New Gamers After PAX East
Ohnojojo
Join Date: 2011-08-01 Member: 113400Members
Join Date: 2011-08-01 Member: 113400Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Tolerance vs Disdain</div>So I played a few games today after the first day of PAX which I attended.
I didn't recognize a lot of the names, though I play often so I figured they were new comers.
Some complained about wasting money. Others (including myself) tried to reassure the person that this is a BETA and real programming into the game has only existed for the last year or so. Needless to say, this didn't really comfort the new comers as they started to sling XBOX360-like insults and remarks.
Its such a shame that there are so many bone-headed noobs, as opposed to polite or interested noobs, starting to fill the servers, but such is the nature of new comers and in the end, their moneys are funding the UWE to continue to do the amazing job that they are working so hard at.
I know its asknig a lot of the UWE staff, especially since they're working so diligently with the game, as well as playtesters and veterans that contribute daily with bug reports and constructive criticisms but I feel that the UWE staff needs to make a stronger connection to its incoming community to make up for what gamers expects nowadays in the games they buy.
After playing through many top titles and going to PAX East the other day, I've come to the strong conclusion that most games nowadays are all about instant gratification, pick-up-and-play, shallow game mechanics for premium prices and its truly depressing.
With the recent hire of Hugh to mediate PR, basically, I believe Hugh and UWE needs to drive home the point that they are small team of developers attempting to execute a genre, fps/rts, that very few that attempted and none have succeeded. I know that the team does his part very adamantly and thats awesome but its not reaching everyone on a personal level that it should.
But then again, maybe I'm just overly concerned over the increasing number of rude, bigoted, racist, sexist, immature, insta-gradification teeny jerk-offs that are slowly but surely entering the NS2 realm. Maybe this should just be expected and accepted and in the end things will work out. But what I do know is that NS2 and NS1's community has by far provided me with the most hospitable gaming atmosphere and its one of the top reasons why I love the game and avoid buying and playing games like BF3 and COD.
Have other community members experienced this?
What are your thoughts on trying to mitigate the influx of ######?
Do you think the game itself needs to tailor to these jerk-offs that represent most of the gaming community at large in the modern age by including no-brainer tooltips that range from:
"press space to jump"
to
"building a second Hive gives access to secondary abilities"
or
"capturing resource nodes increase your personal and team resource flow by X amount per X time"
Do you think that the UWE team needs to develop a way to reach its audience on a closer level to make them understand such things like...
the team has been programming the game for only around a year
the team is made of a small staff, less than 10, compared to enormous gaming industries
the team is tackling a new genre that demands more from its players than auto-aiming and death-matches
the team only acquired their second programmer not too long ago and the game has been moving along rapidly throughout its entire development
the team is extremely well connected its community and accepts ideas put forth that are innovative and align with their desires and needs
the team created a brand new engine from scratch, tailored to be easily moddable and manipulated
At the end of the day, I'd rather pay $200 for NS2 than play 10 top titles for $50.
Most gaming companies monetize everything, have unethical business practices (I'm looking at you EA Games) and produce games with tons of eye-candy with little substance and the vast majority of the populace eats it up.
After visiting PAX East the other day, NS2 was truly the ONLY game there that was trying something new, innovative, exciting and with tons of substance.
True, there are some balance and performance issues, its a beta, chill out ppls, its still better than pretty much every other game on the market today.
NS2 promises an amazing asymmetrical fps/rts experience and it delivers with flying colors.
Even if I were not a die-hard fan of NS2, its near impossible to not give credit where credit is due and NS2 deserves all the praise its received and more.
tl:dr
Back in my day, gamers on a whole weren't such retarded whiny jerk-offs and UWE is ###### amazing.
I didn't recognize a lot of the names, though I play often so I figured they were new comers.
Some complained about wasting money. Others (including myself) tried to reassure the person that this is a BETA and real programming into the game has only existed for the last year or so. Needless to say, this didn't really comfort the new comers as they started to sling XBOX360-like insults and remarks.
Its such a shame that there are so many bone-headed noobs, as opposed to polite or interested noobs, starting to fill the servers, but such is the nature of new comers and in the end, their moneys are funding the UWE to continue to do the amazing job that they are working so hard at.
I know its asknig a lot of the UWE staff, especially since they're working so diligently with the game, as well as playtesters and veterans that contribute daily with bug reports and constructive criticisms but I feel that the UWE staff needs to make a stronger connection to its incoming community to make up for what gamers expects nowadays in the games they buy.
After playing through many top titles and going to PAX East the other day, I've come to the strong conclusion that most games nowadays are all about instant gratification, pick-up-and-play, shallow game mechanics for premium prices and its truly depressing.
