What do you think of 1.2?

[Si-wins]

So, I have not played for around 3 months. Heard that 1.2 beta was out. What do you all think of it?

[KamikOzzy]

bad

[A Spork]

Awesome(and don't pay attention to ozzy, he's barely played it, and is on an anti 1.2 rampage)

[your face]

okay

btw 1.2 will hopefully be better than gpp

[AppleJuice]

http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=12504.0

very similar thread

[phungus420]

Put in a bunch more time in it today.  And I think things are worse then I first thought.  Trem 1.2 is a travesty.  If the skill levels of players is moderate, Aliens don't stand a chance.  A goon has no way of taking on a couple humans anymore.  In fact a goon is pretty much dead against a good player with an MD.  You miss a single pounce and that MD will kill you, it doesn't even take a full clip anymore.  It's also nearly impossible to chomp a good dodger, you're forced to pounce.  Also humans can still just sit back and camp, get credits and then rampage, because noob dretches still feed them.  In 1.1 I could at least defend the base with a goon when this happened.  Not in 1.2, it's impossible, a goon cannot hold off a human assault.  And noob dretches are going to still feed the camping humans in 1.2.  The game is so screwed once 1.2 comes out.

I get the feeling the devs don't even play the game.

[resta247]

I like the graphical improvements. But I am still missing an indicator when a shot hits a target. I am also seeing old and new bugs: brightness is not remembered properly during map changes, servers cannot be sorted properly by ping, and the wall walk toggle is sometimes off although it is set to "on".

Regarding the balance... well... I am a casual gamer (with good building skills though) and I find it very difficult to compete with good players. But I have no idea if anything could be changed to make the game a little bit easier for beginners.

[AppleJuice]

What??

All I can really say to that is...

Goon > Any s2 human (solo)
Goon > 2 mediocre s2 humans
Goon > 3 bad s2 humans

That balance situation is almost the same as it was in 1.1 (aside from the first case; in 1.1, humans had a chance). It just uses different tactics. Play 1.2 more. MDs do not own dragoons at all. Also, from the games I've played last night/before, most of the games aliens lose are due to very poor 1.1 style building and poor teamplay, not overpowered humans.

Edit: I should say that I'm not calling anyone a noob. 1.2 just takes a little more adapting to than one might otherwise think (more than a few days/week, most likely).

[phungus420]

In 1.1 I'm good with aliens, and decent with humans.  In 1.1 I'm good with humans, and decent with aliens; something is wrong.  And the MD pwns, hardcore in 1.2.  It's flipping ridiculous, I was soloing goons, and decent goons easily, and I don't even have that good of aim.  What 1.2 does is it gives goons a ridiculously strong pounce, that they can then use against humans, basically it makes them noob friendly.  But their chomp simply does not work against humans with a decent dodge.  You need to have that chomp to quickly kill a group of humans that are assaulting your base, pounce just takes too long.  Look I agree goon pounce is way too strong, it ruins things, because it makes it so as humans you can't dodge if you're good, you're going to take heavy damage from a goon no matter what.  But it's like 5 shots with an MD to kill a goon; you can get those off before you are pounced to death, and if you have even decent human skills they can't chomp you.  This means that they have to take the time to bounce around to pounce kill, and this just doesn't work against a decently coordinated human assault, because you don't have that kind of time while one of them is sitting in the back drilling you with an MD.

The new human luci + the stupidly powerful MD gives humans such a crazy advantage.  And applejuice I know you play humans alot more then aliens, at least in 1.1 you did.  You need to try to set up a team as aliens with like 4 good players on aliens with 4 good players on humans.  You'll see what I mean if you try to play a game like that.  Aliens simply stand no chance in such a situation.  For one all of your noob players are still going to feed the shit out of the humans by attacking their base as a dretch.  But now when the inevitable fast feed leads to a powerful S2 assault, the four of you on aliens can't defend against that assault with goons.  I think that's what the devs are going for here, they don't want a couple of good players to be able to dominate so much.  What they don't realize is that the nature of the game requires that good alien players at least be able to defend the alien base due to noob dretch base feeding.

It's difficult to explain but I've played 1000s of hours on trem, and the majority of that on aliens.  Having humans camp in 1.1 and feeding off of suicidal noob dretchs has always been a strong strategy.  But in 1.2 it's a sure win.  Once humans figure this out, any game that isn't alien stacked is over.

