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[Dragonmaw]

Let us talk about how good this game is.

PS: Jetpack + flamer is so gud

[Blademasterbobo]

i am too much of a nooblord to enjoy this game at all

[Dragonmaw]

Some pro tips from me to you:

1.) get a friend to play with you and roll in a group of 2
2.) urge your comm to get jetpacks and flamers as soon as possible
3.) stick around an area with a resource tower until the comm builds there.

[nekokoneko]

Had an amazing game with 6 bros on vent that lasted an hour... I fucking love this game.

[mono]

Does anyone else have performance issues?

[Blademasterbobo]

yeah apparently that's why i was sucking so bad, it was running at like 5fps. lowered the res a bunch and at 30 fps i can actually kill doods.

[theRayDog]

This thread needs a revive.

NS2 is one of the most complex multi-player FPS designs I've ever played and I fucking love it. 

Any one of it's basic mechanics would be considered a leap of innovation in contrast to many of today's popular shooters. The subtleties of each alien forms movement, tightly integrated RTS game play, and feeling of real progression and change over the course of a single match have kept me warring in the lonely reaches of space late into the night.

[Muz]

Hmm... will get this if it ever drops to $15 (maybe in 3 years or something)

[Nillo]

Probably won't get this unless they add bots in (or someone makes a mod that has bots).

[Dragonmaw]

Why?

[InfiniteStateMachine]

I wont either. My ping is 200 when playing someone in the same city as me. Wimax is garbage.

Can't wait to play this in 9 months though. I really wish I could play it now.

[Nillo]

Why?

I find completely competitive games unhealthy. I want the option to not play against other people. It's more relaxing and it allows you to learn the mechanics of a game without getting yelled at. It also lets you try new strategies or goof around without ruining the game for everyone else.

[Dragonmaw]

I honestly don't think that NS2 would work with bots. Part of the game is dealing with the fact that players are independent and often don't listen to you. Bots can't get scared, for example. Or rebel against your command. Take the human element out of NS2 and you have a rather mediocre RTS. Add it and it's one of the best multiplayer games ever made.

Also NS2 has rookie mode which gives you helpful tutorials and marks you for other players to help. People have been taking it fairly seriously and doing their best to help rookie players. It's quite nice!

[Nillo]

I would think that the Venn diagram of "People who take a game pretty seriously" and "People who help newbies" doesn't have much of an overlap. The serious players are more likely to lash out when a teammate does something stupid, which is bad for newbies in general.

Anyway, you could argue in a similar way regarding the bots in Dota 2 (it's a game about teamwork, and bots can't work with you so why have bots in Dota?), and yet plenty of people play with and against bots in Dota 2 and enjoy it. The developers spend tons of effort improving the bots in every patch, which shows that they think this is an important feature too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure NS2 is great aside from this glaring flaw. I'd like to try it, but I don't think it's worth the risk right now.

[Dragonmaw]

The difference in regards there is that NS2 fundamentally relies on human behaviors (panic and insubordination being the primary ones) whereas DOTA2 relies on behaviors that can easily be simulated. If you take the human element out of NS2, all you have are MACs with guns. And that's stupid and boring and not at all what NS2 is about.

I would think that the Venn diagram of "People who take a game pretty seriously" and "People who help newbies" doesn't have much of an overlap. The serious players are more likely to lash out when a teammate does something stupid, which is bad for newbies in general.

I'm outright telling you that so far rookie mode has been successful in the games I've played in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure NS2 is great aside from this glaring flaw. I'd like to try it, but I don't think it's worth the risk right now.

Characterizing a lack of bots as a "glaring flaw" is asinine and shows a fundamental lack of understanding as to why NS2 owns. Maybe it's just not a game for you. Go play Starcraft instead.

Also "worth the risk" are you fucking kidding me.

[Nillo]

Also "worth the risk" are you fucking kidding me.

It's a risk because I'm not sure if I will enjoy a multiplayer game that has a learning curve and doesn't include singleplayer or an AI mode. That's a reasonable conclusion, isn't it?

I've been told that Natural Selection 2 is a hybrid of a shooter and a strategy game, but you're saying it's... a human behavior game, or something? Dunno, all I can say is that our conversation has made me more confident in my decision to not purchase this game.

[nekokoneko]

I was totally new to the game and after a few good commanders i'm totally into the swing of things.

You need a bit of mentoring for games like NS2 / Dota to really understand the concepts and as theyre incredibly team dependent it can really change how the games pan out.


Thing is, NS2 is AMAZING, it feels like such a complete package with room for both skill and strategy to shine through, something that MOBA games lack completely. If youre good at FPS games you'll understand the Marine mentality quickly while the aliens require a bit more coordination to swarm them down.

The game has an "Explore" mode where by you can go through the levels and have EVERYTHING explained via tooltip and experiment with every piece of tech which should be enough to understand what things are. Apart from that you really have to dive in and work with the team you have.


In short;

- If you can play FPS youll get to grips with how to move around as a unit quite quickly
- Good commander is key to victory
- Learning curve is steep but after ~60hours i can make a big impact on the outcome.

[Blademasterbobo]

Nillo, you're acting like a straight up tard

[Nillo]

I honestly would never have started playing Dota back in the day if it didn't have an AI map. I played it exclusively against bots for more than a year back then with a few buddies on LAN. And to this day, I still play more bot games than I play "real" Dota games, because I find them relaxing.

Maybe the learning curve of NS2 isn't as steep compared to Dota. As nekokoneko said, if you have experience with other FPS games, playing a marine should be fairly straightforward. In that case, I suppose the inability to play vs. AI isn't a huge problem. But I don't think it's possible to argue that not having bots in a game is a selling point or even a feature. It would objectively be better to have the option of playing against bots than to not have that option, but sometimes a developer team doesn't have the time or resources to work on that, and that's fine.

[Dragonmaw]

It would be objectively worse to play NS2 with bots because that removes everything that makes the game special.