Most gracious of you; I'll try to be as polite in return.
I meant the first group of people want to know when the game will be changed, not just a confirmation that it will. Games and changes have been known to take years to properly be implemented.
It seems to me that you have unreasonable expectations of UWE. You're demanding to know something that UWE does not know yet and cannot know yet. They know that they want to improve the game, but figuring out the best way to improve the game is a complicated and time-consuming task. UWE is working on it now with Sewlek's mod. You can see the work that they are doing as they do it. Once that work has progressed far enough, then UWE will start making more concrete plans as to what changes will be included in the mainline game and how long it will take to include them, and I'm sure that they will announce those plans when they are firm enough to be worth announcing.
You need to have some patience. Nobody could do what you are demanding, and if they tried, they would only make things worse. They would either miss the announced deadline or make compromises to the quality of their work in order to hit the announced deadline.
It's generally not a good idea to get a whole bunch of people together to influence the making of, essentially, a new game. You have no general idea behind it and the whole game becomes a mess of multiple ideas from multiple people with no real cohesion or synergy.
I agree with you, but that's not what's happening here. There is a single mind behind the changes that are being considered right now - Andi's. He's getting feedback from many people, and that feedback is as diverse as you might expect, but by no means is this a design-by-committee. Andi is making his own decisions and proceeding according to his own sense of what the game should be like.
Therefore, READ "It has been said that not all features will be implemented so I think it's important players know what's happening". Saying the second group of people can play the bt and have input is NOT the same as knowing what to practice. What's the point in playing vanilla when you MIGHT have to change complete movement mechanics. Whats the point in playing bt and learning movement mechanics if they MIGHT not get implemented?
Here, alas, I'm afraid I may be less than polite. I simply don't have any sympathy for the viewpoint that you or other competitive players need to know what you should start practicing. "What's the point in playing vanilla?" "What's the point in playing bt?" I would have thought the point in playing ANY version is that you find it fun. If the only reason to play a game is to practice it so that you can get good at it, well, then, there's not really any point in playing ANY game. You might as well spend your time practicing some other arbitrary and meaningless task to demonstrate your hand-eye coordination, like knucklebones. You can get good at that game and be confident that nobody will ever change the rules on you.
That's not to say that there's anything wrong with practicing at a game to become good at it. That's fine. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm delighted that there are people who enjoy the game so much that they want to devote that kind of time to it. Hooray for the competitive players. Long may your flags wave and glorious may your casted deeds be.
What I am saying is that UWE should not be rushed into making important decisions just so that the competitive players can know as soon as possible what they should start practicing. As I said earlier - if you truly are competitive, then you should be able to adapt to anything that's thrown at you. Nobody cares who's better at some specific arbitrary mechanical task like old-shadowstep vs new-shadowstep. What's interesting, what's impressive, what's worthy of the label "competitive NS2 player" is being able to excel at NS2, whatever NS2 happens to be. And what NS2 should be is the best game that it can possibly be, and if it takes more time for UWE to figure out how to make it the best it can be, well, then, that's time well spent.
I hope I've not misunderstood or misrepresented your viewpoint.
I'm really happy that this is a discussion and not a rage fest like most forum posts descend into and I'd like to return the compliment.
I have high expectations of UWE at this point because the game has been dwindling for some time now that they need to do something (balance test) quickly. If it's unreasonable for them to fix it soon, then they'll be doing nothing to retain some of the current player base and the game could die sooner than later.
Again, all I asked for was for an estimated time of arrival. I'm well aware of the consequences of setting a hard deadline and failing to meet it. I just asked that the talk tonight would not be "We've looked at it, like some things and will consider them in the future". I think it would be prudent for Andi to give a broad sense of direction the game is taking. I.e. "We might see the changes around 6-8 months time but bear in mind this isn't official." This isn't concrete so you might say "Oh well if it's not certain it doesn't mean anything because they can change the date", but it gives hope instead of this unnerving "it could be dropped on you at any point" which is what we've been told through 2nd-3rd passages of word of mouth.
Thanks for clearing that up, my view of the changes was that anyone could give input into the game and have it changed. I mean, I know I've given input and things have been changed on the spot! This is in no way sarcastic, my input was a tiny little detail and Sewlek changed it which gave me the impression that anyone could suggest stuff and it could be put into the game. (Don't bother debating this point, I've conceded to your point and I was just letting you know that I have)
You said yourself that some competitive players enjoy being good and find that being good, is fun. Fun is subjective; You can't tell me that playing it to be better is pointless because to me, it is fun. Give us something to work with! Again, there's this idea that UWE have to give black and white answers. This isn't what I'm asking for. I'm asking for UWE to remove some of the uncertainty of the future. I'm asking that they say "No, we actually like the movement we made. This was our idea of the game and we feel it is balanced and fun... on the other hand armories not giving armor to marines is something we're interested in... also the changes to the marine and alien tech routes are very interesting and we may consider it."
You see how it's possible that UWE can give information without dead-lining somethings? They are able to compare the changes to vanilla and just go "No, we like this mechanic in OUR game and we want to keep it" or "This is interesting and we want to play with it".
Giving that kind of information is positive. It lets the community know that they're being listened to instead of a vague "Some features good, some features bad, patch comes out in future". That should be the general gist of things at the end of the interview because we already know that some things are going to be good, some bad and the patch is going to come out in the future! It shouldn't be the literal message they give us.
I feel like questioning my ability to adapt is somewhat off topic.
Like I said earlier, UWE doesn't have much time anymore. It's getting too late, people are leaving. Waiting could be as bad as implementing rushed changes. They need to give people expectations and hope.
Apologies for poor formatting with regards to what I'm responding to.
I meant the first group of people want to know when the game will be changed, not just a confirmation that it will. Games and changes have been known to take years to properly be implemented.
It's generally not a good idea to get a whole bunch of people together to influence the making of, essentially, a new game. You have no general idea behind it and the whole game becomes a mess of multiple ideas from multiple people with no real cohesion or synergy. Therefore, READ "It has been said that not all features will be implemented so I think it's important players know what's happening". Saying the second group of people can play the bt and have input is NOT the same as knowing what to practice. What's the point in playing vanilla when you MIGHT have to change complete movement mechanics. Whats the point in playing bt and learning movement mechanics if they MIGHT not get implemented?
The second group of people are still dissatisfied.
Again I think you misunderstood. Yes people want to hear that they're interested in looking into the balance mod, but they should say specifically what they are interested in. I didn't say they should announce what they have definitely made their minds up about. You can be interested in removing the armory requirement for all tech routes, for example without explicitly saying they are cemented in taking that route. Obviously making bull up is just not beneficial to anyone so if they don't have any idea, say they don't have any idea. Although that's bad because people will lose hope and quit.
Closing ears and waiting till it is done is exactly the problem.
UWE must respond which is what this opportunity is about. However, they must respond in a firm and positive manner which gives the players details to look forward to.
I think you're seeing a problem that is practically non existant. How many competitive players have stopped playing because there might be changes coming to the game at some point in the future? If anything, active comp players will probably do more and more of the bt mod testing as it gets closer to "release".
Anyway, I'm guessing UWE will give out specific and detailed change logs when they've actually decided on them. You can't do such a thing when you're still in full testing. It wouldn't make sense. What's the point in saying feature x and y will make the cut, when it might still get changed? So I don't know what you're asking for.
The next competition is the balance mod cup. Some people don't enjoy the balance mod and have since stopped playing because there is no vanilla competition running. There has been talk of the balance mod being "implemented sooner than you think" making people who don't like the mod quit because they think that's the end game for the game they love. If UWE implement these changes in a years time and don't say that tonight, they'll lose the players who don't believe there'll be any competitions with their beloved vanilla and the players who are bored with vanilla and aren't seeing the changes soon enough.
I can't give a definite number of who's stopped playing, only that some of the players in my team have said that they're going to be quitting with the implementation of the balance test and that some of our opponents and friends will also be quitting. So far as I know maybe 16 players in EU. Doesn't sound like much but that's 3 active teams worth.
