I don't think very many people who play comp NS2 would be happy with gray box maps. We're happy with the NSL versions of the maps that improve performance to acceptable levels, and those are FAR from grayboxed. We like our eye candy too. But we don't want eye candy that gets in the way of what's going on. I'm curious to see if you can name even ONE thing that's allowed in competitive NS2 that would "ruin the game." There are actually very strict rules about what you're allowed to do in comp play... you're not allowed to script, use macros, use custom skins... it's essentially 100% default NS2, just with fewer light entities on the maps.
My competitive experiences go back to the q2 days. I gave it up because it was ruining my enjoyment of gaming and turning into too much work. However, I have kept a finger on the pulse of gaming and have read nothing to lead me to believe that there has been a shift in the common thinking of ripping everything down to the barest minimum to eek out every last possible frame per second. Things like playing on the lowest possible graphic setting, to improve the contrast between players and the environment (which includes lighting). In a game where one side is expected to be ambush hunters, reducing the ability for these players to hide "in shadows" does have an affect on the game.
You yourself have stated a belief that "video games are art" so why screw with that art and make the game look like some 1990 throwback to give yourself an advantage over someone else? To me, that is ruining the game.
I don't begrudge people choosing to play that way, but at least own up to the tweaking done by many competitive players as affecting the game as a whole; and not always for the better. I remember looking at demos of "top players" back in the day and saying "WTF? How do they play like that" and realizing that if that is what it takes to be "competitive" than I don't need to play in leagues. I enjoy the effects, I enjoy the shadows. I don't care that I can get .7 more FPS and see skulks better if I turn off shadows. I don't care that infestation might hide a player or structure. I'd rather see the infestation as intended than to rip it down to the barest minimum then complain that it looks like crap and should be improved.
My competitive experiences go back to the q2 days. I gave it up because it was ruining my enjoyment of gaming and turning into too much work. However, I have kept a finger on the pulse of gaming and have read nothing to lead me to believe that there has been a shift in the common thinking of ripping everything down to the barest minimum to eek out every last possible frame per second. Things like playing on the lowest possible graphic setting, to improve the contrast between players and the environment (which includes lighting). In a game where one side is expected to be ambush hunters, reducing the ability for these players to hide "in shadows" does have an affect on the game.
this is completely baseless. many pros in Quake don't play with full picmip settings (flat walls) because it messes with your depth perception. beyond fullbright models (which are considered standard), everything else is merely preference. I have no clue what "ambush hunters" is, but no competitive Quake game has ever relied on the use of vision obscuring mechanics ever.
You yourself have stated a belief that "video games are art" so why screw with that art and make the game look like some 1990 throwback to give yourself an advantage over someone else? To me, that is ruining the game.
I don't begrudge people choosing to play that way, but at least own up to the tweaking done by many competitive players as affecting the game as a whole; and not always for the better. I remember looking at demos of "top players" back in the day and saying "WTF? How do they play like that" and realizing that if that is what it takes to be "competitive" than I don't need to play in leagues. I enjoy the effects, I enjoy the shadows. I don't care that I can get .7 more FPS and see skulks better if I turn off shadows. I don't care that infestation might hide a player or structure. I'd rather see the infestation as intended than to rip it down to the barest minimum then complain that it looks like crap and should be improved.
the "art" to me in multiplayer involves skill aim and movement, you're talking about singleplayer art which is immersion / graphics / story. what ruins the art for me is going from 140FPS and dropping to 40 FPS in mid combat. it's not a .7 FPS advantage, it's something closer to 70 on average. it doesn't take turning down your graphics settings to be "competitive", you can actually look up plenty of videos of the best players at LAN with default graphics settings: and
it sounds to me like you're just making a really poor excuse and you're missing the point completely. in NS2, the advantage gained through the NSL maps is shared by everyone is playing on the same map...????
this obnoxious "OMG MIGHT AS WELL MAKE SKULKS PINK AND FULLBRIGHT AND PLAY WITH WHITEWALLS BECAUSE OF NSL MAPS" sentiment against the Quake community is ignorant and has been spouted even by devs. it's simply not even close to true. if FPS can be gained by leaps that significant, where you can go from never having above 90 FPS to never dropping below 90 FPS, then it's something that should probably be considered at least looking into ;/ it barely even sacrifices "art" once the optimizations were made.
