven't played this game even longer because of modem troubles. I loved v1.04 I could play it for hours on through and still not get bored or annoyed.
My modem situation is that during summer and the day time during a school year, no I'm not in school, my ISP couldn't handle the bandwith it was promising. Little 12-16 year olds were sucking up my gaming bandwith by staying up late on mommy and daddy's computer downloading porn from Danni's Harddrive. So recently it had been getting worse to the point of my not being able to play at any time, day or night. School year's back in so I can play, but it's v2.00 and needless to say it's <b>different.</b>
I've probably only gotten off a good three or four hours of play on the new version. The first obvious change is the maps, they're extremely dark and hard to navigate. And when I saw that an old map like NS_Eclipse coming up I was relieved to see that there'd be a map I knew. I didn't know it was rennovated, with all the others.
Second obvious change is that marines aren't being skulk rushed and fades aren't as powerful. The third would be turrets and ocs are alot more accurate and stronger even because of that. Fourth is sketchy, some people know how to battle gorge and are fun to be killed by. But when you kill 1-10 gorges you rush, and more so are killed by 7-10 of the ones you rushed there is a problem. Our beloved fatty is too strong, you shouldn't have to need your teammates to take out tubby. Working together is great, but I shouldn't have to hide and call for teammates every time I hear a snort.
Good ideas, fade blink fixed, being able to go Onos with one hive. Turret farms aren't demolished by one relentless fade or skulk. Sensory chambers cloak you indefinately.
Bad ideas, map rennovation, making hive locations irrelevant. They used to be key places in the game a player needed to control, now you only need them to keep the aliens from respawning. And aliens hardly need them at all, they have become decoration.
<i>"OOo I'm a gorge I better get three dcs up then put up a hive!"</i>
"We don't need a hive, cap nodes."
<i>"Huh?"</i>
Also stomp and digest are two completely idiotic ideas. This is StarCraft, not Warcraft okay? I have been frustrated to the brink with this ****. I joined the game to play, not to unload three-hundred lmg rounds into an Onos only to spend the next minute being digested in his freaking stomach. This was a redundant idea beyond belief, Onos are already the single strongest unit in this game soooo, let's make them stronger!
Putting one marine out of commission by killing him is one thing, putting one marine out of commission for four times the normal amount of time he'd have to wait to respawn is another.
Lastly, I might stay on the forums, but this game right now is dead to me. I will not play it, I'll wait for the next update and see if they can't fix these horrible mistakes. Oh and it's newbie not noob, n00b, or newb.
Unfortunately there are so many factual errors in your observations that I can tell you have not been able to play 2.0 as much as you need to to understand the differences. Perhaps read the changlelog and you'll get a better idea.
For a start onos are no where near as powerfull as they were in 1.04. You can drop a carapace onos in as little as 130 LMG hits. With Lvl3 upgrades you can actually kill an Carapaced onos in 39 Pistol hits. Devour is not ALL powerfull but I agree it is damn annoying. Stomp stuns for a very short ammount of time nd is countered by being above or below the onos.
Gorges are nearly the equal to marines but spit is easy to dodge and without Celerity they are slow and cumbersome. As for resources they are far more important now because with 3 hives and no resources you will get slaughtered as you will have no way of defending your land.
Oh and newbie and newb mean begginner - ie you trying to learn
noob and n00b mean a person who believes they know more than they do and spoils the game for others by being an idiot.
I think you should just go as commander more often if you think you have a good handle on the strategy of NS2.0.
Actually, it's NS.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Lastly, I might stay on the forums, but this game right now is dead to me. I will not play it, I'll wait for the next update and see if they can't fix these horrible mistakes. Oh and it's newbie not noob, n00b, or newb.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time...
Oyy, two things I forgot to add not greatly important, or maybe they are.
v1.04 was fun, for the beginner. New players to this game will join it, die countless times, get lost, follow wp and still get killed. I've never been great at the game, but I knew what to do to win a round. I realize that the forums were flooded with new users and the servers popped up real quick, but that happens when any game is released. In a month I guarentee you activity will drop back to normal, if not less than before. And the only time I was distressed or **** off was when a game would end, but one player on a team would stay in a corner and wait to be shot/eaten. Or when some jackass would drop three ccs at the beginning of the game, that was the extent.
The people who learn to adapt and want to continue playing despite the many errors one may see at first hand, are the people who are elite. The average Joe Schmoe, which would be me, doesn't have the time, patience, or comprehension to deal with it.
I really think that v1.04 was balanced beyond belief. Why? Because on NS_Tanith the commander relocated us to Waste Handling hive location and dropped hmgs/meds/welders and we all stood at base defending from the Fade onslaught. We literally spent one hours in heated battle, all the aliens were around our base next to dc chambers. Everytime a man lost an hmg, another man picked it up. We got health when we needed it most and picked off some fades every now and then. That my friends is balance, to me anyway. After we lost our armory it ended with a gorge running inside and dropped lotsa ocs. Allowing his buddies to attack us without retreat.
Point being, I fear we will never see this again ^.- (we being the average Joe.)
the 'marine' experience is
the same thing happened with 1.0x except it was the aliens who where
posting how unfair the 'alien' experience was
the point is this
the 2 sides are too different for balance to exist at all
before it leaned towards marines
now it leans towards aliens
in both versions there were wins on both sides...they were not 50%-50%...they never will be
the solution
play both sides
as an alien you will learn your limitations and how to exploit them when playing marines
as a marine you will learn your limitations and how to exploit them when playing aliens
just play the game <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
It was worth reading, not like most of these NS 2.0 threads!
Thanks for the good read!
And I agree, this isn't StarCraft/Warcraft this is Natural Selection (duh, I thought everyone knew that)
As far as the marine strategy that started this topic.
Good ideas, and 2 or 3 marines can usually hold spawn after the initial rush, and the others can relocate to another res/hive/easily defensable position. It isn't necessary to drop TF and turrets every game, and a few well placed mines will also stop a skulk rush fairly easily.
Shotguns, get enough of them, and they kill redeming Oni like mad...very nice tactic, plus they take care of those darn vent lerks that love to spray there stink all over my base.
Anyway, who would listen to someone like me with so few posts...the sad thing is I have been perusing these forums since November last year, I just haven't had much to say....