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Well the upgrade system is really unintuitive, and this is coming from someone who has played pretty much every iteration of NS Combat since NS1 during the 3.0 playtest. Certain maps are hideously unbalanced. The control point mode is a hot pile of steaming garbage and should be avoided at all costs. The upgrade system completely fucks aliens making it next to impossible to get anything higher than a lerk if you're up against a good marine team, this is compounded even further with the control point game mode. The only positive things I can even think of are the how they handled hive/command chair health. Armor damage can be repaired, health damage can not, and the new cannon is kind of fun to use despite it being hideously loving overpowered against low tier life forms. The game still devolves into throwing a shitload of onos+gorges or jetpacks+gl's into the spawn area and chipping away at the enemies base. It's just not very entertaining or exciting to play.
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Nov 1, 2014 03:50
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http://steamcharts.com/app/310110 But they made a cool thousand bucks for their effort!
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Nov 1, 2014 04:17
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Combat is fun, I think it really is the best parts of NS2 concentrated. Matches are paced much better, and BOTH teams tend towards getting more powerful units as the match goes by; as opposed to vanilla NS2 where one team ends up stomping the other. You usually can't tell who is going to win the match most of the time, since it only takes one good push to win. The control point mode is kinda lame, but that's just an extra mode. If you can't find fun building classes with NS2's weapons and abilities, I'm not sure what fun is to you.
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Nov 1, 2014 04:36
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Garfu posted:http://steamcharts.com/app/310110 I'd be more annoyed but I only paid like $3 for it since I sold a shitload of cards. But seriously they're charging $15 for a game that can barely distinguish it self apart from the mod with the exception of the maps that are rather nice. Even then you still get poo poo like the co_sava hiveroom which looks like it came straight out of the Half-Life 1 version
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Nov 1, 2014 20:19
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Put some time into it (almost 2 hours!) And I agree with Bolow. Everything of fun for aliens is gated to either level 7 (actual useful abilities). Or my favorite xenocide, which hasn't been the same since NS1. I miss so badly hitting a marine start in co on a fresh respawn with some spore laid down, and getting a 6+ xenocide. For a level 10 ability, why wouldn't you go onos? Instead of what amounts to a grumpy skulk fart (that seems to do about as much damage as one would). And I don't know what it is about Spark. But it has never had that tight feeling of aiming like NS1 did, it just feels.... mushy and slow.
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Nov 2, 2014 09:58
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ZombieSupaStar posted:And I don't know what it is about Spark. But it has never had that tight feeling of aiming like NS1 did, it just feels.... mushy and slow. That's what puts me off NS2, they ended up basically reverting every change to make it more like NS1, and the engine is both less visually appealing and runs like poo poo.
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Nov 2, 2014 10:51
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After 2 years I re-installed this game. I couldn't join most of the servers because I was missing "required mods" and when I did join the server was a laggy piece of poo poo. I joined another and I got subsequently yelled at by some retard because I decided to hop in the alien commander seat (which was vacant for 10 minutes) and tried to expand the base. I then got voted out of the commander seat and kickbanned from the server. 10/10 will play again.
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Nov 2, 2014 15:32
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I don't even have an NS2 icon next to my name when I donated $50 for the drat black armor like a year before they even released an alpha. f4's
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Nov 2, 2014 23:04
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Bolow posted:So this Combat game isn't very good. It should have shipped with built in combat, like NS1. A large part of the reason many people even played NS1 was combat, it led them into the full game. NS2 has been a lesson in how to waste absurd amounts of time and money attempting to do everything in-house while catering to rabid Charlie fanboys, and having it end up a mediocre pile of garbage once released. The fact that combat has been packaged up by modders for suckers to buy is icing on the cake.
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Nov 3, 2014 09:05
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DarkStryke posted:It should have shipped with built in combat, like NS1.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:53
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There were a bunch of developer missteps that made this game a posterchild for missed opportunities. Everything from deciding to roll their own engine to refusing to consider anything higher than 6v6 for balance changes. It's cool though, we've got a new asymmetric fps in town - sharks versus divers.