My competitive experiences go back to the q2 days. I gave it up because it was ruining my enjoyment of gaming and turning into too much work. However, I have kept a finger on the pulse of gaming and have read nothing to lead me to believe that there has been a shift in the common thinking of ripping everything down to the barest minimum to eek out every last possible frame per second. Things like playing on the lowest possible graphic setting, to improve the contrast between players and the environment (which includes lighting). In a game where one side is expected to be ambush hunters, reducing the ability for these players to hide "in shadows" does have an affect on the game.
this is completely baseless. many pros in Quake don't play with full picmip settings (flat walls) because it messes with your depth perception. beyond fullbright models (which are considered standard), everything else is merely preference. I have no clue what "ambush hunters" is, but no competitive Quake game has ever relied on the use of vision obscuring mechanics ever.
You yourself have stated a belief that "video games are art" so why screw with that art and make the game look like some 1990 throwback to give yourself an advantage over someone else? To me, that is ruining the game.
I don't begrudge people choosing to play that way, but at least own up to the tweaking done by many competitive players as affecting the game as a whole; and not always for the better. I remember looking at demos of "top players" back in the day and saying "WTF? How do they play like that" and realizing that if that is what it takes to be "competitive" than I don't need to play in leagues. I enjoy the effects, I enjoy the shadows. I don't care that I can get .7 more FPS and see skulks better if I turn off shadows. I don't care that infestation might hide a player or structure. I'd rather see the infestation as intended than to rip it down to the barest minimum then complain that it looks like crap and should be improved.
the "art" to me in multiplayer involves skill aim and movement, you're talking about singleplayer art which is immersion / graphics / story. what ruins the art for me is going from 140FPS and dropping to 40 FPS in mid combat. it's not a .7 FPS advantage, it's something closer to 70 on average. it doesn't take turning down your graphics settings to be "competitive", you can actually look up plenty of videos of the best players at LAN with default graphics settings: and
it sounds to me like you're just making a really poor excuse and you're missing the point completely. in NS2, the advantage gained through the NSL maps is shared by everyone is playing on the same map...????
this obnoxious "OMG MIGHT AS WELL MAKE SKULKS PINK AND FULLBRIGHT AND PLAY WITH WHITEWALLS BECAUSE OF NSL MAPS" sentiment against the Quake community is ignorant and is a sentiment that's been repeated even by devs. it's simply not even close to true
Never even said anything about NSL maps so i don't know why you bring this in. After having been a competitive player and having seen the extents many of them go to to get an advantage in gaming I choose not to join them. I'm not a dev and have no control over the development of the game, but i am still entitled to an opinion. Just as you are entitled to yours. You are entitled to not like my opinion and that is fine too. Don't worry, I won't judge you for it or make "OMG HYPERBOLE" statements about your view either. I don't like the changes competitive players make, in general, to the game which is why I don't compete anymore. You don't have a problem with it. That's fine and our ships will pass in the night.
Never even said anything about NSL maps so i don't know why you bring this in. After having been a competitive player and having seen the extents many of them go to to get an advantage in gaming I choose not to join them. I'm not a dev and have no control over the development of the game, but i am still entitled to an opinion. Just as you are entitled to yours. You are entitled to not like my opinion and that is fine too. Don't worry, I won't judge you for it or make "OMG HYPERBOLE" statements about your view either. I don't like the changes competitive players make, in general, to the game which is why I don't compete anymore. You don't have a problem with it. That's fine and our ships will pass in the night.
they aren't even remotely comparable is my point, because in Quake those advantages are imaginary and don't even exist. you're using Q2 as a reference but you're bringing up points that simply aren't even true. ritualsacrifice was discussing the NSL maps which you replied to so I'm not sure how you can just completely ignore that part of the post. but either way, the NSL maps are an advantage shared by everyone and vastly improved the enjoyment of the competitive scene because you could actually play the game and track skulks without dropping half your FPS mid fight. you said you didn't like the changes competitive players make as it "gains an advantage" over others but it's something that is shared by everyone so I don't see how that's even remotely applicable
(I'm totally jealous that you guys are having this big brawl without me - I'm feeling left out here.)
