Skyice, some people have ambitions when it comes to competition.
Some people want to train and try and break into that top 4 for the chance to go to Cologne.
Some people (most) don't want to. (Casual:Competitive ratio and even some players in the competitive scene themselves just play for organised fun show this)
Hugh said in the State of The Game that UWE does see spikes in revenue after events and free weekends. It seems very ignorant of you to state that they won't see a return.
Just because the announcement was the other day doesn't mean the tournament is tomorrow. I can't remember when it is but I'm sure it's a 2-3 months away which is great in your eyes, no?
It really angers me that people aren't seeing this for what it is. It's an opportunity; it's not a demand! Frankly, it also angers me that you think the "whole feeling in the competitive community is very negative" towards this. You think you represent me? Sorry, no. Attitudes and arguments like this bundling people together into "competitive" and "casual" communities is what causes frictions in the game as proven by the response to this announcement.
If $30,000 are raised by the community, let there be a tournament. If it only benefits the 36 top players I can't imagine them forking out ~$800 each. But say 6000 people donate $5 each, then that's 6000 people who want to see the tournament and benefit from it being put on! $30,000 is a respectable threshold and contribution from the community to hold such an event and I presume UWE's involvement isn't anything more than that, but if it is, so be it; it's another opportunity for them to advertise their game.
If the target is not met, there is no loss.
If the target is met, there is gain to those who care.
I'm not in the top 4 teams but the whole event would be very entertaining in my eyes and so I'm going to donate and in fact I'm probably going to donate more than I would have to show my support. I understand a lot of people are not interested in trying to compete or even watch the event and they don't have to donate, but to bang on about it is ridiculous, insulting to Wasabi, Zefram, Reddog, and UWE, and childish.
yeah sure, we all have ambition to succeed -my commander is the best in the eu(<-- jokes) and we are still struggling in div 2. We train hard and try hard but this doesnt mean that there is any potential for us to be flown to Germany.
But lets stop wasting breath. We all have enormous love for NS2 and instead of arguing we need to work together to try and save it.
Lets be honest, UWE HAVE dropped the ball. NS2 is on the edge and will topple over in the coming weeks if nothing is done.
Sure it might drag its feet with a 400 player base for another year, but fuck, NS is an AMAZING concept and a brilliant game and im just so pissed with the same old closed minded competitive league and developers not bringing results.
The world championship IS a failure, just look at the current funding - a mear 4% after 48 hours. The community wasnt ready for this at this time and it proves that UWE and the shoutcasters have no insight to the community by hyping it to the general public, mostly of whom dont give a damn about competitive at a prem level.
If they would have offered to fly out 2 brand new, never played competitive league(s) before teams or something than maybe it would have caught more peoples attention. Some thing different, dynamic, innovative. But no, welcome to NS2 2012-2013(?) RIP
AiorosJoin Date: 2003-03-24Member: 14850Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
The last Casts from Reddog on the frontpage had shown how many people like watching ns2 comp games.
The sells are increasing which "hopefully" let new players stick with the game.
When this event is happening in 2014, we hopefully have that SABOT system. So all new players will join a diffrent game then we have now.
This will hopefully result in more players staying with ns2.
This event is one of the only ways to increase the ns2 community again and get some new blood into the community.
And the best think about the event?!
Hugh(UWE) is not casting or organising it! Reddog and Wasabione are.
So we dont see some silly facepainting or other useless crap, will see stuff like:
Reddog roundups
Highlights of the tournament to get to Köln.
Informations about the teams and backround informations
Fillers which dont make you close twitch
So this event will 2000% look more professional then we ever have seen before.
The only question you need to ask yourself is:
Is this Championship and the promotion for NS2 worth donating or not?
If they do it even slightly better then hugh and UWE, we will have a lot more people buying and playing the game.
So do you want new players to join NS2 and keep the game alive or not?
So do you want new players to join NS2 and keep the game alive or not?
Yes, of course we all do. We wouldnt be wasting our lifes on these fourms otherwise. I just feel that the 30/45k is better spent elsewhere.
So no, i wont be donating.
I hear you @TallHotBlonde. No game can live forever - And NS1 defied gravity for a very, very long time. Whether NS2 will do the same is an open question. You are right that the competitive community must be at the core - And that the division between 'competitive' and 'public' must be blurry, ill-defined and crossed by skill and commitment, not by clique and favour.
If that competitive community is to be at the core, then we as the game developer must strive to support it in two ways.
