After a discussion with dux some of us decided it might be a good idea if the ENSL community suggested what it wants from NS2. We'll create a list from the posts in here and make a new thread for it on the NS2 forums. In this way our ideas won't be lost under a sea of public players comments- no disrespect to them but the twitter discussion thread has over 2,500 comments. The theory is having our list on the first post of this thread so the developers can click on the thread and not have to wade through pointless posts to gleam our opinions.

Be as general ("keep a high skill ceiling") or specific ("keep health points on the HUD") as you want.

Fana has agreed to moderate this thread. Heavily. Twats will post in this thread- we all know who you are. When you do, there's not going to be editing of posts or warnings, just deletion of posts. Keep it succinct. 

[EDIT]

I'll smarten this post up as soon as I figure out what the hell kind of formatting code it uses!

For clarification: I will never edit any posts on this forum. If a post is in violation of the rules, I will delete it in its entirety.

This is a great initiative, and I hope we'll be able to put together a solid list.

No static warfare. I fear that with this power grid system the gameplay will turn into combat-like warfare, in which versatible tactics and marine positions don't have that much of a role, but I may well be mistaken.

Maps with tree-like layout (like ns_eclipse and ns_tanith) are much more interesting in terms of gameplay than ring-like maps (such as ns_bast). This can be calculated using spider-web diagrams. There is an article about this on NS Forums.

Make every class interesting and versatile. Having skills (such as bunnyhop) which add more depth to lifeforms is essential. Without bunnyhop most aliens would be dead boring, and it adds lots to. The argument against bunnyhop is that it is unintuitive and has a deep learning curve. One solution is to add leaps and timed jumps.

If posssible, have a seperate playtester group of mature competitive players, and get someone dedicated and competent to organise the games. Icons etc. are not necessary at all, just a seperate forum which devs are going to read frequently. When alpha comes out there will be too much information, and people having no clue about the gameplay could affect it. The probability of competitive players understanding the game is a lot better than the average. Besides there is no drawback of having such a group.

Whitewalls, drawgun 0, lots of customizable options for the HUD... No ambient sounds/music no hive screaming "ALLIES UNDER ATTACK" (or smth like that) all the time.

servers always recording demos which you can dl from it ingame directly after...

good autotracking feature for hltv (nstv?)

built in proxy system so you can control your routing to some extent (ala qwfwd http://qw-dev.net/projects/qwfwd/wiki)

actually they should just go through all feature lists for ezquake, mvsvd and ktx, lots of good stuff ;)

Let's try to keep things realistic.

better to aim high!

1) Numbered HUD - especially for aliens as in my opinion it's just vital. Choosing your pushes accordingly ect. - I don't know what the current status of this is though?

2) High skilled movement - maybe be a bit more variant for the different lifeforms, but there should be some movement skills that are easy to learn but hard to master and which show a distinct difference in a players skill between them.

3) More Scoreboard details for aliens - (as long as the scoreboard and gestation system work the same) - basically when an alien is evolving to another lifeform it flashes to the lifeform it's going to evolve into. This helps out especially on large player pubs where you can't keep tabs on everyones res and what they are doing with it.

4) Maybe toggable options for skulks walking on the walls - I hate the AvP wall climbing as it keeps changing your view on any small chink or bump and really makes orientation confusing. It's not immersive, it's just plain annoying.

5) Guides/tutorials/videos - for explaining how classes and the set skill movements work. This helps any player get into the game and is just a nice plus you rarely see in most games.

6) Typical mp_touramentmode 1. Except with a bit more of an advanced "gui". Something along the lines of quake3/live or TF2.

7) Some rate enforcing commands for servers.

8) Lerks to have bite. I saw discussion about giving them spikes back, but this would revert the lerk back to a boring "sit-in-a-vent" style. Maybe a very weak secondary attack for bite which shoots spikes. - I know it's hard to judge what the games going to be like, but I just don't think a spike lerk will be as fun as the current. A mixture of chosing your attacks wisely, fast judgement, and patience.

9) Some way for fades to maintain speed from blink like you could with bunnyhopping.

10) Inbuilt, and optional, "coin-toss" mode for competetive play to choose teams.

11) A HLTV-like spectator form - Would like to see different HUD options for it however. I really do like the new TF2 advanced HUD where you can choose who to spec by pressing a set number key. Maybe have more options like view multiple players at once ect. or map view and a player.

12) Rewards for welding teammates/buildings in the form of points maybe.