We have tried the BT and we didn't like it hence our decision to quit. The factors we don't like are enjoyed by others, I understand that. I understand that the implementation of the BT or not will lose players either way. UWE should do damage limitation by releasing information like which features (so some people might go "oh ok I dont mind that, i'll stay" or "that'll make this game fun again, i'll stay") and when so people can go ("I'll stay and enjoy the game for this long", "Oh it's going to be soon? I'll keep playing then until it's out")
You're just being tedious now. Quoting my reply and ignoring what I've said. "they should say specifically what they are interested in. I didn't say they should announce what they have definitely made their minds up about. You can be interested in removing the armory requirement for all tech routes, for example without explicitly saying they are cemented in taking that route"
They can say these are the issues that the game face balance wise and this is what we're INTERESTED in. They don't have to say that's what'll stay!
I don't understand this perpetual school of thought that this game is ns1 with better graphics.
NS2 is a different game. It has some features which are more enjoyable than ns1 and some which are less so. They're different games, they're going to have different features...
When NS2 was just a test map with a few Skulks and Marines running around with nothing to do I posted that I hoped NS2 would be NS1 with better graphics. I took a lot of flame and nastiness for saying that. It seems funny to me that now people, especially the comp players and old NS1 vets just seem to want exactly that and probably some of the same people who attacked my opinion then now cant post on here without mentioning NS1 and how they think NS2 is inferior in every way.
I played NS1 a lot. I think NS2 is the better game now, after going through the Alpha/Beta and all the changes involved. I trusted UW and especially Charlie to deliver the best game they could with the small team they have. I think they have achieved their goal and more, and lately it has been close to perfect imo and is only a few tweaks away from being great balance wise.
I also believe the BT mod and the fact this was given to one person to do is the worst idea UW have ever had. No disrespect to Andi but Charlie and only Charlie should have the overall say in what goes in and balance. Give the BT mod to 100 players on this forum, me included and you will get 100 different versions of NS2. I don't agree with a lot of what's in the BT mod and I have already stated why. But to change the game so much this far after the release of the game is a bad idea. Most of us who play on a casual basis, the majority btw, will suffer the most. The skill gap between an average player and a good one is already huge. The mod will make that gap bigger still.
I mentioned the mod on two 18 player servers a few nights ago hoping for opinions. Some of the players I have played with for months and play the game a lot more than me. Not one other person had even heard of the mod. The vast majority out there on servers will not even be aware of all this and I worry about that.
The only solution I can see is to have both vanilla available and another version running on servers with whatever changes the mods supporters want in it. RO2 has a similar way as there is a newer more accessible version that is great for the casual players and a classic version which is more like the original Red Orchestra. UW would have to support both with an equal amount of time and updates though which as a small team doubt they will be able to do.
I thought NS2c would be the game to accommodate all those who want these sort of changes and what happened to that? Why cant UW take that as the base for a version of the game based on NS1 if that's what some want. It could even be used for the comp games etc while the majority of us who just want to jump on for an hour here and there for fun still have vanilla. Some including me might even play and enjoy both.
I trust UW and Charlie to do the right thing for the community but for the first time in years I am worried about the future of the game.
The worst thing though by far, is the simple fact that this one mod has split and divided the community so much which is heartbreaking.
I don't understand this perpetual school of thought that this game is ns1 with better graphics.
NS2 is a different game. It has some features which are more enjoyable than ns1 and some which are less so. They're different games, they're going to have different features...
When NS2 was just a test map with a few Skulks and Marines running around with nothing to do I posted that I hoped NS2 would be NS1 with better graphics. I took a lot of flame and nastiness for saying that. It seems funny to me that now people, especially the comp players and old NS1 vets just seem to want exactly that and probably some of the same people who attacked my opinion then now cant post on here without mentioning NS1 and how they think NS2 is inferior in every way.
I played NS1 a lot. I think NS2 is the better game now, after going through the Alpha/Beta and all the changes involved. I trusted UW and especially Charlie to deliver the best game they could with the small team they have. I think they have achieved their goal and more, and lately it has been close to perfect imo and is only a few tweaks away from being great balance wise.
I also believe the BT mod and the fact this was given to one person to do is the worst idea UW have ever had. No disrespect to Andi but Charlie and only Charlie should have the overall say in what goes in and balance. Give the BT mod to 100 players on this forum, me included and you will get 100 different versions of NS2. I don't agree with a lot of what's in the BT mod and I have already stated why. But to change the game so much this far after the release of the game is a bad idea. Most of us who play on a casual basis, the majority btw, will suffer the most. The skill gap between an average player and a good one is already huge. The mod will make that gap bigger still.
I mentioned the mod on two 18 player servers a few nights ago hoping for opinions. Some of the players I have played with for months and play the game a lot more than me. Not one other person had even heard of the mod. The vast majority out there on servers will not even be aware of all this and I worry about that.
The only solution I can see is to have both vanilla available and another version running on servers with whatever changes the mods supporters want in it. RO2 has a similar way as there is a newer more accessible version that is great for the casual players and a classic version which is more like the original Red Orchestra. UW would have to support both with an equal amount of time and updates though which as a small team doubt they will be able to do.
I thought NS2c would be the game to accommodate all those who want these sort of changes and what happened to that? Why cant UW take that as the base for a version of the game based on NS1 if that's what some want. It could even be used for the comp games etc while the majority of us who just want to jump on for an hour here and there for fun still have vanilla. Some including me might even play and enjoy both.
I trust UW and Charlie to do the right thing for the community but for the first time in years I am worried about the future of the game.
The worst thing though by far, is the simple fact that this one mod has split and divided the community so much which is heartbreaking.
I admit, my experience with ns1 was very small and to be honest, I don't care much for it. I'm very happy with ns2 at the moment. I'd just like to see a few changes which would make more tech routes viable and I think sewlek did a great job with that like celerity and regen in combat and armory requirement removed from tech routes. But I've not come to discuss this, this is just a personal view which I'm kind of abusing this platform I have to promote
I completely agree with everything you say in your 3rd paragraph and your last 2 paragraphs, but again I think it's a bit off topic.
From what I have been hearing from players they are just upset with where some of the changes made in the BT mod. Which is okay but they take it to the extreme. "Oh the fade is so weak now he's a brick this game is going to shit! I quit!" Whoa their bud, play it some more, give Andi some feedback and if it is an actual issue he'll adjust it so that it works and that it isn't crap anymore. Its an ever evolving mod that'll continue to have changes to help fix issues that are currently in it. But by not playing and being hard headed won't help the game to progess and become better.
Another thing i've been hearing a lot is how people don't want to spend the time to learn the new mechanics. Give me a break. The game is so BORING right now in the current state and takes no thought to play. If you've been playing the game for a while now, you already have a good understanding of the game and to learn some of the new mechanics definitely won't take as much time as many people think. I think people are just sorta butt hurt that they aren't as good in the BT mod as they are in Vanilla.
I played NS1 a lot. I think NS2 is the better game now, after going through the Alpha/Beta and all the changes involved. I trusted UW and especially Charlie to deliver the best game they could with the small team they have. I think they have achieved their goal and more, and lately it has been close to perfect imo and is only a few tweaks away from being great balance wise.
I also believe the BT mod and the fact this was given to one person to do is the worst idea UW have ever had. No disrespect to Andi but Charlie and only Charlie should have the overall say in what goes in and balance.
NS1>NS2, ns2 is not even close...
Charlie doing balancing?
I could not imagine a worse person to balance a game like NS2... You actually have to play the game to know what works/doesn't work.
Game developers are typically terrible at game balance, that is why they have dedicated balance teams / testing teams providing feedback. This was something the community set up and attempted to provide to UWE, it was ultimately ignored and the team lost interest due to their comments not having any effect. It has also been stated many times by UWE playtesters, that they are bug testers and not to provide feedback on balance.
If the balance team was not ultimately ignored, perhaps we would not be having such a 'major overhaul balance patch'.
Of course change can be a scary thing, but it is also a necessary thing. Many of the same people arguing against the BT mod are also the same people who are on the forums listing their issues with the current Vanilla NS2. The fear that the BT mod makes NS2 a whole new game just seems largely overblown to me.
80% of the mod is improvements to existing mechanics, not altering or adding new features. The changes attempt to address the amount of tech paths and gameplay options that are underused at the moment in Vanilla NS2. We spent the time to implement all that stuff originally, we'd like to see it used more. Other improvements, such as allowing alien spawning to scale with player count, have been necessary for a long time due to the popularity of 24 player servers.
