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I stopped playing, it just seems like the game has lost the fun of earlier builds, and the community seems to be collapsing. I keep the thread bookmarked in case anything new and interesting comes along, but given that UWE had moved to a business model of "begging their existing customers to donate money" I don't expect the updates to go on for too much longer.
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Nov 21, 2013 23:54
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Volmarias posted:I stopped playing, it just seems like the game has lost the fun of earlier builds, and the community seems to be collapsing. I keep the thread bookmarked in case anything new and interesting comes along, but given that UWE had moved to a business model of "begging their existing customers to donate money" I don't expect the updates to go on for too much longer. They let it out a few news updates ago that they're starting to focus on their next game, whatever that will be. I'm kind of hoping at this point it's something out of the NS universe, a completely new game. I would like to see what these guys can come up with when they aren't tied down to their existing universe.
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Nov 21, 2013 23:57
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Yeah, it is going to be very different. You should be seeing an announcement in just the next couple of weeks!
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Nov 22, 2013 00:06
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Incredulous Dylan posted:Yeah, it is going to be very different. You should be seeing an announcement in just the next couple of weeks!  I really hope they don't repeat what happened with NS2. Announce super early, delay and push it back for 5 years.Would be cool if it's a phone game, honestly. I wouldn't mind playing a turn-based strategy game made by UWE on my phone/tablet...
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Nov 22, 2013 00:09
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It's sad to see that NS2 didn't become a huge competitive game and that it seems to be dying (I haven't played in months). Here's to hoping UWE can hold in there.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:26
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Sire Oblivion posted:It's sad to see that NS2 didn't become a huge competitive game and that it seems to be dying (I haven't played in months). Here's to hoping UWE can hold in there. It was never going to be a competitive staple, and honestly I think UWE trying to push it in this direction hurt the game a bit when it came to keeping new players. UWE has come out and said that whenever they put the game on sale it sells good - its just that none of those new players wind up staying. IMO I don't think in game with as much going on as NS there's much you can do to solve that problem without outright cutting stuff and simplifying the game, which will cause a lot of veterans to cry out. So yeah, I'll keep playing and enjoying ns2 on occasion. But I'm looking forward to the next UWE game.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:32
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:UWE has come out and said that whenever they put the game on sale it sells good - its just that none of those new players wind up staying. IMO I don't think in game with as much going on as NS there's much you can do to solve that problem without outright cutting stuff and simplifying the game, which will cause a lot of veterans to cry out. That's a big problem, though, and that's something that really bit them with NS1. Constantly trying to find ways to let the extremely good players dominate more just turned people off or pushed them to the very large servers, like myself. The fact that they were balancing for 6v6 but people mostly went to 12v12 or 16v16 should have been a big clue. They STILL don't balance for those games properly. If the skill ceiling was LOWERED for individual players, so that teamwork was required instead of allowing lone wolfs to singlehandedly dominate servers, I think we might have seen a different result. Instead, we ended up with That Guy going early lerk and shutting down the board, and convincing the new population that the game sucked in the process.
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Nov 22, 2013 02:28
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Volmarias posted:That's a big problem, though, and that's something that really bit them with NS1. Constantly trying to find ways to let the extremely good players dominate more just turned people off or pushed them to the very large servers, like myself. The fact that they were balancing for 6v6 but people mostly went to 12v12 or 16v16 should have been a big clue. They STILL don't balance for those games properly. Yeah, this has been brought up again and again in this thread. They eventually corrected some of it in NS1 when they re-did the resource model to better accommodate bigger games, but they really should have just balanced around those icky "pubby" 24 player games that...you know...everyone is playing in (because they're still fun). Oh well, it's too late now really. I'm still going to play and enjoy the game when I can 
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Nov 22, 2013 04:24
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Volmarias posted:If the skill ceiling was LOWERED for individual players, so that teamwork was required instead of allowing lone wolfs to singlehandedly dominate servers, I think we might have seen a different result. Instead, we ended up with That Guy going early lerk and shutting down the board, and convincing the new population that the game sucked in the process. Yeah, I haven't played in a month or so. The game looks fabulous, and when its fun its great, but there is too much "Really good person goes lerk, shuts down the entire side of the map".
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Nov 24, 2013 10:57
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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I can't have fun with this game anymore. It runs like poo poo and I'm tired of dying when my FPS drops to like 15 whenever I get close to someone. Marines are impossible to hit these days with their acrobat bullshit and maybe I could possibly land a bite on them if this game ran better but it just doesn't.