[Plague Bringer]

The devs want to enforce teamwork. This means that Tremulous will be even more of a clan oriented game because teamwork is impossible on pubs and it's damn hard to be a one man army now, even when you SHOULD be winning the game for your team. This'll result in a lot of good players leaving, I think, when their team causes them to lose more than they did in 1.1.

[A Spork]

Go read the frakking stats.
Aliens are actually winning more than humans
also, I'm pretty sure AJ has played alot more 1.2 than you, and you've hardly played it sounds like.
1.2 plays fairly different than 1.1, you style needs some changing.

Also, MD isn't that op, except vs basis.

[AppleJuice]

In 1.1 I'm good with aliens, and decent with humans.  In 1.1 I'm good with humans, and decent with aliens; something is wrong.  And the MD pwns, hardcore in 1.2.  It's flipping ridiculous, I was soloing goons, and decent goons easily, and I don't even have that good of aim.  What 1.2 does is it gives goons a ridiculously strong pounce, that they can then use against humans, basically it makes them noob friendly.  But their chomp simply does not work against humans with a decent dodge.  You need to have that chomp to quickly kill a group of humans that are assaulting your base, pounce just takes too long.  Look I agree goon pounce is way too strong, it ruins things, because it makes it so as humans you can't dodge if you're good, you're going to take heavy damage from a goon no matter what.  But it's like 5 shots with an MD to kill a goon; you can get those off before you are pounced to death, and if you have even decent human skills they can't chomp you.  This means that they have to take the time to bounce around to pounce kill, and this just doesn't work against a decently coordinated human assault, because you don't have that kind of time while one of them is sitting in the back drilling you with an MD.

The new human luci + the stupidly powerful MD gives humans such a crazy advantage.  And applejuice I know you play humans alot more then aliens, at least in 1.1 you did.  You need to try to set up a team as aliens with like 4 good players on aliens with 4 good players on humans.  You'll see what I mean if you try to play a game like that.  Aliens simply stand no chance in such a situation.  For one all of your noob players are still going to feed the shit out of the humans by attacking their base as a dretch.  But now when the inevitable fast feed leads to a powerful S2 assault, the four of you on aliens can't defend against that assault with goons.  I think that's what the devs are going for here, they don't want a couple of good players to be able to dominate so much.  What they don't realize is that the nature of the game requires that good alien players at least be able to defend the alien base due to noob dretch base feeding.

It's difficult to explain but I've played 1000s of hours on trem, and the majority of that on aliens.  Having humans camp in 1.1 and feeding off of suicidal noob dretchs has always been a strong strategy.  But in 1.2 it's a sure win.  Once humans figure this out, any game that isn't alien stacked is over.

I've actually killed quite a few groups of (s1 and s2) humans rushing our base with pounce alone. They were decent players, at least. Pounce does not only do damage; it also avoids damage, and affects the positioning of the humans. That, added with the new knockback (which I believe is too much), makes pounce so extremely overpowered. Chomping is pretty useless if the human has the stamina left to dodge; that's why I only attempt to chomp now after the initial dodge or two.

The MD being overpowered depends on the map + the goon playing. On a map like arachnid2 with a super long hallway, I can see the MD being overpowered IF the dragoon just charges straight through the hallway. I wouldn't do that anymore (unless I think my opponent sucks or am feeling lazy), because 1.2 gameplay is just different than 1.1's.

However, the above really only applies to pub games. You're right; the game really changes when everyone on each team is fairly skilled. I haven't really played a skilled 4v4 in 1.2, yet, so I don't know about that aspect of the game, so I'll take your advice and try to set one up. However, I suspect there are certain strategies aliens can employ to absolutely destroy human teams, if they don't have s3 yet. Can you imagine a team of 4 dragoons pouncing all at once against a team of 4 humans? Human teams were confused enough by chomp flanks in 1.1; potent pounce flanks would be even worse.

Btw, lasgun > MD ez (IMO, tho - most likely not true for most people)

Anyway, I'll see how a 4v4 turns out.

@Plague Bringer: It's still possible to solo in 1.2. I've been doing it more frequently, now that I've adjusted a bit more. It's just not as feasible as it was in 1.1 (still possible though, and still fun). Once they fix stamina (which they are doing), humans will be able to solo (anything but a goon that knows how to pounce) more easily than in 1.1.

