Talk:Natural Selection (video game)

New Website
Does anyone know the URL and password to get into the new Natural-Selection: Source website? I've been a forum member for a long time, but I lost my email that was binded to my NS forum account so I never got the information. Thanks for the help if someone can post it or direct me to where I can find it. L8R.

Classic
It says:


 * "Classic mode is balanced (or attempted to) so that marines with full upgrades, one hive locked down, and a portion of the resource nodes are equal in strength to aliens with the remaining map features under their control. This usually lends itself to long games anywhere from 45 minutes to over 2 hours. Some maps are even specifically designed with this stalemate in mind. Though if marines lose control of the third hive, they sometimes will play "defend to alamo" in which they will turret farm their main base with as many turrets as physically possible, equip every marine with heavy equipment, and camp in their base for as long as possible. This serves only to drag the game out longer, though usually marines are able to claim ultimate victory if they have a "ninja" (a jetpacker or light marine who sneaks past the alien's front to a hive location and builds a phase gate) who is successful. Though, in rare cases, this may restart the stalemate."

Games of that length are awfully rare in current versions. And alamoing has pretty much ceased to exist. This probably applies better to the 1.04 section. 146.148.99.38 0:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Removed. Scenario is sufficiently rare that it does not warrant its own paragraph among the three (now two) paragraphs of this section.  Most content is either false or superfluous. a civilian 04:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Gameplay
Added in a new item, Gameplay. --Lone Isle 11:34, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Dissatisfied with the current content of the article- too much gameplay details and not enough general ones. Would like to see:
 * stats of NS's popularity
 * updates on Unknown Worlds entertainment
 * a comment on NS's innovation of blending RTS/FPS genres
 * Mention similarity to some other combined rts/fps games such as savage? Mathmo 08:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

--Lone Isle 15:24, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Combat's role in bringing in more players

Nslearn
is it me or is nslearn down?

3.0b6 revision
I rewrote the section on evolutions in combat to reflect the beta 5 changes. Hopefully everything else is up to date.

Also added welder and mines to equipment list and fixed a couple of spelling mistakes. -- sk


 * I have added some missing details from beta 5 and the final version as well as a few clarifications. However, I think the article needs to be reorganised

Infobox
Infobox inserted into article. Please edit to add or correct any information. --Major.T 9 July 2005 01:59 (UTC)

not a single screenshot?
maybe the eye logo thing? Lockeownzj00 20:30, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I am a big fan and I too was dissapointed to see there were no screenshots. Despite being a modification for such and old game, it is still one of the most visually stunning games around--especially among noncomercial mods. ampreindustries 21:26, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Yup and Can somebody upload graphic for info gamebox? And any scrshots showing something mentions in the article would be neat too. --Major.T 20:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I added a hive picture from the media pack released a while back for the infobox, and I can go take some screenshots when I play later if you really want. Keamos 20:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

General
There is a lot of bad grammar that should be cleaned up. The entire article is not very organized and could be improved. --RaydenUni 01:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Armor accuracy?
"Armor Upgrade: has three levels, which progressively increase the effectiveness of armor and also increases starting armor points." I wasn't aware of that. I thought it just increased the amount of armor?

No, it's right, armor 1 absorbs 10%, armor 2 20%, and armor 3 30%, along with increasing the amount of armor you have. Keamos 04:05, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I did some research, and it turns out this is not true for marines. Armor damage absorption is at 70% for regular/JP, while 95% for heavies. Upgrading from Armor 0 to 1 to 2 etc does not increase it's effectiveness for marines. For aliens, on the other hand, the damage each point of armor absorbs is dependent on the amount of hives up. For more information, see http://nsplayer.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=380. I've corrected the article. Underwhelmed

Changelog?
Does anybody else think that is a little too much? Listing the entire changelog from the beta to the current incarnation would take a lot of space, not to mention I see some inaccuracies in them... Underwhelmed
 * Agreed - I'd say remove the whole thing. If some site puts one up we can link to it. a civilian 03:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You could do what they did on the Counter-Strike page and have it as a side box. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Revelade (talk • contribs).

sounds good, go for it. ~ todd10k

Removing random clan links
I propose removing all the links to various clans/communities. It's nothing but advertising, and most of them don't really contribute anything to the game (Aside from, arguably, NSA and Voogru). Underwhelmed


