Got about halfway through when I realized it wasn't a tutorial at all. It was just some guy playing alien commander like normal and not explaining anything he was doing at all.
If that's NS2HD's channel, yeah, he's a bit like that. I think the guys great and good at speaking but he never seems to teach much outside of 'well this is what's happening this game'.
Would be awesome if the team put out some videos that were literally them just setting up a scrim and taking it slow while explaining what the commander's doing at all points from both sides point of view.
So after playing a few games of this, I want to comment on something. This game has a steep learning curve. Everyone needs to work together and listen to the commander, or you lose. Your commander needs to know what he's doing, or you lose. There are a large amount of games I've lost for my team just because I was fucking around in vents on a side of the map I shouldn't have been on, or going solo as a marine and dying.
Despite all of this, I haven't been flamed once. I haven't had anyone yell at me. Outside of a few exasperated veterans explaining things on voice chat, I've seen very little frustration with newbies in NS2. Coming from Dota 2 and LoL, this is a huge breath of fresh air. I don't know what it is about this game, but something about it has made the community far more open and inviting than other games with extremely high skill ceilings.
Edit: Here's a good example. In the first game I ever played, we had an alien commander who had no clue what he was doing. He kept wanting to get out of the chair, but my teammates told him to stay in, he needs to learn. They told him what to build and where, and just tough it out. I have NEVER seen that kind of helpfulness in an online game.
So after playing a few games of this, I want to comment on something. This game has a steep learning curve. Everyone needs to work together and listen to the commander, or you lose. Your commander needs to know what he's doing, or you lose. There are a large amount of games I've lost for my team just because I was fucking around in vents on a side of the map I shouldn't have been on, or going solo as a marine and dying.
Despite all of this, I haven't been flamed once. I haven't had anyone yell at me. Outside of a few exasperated veterans explaining things on voice chat, I've seen very little frustration with newbies in NS2. Coming from Dota 2 and LoL, this is a huge breath of fresh air. I don't know what it is about this game, but something about it has made the community far more open and inviting than other games with extremely high skill ceilings.
Edit: Here's a good example. In the first game I ever played, we had an alien commander who had no clue what he was doing. He kept wanting to get out of the chair, but my teammates told him to stay in, he needs to learn. They told him what to build and where, and just tough it out. I have NEVER seen that kind of helpfulness in an online game.
Speaking as a MOBA player. It's because someone being bad doesn't stop you having fun that much. NS2 is naturally fun in the same way any shooter is. It has great atmosphere and even failures tend to tell a (grim) story for the side that loses. This combined with the fact that right now alot of the veterans are beta players who all seem really invested in keeping a community going leads to a great attitude with most players.
+1
Seguerof the VoidSydney, AustraliaRegistered Userregular
Just finished the most epic 2 hour game.
I jumped in as Khammander when the previous guy left and look at the state of things:
We're a few minutes into the game and we have 1 resource node and 3 hives.
Yep.
What ensues is us frantically keeping Departures and Locker Rooms protected while grabbing res nodes and upgrades. We started close spawns Departures/Terminal, East Wing was theirs for 90% of the game, as well as Bar. They have the entire bottom half of the map, but I have Courtyard. Sitting on 6 res nodes is massive. Somehow though, they hold us at Bar/Locker Rooms until they get a bunch of Exos and Arcs, and they finally manage to wipe out Locker Room, before moving on and also taking out Generator. Left with 1 Hive, we made a last ditch effort and took out all their remaining Exos, and Marines + Jetpackers at Departures, and he we hold on.
Then I retake Generator and Locker Rooms, we finally break into East Wing and Bar, and take the game (after some putzing around from my guys).
I remember veil being a well balanced map, but for some reason marines turn into complete clowns on the map in ns2.
this is the last 5 games I've played there:
2 or 3 aliens go to skylights, 5 or 6 marines go there. they have a cold war for the next 10 minutes.
meanwhile, the aliens take over THE ENTIRE MAP uncontested. maybe one or two rines went to the right side of the map, but the comm either ignores them after they build the topographical res node or worse, tells them to try to take double res.
after 5 minutes, the alien team can all go fade. after 8, onos. the game doesn't last beyond 10 minutes.