Seriously though, I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
As it stood before the change, there was no way to know if a server was modded. It may or may not have been listed as modded - and even if it was there was no way to know whether the mod was something simple like an admin plugin, or something that changed the game. That's pretty much the same as it is now. So just join a server and see what happens. If you can't tell that it is modded, then does it really matter if it is or not?
Worry about how it PLAYS, not about whether or not it happens to be yellow in the server list.
In the end the simple and best way to play is to favourite the servers that you like. That way you always know what you're getting.
Well, I will agree a lot of these things should have been put in earlier, especially since a lot of the changes are in response to issues the community has been bringing up since the early beta days. I just don't see the point in crying over spilled milk and I don't think NS 2 was 'incomplete' at release. I simply think it wasn't as good as it could have been but clearly the developers didn't agree at the time and have only now recently changed their vision.
Better late than never, I really don't see the point in chastising UWE over changing their opinion on NS2's design post-release.
Obviously it's pretty hard to complain about free patching and content, but I feel the slow progress has caused sizeable harm to the community. Many have already quit before the game really 'gets there' and others are unwilling to contribute and invest more into the game because of all the uncertainties.
I guess it's still spilled milk and somewhat had to happen to some extend, but I do hope people realize the wasted potential and significance to long term progress of NS2 game and community.
Seriously though, I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
One side doesn't want mods listed as white as they can be game changing. The other side thinks that game changing mods are fine and think newbies are informed enough about the game to know if the server changes gameplay.
As it stood before the change, there was no way to know if a server was modded. It may or may not have been listed as modded - and even if it was there was no way to know whether the mod was something simple like an admin plugin, or something that changed the game.
That is really the problem. This is a BUG not a feature. White should be clean(or at least non game changing) and yellow should be modded. It's simple, conveys information at a glance, and even a newbie could tell the difference.
I don't disagree that non game changing mods like admin tools, consistency checks, maybe even maps should be listed white. The problem is that instead of fixing it so this could be supported, UWE just threw their hands up and said maybe you will get a details panel later maybe.
The same thing happened in TF2. Server admins complained how their shitty custom modded server was in the custom tab with no one playing on it and valve caved and removed the custom tab and hey people started playing in the shitty modded server again. All I can take away from that case and this one is either 1) no one wants to play on modded servers, hence when a server is labeled modded, they don't go there 2) they are just to stupid to care, they just click the first thing they see and play there.
Either way, I feel that catering to Greens is the way to go. Let them know, "This is how the game is meant to be played." On these yellow servers, your experience may vary. If they are like #1 above, problem solved. If they are #2, newbs should be on unmodded server until they learn to play the game correctly anyway.
That is really the problem. This is a BUG not a feature. White should be clean(or at least non game changing) and yellow should be modded. It's simple, conveys information at a glance, and even a newbie could tell the difference.
That is no more a bug than the fact that cheats could be made for any FPS. The only way to "fix it" would be to stop updating the public server binaries, break compatibility and host only UWE servers. There is no other way. It might sound extreme, but it's not, many game companies has gone down this path.
The same thing happened in TF2. Server admins complained how their shitty custom modded server was in the custom tab with no one playing on it and valve caved and removed the custom tab and hey people started playing in the shitty modded server again. All I can take away from that case and this one is either 1) no one wants to play on modded servers, hence when a server is labeled modded, they don't go there 2) they are just to stupid to care, they just click the first thing they see and play there.
Valves attempt to kill TF2 servers with custom settings (it did not even try to detect mods, only custom settings such as spawn timers) was bypassed the very same day it was released. The only servers that were hurt was those that were actually being honest about what they had modified. It changed only because Valve came to their senses.
