Natural Selection 2

[sser]

I'm a pretty decent "shot" and I find lerks harder to hit than any other alien in the game, including the fading assassins.

 

[Average Manatee]

I have a hell of a time hitting fades. The new phasing effect takes getting used to. Thankfully while fades like to dodge a lot in combat, they tend to move in a predictable straight line while running away.

Lerks... I dunno, I just don't have problems. The fact that I KNOW one shotgun shot is all it takes (req w1, w2 for carapace) makes things so much easier for me. If you get used to how they move and wait for the perfect shot, you shouldn't have too many problems. Doing it with an LMG of course is harder. For long range, keep in mind that the pistol can shoot as fast as you click and does much more damage than an LMG. Anything below a fade not moving at range should die before they know you are shooting at them.

 

[Ashery]

The new autobot repairers seem mad powerful.

Bile bomb will royally fuck up even a full stack of MACs. It's hilarious when an exo's wandering around with what looks like a dozen MACs only to have them all die in a few seconds.

 

[Average Manatee]

True, spamming them has a counter. But they are still really, really powerful individually. 5 res for a perfectly aware welder that doesn't require a marine to operate? Sign me up. That's just insanely economical. MACs are a way to effectively "buy" additional players. And EMP is one of those things that is completely imba IF you can micro them. No more alien special abilities, attacks slowed by 50% or so, gg no re fade/onos. Nailing that guy who saved his first 50 res (and would have gone 50:1 in a pub) on his 2nd marine attack is soooo satisfying.

 

[sser]

Man, I'm pretty sure Marines lose 60-70% of these pub games; at least the 8v8 ones, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was higher. I'm always playing Marines now because the Aliens are boring as shit given how stupidly often they just bowl over the humans.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes, sadly if both teams just run around randomly the Aliens will mop the floor with Marines, since the Alien comm can control 90% of the map after about 3 or 4 minutes while Marine comm is crying on the mic begging people to phase/run 50 feet and take out the single skulk chewing on a building. Aliens have 4 Onoses by the time Marines unlock Shotguns.

On another note, the Skulk bite is starting to get really annoying. Loudest sound in the game x4 forces me to turn down my speaker volume to the point where the rest of the game is but a wimper.

 

[Zewp]

Yeah, I get this feeling being good with the Aliens is a lot easier than being good with the marines. I played with a really good marine team last night and we barely managed to push out of our base.

I'm not sure I'd say the game is unbalanced, but the difficulty curve definitely seems to be higher when playing marines.

 

[Destroid]

Another big content update, and 75% off.

 

[Tehdagah]

Did they fix the performance issues?

 

[Dr Tomo]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/30/natural-selection-2-needs-cash-asks-the-crowd/

Looks like the studio needs help/in trouble.

 

[Destroid]

Tehdagah Yeah, performance has been drastically better since a few patches ago.

 

[KoolNoodles]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/30/natural-selection-2-needs-cash-asks-the-crowd/

Looks like the studio needs help/in trouble.

Nevermind, not really in trouble, just asking for what is essentially a donation to continue with more content because it's not cost-effective for a small studio.

I can get behind that, it's just cosmetic fluff for people who feel like donating.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Huh. Well if they improved performance I'll download it and check it out again. Really enjoyed it but the shitty performance really put me off and I stopped playing, plus the online population dropped quite a bit. Free Steam weekend adding more players and (Maybe) improved performance from a patch might get me back in.

 

[Dr Tomo]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/30/natural-selection-2-needs-cash-asks-the-crowd/

Looks like the studio needs help/in trouble.

Nevermind, not really in trouble, just asking for what is essentially a donation to continue with more content because it's not cost-effective for a small studio.

I can get behind that, it's just cosmetic fluff for people who feel like donating.