Veil is actually a very popular map in competitive play. I think the problem is that pub marines are too aimless and don't expand aggressively enough. There's no reason for Skylights to turn into a cold war, the marines should be able to just push in, beat the ambush and keep going. If they keep losing the fight there then they're simply not as good as the aliens. You can't let the aliens take double, that plus one or two other RTs is already too much res for aliens to be allowed to have.
It's also worth nothing that if the aliens are constantly harassing Skylights then it probably means their hive is Sub, and the right side of the map should be pretty easy sailing. Marines should still be able to hold their west RT but they shouldn't devote a ton of manpower to it.
So here's a question I've been wondering about: You know how if you check the map, you can see what your teammates see? Marine positions/structures/etc?
Does this hold true if I place floater scouts throughout the map? Can my team see what the floaters see?
RT800 on
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
And everything you need to know is obvious if you just listen to announcements and check the map every once and a while.
Which is why you need a mic to share the obvious with the ones that don't know to watch the map, or are busy at the moment. It's easy to miss stuff as commander, lots of shit going on.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
So here's a question I've been wondering about: You know how if you check the map, you can see what your teammates see? Marine positions/structures/etc?
Does this hold true if I place floater scouts throughout the map? Can my team see what the floaters see?
I would imagine that the drifters put red dots on the minimap, or allow you to see the marines through walls like the skulk's parasites do. Either way, I know they make it easier on your teammates and you don't have to tell them where the marines are attacking nearly as much.
Anyone else really excited on how pretty much all the old NS1 maps are getting remade by fans? I've seen works in progress of Eclipse, Tanith, Bast, Hera, and even motherfucking NS_Nancy, Greatest Map Of NS1 History We Will Forever Mourn Its Loss.
I'd really like to see how Veil would play (with pubs, because I agree with Zek about comp play there) if there were more command stations/hive locations and random spawns.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
I'd really like to see how Veil would play (with pubs, because I agree with Zek about comp play there) if there were more command stations/hive locations and random spawns.
Outside of nano, there isn't really anywhere else TO stick another tech location, and if you change the map, it's not veil anymore.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I dunno, I think the traditional spawns are an important part of the gameplay flow of the map. Having fully random spawns makes it lose that delineation between marine territory and alien territory which makes things interesting, and you'd have to totally revamp the map to make things like a starting hive in command viable.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I do think that there needs to be a function for ending a match if a commander hasn't hopped in a chair for the full first 1-2 minutes of a game. Last night had a string of matches where everyone would run off, leaving no-one to command and then, surprise! The opposing team has this massive lead in organization/tech/expansion that makes it impossible to come back.
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Maybe not even end the game.
Maybe have an option for being able to say "Okay, we can start the game now" once teams have settled on a commander, rather than just automatically starting the game 5 seconds after each team has at least 1 person in it.
Maybe have an option for being able to say "Okay, we can start the game now" once teams have settled on a commander, rather than just automatically starting the game 5 seconds after each team has at least 1 person in it.
I would have sworn this was in since it was in NS1 and I played with servers that had it in the beta, but looking at the wiki it's not in the standard game yet. It must be part of ns2stats or some such thing. I don't know why they would have left it out of release.
I was super excited about this game, but sadly it is looking like I won't be able to enjoy it much. It seems that gameplay as a soldier/alien relies about 90% on twitch reflexes and perfect game performance at all times, and I have neither. I will sneak up on a marine as an alien and try to chomp him, and quite often I get 2 or 3 hits in, but they seem to just shrug it off 125 or more and as soon as we are both moving it becomes this crazy dance where I find it impossible to stay on them and time my attacks for those precious microseconds when I am actually in range to bite. As a marine I frequently die from a single bite, and I can almost never seem to get even a skulk down before it is right in my face, let alone any of the higher level aliens. Most importantly though, my FPS frequently dip below 20 even though I have set the game to some rather modest graphical settings.
the game shouldn't even start until someone is in the chair for each side.
give something like 90 seconds for people to decide, then once each team has a comm in place, reset everyone else to spawn and the game begins. if no one gets in the chair in that time, then dump everyone back into the ready room and try again (maybe with a "[team] needs a commander" message)
When we get the DAK admin mod installed we can enable tournament mode which makes each team use "ready" to start the game. I think that would fix the problem both with selecting the comm and with games starting when half the server is in the RR.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
When we get the DAK admin mod installed we can enable tournament mode which makes each team use "ready" to start the game. I think that would fix the problem both with selecting the comm and with games starting when half the server is in the RR.
