Twitter is not an appropriate communication method for dev team with its players/customers. It's basically saying "we'll write single sentence and please comment it on forums, if there's something interesting there's 1% chance we might reply".
<!--quoteo(post=1974005:date=Sep 8 2012, 08:28 AM:name=MOOtant)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MOOtant @ Sep 8 2012, 08:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1974005"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Twitter is not an appropriate communication method for dev team with its players/customers. It's basically saying "we'll write single sentence and please comment it on forums, if there's something interesting there's 1% chance we might reply".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> How is one sentence on twitter any different from one sentence posts on the forums? UWE is a tiny team that is working incredibly hard on NS2. They don't have enough money to hire an entire PR company or an entire PR division like a lot of other game companies do. Keeping up with forum posts and the twitter account and the YouTube videos and the convention booths is not easy for them. I personally find the tweets to be a great way to get a peek into what's going on, and if you don't like them you can just not subscribe to them on twitter and stay out of this thread and you'll never have to hear about them again.
This is typical for people posting here. UWE becamse a company and people say that treating them like a company is some kind of low blow or hate spewing.
<!--quoteo(post=1974052:date=Sep 8 2012, 06:00 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Sep 8 2012, 06:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1974052"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How is one sentence on twitter any different from one sentence posts on the forums?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It's very different. Twitter has lots of rambling like "we're uploading 217". Forums have full changelog. Twitter format is fine for starting conversation on something proper like reddit. NS2 should have something reddit like rather than implementation of outdated idea - forums. Jon Harrop uses it very well, single troll sentence or something controversial in general on Twitter and there are followups.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->UWE is a tiny team<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> First of all it's not. It has enough time to write on Twitter, upload videos and go to conventions.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->that is working incredibly hard on NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What does that have to do with anything? Every company is working hard or will soon be gone.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They don't have enough money to hire an entire PR company or an entire PR division like a lot of other game companies do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm not talking about using more resources but using them better. I understand that 1 hour or 1 dollar spent on convetion booth appears better spent than answering doubts on forums or even is better spent.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Keeping up with forum posts and the twitter account and the YouTube videos and the convention booths is not easy for them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Somehow they keep doing all of that.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I personally find the tweets to be a great way to get a peek into what's going on,<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> And I don't. getsatisfaction is spammed. There is no bug tracker. Most of communication is stream of single sentences on Twitter.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and if you don't like them you can just not subscribe to them on twitter<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I read what they write, the technical part. I'm not really interested in "OMG OMG we're uploading 217 OMG".
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and stay out of this thread<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> What for?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and you'll never have to hear about them again.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This is not a mod, I'm not really sure you get it.
(IPB didn't let me post it at once due to quote overflow)
To make it more clear what I mean let's compare different Twitter streams:
Max's:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Max McGuire â€@max_mcguire @NS2FR @NS2 The server is mostly single threaded, but it will use a second core for physics simulation and some networking<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NS2's <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Natural Selection 2 â€@NS2 Hugh is melted in his chair, after 5+ hours of casting. He looks like he can barely summon energy to swing a virtual sword (yet he does).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And Harrop's
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Jon Harrop â€@jonharrop Translate "elegant" code from MonoTouch home page to F#: 3 lines of C# becomes Table<_>() |> Seq.filter (fun p -> p.ID=id)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Signal to noise is different in each one and what's even more important SNR is different if you're interested in technical details of F# or in typical day of UWE. Twitter is a stream where everything is lumped together and I have to filter through it. Forums are prefiltered by topics.
Twitter like NS2's is a nice idea for generating early hype but I think that phase is over and I'd rather see some long, detailed answers than lots of single sentences.
If you want to see longer, more detailed answers instead of single sentences, then you really should stop reading twitter, which is basically an entire service designed to provide single sentence answers. It seems like what you're saying is that you want the developers to only release the specific kinds of information you want and to stop releasing the kinds of information you don't want, although I'm unclear on the difference between the two and it also seems silly that they should focus their entire information release efforts on what you want instead of, for example, what I want or what the majority wants or what THEY want. If you like the forum much more because it's prefiltered by topics instead of lumping everything together, then I suggest reading the forums.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Yea Tycho is right.. i actually enjoy reading about small things like how Hugh is exhausted etc.. it adds character and a human element that you dont get typically. Mootant.. you seem just generally upset "typical for people posting here" .. because he disagrees with you?