13) Ability to change view angle and range as a commander.

14) The ability to vastly change your hotkeys and maybe even add some "shift+" "alt+" like mechanism.

15) Easy way to add custom crosshairs to your game. Make it more user-friendly for the noobs.

Oh yea also

16) Some form of DoS defence for servers. I've seen quite a few big TF2 games get rolled by DoS attacks. I don't know much about packets ect. But I'm sure it can be done?

BUNNYHOP BUNNYHOP BUNNYHOP!!!

listen to competitive players - obvious

NS2TV - kinda like hltv

be able to turn off the black armor - server side feature - for obvous reasons also

built in mp3 player - controllable from in-game, for pub fun

costumizeable hud - be able to specify where u want ur ammo,hp, etc displayed, and how big they are, a checklist if u want it to appear

be able to mute any player - seperate sound/text mute

NO RECOIL

be able to record the screen straight to avi

be able to mute ambient, and other useless sounds

mp_consistency

scripting features

i dont wanna see any counter-strike resemblance!

remove the 'shield' gorge weapon - it reminds me of an MMORPG, not a speeded up FPS/RTS!

I doubt the recording straight from screen to avi. will be easy. Source tried to do this and instead you just get a massive file which when ran is really choppy.

I would rather see the time spent elsewhere. It's not THAT hard to get viddub.

Oh yea also

16) Some form of DoS defence for servers. I've seen quite a few big TF2 games get rolled by DoS attacks. I don't know much about packets ect. But I'm sure it can be done?

"

tried to quote but wtf, so anyway

DDoS is the attack of the server, not the game itself, get a beefy server with a beefy connection and u should be OK

I found no proper quoting mechanism so I'll do this manually.

From Gibbz:

"8) Lerks to have bite. I saw discussion about giving them spikes back, but this would revert the lerk back to a boring "sit-in-a-vent" style."

As I understood it, the spikes would have way lower range than the ones in NS1 had.

"5) Guides/tutorials/videos - for explaining how classes and the set skill movements work. This helps any player get into the game and is just a nice plus you rarely see in most games."

If UWE doesn't do this, we should probably make these kinds of vids for ENSL. I would even be interested in doing something like this.

From Voodo:

"NO RECOIL"

They already stated that weapons will have recoil.

From lump:

"A way for the alien team to choose their hive before the round starts quickly and easily.  Playing waste 10 times in a row gets annoying."

This was already discussed in some way at the official forums. A nice idea, which would probably leave the second two hives unused in most maps, unless the mappers are able to make three balanced hives into the maps. But, it would also give great tactical advantages and varibility to tactics in general.

It wouldn't leave them unused because one hive will always be advantageous for certain tactics, eg if the hive is shit for being spawncamped but you can cover 3 rts with 1 dc etc.

I agree that more popular hives would be... well.. more popular, but the other hives will still have their times and it would mean that surprise tactics specific to one hive would have a lot more interesting outcomes.

Don't pretend people wont take chances if they are given the chance too, that's just a shitty excuse for not implementing an obvious feature if you ask me.

It's glaringly obvious that choosing hives will do quite the opposite of preventing a hive being played 10 times in a row, it will promote it.

I agree with pretty much everything Zamma said except having optional wall-climbing vantages. Keep it as it is in NS1 now.

They seriously stated weapons will have recoil Vision? I doubt even UWE would be that naive into adding recoil...

Yes frG, there are still DoS attacks as there is no current defence for it (although some plugins claim to give some protection). I'm guessing it's completely fixable though? If we want NS2 to be big then you have to compensate for the larger population of pricks.

"I agree with pretty much everything Zamma said except having optional wall-climbing vantages. Keep it as it is in NS1 now"

I was more saying that; I want it like the NS1 version, but if the team do want to add it in for immersion, atleast make it toggable. (<- is that how you spell it? lulz)

Well, the lockdown thingy has reduced recoil, I think. Of course recoil can be anything between the NS constant cone of fire to DoD's kick to the sky.

I pretty much agree with everything GibbZ said.

Bunnyhopping should stay the way it is in NS. Sure its hard to learn but with tutorials and guides people would most likely get the hang of it pretty quick. Or just make bhopping easier. Marine movement shouldnt be tampered with either.

No recoil. It would probably be a pain in the ass trying to dodge and aim at the same time in a fast paced fps like NS2. We aren't talking about cs where you just stand and shoot at a nearly stationary target.