 * Agreed. Keamos 06:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If it were up to me I'd remove almost all of the links there. Is there some criterion for inclusion? a civilian 03:51, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * And I did just that. As stated in the edit summary, please consider WP:External_Links when adding any of them back. a civilian 04:41, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * About NSA and Voogru, its contribution to the game isn't a reason to include a site in the external links. This is an encyclopedia; the link is included if it is useful. a civilian 04:44, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The external link to the NSArmslab website should be removed. The actual community that this website was for no longer exists and it now only redirects to a generic clan website.  If you want it included for historical purposes as "One of the first Natural Selection Communities" it should probably link to archive.org. --76.253.50.45 (talk) 03:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Add technical explanations
I plan on writing up a bit about hitscan weapons and how they function. I know there are other issues like this where an explanation of the inner workings can give more insight into how the game plays.
 * Hitscan -Trjn 04:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Competitive Play
This section needs heavy revision to comply with WP:NPOV and WP:V. Most of the assertions made in that section (and particularly its subsection, "Competitive Players") are, as far as I can tell, unverifiable. a civilian 22:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Rook2pawn (talk) 09:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Not just skill STACKING
I read over the stacking and how it's described as either a group of good players joining one team or if the numbers for each side are off.

Well, what also plays a big role is having one extremely good player in an otherwise evened game. It wouldn't be stacking because whichever team this player is on would have a huge advantage. Nevertheless, I believe it should be addressed, because it happens frequently. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Revelade (talk • contribs).

First person ever banned by Flayra
Just thought I'd let you know this for a fun fact. but I was the first person ever banned by Flayra. He banned me on November 1st, 2002 because i was saying stuff on the microphone. I cannot prove this however. But to my knowledge, and what i was told by others. That no one was ever banned by Flayra until me. >.> --Dr. Pizza 21:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Old Weapons sections was removed
I noticed "14:46, 3 September 2006 87.232.36.87" has removed the babblers, paralyze, spikes, and the older upgrades in the sensory chamber section. We should put it back and keep it there. I mean if we have a section for terms and sayings that players say in this article, why not keep the older abilities/upgrades there.

People will find it useful, especially if people refer to the old abilities ingame. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Newuser12345215 (talk • contribs).

'NS Language & Culture' section
Aside from being very poorly written, i don't think this section is notable at all. There are no references cited, and although i'm sure you could dig up one or two sources on Google, they wouldn't be especially notable or accurate either (some forum post or something probably). I do think that niche slang can qualify as encyclopaedia content in some cases (e.g., Zerg rush), but not here. It really is not that important at all to know that 'PG' stands for 'phase gate'. The 'culture' parts (the songs and the competitive play) don't seem notable or verifiable either. Consequently i've removed this section.

While i'm on the subject, i think a lot of this article actually suffers from way-too-much-information syndrome. I'm only vaguely familiar with NS, so i wouldn't feel comfortable going through and striking out huge amounts of text, but i really do suggest that somebody take a harder look at this. A lot of the content here is just not important at all and should be stripped from the article. ~ lav-chan @ 15:54, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Go through the article, list out what you think need's to be stripped ~ todd10k


 * Well, again, i have only a pedestrian understanding of NS (i've played it like twice), so keep that in mind. But these things kinda jump out at me:


 * Most of the stuff under 'Strategies', 'Siege maps', and 'Combat game mode' seems too in-depth, like something out of a walk-through or strategy guide. These three sections could probably be condensed to, i don't know, three or four paragraphs maybe? I mean, i'm talking about stuff like this: The time of the opening of the doors is roughly 5 minutes for the main door and 15 minutes for the siege door(s). That belongs on GameFAQs, not Wikipedia.


 * Weapons, upgrades, and all that jazz could be condensed. I'm not sure what '20 res' means and i doubt it matters, nor do i think it's important to note that the shotgun holds 8 shells per clip and has 40 in reserve. Just a brief summary of the weapons would do fine, it's not a strategy guide. The same kind of thing goes for the Kharaa abilities; we don't need to know that Healing Spray heals friendly units for '13 + 2% of maximum hp'.


 * I also am not sure it's relevant to list the 39840983083834 changes there've been across beta versions. A few of the MAJOR changes would be appropriate, but 'Onos resource cost decreased from 100 to 75 for v3.0 beta 1' is not encyclopaedia content. This issue is present throughout the article (there are a few references to insignificant changes made in beta versions in other sections).