1. Make the game as good as possible. This is the most important objective: This is where 99% of Unknown World's resources go. This is where millions of dollars go. This is where Reinforcement Program funds go. This is where the vast majority of UWE's man hours go. This is where we hear and appreciate the forum arguments, the Facebook posts, the personal emails, the tweets and Steam messages go. The greatest weakness, matchmaking must be and will be addressed with Sabot/Hive.
2. Help the community grow its soul.
What?
It is nothing to be a cold, efficient, effective game - Not good enough to be content with tinkering with balance and improving performance over time. A thriving competitive community is full of stories - Human stories. Drama, personalities, teams forming and disbanding, tournaments gone wrong and antics on live streams. Comebacks and stomps, prizes and caster screw-ups. A thriving competitive community has a soul.
If a dedicated group of community members want to reach for the moon and nurture that soul, if they want to organise it, run it, form it - Then Unknown Worlds has an obligation - a duty - to help them. The resource commitment to us is so small in the grand scheme of this game's development. To say no would be the ultimate failure. We would continue step 1 but be found utterly wanting at step 2.
Now, we can all sit at our screens and play NS2 with ourselves and each other. Or we can strive for something more. We can strive for a scene at which we all have a chance to be a part of the human story. The Natural Selection 2 World Championship is a chance to step further towards a scene like that. It is not a perfect step - It is not a D2TI. But it is a step, and a damn ambitious one.
Doing that is - just as improvements to the game are - a way to make NS2's long term community thrive and live a long and exciting life.
I hear you @TallHotBlonde. No game can live forever - And NS1 defied gravity for a very, very long time.
Sure if you call a game "living" with only a few hundred people playing per day..... it's pretty much dead at that point. NS2 is already near that edge.
You are right that the competitive community must be at the core -
This is where you and UWE have been wrong.
By thinking of the competitive community as the core, you end up favoring and catering to them, this hurts your product in the end as you won't be able to attract and retain new players. Thus, the competitive community will slowly but surely die out. Sure you'll have a small group stick it out for awhile.
If that competitive community is to be at the core, then we as the game developer must strive to support it in two ways.
1. Make the game as good as possible.
See above.
Once again by thinking of the comp scene as the core, you "Make the game as good as possible" by making changes that favor the comp scene... which only hurts attraction and retention of new players.
This statement once again shows your favoritism towards the comp scene. Most players that come into this game just want to play a fun and balanced game, they don't care about the "soul".
If you want to continue to think of the competitive community as your core, then have fun with only a few hundred people playing per day. You certainly won't get more than that without thinking about the other side and it will only dwindle down until the comp scene is completely dead.
I've been around awhile and this isn't the first game I've seen this happen in.
Their entire business model is based on getting people to impulse buy the game, hence events like these.
If you look at everything that is going on from that viewpoint it starts to make sense. If they cared about retaining players we'd have seen some indication of that by now.
First make the game enjoyable for the rookies, then pull the marketing stunts, imo.
And how exactly do they do that? I'm little more than a rookie, with only 100 odd hours played (most of which have been spent in the training sim figuring out the game) and I've had a fantastic time playing so far.
Then again, I'm an old school gamer so I don't go into games expecting to be rewarded for pressing W to run forwards for the first time. Trust me, if Rookies want to get better at the game, there are many routes to achieve this (watching It'sSuperEffective's or Hugh's videos, messing around in the training sim, reading the forums and other websites etc).
You can only dumb games down so far before the players have to start making an effort. It works both ways.
If you want to continue to think of the competitive community as your core, then have fun with only a few hundred people playing per day. You certainly won't get more than that without thinking about the other side and it will only dwindle down until the comp scene is completely dead.
Look, it obvious that @hugh is passionate for the long term development/survivability of ns2 along side us, and i thank him for taking the time to read and reply to my fourm posts.
The competitive community will undoubtedly be at the core in one way or another eventually. That is how NS is meant to be played, organised 6v6 with each player having a specific role in the team. This is why i was so f***ing excited about sabot when i heard about it 6 months ago. It is probably the best thing to come to ns2 (as long as it works, well - which is of no easy feat).
This will make easier balance, better integration of public/competitiveness and still have the chaotic 18/24 man public servers where no one listens and does their own thing (if that's what your into)
'Competitive' is a strong word, yet natural selection is such a competitive game. Even normal "public" play is extremely 'competitive'.
Competitiveness and NS goes hand in hand at every skill level...
