What is it and How does it work? 

Thunderdome has been the fun codename for this project that is now being officially labeled as Matched Play in the main menu. We plan on releasing the Beta phase of this feature in the next few weeks.

To put it simply it is a matchmaking system. It matches players together in a lobby of 12. When it performs a search it sorts by the smallest number of available player slots in order to fill up existing lobbies, and then that is sorted by a median skill level that is closest to the searching player, and then it finally refines that based on geodesic distance. Or said another way: The system attempts to …

It’s hard to believe that another year is coming to a close. Sneaky Saint Gorgie is up to their old tricks and while some Marines have been getting some nasty yucky and gooey clogs in their stockings, that silly Saint Gorgie also seems to be dropping off lots of goodies too! We’ve expanded our available skins, and a whole new list of items have been added to your customize menu for you to further put your style on display. Some of our previous packs or individual skins have been expanded to cover more items and there are also a handful of all new individual weapons skins to check out. If you owned a now expanded DLC pack previously, then you …

October is always an exciting time of year for our Natural Selection Development Team, and this year is no exception. 18 years ago a totally unique and amazing new mod for half-life hit the interwebs and for many us, changed our lives. Fast forward to today, and its sequel Natural Selection 2 is celebrating eight years since release. Our Team and dedicated community continue to get games active and going 24hrs a day around the world and today is our next step in supporting all of you into the future. Update 335 is the official release of Hive Skill 3.0 (see our previous blog detailing the changes), our latest update to the backend skill tracking and sorting system …

Community Developer Moultano, the creator of the original HiveSkill rating system that NS2 uses to approximate player skill levels and balance teams when shuffled, has been quietly tinkering and working hard on one of the longest requested features for Natural Selection 2… an expanded HiveSkill rating system that will now include four separate skill ratings! One for the Kharaa, one for the Frontiersman, and one for each of their respective commander roles.

Now, how exactly does this HiveSkill 3.0 system work? Moultano has been kind enough to write up an extensive FAQ about it which you will see below. If you have further questions, you are welcome to join us on our Discord where Moultano and the rest of the …

This is a maintenance patch to fix some issues that cropped up from changes to the Valve back-end as well as our optimizations. Also some additional bug fixes! But best of all, you can now earn your Abyss Lerk skin by playing on METRO. Happy Hunting

Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.

Changelog

Optimizations

• Minor refactor how most achievements are granted

Fixes

• Fixed issue with dual core CPU users being unable to launch the game
• Fixed issue with Abyss Lerk skin not being awarded after playing on Metro for 6 rounds of 5 minutes each.
• Fix steam item granting failing
• Fix steam-stats not updating in

Eclipse Tower is in ruin after the Kharaa invasion. The battle was brought home in the name of “scientific research,” deemed necessary to protect our future. We thought the battle was over and all were safe, but we were wrong…

The Kharaa have escaped to the streets below Eclipse Tower and are already advancing throughout the district. Reinforcements have been called in as the streets, markets and clubs are evacuated. The war for our human existence rages on. We have to hurry to eliminate the threat; they’ve reached the Metro lines and can quickly spread out across the entire city.

As the fights continue into the tunnels of the Metro, shimmers of blue and white appear in the darkness. A …

Hello Everyone!

There hasn’t been a game update in the last months as we have been busy working on some larger features. To keep you all in the loop here is a short summary of what we are working on. And what you can expect from the next game update.

Gameplay

Since December our Balance Team has been busy cooking up the latest set of tweaks and shake ups for gameplay.

We said a bittersweet goodbye to BeigeAlert during this time as he pursues an exciting new opportunity. However this caused a bit of a delay for the development of gameplay changes.

Enter Katzenfleisch joining the team! He has been working together with Ghoul since February to get us back …

Welcome back to “Colony Zero,” the forgotten mining facility on the moon Freya IV. Greed and a continued push for dominance brought the TSF to this moon, but what they found while mining deep was something they felt was far more valuable than ore or minerals; little did they know it would start a pandemic reaching across the entire galaxy. 

Our newest official map, ORIGIN, a remake of the NS1 map, holds the answers to the Origins of Kharaa and is now available to play. You can earn the special Abyss Gorge skin after playing five rounds, but hurry as this skin is only available for a limited time! Thank you to pSyk for all his hard work on re-creating …

Update 328 includes an upgrade to Visual Studio 2017 runtime, continued balance tweaks in response to the last update, updates to DirectX 11 (getting us closer to ditching DirectX 9 altogether) and numerous fixes and optimizations throughout the game. We are making great strides in achieving our goal on the roadmap and 329 is looking to be another great update, so stay tuned for public tests in advance of release. Lastly we want to thank all of you that have been purchasing DLC and all the newcomers that have been buying the game over the last few months. Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.

Check …