For bringing us NS1 and NS2, I want to thank UWE for bringing us over a decade's worth of enjoyment. Without their talents and resources, we would not have had the prodigious history of competitive play or even this community. Just look at this website, over a ten years old and still kicking. Their finger into our free time can not be underestimated. That said, as a company, their focus needs to evolve. With recent patches becoming fewer and less substantial, it appears that UWE's attention is primarily being focused more and more on Subnautica. Although, I love NS2, I can understand their decisions to work on the next thing and do not fault them at all.
I'm a playtester and a maptester, but my primary joy and work for NS2 has and always will be the competitive community. You are my first love and I will always do my best to ensure that your time with the NSL is fun and satisfying. That's our mission statement:
"The vision of the Natural Selection League (NSL) is to gather Natural Selection 2 players for international organized play. At its very core, we would simply like games to be played, in the hopes that this fosters tangible and meaningful relationships among its participants. We realize that its participants span the range of commitment, skill, and time zones and will do everything possible to cater to everyone’s needs and create the most enjoyable experience."
All this said, we look towards the future, next season, the seasons after that. If this community is to stay, and not just be sustained on life support, we need to do something to keep this game fresh, engaging, and fun. My proposal is to created a competitive balance mod for our league. It would hopefully be a mod fleshed out with useful and thoughtful changes, bugfixes, etc. A mod that is implemented into Season 5.
I've already started approaching people to contribute to his mod, but we'd like the community's opinion. Mostly, how do we approach creating this mod? Who would and how we decide on the changes? What sort of changes do we need?
If there's enough interest in this kind of mod, we'll post a detailed outline or what may be to come. Let's hear your thoughts. This mod is for you.
I don't know how deep we can go with a mod, but getting rid of PVE stuffs, getting a real aliens tech tree and focusing more on competitive balance is really necessary imo.
Given some lengthy discussions on campfire, most chatters there like that idea. It only divides up a bit on how to do it in details and who shall do it in the end. Out of question would be a strong interaction with the competitive community and based on feedback given from the teams.
I think I don't hurt anyone by already saying that the mostly "nominated" people are rantology, Dragon and Grissi as a triumvirate.
In the end no one wants big overhauls like redefining the game completely (like 250 did). It is about smaller changes with considerable impact on the meta game. Keeping things fresh and preventing a stagnating game state.
Usually I hated the idea of different game modes, but a comp mod with small changes can be really good - I think. What do you guys think?
You could remove the Fade ground friction again like before Reinforced enabling them to travel more easily/more efficiently. Combat would still cost similar amounts though I imagine but it would be easier to escape/harder to trap. I also thought that movement was much more fun too.
good idea if done right...
complaining about pve in prem div where it is barely used anyway?
barely seen even in the wcs
i wouldnt want to see that i suddenly have less options to win the game, not unless every team has good enough players so the pve becomes obsolete which will never happen...
I agree this needs to happen. In recent history we have seen UWE almost neglect needed fixes that Samus has fixed a long time ago eg: skulk sounds. With people like mendasp & Samus in the community we should be utilizing there skills so we can fix any issues straight away and not have to wait months and months for a fix that should be released straight away.
I'm kinda wary of making the game play differently.
tweaking numbers and such is fine, but stuff like making the fade play completely differently from how you'd play it normally would create too much of a disconnect.
Small subtle and easily explainable changes such as res costs are okay. Do not make the movement different from vanilla, that would alienize the competetive community.
Put all desired changes out there for the community to discuss before they are implemented.
I would love to see some changes to the skill reducing aspects of the game though such as mucous spam or drifter abilities in general. We all want PvE to disappear from comp ns2 but that will never happen without drastic changes. Live fade is fine. We are not changing the movement back nor adding hp/energy unless other game changes require it so.
I think we should just stick to bug fixes and very small tweaks for now.
lol and why do you get to be the one that decides the fade is fine? You aren't a "We"
Also, we need to be careful when changing commander abilities, especially for the aliens. The BT patch already made it so being alien commander is kind of shitty. Taking away the few things the Khamm has left is just going to make people not want to fill that role anymore. If you take away the drifters, what's left? whips? And we're talking about nerfing those too.
Balance should definitely be the main focus of this mod but we should also remember that our community is small, and we can always use more players. We need to be careful not to alienate them by taking the fun out of the game.
@swalk
Poor wording. Settle down Champ. lol But no one in their right mind would bring back the old fade movement.
@Ritual
Yeah, I know. I was just putting random thoughts into words. Changing alien khamm abilities could have unforeseen consequence on the rest of the balance as well. Drifter abilities are just stupid as hell.
Yeah I feel you I usually put out my ideas the same way lol. Old fade movement was fun but it doesn't have a place in the current build... giving fade a little more energy would be nice though.
It's reaaaallly unforgiving right now. A little too much to be fun to learn imo.
(i fully realize i'm asking for something to be buffed because i'm bad at it lol)
I would love to see a possibility to bring a substitute into the game quickly and fairly.