There is really very little that changes the core experience of NS2, and most of the changes will not even be noticed by the average player. Movement is probably one of the larger differences, but again it was necessary to rework the old, buggy and problematic movement code. Raising the skill ceiling was also an important issue that the new movement attempts to address. However, this only affects the Skulk and the Fade, and Andi is and will still be tweaking those right up until the end based on feedback.
In general, a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months, but were instead being implemented in this mod first. Probably one of the things that makes the mod scary to people is the amount and frequency of the changes that have been going into it, but most of those are just tests that Andi wanted to try out quickly, and are often reverted after he's had a chance to see how they play out. So, for people who tried out the mod even a week ago, there may have been multiple changes that they didn't like, that have since been reverted again. As the mod is entering its final phase, Andi is going through and stripping it down more and more to just the essentials.
I don't understand why some people would simply choose to stop playing the game because they know changes are coming when they've been offered the opportunity to have a very real say in which changes are implemented and how they are implemented, so that we can all shape the future of NS2 together.
Of course change can be a scary thing, but it is also a necessary thing. Many of the same people arguing against the BT mod are also the same people who are on the forums listing their issues with the current Vanilla NS2. The fear that the BT mod makes NS2 a whole new game just seems largely overblown to me.
80% of the mod is improvements to existing mechanics, not altering or adding new features. The changes attempt to address the amount of tech paths and gameplay options that are underused at the moment in Vanilla NS2. We spent the time to implement all that stuff originally, we'd like to see it used more. Other improvements, such as allowing alien spawning to scale with player count, have been necessary for a long time due to the popularity of 24 player servers.
There is really very little that changes the core experience of NS2, and most of the changes will not even be noticed by the average player. Movement is probably one of the larger differences, but again it was necessary to rework the old, buggy and problematic movement code. Raising the skill ceiling was also an important issue that the new movement attempts to address. However, this only affects the Skulk and the Fade, and Andi is and will still be tweaking those right up until the end based on feedback.
In general, a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months, but were instead being implemented in this mod first. Probably one of the things that makes the mod scary to people is the amount and frequency of the changes that have been going into it, but most of those are just tests that Andi wanted to try out quickly, and are often reverted after he's had a chance to see how they play out. So, for people who tried out the mod even a week ago, there may have been multiple changes that they didn't like, that have since been reverted again. As the mod is entering its final phase, Andi is going through and stripping it down more and more to just the essentials.
I don't understand why some people would simply choose to stop playing the game because they know changes are coming when they've been offered the opportunity to have a very real say in which changes are implemented and how they are implemented, so that we can all shape the future of NS2 together.
-Cory
It's one thing to have a say, it's another to actually have your say implemented over someone else's. Vanilla movement now is nice to me and enjoyable. BT movement is horrible in my opinion. I know my concerns won't be heard because there are a lot of players (a lot of ns1 vets too) who are saying "BT movement is so good!". I've played BT, I've put input into it but I can not enjoy it with that movement. I think vanilla isn't broken or bugged but indeed very fun. I think the only "balance" needed to done is tech routes, celerity and regen in combat, and fade egg increased cost. These don't change the game drastically into effectively a new one and they do make other routes viable and also cause balance.
a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months
-Cory
And this is where you lost the last 2kish people waiting round on shit that never happened while Sewlek, however useful the testing, held back any real change being implemented in the last few months and will shatter off a very real percentage of whatever 2k concurrent casual players are left by switching 70-80% of what they know around on them.
Things like repair/cavern hive starts on mein shaft and locker room spawns vs anything on Docking have been taking their toll out on the player base, the ever persistent invincible structures, reloading bug, weapon jamming in this patch happens in every single marine round I've played, can't wait for armouries to not heal armour... I get a literal semi every time I think about the amazing team work possibilities I'll have with that one, it's not enough that every marine round that has exos out there is someone complaining that no one is welding, now I won't have to wait for the joyous entrance of exos for this wondrous possibility.
I meant the first group of people want to know when the game will be changed, not just a confirmation that it will. Games and changes have been known to take years to properly be implemented.
It's generally not a good idea to get a whole bunch of people together to influence the making of, essentially, a new game. You have no general idea behind it and the whole game becomes a mess of multiple ideas from multiple people with no real cohesion or synergy. Therefore, READ "It has been said that not all features will be implemented so I think it's important players know what's happening". Saying the second group of people can play the bt and have input is NOT the same as knowing what to practice. What's the point in playing vanilla when you MIGHT have to change complete movement mechanics. Whats the point in playing bt and learning movement mechanics if they MIGHT not get implemented?
The second group of people are still dissatisfied.
Again I think you misunderstood. Yes people want to hear that they're interested in looking into the balance mod, but they should say specifically what they are interested in. I didn't say they should announce what they have definitely made their minds up about. You can be interested in removing the armory requirement for all tech routes, for example without explicitly saying they are cemented in taking that route. Obviously making bull up is just not beneficial to anyone so if they don't have any idea, say they don't have any idea. Although that's bad because people will lose hope and quit.
Closing ears and waiting till it is done is exactly the problem.
UWE must respond which is what this opportunity is about. However, they must respond in a firm and positive manner which gives the players details to look forward to.
I think you're seeing a problem that is practically non existant. How many competitive players have stopped playing because there might be changes coming to the game at some point in the future? If anything, active comp players will probably do more and more of the bt mod testing as it gets closer to "release".
Anyway, I'm guessing UWE will give out specific and detailed change logs when they've actually decided on them. You can't do such a thing when you're still in full testing. It wouldn't make sense. What's the point in saying feature x and y will make the cut, when it might still get changed? So I don't know what you're asking for.
The next competition is the balance mod cup. Some people don't enjoy the balance mod and have since stopped playing because there is no vanilla competition running. There has been talk of the balance mod being "implemented sooner than you think" making people who don't like the mod quit because they think that's the end game for the game they love. If UWE implement these changes in a years time and don't say that tonight, they'll lose the players who don't believe there'll be any competitions with their beloved vanilla and the players who are bored with vanilla and aren't seeing the changes soon enough.
I can't give a definite number of who's stopped playing, only that some of the players in my team have said that they're going to be quitting with the implementation of the balance test and that some of our opponents and friends will also be quitting. So far as I know maybe 16 players in EU. Doesn't sound like much but that's 3 active teams worth.
We have tried the BT and we didn't like it hence our decision to quit. The factors we don't like are enjoyed by others, I understand that. I understand that the implementation of the BT or not will lose players either way. UWE should do damage limitation by releasing information like which features (so some people might go "oh ok I dont mind that, i'll stay" or "that'll make this game fun again, i'll stay") and when so people can go ("I'll stay and enjoy the game for this long", "Oh it's going to be soon? I'll keep playing then until it's out")
You're just being tedious now. Quoting my reply and ignoring what I've said. "they should say specifically what they are interested in. I didn't say they should announce what they have definitely made their minds up about. You can be interested in removing the armory requirement for all tech routes, for example without explicitly saying they are cemented in taking that route"
They can say these are the issues that the game face balance wise and this is what we're INTERESTED in. They don't have to say that's what'll stay!
I'm not being tedious though. I'm just disagreeing that NS2 is losing players because there is an uncertainty about future changes. I also feel that there's already enough information out there about the bt mod and it's goal. It's been discussed plenty. For specifics, just read the changelog of the balance test, you immediately see what might get changed. What more do you want?
Of course change can be a scary thing, but it is also a necessary thing. Many of the same people arguing against the BT mod are also the same people who are on the forums listing their issues with the current Vanilla NS2. The fear that the BT mod makes NS2 a whole new game just seems largely overblown to me.
80% of the mod is improvements to existing mechanics, not altering or adding new features. The changes attempt to address the amount of tech paths and gameplay options that are underused at the moment in Vanilla NS2. We spent the time to implement all that stuff originally, we'd like to see it used more. Other improvements, such as allowing alien spawning to scale with player count, have been necessary for a long time due to the popularity of 24 player servers.
There is really very little that changes the core experience of NS2, and most of the changes will not even be noticed by the average player. Movement is probably one of the larger differences, but again it was necessary to rework the old, buggy and problematic movement code. Raising the skill ceiling was also an important issue that the new movement attempts to address. However, this only affects the Skulk and the Fade, and Andi is and will still be tweaking those right up until the end based on feedback.
