At least he's ideologically consistent. He obvs never figured out the good bits of NS1 and has now implemented all the terrible stuff into NS2.

OK, that’s a bit of a harsh post. NS2 is quite a fun game. I doubt it will be around as long as NS1 but who knows? The bit I find annoying is that they could have taken the good parts of NS1 and built on them but they didn’t. It could have been an amazing sequel with all the extra exciting different crap they wanted. But it isn’t, because nobody seems to have any sort of handle on what made NS1 (or any decent FPS games) good. It is NS1’s successor in looks and name only but is pretending otherwise. Does this make me a purist?

Again, not even that bothered about bhop. Although Bacillus is right, the treatment of it and other issues is symptomatic of the dev process as a whole.

e: look what the official NS forums have done to me, I feel like I have to pre-emptively defend myself against bullshit. fuck yeah

Go outside. Try to commute in a busy city. That's where you realise the crux of this problem is the human race. People are fucking oblivious as to where their bodies are. They have the spatial awareness of a drunken, blind man with no ear canals. This is why the 'old school' FPS is doomed to disappear, along with any concept of including movement skills in a game.

we had in depth discussion with foss-guy about this yeasterday (might be paraprhasing a little)

marko: ns2 sucks
fana: yeah
marko: ns2 sucks
fana: yeah
marko: ns2 sucks
fana: yeah
marko: but might turn out to be good
fana: ...
marko: just kidding
fana: yeah

anyway, I find that post alarming and seems to indcate how much devs (flayra atleast) are out of touch of things that made ns good. we're just not their target audience anymore is my guess.

I'm pretty sure Tane is on the money with ranged vs melee. The two main points that have been missed by NS2 are good ranged/melee combat and the fluidity of combat; both in skirmishes and at the map scale. Both of which I think are necessary to make the game work.

I fear Flayra is largely viewing the success of the gameplay through the prism of strategy only. I agree with their points about the learning curve being too brutal and that yes, strategy in NS1 was very limited but I disagree with how its been treated because it has lost site of fluid ranged/melee aspects. By moving their target audience away from strong melee/ranged combat, it feels as though the core of the game has been twisted into a hybrid which just won't achieve either set of objectives. Basically, the high level design feels misplaced slightly and it is leading to mis-judged decisions.

Just look at the synergy of each lifeform's abilities and their respective movement system in NS2 at the mo: only the skulk works. I don't know what crack the official forums are smoking but the next halfway working lifeform, the lerk, is incredibly easy to kill even with spore all over the place with every weapon the marine's have and I can't even aim half as well as I used to. Fade is about as deep as a puddle, gorge is OK and the onos has always been a bit of the Heavy Weapons Guy of NS so it gets a pass as long as the rest of them are working well.

Although just concentrating on ranged/melee is a little un-just, the fluidity of map control has totally been removed and the gameplay becomes very static when territorial buffs such as infestation are featured as a central design tenet. The res system for the alien team is off as well, I could talk about how the system is boring and has removed all elements of meaningful lifeform/economy/tech trade-offs for the individual but I'll stick to what I think is the biggest problem within the NS2 system: the skulk is both the free default lifeform but also featured as an integral part of alien strategy (and therefore inherently strong). This means a player can save up for a higher lifeform without thinking and it results in every player going lerk or fade at the same time (which is terrible). If skulks were slightly under-tuned by default and had the option to spend res on demand to get a boost in power somehow then it would mimic NS1's strategic lifeform timings and actually improve on NS1's alien tech system by allowing a pressuring marine team to chip away at alien resources in a manner analogous to non-confrontational lerks spore spamming economically strong marine teams.

There were at least 2 more people in that thread asking for a NS:source. So it would be a 2v2 already.

IN YOUR FACE

On-topic, I feel I don't care anymore about NS2. It's just the good drama which make me still read the posts there. UWE goes mainstream, but they will probably not succeed against Activision & Co. I'd be happy for them if they would, but I simply doubt they can pay their checks 6 months after release. The market for casual gamers is aggressive, over-satisfied and hard to survive in it in my opinion.

I'll just wait for the next indie dev catching up the idea about skill/gameplay instead of graphics/achievements/DLC and resell all the new kids bunnyhop under a different name. Like a Notch person for FPS. I think the market exists, and currently is heavily undersatisfied, or, at least not well-used by marketing.