As it stood before the change, there was no way to know if a server was modded. It may or may not have been listed as modded - and even if it was there was no way to know whether the mod was something simple like an admin plugin, or something that changed the game.
That is really the problem. This is a BUG not a feature. White should be clean(or at least non game changing) and yellow should be modded. It's simple, conveys information at a glance, and even a newbie could tell the difference.
So how do you enforce it? This is not something you can code out of the game without coding out modding. You learn in this business that you're better to work with the players than against them. This means two things...
#1: If you try and put in measures to circumvent a server being listed as modded, then they will find another way around it. Do we really want the developers spending time playing cat and mouse on this? Do we really want to alienate the server OPs that drive the NS2 community?
#2: If a server OP put up a significantly 'game changing' mod that was easily noticeable by players - and they tried to hide it from players - the players would find out. They're not dumb. When they do find out they'll go elsewhere, and the server OP will end up with an empty server.
I don't disagree that non game changing mods like admin tools, consistency checks, maybe even maps should be listed white.
It can't happen. Why? First UWE would have to inspect every single mod that wanted to be listed as such. It would also have to inspect the mod every time it was altered. That takes resources. Resources best put into game development. However, even if they did, that would pose more problems.
First it would mean UWE was effectively 'endorsing' the mod, and by extension they would take on responsibility if something went wrong. Why take on responsibility for something you didn't write and don't control? Secondly, what's to stop a mod author from getting a mod white-listed, and then changing the mod to do something else afterwards?
The 'yellow' marker for modded servers served no real purpose. In fact, I think it gave people a false sense of security since they felt that a 'white' server would always mean unmodded - even if it wasn't. So I really don't have a problem with the change. Heck, most of the popular servers were modded, and no one had a problem with it.
Now I *DO* want to see the implementation of a display dialog to show what mods are being run, but I don't think that it is such a big deal to remove the 'modded' designation in the meanwhile. It wasn't accurate, so it was really pointless.
Like I said, best thing for people to do is favourite the servers you like playing on. Mods or not, that is what will get a person the best gameplay experience.
The thing is simply that you will ultimately kill the modding community of the game if you leave the yellow server stigma and filter in the game, so I appreciate that it got removed. You may argue that this is not true and that people who want to play with no mods should have a chance to do so and people who want mods will still join those servers, etc…
But believe me, I have seen where this journey goes. I used to mod for UT2k4 for a long time. And the only reason we were actually able to still make gameplay-improving mods that got played was because we could sneak our way around "unwhitelisting" the server by utilizing only common engine events for our Actors, spawn stuff as ServerActor and hack a lot of ways together to get our own hooks into existing stuff without using the Mutator-hooks that the engine actually provided, because most Mutators except for some holiday-related ones and anti-cheat ones were not whitelisted.
The non-standard mark is a stigma no server operator wanted to carry the burden of. If your mod would unwhitelist the server, it didn't matter how awesome it was - pretty much no server would run it.
It might not have been such a big deal in the past, but nowadays -almost 10 years after the launch of the game- the playerbase has shrunken to a still significant but hard core with just a few newbloods appearing every now and then. In these times can no server operator afford to run any mods that would reduce their server's visibility to potential audience.
You might make a fuzz of this change now, but if it hadn't have taken place, it would have hurt the ingenuity of NS2's modding scene apart from those that develop new gametypes for years to come, when the playerbase might not be as strong as it is now.
There's a big difference between a total conversion like NS1, and the mods for NS2 that do things like force all random, or add RFK, or force custom alien vision
I don't think very many people who play comp NS2 would be happy with gray box maps. We're happy with the NSL versions of the maps that improve performance to acceptable levels, and those are FAR from grayboxed. We like our eye candy too. But we don't want eye candy that gets in the way of what's going on. I'm curious to see if you can name even ONE thing that's allowed in competitive NS2 that would "ruin the game." There are actually very strict rules about what you're allowed to do in comp play... you're not allowed to script, use macros, use custom skins... it's essentially 100% default NS2, just with fewer light entities on the maps.