I suck at FPS's. I can't twitch for shit. I don't have any medical reasons or anything, I just suck at it. When I play TF2 I'm usually towards the bottom of the scoreboard, if not the bottom. But with NS2 I'm usually towards the top of the scoreboard.
I attribute it to two things:
One, As a Marine I'm starting to get a feel for how aliens move and attack and so I can usually get the gun pointed at where they will be before they get there. It helps to let someone else walk ahead of you, so you can shoot the alien on them. As an alien I've adopted hit and run tactics... I don't go for a kill, I go for a bite or two and then vanish into the shadows.
Two: The scoring rewards doing things to help the team like destroying enemy resnodes, building stuff for your commander, etc. etc. Which I love to do. I'd rather do stuff like that than shoot aliens any day.
NS2 really requires you to play the game a lot differently than people are used to playing FPS's.
It's definitely a game about playing conservatively, at least until you get real good. Shooting at skulks is easy if you don't panic and just keep a steady hand. Be sure to not hold down the bite button as a skulk, and stop shooting when you lose your target as a marine.
It's definitely a game about playing conservatively, at least until you get real good. Shooting at skulks is easy if you don't panic and just keep a steady hand. Be sure to not hold down the bite button as a skulk, and stop shooting when you lose your target as a marine.
and never run after them unless you have to
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Gamespot is pulling its review of Natural Selection 2 on account of "factual inaccuracies" and reassigning it. I can't quite exactly remember offhand, but from what I recall this review was really fairly bad and betrayed a number of things that either just weren't true about the game or could have been found out within a few minutes of actually playing it.
Gamespot is pulling its review of Natural Selection 2 on account of "factual inaccuracies" and reassigning it. I can't quite exactly remember offhand, but from what I recall this review was really fairly bad and betrayed a number of things that either just weren't true about the game or could have been found out within a few minutes of actually playing it.
The comments on that article support your memory. Good thing it was pulled since NS2 is a fantastic game. In other news, my Skulk biting needs a lot of work. I seem to miss way too many bites.
Gamespot is pulling its review of Natural Selection 2 on account of "factual inaccuracies" and reassigning it. I can't quite exactly remember offhand, but from what I recall this review was really fairly bad and betrayed a number of things that either just weren't true about the game or could have been found out within a few minutes of actually playing it.
The author wrote about it like he played it a total of an hour, hour and half tops.
The Good
Fascinating combination of real-time strategy and first-person shooting Cool artwork.
The Bad
Steep learning curve makes it hard for newcomers to enjoy Graphics often look dated Long load times.
Like a number of popular games, Natural Selection started off as a modification--in that game's case, a mod for Half-Life--and a full-fledged sequel now follows up on that mod's popularity. Unlike a lot of mod-to-retail conversions, though, Natural Selection 2 retains much of the rough-around-the-edges feel you get from a free, fan-made game. The problem is that this offering isn't free: it costs 30 bucks.
Despite the relatively plain textures, maps are complex affairs, with many redundant pathways and switchbacks.
Rough around the edges isn't necessarily a bad thing, and there's something to be said for the jerry-rigged feel of Natural Selection 2's gameplay and graphics. Apart from a map-exploration mode, the game is entirely multiplayer and features the unique distinction of having two classes of players playing two different styles of game in a given match, depending on their roles. A game of Natural Selection 2 is team versus team, one side playing as the human space marines and the other side as a cadre of Zerg-esque alien creatures.
Whichever side you play, each team designates a commander, who plays Natural Selection 2 as if it were a real-time strategy game: he or she has a top-down view of the map, places structures with the mouse, researches new technologies, and gives orders to individual units. The other players take control of said individual units: they must construct the structures placed by the commander, do the actual shooting/biting of the bad guys, and protect their base from assaults by the other team, all through a first-person interface. The goal for both teams is simply to destroy the opposing team's commander, but that's a lot more difficult than it sounds.
Aliens require 'creep' (the green stuff) to spawn structures. The cysts propagate the creep. Marines kill the cysts.
