I've been bothered by this for a while and feel it's time that i find out for sure.

First i want to ask if the ability to see when the marine com drops medpacks have been removed from NS2 or from either of the mods that are used within NSL. I fondly remember being able to clearly both see and hear this before, yet it was so long ago i can't remember when exactly it was. You can still see the medpacks on the ground as an alien, but i'm talking about the blue shine above the marine and the sound of them being dropped that i used to see and hear all the time. I'm pretty sure you can still hear a marine picking up a medpack, but it seems to be a sound with a much shorter range.

Second, if this has indeed been removed, i'd like to know whether this is intended or simply was unnoticed. Keeping SG marines at bay from afar as a lerk, or going in and out of a room as a fade, leaves me clueless whether or not the marines are being healed or not. Counting the previously clearly visible and audible drops of medpacks was obviously a way to try and keep check on how much health actually remains of the marines between engagements.

As the alien side haven't received the same dose, which i by the way feel they should definitely NOT, i don't see why the marines should have something as fundamental as healing made as good as invisible to the opposing team. Regen, heal-wave, and heal-spray are all clearly visible and audible from afar. Shouldn't medpacks function the same?

Agreed Robby this was bugging me last night, not sure if true though.

weather or not you can hear them or not, the split of a second decisions on if you're going to do engagements or not is not fundamentally changed weather you hear them or not, this is nothing but a quality of life option.

I would even argue if medpacks being more loud would neglect you hearing on something more vital, like an incoming pinch or fired shotgun/lmg/etc, everything adds up.

Iots says

weather or not you can hear them or not, the split of a second decisions on if you're going to do engagements or not is not fundamentally changed weather you hear them or not, this is nothing but a quality of life option.

I would even argue if medpacks being more loud would neglect you hearing on something more vital, like an incoming pinch or fired shotgun/lmg/etc, everything adds up.

You seem like a person who've either never played Lerk or yolos the whole round through. If that's what works for you, i'm glad for you. Nothing wrong with that. But not everyone plays the same regardless of the health of the enemy. Knowing whether the enemy has 30 HP or 130 puts great weight into a situation where you're getting low on health and you need to decide whether to flee or to continue. I do more decisions while fighting than i do before deciding to attack.

I don't like to put the knowledge of whether the marine i'm fighting is being healed or not to chance. I'd like to find this out during the battle rather than afterwards when either he or i am potentially dead.

There's nothing in the world that's gonna drown the sound of weapons and attacks. So it's hardly as if going back to the way things were would keep you from hearing foot-steps or shotguns going off. You can clearly hear when an alien is being healed, and this doesn't drown out the other sounds at all. It could very well work the same way with marines.

Robby says

You seem like a person who've either never played Lerk or yolos the whole round through.

Iots is not a Lerk, or at least, a good one. And he's Fin.

A wise man once told me... Always assume your opponent will get meds and you will live a much longer life.

joshhhy says

A wise man once told me... Always assume your opponent will get meds and you will live a much longer life.

TIL

joshhhy says

A wise man once told me... Always assume your opponent will get meds and you will live a much longer life.

But also a potentially less efficient one. One does want to try one's best. Until there is some official word on this i guess i'll have to follow the ol' saying.

Iots says

weather or not you can hear them or not, the split of a second decisions on if you're going to do engagements or not is not fundamentally changed weather you hear them or not, this is nothing but a quality of life option.

This game has a lot of split second decision making moments where commitment is key. Hearing/seeing the medpacks will definitely be beneficial, particularly for lerks

I don't want to be blind by the med packs...

zebroe says

I don't want to be blind by the med packs...

With your squint i understand your worry, mate!

Joking aside, weren't you around for when the blue flash occurred in the ceiling above the marines when medpacks were dropped in the past? It wasn't impeding vision at all. I don't see a good reason for removing this.

Robby says

zebroe says

I don't want to be blind by the med packs...

With your squint i understand your worry, mate!

Joking aside, weren't you around for when the blue flash occurred in the ceiling above the marines when medpacks were dropped in the past? It wasn't impeding vision at all. I don't see a good reason for removing this.

Maybe you turned off particles or something in NS2-

joshhhy says

A wise man once told me... Always assume your opponent will get meds and you will live a much longer life.