My competitive experiences go back to the q2 days. I gave it up because it was ruining my enjoyment of gaming and turning into too much work. However, I have kept a finger on the pulse of gaming and have read nothing to lead me to believe that there has been a shift in the common thinking of ripping everything down to the barest minimum to eek out every last possible frame per second. Things like playing on the lowest possible graphic setting, to improve the contrast between players and the environment (which includes lighting). In a game where one side is expected to be ambush hunters, reducing the ability for these players to hide "in shadows" does have an affect on the game.
You yourself have stated a belief that "video games are art" so why screw with that art and make the game look like some 1990 throwback to give yourself an advantage over someone else? To me, that is ruining the game.
I don't begrudge people choosing to play that way, but at least own up to the tweaking done by many competitive players as affecting the game as a whole; and not always for the better. I remember looking at demos of "top players" back in the day and saying "WTF? How do they play like that" and realizing that if that is what it takes to be "competitive" than I don't need to play in leagues. I enjoy the effects, I enjoy the shadows. I don't care that I can get .7 more FPS and see skulks better if I turn off shadows. I don't care that infestation might hide a player or structure. I'd rather see the infestation as intended than to rip it down to the barest minimum then complain that it looks like crap and should be improved.
You still didn't name one thing that's allowed in the NSL that would ruin the game. Take a look at any of the competitive player's streams, you won't see graphics that look like a 1990 throwback. This is not quake 2. The ONLY things that are allowed to be customized are the circles around observatory scans, crosshairs, and maybe the waypoint graphics. We can't even use custom huds AFAIK unless there's been changes to the rules. There is forced consistency checking to make sure you can't join a server if you're using other mods. The NSL versions of the maps are the same exact maps, just with less light entities.
Seeing as NS was a mod the anti-mod stigma among its fans is really strange.
Not really. NS didn't "pretend" to be halflife. The gametype was set to ns. It's the same for the combat mod for NS2. IIRC they set the gametype to co.
What these other mods are doing is pretending to be pure NS2 when they are NS2 and other stuff.
#1: If you try and put in measures to circumvent a server being listed as modded, then they will find another way around it. Do we really want the developers spending time playing cat and mouse on this? Do we really want to alienate the server OPs that drive the NS2 community?
Agreed. It's a bunch of tradeoffs and it is clear where UWE sits.
#2: If a server OP put up a significantly 'game changing' mod that was easily noticeable by players - and they tried to hide it from players - the players would find out. They're not dumb. When they do find out they'll go elsewhere, and the server OP will end up with an empty server.
I more worried about New Player impressions/confusion.
The 'yellow' marker for modded servers served no real purpose. In fact, I think it gave people a false sense of security since they felt that a 'white' server would always mean unmodded - even if it wasn't. So I really don't have a problem with the change. Heck, most of the popular servers were modded, and no one had a problem with it.
I really doubt most of the popular servers are running game changing mods. I really think they were only running some form of admin tools.
Server admins need admin tools unfortunately the only way they could get that option is by becoming modded. Since they didn't want to be listed as modded when all they wanted was admin tools that they need. They cheated and it broke things.
It really comes to 4 options from that.
1) Remove all modded designations and just list what might be on the server. (The current option)
2) Provide admin tools in the game. (Hard + any useful additions later have the same issue)
3) Have people cheat (Previous option)
4) Provide a way to differentiate between game changing mods and not game changing mods. (Also hard)
Well, I think some sort of data-gathering tool is needed, on every server, something put out there in the big wide real world to look at and record player performances and how games play out.
It's there already. It reports data back to UWE. They have it all. They use it.
And they are working on ways to make it publicly available, but no eta yet. It's called "Sponitor", and you can search to learn more about it.
Nice, thanks. Also, I stumbled upon this while searching for Sponitor http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-2-balance/ It's 34 days old, so most people have probably seen it. It's about the effects of balance changes with each build.