With the recent hire of Hugh to mediate PR, basically, I believe Hugh and UWE needs to drive home the point that they are small team of developers attempting to execute a genre, fps/rts, that very few that attempted and none have succeeded. I know that the team does his part very adamantly and thats awesome but its not reaching everyone on a personal level that it should.
But then again, maybe I'm just overly concerned over the increasing number of rude, bigoted, racist, sexist, immature, insta-gradification teeny jerk-offs that are slowly but surely entering the NS2 realm. Maybe this should just be expected and accepted and in the end things will work out. But what I do know is that NS2 and NS1's community has by far provided me with the most hospitable gaming atmosphere and its one of the top reasons why I love the game and avoid buying and playing games like BF3 and COD.
Have other community members experienced this?
What are your thoughts on trying to mitigate the influx of ######?
Do you think the game itself needs to tailor to these jerk-offs that represent most of the gaming community at large in the modern age by including no-brainer tooltips that range from:
"press space to jump"
to
"building a second Hive gives access to secondary abilities"
or
"capturing resource nodes increase your personal and team resource flow by X amount per X time"
Do you think that the UWE team needs to develop a way to reach its audience on a closer level to make them understand such things like...
the team has been programming the game for only around a year
the team is made of a small staff, less than 10, compared to enormous gaming industries
the team is tackling a new genre that demands more from its players than auto-aiming and death-matches
the team only acquired their second programmer not too long ago and the game has been moving along rapidly throughout its entire development
the team is extremely well connected its community and accepts ideas put forth that are innovative and align with their desires and needs
the team created a brand new engine from scratch, tailored to be easily moddable and manipulated
At the end of the day, I'd rather pay $200 for NS2 than play 10 top titles for $50.
Most gaming companies monetize everything, have unethical business practices (I'm looking at you EA Games) and produce games with tons of eye-candy with little substance and the vast majority of the populace eats it up.
After visiting PAX East the other day, NS2 was truly the ONLY game there that was trying something new, innovative, exciting and with tons of substance.
True, there are some balance and performance issues, its a beta, chill out ppls, its still better than pretty much every other game on the market today.
NS2 promises an amazing asymmetrical fps/rts experience and it delivers with flying colors.
Even if I were not a die-hard fan of NS2, its near impossible to not give credit where credit is due and NS2 deserves all the praise its received and more.
tl:dr
Back in my day, gamers on a whole weren't such retarded whiny jerk-offs and UWE is ###### amazing.
Comments
I think explaining what the game is & what the developers are trying to achieve would be fine, but nobody cares about the size of the development team or that its new technology. They just want the game to work well on their machine.
If somebody comes in thinking they can build their character with unlockables they control (eg through experience or kills) like in many FPS, they will be disappointed. But I think many gamers, when they get through a few sessions, will learn what it is about & like the concept.
Sure just a fraction of players will find it compelling, but those that do will end up being hard core, like a lot of NS'ers in the past.
edit: I think you might be extrapolating from a few anecdotes, Ohnojojo. Instead of rageposting here, try and be nice to the new players who are willing to look past NS2's current foibles. Expecting every player to be happy with the poor performance and lack of feature-completeness/balance when they've just paid for a game that presumably was working well at PAX is downright silly.
I think UWE already does an awesome job communicating with the community especially relative to the rest of the industry so i dno what else they can really do besides repeatedly state that its still beta..
I think explaining what the game is & what the developers are trying to achieve would be fine, but nobody cares about the size of the development team or that its new technology. They just want the game to work well on their machine.
If somebody comes in thinking they can build their character with unlockables they control (eg through experience or kills) like in many FPS, they will be disappointed. But I think many gamers, when they get through a few sessions, will learn what it is about & like the concept.
Sure just a fraction of players will find it compelling, but those that do will end up being hard core, like a lot of NS'ers in the past.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, maybe I'm being overly concerned that I have to start dealing with rude jerks. And frustrated over people who don't see the depth the game has to offer simply because it doesn't have useless crap like...
hats, death-match and customizable marines or unlockable weapons with experience points.
And then again i can imagne it isnt bad as you think. We play by many who do not whine and do not notice them but it just takes one or two to whine and it sounds like everyone is.
But i have to say perhaps at the least UWE need to stress on launch of the game that the game is still in beta and things arnt added..etc so expect bugs..etc might nail into ppls heads a bit more. They did that with the BF3 beta and whenever i heard anyone moan ppl tended to remind them that it is a beta as said in title (And even in the launch name :P ) lol
but a bit more instruction would certainly be nice. It isnt the easiest of games to get ur head round lol
and Dude please. Hats any day the gorge certainly has one ready for chirstmas :P
I think UWE already does an awesome job communicating with the community especially relative to the rest of the industry so i dno what else they can really do besides repeatedly state that its still beta..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't know what more UWE could do either, they really do communicate immensely well with its community.