Come on man... if you aren't interested in it, then you dont have to read it. :) For more information see forums or use email
<!--quoteo(post=1974542:date=Sep 9 2012, 08:00 PM:name=ironhorse)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ironhorse @ Sep 9 2012, 08:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1974542"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yea Tycho is right.. i actually enjoy reading about small things like how Hugh is exhausted etc.. it adds character and a human element that you dont get typically. Mootant.. you seem just generally upset "typical for people posting here" .. because he disagrees with you?
Come on man... if you aren't interested in it, then you dont have to read it. :) For more information see forums or use email<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Nah, I didn't mean that there is no one that can enjoy what NS2 devs do on twitter.
The typical thing I had in mind was aggression at something who wants someone else, I listed what exactly is the difference between various feeds. "Personal" info like one I quoted might be interesting for someone who is constantly looking at the feed but I am interested in different things.
So I don't really understand what you're saying. You think that what the NS2 twitter feed tweets is fine for some people, but that you'd rather have other stuff on the twitter feed, so... they should change the twitter feed? But what about all the other people who you say it's fine for right now? Won't they come into this thread and ask for the twitter feed to be changed back, and then you'll be on my side of the argument? Why not just let the devs tweet what they want to tweet and yell at them about other stuff instead?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm sure there's a way we could deter experienced players from newbie servers...no wall-jumping?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Any one else want to see a centralized / option for locally stored skill ranking implemented into the game? It seems like the best way to stop pub-stomping and separating players of various skill / seriousness levels. Even if it isn't a 1.0 feature.
Also it seems like the community is half way there with the launch of NS2stats.org...
fmponeJoin Date: 2011-07-05Member: 108086Members, Squad Five Blue
That tweet proposes creating two different versions of the game. This will just create confusion for new players, it's best to streamline the main game than to fragment what they can play
<!--quoteo(post=1975325:date=Sep 11 2012, 12:46 AM:name=Katana-)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Katana- @ Sep 11 2012, 12:46 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1975325"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any one else want to see a centralized / option for locally stored skill ranking implemented into the game? It seems like the best way to stop pub-stomping and separating players of various skill / seriousness levels. Even if it isn't a 1.0 feature.
Also it seems like the community is half way there with the launch of NS2stats.org...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes. Elo ranking and auto-balance to keep the teams fair is needed imo. Many games you can tell who is going to win in the first minute because the teams are so one sided.
I don't think many people care about the wall jumping tbh.
Yes, I have seen a game like that - NS1! Simply put, we just need servers that advertise themselves as being noob-friendly, and count on the admins/regulars to be supportive of new players. Let the new guys get a chance to comm, help them get through the initial learning curve, and most importantly, don't freak out when they mess up. Admins can banhammer griefers, everyone profits.
Don't make an alternate or "dumbed-down" version of the game.
I'm sure there's a way we could deter experienced players from newbie servers...no wall-jumping?
how about not recording stats on newb-servers? they are just for learning the game, no need for stats imho. should get rid at least of those that get a kick out of 30 to 0 stats. which i guess are quite a few of these griefers.(at least i hope so, i actually have no idea what those guys are thinking...)
schkorpioI can mspaintJoin Date: 2003-05-23Member: 16635Members
<b>using turrets offensively? </b>- I hope this isn't a really stange way to make up for the fact that turrets are useless right now. There are heaps of really good suggestions out there already for making turrets good but fair, and fun.
<b>making two versions of the game? </b> why would anyone want to seperate the community - the handful of complainy "elite" players just need to stop being *** holes. (most veterans are fine, but a tiny portion of people are just *** holes that forget that other people play games to have fun). I always think its great playing on a server where some players are awesome fades, or great with the shotgun etc. It makes the game more interesting, and it shows off that there is a high level of skill involved in the game.
the best way i've seen for newbies to learn the game is by way of bots, NS1 did this quite well thanks to some servers i played on, where good players guided newbies in not only playing as marines/aliens, but commanding aswell. anyone who was being a jerk was warned, kicked, or banned if they were just being nasty.
but yea, until we have bots and auto-commanders... we're gonna have to make some "training" servers in which admins will have to keep an eye on for trouble makers. but people with experience will be needed for advice
There really is no better alternative than something like the SC2 method, where you rank players and put them into specific skill-related leagues. Even imperfect systems would do a better job than the current method.
Play Super Monday Night Combat to see how ranking fails in a small community. And that game is 5v5. With NS moving towards 10v10 or 12v12 as standard, less concurrent games played means it's almost inevitable that there will be pub stomping going on because it will be impossible to separate out the skill levels.