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Nov 24, 2013 13:05
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I playtested this game for 4 years, and the fatigue of playing the same thing over and over, and the performance just never getting to an acceptable standard just kind of killed it for me post release. I enjoyed seeing something get made and the iterations that the game went through, but it kind of killed my enthusiasm after so long. Also because of the way everything is cached, the initial loading times are like 5 minutes long after every patch, and I can't handle that poo poo. UWE struggling with their engine really compromised their ability to concentrate on the game and deliver a product on time. Their lead coder was constantly focused on performance, for almost the entire development of the game. I really hope for whatever they are working on next, they ditch Spark. Because there are far better alternatives out there that didn't exist when UWE started NS2. Kernel Monsoon fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Nov 24, 2013 |
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Nov 24, 2013 13:14
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My post was really just venting but you make a good point. It must be said that UWE really put in a very good effort and the game is very pretty, and that really they should be recognised for the achievements they made in pursuing their own engine. But in all honesty unless you have Carmack on your team you probably shouldn't be building an engine from scratch anyway. Existing engines build on years of performance improvements for rendering, memory management, netcode, etc, whereas Spark is replete with rough edges. My favourite alt-history hypothetical is if UWE had stuck with Source for making NS2 (I can't remember what it was that they said Source couldn't offer). It could have shaved years off of development time, NS2 would have run much smoother and we'd possibly be anticipating the release of NS3 by now.
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Nov 24, 2013 13:45
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I think it was Max claiming that doing their own engine with Lua bindings and dynamic culling would allow quicker development iterations than using the Source engine. Except the time spent refining those systems was way too long, and Source already has precedence for using Lua.
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Nov 24, 2013 15:56
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This game took me to Germany so that was cool... but in the end it wasn't all that great. Too many issues like those stated above.
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Nov 24, 2013 16:48
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AgentF posted:My favourite alt-history hypothetical is if UWE had stuck with Source for making NS2 (I can't remember what it was that they said Source couldn't offer). It could have shaved years off of development time, NS2 would have run much smoother and we'd possibly be anticipating the release of NS3 by now. I remember an interview where they said Source couldn't render the spread of infection the way they wanted. No engine at the time could. They built their own engine out of necessity.
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Nov 24, 2013 18:03
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I'm not sure if this is how the thread works, but any chance of a organized get-together-to-play NS2 at a certain time?
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Nov 24, 2013 20:51
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I don't play too many games these days, so it's great knowing that I can hop into NS2 for a few hours every once in a while and get some sweet twitch gameplay with that RTS twist. The game has issues but it is a finished product that is fun and plays well. Whenever I take a break from games and come back there's good times waiting!
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Nov 24, 2013 20:51
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limp_cheese posted:I remember an interview where they said Source couldn't render the spread of infection the way they wanted. No engine at the time could. They built their own engine out of necessity. One of the early beta builds had phenomenal infestation, it looked and behaved pretty much exactly in the tech demo (which was done in source). It was incredibly cool, but made the game run like complete rear end. The infestation they have now is still pretty cool, but I think they could have done it in source. Also, I thought the problem wasn't infestation so much as the dynamic lighting changes that was their reason for ditching Source? I seem to recall in the previous thread talking about infestation being the reason, and someone pointed out it was actually shifting the lighting in powered/unpowered rooms. Additionally, we were talking about balancing for players, but I think the real challenge was balancing around commanders.
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Nov 25, 2013 00:07
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Guesticles posted:Also, I thought the problem wasn't infestation so much as the dynamic lighting changes that was their reason for ditching Source? I seem to recall in the previous thread talking about infestation being the reason, and someone pointed out it was actually shifting the lighting in powered/unpowered rooms. \/Well consider me educated\/ Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Nov 25, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 00:29
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In Source, you have one set of very nice shadows that are baked. However, if a light goes off, those shadows remain. You end up having to have only dynamic shadows, and those aren't very good in Source. Dynamic shadows did get an upgrade later with Alien Swarm and Portal 2.
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Nov 25, 2013 00:39
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HL1 and Source support prebaked on/off shadows with multiple lightmap pages, but it exponentially increases the map's file size.
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Nov 25, 2013 09:05
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Right, it wasn't until Doom 3 that a game had dynamically calculated lighting effects (move a light around a room, see the shadows dance on the wall). This was very expensive so there couldn't be that many lights in a scene at once, which is one reason why Doom 3 was so notoriously dark. I'll also note that it had no "diffusion" of lighting, ie a single light in a room would make a 100% pitch black shadow on the wall.
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Nov 25, 2013 11:48
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Keep in mind that UWE started developing this game years ago, before source had any technical upgrades. I was added to the playtest team when UWE were experimenting with art assets in the source engine, A bunch of 'vertical slices' were made, and it was a struggle to get the lighting to look good. Things like Unity and Unreal Engine 3's free licencing weren't really a thing back then either. Their lead coder was the Lead Engine Programmer on Titan Quest, so it wasn't as if nobody on the team had ever worked on a custom engine before. Natural Selection 1 had a lot of depth, and with that comes complexity. Both sides were completely asymmetrical. I can't really say that's the case in NS2. With the tech tree you always feel like you're going through the motions and not actually making the choice of going down one branch over the other. It's all very shallow. Why pick Exosuits when Jetpacks are clearly the better choice? Kernel Monsoon fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Nov 25, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 14:01
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It just felt like they tried too hard to be similar to the original, without adding the little things in the original that made it so fun. They probably would have been better off catering to the large server casuals instead of focusing on small team competitive balance.
