Sad to hear as lack of some sort of skill-based matchmaking is really crippling the playerbase. NS2's skill curve is much, much better when your not regularly pitting Bronze-level players against Platinum-level ones.
well when you organize a scrim / gather / tournament, it is a type matchmaking. can you imagine actually enjoying this game without any of that?
obviously it's not going to be as quick as finding a 1v1 in Starcraft, but it's better if players wait 5-10 minutes and play a "real game" instead of joining 30-player servers mid-match...
the lack of RTS-like matchmaking where teams are fixed and all players start & finish the game together was a mistake
they style they chose works in games without resource management, but NS2 is too different from something like enemy territory
the round is considerably less fun as the game goes on. there are real reasons not to switch teams when players leave. big games sometimes last an hour even if they're horrible. it just doesn't work.
That's one way to do it and would probably be the best for people interested in an ENSL-style gather setup. However, I was thinking a quick join feature that deposits you in the first server that fit certain search parameters (e.g. average player skill, playercount, ping, whether you have favorited it, etc). You could even add the server's average player skill to the server browser.
The point is that skill imbalances are one of the biggest problems with NS2 of which the game does nothing to fix.
I am sorry but I played with Godar and tried out the new balance mod, it is a completely different game but leaning to the downgrade curve...They made the skulks just utterly stupid and I completely agree with Bonkers statement. GG game, GG.
balance mod is the future and i have to disagree with bonkers.
the balance mod is the future and without it as u can see already the game is slowly dropping dead.
95% of the players i talked with, enjoyed the balance mod.
More tactics, more stuff to do.
You got more to do as an Alien Kham then as Marin commander.
But people always cry about changes. Mostly the Trolls.
I really like the balance mod, but I also really enjoy the normal game. Of course there are certain problems with the game as it stands right now.
The fact that there is very little for the Alien com to do right now is a problem. The balance mod tries to fix this and it seems a lot more interesting.
Skulk movement in balance mod is by far the most enjoyable element for me. It takes a lot more skill than the live version to manoeuvre around. The only problem I see with this is that it means the aliens can get around the map far too quickly early game which could cause some problems for the marines as they won't be able to keep up with that kind of speed until they get jetpacks.
I think I prefer the lerk movement in the live version right now although the balance mod movement is quite interesting too.
The fade movement in the live version I find more enjoyable than the balance mod movement but I do quite like the blink/bunnyhop style too. It might grow on me.
I have yet to try the onos and gorge out but I did a bit of commanding yesterday and I watched in amazement as 4 of my fully upgrades marines (only using lmg) spent atleast a minute or slightly more trying to kill 1 gorge on his own! Gorge heal spray+cara too strong maybe? There was a crag there also so perhaps the heal wave on that kept him alive.
Before I can really give any real comment whether I would prefer this mod to the live version I would really need to play a pcw/scrim to see the difference in competitive but considering the mod is still something that is being worked on it does look promising, however in some cases it felt like marines might be slightly weaker than aliens but would need to give it some proper testing.
Perhaps UWE can/will implement some elements of the balance mod into the live version or maybe it will always just stay a mod that competitive players will use for matches. Either way I am very interested to see both what UWE and Sewlek have in store for each respective version of the game.
Those are my thoughts so far, sorry for the long read!
Great Job working on their next game .. how about they finish this one first .. OMFG!
this is like .. we have nothing for Starcraft2 the third part, with the protoss .. whatever it will be named, so i think half our team should get started on StarCraft 3 ... sounds like a good plan right?
HELL NO .. not even a big ass company like Blizzard can afford that so why would it be a good idea for little UWE? !
He said a while back (even prior to Cologne) that he no longer worked directly on NS2, he is solely on the business end of it. While Sewlek and the rest of the team are still focusing on NS2. That's why its so important to give good feedback on the Balance Mod, since NS2 will move closer into that direction. But obviously just because some things are in the Balance mod right now, doesn't mean they'll make it into NS2, they are only testing certain things to see if it would work or not.
Just make a mod like i see one on the beta stage of ns2 who is the NS1 style gameplay, gorge build rt etc like in NS1 but whit ns2 graphics, all ppl will play on it, because the ffa on ns2 isnt fun a lot instead of ns1 where you can play 4-5 hours whit friend in ffa and have good game played . NS2 is boring, ns1 was so fun, friendly, and reactive.
Did someone remember the name of the mod who make ns2 a ns1like gameplay?