We just need the tools, development and community to make this feel right for everyone. Sabot is a bloody good start.
By thinking of the competitive community as the core, you end up favoring and catering to them, this hurts your product in the end as you won't be able to attract and retain new players. Thus, the competitive community will slowly but surely die out. Sure you'll have a small group stick it out for awhile.
Oh well you'd think they would of learned by now, there's no use trying to change their mind about ns2 as an esport at this point, if they rather have a hundred competitive players instead of thousands of normal gamers playing then they'll surely get their way.
Their entire business model is based on getting people to impulse buy the game, hence events like these.
If you look at everything that is going on from that viewpoint it starts to make sense. If they cared about retaining players we'd have seen some indication of that by now.
This statement once again shows your favoritism towards the comp scene. Most players that come into this game just want to play a fun and balanced game, they don't care about the "soul".
If you want to continue to think of the competitive community as your core, then have fun with only a few hundred people playing per day. You certainly won't get more than that without thinking about the other side and it will only dwindle down until the comp scene is completely dead.
I don't believe public works how you think it works. Balance is impossible, ns is a team game, general public integrates no teamwork IMO. 1 rookie on your team can lose you the game. Ns is competitive in every forum, thus the competitive scene even at the very lowest level is the core...
HAHA! That's awesome! I actually remember that game!
I used to play Battletank for hours tho. I look at it now and wonder why hahah
Damn this brings back good memories, out of curiosity how old are you? I'm going to be 28 by end of Oct.
also anyone remember the name of that game with two cowboys dueling?
This just in: Business invests in self in an attempt to grow. More at 12.
If only they knew how to invest in it correctly to make themselves grow.
No matter how much money UWE throws at the esports arena, it will not make NS2 grow. Thats already been proven by their past experience with hosting an NS2 final.
According Steam stats of concurrent players that play at any given time has remained relatively stable, with spikes during sales then slowly tapering back down to normal. This game is not dying.
@Ironhorse , yeah that was awhile ago, before I realized UWE was not going to make any of the changes necessary to make NS2 to grow, but instead just make their player base flatline.
If you look at some of my posts sometime after, I became increasingly critical of some of the changes UWE made to the game that only catered more to the veteran players or comp scene.
There is also a reason why I am so critical about this. The exact same thing happened in another game I used to enjoy playing. The player base slowly declined, the game had a high learning curve, the comp scene slowly dwindled, until finally the game died completely. I'm seeing the exact same thing happen here, only at an even faster rate.
I could give some merit to the division between the guys running NSL and UWE. One particular meeting for the NSL refs and casters, they were discussing problems with the way comp games were working out and they were trying to come up with solutions. The problem is this was right before the big balance changes. Perhaps feeding the people running things a bit more information in exchange for signing an NDA wouldn't be a bad idea for the comp scene.
This just in: Business invests in self in an attempt to grow. More at 12.
If only they knew how to invest in it correctly to make themselves grow.
No matter how much money UWE throws at the esports arena, it will not make NS2 grow. Thats already been proven by their past experience with hosting an NS2 final.
The player base and sales have surged for each event they have held. The ground level for the potential player population has grown obscenely. This as a business (key word here) is a GOOD THING. Haha business! There is a problem though, and it is one we can both agree on, retention. The biggest issues with the game have not necessarily been mechanics or balance, but quality of life improvements. These combined with a press event like a tourney can re-infuse the "dying population" as you put it and it should not be underestimated.
Things that have plagued retention:
1) Performance. The biggest reason games like LoL, WoW, and CS have retained such big audiences has been their ability the run on toasters. That's a huge amount of accessibility for a gaining an audience, and that is NS2's biggest failing. *
2) Complexity. No I am not saying the game is too complex, I am saying that the mechanics aren't something you can easily pick up in an instant even having played other FPS games. This isn't a LET'S DUMB THIS SHIT INTO THE GROUND statement, more of a need for tutorials and ways to teach the player. This has been vastly improved since release. Big kudos.
3) Organized play systems. SABOT. Now. It is hard to make the transition or consider making the switch over to comp play when it is vastly different mindset from public servers. It seems like an impassable mountain (it isn't) and some people feel they will never be as good as X player (hint: you can, just like any hobby or talent, it's a time investment to learn and improve).