The worst example of what I'm talking about though is the BT mod. I haven't had too much experience with it, but why is it necessary to have a balance test mod at this point? 6 months after the game comes out, they're working on a mod that's going to totally revamp the tech trees, movement, the way the weapons work.. and that's great, and I've heard good things about it. But isn't this basically just admitting that the game wasn't finished at release?
No, it's not. So, I don't know exactly how many people have bought to this day NS2, but according to http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#All you can see how many people played on release day, which was about 6,000, and it's never really gotten higher than, apart from two spikes, one of which was a free-to-play-weekend where the numbers reached "over 9000". Currently, and generally between the three spikes of popularity, the daily player count is about 1,500-2,000 people. Which is pretty small. How many Beta testers did they have? Dunno, but I doubt it was that many.
If they had 100,000 people playing every day, then no doubt they could get balance changes and tweaks sorted out faster. From release, the average monthly player count is about 1,870. I don't know how many matches that involved.
I think it's better that they spend a longer time to gather more reliable, though smaller quantities of data, than to rush out a change based on one month of 1,870 people. However, one month of 100,000 people would probably be fine, but they don't have that kind of player base to make calculated, reliable decision like this which won't backfire horribly.
Long story short, how can a small game developer know how their game is going to perform in the real world, without hiring thousands of beta testers? Regardless, I paid £10.50 for this game, which is the best tenner I ever spent.
Long story short, how can a small game developer know how their game is going to perform in the real world, without hiring thousands of beta testers? Regardless, I paid £10.50 for this game, which is the best tenner I ever spent.
At least it's not Global Agenda, where people tried to help during Beta and were listened to. Killed the game.
Nah, game was killed by the developers with dumb FTP carrots on a stick when they realized they couldn't charge subscription to it. They actually listened to very very little feedback from the community.
At least it's not Global Agenda, where people tried to help during Beta and were listened to. Killed the game.
Nah, game was killed by the developers with dumb FTP carrots on a stick when they realized they couldn't charge subscription to it. They actually listened to very very little feedback from the community.
Well, this is the thing, they listened to the feedback of a vocal minority. Other guys weren't piping up about it, so, it happened.
Comments
My competitive experiences go back to the q2 days. I gave it up because it was ruining my enjoyment of gaming and turning into too much work. However, I have kept a finger on the pulse of gaming and have read nothing to lead me to believe that there has been a shift in the common thinking of ripping everything down to the barest minimum to eek out every last possible frame per second. Things like playing on the lowest possible graphic setting, to improve the contrast between players and the environment (which includes lighting). In a game where one side is expected to be ambush hunters, reducing the ability for these players to hide "in shadows" does have an affect on the game.
You yourself have stated a belief that "video games are art" so why screw with that art and make the game look like some 1990 throwback to give yourself an advantage over someone else? To me, that is ruining the game.
I don't begrudge people choosing to play that way, but at least own up to the tweaking done by many competitive players as affecting the game as a whole; and not always for the better. I remember looking at demos of "top players" back in the day and saying "WTF? How do they play like that" and realizing that if that is what it takes to be "competitive" than I don't need to play in leagues. I enjoy the effects, I enjoy the shadows. I don't care that I can get .7 more FPS and see skulks better if I turn off shadows. I don't care that infestation might hide a player or structure. I'd rather see the infestation as intended than to rip it down to the barest minimum then complain that it looks like crap and should be improved.
the "art" to me in multiplayer involves skill aim and movement, you're talking about singleplayer art which is immersion / graphics / story. what ruins the art for me is going from 140FPS and dropping to 40 FPS in mid combat. it's not a .7 FPS advantage, it's something closer to 70 on average. it doesn't take turning down your graphics settings to be "competitive", you can actually look up plenty of videos of the best players at LAN with default graphics settings:
it sounds to me like you're just making a really poor excuse and you're missing the point completely. in NS2, the advantage gained through the NSL maps is shared by everyone is playing on the same map...????
this obnoxious "OMG MIGHT AS WELL MAKE SKULKS PINK AND FULLBRIGHT AND PLAY WITH WHITEWALLS BECAUSE OF NSL MAPS" sentiment against the Quake community is ignorant and has been spouted even by devs. it's simply not even close to true. if FPS can be gained by leaps that significant, where you can go from never having above 90 FPS to never dropping below 90 FPS, then it's something that should probably be considered at least looking into ;/ it barely even sacrifices "art" once the optimizations were made.
