Final: Bitey first impression Feedback

There are so many changes in the BT that trying to go over every single one takes up so much time that I'd rather focus only on the things I have an actual issues with.  The prime complaint of mine is simply the movement system that's being crafted to be in place. When I played the BT I jumped directly into a 6v6 with no experience expect what I knew from live. The goal was to give me the best feeling of what it would be like for the rest of the community who simply 'play' the game and nothing else. This lead me to an experience that for the most part was semi-enjoyable on marine, and a larger struggle on alien.

[b]Aliens[/b]

The alien side was stressful due to the fact that all forms of live movement are essentially removed.  If you claim that something is left over, then you learned skulk movement differently from myself and I give you congratulations on being a true master.  My struggles came from the raw overwhelming changes to everything having a different feel, so that lead to a very unenjoyable experience. It's not to say that I will want to burn the BT alien side with fire I could probably love it in the future given some extra cuddling, but if my first impression is this negative towards the change what does that say about someone who's uninformed?  The movement being a complete rewrite means that none of the experience learned can be transferred over, this leads to a knowledge that in order to retain the confidence of movement I had prior, would to me mean at least 10-20hrs of focus on the task.

I ask what the real issue is with live skulk movement, my personal thought are that it's too slow.  The B239 skulk had great potential and was also easy to teach and explain, however with small flaws in different places it could have been polished up to be more enjoyable for all parties.   The current live skulk is something that is extremely stressful to play due to a lack of easy ways to gain a boost of speed to leave fights or pressure into a room easily.  Why was the thought of never looking into the past versions of wall jumping reexamined?  The last round of complaints I remember from back then it was too easy/simple.  Which is hardly a problem given the fact that movement should be very straightforward.

Here is a complexity example of the BT movement vs Live:

Explain how to gain and maintain speed as skulk and fade?
Live Skulk: Jump off walls and chain wall jumps together to gain speed.  jump off from higher points for an extra speed boost.
Fade: Shadow step in one of the 8 directions, and utilize your double jump for extra travel.  Use air control to make sharp turns.
**If there is one problem with live Fade, it's that shadowstep costs too little so that energy management is not very important for maintaining movement.  Another problem is that explaining air control is very challenging.

I'd like someone from the balance mod break down how to simplify the movement from the BT.  Since I honestly haven't really studied it much and currently aren't a great source of learning it.
BTSkulk:
BTFade:

Honestly if you take a more combined approach to the movement setups utilizing both live and BT creations you should be able to get something that is not a whole new movement system.  Instead you could create a potent upgrade which leads to ease of use and a more complex utilization.   First would be the implementation of jump querying on live, that could easily be patched in with any build.   Second would be to add in how the acceleration from walls occurred in patches prior to b239 perhaps making it harder/take longer to gain speed by chaining jumps together.  Then utilize adding a speed cap of 11/13 so that skulks aren't that much faster then lerks, and make sure that it's challenging to keep the rate of speed around those levels.

To sum it up, the movement doesn't need to be rewritten it simply needs to be tweaked in small ways from live to create a much more enjoyable experience.  The fact that the fade was overhauled is something of a different approach, and I still don't really have an understanding as to why it was changed other then to just 'change it up.'  Alien movement is alittle too far off from live build and in my view a few extra attempts should be made to bridge the gap.


[b]Marine[/b]

The marine game was substantially more enjoyable for the reasoning that it actually carries over much of the same skills learned from the live build.  This leads to an experience that gives a fresh approach, while still maintaining most of the gameplay functional.  Overall it's a mostly positive change from the field players view, and I can see that almost all of the current changes to marine game could be ported over.  My only minor gripes revolved around the AR spread changes and the new armory approach.

While it's not game breaking, the question of why the AR has more spread deserves a valid question. I dont really recall anything of frustration happening the live build as a result of rifles appearing overpowered in anyway and while I haven't played much of the BT, I'm curious as to why this change was thrown in if there was any significant problem.  The fault with the rifle is that the spread is truly random, so you have no real guarantee that shooting in the center will land the first, last, or middle shots.  This leads to more wasted ammo, less accuracy, and stopping power in the long term.  If you're going to attempt to continue utilize a random cone fire, the cone should start smaller at the start of shooting then grow over time.  Sorry but I'm not sold that random cones are enjoyable, just look at how people complain about random shotgun spreads in the past.

If the original problem with the AR is that it was too hard to use, perhaps checking into the scenario of lowering the amount of bullets per clip, raising the damage per bullet, and adjusting the rate of fire.  A big problem with alot of newer players is the sheer amount of wasted bullets fired from the AR, mostly due to player inexperience, skill, or the enemies movement.  A larger bullet, slower ROF, and more damage could attempt to alliterate some of the rifles high skill requirement.

