Hey everyone! Part of our goal as a development team is to look at player retention for the long term, not just how we stand now. A lot of our focus on this lately starts with new players to the game. We have continued to make  changes to the game and mechanics in order to help new players better understand how to play NS2, while keeping the experience intuitive and fun. This patch is the first step in achieving these goals. We'll likely be patching again later this week as we quickly move on to Patch 287 and beyond! CHANGELOG Tweaks / Improvements

• Added an Introduction to Natural Selection 2 video. It will play on first launch, and can be watching again from the Training menu
• In locations with no structures that require power, and no blueprints, building the power node will become primed when fully built. 
• Pressing E to build while you have a welder will now use the welder instead of the build tool
• Made minor improvements to the tutorial, but only 50% of players will see the improved version, so we can measure the effects (A/B testing)
• Reduced resolution of some specular textures to improve memory usage
• Increase rookie level to 5 so new players can keep playing and practicing on rookie-only servers for longer before joining the non-rookie servers. You can still play on any server you want after reaching level 1 or finishing the tutorial.
• Added a ranked server filter to the server browser
• The server browser will now highlight ranked servers. Listed as GOLD NS2 in the gamemode column. (Thanks mendasp!)
• The server browser now shows the total number of servers available as well as the total number that pass your filter settings (Thanks mendasp!)
• Resource nodes and tech points are now highlighted on the minimap (Thanks mendasp!)
• Rookies are no longer banned from commanding on non-rookie servers, but instead will be shown a warning
• Commanders are now credited with the average score on their team at the end of a round, so they will continue to level up as fast as all the other players even while commanding
• Play Now will now prioritize joining into a ranked server over an unranked one

Fixes

• Fixed awesomium_process.exe crash (occurred frequently in the tutorial, or for new players if tip videos were playing when they exited a game)
• Fixed hangs on server join, disconnecting, and exiting the game
• Fixed specular textures loading at a lower resolution than intended (shiny new prettiness)
• Integrated fix for gorge tunnels not always opening when a player has dropped both sides
• Throttled “illegal miplevel” error spam so if it happens, it won’t impact performance
• Updated ns2_derelict overview to show new vents
• Fixed another case of rifle jamming (Thanks xDragon and SamusDroid!)
• Fixed looping rifle fire sounds while not firing (Thanks xDragon!)
• Fixed locations in ns2_docking and ns2_tram where you could build structures that would be impossible to attack

SDK

• Fixed Shared.SendHTTPRequest jobs not canceling properly when the lua vm is destroyed, which could cause hangs/crashes