Back in the "old" days, getting a new game was also much more of an investment time and money wise, so I for instance made sure I milked every penny's worth out of every game I ever bought back then. I remember barely getting Tribes 2 to work on my ancient system, and getting slaughtered on every server I joined, but I spent a lot of money on this game damnit, so I kept playing until I got better even if performance was horrible all the while.
Today however, there's an over abundancy of games which are easily available through online distribution platforms, being in sales all the time, or just being F2P. If the first few hours of playing a game is not to their liking, it's easy for people to get discouraged and just try out something else that's readily available anyway.
Unfortunately for NS2, it's a very hard game to get into, and especially overwhelming now that the remaining core playerbase has a fairly high skill level on average. Adding more in depth tutorials, or even full fledged SP missions won't change much imo.
Best bet has always been matchmaking, so people can gradually learn and improve in a slightly more forgiving surrounding, but for that to work you need a sizeable playerbase to begin with. Maybe if NS2 ever goes F2P...
That's why I said you need ppl "on the ground"... in the game actively helping and explaining. This is the way to go... YouTube Videos are for attention and fun. not for getting in the game. That's why vets are needed on rookie servers. and that's why exploiters (rookie stomper) need to be banned from life, for life ^^ harsh but true. we lose one asshole in the community and 20 stay, that would have fleft for good. fine trade off in my oppinion
If you decapitate a thief 8 more quit stealing imediately
Like I said earlier.. it's the YEAR of asymetric multiplayer... Casual shiz... there ARE ppl who would kill for the challenge, the just don't KNOW about NS2... YouTube would change that. no tut vids. REALY funny rounds with crazy ppl that have nice personalitys. Or even some preGame madness.
This only helps to keep players. We are way past that point. We either need players back or get new ones. And that's incredibly harder to do.
But none of these easy to get games has sooo much to it like NS2 does. That's why I said earlier we need to communicate it better. Ppl can't like what they are not aware of.
@F0rdPrefect yeah, sure it keeps em. They do not deinstall imediately. New ones via YouTube, old ones via Group events. way to go. I don't think either of us can afford TV commercials. That would be UWEs part anyway.
BeigeAlertTexasJoin Date: 2013-08-08Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
It's so discouraging to see how pessimistic this community has become. Why is it too late to save this game? Yea it's old, but it looks just as good or better than most games out there. And I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would love this game, just haven't bothered to check it out yet, and just *one* more sale is all it's going to take to get them to pay this game a visit. What are they going to find when they do?
You guys might be fine just sitting around while this game dies, but I'm not.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
@BeigeAlert - You are acting almost like this is the first game you have loved that has died due to a lack of players. It is something you get used to.. NS1 died, and many others have before that, it is what happens. By all means try and do something to increase the playerbase, but NS2 is old news now. Without somekind of massive re-invention it just won't achieve the results you are looking for.
@Soul_Rider That's what BeigeAlert meant with beeing pessimistic. Don't like the game anymore, fine.. keep it to your self, pls. Thx very much. Ppl still play Star Craft Brood War, cuz it's a sport. Or Street Fighter (even older). Hell they play football and this was old news befor there where news
@BeigeAlert - You are acting almost like this is the first game you have loved that has died due to a lack of players. It is something you get used to.. NS1 died, and many others have before that, it is what happens. By all means try and do something to increase the playerbase, but NS2 is old news now. Without somekind of massive re-invention it just won't achieve the results you are looking for.
It's not. I used to make maps for Starcraft Brood War, and that's dead now too... but that game lasted at least a DECADE, this game has lasted about 2 years so far. As I understand, NS1 lasted much longer as well... right? (I wasn't around for NS1... )
Brood war is still the shiz in Korea... and it's only not THAT populat anymore, cuz' there is SC2.. It's THE SAME GAME. With uped graphics and refined gameplay... When UWEs has recovered from Subnautica we'll have NS3 6-8 Years from now. Will be the same deal like with SC. If they are still sane.
BeigeAlertTexasJoin Date: 2013-08-08Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
edited August 2014
Well Starcraft is a bit of an anomaly... I mean... yea it'd be great if there was some country out there that had adopted NS2 as a huge part of their culture... but there isn't. Gorgistan they'd call it.
Well... that's our fault. We havent done the massive productions jet. also it's easier to set up a 1v1 than a 6v6 with specs... but ultimateley more interesting when handled correctly. I'd like to watch NS2 in a good production in my favorite bar. Am i alone?! I think it's far better than cartoons rainbow flashin away thier HP bars till I get a seizure (LoL, Dota)... and THAT IS on TV
But none of these easy to get games has sooo much to it like NS2 does. That's why I said earlier we need to communicate it better. Ppl can't like what they are not aware of.