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Nov 3, 2014 16:16
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DarkStryke posted:NS2 has been a lesson in how to waste absurd amounts of time and money attempting to do everything in-house
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Nov 3, 2014 17:19
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Bhodi posted:There were a bunch of developer missteps that made this game a posterchild for missed opportunities. Everything from deciding to roll their own engine to refusing to consider anything higher than 6v6 for balance changes. I think their excuse on the engine was that back in 2006 when they started working on NS2, there wasn't an engine availible that could do the stuff they wanted to do (mainly the infestation poo poo). It's not like it is now, where everyone and their mother has a free version of their engine you can just use. Also, yeah the 6v6 balance poo poo was killer. I've hammered the point home in this thread, but they made the same exact mistake in NS1 also. wukkar posted:Did NS2 turn a profit for UWE? Charlie indicated in a gamasutra comment in early 2013 that the game was going to be profitable, so yeah. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/187299/postmortem_unknown_worlds_.php?page=4#comment190466 chocolateTHUNDER fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 18:21
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I remember reading about their successes during the game sales and I could easily believe it. There was a poo poo ton of new players around each sale. It seemed like every game would be 90% brand new people. Unfortunately, the tutorial wasn't available/was garbage back during the largest player influxes and I think that, coupled with hostility from certain parts of the player base, scared a lot of those people off. It isn't 2000 anymore where people only had a handful of big games to play and they would stick around and learn a game. It seems like if your game can't offer instant gratification it is more likely to do poorly. DOTA is really the only game with a learning curve that I see people sticking around for and a lot of that likely has to do with an excellent matchmaking system (plus marketing through tournaments and casters, etc). I've been within around 5% of a 50/50 win loss rate overall in that game since I started with no experience at all. Whenever I have a revelation about how to play and go on some 15 game winning streak, I seem to be moved to a different player group that knows how to counter my new knowledge and over time I go back to my usual ratio. If you don't know what you are doing in NS2 you could easily go through a lot of games and just get crushed without understanding why at all.
Incredulous Dylan fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 19:52
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On the plus side I am seeing a shitton of new players from the Halloween sale They still don't do the tutorials though 
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Nov 3, 2014 20:17
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I was hopeful about NS2: Combat but wanted to wait to buy it until I heard how well it did. I asked someone who bought it on launch day how many servers had people in them. He only saw 3. 
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Nov 3, 2014 20:30
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Incredulous Dylan posted:I remember reading about their successes during the game sales and I could easily believe it. There was a poo poo ton of new players around each sale. It seemed like every game would be 90% brand new people. Unfortunately, the tutorial wasn't available/was garbage back during the largest player influxes and I think that, coupled with hostility from certain parts of the player base, scared a lot of those people off. It isn't 2000 anymore where people only had a handful of big games to play and they would stick around and learn a game. It seems like if your game can't offer instant gratification it is more likely to do poorly. DOTA is really the only game with a learning curve that I see people sticking around for and a lot of that likely has to do with an excellent matchmaking system (plus marketing through tournaments and casters, etc). I've been within around 5% of a 50/50 win loss rate overall in that game since I started with no experience at all. Whenever I have a revelation about how to play and go on some 15 game winning streak, I seem to be moved to a different player group that knows how to counter my new knowledge and over time I go back to my usual ratio. If you don't know what you are doing in NS2 you could easily go through a lot of games and just get crushed without understanding why at all. I think this is slightly off the mark because you could come in with no understanding of how the game works but have good FPS aim and top the boards every round having fun despite your teammates' experience and that is what truly kills off the newbie players. Tutorials might help them stick a little longer but the good aim people will still ruin servers. There's no balance to check that part.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:53
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Zigmidge posted:I think this is slightly off the mark because you could come in with no understanding of how the game works but have good FPS aim and top the boards every round having fun despite your teammates' experience and that is what truly kills off the newbie players. Then they always play marines. I personally stopped playing NS2 because 3-4 "good" people on the server always joined the same team, and I could predict who would win just by looking at the team list at the beginning. As the player population dropped, this happened more and more often. I tried to stop it by joining the other team, but it felt like I was smashing my head against a wall. Even if you called them out on it, they didn't care. I don't understand that mentality of not wanting an even game and just stomping the other team over and over. It was really toxic to new players.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:05
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Stele007 posted:I was hopeful about NS2: Combat but wanted to wait to buy it until I heard how well it did. I asked someone who bought it on launch day how many servers had people in them. He only saw 3. During prime time US on the launch day there was only 2 US servers with people in them and 1 euro server. Also loving goddamn they made the assault rifle a giant pile of rear end chocolateTHUNDER posted:Also, yeah the 6v6 balance poo poo was killer. I've hammered the point home in this thread, but they made the same exact mistake in NS1 also. I always felt like they should have just capped servers at 9v9 and gone from there. Anything over that is loving terrible to play. Then again I've always preferred servers that were more akin to Nano-Grid back in the NS1 days as opposed to the pubbie shitshow that was Voogru and the like.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:09