I could think of a modification of the ready room and/or the spectator-team. The substitutes should be able to see what is happening in the game, without seeing information, their teammates could not see - like the commander's perspective.
If a player crashes the substitutes could get into the game with mere seconds of delay.
A counter on the substitutions during the game and/or referee-rulings would regulate substitution-abuse.
The mod would have also to implement, that the player switching in has the same amount of PRes than the crashed player.
I want old fade vanilla ... and blink in research.
Don't nerf alien com maybe . We have nothing to do in com or don't lock res at 0 for com...
If the role of com it's put (maybe 4-5 upgrade) ... that will be boring and spam one letter to mucus...
I think mucus it's too much porwefull because alien are too much resistant and that affect too much the fight.
I think mucus don't will regain your armor when you are hit !!! (for 2 sec)
I think mucus will be on the crag and not on the drifter...
And make new drifter ability (with little range and little area)(depend on what hive you have or make a research for that)... (that affect the reloading of marine... ,the movement of marine...and maybe a little ink) and maybe create a new catapact more cheaper and less powerfull to cure that effect or imunne to 2-3 sec.
we Have on com marine ,armor1/2/3 weapon1/2/3 , shotgun,robotic/jetpack/catapack/phasegate/arc/robotic/medpack/ammo/observatory/advanced armory/Armlab/ ...
In alien com ,we have mucus,shell ,drifter,shade, crag and whip, biomass,cyst... (and maybe umbra)
we need more little research for alien com... that give ability for whip to bile bomb , crag ,drifter.
We need more strat viable, and a counter for marine com...
What we want ,we want more fps or RTS or 50/50 ?
That just my idea , soz for my english :D (i hope you will understand what i think)
If big changes need to happen why not start out with them and slowly tweak after that. We all know UWE wont make the big changes anymore and we will be lucky to get hotfixes that should be a week after release, instead months later.
One thing i really want to see and should be a requirement for whoever (group or single person) takes on this project is 100% transparency on changes.
Also when changes do happen they should be well thought out and well tested before ever reaching the mod. Changes going live between seasons and only emergency game fixing changes being made mid season.
In a perfect world i would love to also see representatives of all the Premier clans give their stamp of approval on changes before they go live. If you can please all those try hards, you have a good set of changes. This might be a good safe guard if pulled off.
But im just a Div 3 flash fade :P what do i know. Thank you to those taking up this epic task and thank you Zefram for bringing this up.
I think you will struggle to actually improve balance in general if all you do is tweak some numbers internally. You might be able to shift the problem, but unless you introduce new mechanics that scale with player skill you would only be improving the balance at the top and making it worse else where. Improving balance at the top is still fundamentally better in my opinion, but still.
you can drastically alter the metagame and improve balance by tweaking numbers.
SC2 does it all the time. So does dota/lol.
for example, something like making whips cost 15 res, and reducing alien respawn time by like 2 seconds. Now its a much more volatile/faster game. I have no idea how balanced it would be, but these are relatively simple number changes.
This is exactly what the balance mod CANNOT do. It will be impossible for even the 5 premier teams to agree on any large changes. Even if all 5 teams agree that the alien commander needs to be removed, each one will have vastly different ideas about how it should be done. Who would ever decide this in such a way that we don't alienate entire teams?
This just gets much more complicated when you consider all 50 teams.
this kind of changes would need at least weeks of testing.
Remember the ns2balance mod cup, even small changes got a big impact on the game.
Reduce of Biomass and Bilebomb e.g. would result in endless gorge bilebomb rushes again
Any buff or nerf can result the game to swing to either side being OP.
This kind of "ensl mod" with changes, would need some good testing of equal teams.
I'd call RFK a subtle change in itself, but you can't just add RFK to the current NS2, you would get way too much PRes, which means even more guns and lifeforms all over the place. You would need to do something else with the PRes as well to balance out all the extra res that comes from adding RFK. Also you should only gain 1 PRes per kill imo. Not 1-3. I'm not sure what to do about the extra res. Maybe it would work better with 1 TRes per kill. It would definitely make the game snowball faster, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
you mean the community isnt growing because those "baddies" have no place in the game u imagine.... behaviour like that might just be another reason nobody wants to join this community
If you bother doing a balance mod, change the alien tech tree, it's the biggest problem right now.
If your only concern is that it will make pub and comp too different, remember that it is the point of doing this.
Limiting the balance mod because what we are changing is going to make comp play so good that pub play is going to feel even crappier is not a good reason tbh. Don't be afraid to do drastic changes.
If it is really better, you will probably see pub servers running the mod.
Don't fool yourself thinking those who enjoy 12v12 shitspam might someday realize how good comp play is and give it a try, just to give up because the game is too different. The game is already too different, and most of those players won't make the jump anyway.
I think you go from pub to comp to experience the better side of the game, so why limit this better side in order to make it look closer to the bad side?