I'm just a bit tired of hearing things like....
OMG THIS GAME SUX, ITS SO UNBALANCED AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE LIKE IRON SIGHTS OR HATS AND PERFORMANCE SUX AND YOU'RE ###### AND I BONED YOUR MOM.
Like seriously... I don't even touch the xbox360 because of ppl like that, i don't want to deal with it in NS2.
Er, do they?
If you're just encountering the game, you have NS2HD videos, which show rather selective highlights of games, usually played by clanners with good ping on good servers, and you have the pax thing I suppose if you were at pax, which would presumably be running on a LAN and computers which run the game well, on a build specially polished and produced for public display.
Neither of those really communicate the general state of the game on your home computer and connection and any other build.
I don't really think UWE is much better at communicating than any other company.
If you're just encountering the game, you have NS2HD videos, which show rather selective highlights of games, usually played by clanners with good ping on good servers, and you have the pax thing I suppose if you were at pax, which would presumably be running on a LAN and computers which run the game well, on a build specially polished and produced for public display.
Neither of those really communicate the general state of the game on your home computer and connection and any other build.
I don't really think UWE is much better at communicating than any other company.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's pretty obvious just by reading these forums that UWE communicates far more than any other gaming company that I've ever interacted with. I see dev posts all the time on everything from shade balance to onos to skulk movement to exos. You really don't see as liberal posting by devs in other games.
There is the occasional dev comment but you get those on say, the bioware forums, doesn't stop the bioware forums being a fetid cesspool of stupidity and it didn't help ME3 much.
Also that isn't really a good form of communication, trawling the forums isn't something most people are going to do, a lot of them probably aren't even going to join the forums.
The important stuff should go on the game website, and in a couple of videos that show you everything the game is about, and also in a gigantic, impossible to miss or ignore page which tells you that the game is full of bugs and there's no guarantee it'll even run on your PC right now, which you have to look at before you can buy it.
As far as I know, there are no such videos, and no such page, which means your new players aren't going to have a good idea of what to expect.
Also that isn't really a good form of communication, trawling the forums isn't something most people are going to do, a lot of them probably aren't even going to join the forums.
The important stuff should go on the game website, and in a couple of videos that show you everything the game is about, and also in a gigantic, impossible to miss or ignore page which tells you that the game is full of bugs and there's no guarantee it'll even run on your PC right now, which you have to look at before you can buy it.
As far as I know, there are no such videos, and no such page, which means your new players aren't going to have a good idea of what to expect.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Although I do believe UWE communicates with it's audience more-so than any other gaming company out there. Chris does have a point.
There is plenty of content regarding the game and its stages of development but most people are too dim-witted or uninterested to go around the forums to find real answers or look through NS2HD's hundreds of videos to find the ones that address current issues regarding performance or features that will be added in like dynamic infestation.
Maybe more community members can help to address this issue, like NS2HD did. And he got a job for doing it so well.
I played a good six years of NS1, and the money I payed for the beta was in return for the great gaming experience that gave me. Getting to play the NS2 beta was a nice addition, but it wasn't the reason I payed. If, as a person who had never experienced NS1 and thus owed nothing to UWE, I experienced some gameplay in the beta, I can say with certainty that I would not have pre ordered.
As veterans, we get more from the process than just playing a game. We become apart of the recreation of something very dear to us, and we become involved in the process taking place. I think that this is the part the majority of us relish most, not playing the game in its current state. If you aren't a veteran, you don't get that feeling, so its understandable to think you got less than what you paid for.
Not to say that the game won't be worth every penny and more when its finished, but the new players don't even know what that finished product will be, while we have a vague idea.
I played a good six years of NS1, and the money I payed for the beta was in return for the great gaming experience that gave me. Getting to play the NS2 beta was a nice addition, but it wasn't the reason I payed. If, as a person who had never experienced NS1 and thus owed nothing to UWE, I experienced some gameplay in the beta, I can say with certainty that I would not have pre ordered.
As veterans, we get more from the process than just playing a game. We become apart of the recreation of something very dear to us, and we become involved in the process taking place. I think that this is the part the majority of us relish most, not playing the game in its current state. If you aren't a veteran, you don't get that feeling, so its understandable to think you got less than what you paid for.
