Why this game died...

[Private 1st Class Jeffrey Bison]

I really wanted to like Natural Selection 2 but the engine is horrible, the game takes too long to load, performance is rather bad and server performance is bad too... like Red Orchestra 2 where everyone has 150+ pings for some reason.

The Marines feel too floaty, the guns need a bit of kick back, screen shake and the marines need some animated head bobbing or something. Stuff you get in other shooters which gives you that satisfying weighty feel. I also hated the Jet Packs and the constant jumping of the Marines, they're in massively heavy gear, they shouldn't be able to move like that.

The game has no collision as well, so fights always end up with both the Marine and the Alien just circling round, jumping and trying to actually find each other because you're models will be standing inside each other. It just makes the fast paced combat feel a mess and tbh they needed to add collision and to slow things down a tad bit.

I'm not a fan of the start Alien either, not having leap just makes them feel terrible and not fun to play at all. This just means new players get frustrated, quit and never come back. I don't care if it was done for balancing reasons, you need to find a way to balance it, having leap so far down the line means a lot of the time you never get it.

The commander just doesn't work for public games and yet once you get rid of it then part of the appeal is lost. It is a hard thing to get right and sadly it just doesn't work in the end. For public games you need 100% of matches to be fun, most of the time in NS2 you're losing and not having fun due to the commander being crap or leaving half way through. When you join a game you'll alwyas join the losing team because people naturally quit when they're losing, so this was an issue that needed to be fixed and never was.

The stand alone Combat thing could have fixed it, sadly though they made it a standlone and not an update to the existing game. I don't get that choice as it doesn't improve the original game by adding a mode more suited for casual public games, it just adds a whole new game, splits up the community and makes it feel even more dead so people just don't bother playing either. They should have handled it like Red Orchestra 2, make an event out of it, get people excited and give it away in the main game.


I love the premise of NS2 and when you get to the end game, you have a mech with rail guns and you're one shotting Aliens it is so fun. I even love the commander when both teams have a good one and it is a long drawn out balanced game. Sadly though even if all my personal issues aren't shared with the majority of you, there is one fact that you cannot deny and that is the poor performance of the engine. I tried to get my friends into NS2 years ago and none of them could be bothered to put up with the load times and how the framerate bogs down constantly as the game progresses. Even to this day it hasn't improved.


I hope either Natural Selection 3 comes around and is much more stable or Turtle Rock make Evolve 2 and copy the good stuff about NS2.

[Vitdom]

1. This game requires a modern PC. A cheap laptop with 5400 rpm HDD won't do.

2. This game has advanced collision detection compared to GoldSource which collide players in rectangular boxes, hence you don't circle around them. I agree there should be some greater friction though.

3. This game is not about 100% fun, it's about an immersive and developing experience, especially as the commander. Talking through a mic is many times paramount. This game is about skill and competition, nothing else.

4. Graphical disruptions were intentionally not implemented by the developers and the Alpha+Beta community participants.

5. This game is not dead. Your PC is, if you can't play it.

6. Not having leap at the start is intentional to the balanced and assymetric gameplay, and requires all players to adapt. The commander evolves the team's abilities throughout each match. Brain-dead players who can not adapt will always fail, "Natural Selection".

[Piopio]

Originally posted by Vitdom:

1. This game requires a modern PC. A cheap laptop with 5400 rpm HDD won't do.

But it's also strange when one day I can play with average 40fps rarely dropping under 30 and after some updates 15fps becomes typical. Not to mention that currently I can hardly connect to any server because the loading results in 4 black screens on 5 attempts...

[Stark]

Yeah, I can just image that shooting fast moving aliens would become so much easier if the rifle had recoil and your screen shook as you were trying to track them... The average pub player can struggle to kill a single skulk at the beginning of the game (9 bullets) with a full clip (50 bullets) with no recoil...

I don't see how not having leap to start makes skulks "not fun". Leap is a late game tech used as a counter to jet packs. The reason new players struggle is because for some reason they think it's reasonable to walk in a straight line towards a guy holding a gun. If you learn how to ambush, wall jump, and attack in packs, you'll find that early game skulk is fun to play.

********* The people who made NS2 did not make the Combat stand-alone *********

[Naskoni]

Originally posted by STAR WARS:

Do people still game using 5400rpm Drives?
Get a WD Black ffs.
Or an SSD (little better).

Pffff - get a WD Velociraptor ffs.

[razdaz]

Too many times have I read a thread like this. Pretty much everything you complained about has been said 1000 times already.

[dePARA]

Its always interisting that people with no clue how a games work know what the game need.
So instead of learning a game they want it dumbed down to there needs instad the the opposite way.

THATS why NS2 is dying.
Its a complex game and the typical casual player is not willing to learn it and dont want so spend the needed time.

@Private 1st Class Jeffrey Bison
Just for interest:
What is a bad com for you?
Someone who dont give you exo and fast phase gates?

[Elfi]

If you dont rush pgs you cleary dont know what you are doing

[TINEY]

I have a pretty much top-of-the-line PC, yet this game still takes 5 mins to load.

[Naskoni]

Originally posted by Templar1119:

I have a pretty much top-of-the-line PC, yet this game still takes 5 mins to load.