The armory change is probably one of the more understand fixes put into the game, but I believe that this approach is simply too hardlined and trying to force teamwork onto a team.  It was once tried in the past, then removed.  The reasons for it's removal I've forgotten, but why not just try a slowed armory healing/armor recovery?  This is @andi, if the real problem is that marine teams turtle, in public games they already lose for doing that.  Unless the new marine changes have made a marine turtle extremely valid, that seems that something else may need to be considered.

 AA's cost too much, unless you rewrite how they work for healing armor, weapons, and other factors. And make it a much quicker upgrade for a field ARMOR healing Armory.  In fact if you're going to change the armory to not heal armor anymore, then it might as well be called supply station.  As you get guns and weapons, but no armor.

All in all, most marine changes would probably be fine.  But it's always best to be wary about trying to force teamwork onto people, and there should typically be an option to solo heal from something much easier then say a mac or welder.


[b]Bitey's view's on why NS2 loses new players
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--I wont say anything about performance, because that's a whole different basket of things not relating directly to gameplay.  And hopefully luaJit takes a big bite out of that issue.

If the balance test is trying to settle the imbalance in the core of the game by it's namesake, then the real issues with why people leave still aren't being targeted.  It's never been much about the state of the gameplay in terms of who wins what, or why one team wins over another.  After all consider that what determines a win is usually reliant on what players understand they need to do in order to create a win.  New players pick the game up, start playing, and learning weapons.  However in ns2 weapon mastery, frags, and raw personal skill only make up part of what it takes to win.  A major problem with ns2 is that nothing in public game play conveys the decision making tactics that lead to repeated and formulaic success.

To have an example of this, you merely need to look at the swaying wins and losses of both public games and PCW/scrim/matches.  Aliens have, and always will be favored given enough time simply because of the side being easier to play.  The decision making process of the Khaara side is basic, defend your ground as needed and attack enemy buildings when openings are present.  Just repeat that cycle, stay in the game, and wait for high lifeforms to help give you a push off point.  This process shows in games where aliens win the majority of the time and typically every mistake a skulk makes can be overlooked for several deaths in a row minus trying to save those precious havestors.  For everything else dying on the field is only an inconvenience due to the movement aliens enjoy. It takes multiple deaths in a row before the effects of repeated personal failure to make a sizable impact to team performance.

However, while the alien team is usually easier to play you can witness the mixed results of pub knowledge vs match knowledge when new competitive teams forms.  Often any new alien team employ the wrong set of attacks and defenses that would ordinarly secure them a win.  For example if a marine team pressures one havestor with a 4 man team, is the proper response to defend, hit marine rts, or hit marine start?  Often those kind of decisions are real plays that make the best teams succeed.  I would credit Arc as being an example of almost always making the right play call, which is why winning seems to be their specialty.

The contrast to this is how the marine side struggles to take victories away past the 5 minute openings mark of the game.  For a marine player he must always try to outplay the alien side by several factors of performance. The problems not only come from the multiple jobs the basic marines must employ.  You are the builder, defender, and attacker which leads to multiple different things to be considered before making any action.  Each of those roles are crucial to survive a game against the alien menace.  If you fail to build you're economy and tech falls behind, if you fail to defend then all the time spent building needs to simply be repeated, and if you simply never attack into alien territory you're still going to be doomed into failure simply because alien's are much more expendable while attacking into marines.  Every small decision matters just as much as making sure every bullet counts, if you check the wrong corner and get fragged you may lose much more then your own weapon out of said mistake.

All of these issues collide together and form a game that is extremely daunting for any random new player to attempt to learn.  So what needs to be strongly investigated is a method on how to teach a person the basics. More then just raw skills needed to shoot and perform, but several of the basic decision making foundations.  A tutorial map would be the best place to start, and I'd tried to hand that to the community who are full of people willing to help design those kind of systems.  Myself included!

[b]The Big Summary TL:DR [/b]

So you couldn't make it to the end, here is the short list that gets straight to the point:


-(Alien)For a new movement system regardless of my person thoughts of how it performs. You will have to make sure that somehow you break down the movement systems for any current vet to learn the new changes quickly.  A video on the forums that's hard to find wont cut it.  Have something in game linking to the 'best' tutorial video out there.

-(Marine) Forcing teamwork is a slippery slope to work with.  While Armory humping is sometimes an issue, it's often not a serious problem.  An easy tweak is to encourage welder uses as the balance mod does already, but decrease an armoies ability to heal armor.  Try forcing to always look at the armory to gain armor over time at a slow rate?  That way you can't twitch look at the armory for a free burst of extra super durable Armor hp.

-(Marine) Rifle spread, why change to something that's a total random cone?  It should always be focused towards the center.  I'd have a vairable cone then a fully random bullet spread.

-Everything else.  I actually enjoy most of the new gameplay elements in terms of adding the much needed variety to ns2.  So good work on everything else.

Since you finally made it to the end, hopefully you come away with some stellar new ideas and hopefully a more refined direction on what you think to do with the game. Player, Dev, and otherwise!


Bitey <3