Not to say that the game won't be worth every penny and more when its finished, but the new players don't even know what that finished product will be, while we have a vague idea.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Exactly how I feel.
Now if only there was a way to somehow convey these feelings into newcomers.
I'm thinking there might not be a simple way to do it if at all.
Except maybe to just be courteous and informative, which I do see a lot of vets of ns1 and ns2 being.
LOL.
dude.. i dont know what experience you have with game developers and their communication abilities, but i have had a lot and there are large differences that UWE makes besides the obvious occasional post. (which is still way more than most)
Theres the progress tracker where you can see what they are working on
Theres high level design documents so you understand the big picture and philosophy
Theres facebook, livestream, youtube, twitter, wiki, irc, forum and email.
These guys give us hourly updates on twitter, full weekly changelogs, and they even provide the occasional tech support on top of showing us their working quarters.
They even livestream the playtests now.
The best part? they take into account feedback from the community when issues are large enough. there are many occasions a simple post changed the mind of the creative director. <b>this is huge - the ability to help shape your game that you love!</b>
<i><u>Who else does all this?</u></i>
Not to mention the fact they do it all with only a few people.
Go email a dev at bioware with questions about their product in a specific manner and see if you get a response, even with their multiple PR reps, execs, managers etc. then do the same to UWE and compare.
its my single most favorite aspect of pre ordering
<b>Edit</b>: dont forget you have direct line of communication with it's playtesters! steam me or PM me, i can help get your bug submitted. :)
NS2HD actually does have a quite a few videos that talk about performance issues or tasks that the devs are doing to increase performance and etc.
Of course Hugh of NS2HD isn't a programmer so he can't get into the nitty gritty details. But usually for most issues that seem pressing, Hugh has usually addressed it with a dedicated video or at least mentioned it within a gameplay commentary.
I had the pleasure of meeting him the other day and he explained to me in general rough detail that performance will increase once they streamline the LUA coding? Or something like that. I'm not a programmer either and I didn't really understand a whole lot of what he said but he and the team seemed very aware of all the issues regarding performance or the engine or balance. So I have faith in them.
Needless to say the playtesters are DA BOMB!!
dude.. i dont know what experience you have with game developers and their communication abilities, but i have had a lot and there are large differences that UWE makes besides the obvious occasional post. (which is still way more than most)
Theres the progress tracker where you can see what they are working on
Theres high level design documents so you understand the big picture and philosophy
Theres facebook, livestream, youtube, twitter, wiki, irc, forum and email.
These guys give us hourly updates on twitter, full weekly changelogs, and they even provide the occasional tech support on top of showing us their working quarters.
They even livestream the playtests now.
The best part? they take into account feedback from the community when issues are large enough. there are many occasions a simple post changed the mind of the creative director. <b>this is huge - the ability to help shape your game that you love!</b>
<i><u>Who else does all this?</u></i>
Not to mention the fact they do it all with only a few people.
Go email a dev at bioware with questions about their product in a specific manner and see if you get a response, even with their multiple PR reps, execs, managers etc. then do the same to UWE and compare.
its my single most favorite aspect of pre ordering<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+111111111111111111111111
In fact, UWE is even more susceptible to criticism and negativity because they have frequent direct contact with their playerbase. If someone wants to tell the dev's how much their game sucks they can just make a post or quote the latest dev post and flame them. This is very rare -- imagine if Bioware devs had a forum presence during the ME3 ending controversy.
The truth is that most gamers (ie; not us as we're on the forums) expect a complete and relatively bug free game regardless if it's classified as a beta. This is partly because AAA devs/publishers release 'beta' versions to stress test or create hype/publicity. Most gamers are use to betas which are more comparable to retail versions rather than the an actual internal testing build.
lol you must be kidding.
So, don't bring the connection to the community as an argument, it is pretty much invalid. Let's see how this would look like if NS2 would have hundred thousands of players...
And please, I really dislike the "OMG COME ON UWE IS LESS THEN 10 PEOPLE" argument... UWE brought this onto themselves. Usually you would not tackle such a huge undertaking with so few people. Especially with an own engine. And most companies would not (want to) work on a game for more than 5, 6, 7 years...
UWE wants to have a game that is equal to the big boys? Then they should also be willing to be measured like the big boys, to a certain degree.
Now I'll go, smack some Kharaa-ass.
Then tell UWE to get rid of that ANNOYING armory bug. Where you can not buy a few things or anything at all at an armory and have to walk to another one.
And the weapon bug...
They have been in there for ages.
And the weapon bug...
They have been in there for ages.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
not a bug. it's getting fixed in the next build i believe (teched up weapons like grenade launcher and flamethrower can't be bought at unupgraded armories).