Part of the reason it's difficult is that the game is well balanced, but a lot of the reason it's difficult is that the game simply fails to sufficiently explain what does what and how things work. There's a series of YouTube tutorials that you can watch to learn the basics, but these are either far too shallow or terribly abstruse (some are nearly 30 minutes in length), and therefore not much use to most players. There's no interactive tutorial, so completely green players (literally colored green to designate them as new for others) are thrust into the mix with no hands-on experience. This often makes for incredible confusion, and newbies are often left wondering what is going on, while experienced players largely ignore anyone colored green and shout unintelligible Natural Selection cant at each other as the bullets fly.
Another problem is that because each side has only a single commander, it's critical that this person be attentive, competent, and unflappable. Unfortunately, a fact of life in online gaming is that some people are apathetic, unskilled, and prone to quitting matches in a rage. That means playing Natural Selection 2 with random commanders is a recipe for disaster.
If you get to play as the Commander, though, you’ll find it’s pretty similar to a stripped-down version of the original Starcraft. Resources are generated passively through structures built on specific resource points throughout the maps. You designate where these ought to be built, and must rely on your team to build them. You can also lay down defensive structures, set waypoints and mission goals, and decide what areas to research in your tech tree. Often, Commanders will poll their team and ask what would be of most use to them for research or building. Such practice is a case in point in Winston Churchill’s famous quotation that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Teammates often have no idea what they need, and will often just agree to anything that sounds like “free stuff."
Aliens all start out as lowly skulks but can evolve into a variety of types, including this pterodactyl-inspired thingy called a lerk.
As for the rank-and-file soldiers, it's critical that they communicate and create synergistic combinations of skills, loadouts, and roles. For the marines, this means having some guys focus on crowd control and base defense, while others go out and surgically destroy key alien units and structures. Aliens are perhaps even more reliant on good teamwork, because they aren't as survivable as individual marines, and instead must make use of hit-and-run and distraction/stealth tactics, which is virtually impossible without good coordination.
In theory, this could make for some compelling, variegated gameplay, but because Natural Selection 2 lacks a skill-based matchmaking system, and because the learning curve is so high, most newbies are going to lose--over and over, while better players yell at them to shape up. No biggie, you might say, but losing a game becomes considerably more frustrating when you need to deal with the extremely long load times between maps. Natural Selection 2 "pre-caches" (presumably textures) for as much as five full minutes as maps load, which is an unacceptably long time.
Marines respawn in these teleporter-like things back at their base. Get used to seeing these often.
All that said, Natural Selection 2 is filled with promise if you can put in the hours of grinding necessary to learn the units, maps, controls, and balance, and figure out what the heck is happening around you at a given moment. Graphically, the game looks, well, old, and the color palette for the levels is uniformly grey and brown, with a dirty chartreuse for the alien parts. But, especially with regard to the aliens (who see through their mouths), the artwork is surprisingly evocative, with interesting models, and a distinctive, consistent look to both the marines and the aliens. The interfaces, too, are minimalist and well done, and the game will sometimes helpfully prompt you with certain, limited information (telling you to signal the Commander for a health dispensation when you’re near death, for example).
More importantly, the core idea of Natural Selection 2 is clever in the way that it hybridizes two disparate genres. The idea is clever, that is, but the execution isn't. And that's the long and short of it. There's promise galore here, but Natural Selection 2's foibles simply keep it from fully realizing its promise in the end
hahaha oh man that's wonderful. I was a little angry at the review because that sort of thing can legitimately hurt a small indie game like NS2, which doesn't have the marketing budget it needs to shove the thing down people's throats, and Metacritic/Gameranking scores can make a difference. I never thought Gamespot would be awesome enough to actually pull the awful review, though. Props to them for realizing their mistake.
Posts
If that's NS2HD's channel, yeah, he's a bit like that. I think the guys great and good at speaking but he never seems to teach much outside of 'well this is what's happening this game'.
Would be awesome if the team put out some videos that were literally them just setting up a scrim and taking it slow while explaining what the commander's doing at all points from both sides point of view.
Despite all of this, I haven't been flamed once. I haven't had anyone yell at me. Outside of a few exasperated veterans explaining things on voice chat, I've seen very little frustration with newbies in NS2. Coming from Dota 2 and LoL, this is a huge breath of fresh air. I don't know what it is about this game, but something about it has made the community far more open and inviting than other games with extremely high skill ceilings.
Edit: Here's a good example. In the first game I ever played, we had an alien commander who had no clue what he was doing. He kept wanting to get out of the chair, but my teammates told him to stay in, he needs to learn. They told him what to build and where, and just tough it out. I have NEVER seen that kind of helpfulness in an online game.
