Lack of fixed player servers undermines NS2 both: as a team game; as entertaining a metagame

ArmouredGRIFFON

At the moment it never feels like NS2 has a strong sense of 'metagame'. Right now we have a general idea of what to do within games, and to some complexity yes. However NS2 has a very vague if not no metagame therein: a sense in which the players operate beyond the rule-set of the game itself. If I am not mistaken this may be due to the fact that there are no dedicated servers positing a minimum or maximum number of players to start the game. For example in Counter-Strike the meta-game changes dependent on how players take a general consensus of the best strategy in situation 'x'. But that strategy is employed in relation to the number of players in a given area.

The issue is with NS2 is that the quantification of players seems so vague that there is no real room to develop strategies thereto in that department. I don't understand how this game can be competitive as a 'team-game' in a robust sense if it is true that the team cannot create more than 'general strategies' which can be reliably deployed each game due to the variation of the number of players within any given game those teams may join.

This makes it very difficult to play with your friends. Whilst it may have been true in the good old days of FPS that playing with your friends meant playing over LAN .etc. now playing with your friends tends to refer to the internet domain. A team of friends, therein, are likely to struggle to deploy their strategy to any recursive effect given that there are an invariable number of players in the game, except for the run of the mill 'rush area 'y' for it is weak'. That is, unless you fix the number of players within games, then playing with friends on public servers will continue to remain undermined. This can be remedied by introducing a party system which will necessitate a matchmaking criterion to pit players against each other lest super duper l33t players are pitted against new players.

As a game which almost only can be played in working as a team this is extremely problematic. How can NS2 hope to succeed as a serious development if the very philosophy (being a team-game) is completely undermined by nature of it's design?! The idea is absurd!

#ForNS3

Kaneh

I like big words.

squad tactics are effective in any size pub if you actually have strat/tactics.

Nominous

There are a lot of choices you can make during a game and they become apparent as you develop game sense. Logistics is important, so pull up your mini-map frequently. For example, lets say it's mid-game and a fade starts attacking your teammates in room X. You become aware of this since you saw the fade on your mini-map or someone calls it out quickly. Rooms adjacent to X are Y and Z. You're close to room Z and you have a shotgun, so you go there instead of being oblivious to this threat (which can snowball if it's a decent fade). The fade's lit and it happens to take room Z as its escape route. You happen to finish it off.

Here are some other examples:

It's early game and the opposing marines are starting to cap many RTs. Your teammates throw themselves at a group of armory-supported rines at some chokepoint, but you decide to go past the frontlines and nom on some RTs. Your team eventually pushes the rines back and you make a dent in their economy, somewhat balancing the game momentum.

It's mid-game and aliens are about to overwhelm your second base. Comm screams at your team to reinforce. Marines start throwing themselves at pgs or sprinting like madmen. You and your friends are somewhat close to the enemy base. You throw the plan out the window and start shotgunning the hive. Aliens back off because of the threat and you and your friends die, but you manage to salvage your base.

RedSword

Just the "what needs to be done" for new people (and even old player, sometimes) is hard to know, be it few or a lot of players. New player needs incentive for harassing RT beside having an annoying comm telling them to do so and the score points.

As of how to do it, eh....

(Damn rereading my post im slightly off-thread; but slightly only =3)