OMFG 7 bites in a row as lerk and no kill WTF

Yeah i'll rather not quote since it'll be too long post, :D

@Robby, thanks for the laugh, i've played with you a lot on pubs and we've always granted you as a yolo machine so that statement is quite amusing coming from you. But since i wasn't really thorough in my post i'll give it another go! disclaimer: i've played lerk primaly in ns2, was main fade ns1 so i think i have a pretty good idea how engagements work.

The split decision is tied to the key notion of if you land your hits or not, and how much damage you've taken while doing so, to comperehend what your odds are at a specific time, you have few examples you either go by the number of your health but since not everyone can do that due it being on the side of your screen, you can go by the sound of their shots/hits on you. In most cases, you don't want to hear too many shotgun pellets being shot, and still be there biting/swiping, or you might loose your life.

The key will always be, did you land your hits, did you remove the armor, do you have energy for the 2(or more if its really late game) hits to finish off the target, can you go for the killing blow. Weather or not they get meds, has absolutely nothing to do with this decision however, as you should be aiming to land those hits before any meds willl be able to land (there are only a few comms who can reliably keep all marines up on the field to negate this). And when it is apparent your target is being spammed with meds, you should be on your way out well before or forcing the engagement away from the 'white floor', etc. you get the idea..

So no, i don't think it matters jack shit if the meds that land are more clear to the aliens, but that's because of how i play the game, but hey that's my opinion.

@Wob, I can understand the point of view, but i'd say if you're going to make the commitment it'll be already too late to do anything about it, either you kill the target or you die, the extra sounds are just there for fun. Again, a matter of opinion.

Definitely a quality of life suggestion. But I agree that it should be fixed. When you do commit to a target it would be great to have an idea about how many meds are given to the marine. That way you can kind of sense how much res the marine comm is using on it. Could maybe also ease frustration a bit when dying in those situations.

@lots

Hehe, it's very true about the yolo:ing in pubs. But i'm afraid your picture of me is highly tainted. This is strictly for the purpose of maximizing aim- and reflex-time. 95% of the time i play combat when going public just to warm up before a match when there are no gathers going. I haven't played a public game to "win" nor to have fun for months. I only select the few upgrades that you'd realistically have during a PCW regardless of how many points i have and i use that to warm up. I would do the same thing against bots if they were better and never play public at all. And often i practice with the same weapon the entire round whether i'm dying ten times in a row or not. It's not about the score when i play public, it's about preparing for the real deal. That's not the same Robby you'd see in a match.

Whether the usage of medpacks being visible and audible is necessary for your particular play-style was not quite the point of the topic. That's just discussing semantics that could go on forever and ever. But it is still interesting, of course. Naturally there are moments where there are no medpacks in the world that can save a marine anyway. But medpacks do make a difference, however small, to every engagement. Otherwise they wouldn't exist in the game. If even a non-acute ability like metabolize is clearly audible from afar, why shouldn't medpacks be? There is no good fundamental reason other than to make it slightly riskier to play alien. That's an odd way to balance the game, if the old medpack-drop indeed was removed on purpose. That's why i'm wondering what happened to this feature.

You haven't said much about decision-making based on the status of others, whether enemy or team-mate. I don't know if this is because your job in your team is to focus on yourself or if you simply misunderstand me as doing the same when i play in mine. But the health of the enemy is more important when you constantly try to be helpful to your team-mates. I'm not very concerned with landing bites or swipes nor with taking down the armor of marines as this frankly isn't a problem. But this is just the practical part of the game, and not the part that requires decision-making.

I often make decisions based on the status of others, both enemy and team-mate. How much HP do these two marines have left? Which one is the most hurt and should be killed first? When and where will my closest team-mate join the engagement? If the marine closest to him is low on health, he won't need me to assist, so i'll focus on the other one. If the marine closest to him instead is being medpacked, the situation changes. Which marine have the least amount of health remaining for when a fleeing life-form needs assistance? Etc, etc. There are occasions where knowing which marine that the commander is focusing on can make things a lot easier for you. Those occasions are mostly gone as it's now much more difficult to see and hear this. As much focus as i put on others, knowing the HP of my enemies is of high importance. Would the medpack-drop effects and sound-design be that of the old style, it would be much easier to keep a track of this. The way it is now it's near impossible to track this during engagements and from afar as you can neither see it nor hear it other than medpacks lying on the ground when a commander's been missing half the time. And this obviously doesn't work when a commander hits all the medpacks.