Tux
ps: brign back hmg instead of useless GL and Flamers, get back gorge building rt and dc/sc/mt etc kick off aliens comm its useless, etc etc make the possibility to REMAKE sometime RELOCATION etc ..
Just make NS1 all gameplays and techtray etc on ns2 graphics ;) and all people will come back , ffa will be fun and ppl on it will have teamplay etcc the competitive side will be 1000x better than etc JUST PUT NS1 ON BETTER GRAPHICS AND PPL WILL PLAYS THIS GAME FOR 10year AGAIN.
And you are telling me that not every single person that preorderd the game was not EPICLY PISSED because they took so damn long to deliver?
All the preorders were cause ns1 was great and ppl said .. it is worth that to me cause NS1 was great !
Then they had a releasedate .. which was less than acurate ... then the game is unplayable even though the say it is "finished" and now you still have no decent balance or gameplay !
ANd you still need a beast of a computer to have some sort of fun !
So yeah .. FAIL for the ppl .. that they made to much money with that is clear to us all but thx for telling us that for them ofc it was succesful and they can alrdy not gice a shit .. cause sometimes i feel like THEY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE !
So what i was saying is .. FAILURE to actually deliver a game that will sustain a big community and be played over a long TIME !
Thx for taking the money perspective it is always good to see how ppl think XD !
I'm not sure how you think UWE would be able to continue to support NS2 if they went bankrupt from not making enough money. Yes, the 'money perspective' is important because without money UWE can't keep giving us free updates to the game.
I'm also not sure what you consider to be a 'big' community, but NS1 went for years in the 500-2000 playercount range (http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/129975/natural-selection-playercounts/p1). NS2 looks well on its way to doing something similar, since UWE has already stated and have regularly delivered on updates to the game. As long as something like WoW 2.0 doesn't drop within the next few years to decimate the online gaming communities, I expect NS2 to continue quite nicely for years to come.
one thing i would say is that trying to make 'balance mod' the defacto standard 6 months after launch will not have any positive effects on player counts. i suspect it will disillusion alot of public players (not to mention competitive players) and so transfer from one scene to the other will stop.
releasing a wholesale redesign of the game 6 months after release is bad game development imo. if you feel changes need to be made, make them incrementally, its safer and will lead to greater acceptance of the changes .
funny how some changes in the balance mod were tried in beta but they got removed again. things like "armory doesnt heal armor" were approved by the majority of players :/
If you think about the History of NS .. there is not one single thing in that balance mod that has not been in the game at some point !
So i do not think it will be very hard for most ppl to adjust.
And lets face it NS is a game which has a learning curve it takes some brain so if ppl cant figure out those few changes they should not be playing NS anyway.
Also:
I think it took them more than 3 years to get NS1 balanced .. and they made HUGE CHANGES.
In the start you could not get more than 33 res as alien when you only got 1 hive unless you are a gorge.. also gorge bot more res than the rest of the team .. so u enver had morte than 1 gorge and losing him was HORRIBLE !
They changed these things and ppl adjusted very quick tbh.
So .. to sum up: DONT BE AFRAID ! .. ppl wont stop playing just cause they might have to learn a few new things. I actually think this might be good for NS2 !
"I'm also not sure what you consider to be a 'big' community, but NS1 went for years in the 500-2000 playercount range "
In the 5 last years of it's lifespan, not in the 5 first months. Ns2 is under 950 now.
And yea i agree thelaw, it's pretty funny to see a part of the competitive community pushing a ns1 mod of ns2
:> (it's basically what it is) when UWE didn't want this to happen in the first place.
Props to the persons involved for trying but i see problems with this too
1: the low playercount and the players being used to the ns2 mechanics, exactly like thelaw says it will create a schism on the allready dwindling community.
2: the so called "performance patch" is still not released.
3: why would you try to make this cup bigger than the season 2 finals with the fancy prize talks? To get more people involved in this playtest because UWE playtesters weren't able to deliver?
Anyway in the state the game is, with the engine performance and the super registration, what's the idea behind making it faster? Isn't it counter productive? Is the engine in a state where fighting 20 speed fades is fun?
I mean ok it's cool to use the pseudo-quakish-strafejumping, but at this point i would rather play ns2 at a stable 125fps than ns1 with new graphics at 50fps mid game!
IMO: We need performance and a free weekend soon, the summer with new game releases will prolly have it's toll on the playerbase. 300 playercount on september if nothing happens. SPARTAAAAAA
