I hope they made some serious changes to Valley...the beta 2 version is so biased in favor of Strogg that it is somewhat pointless to even play it.

Yeah, sounds like they tweaked the Valley map so I'll give this demo a go.

I heard players dislike the vehicle handling and they seem to have adjusted that too. On for Monday!

cool, so the demo is still coming Monday. what will tomorrow's story be? that the demo is going to be x bytes? or maybe that the demo filename will be demo.exe?
stay tuned!!!!!

I hope they made some serious changes to Valley...the beta 2 version is so biased in favor of Strogg that it is somewhat pointless to even play it.

It all depends on which team has their act together. When Beta 2 was first released, all of us on the first server I played on were convinced that the map was horribly biased in favor of GDF. The reason? In Phase 3 and 4, GDF can easily spawn camp the Strogg's main spawn with vehicles, if they know what they're doing. Since then I've rarely seen it happen, but if GDF can vehicle rush straight across the bridge, up the ramp and hang a right into the Strogg spawn, they can easily tie down enough Strogg players that Covert Ops shouldn't have any problem hacking the shield gen. The point is that the map offers opportunities for both teams to dominate if and only if the teams have their acts together. Otherwise it has seemed to be roughly even as to which team wins.

I'll probably try it out with the bots, and maybe, if I'm feeling adventurous, a public server.

I hope they made some serious changes to Valley...the beta 2 version is so biased in favor of Strogg that it is somewhat pointless to even play it.

It all depends on which team has their act together.

agreed. my experience with beta and beta2 was that there was no bias, it just came down which team had their act together.

or even, which team had less people trying to do everything by themselves.

i still remember me dying and seeing a medic right next me. as i waited to be healed i watched him throw a med pack on the ground, heal himself, and run off. teamwork ftw!

I hope they made some serious changes to Valley...the beta 2 version is so biased in favor of Strogg that it is somewhat pointless to even play it.

The biggest change is the forward spawn being available on the Shield Generator stage. This was largely considered the biggest problem with the map; the MCP phase needed work but the Shield Gen was even worse.

Scottish Martial Arts

It all depends on which team has their act together. When Beta 2 was first released, all of us on the first server I played on were convinced that the map was horribly biased in favor of GDF. The reason? In Phase 3 and 4, GDF can easily spawn camp the Strogg's main spawn with vehicles, if they know what they're doing. Since then I've rarely seen it happen, but if GDF can vehicle rush straight across the bridge, up the ramp and hang a right into the Strogg spawn, they can easily tie down enough Strogg players that Covert Ops shouldn't have any problem hacking the shield gen. The point is that the map offers opportunities for both teams to dominate if and only if the teams have their acts together. Otherwise it has seemed to be roughly even as to which team wins.

in the beginning it may hold true as to just which team has their act together, but now since beta 2 and valley have been out for weeks look at the stats. Strogg sits with a 2/1 win ratio over GDF. GDF get no airpower in the first phase, strogg have the Icarus and the Tormentor. Not to mention the massive deployable area that that the Strogg have in all three phases of the map compared to the horrendous deployable area tha GDF gets.

Yeah GDF can spawn camp the back Strogg spawn with a goliath, but it isn't easy or quick to get a tank up there to do it.

Whats with the ****ng bots? I cant stand playing on servers with bots. Why do people even like bots? Can someone who actually enjoys playing against bots, ,especially on an on-line server, please explain the ****ng fascination with playing against computer code versus an intelligent human being?

sponge

The biggest change is the forward spawn being available on the Shield Generator stage. This was largely considered the biggest problem with the map; the MCP phase needed work but the Shield Gen was even worse.

They really need to reevaluate the vehicle dynamics of Phase 2.

GDF get something like 1 Goliath, 3 huskies (which are no comparison to the Icarus) 1 APC, and 3 Humvee.

Strogg have 2 hogs, 1 tormentor, 4 Icarus, and a desecrator.

With no airpower, and huskies being weaponless and basically useless unless you plant a mine on the front of it, GDF is hadicapped pretty bad when it comes to vehicles until they capture the outpost.

Strogg sits with a 2/1 win ratio over GDF.

Really? I wasn't aware of that. I had assumed that my own experience of each team winning in roughly equal measure was generally holding true globally. In that case, hopefully the earlier access to the forward spawn will help even things out.

GDF get no airpower in the first phase, strogg have the Icarus and the Tormentor.

First phase generally goes pretty quickly in my experience. In general, GDF seems to be able to get the bridge build pretty fast unless the Strogg team is made up of substantially better players. The big balance issue isn't air power, in my opinion, but rather that the Strogg can get a desicrator up on the ridge and fire down on the construction point. The only real counter, as far as I can tell, is to have a field ops call in a hammer strike, or manually guide in rocket artillery.

Not to mention the massive deployable area that that the Strogg have in all three phases of the map compared to the horrendous deployable area tha GDF gets.

True. Although if the GDF has access to dam forward spawn early, then that means they can set up anti-vehicle turrets at the entrance to the phase 3/4 compound. That ought to help limit the value of Strogg vehicles in defending the phase 3/4 area.