 * Lastly i don't think it's appropriate to list every single version change ever. Nobody needs to know the time elapsed between 'v3.0 beta 6 build 4' and 'v3.0 beta 6 build 5' (that's 4 days, by the way).


 * ~ lav-chan @ 20:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Notability
Has this game won any awards or had any articles written about it? I'd like to see some sources here, please. Wickethewok 19:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * NS won GameSpy's Mod of the Year award in 2002. The game actually had a pretty detailed site at natural-selection.org a while back, one that probably would have listed any awards it received, but at some point i guess they switched to this new site (which is horrible and offers very little useful information). Their site does point out a few facts though:


 * NS has atmospheric indoor sci-fi environments full of steam and smoke, and features custom orchestral music from the award-winning Jeremy Soule. It is a freely-available Half-life modification, and since its release in October of 2002, has had 10,000 unique players every day, 90,000 unique players every month, and over 2 million downloads. It received Mod of the Year from Gamespy, has average reviews above 90%, and has become the world's most popular independent Half-life modification (+2,000 peak players).


 * First-party information, but i guess it's something. At the moment the developer appears to be focussed on this 'Zen of Sudoku' game (in fact the NS blog is devoted more to that than to NS), so things have definitely slowed down recently. But i guess he's working on a sequel. :shrug: ~ lav-chan @ 03:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Firing Squad review. Was also reviewed by Halflife.org and Ozgn.com, but neither of these sites exist anymore (to my knowledge).  Finally, I don't read game magazines so I haven't verified this but the test (and former) site says "See articles in PC Zone (93% 12/16/02), PC Gamer as well as game magazines in Turkey, Poland, Australia, Brazil and more for additional coverage." a civilian 04:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a notable mod, but it would be a lot better if you created a "Critical reaction" section in the article and then worked these sources in. I have magazine scans for Natural Selection in PCZone, if you need them, just email me. - Hahnch  e  n 23:53, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Game Guide
Even though most of the tactical and strategic information has been removed, there is still something to be said for this argument. This article provides a lot of specific data about most aspects of the game; it seems to emulate a manual. Perhaps this information should be summarized. a civilian 04:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Game guides should be part of the external links, under a new category "Guides". Rook2pawn (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Old weapons section was not removed, only reordered and clarifyed.
"noticed "14:46, 3 September 2006 87.232.36.87" has removed the babblers, paralyze, spikes, and the older upgrades in the sensory chamber section. We should put it back and keep it there. I mean if we have a section for terms and sayings that players say in this article, why not keep the older abilities/upgrades there.

People will find it useful, especially if people refer to the old abilities ingame"

I Moved the section and clarifyed as to the nature of the weapons. When i was reading it i got the impression the author was attempting to convey these weapons as still having a place in the game, which they do not. check the end of the article, with a new section entitled "defunct weapons and upgrades."

Also made some clarifications as to the server side modifications part on that day, and removed the 9+ line entry on voogru, with only a brief footnote on the voogru community. i believe we should keep the other developers out of the entry with the exception of flayra, unless we want to do a fork section for the developers and their bio's on a different page.

Also, today made some clarifications on the upgrade's, and explained in greater depth about how chambers provide differing levels of effectiveness on upgrades. removed the section on "skill stacking" in the gameplay paragraph. Last thing we want to do is give people the impression that every server is skill stacked and "zomg lol i pwnwfwefwefvvsdweed you" is prevalent on what server's NS has left. ~ todd10k

Game guide information

 * I went ahead and removed the game guide information, including strategy, character stats, and other pieces of obvious original research. This includes the myriad of fair use images.  The "siege maps" section, too, looked unsalvageable, as it only discussed player strategies, which I highly doubt can be verified.  Wickethewok 13:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
 * While I don't believe such detail belongs in this article, the stats are not by any means original research. They were taken from the game's manual. - a civilian 15:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to imply the stats were OR, just that they shouldn't be included. Wickethewok 15:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Why was the lifeforms, upgrades, and weapons section removed? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Todd10k (talk • contribs) 07:46, 12 November, 2006 (UTC).

Erichwtl 22:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I too, am also questioning the removal of certain sections that explained some of the aspects of NS that made a comparison/contrast from other online games...