@F0rdPrefect yeah, sure it keeps em. They do not deinstall imediately. New ones via YouTube, old ones via Group events. way to go. I don't think either of us can afford TV commercials. That would be UWEs part anyway.
The media attention a game gets (and the attention the media is willing to give to a game) exponentially rises from it's first announcement until it peaks at release. Then it quickly goes down and fades away over time. This can be prolonged with releasing DLCs etc, but it always goes down. You only have one chance, and this chance is, sadly, over.
Personally, I don't know any game that "came back".
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
@Hellrunner2k - What gives you the idea that I don't like the game anymore? I will continue to play the game until there is no-one for me to play with when I log on, however, I am still not so blinded that I refuse to look at the reality of the situation.
Unless something massively changes, the game is going to die out, and hence is the reason for the @BeigeAlert post.
You quoted some of the sub 1% of games that lasted for a long period of time. Picking out the anomalies to prove a point is ridiculous when 99% of games have a player lifespan of upto 18months. NS2 has already been a long standing game, some of us have been playing it for 4 years.
However, without something drastic, NS2 will peter out and die. There is nothing wrong with that, it is the way of games.
As a question, how many games do you play seriously at any 1 time? For me it's never more than 2 or 3 at a time. With the number of games that come out, it stands to reason that people are going to eventually rotate all 3 of their favourite games to new games over a period of time. Change is inevitable, and important. If NS2 didn't dry out, why would NS3 ever get made? Why would anyone bother writing new computer games, if everyone stayed playing an old game for the rest of their life.
Or is it you feel it is too soon for NS2 to die? In which case, how long should NS2 live for, 8 years? How are you going to get all the people who have stopped playing NS2 to come back because they haven't spent the magic 8 years playing NS2?
Look, life is life, I understand you don't want NS2 to die, but unless you can come up with some amazing technique people will move on to the next big thing, and if there was one, don't you think every game in the world would have implemented it to keep their player base alive?
Best bet has always been matchmaking, so people can gradually learn and improve in a slightly more forgiving surrounding, but for that to work you need a sizeable playerbase to begin with. Maybe if NS2 ever goes F2P...
Well just herding the rookies into rookie ONLY servers would go a long way to ensuring a stomp free and casual learning experience.
Bots could be improved a bit more so that they can command adequately, ensuring rookies just learn how to play the basics on these servers without needing a commander.
Best bet has always been matchmaking, so people can gradually learn and improve in a slightly more forgiving surrounding, but for that to work you need a sizeable playerbase to begin with. Maybe if NS2 ever goes F2P...
Well just herding the rookies into rookie ONLY servers would go a long way to ensuring a stomp free and casual learning experience.
Bots could be improved a bit more so that they can command adequately, ensuring rookies just learn how to play the basics on these servers without needing a commander.
I don't like the idea of rookie ONLY. That's the blind leading the blind right there. We need to devise a way of letting experienced players teach, without stomping. Maybe "rookie ONLY" means that experienced players that do join can only spec, BUT can chat with the players on the ground, help direct them. I wouldn't mind doing this every once in a while.
Although, the bot commander improvements does sound like a good idea though.
@ironhorse , that fact about super Mario brothers... hurt me inside.
Don't worry, the Super Mario Bros thing is not true. It's satire that was taken for a real article. However, there is no denying that games are getting easier.
Yea, as I read it later I realized it couldn't be true. Thanks for straightening me out lol and I agree with you on the dumbing down.
well .. I'll do my own thing then. the best protection against rookie stompers is my ban list. there are 8 boys and 6 girls on right now having a BLAST. Planing really funny stuff for the future and will sleep very well today The greenie in thier midst goes with the flow and askes shiz and is TOTALLY interested.. I wish I had that experience in my first 3 hours! He'll stay, THATS for sure.
Best bet has always been matchmaking, so people can gradually learn and improve in a slightly more forgiving surrounding, but for that to work you need a sizeable playerbase to begin with. Maybe if NS2 ever goes F2P...
Well just herding the rookies into rookie ONLY servers would go a long way to ensuring a stomp free and casual learning experience.
Bots could be improved a bit more so that they can command adequately, ensuring rookies just learn how to play the basics on these servers without needing a commander.
I don't like the idea of rookie ONLY. That's the blind leading the blind right there. We need to devise a way of letting experienced players teach, without stomping. Maybe "rookie ONLY" means that experienced players that do join can only spec, BUT can chat with the players on the ground, help direct them. I wouldn't mind doing this every once in a while.