We've all been there in those moments when five skulks get owned because they didn't know which marine to focus on. This could be a thing of the past if we could clearly hear and see which marine is being med-spammed. This is hardly something that there is enough time to for one player to relay to his team-mates during an engagement. The situation will have changed before he finishes the sentence as medpacks are an instantaneous ability.

In easy one-on-one engagements, such as where you covertly can attack a marine from behind, medpacks aren't gonna be a problem. But that doesn't mean that knowing how many medpacks that drops, and where, is unimportant other times. A single medpack can change the outcome of a battle. It would feel rather logical if the alien players would be allowed to know this as it happens.

Accurate med-spam on accurate marines takes down life-forms. Such an ability simply shouldn't be left to guessing, regardless of whether you're good enough to survive any med-spam anyway. What you say about the moment of getting badly wounded and it being too late to decide whether to continue the fight or flee or another highly relative point. I can't pretend that i know enough about the community to know where others stand on this, but there's plenty of people in my team for one who can flee with very little health and survive 90% of the time. A certain lerk 99% of the time! (And i don't mean me! ;) ). If these people knew exactly where the medpacks landed and when, maybe they would flee sooner, or know when a sustained attack would do the trick more often.

Also, i'm not saying this due to some grudge with the marines or anything. It's the concern for information-gathering and sharing that prompted me to create this topic. It would surprise me if there are more people against bringing back the old-style medpack-dropping effects than there are for. They made sense.

English course online

lol

There's a lot of other aspects that are involved in engagements, and i don't really see the point in writing a full on essay on something as trivial as this, since of your what seems like(i could be wrong here who knows) arrogance in neglecting what i wrote, i gave you ashort (just compare it to your last post haha) insight where i was coming from.

Don't think this is a debate, so i'll leave you to fighting the fight! Think i've said all i care for this topic :)

Iots says

lol

There's a lot of other aspects that are involved in engagements, and i don't really see the point in writing a full on essay on something as trivial as this, since of your what seems like(i could be wrong here who knows) arrogance in neglecting what i wrote, i gave you ashort (just compare it to your last post haha) insight where i was coming from.

Don't think this is a debate, so i'll leave you to fighting the fight! Think i've said all i care for this topic :)

Ehm, of course you don't find any point in writing long posts about something you find trivial. Nobody does. I don't start topics about stuff i don't care about. But you yet again seem to fail to see the point of this topic, or indeed any topic: some people find the contents important. Just because you don't it doesn't mean that it's not worth mentioning. There is no such thing as "writing too much" about something that you care about. You're writing from the point of view of a person who simply don't find information about medpacks important. If the people still around coding for the game read this topic i want them to have as much details about my concern for this as possible, and as much debunking of the careless points of others as possible.

This is rather far out. I'm not sure if you're trolling or if you're just [redacted]. Let me try this again:

Person A finds feature X important due to play-style Y.
Person B finds feature X unimportant due to play-style Z.
Feature X positively impacts play-style Y, yet doesn't negatively impact play-style Z.

Person A wants feature X to help make the game more logical and indeed perhaps more balanced as several very risky situations could be eliminated.
Person B doesn't want feature X because he is certain that it doesn't help neither play-style Y nor Z.

Lots mate, you clearly can't relate to others. You're the one who chose to participate here, knowing full well my stance on the matter, and actually turned it into a debate by taking the con-side. You made this into a debate in which you showed that you care naught about the play-style of others. Then you go on by saying that debating this is futile and that i'm the arrogant one for trying to make you understand why this matters to others. Rather confusing.

As i've said several times in this topic, i have no problem with your play-style. In fact, i find it most fascinating that there are people with play-styles that actually disregard information about medpacks. I didn't know that existed. So thank you for bringing this to my attention. But i do find a problem with people who clearly don't care for the play-style of others to such a degree that they actually think that bringing back features that used to benefit the others simply isn't important just because it wouldn't be necessary for you. That's just cold, mate.

In the end this isn't about you or me. It's about logical features that used to provide information on the use of an insta-healing feature that no longer are present in the game. This is worth questioning and fighting for.