Never even said anything about NSL maps so i don't know why you bring this in. After having been a competitive player and having seen the extents many of them go to to get an advantage in gaming I choose not to join them. I'm not a dev and have no control over the development of the game, but i am still entitled to an opinion. Just as you are entitled to yours. You are entitled to not like my opinion and that is fine too. Don't worry, I won't judge you for it or make "OMG HYPERBOLE" statements about your view either. I don't like the changes competitive players make, in general, to the game which is why I don't compete anymore. You don't have a problem with it. That's fine and our ships will pass in the night.
Seriously though, I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
As it stood before the change, there was no way to know if a server was modded. It may or may not have been listed as modded - and even if it was there was no way to know whether the mod was something simple like an admin plugin, or something that changed the game. That's pretty much the same as it is now. So just join a server and see what happens. If you can't tell that it is modded, then does it really matter if it is or not?
Worry about how it PLAYS, not about whether or not it happens to be yellow in the server list.
In the end the simple and best way to play is to favourite the servers that you like. That way you always know what you're getting.
I guess it's still spilled milk and somewhat had to happen to some extend, but I do hope people realize the wasted potential and significance to long term progress of NS2 game and community.
I don't disagree that non game changing mods like admin tools, consistency checks, maybe even maps should be listed white. The problem is that instead of fixing it so this could be supported, UWE just threw their hands up and said maybe you will get a details panel later maybe.
The same thing happened in TF2. Server admins complained how their shitty custom modded server was in the custom tab with no one playing on it and valve caved and removed the custom tab and hey people started playing in the shitty modded server again. All I can take away from that case and this one is either 1) no one wants to play on modded servers, hence when a server is labeled modded, they don't go there 2) they are just to stupid to care, they just click the first thing they see and play there.
Either way, I feel that catering to Greens is the way to go. Let them know, "This is how the game is meant to be played." On these yellow servers, your experience may vary. If they are like #1 above, problem solved. If they are #2, newbs should be on unmodded server until they learn to play the game correctly anyway.
Valves attempt to kill TF2 servers with custom settings (it did not even try to detect mods, only custom settings such as spawn timers) was bypassed the very same day it was released. The only servers that were hurt was those that were actually being honest about what they had modified. It changed only because Valve came to their senses.
#1: If you try and put in measures to circumvent a server being listed as modded, then they will find another way around it. Do we really want the developers spending time playing cat and mouse on this? Do we really want to alienate the server OPs that drive the NS2 community?
#2: If a server OP put up a significantly 'game changing' mod that was easily noticeable by players - and they tried to hide it from players - the players would find out. They're not dumb. When they do find out they'll go elsewhere, and the server OP will end up with an empty server.
It can't happen. Why? First UWE would have to inspect every single mod that wanted to be listed as such. It would also have to inspect the mod every time it was altered. That takes resources. Resources best put into game development. However, even if they did, that would pose more problems.
First it would mean UWE was effectively 'endorsing' the mod, and by extension they would take on responsibility if something went wrong. Why take on responsibility for something you didn't write and don't control? Secondly, what's to stop a mod author from getting a mod white-listed, and then changing the mod to do something else afterwards?
The 'yellow' marker for modded servers served no real purpose. In fact, I think it gave people a false sense of security since they felt that a 'white' server would always mean unmodded - even if it wasn't. So I really don't have a problem with the change. Heck, most of the popular servers were modded, and no one had a problem with it.
Now I *DO* want to see the implementation of a display dialog to show what mods are being run, but I don't think that it is such a big deal to remove the 'modded' designation in the meanwhile. It wasn't accurate, so it was really pointless.
Like I said, best thing for people to do is favourite the servers you like playing on. Mods or not, that is what will get a person the best gameplay experience.