In general, a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months, but were instead being implemented in this mod first. Probably one of the things that makes the mod scary to people is the amount and frequency of the changes that have been going into it, but most of those are just tests that Andi wanted to try out quickly, and are often reverted after he's had a chance to see how they play out. So, for people who tried out the mod even a week ago, there may have been multiple changes that they didn't like, that have since been reverted again. As the mod is entering its final phase, Andi is going through and stripping it down more and more to just the essentials.
I don't understand why some people would simply choose to stop playing the game because they know changes are coming when they've been offered the opportunity to have a very real say in which changes are implemented and how they are implemented, so that we can all shape the future of NS2 together.
-Cory
frankly, perhaps UWE should have finished 'shaping NS2' before releasing it? this seems to be the issue at the heart of all NS2's problems - content, performance, polish etc, content being the least of them - which makes this strategy to 'save' ns2 with content all the more nonsensical. whats more, vanilla ns2 itself isnt perfectly 'balanced' despite its relative simplicity so the notion that adding layers of complexity will somehow yield 'balance' seems absurd to me - if anything the opposite is more likely to happen leading to endless tweaking and follow up changes to 'fix' these issues. realising all this, i can easily see why people would hesitate to commit to playing BT when its done. im sorry to say this, but UWE's track record is not particularly good and the approach taken with the conception, testing and community communication about BT does absolutely nothing to dispel the perception of amateurism at UWE.
a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months
-Cory
And this is where you lost the last 2kish people waiting round on shit that never happened while Sewlek, however useful the testing, held back any real change being implemented in the last few months and will shatter off a very real percentage of whatever 2k concurrent casual players are left by switching 70-80% of what they know around on them.
You are trying to link a decline in players to a lack of patches, but you are neglecting that a decline in player count is the normal flow of a game after it's release and which only gets a shorttimed boost through massive updates. There are some games that manage to keep a high steady player count such as TF2, but you can't really compare a F2P game with a low skill floor from a AAA studio that can afford to shell out massive updates and cross-promotions with other titles on a monthly base to a small indie team.
Small patches wouldn't have the same effect on the player count as massive content updates that get them a lot more attention from gaming news sites and promotional opportunities on Steam.
You are trying to link a decline in players to a lack of patches, but you are neglecting that a decline in player count is the normal flow of a game after it's release and which only gets a shorttimed boost through massive updates. There are some games that manage to keep a high steady player count such as TF2, but you can't really compare a F2P game with a low skill floor from a AAA studio that can afford to shell out massive updates and cross-promotions with other titles on a monthly base to a small indie team.
Small patches wouldn't have the same effect on the player count as massive content updates that get them a lot more attention from gaming news sites and promotional opportunities on Steam.
I'm sorry, I don't want to be the ass here but this point of "diminishing playercounts are absolutely normal" is so bad it really hurts me physically.
Today on a saturday evening NS2 is not even in the Steam Top 100 which bottoms at 1260 concurrent players. at 12 pm todayI literally counted ALL people on ALL EU servers. There were about 140.
Of course... "Steam top 100 ... all the AAA games... no proper comparison to a indie game like NS2.... also NS2 is quite old...."
let me name some top 100 games (concurrent players):
Little Inferno(1259)
Warhammer DoW II (1306)
Half Life 2 (1369)
Rome: Total War (1447)
X3: Albion (1452)
ORION: Dino Horde (1581)
FTL (3605)
Chivalry (3799)
Payday (3867)
Portal 2 (3634)
Fallout : NW (5335)
Arma 2 (6370)
These are all old games[some are very old], many by small/indie developers, some even SINGLEPLAYER and some like X3 and Arma certainly considerably more off the "standard games" than NS2. I even bet some of them sold less copies than NS2(144k in first week). Still they have more players than NS2.
Of course any game looses players over time but to say that the fact that people are leaving the game is in no direct correlation to state of the game and especially balance/performance/casual-appeal is -I'm sorry- stupid and imho one of the reasons nothing about this has changed over the last months.
If there is a problem -which there certainly is- you have to
a) acknowledge the problem
b) find and face the source of the problem
c) fix it
so far a) and b) were nearly completely neglected and as a result there was random content released that aimed to do c) which sadly is not possible withput a) and b) and therefore failed.(I bet not a single person left NS2 because he/her missed goge tunnels or railgun exos)
And for your last statement: The thing that has the most positive impact on playerbase is good gameplay. Nobody gives a shit about shiny content if the gameplay is broken and nobody leaves for a lack of it if gameplay is good.
Counter Strike hasn't had a real content upgrade since beta 5.2 or sth. and still people play it. (I do hate it personally but still I have to give respect to this fact)
So the best thing to do would have been balance and gameplay adjustments right after release when people actually cared.
honestly, i think the biggest issue with the game is and always has been performance. the game looks like its 5 years old, but runs like its meant to come out in 2018. i know that had a not shelled out for a new PC ~£1000 (which i was going to do anyway) I would not be playing NS2 anymore.
I'm still not 100% on why people are still wasting their breath on silly arguments about competitive players. Honestly, unless this game was designed for the top 5% I say we fix it for the remaining 95% of the player base. As a casual gamer, I don't care about matches, pod casts, live feeds or what ever else is being thrown around to show other people playing the game. I'd rather play the game. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that a good percentage of the gamers are casual as I am, and when faced with a game that frustrated them, they moved on to something that didn't. Most of us are not 16 any more, and value the time between the kids going down to bed, and the time we close our eyes, so anything that is frustrating honestly will take a back seat to something more entertaining. There have been times I have logged out of many games saying to myself "this isn't worth my evening", meaning the frustration and annoyance was simply too high to spend my "down time" on.
I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, I had fairly real expectations, I think I got what I paid for.
I'm still not 100% on why people are still wasting their breath on silly arguments about competitive players. Honestly, unless this game was designed for the top 5% I say we fix it for the remaining 95% of the player base. As a casual gamer, I don't care about matches, pod casts, live feeds or what ever else is being thrown around to show other people playing the game. I'd rather play the game. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that a good percentage of the gamers are casual as I am, and when faced with a game that frustrated them, they moved on to something that didn't. Most of us are not 16 any more, and value the time between the kids going down to bed, and the time we close our eyes, so anything that is frustrating honestly will take a back seat to something more entertaining. There have been times I have logged out of many games saying to myself "this isn't worth my evening", meaning the frustration and annoyance was simply too high to spend my "down time" on.
I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, I had fairly real expectations, I think I got what I paid for.
I don't think you understand that with only ~900 people playing every day, a HUGE chunk of the daily players are competitive. For example, in just north america, there are 4 divisions with either 5 or 6 teams each, each team with a minimum of 6 players. That's ~20 teams with 120+ players on them. EU is even bigger. We're probably closer to 10% of the active community. 10% of <1000 is a pretty big deal.
You completely missed the point . The goal isn't to achieve the ultimate "competitive" shooter... The goal of most video game companies is to sell copies and have a large player base. My original point is , without casual players, who cares? Games are still fund driven.
HUGE chunk of the daily players are competitive
This IS the problem. The game has become a niche` and not a wide target audience hit. Many will argue that "this is how ns has always been" - that's all well and good, when it's a free mod, but when your staking a companies future on it, not so much.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Would have been good to have some Europeans hosting and less hosts in general as basically we didn't get to hear much from Sewlek and all the questions asked were things that could have been extracted from the balance mod thread.
Also, there seemed to be a general lack of in-depth knowledge about the balance mod and its components from the panel and unsurprisingly most of the commentary and questions were based on factual errors or were of low level.
Its always the same when an established game receives fundamental changes, people are either too attached to current mechanics (even if they're flawed) or reject the new changes as the wrong solution to current problems as they have a better ideas. Giving you personal opinions to help the game move in the right direction is all we can do. We'll all have different opinions or preferences, but you have to look at the changes in an objective way. Spend some time with each build of the BT mod before you pass judgement. The game is not perfect not by a long-shot and so change has to happen or it'll never receive the player counts it deserves.