For such, I'd even restart making bad quality videos telling the world about my new internet connection while missing Tane's best frag in life.

After reading this topic, all that I can see is:

ps. good posts mu, don't shoot

On a serious note:



A long post is better with some music on.

I thought I'd stay away from this thread as I'd rather not band wagon on the hate train too much.

My more or less educated guess is that NS2'es success as casual (or competitive) will depend on engine performance. You can always mod the game to be much better. While I think bunny hop or equivalent is practically mandatory for competitive NS gaming, I think NS1 players over-emphasize its impact. If NS2 were to have bunnyhop tomorrow, it suddenly wouldn't turn to be the best game on the market. No, you would have to improve a million other things. Getting a great game is not getting one thing right, but getting many of them (viva la Marginal Revolution). I haven't played NS2, or NS1 for that matter, much recently so I don't really know what's going on. I'll check back when the final version is out.

I think the game could be modded to be a lot better if engine works well. Since most of the assets are in the game, changing LUA, which is one of the highest-level FPS gaming scripting languages, would be rather easy (after figuring out the API). Most promods never succeed, but if marketed as NS1 Classic it just might. Warsow had evolution of gameplay too.

To put out my point in another way, you could remove bunnyhop from NS1, and it'd still feel like a great game. Marines would be a bit duller, aliens would be more boring but it would still be quite a great game because HL1 is one of the best, if not the best, FPS engine out there. The feel would be great, and also the game logic is highly competitive and entertaining.

All in all, I'm not saying there are any not any gains available in the game logic itself, but all things considered, its much easier to fix than engine. So whatever game feature they introduce, I'm not really bothered.

Fana:

That would surprise me, as I've never seen them give a rats ass about anything anyone "from ENSL" has to say about the game, at least not to the point where it actually has any effect on their gameplay design decisions.

I don't think this is true. Sure, they'll ignore a lot of what we say, but I've got several things through. The problem here is that you should look it from their position, to them you or me are just another whining player. It all depends on their intuition to judge our analysis. If you don't take advice from some people, you do the same. I'm not saying its wise, in fact in most matters, we should agree with people who know more about the subject but in some things its not always obvious who is the expert. Classical musician could tell you to stop listening to pop music which is a lot less complex than art music (but sometime less emotionally satisfying). To them you look the same, probably.

But like the mighty Tyler Cowen said, every time you tell an evil vs good story, you decrease your IQ by ten points. I think if you had never been competitive players and had founded such a company, any of could be in the same place. So I'm not blaming here anyone. There're some coordination problems you can solve by being angry, raging and calling people stupid (ahem). Its not impossible but I don't it will work here.

Fana:

Asmodee, some American, actually did port some maps and basic movement mechanics into source, but it's never going to go beyond that. Even if he somehow managed to turn it into a actual playable game, who would play it?

Most of the stuff in NS is really just slight variations of HL stock features, especially when you get the massive HL2 engine arsenal. He had done most alien and marine upgrades / weapons (but in different SDK's), and only big thing that was missing was commanding. I don't think finishing the game code would be hard at all apart from the models. It would take about as much as time as the longest frag movie that was made.

My issue here is exactly what you said: who would play it. We would need to have modern maps, modern models, modern rigging, and god knows what.. possibly even some ad money to get it off the ground. Not impossible but if it'd look like NS1 on source engine, some NS1 players would probably visit it and go away. I haven't done any mod projects, so maybe its doable but mod scene is dying because of the huge capital costs involved in getting assets and stuff done compared to brick-and-mortar era of HL1. Minecraft did it but it was casual-oriented. Maybe I'll finish the code when I need to sharpen my C++ skills.

If Flayra would endorse such project, maybe it could be done. I don't know if he would see it as a competitor though.

blind:

I'll just wait for the next indie dev catching up the idea about skill/gameplay instead of graphics/achievements/DLC and resell all the new kids bunnyhop under a different name. Like a Notch person for FPS. I think the market exists, and currently is heavily undersatisfied, or, at least not well-used by marketing.

