I got into a game and it was significantly better regarding lag. I hardly even noticed. The game is actually quite playable now.
My experience differed. I got it to work with updated NVidia driver. The game is significantly MORE playable, but still unplayable. I only tried aliens. Here are the problems I encountered in less than five minutes that made the game unplayable, so I quit.
1) Evolving into Gorge teleported me to crazy places. One time I was teleported somewhere where there was no map. Another time I was teleported through the floor into a pit. 2) We couldn't build anything. Since the alien commander needs to command those thingies to build stuff, but they were buggy as hell and kept flying away. We couldn't get a single res. 3) Lag was significantly improved from previous builds. What used to be horrendous lag is now merely abysmal. The game runs smooth for a few seconds, lags for a fraction of a second, then is smooth again. Repeat infinitely. That was with very few players.
That doesn't include any of the many bugs that were not showstoppers. The biggest of those was that joining random team put you on spectator team! What genius thought of that?
Watched a laggy skulk kill a marine frozen in T-pose.
I ignored all the T-posers and ran around trying to kill skulks. All of the marines except me seemed to be lagged out, but all of the aliens were fine.
The crippling lag, the random teleporting, the stuck T-pose Marines, the runaway buildbots, or the fact that every server I ever join is full of other people who are so lagged out they can't do anything?
The crippling lag, the random teleporting, the stuck T-pose Marines, the runaway buildbots, or the fact that every server I ever join is full of other people who are so lagged out they can't do anything?
Let us know if you've managed it. I have never played NS2 for more than a couple of minutes, and have never seen a game actually progress beyond "T-pose marines stuck in spawn being eaten by skulks."
I've played some games earlier, but only three on three. I had many, many, many problems though. I was never sure if the lag was on my end, because I'm using a macbook pro running windows, but it seems it was a common experience.
I'm so happy I've never paid to not play that game.
I didn't pay to play. I paid in the hopes to one day play. It's like a gamer lottery ticket.
If you could pay £20 for a super advanced pre-order Portal 3 now, would you?
Nope. In that case, since the game would or would not come out irrespective of whether people pre-ordered it, the opportunity cost is too high. NS would never have even had a chance if people hadn't paid. It might still never come out, but that's what happens with lottery tickets.
The only difference here is that if the lottery pays off, everyone wins.
Even thought it's fairly broken, I still would have paid if given another chance. It takes a lot of balls for a developer to allow people to play early builds that may or may not work. They took a risk and I hope it will pay off. I do wish that they would focus less on feature and more on functionality, but perhaps they need people like us who have software experience to file worth while bug reports. I really care about this game doing well. Perhaps we should spend a night, host our own server, and do some proper bug testing and file the bugs we find to them?
I've never played Natural Selection, from this thread I'm getting the vibe that I should wait before jumping in to pre-order the sequel?
I didn't pay to play. I paid in the hopes to one day play. It's like a gamer lottery ticket.
However is the payoff ever going to be as much as you would want? For example I was once looking forward to Duke Nukem, now I will never buy that game. I was once looking forward to Team Fortress 2 however when that game finally came it is a caricature of the original hard core Quake mod that I played as such I didn't play TF2 for more than 10 hours.
Contrast to L4D2 which I still think is an improvement to the original, I've played just over 1000 hours on and the developers have made it almost indefinitely playable with the constant Developer Mods released in addition to the community based maps. Another example is Starcraft 2 which took forever to come out but Blizzard didn't let it out to the masses till it was almost done and have left themselves with a cash cow that has 2 further expansions. However in this game there was still no investment required.
The games that I wanted to invest in never paid off but the game that came out almost fully polished was highly enjoyable even though there is an argument that it isn't that much different from the original game.
I decided one again to check out the latest build to see if this game is working yet. Well, I'm not sure.
I tried to play online, but there were NO servers. None. I guess that's better than a ton of servers you can't connect to? Or better than servers you can connect to, but the lag is extreme once you do?
Played locally, and there was only a tiny bit of lagginess walking around the map all alone.
One upside of living in the UK is that no UK server is going to be over 100 ping. Lag isn't an issue when I've played but my graphics card is going to need upgrading most likely, so much lighting.
I decided one again to check out the latest build to see if this game is working yet. Well, I'm not sure.
I tried to play online, but there were NO servers. None. I guess that's better than a ton of servers you can't connect to? Or better than servers you can connect to, but the lag is extreme once you do?