While I do not like or agree with a lot of the changes in BT mod the game has stagnated in a flawed state for too long. BT mod represents the game returning to a state of evolution and with a culture of change and while a lot of things don't work, it is a step in the right direction for creating a better game.
"I don't understand why some people would simply choose to stop playing the game because they know changes are coming when they've been offered the opportunity to have a very real say in which changes are implemented and how they are implemented, so that we can all shape the future of NS2 together."
this statement is not accurate. the fact that balance mod will replace vanilla in some form or another has not been communicated effectively to the public players. How are they to have a say when it hasn't been communicated loudly and clearly whats going to happen. This means that the suggestions and feedback you are getting are not demographically representative of the entire game population. This is extremely clear when you look at the resultant gameplay. When is it going to be clearly communicated whats going to happen? there should have been some 'special announcement' or something like that now while they still have a chance to influence the design - theres no point making the announcement when the changes have more or less been finalised...
I'll probably get r@ged at, but meh everyone I've spoken to pretty much thinks the same.
Wasabi
Wasabi, I'm assuming it was you that organised this panel so thank you. Organisation/logistics is an underappreciated skill and creating content is always wanted and appreciated. I also appreciate the long and exhaustive explanation of the new alien commander, great work!
Good
- Powerpoint display showing current changes
Bad
My complaint revolving this apparant 'expert panel' was the following:
Hosts:
It was entirely evident to anyone with experience playing the balance mod that Bitey, Virsoul and Reddog simply do not even play the mod. If they do play the mod, they have an extremely limited knowledge of it and simply do not represent the 'expert' panel that a 'state of the game' should host. Infact, Wasabi you showcased the most experience/knowledge of the mod and you are not even a competitive player, so congrats.
Sewlek's - When is it his turn to speak?
The entire panel/discussion was dominated by the hosts and not the man everyone wanted to hear - sewlek.
Things that made me rage...
Armoury Healing armour
Virsoul - There was an entire thread dedicated to this topic. A SOTG panel is not your personal time to grab the attention of Sewlek to put forward your point of view.
Reddog - Requesting an upgrade for marines to self-repair armour
If you played the mod, and not just the 1 hour before the SOTG panel you would know that this was previously tested.
Skulk Movement
General: Why not showcase the new skulk/fade movement with a video. It is terribly complicated to explain to people what it looks/feels like with words. As one of the most controversional topics, this had basically no real discussion which I don't understand.
Bitey - Seems perfectly fine with the NS2 Live skulk movement when it is fucking terrible. Complaining that the skulk bhop is not an actual bhop... when its not meant to be on purpose. Basically having no clue on BT skulk movement mechanics and spouting off rubbish about it. Really disappointing tbh, I expected more from a competitive player in NXZL's A team. This REALLY showcased the fact that he has not played the mod...
Sewlek who held is tounge through your counter strike weapon requests even had to stop you on this one saying you were incorrect.
No discussion revolving around the efforts made to make skulk movement more accessible to new players. Queue'd jumping + a easier implementation of pseudo-bhop (forward+jump).
Bitey - Pistol Spread
No... this does not exist. WTF!!!
Bitey - LMG Cone variance
No... this is not counter strike. We do not want the gun to be more accurate for the first couple of bullets WTF!!!!
Fade Movement
No discussion on this? Mentioning it in the patch notes does not really count. I can only assume this was not discussed as the panel hasn't played fade in BT mod to even comment on it.
Jetpack
No discussion on this topic? Quite a large change considering they go from having no movement capabilities to being able to race a lerk in terms of speed.
Summary
As a player who has played nearly every single iteration of balance mod, tests all the movement changes each time an update occurs and follows this mod very closely the only NEW and useful information attained from 60 minutes of video is the following:
- Cory/Sewlek had a discussion about the possible implementation of Balance mod into live with two paths... Either splitting its implementation into one big patch or lots of small patches. Sewlek commented that he wants ONE BIG BANG!
- Hint at possible announcement regarding performance in 1-2 weeks, most likely luAJIT.
Unfortunately the hosts had only a basic level of knowledge, dominated the conversation, made absolutely terrible and wild suggestions with no thought behind them and the man everyone wanted to hear barely spoke.
PS: Thanks Sewlek, your hardwork is appreciated.
Wasabi, maybe get some Europeans next time. Blind, Fana, b1 would be my number 1 choice
I'm still not 100% on why people are still wasting their breath on silly arguments about competitive players. Honestly, unless this game was designed for the top 5% I say we fix it for the remaining 95% of the player base. As a casual gamer, I don't care about matches, pod casts, live feeds or what ever else is being thrown around to show other people playing the game. I'd rather play the game. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that a good percentage of the gamers are casual as I am, and when faced with a game that frustrated them, they moved on to something that didn't. Most of us are not 16 any more, and value the time between the kids going down to bed, and the time we close our eyes, so anything that is frustrating honestly will take a back seat to something more entertaining. There have been times I have logged out of many games saying to myself "this isn't worth my evening", meaning the frustration and annoyance was simply too high to spend my "down time" on.
I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, I had fairly real expectations, I think I got what I paid for.
It is not a waste of time when I, as a competitive player, am scared for the game I spend time on to compete against others for fun. These are legitimate concerns regarding player count. I don't understand how these arguments affect you as a public player anyway. There's an argument that says people don't know whats best for them (Democracy often is described as having this as a side effect by using politicians to represent people) and that public players just don't understand the best and most effective techniques to win the game. Whilst competitive players have actually understood tactics and strategies to best utilise the tools in the game to win.
You've literally just blundered into this thread to stomp down on competitive players and their views because you might feel like you're viewed as a "puny casual". You're not contributing to discussion. I'd compare you to an extreme feminist.
I'm sorry, I don't want to be the ass here but this point of "diminishing playercounts are absolutely normal" is so bad it really hurts me physically.
Today on a saturday evening NS2 is not even in the Steam Top 100 which bottoms at 1260 concurrent players. at 12 pm todayI literally counted ALL people on ALL EU servers. There were about 140.
Of course... "Steam top 100 ... all the AAA games... no proper comparison to a indie game like NS2.... also NS2 is quite old...."
let me name some top 100 games (concurrent players):
Little Inferno(1259)
Warhammer DoW II (1306)
Half Life 2 (1369)
Rome: Total War (1447)
X3: Albion (1452)
ORION: Dino Horde (1581)
FTL (3605)
Chivalry (3799)
Payday (3867)
Portal 2 (3634)
Fallout : NW (5335)
Arma 2 (6370)
These are all old games[some are very old], many by small/indie developers, some even SINGLEPLAYER and some like X3 and Arma certainly considerably more off the "standard games" than NS2. I even bet some of them sold less copies than NS2(144k in first week). Still they have more players than NS2.
Of course any game looses players over time but to say that the fact that people are leaving the game is in no direct correlation to state of the game and especially balance/performance/casual-appeal is -I'm sorry- stupid and imho one of the reasons nothing about this has changed over the last months.
There seems to be two forms to game playercounts:
- Spike with diminishing returns (Torchlight II/FTL)
- Slow buildup but low peaks (Chivalry/Don't Starve)
Currently, NS2 is following the spike-like playercount mechanism, usually a result of release-day hype/advertisement. The slow buildup mechanism is interesting, but seems to require regular updates with new features (Don't Starve has an ETA to the next update on their splash screen and all their updates include new content).
I'll probably get r@ged at, but meh everyone I've spoken to pretty much thinks the same.
Skulk Movement
Bitey - Seems perfectly fine with the NS2 Live skulk movement when it is fucking terrible. Complaining that the skulk bhop is not an actual bhop... when its not meant to be on purpose. Basically having no clue on BT skulk movement mechanics and spouting off rubbish about it. Really disappointing tbh, I expected more from a competitive player in NXZL's A team. This REALLY showcased the fact that he has not played the mod...
Sewlek who held is tounge through your counter strike weapon requests even had to stop you on this one saying you were incorrect.
No discussion revolving around the efforts made to make skulk movement more accessible to new players. Queue'd jumping + a easier implementation of pseudo-bhop (forward+jump).