But believe me, I have seen where this journey goes. I used to mod for UT2k4 for a long time. And the only reason we were actually able to still make gameplay-improving mods that got played was because we could sneak our way around "unwhitelisting" the server by utilizing only common engine events for our Actors, spawn stuff as ServerActor and hack a lot of ways together to get our own hooks into existing stuff without using the Mutator-hooks that the engine actually provided, because most Mutators except for some holiday-related ones and anti-cheat ones were not whitelisted.
The non-standard mark is a stigma no server operator wanted to carry the burden of. If your mod would unwhitelist the server, it didn't matter how awesome it was - pretty much no server would run it.
It might not have been such a big deal in the past, but nowadays -almost 10 years after the launch of the game- the playerbase has shrunken to a still significant but hard core with just a few newbloods appearing every now and then. In these times can no server operator afford to run any mods that would reduce their server's visibility to potential audience.
You might make a fuzz of this change now, but if it hadn't have taken place, it would have hurt the ingenuity of NS2's modding scene apart from those that develop new gametypes for years to come, when the playerbase might not be as strong as it is now.
You still didn't name one thing that's allowed in the NSL that would ruin the game. Take a look at any of the competitive player's streams, you won't see graphics that look like a 1990 throwback. This is not quake 2. The ONLY things that are allowed to be customized are the circles around observatory scans, crosshairs, and maybe the waypoint graphics. We can't even use custom huds AFAIK unless there's been changes to the rules. There is forced consistency checking to make sure you can't join a server if you're using other mods. The NSL versions of the maps are the same exact maps, just with less light entities.
What these other mods are doing is pretending to be pure NS2 when they are NS2 and other stuff.
No. It's possible to provide a "clean" api that wouldn't trigger modded. (I believe Devs said that they didn't want to take this path)
Agreed. It's a bunch of tradeoffs and it is clear where UWE sits.
I more worried about New Player impressions/confusion.
I really doubt most of the popular servers are running game changing mods. I really think they were only running some form of admin tools.
Server admins need admin tools unfortunately the only way they could get that option is by becoming modded. Since they didn't want to be listed as modded when all they wanted was admin tools that they need. They cheated and it broke things.
It really comes to 4 options from that.
1) Remove all modded designations and just list what might be on the server. (The current option)
2) Provide admin tools in the game. (Hard + any useful additions later have the same issue)
3) Have people cheat (Previous option)
4) Provide a way to differentiate between game changing mods and not game changing mods. (Also hard)
Nice, thanks. Also, I stumbled upon this while searching for Sponitor http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-2-balance/ It's 34 days old, so most people have probably seen it. It's about the effects of balance changes with each build.
No, it's not. So, I don't know exactly how many people have bought to this day NS2, but according to http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#All you can see how many people played on release day, which was about 6,000, and it's never really gotten higher than, apart from two spikes, one of which was a free-to-play-weekend where the numbers reached "over 9000". Currently, and generally between the three spikes of popularity, the daily player count is about 1,500-2,000 people. Which is pretty small. How many Beta testers did they have? Dunno, but I doubt it was that many.
If they had 100,000 people playing every day, then no doubt they could get balance changes and tweaks sorted out faster. From release, the average monthly player count is about 1,870. I don't know how many matches that involved.
I think it's better that they spend a longer time to gather more reliable, though smaller quantities of data, than to rush out a change based on one month of 1,870 people. However, one month of 100,000 people would probably be fine, but they don't have that kind of player base to make calculated, reliable decision like this which won't backfire horribly.
Long story short, how can a small game developer know how their game is going to perform in the real world, without hiring thousands of beta testers? Regardless, I paid £10.50 for this game, which is the best tenner I ever spent.
NS2 was in beta for like 2 years man.
Nah, game was killed by the developers with dumb FTP carrots on a stick when they realized they couldn't charge subscription to it. They actually listened to very very little feedback from the community.
Well, this is the thing, they listened to the feedback of a vocal minority. Other guys weren't piping up about it, so, it happened.