Although, the bot commander improvements does sound like a good idea though.
We NEED rookie only so they can learn the absolute basics. Rookie tournament anyone? People can figure more out on their own than you'd think.
If you can somehow get people to grind through the first 50/100 hours of being a complete nub, this game is gold and a lot more people would play it. Unfortunately, this type of game doesn't appeal to the current generation of gamers. Trial by fire just doesn't seem to work anymore.
Beige, I like you, and I like your passion for this game. A tutorial system would be great. Different scenarios to teach people how to set up ambushes, or what targets to prioritize in a base rush would really give the game polish. Unfortunately, I can't imagine the investment would be worth educating the small trickle of new players coming in. I don't want to be a defeatist, but I am a realist.
I have come to terms with the fact that this is a niche game. It's not going to die; we are the community that will keep it alive. Even if the numbers dwindle, the people playing right now are invested (addicted?) enough to sustain a population big enough to fill more than a handful of servers on a Thursday night. I played this game with my friends daily when it first launched. They enjoyed it, but simply lost interest after a while. The investment argument is true. It's easy to acquire new games at cheap prices that are immediately more gratifying than NS2. This is a game for a certain type of person: one who enjoys atmosphere; one who enjoys teamwork; one who enjoys winning based on skill. The majority of modern gamers have been trained to feed off of XP bars, weapon drops, and microtransactions. There's something very different about games now and games ten or fifteen years ago: there's little learning to be had. I don't think it's UWE's fault it wasn't a blockbuster, it just wasn't the right time.
For every game I've stuck with for a long time, I always stayed because of the community. When I felt my interest in NS2 begin to wane, I started lurking here at the forums. It reminds you how much people care about the game, and that there really are people playing and enjoying it. I think we should make the forums more prominent in-game. Make big fat links and advertisements to get people to visit. Put a thread ticker on the loading screen. Let people poke around the boards while they're waiting for the map to load. I'm always surprised when I hear people say things like "did a patch come out recently?" because I knew about the upcoming patch months ago..
tl;dr: put more links to the forums in the game for tighter community
A singleplayer tutorial / campaign style would not just benefit the new players.
I don't want to sound like an elitist, but there are very few players with less than 1000 hours that actually understand some of the most basic things about the game. I'm not talking about how structures, weapons, abillities or mechanics work. But the real elemental stuff like route-blocking and just overall decision making.
You could make a tutorial that teaches these basic concepts through an interactive experience, by fixing a set of scenarios - rather than listening to some anoying narrator or reading a guide. -no offense to the hard work people have been doing in those areas.
A singleplayer tutorial / campaign style would not just benefit the new players.
I don't want to sound like an elitist, but there are very few players with less than 1000 hours that actually understand some of the most basic things about the game. I'm not talking about how structures, weapons, abillities or mechanics work. But the real elemental stuff like route-blocking and just overall decision making.
You could make a tutorial that teaches these basic concepts through an interactive experience, by fixing a set of scenarios - rather than listening to some anoying narrator or reading a guide. -no offense to the hard work people have been doing in those areas.
That's actually right on target for what I was going for: a bunch of small mini-scenarios that teach concepts by having the rookie play through them, rather than not listening to a video.
Comments
Today however, there's an over abundancy of games which are easily available through online distribution platforms, being in sales all the time, or just being F2P. If the first few hours of playing a game is not to their liking, it's easy for people to get discouraged and just try out something else that's readily available anyway.
Unfortunately for NS2, it's a very hard game to get into, and especially overwhelming now that the remaining core playerbase has a fairly high skill level on average. Adding more in depth tutorials, or even full fledged SP missions won't change much imo.
Best bet has always been matchmaking, so people can gradually learn and improve in a slightly more forgiving surrounding, but for that to work you need a sizeable playerbase to begin with. Maybe if NS2 ever goes F2P...
This only helps to keep players. We are way past that point. We either need players back or get new ones. And that's incredibly harder to do.
@F0rdPrefect yeah, sure it keeps em. They do not deinstall imediately. New ones via YouTube, old ones via Group events. way to go. I don't think either of us can afford TV commercials. That would be UWEs part anyway.
You guys might be fine just sitting around while this game dies, but I'm not.
It's not. I used to make maps for Starcraft Brood War, and that's dead now too... but that game lasted at least a DECADE, this game has lasted about 2 years so far. As I understand, NS1 lasted much longer as well... right? (I wasn't around for NS1...
The media attention a game gets (and the attention the media is willing to give to a game) exponentially rises from it's first announcement until it peaks at release. Then it quickly goes down and fades away over time. This can be prolonged with releasing DLCs etc, but it always goes down. You only have one chance, and this chance is, sadly, over.