This is a common problem amongst people in controversial discussions. People who say "I'll probably get raged at, but everyone I've spoken to pretty much thinks the same". You've said you recognise that people WON'T agree with you but then you say that everyone you've spoken to thinks the same! This shows that you identify people who agree with you and dismiss people who don't and that is a big problem when _discussing_ things. It shows you're closed minded and I implore you to try and be more open to discuss this properly to get positive results.
Live skulk movement is nice and precise. BT movement is, like bitey said, like walking on ice. It seems to me that having more control increases the skill ceiling and decreasing control just lowers the skill floor.
I think this is also another concept people don't consider. That there is a difference between being able to be really good at controlling something and be skillful, and making the initial starting point harder to control.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2013
Live skulk movement is nice and precise. BT movement is, like bitey said, like walking on ice. It seems to me that having more control increases the skill ceiling and decreasing control just lowers the skill floor.
Except it isn't.
There is room to be precise. If you've played against against king_yo or Alcalde for example on the BT server you would see that.
For the first few hours I felt the same. The movement in BT punishes you for the lazy live dodging we have now. If you attempt it in BT in the same way as you would in vanilla you will lose your momentum. Once you practice with it and understand how the momentum gain works it's still very viable to try and out dodge the marines aim with walls in favorable areas.
I'm still not 100% on why people are still wasting their breath on silly arguments about competitive players. Honestly, unless this game was designed for the top 5% I say we fix it for the remaining 95% of the player base. As a casual gamer, I don't care about matches, pod casts, live feeds or what ever else is being thrown around to show other people playing the game. I'd rather play the game. I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that a good percentage of the gamers are casual as I am, and when faced with a game that frustrated them, they moved on to something that didn't. Most of us are not 16 any more, and value the time between the kids going down to bed, and the time we close our eyes, so anything that is frustrating honestly will take a back seat to something more entertaining. There have been times I have logged out of many games saying to myself "this isn't worth my evening", meaning the frustration and annoyance was simply too high to spend my "down time" on.
I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, I had fairly real expectations, I think I got what I paid for.
It is not a waste of time when I, as a competitive player, am scared for the game I spend time on to compete against others for fun. These are legitimate concerns regarding player count. I don't understand how these arguments affect you as a public player anyway. There's an argument that says people don't know whats best for them (Democracy often is described as having this as a side effect by using politicians to represent people) and that public players just don't understand the best and most effective techniques to win the game. Whilst competitive players have actually understood tactics and strategies to best utilise the tools in the game to win.
You've literally just blundered into this thread to stomp down on competitive players and their views because you might feel like you're viewed as a "puny casual". You're not contributing to discussion. I'd compare you to an extreme feminist.
The butt hurt in your post ..... WTF are you even talking about..
You act like I came in to bash on competition players... I simply stated a game can't survive playing favorites to the minority. Casual players ARE the player base of any game, simply put, they are required to sustain the game. Put your big girl panties on and realize that it isn't all about YOU, but rather the community as a whole.
Comments
I'm really happy that this is a discussion and not a rage fest like most forum posts descend into and I'd like to return the compliment.
I have high expectations of UWE at this point because the game has been dwindling for some time now that they need to do something (balance test) quickly. If it's unreasonable for them to fix it soon, then they'll be doing nothing to retain some of the current player base and the game could die sooner than later.
Again, all I asked for was for an estimated time of arrival. I'm well aware of the consequences of setting a hard deadline and failing to meet it. I just asked that the talk tonight would not be "We've looked at it, like some things and will consider them in the future". I think it would be prudent for Andi to give a broad sense of direction the game is taking. I.e. "We might see the changes around 6-8 months time but bear in mind this isn't official." This isn't concrete so you might say "Oh well if it's not certain it doesn't mean anything because they can change the date", but it gives hope instead of this unnerving "it could be dropped on you at any point" which is what we've been told through 2nd-3rd passages of word of mouth.
Thanks for clearing that up, my view of the changes was that anyone could give input into the game and have it changed. I mean, I know I've given input and things have been changed on the spot! This is in no way sarcastic, my input was a tiny little detail and Sewlek changed it which gave me the impression that anyone could suggest stuff and it could be put into the game. (Don't bother debating this point, I've conceded to your point and I was just letting you know that I have)
You said yourself that some competitive players enjoy being good and find that being good, is fun. Fun is subjective; You can't tell me that playing it to be better is pointless because to me, it is fun. Give us something to work with! Again, there's this idea that UWE have to give black and white answers. This isn't what I'm asking for. I'm asking for UWE to remove some of the uncertainty of the future. I'm asking that they say "No, we actually like the movement we made. This was our idea of the game and we feel it is balanced and fun... on the other hand armories not giving armor to marines is something we're interested in... also the changes to the marine and alien tech routes are very interesting and we may consider it."
You see how it's possible that UWE can give information without dead-lining somethings? They are able to compare the changes to vanilla and just go "No, we like this mechanic in OUR game and we want to keep it" or "This is interesting and we want to play with it".
Giving that kind of information is positive. It lets the community know that they're being listened to instead of a vague "Some features good, some features bad, patch comes out in future". That should be the general gist of things at the end of the interview because we already know that some things are going to be good, some bad and the patch is going to come out in the future! It shouldn't be the literal message they give us.
I feel like questioning my ability to adapt is somewhat off topic.
Like I said earlier, UWE doesn't have much time anymore. It's getting too late, people are leaving. Waiting could be as bad as implementing rushed changes. They need to give people expectations and hope.
Apologies for poor formatting with regards to what I'm responding to.
The next competition is the balance mod cup. Some people don't enjoy the balance mod and have since stopped playing because there is no vanilla competition running. There has been talk of the balance mod being "implemented sooner than you think" making people who don't like the mod quit because they think that's the end game for the game they love. If UWE implement these changes in a years time and don't say that tonight, they'll lose the players who don't believe there'll be any competitions with their beloved vanilla and the players who are bored with vanilla and aren't seeing the changes soon enough.
I can't give a definite number of who's stopped playing, only that some of the players in my team have said that they're going to be quitting with the implementation of the balance test and that some of our opponents and friends will also be quitting. So far as I know maybe 16 players in EU. Doesn't sound like much but that's 3 active teams worth.
We have tried the BT and we didn't like it hence our decision to quit. The factors we don't like are enjoyed by others, I understand that. I understand that the implementation of the BT or not will lose players either way. UWE should do damage limitation by releasing information like which features (so some people might go "oh ok I dont mind that, i'll stay" or "that'll make this game fun again, i'll stay") and when so people can go ("I'll stay and enjoy the game for this long", "Oh it's going to be soon? I'll keep playing then until it's out")
You're just being tedious now. Quoting my reply and ignoring what I've said. "they should say specifically what they are interested in. I didn't say they should announce what they have definitely made their minds up about. You can be interested in removing the armory requirement for all tech routes, for example without explicitly saying they are cemented in taking that route"
They can say these are the issues that the game face balance wise and this is what we're INTERESTED in. They don't have to say that's what'll stay!
When NS2 was just a test map with a few Skulks and Marines running around with nothing to do I posted that I hoped NS2 would be NS1 with better graphics. I took a lot of flame and nastiness for saying that. It seems funny to me that now people, especially the comp players and old NS1 vets just seem to want exactly that and probably some of the same people who attacked my opinion then now cant post on here without mentioning NS1 and how they think NS2 is inferior in every way.
I played NS1 a lot. I think NS2 is the better game now, after going through the Alpha/Beta and all the changes involved. I trusted UW and especially Charlie to deliver the best game they could with the small team they have. I think they have achieved their goal and more, and lately it has been close to perfect imo and is only a few tweaks away from being great balance wise.
I also believe the BT mod and the fact this was given to one person to do is the worst idea UW have ever had. No disrespect to Andi but Charlie and only Charlie should have the overall say in what goes in and balance. Give the BT mod to 100 players on this forum, me included and you will get 100 different versions of NS2. I don't agree with a lot of what's in the BT mod and I have already stated why. But to change the game so much this far after the release of the game is a bad idea. Most of us who play on a casual basis, the majority btw, will suffer the most. The skill gap between an average player and a good one is already huge. The mod will make that gap bigger still.
I mentioned the mod on two 18 player servers a few nights ago hoping for opinions. Some of the players I have played with for months and play the game a lot more than me. Not one other person had even heard of the mod. The vast majority out there on servers will not even be aware of all this and I worry about that.