* I also want to address the whole SPARK WAS A MISTAKE inevitable shitstorm. Despite it's obvious flaws with performance, we'd have a worse game overall if they had just stuck with a preexisting engine like source. The time to iterate in LUA is orders of magnitude faster than it would be in a compiled language. Imagine the gameplay mechanics from beta, and some of the seriously questionable design decisions. Now imagine them in the present. Would you still be here? I certainly wouldn't. I am more inclined to put up with meh performance than awful gameplay.
That said, I think the tournament is a good idea. This game still needs a lot of improvement, but it is in a much better place than it ever has been. The money from reinforced IS going to improving the game, nothing has been stated otherwise. This thread and the others that have spawned have caused me a headache and now I need an additional beer.
tl;dr Having a tournament can drive new sales, and catch the eye of former players to bring them back. If the community funds the community driven event, UWE would be stupid from a business standpoint to not throw some weight behind it.
Makes you wonder where the 30k UWE hopes to put up will come from... Oh wait all you reienforced donators just gave them a nice cash pool to dip into. Makes me glad I didn't give, I will always love NS as the potential is amazing. However I continue to grow more and more depressed as UWE ideals seem to change. Once upon a time UWE tried to push limits and try for the unattainable to make their dreams happen, now it seems that it's no longer the dream but the business. I guess this is the difference between a work of passion like NS1 and getting the job done like NS2
Ten months ago if you would have told me that NS2 was going to be in the state that it is in now I would have spit out my drink. It's simply amazing how far this game has fallen from greatness. At one point in time this game was my 2012 GOTY. It was also one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time, second only to The Specialists 2.1. Now NS2 sits in my Steam folder, moved off of my SSD, and more importantly: unplayed.
I don't know what happened. I really don't. One second I see this great game with some issues that could have been easily corrected. The next I see the aftermath of a train wreck. What happened?
I tried to give my input. I tried to say "hey, you guys really shouldn't do this." Yet my pleas and the pleas of many others who have since moved on fell on deaf ears.
I visit this forum every month with the futile hope that NS2 will be returned to greatness one day. Every time I visit I leave disappointed. It's a shame. It really is a shame.
You might find it harsh, but I somewhat hope the 30'000$ will not be raised in 30 days. And instead it will go into the Reinforced Programm. Hell if that tournament is beeing held, I wan't my Reinforced donation back. Don't tell me, that it's an entirely different fund pool: UWE is going to sponsor the other half needed, thats another 30'000$. Cash that has also been raised with the Reinforced Programm. I didn't donate for some tournament I'm completly NOT interested in. I donated because I wanted the game to be more enjoyable and I thought UWE need donation to keep the lights on in their studio.
Comments
yeah sure, we all have ambition to succeed -my commander is the best in the eu(<-- jokes) and we are still struggling in div 2. We train hard and try hard but this doesnt mean that there is any potential for us to be flown to Germany.
But lets stop wasting breath. We all have enormous love for NS2 and instead of arguing we need to work together to try and save it.
Lets be honest, UWE HAVE dropped the ball. NS2 is on the edge and will topple over in the coming weeks if nothing is done.
Sure it might drag its feet with a 400 player base for another year, but fuck, NS is an AMAZING concept and a brilliant game and im just so pissed with the same old closed minded competitive league and developers not bringing results.
The world championship IS a failure, just look at the current funding - a mear 4% after 48 hours. The community wasnt ready for this at this time and it proves that UWE and the shoutcasters have no insight to the community by hyping it to the general public, mostly of whom dont give a damn about competitive at a prem level.
If they would have offered to fly out 2 brand new, never played competitive league(s) before teams or something than maybe it would have caught more peoples attention. Some thing different, dynamic, innovative. But no, welcome to NS2 2012-2013(?) RIP
The sells are increasing which "hopefully" let new players stick with the game.
When this event is happening in 2014, we hopefully have that SABOT system. So all new players will join a diffrent game then we have now.
This will hopefully result in more players staying with ns2.
This event is one of the only ways to increase the ns2 community again and get some new blood into the community.
And the best think about the event?!
Hugh(UWE) is not casting or organising it! Reddog and Wasabione are.
So we dont see some silly facepainting or other useless crap, will see stuff like:
- Reddog roundups
- Highlights of the tournament to get to Köln.
- Informations about the teams and backround informations
- Fillers which dont make you close twitch
So this event will 2000% look more professional then we ever have seen before.The only question you need to ask yourself is:
Is this Championship and the promotion for NS2 worth donating or not?
If they do it even slightly better then hugh and UWE, we will have a lot more people buying and playing the game.