Personally, I don't know any game that "came back".
Unless something massively changes, the game is going to die out, and hence is the reason for the @BeigeAlert post.
You quoted some of the sub 1% of games that lasted for a long period of time. Picking out the anomalies to prove a point is ridiculous when 99% of games have a player lifespan of upto 18months. NS2 has already been a long standing game, some of us have been playing it for 4 years.
However, without something drastic, NS2 will peter out and die. There is nothing wrong with that, it is the way of games.
As a question, how many games do you play seriously at any 1 time? For me it's never more than 2 or 3 at a time. With the number of games that come out, it stands to reason that people are going to eventually rotate all 3 of their favourite games to new games over a period of time. Change is inevitable, and important. If NS2 didn't dry out, why would NS3 ever get made? Why would anyone bother writing new computer games, if everyone stayed playing an old game for the rest of their life.
Or is it you feel it is too soon for NS2 to die? In which case, how long should NS2 live for, 8 years? How are you going to get all the people who have stopped playing NS2 to come back because they haven't spent the magic 8 years playing NS2?
Look, life is life, I understand you don't want NS2 to die, but unless you can come up with some amazing technique people will move on to the next big thing, and if there was one, don't you think every game in the world would have implemented it to keep their player base alive?
Bots could be improved a bit more so that they can command adequately, ensuring rookies just learn how to play the basics on these servers without needing a commander.
I don't like the idea of rookie ONLY. That's the blind leading the blind right there. We need to devise a way of letting experienced players teach, without stomping. Maybe "rookie ONLY" means that experienced players that do join can only spec, BUT can chat with the players on the ground, help direct them. I wouldn't mind doing this every once in a while.
Although, the bot commander improvements does sound like a good idea though.
But Rookie FRIENDLY is just broken and always has been.
But you can't stomp if you can only spectate.
Yea, as I read it later I realized it couldn't be true. Thanks for straightening me out lol and I agree with you on the dumbing down.
We NEED rookie only so they can learn the absolute basics. Rookie tournament anyone? People can figure more out on their own than you'd think.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/131437/rookie-tag-really-needs-to-be-reworked/p1
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/134764/give-the-game-away-free-not-f2p/p1
BLARG! HOGWASH! I'll DIE before I see this game in the hands of the pleb empire!
You might want to check the steam charts for RO2 now and see for yourself just how much retention that had.
From 1845 to 16311 back down to 1712.
CS:GO
I don't know much about CS:GO. Did they fix something they massively screwed up before? If yes, it's somehow only a half-truth
But otherwise: Okay.
They do have a bigger marketing budget, though.
I have come to terms with the fact that this is a niche game. It's not going to die; we are the community that will keep it alive. Even if the numbers dwindle, the people playing right now are invested (addicted?) enough to sustain a population big enough to fill more than a handful of servers on a Thursday night. I played this game with my friends daily when it first launched. They enjoyed it, but simply lost interest after a while. The investment argument is true. It's easy to acquire new games at cheap prices that are immediately more gratifying than NS2. This is a game for a certain type of person: one who enjoys atmosphere; one who enjoys teamwork; one who enjoys winning based on skill. The majority of modern gamers have been trained to feed off of XP bars, weapon drops, and microtransactions. There's something very different about games now and games ten or fifteen years ago: there's little learning to be had. I don't think it's UWE's fault it wasn't a blockbuster, it just wasn't the right time.
For every game I've stuck with for a long time, I always stayed because of the community. When I felt my interest in NS2 begin to wane, I started lurking here at the forums. It reminds you how much people care about the game, and that there really are people playing and enjoying it. I think we should make the forums more prominent in-game. Make big fat links and advertisements to get people to visit. Put a thread ticker on the loading screen. Let people poke around the boards while they're waiting for the map to load. I'm always surprised when I hear people say things like "did a patch come out recently?" because I knew about the upcoming patch months ago..
tl;dr: put more links to the forums in the game for tighter community
I don't want to sound like an elitist, but there are very few players with less than 1000 hours that actually understand some of the most basic things about the game. I'm not talking about how structures, weapons, abillities or mechanics work. But the real elemental stuff like route-blocking and just overall decision making.
You could make a tutorial that teaches these basic concepts through an interactive experience, by fixing a set of scenarios - rather than listening to some anoying narrator or reading a guide. -no offense to the hard work people have been doing in those areas.
That's actually right on target for what I was going for: a bunch of small mini-scenarios that teach concepts by having the rookie play through them, rather than not listening to a video.