The only solution I can see is to have both vanilla available and another version running on servers with whatever changes the mods supporters want in it. RO2 has a similar way as there is a newer more accessible version that is great for the casual players and a classic version which is more like the original Red Orchestra. UW would have to support both with an equal amount of time and updates though which as a small team doubt they will be able to do.
I thought NS2c would be the game to accommodate all those who want these sort of changes and what happened to that? Why cant UW take that as the base for a version of the game based on NS1 if that's what some want. It could even be used for the comp games etc while the majority of us who just want to jump on for an hour here and there for fun still have vanilla. Some including me might even play and enjoy both.
I trust UW and Charlie to do the right thing for the community but for the first time in years I am worried about the future of the game.
The worst thing though by far, is the simple fact that this one mod has split and divided the community so much which is heartbreaking.
I admit, my experience with ns1 was very small and to be honest, I don't care much for it. I'm very happy with ns2 at the moment. I'd just like to see a few changes which would make more tech routes viable and I think sewlek did a great job with that like celerity and regen in combat and armory requirement removed from tech routes. But I've not come to discuss this, this is just a personal view which I'm kind of abusing this platform I have to promote
I completely agree with everything you say in your 3rd paragraph and your last 2 paragraphs, but again I think it's a bit off topic.
Another thing i've been hearing a lot is how people don't want to spend the time to learn the new mechanics. Give me a break. The game is so BORING right now in the current state and takes no thought to play. If you've been playing the game for a while now, you already have a good understanding of the game and to learn some of the new mechanics definitely won't take as much time as many people think. I think people are just sorta butt hurt that they aren't as good in the BT mod as they are in Vanilla.
NS1>NS2, ns2 is not even close...
Charlie doing balancing?
I could not imagine a worse person to balance a game like NS2... You actually have to play the game to know what works/doesn't work.
Game developers are typically terrible at game balance, that is why they have dedicated balance teams / testing teams providing feedback. This was something the community set up and attempted to provide to UWE, it was ultimately ignored and the team lost interest due to their comments not having any effect. It has also been stated many times by UWE playtesters, that they are bug testers and not to provide feedback on balance.
If the balance team was not ultimately ignored, perhaps we would not be having such a 'major overhaul balance patch'.
80% of the mod is improvements to existing mechanics, not altering or adding new features. The changes attempt to address the amount of tech paths and gameplay options that are underused at the moment in Vanilla NS2. We spent the time to implement all that stuff originally, we'd like to see it used more. Other improvements, such as allowing alien spawning to scale with player count, have been necessary for a long time due to the popularity of 24 player servers.
There is really very little that changes the core experience of NS2, and most of the changes will not even be noticed by the average player. Movement is probably one of the larger differences, but again it was necessary to rework the old, buggy and problematic movement code. Raising the skill ceiling was also an important issue that the new movement attempts to address. However, this only affects the Skulk and the Fade, and Andi is and will still be tweaking those right up until the end based on feedback.
In general, a lot of the changes are balance adjustments that would have been in various patches over the past few months, but were instead being implemented in this mod first. Probably one of the things that makes the mod scary to people is the amount and frequency of the changes that have been going into it, but most of those are just tests that Andi wanted to try out quickly, and are often reverted after he's had a chance to see how they play out. So, for people who tried out the mod even a week ago, there may have been multiple changes that they didn't like, that have since been reverted again. As the mod is entering its final phase, Andi is going through and stripping it down more and more to just the essentials.
I don't understand why some people would simply choose to stop playing the game because they know changes are coming when they've been offered the opportunity to have a very real say in which changes are implemented and how they are implemented, so that we can all shape the future of NS2 together.
-Cory
It's one thing to have a say, it's another to actually have your say implemented over someone else's. Vanilla movement now is nice to me and enjoyable. BT movement is horrible in my opinion. I know my concerns won't be heard because there are a lot of players (a lot of ns1 vets too) who are saying "BT movement is so good!". I've played BT, I've put input into it but I can not enjoy it with that movement. I think vanilla isn't broken or bugged but indeed very fun. I think the only "balance" needed to done is tech routes, celerity and regen in combat, and fade egg increased cost. These don't change the game drastically into effectively a new one and they do make other routes viable and also cause balance.
And this is where you lost the last 2kish people waiting round on shit that never happened while Sewlek, however useful the testing, held back any real change being implemented in the last few months and will shatter off a very real percentage of whatever 2k concurrent casual players are left by switching 70-80% of what they know around on them.
Things like repair/cavern hive starts on mein shaft and locker room spawns vs anything on Docking have been taking their toll out on the player base, the ever persistent invincible structures, reloading bug, weapon jamming in this patch happens in every single marine round I've played, can't wait for armouries to not heal armour... I get a literal semi every time I think about the amazing team work possibilities I'll have with that one, it's not enough that every marine round that has exos out there is someone complaining that no one is welding, now I won't have to wait for the joyous entrance of exos for this wondrous possibility.
I'm not being tedious though. I'm just disagreeing that NS2 is losing players because there is an uncertainty about future changes. I also feel that there's already enough information out there about the bt mod and it's goal. It's been discussed plenty. For specifics, just read the changelog of the balance test, you immediately see what might get changed. What more do you want?
frankly, perhaps UWE should have finished 'shaping NS2' before releasing it? this seems to be the issue at the heart of all NS2's problems - content, performance, polish etc, content being the least of them - which makes this strategy to 'save' ns2 with content all the more nonsensical. whats more, vanilla ns2 itself isnt perfectly 'balanced' despite its relative simplicity so the notion that adding layers of complexity will somehow yield 'balance' seems absurd to me - if anything the opposite is more likely to happen leading to endless tweaking and follow up changes to 'fix' these issues. realising all this, i can easily see why people would hesitate to commit to playing BT when its done. im sorry to say this, but UWE's track record is not particularly good and the approach taken with the conception, testing and community communication about BT does absolutely nothing to dispel the perception of amateurism at UWE.
You are trying to link a decline in players to a lack of patches, but you are neglecting that a decline in player count is the normal flow of a game after it's release and which only gets a shorttimed boost through massive updates. There are some games that manage to keep a high steady player count such as TF2, but you can't really compare a F2P game with a low skill floor from a AAA studio that can afford to shell out massive updates and cross-promotions with other titles on a monthly base to a small indie team.
Small patches wouldn't have the same effect on the player count as massive content updates that get them a lot more attention from gaming news sites and promotional opportunities on Steam.
I'm sorry, I don't want to be the ass here but this point of "diminishing playercounts are absolutely normal" is so bad it really hurts me physically.
Today on a saturday evening NS2 is not even in the Steam Top 100 which bottoms at 1260 concurrent players. at 12 pm todayI literally counted ALL people on ALL EU servers. There were about 140.
Of course... "Steam top 100 ... all the AAA games... no proper comparison to a indie game like NS2.... also NS2 is quite old...."
let me name some top 100 games (concurrent players):
Little Inferno(1259)
Warhammer DoW II (1306)
Half Life 2 (1369)
Rome: Total War (1447)
X3: Albion (1452)
ORION: Dino Horde (1581)
FTL (3605)
Chivalry (3799)
Payday (3867)
Portal 2 (3634)
Fallout : NW (5335)
Arma 2 (6370)
These are all old games[some are very old], many by small/indie developers, some even SINGLEPLAYER and some like X3 and Arma certainly considerably more off the "standard games" than NS2. I even bet some of them sold less copies than NS2(144k in first week). Still they have more players than NS2.
Of course any game looses players over time but to say that the fact that people are leaving the game is in no direct correlation to state of the game and especially balance/performance/casual-appeal is -I'm sorry- stupid and imho one of the reasons nothing about this has changed over the last months.
If there is a problem -which there certainly is- you have to
a) acknowledge the problem
b) find and face the source of the problem
c) fix it
so far a) and b) were nearly completely neglected and as a result there was random content released that aimed to do c) which sadly is not possible withput a) and b) and therefore failed.(I bet not a single person left NS2 because he/her missed goge tunnels or railgun exos)
And for your last statement: The thing that has the most positive impact on playerbase is good gameplay. Nobody gives a shit about shiny content if the gameplay is broken and nobody leaves for a lack of it if gameplay is good.
