An open letter to the NS2 Community
WasabiOne
Co-Lead NS2 CDT Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104623Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
Co-Lead NS2 CDT Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104623Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
Dear Community,
I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on the Community Development Team. As I am sure you have noticed, the CDT has released a few patches over the last months and work continues with Build 270. Our goal has always been to help strengthen and build up our fellow NS2 community member and the CDT feels that this has happened. However, it's not perfect and I don't think it ever will be, but we can learn and grow throughout the process.
Moving forward we have made a few changes and as always look to our fellow community members for help, thoughts and ideas. We are always reading through the forums, you can message us, email us or even request a teamspeak meeting. We are all volunteers working together to keep this train moving and we couldn't do it without you.
Please check out our updated trello board for more insight into what the team has been looking at and possibly working on in the future. If you register an account with trello, you can then vote on any card on the list to tell us things you want to see priority given or just to say I LIKE THIS! We have also adjusted our testing methods to better verify the integrity of upcoming patches and to make sure we have plenty of time to test a future patch through every stage of its development, especially the release canidate. There are some other items that will soon be in place as well that should vastly help the programming members of the CDT work with even higher collaboration and efficiency moving forward.
Again, we are volunteers and members of the community just like you. You are as much a part of this team as the next and we value your input. Please feel free to contact myself or other members of the team anytime, because together we can continue to show people why this game and its community are so amazing.
Thank you,
Your Community Development Team
I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on the Community Development Team. As I am sure you have noticed, the CDT has released a few patches over the last months and work continues with Build 270. Our goal has always been to help strengthen and build up our fellow NS2 community member and the CDT feels that this has happened. However, it's not perfect and I don't think it ever will be, but we can learn and grow throughout the process.
Moving forward we have made a few changes and as always look to our fellow community members for help, thoughts and ideas. We are always reading through the forums, you can message us, email us or even request a teamspeak meeting. We are all volunteers working together to keep this train moving and we couldn't do it without you.
Please check out our updated trello board for more insight into what the team has been looking at and possibly working on in the future. If you register an account with trello, you can then vote on any card on the list to tell us things you want to see priority given or just to say I LIKE THIS! We have also adjusted our testing methods to better verify the integrity of upcoming patches and to make sure we have plenty of time to test a future patch through every stage of its development, especially the release canidate. There are some other items that will soon be in place as well that should vastly help the programming members of the CDT work with even higher collaboration and efficiency moving forward.
Again, we are volunteers and members of the community just like you. You are as much a part of this team as the next and we value your input. Please feel free to contact myself or other members of the team anytime, because together we can continue to show people why this game and its community are so amazing.
Thank you,
Your Community Development Team
Comments
Here we go for a new problematic thread.
This is a long post because it gathers many opinions from a lot of players, not just one random guy.
Everyone agrees that UWE has done an amazing job creating and releasing Natural Selection 2. It is understandable, that as a company, UWE now chooses to move on to other projects like Subnautica. It is unfair to say that UWE has abandoned NS2 and its community. Even recently they have just provided the competitive community with 5 NSL servers to use.
Because UWE must move on to other projects, they have given us the CDT. This is an amazing opportunity given to us to continue to make this game great, and hopefully revive it to a much healthier state, however, there are many in this community that feel our CDT has missed its mark and not met our expectations. Don’t be mistaken about our remarks though, we do not criticize the CDT itself and its goal, but rather are unconvinced of some members and some points the CDT has been working on lately.
1. Clarity and Transparency on the CDT team
- In the beginning, UWE gave us a list of those who would be on the CDT, and what their primary roles are. Today, this list has grown, and the roster and roles of the CDT have become less transparent. The community should be involved in some way about the decisions of the CDT, and this includes who is a part of the team and who is not. It also needs to be clear on the role of everyone involved in the team. If they don’t have a role, they should just be a part of the community, like the rest of us. We expect more transparency about the CDT so it doesn’t feel like an obscure group of puppeteers. We would like to be able to consult a list of who actually is a member of the CDT and why, what is the role of everyone in the development of new NS2 builds. Moreover, we’ve been given the CDT as a done deal. For some members, the reason of their presence seems obvious (Mendasp proved his capability thanks to NS2+, and It’sSuperEffective has always been working hard on his NS2 videos). But what about the others? What do they do? why are they in? Who decided that?