Not that I think the tweet suggestion is better at all.
<!--quoteo(post=1975419:date=Sep 10 2012, 10:07 PM:name=noncomposmentis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (noncomposmentis @ Sep 10 2012, 10:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1975419"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Play Super Monday Night Combat to see how ranking fails in a small community. And that game is 5v5. With NS moving towards 10v10 or 12v12 as standard, less concurrent games played means it's almost inevitable that there will be pub stomping going on because it will be impossible to separate out the skill levels.
Not that I think the tweet suggestion is better at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
it really depends on how the ranking system is implemented. i think there are absolutely ways to rank players at least semi-accurately in games like ns2, and the player base shouldn't be that small.
Easy skill metric: accuracy. Just count shots fired vs shots hit. Sure, there are other ways to contribute to your team, but I think accuracy would correlate very strongly with overall skill and its trivial to collect that data.
<!--quoteo(post=1975424:date=Sep 10 2012, 07:14 PM:name=Wheeee)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wheeee @ Sep 10 2012, 07:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1975424"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->it really depends on how the ranking system is implemented. i think there are absolutely ways to rank players at least semi-accurately in games like ns2, and the player base shouldn't be that small.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The actual skill ranking isn't the problem. When you go to make games, though, unless there are enough players it will take forever to match people of "equal skill" via whatever metric you use. The compromise is time waiting vs accuracy of match. With a game like SMNC, which has a similar size community, if not a bit larger due to free to play, games take 3-15 minutes to match-make, and you <b>still</b> end up with pub stomping.
<!--quoteo(post=1975437:date=Sep 10 2012, 09:47 PM:name=Typhon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Typhon @ Sep 10 2012, 09:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1975437"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Easy skill metric: accuracy. Just count shots fired vs shots hit. Sure, there are other ways to contribute to your team, but I think accuracy would correlate very strongly with overall skill and its trivial to collect that data.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, screw everyone who fires to suppress aliens or battles opponents who know how to dodge. People who only use their weapons to take out cysts are so much more pro.
and if you only measure accuracy against life forms, it will depend on fps.
i'd like to point out that the idea is to <b>distinguish new players from the veterans, not unskilled/handicapped players from the vets</b>. so what it comes down to is the knowledge about game mechanics and tactics etc.
<b>so how about this:</b> newbies will be marked as new players on the scoreboard, also displaying their amounts of game experience (non-afk) in hours. as soon as they reach a certain fixed limit (e.g. 100 hours) they will not be marked as new players anymore. certain serveres could be limited to have no new players (e.g. servers with stats) while some servers could be only for newbies (although some vets will give them hints, some might ruin their fun by playing an unkillable fade etc.). i belive the hour-limit should be fixed to prevent things like "elite" servers). on the mixed servers, people will at least know what they are dealing with (e.g. they can recommend not to command yet, which is probably better than exposing the newbie to massive negative feedback) and might make them more likely to give/take advices. as soon as a person reaches the limit, they have to play on mixed or non-newbie servers which might seem much harder for them. however, there is also a sense of achievement (yay i got "promoted") and the fact that they know the game decently enough not to perceive certain unintuitive mechanics as extremely unfair.
there is a risk of new players developing their own (possibly "bad") habbits among their own (as in: you better learn it the right way from the beginning) but one could counter this by having several "ranks" instead of just newbie and non-newbie.
Elo is a great idea, but then there's stacking. To solve this, there is the option of having an automated system to force everyone into relatively balanced teams using the Elo rating but this reduces the fun because some will want to play in the same team as their friends.
This issue, in turn, may be solved by allowing friends to "link" each other so that the system will consider the group as a single entity that occupies two or more slots, with each slot having the median Elo rating of the linked group of friends. Points awarded at the end of each round will still be proportional to their own personal ratings. To prevent entire teams from being filled with a single group of friends, this "linkage" can be limited to maybe two or three players.
In addition, team sizes do not have to be equal if such a "linkage" allows one team to have a much higher Elo rating than the other. For example, if two top-tier players are linked in a pub server, it may be possible that they will be alone in one team playing against the rest of the serve if their Elo ratings are high enough. It would be the system's way of saying, "F**k you for trying to pubstomp the server!"
Furthermore, such "linkages" must not be allowed to work in servers with low populations, like 4 or 5 players.
Finally, to allow players some degree of control over which team they end up in, they will be allowed to pick their preferred team before the system allocates them. In situations where two players have similar Elo ratings, this preference will be taken into account.
TBH this is kinda complicated and may cause more problems than it solves.