I don't like the whole alien commander thing. The reason I liked NS more than any other game was that the two sides were completely different.

The alien comm could be good if they actually make use of it. Aliens can variate their game more --> the marines have to variate more also --> interesting stuff and more challenge. 

Then again it they'll fail to make use of the potential in it, it's a shame to see the asymmetry go.

My thoughts on some of the suggestions so far:

Mass spectating (HLTV) has been confirmed NOT INCLUDED in the first release. Doesn't mean we shouldn't lobby for it, but our energy might be better spent on other issues.

Bunnyhopping is currently Skulk only, I suggest we count that as a partial victory and reserve our bunnyhop whine until after we see how the classes play in alpha. We should definitely push hard for "freedom of movement" in general, though.

Spawncamping won't be an issue, from what I've read. They've changed the way aliens spawn significantly.

By "recoil" I assume they mean "cone of fire", just like in NS.

Bear in mind that a lot of the stuff you're suggesting doesn't take into account that you/we have no idea how NS2 will actually play. We don't even know if there's going to be static hive locations, so suggesting "hive voting" doesn't make much sense.

Yeh. I don't give a shit that only skulks get bunnyhop as long as this gorge bellyslide can be used for a speed boost or whatever, something that involves skillful movement for them that allows them to use bulletshield less often if theyre good at positioning and will therefore let them heal/slowspit marines more often. Fades are probably gonna get a cool rapidfire blink now and who cares about onos getting bhop really? theyre too big to dodge anything

oh and they've always referred to cone of fire as recoil afaik so dont worry just yet

I'm hoping the gorge slide mechanism works in a similar fasion to quake 4 crouch sliding. If so then I'm really interested in it. I mean NS was great because of all the movement techniques but adding more seems even better.

The skulk bunnyhop sounds good aswell, and to be honest it is the only lifeform that I would say requires bunnyhopping as mu rightly pointed out.

Still, I am concerned about the fade. I hope they don't change blink too much. Sure I'm keen for anything new, but I would prefer for it to have the same blink but yet some way to maintain speed after the original blink. As fana said though we're yet to see a release so we can't over comment on anything yet.

As far as the lerk goes. Even low range spikes won't change the lerks style. If you can't get right in a marines face and do an instant 60 damage then the only style I see for lerks is vent whoring. The only compromise is some form of "shotgun" like style for the spikes, where the spikes come out all at once (short range, slower rof), but even this seems a bit "meh". I just love watching phil and sheep pancaking up and down biting marines after chosing a prime time to attack, I'd hate to see more linear (and in my eyes boring) lerk style. Also, if a lerk has no melee, then straight away it looses it's tank abilities (for distracting). You only shoot at a lerk to stop it getting near to you and fragging you, yet if you know that it can do no damage up close (without going stationary / or only doing very little damage) then there is no point shooting it and it serves no immediate use as a target. It takes away from a teamwork aspect I love seeing.

Good network adapter and enough bandwidth is the best protection against DDoS in general, also there are some OS low-level settings that can be enabled to drop malicious packets. This is all relevant whether its a game server or not. The NS2 server itself can have bad socket handling, and we just need to hope Max gets it right.

Also NS2 won't be the "same" because every engine feels like itself.

I agree that lerk bite should be included. Spikes make it boring and repetitive.

Bunnyhop for other than skulks would be cool but not necessary. Adding movement skills doesn't make the game itself noob-unfriendly. For example, in Hearts of Iron II there are lots of tricks that you simply cannot know without looking up on the web. Super Smash Bros Melee has wavedashing which is similar to bhop. Neither of these don't make the game bad, instead they add lots of depth to it. Unbalanced teams cause bad games, not special skills. Having ranked servers which can set the number of games a player needs to have played before joining them would be one solution.

Best of both worlds is to have lots of movement skills to keep the game interesting for competitive play, and address the issue of unbalanced games. You cannot fix that top-players are going to demolish any beginner in the game, but you can set up mechanics to avoid such unbalanced games.

Afaik, HLTV won't be in the initial release but Max said it'd be in the updated to come. Until that we can have the ENSL Livestream that we have now tested. Only issue is now the lack of sound, but atleast shoutcast can be mixed in. Yeah, mr. McDonell im looking at you!

Remember that they are not planning to add any feature that is not worth extending the ETA. Also they are keeping exta stuff minimal because they have added LUA and extensive scripting features.