Tribes could be considered one competitior, and I have heard at least one guy trying to make hardcore game. I know there are quite a few oldschool gamers who want something competitive, but they are getting older, and their numbers are decreasing. Maybe it could be done, hard to say really. With enough ad money, I'm sure you can sell fridges to eskimos. So any NS player whos planning to be a multi-millionaire withing this decade might be able to do it!

My honest guess is that competitive FPS gaming as we know it, will be dead. There are signs of Starcraft and CS dying. They're tough little games but the Titanic is sinking.

Also I agree with Tane, as with actually quite many of you with posts longer than three lines and coherent sentences. No need to repeat them.

I wish good luck to NS2 devs. I don't really care if the game succeeds or not. For us, it would be better if it did. I think NS2 will be our only chance of getting something resembling good ol' NS. I don't believe same kind of game will come out soon.. probably never. Great music has disappeared, so will great games. Unfortunately.

p.s. As for the actual topic, there's no way in hell I'd ask for a refund. A man quiting his job for 18 months to create a mod that turns out to be the best FPS game, even if not by intention, deserves my sixty dollars.

jiriki

On a serious note:

p.s. As for the actual topic, there's no way in hell I'd ask for a refund. A man quiting his job for 18 months to create a mod that turns out to be the best FPS game, even if not by intention, deserves my sixty dollars.

SIXTY DOLLARS? WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU BUY IT LOL SCAM

(constie doesn't count oke)

p.s. As for the actual topic, there's no way in hell I'd ask for a refund. A man quiting his job for 18 months to create a mod that turns out to be the best FPS game, even if not by intention, deserves my sixty dollars.

I could've donated that 60 dollars for the game early on and the bought the game later, absolutely no problem. Where it gets tricky is when they advertized it as a game that's out in 2009 and runs on a 1.2 ghz machine. That's not the kind of business I want to approve in any possible way. If they choose to do it the business way, they better stand with the business responsibilities. Had it been any other company in the world, I would have taken the refund right away and told my friends to treat the whole company with exteme prejudice.

I gave them a second chance and said "fine, make this something worth it". Looking at it now, I don't know what I should think.

You're probably right, Bac. But I'll never ask for a refund too. I don't really mind if or how UWE fucks with us or not, just the fact what they've done before with NS1 was reason enough for me to invest in their dream product, whether it will be good for me or not.

let's be honest there.
as long as they dont give us a plushgorge, they dont WANT to make money anyways.

Well I could have given them the sixty dollars and they could have drank all the money for all I care. If they make a game, now that's a bonus.

Honestly, I don't see the big incentive effects here. Its like public voting, probably makes a bit more difference than private but still marginal impact. And public voting has much more local than global value!

Saebel, yeh me and Gibbz were planning for a plushie gorge but it never happened. It would have needed some capital though so not really a good idea for students to begin with.

dugi: 40 euros for NS2 + 20 for constie = 60 bucks, epic math.

it was 40 USD, wasn't it? I think I got it for 26€ or smth because of the good exchange rate at the time...
So, epic liar!

all i want is a fucking gigantic pink gorge icon next to my name. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK

that or a plushy gorge. GIMMIE OMG

jiriki

I don't believe same kind of game will come out soon.. probably never. Great music has disappeared, so will great games. Unfortunately.

I cried ;(

ps, i miss you jiriki.

pps hi tweadle

I miss you too Keyse (:

See the cutie on my avatar, it misses you too.

ANYONE WANT TO WATCH TANGLED WITH ME???????? FUCK NS2

jiriki

I haven't played NS2, or NS1 for that matter, much recently so I don't really know what's going on. I'll check back when the final version is out.

They're constantly adding polish and new features, but the core issues remain unchanged.

jiriki

but I've got several things through.

Oh really? Do tell.

jiriki

I think if you had never been competitive players and had founded such a company, any of could be in the same place. So I'm not blaming here anyone.

I shouldn't be so hard on them because I haven't walked a mile in their shoes? That's a load of crap. Daikatana was trash, walking a mile in John Romero's shoes wouldn't change that.

I'm disappointed and I have a right to be angry about it. Does that increase the chances of the game getting any better? No, but neither has anything else I've done the past three years so I may as well blow off some steam.

hi fana.

good one

Fana

Oh really? Do tell.

I don't know what I can. The tech tree back to NS1 type was one of them. Sure I didn't bring back bunnyhop but I did get them to listen quite a few times. It never felt they were being intentionally ignorant toward me. It just felt they didn't understand the value of my arguments.