Point 1 - Newbie servers will only attract newb stomping experienced players, its like saying target practise zones here.... turns newbie friendly servers into newbie trashing servers (see BF3 PC / Bad Comp 2 PC).
Point 2 - Who the heck is going to put up all these servers ? UWE seems to be relying on its fans to fork out for the server costs as I dont see a single official EU server put up by UWE ? Now UWE wants its fans to put up newbie friendly servers as well ? Oh, and add the fact the servers are CPU hogs and need some serious OC work just to run a 22 man server currently... your servers are expensive to keep running.
I think it would be better just to encourage new players to let the server know they are new, and to let new players know that NS2 is hard to learn but a fun learning experience anyways (like the Dwarf Fortress motto : Losing is fun).
Back to the server issue, what is UWE doing to minimise the impact the loss of a top server group will have on its players ? I mean what if the guys currently putting up servers decide to move on, or cant afford the upkeep anymore, or issues crop up and the maintainers cant keep the servers going ? Like in Aussie when the one set of servers went offline, the Aussies were basically screwed for a decent server with a decent ping.
Expecting fans to put up your servers for a free mod is one thing, expecting fans to put up expensive servers for a game they have to pay for is different kettle of fish altogether... so whats the plans here UWE ?
(Note: I may come off as anti UWE, I am not I am just concerned at the lack of official servers in the EU... hell at the lack of 'proper' servers altogether... there sure isnt enough to support the release of the game at the moment. The EXO build showed that pretty well as all the 'proper' servers were packed ... imagine that but with MUCH greater number of players fighting for server slots.)
you got a good point: servers are already crowded as it is. player base will easily double upon release and many of them will be very hyped to give the game a try right away... in the long run, there will probably be some more people among the new players who set up servers by themselves. but i think this will take a bit as they will probably want to know the game first.
Silly suggestion Flayra, the whole idea was to make skillbased movement that scales from new to vet like aiming on marines, not to remove the only thing that could be it right?
Further more it would lead to "better" players stacking marines if they wanted to play on the server because there would be no point in playing skulk.
ZeikkoJoin Date: 2007-12-16Member: 63179Members, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester
Creating newbie servers with separate gameplay has ocuple of issues. first one to come to my mind is the balance. Now you would have to balance two games instead of one. And how do you actually prevent good players going to the newbie server? If wallhop and some other key features like this were removed in newbie servers it could be very inviting for a good player to go there and abuse the aspects in the game that the removed features are meant to counter.
If wallhop was removed and one wanted to get ton of easy frags he just needs to join the marine team in a newbie server and go to camp in a long corridor next to a hive. Aliens would have no way to deal with this. Also why would anybody play skulk if the wallhop was removed? And how are you supposed to learn the most unique mechanic in the game if it's completely removed? Skulk movement and wallhop is pretty much equivalent to aiming in marines. If wallhop was removed something should be done to the prevent marines from aiming / shooting / damaging skulks to balance this out.
Comments
How is one sentence on twitter any different from one sentence posts on the forums? UWE is a tiny team that is working incredibly hard on NS2. They don't have enough money to hire an entire PR company or an entire PR division like a lot of other game companies do. Keeping up with forum posts and the twitter account and the YouTube videos and the convention booths is not easy for them. I personally find the tweets to be a great way to get a peek into what's going on, and if you don't like them you can just not subscribe to them on twitter and stay out of this thread and you'll never have to hear about them again.
<!--quoteo(post=1974052:date=Sep 8 2012, 06:00 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Sep 8 2012, 06:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1974052"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How is one sentence on twitter any different from one sentence posts on the forums?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's very different. Twitter has lots of rambling like "we're uploading 217". Forums have full changelog. Twitter format is fine for starting conversation on something proper like reddit. NS2 should have something reddit like rather than implementation of outdated idea - forums. Jon Harrop uses it very well, single troll sentence or something controversial in general on Twitter and there are followups.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->UWE is a tiny team<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
First of all it's not. It has enough time to write on Twitter, upload videos and go to conventions.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->that is working incredibly hard on NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What does that have to do with anything? Every company is working hard or will soon be gone.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They don't have enough money to hire an entire PR company or an entire PR division like a lot of other game companies do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not talking about using more resources but using them better. I understand that 1 hour or 1 dollar spent on convetion booth appears better spent than answering doubts on forums or even is better spent.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Keeping up with forum posts and the twitter account and the YouTube videos and the convention booths is not easy for them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Somehow they keep doing all of that.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I personally find the tweets to be a great way to get a peek into what's going on,<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And I don't. getsatisfaction is spammed. There is no bug tracker. Most of communication is stream of single sentences on Twitter.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and if you don't like them you can just not subscribe to them on twitter<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I read what they write, the technical part. I'm not really interested in "OMG OMG we're uploading 217 OMG".