Yeah GDF can spawn camp the back Strogg spawn with a goliath, but it isn't easy or quick to get a tank up there to do it.

If GDF vehicle rushes immediately after capturing the phase 2 outpost (to get there before strogg AV turrets get up) then it's a straight shot to the spawn. Otherwise, a tank can cross the dam, hang a left and skirt around the contaminator building and pop out right at the spawn.

They really need to reevaluate the vehicle dynamics of Phase 2.

I agree to a point. On the other hand, a couple of rocket launcher armed soldiers seems to more than make up for the GDF lack of vehicles. It seems like whenever GDF gets hung up on Phase 2, there are hardly any Soldiers playing. With soldiers you can easily disable the Strogg deployables, which forces the Strogg to move forward and engage on the even ground of an infantry battle.

They really need to reevaluate the vehicle dynamics of Phase 2.

I both agree and disagree. I agree because that phase is still a problem, but I disagree because the shield generator is much worse, and being pinned down with turrets seems to be more common than vehicle problems.

On the other hand, a couple of rocket launcher armed soldiers seems to more than make up for the GDF lack of vehicles

Yea, I am the one guy shooting YOU down with my 4 star heavy arms skill *G*

Seriously, great game, been playing the beta nonstop for 3 days now.

Scottish Martial Arts

I agree to a point. On the other hand, a couple of rocket launcher armed soldiers seems to more than make up for the GDF lack of vehicles. It seems like whenever GDF gets hung up on Phase 2, there are hardly any Soldiers playing. With soldiers you can easily disable the Strogg deployables, which forces the Strogg to move forward and engage on the even ground of an infantry battle.

The only time I have seen this work is when you have two or more soldiers working in close proximity to combat the tormentor so that one fires a rocket and it is taken out by the flares and then the second soldier locks and fires before the flare recharges. It is hard to get that kind of teamwork with no voicechat. Then you have two soldiers dedicated to taking out one vehicle. Try going up against Dommafia when he is in the tormentor, and you will see how the strogg vehicles themselves outclass GDF in general, but especially before phase 3 when GDF has no air power.

Whats with the ****ng bots? I cant stand playing on servers with bots. Why do people even like bots? Can someone who actually enjoys playing against bots, ,especially on an on-line server, please explain the ****ng fascination with playing against computer code versus an intelligent human being?

After the first few weeks of online play where it will appear that people are trying to teamplay to achieve the objectives laid out in the design of the maps and everyone turns the game into one big outdoor deathmatch battle, you’ll be glad that there’s bots to play against, offline.

remember, blame the player(s), not the game.

seems to me that the game is pretty balanced, since some people are saying it's Strogg biased, and others are saying it's GDF biased (in certainly phases). in my experience, if the team is trying for the objective vs screwing around, things gets accomplished...(for example, a well organized strogg sniper team can delay bridge building forever; a good GDF team can have the MCP in the base in no time)....there are many ways an 'exploit/bias' can be minimized just by having the right deployables or right class.

After the first few weeks of online play where it will appear that people are trying to teamplay to achieve the objectives laid out in the design of the maps and everyone turns the game into one big outdoor deathmatch battle, you’ll be glad that there’s bots to play against, offline.

remember, blame the player(s), not the game.

Exactly... the only "advantage" that a human-populated public server has over offline bots is that the humans will surprise you with new ways of being idiotic, while the bots are quite consistent.

Whats with the ****ng bots? I cant stand playing on servers with bots. Why do people even like bots? Can someone who actually enjoys playing against bots, ,especially on an on-line server, please explain the ****ng fascination with playing against computer code versus an intelligent human being?

I'll admit that I prefer to play against bots rather than people. For me, it's just that the fun of a shooter isn't the competition as much as just the joy of blowing things to smithereens.

Another part is that bots don't latch onto one particular weapon and strategy that works, they don't bunny hop or try to use exploits, they don't talk about how l33t they are, and they don't blow up your tank on you just because you finally got to drive one after weeks of playing and they wanted it instead.

I completely agree that bots are a bad idea in games for online multiplayer.

I think that the reasoning is that bots lure in the first few players. Well, maybe, but Counter-Strike did just fine without them for a coupe years before they added them in for CS:S and now you can still find bots even in large games because the server owner wants 28 people minimum and pathetic shit like that.

Killing a bot is ZERO satisfaction. Killing a human being, especially a little kid who cries and whines and goes on and on about it; that's satisfaction right there.

This is why this is my favorite fight video ever:
http://www.break.com/index/wussy-skater-fight.html

Because that bitch came at a kid with a weapon and got hit with a weapon. What the fuck did he think was gonna happen?
I can't wait til some smart ass prick of a bitch head teenager comes at me with a knife or something. He's gonna be shot right on the spot with a real gun. Outside, I'll be nice and calm. Inside, I'll be laughing, "BITCH, WHAT NOW YOU STUPID MOTHER FUCKER!"

You can't get this kind of pleasure from a bot...