PC Zone print references available
I have a few reviews from PC Zone, and can provide magazine scans provided they are used to improve the article. Please use Wikipedia email to notify me if you want them. - Hahnch e  n 03:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

requirements
what exactly do i need to buy to play this game? i can't find any "natural selection" on steam


 * NS is a third party mod. You just need Half-Life. Go to http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/?action=files and download the client. Faulty 06:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Stacking
Removed this: "Natural Selection, as an asymmetrical game, has a very sensitive skill balance. Evenly matched teams with equal amount of players can result in epic confrontations that last hours. However, when playing on a public, open server, players may choose to "stack" one side. This can cause the game to end if the total number of players on one team exceeds 120% of that on the other team (e.g. 7 marines against 3 aliens)."

You can never join a numerically superior team. If players start leaving one team, the game ends when the other team has 4 more members, though. "Stacking" refers to standing in queue to the more popular team (marines) or in the case of teamstacking, all the regulars/good players joining one team.


 * You can never join a numerically superior team ...  not strictly true -- maximum allowed team difference is a server-side setting. Default is 1, but can be set as server op prefers.

Changed grammatical error..
"Cleveland stated that the current Half Life version of the game will continue to be updated Natural Selection 2 is developed. A release date for the sequel is not yet known."

I changed that to "Cleveland stated that the current Half Life version of the game will continue to be updated while Natural Selection 2 is developed. A release date for the sequel is not yet known."

Thats what it's supposed to be right? Tommyhaych 11:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Jeremy Soule
Did he compose the theme for NS? His article says so. Ripperhugmeguy 20:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, he did. 86.134.83.179

Development history?
I think a history of the mod itself might be a good addition to the article, eg when it entered closed and open betas, any problems the team ran into, any advertisement they did and so on... personally I don't know much about the history of the mod but I'd love to find it out. Faulty 09:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd love to write about this, being ex-QA lead. But Charlie would probably release the hounds. ;) Csgbh 13:16, 08 June 2007 (BST)

Removing Game stats
I'm removing the section game stats as this is supposed to be an encyclopedic article, not a game manual. Also I find the Communities section suspect as there is little reason to believe the 3 servers mentioned are more notable than any other server. Delta Tango • Talk 09:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:NaturalSelectionLogo.jpg
Image:NaturalSelectionLogo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 17:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Stop adding in some random third party images for the logo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.6.183 (talk) 23:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've attempted to rectify the issue of a banner / cover art with an image that I went over with the people at #wikipedia on freenode concerning fair use and provided fair use documentation. Rook2pawn (talk) 17:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Competitive NS and NS2
"Previously North American clans competed in the Natural Selection division of the Cyberathlete Amateur League before it was shut down due to several factors, those being a lack of participating teams, mostly attributed to a rise in player's cheating, and poor leadership of League Officials." - Only the first reason was given as the official rationale; the following two are nothing but pure speculation (And in the personal opinion of somebody who played in CAL, not nearly half-true). "Several gameplay modes only currently available as community-developed mods (such as Marines vs. Marines) will now become officially supported modes." - This is false or poorly worded. Developer support for mods is expected only in the sense that the tools to create and integrate them will be made available. Flayra has made it quite clear on the forums that he most certainly will not be coding in alternative game modes, that it will be up to the community to create those mods on their own if they want them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.7.220 (talk) 12:31, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Did major cleanup: Citations Added, Reception, New Fair Use Logo, cleaned up Gameplay, Added Commander Mode
I did alot of cleanup work in attempt to move this article from Start class. I deleted almost nothing, so dont sweat it.


 * Moved screenshot to gameplay section, found Fair Use Logo from the media pack to put in infobox
 * Cleaned up the Gameplay section - was in desparate need of some organization!
 * Introduced Commander Mode section - what makes NS so distinctive!
 * Cleaned up the External Links category
 * VG_Reviews Template for critical Reception added
 * I added numerous citations.
 * I need that screenshot from PC Zone, so we can add that to the Reception List. Also the VG_Reviews template designer needs to add Firing Squad to the list of acreditted review sites, I'll holler on the template designer about that.
 * Moved two links from Notes section into External links under Community Resources

Let me know what you think. Also, i dont think there needs to be anything about NS Bot Servers nor User Customization Packs. This article is about the game. Anyone in agreement about that? Rook2pawn (talk) 20:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Siege mode
This mode should not be mentioned as it's not an official mode, but rather just a specific kind of map. Eik Corell (talk) 19:22, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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