I think augmenting an alien players ability to know when medpacks are being applied is a good idea. There's no skill in guessing. I thought you were already able to tell though? Is that only when you happen to see a render of the medpack microseconds before it's consumed (if you're lucky)?

Simba says

I think augmenting an alien players ability to know when medpacks are being applied is a good idea. There's no skill in guessing. I thought you were already able to tell though? Is that only when you happen to see a render of the medpack microseconds before it's consumed (if you're lucky)?

I'm not sure what the other participants expect exactly, but what i mean is a visual-audial feature that used to be around specifically for when the commander DROPS medpacks, and not when the marines pick them up. There used to be a very short-lived blue flash close to the ceiling (the same that the commander used to see) and a unique sound different to the current sound of medpacks being picked up that made it very easy to localize both visually and audibly every single medpack dropped. It may seem overkill when imagined, but it actually used to work really well and made a lot of sense when playing alien without making it too much of an edge.

I think the picking up of medpacks is the sound that's still around. But it's either quieter and/or has less range than i remember. It also feels more difficult to locate exactly where this sound is coming from, as if it has a very wide sound-cone, so to speak. I think this is because the marine close to it is supposed to be the only player to really is able to hear it properly.

During combat the other sounds are also too loud to hear anything of the sort, making it a flat-out guess whether anyone in the room is being med-spammed unless you get a moment to look down into the floor or if your bites isn't killing the dude, whereas it may be too late.

These features actually used to make it easier for the marines to know exactly where the medpacks are dropped too, thus increasing their chances of being able to strafe over missed medpacks on the ground, if they're perceptive and focused enough on that unique sound, in case they're in the middle of a fight i.e. against a fade going in and out and they can't look away even for one second to look for those medpacks.

This entire concept of course gets more acute and important when there's more than one marine in an engagement.

A tiny drone copter flies into the room and drops the medpack/ammo pack. Shit's gotta be immersive.

didn't they change medpacks to not drop as far anymore? maybe i'm remembering it wrong but I thought they stopped falling from the ceiling some point around season 3, in effort to make it easier to hit meds/avoid meds getting stuck on top of walls and shit. when i med it seems fairly instantaneous


*edit*

nvm i'm dumb, you can still check hives with meds so clearly they still fall from the ceiling. i know something was changed about them at some point though

ritual says

didn't they change medpacks to not drop as far anymore? maybe i'm remembering it wrong but I thought they stopped falling from the ceiling some point around season 3, in effort to make it easier to hit meds/avoid meds getting stuck on top of walls and shit. when i med it seems fairly instantaneous


*edit*

nvm i'm dumb, you can still check hives with meds so clearly they still fall from the ceiling. i know something was changed about them at some point though

Sticky med assists. I believe it's supposed to be stretching the player's hitbox only for the case of medpacks, so they're more accurate. It helps a lot in the case of ping, but when pings exceed 200, it generally still sucks a lot.

Well with mendasp adding timers to medpacks for marines, they won't really benefit from a lighting effect.

Still, aliens should have this info too

Simba says

ritual says

didn't they change medpacks to not drop as far anymore? maybe i'm remembering it wrong but I thought they stopped falling from the ceiling some point around season 3, in effort to make it easier to hit meds/avoid meds getting stuck on top of walls and shit. when i med it seems fairly instantaneous


*edit*

nvm i'm dumb, you can still check hives with meds so clearly they still fall from the ceiling. i know something was changed about them at some point though

Sticky med assists. I believe it's supposed to be stretching the player's hitbox only for the case of medpacks, so they're more accurate. It helps a lot in the case of ping, but when pings exceed 200, it generally still sucks a lot.

NS2+ removes the height check on picking up medpacks and ammo, it doesn't extend the player's hitbox at all. This let's you medpack players in vents and removes some frustration of meds/ammo getting stuck on geometry.

Wob says

Well with mendasp adding timers to medpacks for marines, they won't really benefit from a lighting effect.

Still, aliens should have this info too

Mendasp doesn't touch any timers involving interactions with players. The timers you're referring to are simply for the medpack accuracy statistic.

Golden says

Mendasp doesn't touch any timers involving interactions with players. The timers you're referring to are simply for the medpack accuracy statistic.

I thought he added the timers to medpacks on the floor like he did with dropped shotguns and welders, no?

Well the point is, there is a timer on the floor which adds to visibility of medpacks left on the floor