2. Communication about upcoming plans and changes for NS2
- Currently we have the twitter account and trello board to view upcoming changes. For good reason, there is a hidden trello board as well. Many of us, however, have come to catch wind of some “big plans” for the near future of NS2 that the CDT is working on, and many of us feel that we should get some information on this, as it greatly affects NS2 today! The word on the street is “NS2 is dead, find another game”. It sure looks and feels that way all the time. If there indeed is some big plans that might help and change things, let’s hear about it. The CDT is behaving almost like a real game developer, which we hate. We want them to open their Kimono and show us all their naked bits. As a “community” development team, let us know what we should expect for the future of NS2! Don’t keep it in the dark until it’s too late...
3. Recent Changes from CompMod
- This is a controversial one. There have been some good changes to vanilla NS2 that have come from compMod, however there have also been a lot adoptions that many people do not agree with, and some of these being very young changes that haven’t been fully tested or even accepted by the competitive community. As we all know, many public and non-competitive community players have strong opinions about features and changes present in the compmod, and whether or not they should apply to vanilla. As such, changes in this category need to be handled MUCH more carefully. Most of the community does not agree that some recent changes are acceptable and are FOR the community, BY the community. It looks and feels more like some changes decided on by a few people and rushed in at the end, without allowing for a rightful amount of time for said changes to be debated or voted on. An example is the lerk glide sounds. This is a VERY recent change in compmod, and still VERY controversial. There is a huge outcry still about this change, yet it’s ALREADY been put into vanilla? This does not even go to mention that it generally feels most of the compmod decisions are made by a few premiere players, and lower divisions go ignored… When feedback is given, more attention should be paid. If the people who give feedback are ignored, nobody will tell what they think in vain anymore, and so all the upcoming changes will be made without the approval of the community. That is what happened with the CompMod: people gave a lot of feedback at first, but when they realized nobody took it into consideration, they simply didn’t give their opninon anymore. I know it is hard to please everyone, but together, as a community, we can figure out what makes sense and satisfies the majority. We want to make sure that the whole community is listenened to, even though we all know everyone can’t agree with the changes to be made.
4. Bring new players
- What does the CDT plan for the future? The game is currently dying and this is fair enough to try to keep our community alive thanks to all the patches but it’s about time to act to bring back those that left and persuade new players to buy the game, to stay once they’ve played a bit more. There are many things to do that can help NS2. A lot of them have been done (ingame tutorials and tips) already but there is still more to do. Some of our suggestions include better communication with specialized medias or companies (Intel and Nvidia have participated for the NS2WC), promote the game to a larger number of countries, asking for some famous Youtubers, Twitch Streamers and other people to test and review the game. Why not make the game free to play now (that could mean adding more extra content like skins, armor types, etc beyond what already exists thanks to the Reinforced Program)? This is definitely a possibility that should be weighed fully by both the community and UWE itself. It would certainly do something regarding of the overall player numbers. It would also be a good idea to advertise the increases in game performance in an effort to pull older players back into the game..
5. Maptesting !
- What happened to it? UWE used to do this regularly to help get feedback to the most giving part of our community! What is the CDT’s plan for UWE maptesting? NSL Maptesting is not enough, as that’s for the competitive community, and still very limited. Does the CDT plan to revive maptesting the way it used to exist under UWE? Are we going to continue to support those who try to bring more content?
6. Conclusion
This is not meant to be an attack on the CDT. We only wish to work with the CDT to help them make the decisions that will move the game forward, and provide feedback so that we can assure that it continues to operate in the community’s best interests for NS2. There is no need to show the Steam activity graph - we are all dreadfully aware. These points are not of a vocal few, either. This post has been crafted with the voices and ideas of several who consider themselves a part of this community. If you skip this thread and are not honest in your messages, I’m sorry to say NS2 will continue on its current trend. I played NS1, many of us did it and a big part started NS2 before or during its release, we don’t want the game to die. That’s why we believe you, CDT, has to consider the points mentioned above. This is not because we don’t like what you’re doing and have done, but because we care about the game and its community. We both want a prosper and thriving NS2 and we will fight for that.