Ah... explains it. A message pop-up would have helped to make it less frustrating.
They have been in there for ages.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
For buying GL and Flamethrower you need to be at an advanced armory. It's a bit confusing, because a normal armory shows them as buyable item, too. They'll surely implement some visual representation for that.
I never saw a bug where you can buy nothing at all - but if you say it exists, maybe try to avoid writing negative words with caps-lock when reporting it :D
OnTopic:
The last full EU-server for NS1 has way too many VoIP-spammers, ragers and unfriendly people on it - and they are not new at all ;)
Till now the NS2 community is more sympathic to me.
The people complaining about the game itself will either stop playing or stop complaining after a while ^^
I'm just a bit tired of hearing things like....
OMG THIS GAME SUX, ITS SO UNBALANCED AND THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE LIKE IRON SIGHTS OR HATS AND PERFORMANCE SUX AND YOU'RE ###### AND I BONED YOUR MOM.
Like seriously... I don't even touch the xbox360 because of ppl like that, i don't want to deal with it in NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Welcome to the internet, deal with it.
Also that isn't really a good form of communication, trawling the forums isn't something most people are going to do, a lot of them probably aren't even going to join the forums.
The important stuff should go on the game website, and in a couple of videos that show you everything the game is about, and also in a gigantic, impossible to miss or ignore page which tells you that the game is full of bugs and there's no guarantee it'll even run on your PC right now, which you have to look at before you can buy it.
As far as I know, there are no such videos, and no such page, which means your new players aren't going to have a good idea of what to expect.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Twitter (every dev has one read em), facebook always up to date, live stream (from atleast 10 players including pub-games), youtube, NS2HD page, desing doc (updated monthly, including a high lvl desing doc), forums and if I write a mai/Steamchat to a dev a don't have to wait 1week to get my answer, and other things.
They comunicate way more with us than any other DEV group does! Also you can look what posts a DEV read in the last days and some read almost everything, but don't answer to every 200 posts per day.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This page has been accessed 1,604 times.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm happy to see that in few latest patches there has been all kind of improvements for new players. I haven't played much lately so I don't know if aliens got now tool tips or something for their abilities but that was big problem for me not knowing how alien abilities work.
I was thinking of something along the lines of.. you know those booklets that you get with a new game? The one that describes the HUD with numbered labels that give more information on it in text on the pages right next to the picture? Why not incorporate a flip-menu 'help' option in-game that gives a brief description of what the things do.. even have a rotating 3D model. It would help showcase the art and give clues as to where to use the attacks/defences and when.
I know there's the wiki but for lazy people that only want to be using the game to understand it, it could prove to be invaluable for absolutely new players. I even thought out what kind of table of content it would need.. but it gets long and complicated and since the game isn't feature complete I wouldn't be able to finish it myself otherwise I would have, and posted it here. (Mainly exo has gaps, powerpacks implementation, alien attacks layout changes often) To avoid myself re-writing it, I simply haven't started.. for now the wiki and some reading on this forum goes a long way. Especially the wiki.. considering it has a section labelled "Beginner's Guide" and while it's basic it does incorporate things that I still see players not doing (<b>MAP!!!!!!!!!</b> MAP YOU NEW PLAYERS LOL LEARN THE BUTTON ALREADY D: ) I even wrote a post a while back aimed at total new players that had some good criticism from the community and encouraged its use but it got outdated rather quickly. The main highlight of it was just the absolute basic controls, too..... Then again I come from playing games like Mechwarrior 2 where you needed your entire keyboard including the F buttons <i>and</i> Shortcut Keys to properly strategically SURVIVE the mission. I think though as much as simple things like knowing where the map key is - the aliens really have a lot of mystery surrounding their attacks from a new players standpoint; Marines have the armory that displays a little tidbit of information, aliens have nothing like that (I don't think anyways).
I didnt, someone else did. Read up. But besides that, i disagree, in a thread regarding developers and community its <i>pretty</i> relevant.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Let's see how this would look like if NS2 would have hundred thousands of players...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
larger PR needs are met by specially hired PR people for that sole purpose, as you said. <u>PR needs scale</u>. But having developers who are busy<b> developing the game</b> is asking for more than the typical.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->UWE brought this onto themselves.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What is "this" supposed to be? Your expectations??
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->UWE wants to have a game that is equal to the big boys? Then they should also be willing to be measured like the big boys, to a certain degree.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think we should have this talk after 1.0 drops. :)
oh and, as others said, that armory issue isnt so much a bug as it is game design combined with lack of information - <b>beta</b>.
feel free to drop any potential bugs in my inbox or steam.