In my opinon, external tutorials for basic stuff are bad game design. Instead have an interesting single-player practice scenario, like there was for NS1.

Gibbz, rate enforcing is in my opinion half-useless. It helps a bit for those who have no clue about rates, but doesn't really stop abuse, apart from maybe changing the rates with some script. Instead, I'd like to see server setting maximum loss, choke, ping etc.

For the commander:

A player camera is rather useless. It doesn't provide any other information that commander doesn't have. The only useful purpose is that you can say: "lol get aim". Besides, it would take a bunch of the view space that would a lot more useful for something else. If its toggleable, then no problem but prob. not worth the trouble.

Sequenced waypoints is a good idea, mainly for the public though. But who knows, maybe waypoints could be used competitively. Now they are somewhat limited. If you could sequence waypoints like build that, phase there, cap that, weld that, attack there it might be useful. It could also have ability to select spawning marines. Now its just a lot more easy to say all that over voice com.

Seeing HP's (and armor) and RT count all the time is very useful

Resource Model could be like in SupCom for several reasons. First of all, it makes it possible use sequenced research with pausing. This also decreases the amount of micro-management needed. While the CC shouldn't be doing comms job, the success rate of comm is directly propotional to the number of enjoyable games there are in NS. It doesn't really hurt the gameplay when the job is easy from the technical side, as long as its challenging on the tactical and strategic side. Having to remember and do less stuff isn't bad idea when the CC is not doing decisions for the com.

Anything to help new comms is a good thing in general as long it can toggled for experienced ones (like tips). Verbal reminders for excess res or lack of res towers would be good ones. They could do a lot more for new comms such as remind to drop weapons when there are fades around.

Height is a very important thing like Bacillus said. Just like in SSBM (super smash brothers melee) its annoying when the camera zooms out and its all about hitting the right pixel. Its also rather annoying to look at small things. Maybe the mapper could also specify some kind of brush for the commander view level. Now I remember it was specified by some fixed height number, which isn't flexible. But rather, just keep the maps more flat. Ability to zoom in and zoom out using mousewheel is great. Especially in SupCom the units will become icons in broader view. Then there is also no need for map to move around.

Minimialistic HUD is great. Now there is a pack to have a transparent and minimalistic hud for NS1 (namely nL pack). The photoshopped com UI that was seen was great, but even more can be taken out. Maybe there could be some more bloated default skin, but then experienced comms could use more minimalistic version which puts functionality beyound outfit. Buttons can be small for such skin, because hotkeys are used. Map, action buttons (the right corner buttons currently), info bar (res, rts), logout and icons for requests are probably the only ones needed. Maybe the cartographic view of SupCom could be implemented in NS2.

Current hotkey system is awesome. However, teaching all the hotkeys is another question. Maybe the normal com UI skin could have some button to show a very visually explanative picture with keyboard and hotkeys. Its a lot better option than going through the menus for key configs.

Polling is unnecessary. Having a message or icon to show when some structure is idle is a good idea. This could include something like arms labs, armories, tfacs, sieges, full-energy obs etc.

Teaching new comms all this is another question. Tutorials are one thing but they tend to be rather boring. Most of the people won't read web tutorials or the manual anyway, so this is something a lot of thought needs to be put into. Radix made a great point. He went into the chair, put a TF and few turrets, got ejected and didn't know what he made was wrong. Now we can expect very many people doing the same in NS2 if its only possible. While only real place to learn to com is the CC, there should be something the comms need to do before getting in there. More discussion about it here.

The commander tips is a copy-paste from UWE forum's Commander Topic.

OT: enig's avatar is amazing

only 1:

KEEP THE FUCKING ASYMMETRY

Also

17) Low numbers of players per game. I don't want a 12vs12 gameplay. I would prefer small numbers ranging from 6-8 tbh.

I find it rather sad that after years of talking about NS2 they still dont know what shape the game will take. I for one would love to see some actual decisiveness in their next update, no more "we're thinking about...", "Tinkering with the idea of...", "Think it would be neat if...". I want to see an update that says "This is what we've done".

In the spirit of the topic though,

I suppose Id like to see a few more tools of war, so to speak, available from the get go. The more tech both teams have available to them at the start of the game the more variation it will have.

Brightness and gamma, this has been frustrating me for years. I honestly dont want to change my screen settings every time I play the game. Dark and gloomy is fine for single player survival horrors, but this is a fastpaced multiplayer fps for crying out loud.