So do you want new players to join NS2 and keep the game alive or not?
So no, i wont be donating.
I hear you @TallHotBlonde. No game can live forever - And NS1 defied gravity for a very, very long time. Whether NS2 will do the same is an open question. You are right that the competitive community must be at the core - And that the division between 'competitive' and 'public' must be blurry, ill-defined and crossed by skill and commitment, not by clique and favour.
If that competitive community is to be at the core, then we as the game developer must strive to support it in two ways.
1. Make the game as good as possible. This is the most important objective: This is where 99% of Unknown World's resources go. This is where millions of dollars go. This is where Reinforcement Program funds go. This is where the vast majority of UWE's man hours go. This is where we hear and appreciate the forum arguments, the Facebook posts, the personal emails, the tweets and Steam messages go. The greatest weakness, matchmaking must be and will be addressed with Sabot/Hive.
2. Help the community grow its soul.
What?
It is nothing to be a cold, efficient, effective game - Not good enough to be content with tinkering with balance and improving performance over time. A thriving competitive community is full of stories - Human stories. Drama, personalities, teams forming and disbanding, tournaments gone wrong and antics on live streams. Comebacks and stomps, prizes and caster screw-ups. A thriving competitive community has a soul.
If a dedicated group of community members want to reach for the moon and nurture that soul, if they want to organise it, run it, form it - Then Unknown Worlds has an obligation - a duty - to help them. The resource commitment to us is so small in the grand scheme of this game's development. To say no would be the ultimate failure. We would continue step 1 but be found utterly wanting at step 2.
Now, we can all sit at our screens and play NS2 with ourselves and each other. Or we can strive for something more. We can strive for a scene at which we all have a chance to be a part of the human story. The Natural Selection 2 World Championship is a chance to step further towards a scene like that. It is not a perfect step - It is not a D2TI. But it is a step, and a damn ambitious one.
Doing that is - just as improvements to the game are - a way to make NS2's long term community thrive and live a long and exciting life.
Sure if you call a game "living" with only a few hundred people playing per day..... it's pretty much dead at that point. NS2 is already near that edge.
This is where you and UWE have been wrong.
By thinking of the competitive community as the core, you end up favoring and catering to them, this hurts your product in the end as you won't be able to attract and retain new players. Thus, the competitive community will slowly but surely die out. Sure you'll have a small group stick it out for awhile.
See above.
Once again by thinking of the comp scene as the core, you "Make the game as good as possible" by making changes that favor the comp scene... which only hurts attraction and retention of new players.
This statement once again shows your favoritism towards the comp scene. Most players that come into this game just want to play a fun and balanced game, they don't care about the "soul".
If you want to continue to think of the competitive community as your core, then have fun with only a few hundred people playing per day. You certainly won't get more than that without thinking about the other side and it will only dwindle down until the comp scene is completely dead.
I've been around awhile and this isn't the first game I've seen this happen in.
edit: The conclusions Blarney_Stone brings up from his NS2 survey pretty much proves that what I am saying is true. http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2159428/#Comment_2159428
If you look at everything that is going on from that viewpoint it starts to make sense. If they cared about retaining players we'd have seen some indication of that by now.
And how exactly do they do that? I'm little more than a rookie, with only 100 odd hours played (most of which have been spent in the training sim figuring out the game) and I've had a fantastic time playing so far.
Then again, I'm an old school gamer so I don't go into games expecting to be rewarded for pressing W to run forwards for the first time. Trust me, if Rookies want to get better at the game, there are many routes to achieve this (watching It'sSuperEffective's or Hugh's videos, messing around in the training sim, reading the forums and other websites etc).
You can only dumb games down so far before the players have to start making an effort. It works both ways.
+1 billion; from one oldie to another...
Look, it obvious that @hugh is passionate for the long term development/survivability of ns2 along side us, and i thank him for taking the time to read and reply to my fourm posts.
The competitive community will undoubtedly be at the core in one way or another eventually. That is how NS is meant to be played, organised 6v6 with each player having a specific role in the team. This is why i was so f***ing excited about sabot when i heard about it 6 months ago. It is probably the best thing to come to ns2 (as long as it works, well - which is of no easy feat).
This will make easier balance, better integration of public/competitiveness and still have the chaotic 18/24 man public servers where no one listens and does their own thing (if that's what your into)
'Competitive' is a strong word, yet natural selection is such a competitive game. Even normal "public" play is extremely 'competitive'.