Thanks for reading.
I'm not sure if a "awesome" contest will solve these issues. That's not good path.
(edit : fuuu Darkalf stop it ! )
The letter posted by chibi was passed around the community (mostly EU I think) to receive signatures of many players. Obviously whispers got around and Wasabi made this thread as a preempted defence (not trying to "militarise" this).
Little bit rude considering the OP is clearly just saying the CDT is doing what the letter argues they aren't doing. However, it is a volunteer thing.
End of the day happened because > it's a dead game > dev's not wasting more money on it > CDT gets free reigns > community segment (minority or majority?) asking CDT changes its conduct a bit.
Edit:
TL;DR
Get your popcorn out
*snip* This is not an imageboard -Ironhorse
YUP, that's my point.
GG
However as it also says there are some issues with it all.
That's not the issue either, imo
edit : I messed up the quotation, it's fixed now
I know that's not what the petition said, I'm the one that is saying that, disagree with it if you want.
CDT probably got word about the petition so before giving the actual community a chance of posting it they post this.
Also, UWE is "keeping an eye" on them doesn't impress me either, they are the ones that screwed up in the first place.
But at least they could be held accountable when they were responsible for the development, how do we hold the CDT accountable when they are all volunteers who get no money for the job they are doing?
BTW I'm not mad at the CDT because I blame UWE in the first place, but I don't think the community should be happy about it either which is what I think Wasabione is trying to imply here.
yeh well the community letter says it all better then I do. But I did not specify a issue in my post hence I dont understand your answer.
It's called the CDT NOT because the COMMUNITY is developing the game, but because people FROM the community are now developing the game. The difference being, if you want to join the CDT, you need to prove you have something to contribute! UWE did not open-source NS2, nor did they dump the code and engine on the "community". No, they ENTRUSTED the continued development of NS2 in the hands of a capable few FROM THE COMMUNITY.
If the ENTIRE community was brought into the CDT... there would be no focus, stuff would take 10x as long to get done, and in the end, the game would be worse off. If you've ever worked on a project in a large group that tolerated this kind of BS, you'd know how badly off this sort of "committee thinking" can leave a project. Rather than being the focused vision of a few individuals, you'll end up with an incoherent mess of garbage because everyone got their way.
*Reclines in chair, waits for disagrees to come rolling in* B-)
There has always been a lack of feedback, since the day the comp mod initially started. I went back earlier and read over every single comp mod thread on the NSL forums, and there is very few posts that had reasonable feedback that didnt directly influence discussion. If there is so many people who disagree with a change or changes from CompMod, why is this the first time this is being made public. If you disagree with something but tell no one else, how are we supposed to know there is a problem? I would like to be able to read peoples minds, but sadly its not something I have mastered yet. I'm going to say the same thing I said on the NSL forums:
I know communication about CompMod has not been perfect, but acting like you represent the majority of the community, and that there has been 'ample' feedback already provided is hugely arrogant, and as far as I can tell, a complete fallacy.
There are some things in the open letter with which I strongly agree, however. In particular, the contentious changes (like lerk bomber sounds) really needed open consultation with the community before being implemented.
The Trello board is great (and I read the digests on e-mail when they come through), and for many things it is the perfect vehicle for disseminating the proposed changes/improvements. However, Trello ISN'T the place for the contentious changes to be announced - it doesn't provide the right format for full and frank discussion about a topic (like this board does, for instance).
I hope this isn't seen as harsh or unfair criticism. I mean it only as well-intended feedback to help improve the community relations. Everyone here (bar the odd forum troll) wants the same thing: a long-lived, healthy game. It's important that we all recognise that actually, we do have the same goals. There will be differences of opinion along the way, that's fine, but as long as everyone recognises those then we can work together to come to agreements or at least acceptance of certain upcoming changes, with full disclosure and discussion amongst as much of the community as possible prior to the events.