Played locally, and there was only a tiny bit of lagginess walking around the map all alone.
Huh, while I haven't been playing it, for a number of reasons. The NS2HD channel makes it sound like there's definitely a handful of servers that are frequently up. Also judging by the same channel the game looks to be in a pretty good state currently.
I have been playing the game quite frequently lately and there is always, at least, a server full of people playing. Did you click the "Players" button on the server screen? If you click it once or twice, it would sort the servers from greatest number of players to least number of players.
I have been playing the game quite frequently lately and there is always, at least, a server full of people playing. Did you click the "Players" button on the server screen? If you click it once or twice, it would sort the servers from greatest number of players to least number of players.
There were no servers in the list whatsoever. It even said "no servers."
I have been playing the game quite frequently lately and there is always, at least, a server full of people playing. Did you click the "Players" button on the server screen? If you click it once or twice, it would sort the servers from greatest number of players to least number of players.
There were no servers in the list whatsoever. It even said "no servers."
Oh! It's because Build 193 was released today, and the servers are probably not updated yet. Wait one or two days and try again. I assure you there will be at least one server half filled with people ;-)
Ok, so I tried again last night, and there were servers. The game sort of works. It is still a tiny bit laggy, but not to the point of complete brokenness. The guys I was playing with said the previous build was less laggy. Whether that's true or not, things are looking up.
The major problem I noticed, at least in the game we played, is that aliens just dominate when there are a small number of players. I mean, it was the same in NS1. If there's some fades, marines can't touch it without some major upgrades. That's no different. The problem was that fades and lerks would be harrasing and destroying the base, and we still had LMG. Could have been we sucked, but didn't seem like that to me. Seemed like the aliens could just take over the map much faster. I'd like to play a game with more players and see if that's still true.
Or just play NS1, which I just did and it is still awesome.
1) Got into a server with about twelve other people 2) Witnessed animated marines 3) Was shot by said marines 4) Ate a marine 5) Got shot more 6) Shot a skulk 7) Got eaten by skulks 8) Lit myself on fire with the flamethrower
Comments
1) Evolving into Gorge teleported me to crazy places. One time I was teleported somewhere where there was no map. Another time I was teleported through the floor into a pit.
2) We couldn't build anything. Since the alien commander needs to command those thingies to build stuff, but they were buggy as hell and kept flying away. We couldn't get a single res.
3) Lag was significantly improved from previous builds. What used to be horrendous lag is now merely abysmal. The game runs smooth for a few seconds, lags for a fraction of a second, then is smooth again. Repeat infinitely. That was with very few players.
That doesn't include any of the many bugs that were not showstoppers. The biggest of those was that joining random team put you on spectator team! What genius thought of that?
Got bored being killed by skulks.
Quit,
The only difference here is that if the lottery pays off, everyone wins.
Contrast to L4D2 which I still think is an improvement to the original, I've played just over 1000 hours on and the developers have made it almost indefinitely playable with the constant Developer Mods released in addition to the community based maps.
Another example is Starcraft 2 which took forever to come out but Blizzard didn't let it out to the masses till it was almost done and have left themselves with a cash cow that has 2 further expansions. However in this game there was still no investment required.
The games that I wanted to invest in never paid off but the game that came out almost fully polished was highly enjoyable even though there is an argument that it isn't that much different from the original game.
I tried to play online, but there were NO servers. None. I guess that's better than a ton of servers you can't connect to? Or better than servers you can connect to, but the lag is extreme once you do?
Played locally, and there was only a tiny bit of lagginess walking around the map all alone.
The major problem I noticed, at least in the game we played, is that aliens just dominate when there are a small number of players. I mean, it was the same in NS1. If there's some fades, marines can't touch it without some major upgrades. That's no different. The problem was that fades and lerks would be harrasing and destroying the base, and we still had LMG. Could have been we sucked, but didn't seem like that to me. Seemed like the aliens could just take over the map much faster. I'd like to play a game with more players and see if that's still true.
Or just play NS1, which I just did and it is still awesome.
1) Got into a server with about twelve other people
2) Witnessed animated marines
3) Was shot by said marines
4) Ate a marine
5) Got shot more
6) Shot a skulk
7) Got eaten by skulks
8) Lit myself on fire with the flamethrower