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Natural Selection 2

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Frostiken 3 May, 2024 @ 9:58am
Did they ever fix the balance?
When I first started playing Marines were a ton of fun with traditional FPS mechanics and Aliens had a very punishing learning curve.

EVERYBODY wanted to play as Marines. You got cool stompy mechs and all kinds of neat gizmos. Aliens were just copy pasted from NS1 with no new interesting mechanics and upgrades.

As a result a the new players (or anybody actually wanting to have fun) played as a Marine. Veterans always were basically forced to Aliens since the game wouldn't start since everyone piled in the lobby waiting to join Marines.

You die as a Marine who cares. Pick up your dropped gun and you had permanent upgrades. Die as an alien and alt-F4, you lose everything.

So the clueless devs with their e-sport stupidity kept balancing the game around "50/50 win rate" and Aliens never became fun and it was balanced around newbies vs. veterans.

Curious what ever came of it.
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CЯaZyCAT 3 May, 2024 @ 10:36am 
I recommend you to research the topic of actual side winrates before you complain about bad balance.

https://ns2panel.com/communities/2
https://ns2panel.com/communities/12

If you complain just about alien vs marine gameplay then you're probably right here: marine gameplay is much more ELEMENTARY that's why people often wants to play marines. I can't challenge that fact but I doubt devs/community/me/you/anyone-else is capable to fix that problem in game like ns2.
#1
T-800 5 May, 2024 @ 2:18am 
In this game, however, there is no option to take your weapon again. It will sink into the ground before you can reach it with the phase gate. Unless you have intelligent teammates, they're going to pick it up. But we often witness when teammates have a weapon 10 meters away from them and leave it lying idle. I find alien games much more fun. The biggest successes are recorded as a skulk. I wouldn't say it's as weak as you suggest.
#2
Horny Rooster 6 May, 2024 @ 6:13pm 
I think the game is balanced pretty well, some people don't and continue to try to "balance" it.
#3
T-800 9 May, 2024 @ 5:52am 
I also find it good. If people use their brains, they can do more. And that's sometimes a problem.
#4
Ardvin 13 May, 2024 @ 1:14am 
The game is pretty balanced if you look at actual data sites like NS2Panel provide.

New players preferring Marines over Aliens is also pretty normal since we're humans and humans are naturally more attracted to what's similar to them. Marine is quite honestly also easier on an individual level since you share most of your responsibilities and workload while aliens roles are more dedicated/specialized I'd say.
As a side note there's a bit of a running joke among the community to "not play Marines when the game goes on free weekend" because during free weekends the servers are flooded with rookie players which predominantly want to join marine team causing marine's average performance to take a dip.

However this and the complaint you had about game starts being dragged out is mitigated by the fact that the game now auto starts and automatically assigns players to teams based on their Hive Skill rating which unfortunately is also somewhat mitigated itself by smurfing.

It's still a fun and balanced game for the most part, I wouldn't be playing it if it wasn't. Occasionally the smurfing gets excessive at which point I just leave and come back another time.
#5
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Natural Selection 2 > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 3 May, 2024 @ 9:58am
Posts: 5

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