So in conclusion: please keep up the good work; we are with you! Any criticism on here is meant to be positive, to be productive and to help improve communication. We, the Community, want to help you, the Community Development Team, to continue improving our beloved NS2.
Roo
I want to reply to this portion in particular. I think the only thing that has come from open involvement with the community (not the CDT) regarding balance and gameplay changes is the realisation that 99% of the people on this board have no idea what they are talking about. It's a bit hard to take this argument seriously when the feedback on changes is is either non existent or completely ridiculous. The people that know what they are talking about happen to be in the CDT. What a coincidence!
For what reasons do you think this list isn't here?
I talked with Zefram and we had a very nice discussion. The purpose of the googledoc was to do the same on a forum. I just personally think CDT could have waited the time we post our own thread.
Everyone is here 'cause they care about NS2, so let's make a real discussion right now and let's skip these both letters. We have a small and an awesome community compared to other games. Why people would like to get it down? There were community players that agreed about the stated points, and other that disagreed with all or few of them. What's wrong? Everyone can have their own idea. A GoogleDoc can be a bit bad and threatening but why do you think it wasn't posted yet? It has been open one day ago (only one day, things can change to have a good thread to open), ideas and requests have changed, even now, on the Chb's message, there are parts that have been removed. Of course, people asked to have a proper list for those that agree (next time a list for those that disagree can be fine aswell), not the best idea but it has been done because some people claimed for this.
What did we learn? Well, I hope at least nobody can agree with everything, but that doesn't mean those that do not have your opinion are wrong (no matter what side 'cause there's only one side: NS2).
Now it's done, I did notice some really pleasant things on Trello -
I like it but isn't it a bit too close to CS:GO right?
The problem with the lerk change is twofold:
1. There are those who are against compmod changes being a part of vanilla simply because the game is not only for competitive players, and generally speaking, if it's in the comp mod, it's tailored for competitive players, and not necessarily for average/vanilla/casual players.
2. The lerk sound is a VERY recent change as far as comp mod changes, and there hasn't been much time for competitive players to get used to it, practice with it, and even approve/disapprove of it. It was rushed in. Hell the HMG's are older and those aren't in vanilla yet.
I personally believe it was the right move, but I think how it was snuck into vanilla was not the right move. People hate change. You have to go slow and steady and hold their hand.
It shouldn't even be in compmod imo, lets please not go and add something that has messed balance up so much to vanilla for the love of god...
And that is your opinion on its impact on balance crazy, there are many people who also support it, including many lerk players. Be mindful that it's your opinion and not some proven fact.
Also, that main menu concept is crazy close to CS. If that's intentional that's pretty dangerous water to swim in I would think.
But this isn't in vanilla, this is a compmod change...
Then accept my most sincere apologies and continue your good work, kind sir.
No this is not. This was in the Trello.
Uhm, I think this is massively missing the point. You can't tell people they should've given feedback to the compmod if changes from that mod influence the main game.
Firstly, the compmod is, as the name suggests, a) a mod and b) from and for the competitive community. Only people interested in at least one of those two aspects are going to give feedback, because no one else is affected.
If you indicate that a majority of the compmod feedback happens on the NSL forums (which would make sense, as it's a competitive thing), then you have another reasons - most of us aren't there. Not everybody is a competitive player.
Furthermore, there has never been any hint before the CDT appeared, and arguably some time after that, that compmod changes would affect the main game. Even until it happened it was not explicitly communicated to the average player, so it went right over their head.
So, in conclusion, saying people shouldn't complain about to changes to the main game that came from a "competitive" mod because they could've given to that very mod is downright ridiculous.
However if you want that kind of feedback for upcoming changes to the actual main game and started a mod/thread for it, I am sure you will get a lot more responses. Think of Sewlek's old balance mod.
It's not in the public build, and it is on trello, so it is public and therefore you have a chance to provide feedback before it goes in. By the way, the implementation was quite different from the compmod one, just because it sounded similar doesn't mean that it was going to be a copy & paste.
Also, if you read the Trello you'll see it has been pulled.
Oh. Ok. My bad, I misunderstood.