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Zigmidge posted:I think this is slightly off the mark because you could come in with no understanding of how the game works but have good FPS aim and top the boards every round having fun despite your teammates' experience and that is what truly kills off the newbie players. Not to delve too deep into this but I will say I think that if you are up against good teamwork individual FPS skill won't make up for a lack of experience. If they are using cover, rotating skulks out for gorge heals, a commander is supporting properly with a drifter etc., you really have to rely on knowledge of game mechanics and proper team support to beat the push. I've defeated stacks four or five deep with a newer team but only if they are communicating and are willing to try strategies they aren't used to. There are only so many bullets in a clip! I agree it sucks to be up against a stack when your team isn't talking at all, though. I don't care if I lose if we actually worked together because half of the fun is in executing a plan for me.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:41
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That's true but unrealistic, you're giving the pubbies I've seen way too much credit.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:52
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Bolow posted:I always felt like they should have just capped servers at 9v9 and gone from there. Anything over that is loving terrible to play. Then again I've always preferred servers that were more akin to Nano-Grid back in the NS1 days as opposed to the pubbie shitshow that was Voogru and the like. It's a poo poo show partially because they refused to balance for it. When a large part of your community plays on large servers, maybe it's time to listen to them and balance for them instead of the ~*pros*~
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Nov 3, 2014 22:25
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They were hopeful that the game would be an e-sport, so they catered very heavily to the competitive side. Also most of the playtesters were playing nearly every day for years - meaning the average skill of the test servers was overwhelmingly above what you'd see in any public server. The game was good if both teams played well, but the hard truth is it just didn't have the right feel, speed or the performance of NS1, and it kind of made playing the game frustrating for me personally, once I ventured out of the testing circle. Still a great game though.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:52
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DarkStryke posted:It should have shipped with built in combat, like NS1. A large part of the reason many people even played NS1 was combat, it led them into the full game. I'd disagree with this; I think Combat was one of the main reasons that NS1 died. Sure, it's a fun game mode, but it's introduction fractured the player base heavily. Furthermore, Combat suffers from not being anywhere near as sticky a game mode as Classic, so players who played it as their main game mode churned out of the community faster. I used to run one of the larger NS1 servers out there, and I saw first hand the rapid diminishment in players that occurred afterwards.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:03
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I would argue that the reason combat caused that sort of exile is because NS1 classic has one of the least pleasant playerbases combined with one of the least welcoming set of gameplay mechanics I've ever encountered. It's not really surprising that a simpler to pick up gamemode which a good section of the more acidic community wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, would take off and draw a majority of the newer players away. And now, ten or so years later, we're back where we started. How times change.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:07
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At this point there is literally 0 game with this fabled "friendly playerbase". Grow a thick skin or just mute everyone. Actually most games are pretty much slient except for the ocassional intel or order from the more communicative players or the cocmmander. I stopped playing NS2 because every time they update my game takes like 10 minutes to re-cache each map and my computer right now just don't have the performance to run it smoothly. Well, my old server crowd kind of dissipated probably didn't help. But eh...NS1 is probably my most played game ever so I don't really mind buying the black armor edition back then and two extra copies during the sales as a thank you to the dev.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:18
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It didn't help that the 3.0 release of NS1 was pretty goddamn disastrous from a balance stand point. The veteran and constellation program was in large part to blame for that since no one bothered to even play classic during the entire 3.0 playtest. Myself included By the time 3.2 unfucked most of the major balance issues the game was soundly dead with the exception of the voogru servers which were poo poo.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:42
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Bolow posted:It didn't help that the 3.0 release of NS1 was pretty goddamn disastrous from a balance stand point. The veteran and constellation program was in large part to blame for that since no one bothered to even play classic during the entire 3.0 playtest. Myself included You could say the same for NS2 when it launched when it had a massive population but lost so much of it because of absolute poo poo game performance, the game not being optimised at all, and the Dev team rebalancing the game completely several times before it got into a decent state. Partly the fault also falls on the playerbase, since new players to the game are used to having their hand held through casual fps games like Team Fortress and Call of Duty, where dying isn't a massive deal. They bring this mentality to NS2 and never bother to change. I sing praise to the high heavens whenever I hear a rookie asking "what do I need to do" and using VOIP, or asking "how I do this". But for every 1 of those players there is a 100 brain donor rookie players who never listen, never communicate, never bother trying new tactics or staying in a group. These players then leave saying the game is "poo poo, unbalanced" etc, when really they never took the time to learn it. Yes the community can be poo poo, I can be a shithead when it comes to new players, but this is also one of the best communities for people who will willingly take time to help you learn the game. But every time I see new players I tell them to ask questions if they are confused or don't know what to do, but I am met with dead silence every time. TLDR: Game would have been better if performance and balance was closer to what we have now at release, and if casual players took the time to actually learn the game.