Then you have a rather bottom of the line hard drive in it...

[Goliath Dreamteam Vietnam]

Game is allways have full server , many players still play this game

This is not "Call of Duty Kids trickshot+ hip fire + killstreak" >> So you can understand why its not popular

[TINEY]

Originally posted by Naskoni:

Originally posted by Templar1119:

I have a pretty much top-of-the-line PC, yet this game still takes 5 mins to load.

Then you have a rather bottom of the line hard drive in it...

Actually, my hard drive is good. Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm. It's only this game that has such long load times. Other games, even more advanced than this (Attila:Total War, Far Cry 4, DA:I) load much, much faster. This is no excuse.

[Naskoni]

Originally posted by Templar1119:

Originally posted by Naskoni:

Then you have a rather bottom of the line hard drive in it...

Actually, my hard drive is good. Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm. It's only this game that has such long load times. Other games, even more advanced than this (Attila:Total War, Far Cry 4, DA:I) load much, much faster. This is no excuse.

Your Barracuda is, at best, mediocre in terms of "top of the line" stuff.

And those other games are more advanced? In what ways exactly? You are comparing 2 console games with something built explicitly for the PC. I'm yet to see a game with better lighting, not to mention even textures on the highest setting.

[TINEY]

Originally posted by Naskoni:

Originally posted by Templar1119:

Actually, my hard drive is good. Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm. It's only this game that has such long load times. Other games, even more advanced than this (Attila:Total War, Far Cry 4, DA:I) load much, much faster. This is no excuse.

Your Barracuda is, at best, mediocre in terms of "top of the line" stuff.

And those other games are more advanced? In what ways exactly? You are comparing 2 console games with something built explicitly for the PC. I'm yet to see a game with better lighting, not to mention even textures on the highest setting.

Textures? I am playing on the highest setting, and the textures are NOWHERE NEAR those in the games I've listed. Don't compare it to BF4 or others, or, if you really want a PC-exclusive, even Homeworld Remastered. Total War Attila is not for consoles, has better textures, many, many more units and less than half the loading time.

Your argument really doesn't stand. I've yet to see another game choked by the "harddisk" as much as this one. The fact that it's built for the PC exclusively only shows how unoptimized it is. Besides, I really don't care about the HDD. I've invested in other, more important areas to me, like the graphics card and the processor.

[Naskoni]

Originally posted by Templar1119:

Originally posted by Naskoni:

Your Barracuda is, at best, mediocre in terms of "top of the line" stuff.

And those other games are more advanced? In what ways exactly? You are comparing 2 console games with something built explicitly for the PC. I'm yet to see a game with better lighting, not to mention even textures on the highest setting.

Textures? I am playing on the highest setting, and the textures are NOWHERE NEAR those in the games I've listed. Don't compare it to BF4 or others, or, if you really want a PC-exclusive, even Homeworld Remastered. Total War Attila is not for consoles, has better textures, many, many more units and less than half the loading time.

Your argument really doesn't stand. I've yet to see another game choked by the "harddisk" as much as this one. The fact that it's built for the PC exclusively only shows how unoptimized it is. Besides, I really don't care about the HDD. I've invested in other, more important areas to me, like the graphics card and the processor.

In other words, as already said previously, a "top of the line" PC with a mediocre (at best) hard drive. You want to play with a mediocre component that makes loading lots of small files last 5 mins - its your business. I load it in 10 seconds, as I do, in fact, have a top of the line PC. In that sense I load this game MUCH faster than I load other games, thus logic dictates, the problem is your hard drive (and most probably the mediocre rest of your supposedly "top of the line" computer).

[TINEY]

Originally posted by Naskoni:

Originally posted by Templar1119:

Textures? I am playing on the highest setting, and the textures are NOWHERE NEAR those in the games I've listed. Don't compare it to BF4 or others, or, if you really want a PC-exclusive, even Homeworld Remastered. Total War Attila is not for consoles, has better textures, many, many more units and less than half the loading time.

Your argument really doesn't stand. I've yet to see another game choked by the "harddisk" as much as this one. The fact that it's built for the PC exclusively only shows how unoptimized it is. Besides, I really don't care about the HDD. I've invested in other, more important areas to me, like the graphics card and the processor.

In other words, as already said previously, a "top of the line" PC with a mediocre (at best) hard drive. You want to play with a mediocre component that makes loading lots of small files last 5 mins - its your business. I load it in 10 seconds, as I do, in fact, have a top of the line PC. In that sense I load this game MUCH faster than I load other games, thus logic dictates, the problem is your hard drive (and most probably the mediocre rest of your supposedly "top of the line" computer).

I hope you do realize how flawed your logic is. You're stating that this game has no problems since it's tied to HDD performance, and claim to be able to load it in under 10 seconds, but you completely ignore the fact that other, more resource-intensive games, such as those that I've listed, have absolutely no problem in loading more files and assets.

You completely ignore my perfectly valid arguments, then go on to boast about your "superior" rig just because you have a better HDD, which, I assure you, is one of the least important components when it comes to what I do besides gaming. Your attitude is obviously not mature enough to keep me engaged in this conversation. Good luck!