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Nov 25, 2013 14:07
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Should've just capped the max player count at 16 or 18 and called it a day
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Nov 25, 2013 17:40
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Bolow posted:Should've just capped the max player count at 16 or 18 and called it a day No. Just no. Doing this would mean the game would have fewer players than it does now. I know I wouldn't still be playing. I actually miss the 32 player servers that have all disappeared. Every time I load it up it seems like there are fewer servers. Not sure how much longer this game will last.
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Nov 25, 2013 18:08
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Supernorn posted:Natural Selection 1 had a lot of depth, and with that comes complexity. Both sides were completely asymmetrical. I can't really say that's the case in NS2. With the tech tree you always feel like you're going through the motions and not actually making the choice of going down one branch over the other. It's all very shallow. Why pick Exosuits when Jetpacks are clearly the better choice? Because you suck with jetpacks 
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Nov 25, 2013 19:47
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erotic dad posted:HL1 and Source support prebaked on/off shadows with multiple lightmap pages, but it exponentially increases the map's file size. This. Also the compiler/engine tends to throw a shitfit if you try to pack too much lightmap (or any sort of data) into the map file. Source can do a lot of things, really, but only in small doses.
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Nov 25, 2013 23:10
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I still hop on and play myself on the nights my usual multiplayer friends aren't online. Its all good and fun until someone really good at the game gets on and just dominates. I just quit servers now once someone on either team finishes a round or two with only a few deaths total. That number varies depending on how many times I was on the receiving end of a kill. But it just drains all the fun out of the game when 1 person can shut the whole map down. I make sure to bail before I get frustrated, because thats all that happens. Also, is it just me, or does lag give you an advantage in this game now? When I play, I find I'm consistently dying to people with a ping at least in the 3 digits more often than people who have normal/moderate ping (less than 100ms). So just joining a server, and looking at the board, I can pick out several people without even looking at kill ratio who will kill me more than I them with fair accuracy.
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Nov 25, 2013 23:52
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I've been playing this so much lately that sometimes I'm the rear end in a top hat that shuts down half the map. It's nice to be able to put up a stand against other strong players, but a good lerk or fade is still generally unstoppable. I finally bailed on Savage2 after a bunch of years, which is a similar game. I watched the community dwindle away on that game, and the same thing is going to happen here. Multiplayer games with such enormous skill cliffs are just not sustainable, especially when the "higher level" play essentially comes down to a jumping game. I wish aim and biting was more forgiving, there's no reason to miss a bite when you are right next to someone. Lerks and fades needs to be slowed the gently caress down because you just can't hit them. Basing the game around the idea that you need to keep a unit alive is not fun for anyone except the dumb fade who just went 20/0 who ragequits when someone actually kills him anyway. UWE should just do whatever they can to chop off the higher end of the skill cliff, because then the game will not just be for the guys who play all the goddamn time. I would love for the game to be about strategy, positioning, organization, map control, and those kinds of things. Right now it's generally about a few players who know how to mash on the controls in the right way in order to dodge bullets or bites. All that being said, I don't know if UWE has any real insight or compulsion to commit to some strong design changes to make this game more fun for a larger audience. Pontificating Ass fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 00:11
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It's too late and they're already started on their next game.
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Nov 28, 2013 09:05
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Most of them are still working on NS2 though.
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Nov 28, 2013 16:22
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Is their next game another sudoku?
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Nov 29, 2013 06:27
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Garfu posted:This game took me to Germany so that was cool... but in the end it wasn't all that great. Too many issues like those stated above. Yeah those hundreds of hours you've played must mean it's not a very good game. Sound logic. ... That's not to say I think everything worked out perfectly. But it's pretty funny when people like Garfu claim the game isn't very good after such a ridiculous amount of time played. Opinionated fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 07:02
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I played it for as long as I did because I was very good at it and I started playing it because a group of people I FPSd with wanted to jump to it. I've played 40 hours of bf4 since I got it a couple weeks ago but I think it's a terrible game, I'm just extremely good at it so I keep playing.
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Nov 29, 2013 09:03
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I would at least say NS2 falls short in several ways. It's a good, unique game, but the lack of polish shows sometimes, which is unfortunate given that I'm certain it's not for lack of effort. The engine will probably always have its rough edges and the gameplay will probably always be unrelentingly hostile to newcomers, until the playerbase begins to dwindle like most games with these problems. It's been great fun in the meantime, however, and there's always the chance that some unexpected fixes could revitalize the game and playerbase. Tepid and pointless statement though that probably is...
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Nov 29, 2013 12:46
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Downer thread regarding the big community event: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/133327/a-frank-ns2wc-discussion
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Dec 1, 2013 20:47
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Sadly sounds about right; not a lot of praise going around for NS2 as of late, it seems like. FPS/RTS games seemed to be pretty universally doomed to elitism and mismanagement, though. Seems like DOTA-like games (MOBA's, I think?) suffer from similar issues.
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Dec 1, 2013 21:05
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Obiter dictum posted:Downer thread regarding the big community event: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/133327/a-frank-ns2wc-discussion This is loving stupid, why can't people who haven't played in any games yet change teams? I wasn't following this event at all but I'm still mad that they would have such a lovely rule.
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Dec 1, 2013 22:14
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Video game tournaments are stupid.
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