[phungus420]

To be clear, I didn't mean 4v4 like a scrim.  I meant just a public game but 3 or 4 good players on each team.  That's how the games were being played last night for a couple of hours, and the only games aliens could win were games where the human builder screwed things up.  Otherwise humans were dominating.  And what got to me was that I was dominating with humans, and I'm only decent with them on 1.1.  Conversely, whereas in 1.1 I can hold off a few good players with my goon on defense, I just couldn't do it anymore.  The problem lies in the defensive tactics.  In 1.1 I would pounce out into the group, try a chomp-chomp-chomp dead to wittle into the assault team, and valiently run away to heal.  In 1.2 that's simply not possible, pouncing takes longer then a quick 3 chomp kill.

You do raise some good points, I may simply need to reevaluate the use of pounce and chomp for this.  But it just seems wrong that pounce is so strong.  It's way to easy to pounce.  Basically I feel the goon changes only increase frustration for humans (because you can't realistically dodge or beat a goon with skill anymore), while at the same time is frustrating to the player playing the goon because they simply can't kill quickly enough when facing a human assault.

[resta247]

The devs want to enforce teamwork.

If you really want to enforce it, then give humans and aliens buildings or capabilities to grab players and slowly kill them. In such situations, only a team mate should be able to help. Have a look at "Left 4 Dead". They have many situations in which team mates have to help. That way you can really enforce team work.

[A Spork]

That sounds an awful lot like a Basi.....

[Bissig]

@phungus

A skilled, small team of shotguns can almost kill any goon on 1.1

[phungus420]

@phungus

A skilled, small team of shotguns can almost kill any goon on 1.1

True.  But there were ways to stop the assault.  In 1.1 can pounce in from the correct angle and get a quick kill with chomping, that just can't be done anymore in the GPP.  I suppose my issue is I just don't understand why Pounce and Chomp have pretty much had their roles reversed.  It sort of makes your goon feel powerless, as you now don't try to get in someone's face and chomp-chomp then run.  Now you just want to harass them with pounces.  It's less fun, and just feels wrong.  It's also very frustrating as humans, because dodging a pounce is much harder.

[KamikOzzy]

One thing that's always bugged me (in 1.1) is though a goon and a shotgun may have a fairly even match, if the goon realizes there are too many humans or he's losing, he can always run away. The shotgun, however, would be forced to fight or die. Is it still that way with the new regen system?

[Hendrich]

It's also very frustrating as humans, because dodging a pounce is much harder.

Unless you use the 'dodge' keys, which worked for me.

[jal]

Unless you use the 'dodge' keys, which worked for me.

Which reminds me: Tremulous uses too many keys. I've no place for a usable bind for these. It's either dodge or sprint for me. One of the must go to a not-quick-to-use key, which, in quick action keys like these, is the same as not having it.

[David]

I have them both on the same key.

[resta247]

Which reminds me: Tremulous uses too many keys. I've no place for a usable bind for these. It's either dodge or sprint for me. One of the must go to a not-quick-to-use key, which, in quick action keys like these, is the same as not having it.

That would be nice: Run and dodge the same key (by default).

[A Spork]

It's easy enough to bind them together
/bind x "+button6; +button8"

[AppleJuice]

One thing that's always bugged me (in 1.1) is though a goon and a shotgun may have a fairly even match, if the goon realizes there are too many humans or he's losing, he can always run away. The shotgun, however, would be forced to fight or die. Is it still that way with the new regen system?

It's still pretty much the same; goons can escape by pouncing before dying. Now, they just have to go all the way to a base/booster/basi instead of some random corner. However, it's also possible for the human to escape as well (at least, it will be once they fix stamina), depending on the situation. However, that situation will never be even, since aliens are overall faster than humans are.

[mooseberry]

However, that situation will never be even, since aliens are overall faster than humans are.

And should stay that way. But at least now humans have new repeaters to help counter this.

[Norfenstein]

Which reminds me: Tremulous uses too many keys. I've no place for a usable bind for these. It's either dodge or sprint for me. One of the must go to a not-quick-to-use key, which, in quick action keys like these, is the same as not having it.

That would be nice: Run and dodge the same key (by default).

I've found that it's nicer to just put dodge on your easy-to-reach key (shift for me) and sprint somewhere else (I wasn't using z for anything...) and turn on cg_sprintToggle.

[StevenM]

or we could add if statements, for loops, etc. and tap one to sprint, double tap to dodge? caaammannn lol?

[Si-wins]

I downloaded the mac beta. What do I do with it once I download it? Do I put it in the tremulous file or what lol? I'm not good with macs.

[Si-wins]

I pasted it into the apps folder, not working.

[A Spork]

If statments would be pro.