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and stay out of this thread<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What for?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and you'll never have to hear about them again.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is not a mod, I'm not really sure you get it.
To make it more clear what I mean let's compare different Twitter streams:
Max's:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Max McGuire â€@max_mcguire
@NS2FR @NS2 The server is mostly single threaded, but it will use a second core for physics simulation and some networking<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NS2's
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Natural Selection 2 â€@NS2
Hugh is melted in his chair, after 5+ hours of casting. He looks like he can barely summon energy to swing a virtual sword (yet he does).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And Harrop's
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Jon Harrop â€@jonharrop
Translate "elegant" code from MonoTouch home page to F#: 3 lines of C# becomes Table<_>() |> Seq.filter (fun p -> p.ID=id)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Signal to noise is different in each one and what's even more important SNR is different if you're interested in technical details of F# or in typical day of UWE. Twitter is a stream where everything is lumped together and I have to filter through it. Forums are prefiltered by topics.
Twitter like NS2's is a nice idea for generating early hype but I think that phase is over and I'd rather see some long, detailed answers than lots of single sentences.
Mootant.. you seem just generally upset "typical for people posting here" .. because he disagrees with you?
Come on man... if you aren't interested in it, then you dont have to read it. :)
For more information see forums or use email
Mootant.. you seem just generally upset "typical for people posting here" .. because he disagrees with you?
Come on man... if you aren't interested in it, then you dont have to read it. :)
For more information see forums or use email<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nah, I didn't mean that there is no one that can enjoy what NS2 devs do on twitter.
The typical thing I had in mind was aggression at something who wants someone else, I listed what exactly is the difference between various feeds. "Personal" info like one I quoted might be interesting for someone who is constantly looking at the feed but I am interested in different things.
Any one else want to see a centralized / option for locally stored skill ranking implemented into the game? It seems like the best way to stop pub-stomping and separating players of various skill / seriousness levels. Even if it isn't a 1.0 feature.
Also it seems like the community is half way there with the launch of NS2stats.org...
Also it seems like the community is half way there with the launch of NS2stats.org...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes. Elo ranking and auto-balance to keep the teams fair is needed imo. Many games you can tell who is going to win in the first minute because the teams are so one sided.
I don't think many people care about the wall jumping tbh.
Yes, I have seen a game like that - NS1!
Simply put, we just need servers that advertise themselves as being noob-friendly, and count on the admins/regulars to be supportive of new players. Let the new guys get a chance to comm, help them get through the initial learning curve, and most importantly, don't freak out when they mess up. Admins can banhammer griefers, everyone profits.
Don't make an alternate or "dumbed-down" version of the game.
how about not recording stats on newb-servers? they are just for learning the game, no need for stats imho. should get rid at least of those that get a kick out of 30 to 0 stats. which i guess are quite a few of these griefers.(at least i hope so, i actually have no idea what those guys are thinking...)
<b>making two versions of the game? </b> why would anyone want to seperate the community - the handful of complainy "elite" players just need to stop being *** holes. (most veterans are fine, but a tiny portion of people are just *** holes that forget that other people play games to have fun).
I always think its great playing on a server where some players are awesome fades, or great with the shotgun etc. It makes the game more interesting, and it shows off that there is a high level of skill involved in the game.
but yea, until we have bots and auto-commanders... we're gonna have to make some "training" servers in which admins will have to keep an eye on for trouble makers. but people with experience will be needed for advice
This.
There really is no better alternative than something like the SC2 method, where you rank players and put them into specific skill-related leagues. Even imperfect systems would do a better job than the current method.
Not that I think the tweet suggestion is better at all.
Not that I think the tweet suggestion is better at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
it really depends on how the ranking system is implemented. i think there are absolutely ways to rank players at least semi-accurately in games like ns2, and the player base shouldn't be that small.
The actual skill ranking isn't the problem. When you go to make games, though, unless there are enough players it will take forever to match people of "equal skill" via whatever metric you use. The compromise is time waiting vs accuracy of match. With a game like SMNC, which has a similar size community, if not a bit larger due to free to play, games take 3-15 minutes to match-make, and you <b>still</b> end up with pub stomping.