Fana

I shouldn't be so hard on them because I haven't walked a mile in their shoes? That's a load of crap. Daikatana was trash, walking a mile in John Romero's shoes wouldn't change that.

First of all, I think their biggest mistake was to go with their own engine. A lot of other problems are derivatives of this. And in all fairness, I think it was a honest mistake, like dying to two LMGs in ENSL Finals. Your teammates had every right to be angry! Do you think they should keep raging about it for the next year?

To me, I think we come across as the grandpa who is whining about the youth playing video games and not reading books or whatever. Or the classical musician whining about people listening to popular music instead of much more complex art music. If some of such people would come across you, you would probably ignore the guy and move on. Given such relativism, I'm not sure inclined to be angry because I find some of that quite hypocritical.

I think some of the issues with NS2 are simply the fact that hardcore gaming has died or is dying, and there's no demand for the games. Carmack said this before, and some others too. Maybe there's a way to do it but blaming the companies for customer demand is in my opinion pointless, its like protesting for the world poor, it hardly helps at all but it does have signalling value for the protesters.

Yes I'm disappointed too but not so much at UWE. I also don't care about my 40 bucks either.

Fana

I'm disappointed and I have a right to be angry about it.

You could get a refund, would you still be angry after that? Politics isnt' about policy, angry feedback isn't about progress!

But this is mostly just semantics so whatever.

jiriki

It never felt they were being intentionally ignorant toward me. It just felt they didn't understand the value of my arguments.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough in my wording. I don't think they intentionally ignore our input, they just choose not to give it any weight in competition with other concerns.

jiriki

I think it was a honest mistake, like dying to two LMGs in ENSL Finals. Your teammates had every right to be angry! Do you think they should keep raging about it for the next year?

Well, considering you (and you weren't even on my team!) still like to mention it every chance you get... Also; wtf? Also; I was only at fault for one of the three rounds we lost, so it doesn't make any sense to blame me.

jiriki

To me, I think we come across as the grandpa who is whining about the youth playing video games and not reading books or whatever. Or the classical musician whining about people listening to popular music instead of much more complex art music. If some of such people would come across you, you would probably ignore the guy and move on. Given such relativism, I'm not sure inclined to be angry because I find some of that quite hypocritical.

Suppose your favourite band is Dream Theater. They play complex progressive metal. Suddenly they realize they aren't selling as much as they used to, because everybody's buying the latest Justin Bieber album instead. Citing this as the reason, Dream Theater sign Bieber as their new singer and start producing "teen pop" instead. As a Dream Theater fan, would you just go "oh well, I guess it would be hypocritical to be mad about it"?

jiriki

its like protesting for the world poor, it hardly helps at all but it does have signalling value for the protesters.

Yes. I already said this, with other words and without the strange analogy to political activism, in the post you just quoted parts of.

jiriki

I also don't care about my 40 bucks either.
You could get a refund, would you still be angry after that?

Don't understand why you keep bringing this up. You're the only one talking about refunds. I sure as hell don't want one. Partially because $40 is barely enough for a pizza where I live and partially beacuse I consider it a donation in the same vein as constellation.

In response to your Dream Theater quote; yeah well I'd be disappointed, not angry because just being does not feel I'm entitled to tell what they can do. But its semantics really.

Kind of useless debate we had here lol.

jiriki

In response to your Dream Theater quote; yeah well I'd be disappointed, not angry because just being does not feel I'm entitled to tell what they can do. But its semantics really.

Kind of useless debate we had here lol.

Yeah, those aren't really mutually exclusive though. You can still be angry even though they have the right to do whatever they want with their music. I understand what you mean though, I'm just reacting to the way that you seem to be arguing that your thinking on this should naturally apply to me.

Useless, like 9/10 debates :(

This was definitely as useless as fraggie and tom debating about +1'ing forum posts lol.

CONINCIDENCE? YOU DECIDE

Lets just all agree to one thing:

YOU TWO ARE POINTLESS ! << You have that in common with NS2 !

<33 !

I think Jiriki just likes talking about pointless subjects that most people can have absolutely no effect on.

Why don't we all just agree that I'm right about everyone being completely worthless