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Nov 5, 2014 12:34
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note that i'm only able to play on the weekends but go ahead and add me if you want to crush some fuckers on enjoyable servers (USA) http://steamcommunity.com/id/tryandstopus/
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Nov 8, 2014 01:10
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Incredulous Dylan posted:Not to delve too deep into this but I will say I think that if you are up against good teamwork individual FPS skill won't make up for a lack of experience. If they are using cover, rotating skulks out for gorge heals, a commander is supporting properly with a drifter etc., you really have to rely on knowledge of game mechanics and proper team support to beat the push. I've defeated stacks four or five deep with a newer team but only if they are communicating and are willing to try strategies they aren't used to. There are only so many bullets in a clip! I agree it sucks to be up against a stack when your team isn't talking at all, though. I don't care if I lose if we actually worked together because half of the fun is in executing a plan for me. Problem is when there's two (or more) of them, one blocking each lane. You can send the whole team to kill one, but then all your other lanes are open and probably have marines pushing up them while half your team respawns. Also, expecting any communications or semblance of teamwork from pubbies is an exercise in frustration. I've stopped trying or caring.
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Nov 8, 2014 03:34
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It is significantly easier to have one or two good combatants than it is to have a team full of good team-players.
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Nov 8, 2014 11:43
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Bhodi posted:There were a bunch of developer missteps that made this game a posterchild for missed opportunities. Everything from deciding to roll their own engine to refusing to consider anything higher than 6v6 for balance changes. I still think they should have just capped the max server size to 20 somehow, would have allowed for balanced games and probably retained more players with lower end PCs.
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Nov 8, 2014 16:20
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Dyz posted:I still think they should have just capped the max server size to 20 somehow, would have allowed for balanced games and probably retained more players with lower end PCs. That and make the competitive format 7v7 or 8v8. Doing both I think would have solved a ton of issues with the community.
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Nov 8, 2014 18:28
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Hardest part of the game for new players is that there are virtually no servers with decent communities. You can grab a pub game, but that will mostly be one guy with 6000 hours played going 45-0-0 with the commander just medpack spamming him the entire game. Or, if you're lucky, a fade ramping up about 75 kills with no deaths. TGNS has a decent server, but for all their "newbies are welcome!" stuff most of the guys on the server have been playing since release and are passive aggressive dicks to anyone new. The main admin has the typical "I'm totally fair" attitude but will instaban anyone who disagrees with him and has some incredible mood swings. Sadly it's still probably the only server worth playing on, although the LF server has some decent lower skilled games. It's really a shame the community is pretty much dead at this point. There aren't many high skill shooters out there anymore. NS2 sort of reminded me of the old quake, tfc, ns1 (obviously), etc. Lots of problems, but it had potential. Having the community take over will probably extend the life but they're just going to cater to same people driving away new players and probably patch in even more extremely high skill absurd jumping mechanics I think it's still a fun game and it's worth trying if you can get it for (preferably free) or 5$, but $20 is asking a lot for something so damaged. I actually tried playing ns1 a couple weeks ago as I saw there was still one server up and a forum with a few people. Had 12 players or something. I joined up, immediately got raged at because "6v6 noob", then got banned. It was a pretty accurate ns1 experience.
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Nov 11, 2014 05:20
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I do delight that this thread is basically a who's who of 'NS1.0 Forum Dwellers' though, it amuses me every time I look at it.Supernorn posted:Also most of the playtesters were playing nearly every day for years - meaning the average skill of the test servers was overwhelmingly above what you'd see in any public server. As someone who was involved as well, come on Norn, we can't even begin to give that much credit, competitively anyway.
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Dec 2, 2014 11:39
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So I bought this game a long time ago, but I didn't get around to playing it much, is it way past it's prime now?
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Feb 9, 2015 07:13
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Turtlicious posted:So I bought this game a long time ago, but I didn't get around to playing it much, is it way past it's prime now? Good luck finding a populated server that doesn't kick you at under 100 hours since about june 2014.
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Feb 9, 2015 07:15
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The Tactical Gamer servers were really good last time I was playing. They can also be hard to get into at prime time because of this.
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Feb 9, 2015 14:26
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There is a lot of populated servers, the game seems to have a load of rookies playing it now.
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Feb 9, 2015 19:52
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Turtlicious posted:So I bought this game a long time ago, but I didn't get around to playing it much, is it way past it's prime now? Pomp posted:Good luck finding a populated server that doesn't kick you at under 100 hours since about june 2014. This was my exact problem when I last tried to play. I pumped countless hours into the game before they implemented that whole ranking system, and got hosed when they did.
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Feb 9, 2015 23:15
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