Counter Strike hasn't had a real content upgrade since beta 5.2 or sth. and still people play it. (I do hate it personally but still I have to give respect to this fact)
So the best thing to do would have been balance and gameplay adjustments right after release when people actually cared.
I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, I had fairly real expectations, I think I got what I paid for.
I don't think you understand that with only ~900 people playing every day, a HUGE chunk of the daily players are competitive. For example, in just north america, there are 4 divisions with either 5 or 6 teams each, each team with a minimum of 6 players. That's ~20 teams with 120+ players on them. EU is even bigger. We're probably closer to 10% of the active community. 10% of <1000 is a pretty big deal.
You completely missed the point . The goal isn't to achieve the ultimate "competitive" shooter... The goal of most video game companies is to sell copies and have a large player base. My original point is , without casual players, who cares? Games are still fund driven.
This IS the problem. The game has become a niche` and not a wide target audience hit. Many will argue that "this is how ns has always been" - that's all well and good, when it's a free mod, but when your staking a companies future on it, not so much.
Also, there seemed to be a general lack of in-depth knowledge about the balance mod and its components from the panel and unsurprisingly most of the commentary and questions were based on factual errors or were of low level.
Thanks anyway to Sewlek.
While I do not like or agree with a lot of the changes in BT mod the game has stagnated in a flawed state for too long. BT mod represents the game returning to a state of evolution and with a culture of change and while a lot of things don't work, it is a step in the right direction for creating a better game.
this statement is not accurate. the fact that balance mod will replace vanilla in some form or another has not been communicated effectively to the public players. How are they to have a say when it hasn't been communicated loudly and clearly whats going to happen. This means that the suggestions and feedback you are getting are not demographically representative of the entire game population. This is extremely clear when you look at the resultant gameplay. When is it going to be clearly communicated whats going to happen? there should have been some 'special announcement' or something like that now while they still have a chance to influence the design - theres no point making the announcement when the changes have more or less been finalised...
I'll probably get r@ged at, but meh everyone I've spoken to pretty much thinks the same.
Wasabi
Wasabi, I'm assuming it was you that organised this panel so thank you. Organisation/logistics is an underappreciated skill and creating content is always wanted and appreciated. I also appreciate the long and exhaustive explanation of the new alien commander, great work!
Good
- Powerpoint display showing current changes
Bad
My complaint revolving this apparant 'expert panel' was the following:
Hosts:
It was entirely evident to anyone with experience playing the balance mod that Bitey, Virsoul and Reddog simply do not even play the mod. If they do play the mod, they have an extremely limited knowledge of it and simply do not represent the 'expert' panel that a 'state of the game' should host. Infact, Wasabi you showcased the most experience/knowledge of the mod and you are not even a competitive player, so congrats.
Sewlek's - When is it his turn to speak?
The entire panel/discussion was dominated by the hosts and not the man everyone wanted to hear - sewlek.
Things that made me rage...
Armoury Healing armour
Virsoul - There was an entire thread dedicated to this topic. A SOTG panel is not your personal time to grab the attention of Sewlek to put forward your point of view.
Reddog - Requesting an upgrade for marines to self-repair armour
If you played the mod, and not just the 1 hour before the SOTG panel you would know that this was previously tested.
Skulk Movement
General: Why not showcase the new skulk/fade movement with a video. It is terribly complicated to explain to people what it looks/feels like with words. As one of the most controversional topics, this had basically no real discussion which I don't understand.
Bitey - Seems perfectly fine with the NS2 Live skulk movement when it is fucking terrible. Complaining that the skulk bhop is not an actual bhop... when its not meant to be on purpose. Basically having no clue on BT skulk movement mechanics and spouting off rubbish about it. Really disappointing tbh, I expected more from a competitive player in NXZL's A team. This REALLY showcased the fact that he has not played the mod...
Sewlek who held is tounge through your counter strike weapon requests even had to stop you on this one saying you were incorrect.
No discussion revolving around the efforts made to make skulk movement more accessible to new players. Queue'd jumping + a easier implementation of pseudo-bhop (forward+jump).
FYI, you still gain speed walljumping like you do in live. The only difference is you keep your momentum/speed and have to hold forward+jump when you hit the ground. Watch my video here if required: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/130461/bt-mod-skulk-movement-video
Weapon Spread
Bitey - Pistol Spread
No... this does not exist. WTF!!!
Bitey - LMG Cone variance
No... this is not counter strike. We do not want the gun to be more accurate for the first couple of bullets WTF!!!!
Fade Movement
No discussion on this? Mentioning it in the patch notes does not really count. I can only assume this was not discussed as the panel hasn't played fade in BT mod to even comment on it.
Jetpack
No discussion on this topic? Quite a large change considering they go from having no movement capabilities to being able to race a lerk in terms of speed.
Summary
As a player who has played nearly every single iteration of balance mod, tests all the movement changes each time an update occurs and follows this mod very closely the only NEW and useful information attained from 60 minutes of video is the following:
- Cory/Sewlek had a discussion about the possible implementation of Balance mod into live with two paths... Either splitting its implementation into one big patch or lots of small patches. Sewlek commented that he wants ONE BIG BANG!
- Hint at possible announcement regarding performance in 1-2 weeks, most likely luAJIT.
Unfortunately the hosts had only a basic level of knowledge, dominated the conversation, made absolutely terrible and wild suggestions with no thought behind them and the man everyone wanted to hear barely spoke.
PS: Thanks Sewlek, your hardwork is appreciated.
Wasabi, maybe get some Europeans next time. Blind, Fana, b1 would be my number 1 choice
It is not a waste of time when I, as a competitive player, am scared for the game I spend time on to compete against others for fun. These are legitimate concerns regarding player count. I don't understand how these arguments affect you as a public player anyway. There's an argument that says people don't know whats best for them (Democracy often is described as having this as a side effect by using politicians to represent people) and that public players just don't understand the best and most effective techniques to win the game. Whilst competitive players have actually understood tactics and strategies to best utilise the tools in the game to win.
You've literally just blundered into this thread to stomp down on competitive players and their views because you might feel like you're viewed as a "puny casual". You're not contributing to discussion. I'd compare you to an extreme feminist.
Added in Torchlight II and Don't Starve as I feel their comparable to the NS2/UWE for this situation. I'd also count only 4 games from that list as from an Indie Studio (Little Inferno, Orion: Dino Horde, FTL, and Chivalry). Data from here: http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=219640q212680q219740q200710&from=1346482800000&to=1370070000000
There seems to be two forms to game playercounts:
- Spike with diminishing returns (Torchlight II/FTL)
- Slow buildup but low peaks (Chivalry/Don't Starve)
Currently, NS2 is following the spike-like playercount mechanism, usually a result of release-day hype/advertisement. The slow buildup mechanism is interesting, but seems to require regular updates with new features (Don't Starve has an ETA to the next update on their splash screen and all their updates include new content).
This is a common problem amongst people in controversial discussions. People who say "I'll probably get raged at, but everyone I've spoken to pretty much thinks the same". You've said you recognise that people WON'T agree with you but then you say that everyone you've spoken to thinks the same! This shows that you identify people who agree with you and dismiss people who don't and that is a big problem when _discussing_ things. It shows you're closed minded and I implore you to try and be more open to discuss this properly to get positive results.
Live skulk movement is nice and precise. BT movement is, like bitey said, like walking on ice. It seems to me that having more control increases the skill ceiling and decreasing control just lowers the skill floor.
I think this is also another concept people don't consider. That there is a difference between being able to be really good at controlling something and be skillful, and making the initial starting point harder to control.
Except it isn't.
There is room to be precise. If you've played against against king_yo or Alcalde for example on the BT server you would see that.
For the first few hours I felt the same. The movement in BT punishes you for the lazy live dodging we have now. If you attempt it in BT in the same way as you would in vanilla you will lose your momentum. Once you practice with it and understand how the momentum gain works it's still very viable to try and out dodge the marines aim with walls in favorable areas.
The butt hurt in your post ..... WTF are you even talking about..
You act like I came in to bash on competition players... I simply stated a game can't survive playing favorites to the minority. Casual players ARE the player base of any game, simply put, they are required to sustain the game. Put your big girl panties on and realize that it isn't all about YOU, but rather the community as a whole.