Well I think it has improved a lot since the last free weekend, yet it still feels a bit unoptimized compared to other shooters and I wonder if I have to wait till build 350 before it plays as smooth as the trailers portray it. Also wish the studio offered more transparency instead of trying to pull on the heart strings of gamers by saying we are offering this content for free and not selling it like dlc like other evil pub's would do.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Eh. Loaded the game up, performance is still pretty questionable. It does seem a little better than what it was but "Better than what it was" still is annoying when aliens are bouncing around and you haven't got the FPS to accurately keep up.

 

[Destroid]

It will never look as smooth as it does in the trailers, no game does. Those have motion blur applied to them (and probably other post processing) that make it look that way. I have a low end i5 and hd6850, it runs in the 50-80fps range for me.

 

[Konjad]

Never had the issues with performance and the game runs perfectly fine on my 4yrs old laptop in high details. However, loading times kill it for me, especially on my 5400 RPM HDD. Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?

 

[Destroid]

The game is mostly demanding on CPU, and it's not uncommon for laptops to be pretty good in this area. Loading times are indeed long, especially the first time you load a map it runs a bunch of optimisations on it.

 

[asper]

Game has a 75% discount on Steam this weekend

 

[Dr Tomo]

It will never look as smooth as it does in the trailers, no game does. Those have motion blur applied to them (and probably other post processing) that make it look that way. I have a low end i5 and hd6850, it runs in the 50-80fps range for me.

Well considering that I can run most games BF3 and etc quite fine (around 35 fps) and yet NS 2 still gives me >20 fps I find that a bit problematic. It seems like they are inexperienced and learnnig as they go from how NS 2 is doing and their desperate need for $$$ with the use of KS.

 

[Destroid]

Of course they are inexperienced, NS2 is their first serious commercial game, with their own in house engine. They have a very small staff and an ambitious game that has to handle a lot of entities. As indies, solvency is always going to be an issue looming on the horizon and has troubled much larger studios like Obsidian and Double Fine. The crowdfunding program is to provide funding to continue to have staff dedicated to improving and creating new content for NS2. If it dries up I imagine they will stop doing that, lay off a few staff, and focus on another project.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Of course they are inexperienced, NS2 is their first serious commercial game, with their own in house engine. They have a very small staff and an ambitious game that has to handle a lot of entities. As indies, solvency is always going to be an issue looming on the horizon and has troubled much larger studios like Obsidian and Double Fine. The crowdfunding program is to provide funding to continue to have staff dedicated to improving and creating new content for NS2. If it dries up I imagine they will stop doing that, lay off a few staff, and focus on another project.

That might be true, but I am comparing them to Interwave studios which also released their first commercial project and isn't struggling to fix their only commercial project. It is of my opinion that Unknown Worlds employees doesn't have much industry experience as they are still struggling with their only commercial game.

 

[Destroid]

Not comparable, Nuclear Dawn uses source engine. Of course, you could always say that making an in house engine for an FPS as an indie is foolish, and I would agree.

 

[Kane]

Not comparable, Nuclear Dawn uses source engine. Of course, you could always say that making an in house engine for an FPS as an indie is foolish, and I would agree.

It's also an issue of priorities. Why have all these graphical super-effects in the engine? Flymonster gassing is -40FPS. Yeah, all that particels just have to be rendered, or else...!!!

 

[Destroid]

Can't say I ever noticed FPS drops from particle effects like the gasses. Usually they come late game as the entity count jacks up from all the buildings.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Not comparable, Nuclear Dawn uses source engine. Of course, you could always say that making an in house engine for an FPS as an indie is foolish, and I would agree.

Actually I would see both as comparable as they are both brand new studios with only one commercial release and both worked on mod before the did their first commercial game. The major difference is one actually used the same engine they had exp in already while the other built theirs from scratch. Also a indie making their own in house engine isn't foolish if they know what they are doing, which in Unknown's case it is apparent they are a bit inexperienced as their engine is comparable to Carbon (CCP's). Also agree with raw that their priorities are out of order since they are still trying to add more stuff to their game and not just polishing their game.