Speaking as a MOBA player. It's because someone being bad doesn't stop you having fun that much. NS2 is naturally fun in the same way any shooter is. It has great atmosphere and even failures tend to tell a (grim) story for the side that loses. This combined with the fact that right now alot of the veterans are beta players who all seem really invested in keeping a community going leads to a great attitude with most players.
I jumped in as Khammander when the previous guy left and look at the state of things:
We're a few minutes into the game and we have 1 resource node and 3 hives.
Yep.
What ensues is us frantically keeping Departures and Locker Rooms protected while grabbing res nodes and upgrades. We started close spawns Departures/Terminal, East Wing was theirs for 90% of the game, as well as Bar. They have the entire bottom half of the map, but I have Courtyard. Sitting on 6 res nodes is massive. Somehow though, they hold us at Bar/Locker Rooms until they get a bunch of Exos and Arcs, and they finally manage to wipe out Locker Room, before moving on and also taking out Generator. Left with 1 Hive, we made a last ditch effort and took out all their remaining Exos, and Marines + Jetpackers at Departures, and he we hold on.
Then I retake Generator and Locker Rooms, we finally break into East Wing and Bar, and take the game (after some putzing around from my guys).
this is the last 5 games I've played there:
2 or 3 aliens go to skylights, 5 or 6 marines go there. they have a cold war for the next 10 minutes.
meanwhile, the aliens take over THE ENTIRE MAP uncontested. maybe one or two rines went to the right side of the map, but the comm either ignores them after they build the topographical res node or worse, tells them to try to take double res.
after 5 minutes, the alien team can all go fade. after 8, onos. the game doesn't last beyond 10 minutes.
I laughed at him.
But I fucking hate talking.
And everything you need to know is obvious if you just listen to announcements and check the map every once and a while.
Mic communication in this game is crucial, from what I've seen. Especially if you're going to be commanding.
Does this hold true if I place floater scouts throughout the map? Can my team see what the floaters see?
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I would imagine that the drifters put red dots on the minimap, or allow you to see the marines through walls like the skulk's parasites do. Either way, I know they make it easier on your teammates and you don't have to tell them where the marines are attacking nearly as much.
Really? damn, that would have gotten me back into NS1.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Maybe have an option for being able to say "Okay, we can start the game now" once teams have settled on a commander, rather than just automatically starting the game 5 seconds after each team has at least 1 person in it.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Of course, I need to spend more time in that chair cause right now I'm part of the problem.
I would have sworn this was in since it was in NS1 and I played with servers that had it in the beta, but looking at the wiki it's not in the standard game yet. It must be part of ns2stats or some such thing. I don't know why they would have left it out of release.
So in summary, frustration and shame
give something like 90 seconds for people to decide, then once each team has a comm in place, reset everyone else to spawn and the game begins. if no one gets in the chair in that time, then dump everyone back into the ready room and try again (maybe with a "[team] needs a commander" message)
Oh cool I didn't know that was even an option.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I attribute it to two things:
One, As a Marine I'm starting to get a feel for how aliens move and attack and so I can usually get the gun pointed at where they will be before they get there. It helps to let someone else walk ahead of you, so you can shoot the alien on them. As an alien I've adopted hit and run tactics... I don't go for a kill, I go for a bite or two and then vanish into the shadows.
Two: The scoring rewards doing things to help the team like destroying enemy resnodes, building stuff for your commander, etc. etc. Which I love to do. I'd rather do stuff like that than shoot aliens any day.
NS2 really requires you to play the game a lot differently than people are used to playing FPS's.
and never run after them unless you have to
Ping is so damn useful.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Gamespot is pulling its review of Natural Selection 2 on account of "factual inaccuracies" and reassigning it. I can't quite exactly remember offhand, but from what I recall this review was really fairly bad and betrayed a number of things that either just weren't true about the game or could have been found out within a few minutes of actually playing it.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
The comments on that article support your memory. Good thing it was pulled since NS2 is a fantastic game. In other news, my Skulk biting needs a lot of work. I seem to miss way too many bites.
What did I doooo?
Edit: Restarted steam again and all is well. Crisis averted.
The author wrote about it like he played it a total of an hour, hour and half tops.