Competitiveness and NS goes hand in hand at every skill level...
We just need the tools, development and community to make this feel right for everyone. Sabot is a bloody good start.
Oh well you'd think they would of learned by now, there's no use trying to change their mind about ns2 as an esport at this point, if they rather have a hundred competitive players instead of thousands of normal gamers playing then they'll surely get their way.
Hmm this makes sense but is really sad if true.
I don't believe public works how you think it works. Balance is impossible, ns is a team game, general public integrates no teamwork IMO. 1 rookie on your team can lose you the game. Ns is competitive in every forum, thus the competitive scene even at the very lowest level is the core...
Thanks man. My first console was an Atari 2600 :P
And thanks for your Twitch show, really enjoy your streams mate
Mine too! I still have it actually! Battletanks FTW!
Old school twitch skills with a paddle controller
I used to play Battletank for hours tho. I look at it now and wonder why hahah
Damn this brings back good memories, out of curiosity how old are you? I'm going to be 28 by end of Oct.
also anyone remember the name of that game with two cowboys dueling?
Edit: Found it, its called outlaw
anyone?
31 here btw
This just in: Business invests in self in an attempt to grow. More at 12.
This guy gets it.
If only they knew how to invest in it correctly to make themselves grow.
No matter how much money UWE throws at the esports arena, it will not make NS2 grow. Thats already been proven by their past experience with hosting an NS2 final.
If you look at some of my posts sometime after, I became increasingly critical of some of the changes UWE made to the game that only catered more to the veteran players or comp scene.
There is also a reason why I am so critical about this. The exact same thing happened in another game I used to enjoy playing. The player base slowly declined, the game had a high learning curve, the comp scene slowly dwindled, until finally the game died completely. I'm seeing the exact same thing happen here, only at an even faster rate.
The player base and sales have surged for each event they have held. The ground level for the potential player population has grown obscenely. This as a business (key word here) is a GOOD THING. Haha business! There is a problem though, and it is one we can both agree on, retention. The biggest issues with the game have not necessarily been mechanics or balance, but quality of life improvements. These combined with a press event like a tourney can re-infuse the "dying population" as you put it and it should not be underestimated.
Things that have plagued retention:
1) Performance. The biggest reason games like LoL, WoW, and CS have retained such big audiences has been their ability the run on toasters. That's a huge amount of accessibility for a gaining an audience, and that is NS2's biggest failing. *
2) Complexity. No I am not saying the game is too complex, I am saying that the mechanics aren't something you can easily pick up in an instant even having played other FPS games. This isn't a LET'S DUMB THIS SHIT INTO THE GROUND statement, more of a need for tutorials and ways to teach the player. This has been vastly improved since release. Big kudos.
3) Organized play systems. SABOT. Now. It is hard to make the transition or consider making the switch over to comp play when it is vastly different mindset from public servers. It seems like an impassable mountain (it isn't) and some people feel they will never be as good as X player (hint: you can, just like any hobby or talent, it's a time investment to learn and improve).
* I also want to address the whole SPARK WAS A MISTAKE inevitable shitstorm. Despite it's obvious flaws with performance, we'd have a worse game overall if they had just stuck with a preexisting engine like source. The time to iterate in LUA is orders of magnitude faster than it would be in a compiled language. Imagine the gameplay mechanics from beta, and some of the seriously questionable design decisions. Now imagine them in the present. Would you still be here? I certainly wouldn't. I am more inclined to put up with meh performance than awful gameplay.
That said, I think the tournament is a good idea. This game still needs a lot of improvement, but it is in a much better place than it ever has been. The money from reinforced IS going to improving the game, nothing has been stated otherwise. This thread and the others that have spawned have caused me a headache and now I need an additional beer.
tl;dr Having a tournament can drive new sales, and catch the eye of former players to bring them back. If the community funds the community driven event, UWE would be stupid from a business standpoint to not throw some weight behind it.
I don't know what happened. I really don't. One second I see this great game with some issues that could have been easily corrected. The next I see the aftermath of a train wreck. What happened?
I tried to give my input. I tried to say "hey, you guys really shouldn't do this." Yet my pleas and the pleas of many others who have since moved on fell on deaf ears.
I visit this forum every month with the futile hope that NS2 will be returned to greatness one day. Every time I visit I leave disappointed. It's a shame. It really is a shame.
Yeah, I'm glad I didn't donate much now...