Yeah, screw everyone who fires to suppress aliens or battles opponents who know how to dodge. People who only use their weapons to take out cysts are so much more pro.
i'd like to point out that the idea is to <b>distinguish new players from the veterans, not unskilled/handicapped players from the vets</b>. so what it comes down to is the knowledge about game mechanics and tactics etc.
<b>so how about this:</b> newbies will be marked as new players on the scoreboard, also displaying their amounts of game experience (non-afk) in hours. as soon as they reach a certain fixed limit (e.g. 100 hours) they will not be marked as new players anymore.
certain serveres could be limited to have no new players (e.g. servers with stats) while some servers could be only for newbies (although some vets will give them hints, some might ruin their fun by playing an unkillable fade etc.).
i belive the hour-limit should be fixed to prevent things like "elite" servers).
on the mixed servers, people will at least know what they are dealing with (e.g. they can recommend not to command yet, which is probably better than exposing the newbie to massive negative feedback) and might make them more likely to give/take advices.
as soon as a person reaches the limit, they have to play on mixed or non-newbie servers which might seem much harder for them. however, there is also a sense of achievement (yay i got "promoted") and the fact that they know the game decently enough not to perceive certain unintuitive mechanics as extremely unfair.
there is a risk of new players developing their own (possibly "bad") habbits among their own (as in: you better learn it the right way from the beginning) but one could counter this by having several "ranks" instead of just newbie and non-newbie.
This issue, in turn, may be solved by allowing friends to "link" each other so that the system will consider the group as a single entity that occupies two or more slots, with each slot having the median Elo rating of the linked group of friends. Points awarded at the end of each round will still be proportional to their own personal ratings. To prevent entire teams from being filled with a single group of friends, this "linkage" can be limited to maybe two or three players.
In addition, team sizes do not have to be equal if such a "linkage" allows one team to have a much higher Elo rating than the other. For example, if two top-tier players are linked in a pub server, it may be possible that they will be alone in one team playing against the rest of the serve if their Elo ratings are high enough. It would be the system's way of saying, "F**k you for trying to pubstomp the server!"
Furthermore, such "linkages" must not be allowed to work in servers with low populations, like 4 or 5 players.
Finally, to allow players some degree of control over which team they end up in, they will be allowed to pick their preferred team before the system allocates them. In situations where two players have similar Elo ratings, this preference will be taken into account.
TBH this is kinda complicated and may cause more problems than it solves.
Point 2 - Who the heck is going to put up all these servers ? UWE seems to be relying on its fans to fork out for the server costs as I dont see a single official EU server put up by UWE ? Now UWE wants its fans to put up newbie friendly servers as well ? Oh, and add the fact the servers are CPU hogs and need some serious OC work just to run a 22 man server currently... your servers are expensive to keep running.
I think it would be better just to encourage new players to let the server know they are new, and to let new players know that NS2 is hard to learn but a fun learning experience anyways (like the Dwarf Fortress motto : Losing is fun).
Back to the server issue, what is UWE doing to minimise the impact the loss of a top server group will have on its players ? I mean what if the guys currently putting up servers decide to move on, or cant afford the upkeep anymore, or issues crop up and the maintainers cant keep the servers going ? Like in Aussie when the one set of servers went offline, the Aussies were basically screwed for a decent server with a decent ping.
Expecting fans to put up your servers for a free mod is one thing, expecting fans to put up expensive servers for a game they have to pay for is different kettle of fish altogether... so whats the plans here UWE ?
(Note: I may come off as anti UWE, I am not I am just concerned at the lack of official servers in the EU... hell at the lack of 'proper' servers altogether... there sure isnt enough to support the release of the game at the moment. The EXO build showed that pretty well as all the 'proper' servers were packed ... imagine that but with MUCH greater number of players fighting for server slots.)
in the long run, there will probably be some more people among the new players who set up servers by themselves. but i think this will take a bit as they will probably want to know the game first.
Further more it would lead to "better" players stacking marines if they wanted to play on the server because there would be no point in playing skulk.
If wallhop was removed and one wanted to get ton of easy frags he just needs to join the marine team in a newbie server and go to camp in a long corridor next to a hive. Aliens would have no way to deal with this. Also why would anybody play skulk if the wallhop was removed? And how are you supposed to learn the most unique mechanic in the game if it's completely removed? Skulk movement and wallhop is pretty much equivalent to aiming in marines. If wallhop was removed something should be done to the prevent marines from aiming / shooting / damaging skulks to balance this out.