There's No Updated Wiki/Manual
Keating
Join Date: 2012-05-02 Member: 151444Members
Join Date: 2012-05-02 Member: 151444Members
TL;DR: The NS2 wiki hasn't been updated since JANUARY 16, and there's manual for the game. Me (and I would guess thousands of others) are being turned away because of an uncomfortable confusion about not knowing how the game mechanics have changed since launch. How can we convince players (or maybe the developers at this point), to update the wiki/manual?
[HERE's an example page of the amazingly-well-updated TF2 wiki (which Valve didn't have for years), which I've also helped update]
So, I wanted to start getting into playing NS2 after maybe 5 months of not playing, and I played maybe 5 games last night. The game looked mostly similar to me with the biggest changes I saw being 1) there has to be a commander to start the game (fantastic idea!), and a surrender system.
But then naturally, I wanted to learn about all the updates that have happened and see what the current game mechanics are, so I hopped on the NS2 wiki (http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Main_Page) to look at the patch notes. But there's nothing. The wiki hasn't been updated since JANUARY 16! So I hopped on the official main page with all the patch announcements, and found tons of patches, including, apparently, a massive update called "Gorgeous" which added tunnels, babblers, and rail guns.
But have those changes been reverted? When I played last night, I saw all the usual shotguns, mines, zenocide, jetpacks, enzyme, carapace, phase gates etc (no exos, though). But I saw nothing of these new abilities, or even anyone mention it. So now I just spent 20 minutes trying out dozens of different google searches to find wherever new site the wiki-editors have moved to, and could not find anything... I can't even find a SINGLE thread on the internet explaining Gorge tunnels (I only found 3 complaint/bug threads).
Yeah, I could get one of my friends who plays NS2 a ton and start nailing him with questions over the next few weeks to find the hundreds of little mechanics, statistics, and bugs with all the updated abilities and weapons (which I'm going to be doing), but that won't help all the hundreds of thousands of players who won't do that, and stay nooby. And that's still way more effort than it should be.
So how can we re-develop the wiki, or another manual, and keep it updated? For a game as complicated (and cooperative) as this, I think it's essential to keeping the game alive by letting anyone-less-than-veterans know the game well enough to play it right. I know there's something called Squad 5 that was ramping up many months ago, so if that's still alive, maybe it would be a great project for that. If not, maybe UWE could host events or awards for updating the wiki after every patch. And lastly, to get really quality stats, there needs to be at least one tech-savvy player or dev who's willing to put the raw stats up from the game files for each article.
Cheers!
[HERE's an example page of the amazingly-well-updated TF2 wiki (which Valve didn't have for years), which I've also helped update]
So, I wanted to start getting into playing NS2 after maybe 5 months of not playing, and I played maybe 5 games last night. The game looked mostly similar to me with the biggest changes I saw being 1) there has to be a commander to start the game (fantastic idea!), and a surrender system.
But then naturally, I wanted to learn about all the updates that have happened and see what the current game mechanics are, so I hopped on the NS2 wiki (http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Main_Page) to look at the patch notes. But there's nothing. The wiki hasn't been updated since JANUARY 16! So I hopped on the official main page with all the patch announcements, and found tons of patches, including, apparently, a massive update called "Gorgeous" which added tunnels, babblers, and rail guns.
But have those changes been reverted? When I played last night, I saw all the usual shotguns, mines, zenocide, jetpacks, enzyme, carapace, phase gates etc (no exos, though). But I saw nothing of these new abilities, or even anyone mention it. So now I just spent 20 minutes trying out dozens of different google searches to find wherever new site the wiki-editors have moved to, and could not find anything... I can't even find a SINGLE thread on the internet explaining Gorge tunnels (I only found 3 complaint/bug threads).
Yeah, I could get one of my friends who plays NS2 a ton and start nailing him with questions over the next few weeks to find the hundreds of little mechanics, statistics, and bugs with all the updated abilities and weapons (which I'm going to be doing), but that won't help all the hundreds of thousands of players who won't do that, and stay nooby. And that's still way more effort than it should be.
So how can we re-develop the wiki, or another manual, and keep it updated? For a game as complicated (and cooperative) as this, I think it's essential to keeping the game alive by letting anyone-less-than-veterans know the game well enough to play it right. I know there's something called Squad 5 that was ramping up many months ago, so if that's still alive, maybe it would be a great project for that. If not, maybe UWE could host events or awards for updating the wiki after every patch. And lastly, to get really quality stats, there needs to be at least one tech-savvy player or dev who's willing to put the raw stats up from the game files for each article.
Cheers!
Comments
Still agree on the rest of the wiki needing to be more up to date.
Ok, on a more serious note: Yes, the wiki is terribly outdated and missing a lot of information. I recently started playing around with the map editor and the wiki was terrible as a source. Rewarding people for updating the wiki might not be too bad an idea, however my stomach aches a bit thinking about it (for idealistic reasons I resent the notion of "external" incentives for working on a wiki).
One thing I'd like to see is the following: Whenever someone asks a question, has a problem, etc. and he finds help here on the forums, I think someone (ideally the person providing the help) should kindly ask the OP to please take his new knowledge and insert it into the wiki (as a sort of "thank you") so others may profit from it. It would of course be easier if the person providing the answer just copy it over to the wiki since he already did most of the work anyway, but it's about getting people involved into the wiki, and using the "giving back/passing forward" approach might be better imho.
I did, hence the commander guides are up to date. hahaha
Seems noone caught onto what I ment. It was a hint saying 'so all update the bloody wiki'
But 1 NS2 player is worth 200 TF2's
;-)