One more thing I'm kind of curious about. How did you guys prepare for launch from the server side of things. The video @MCMLXXXIV brough up shows that only seven test servers are currently up with three for Europe three for the US and one more for another region that may or may not be Australia.
The question being, did you reach out to some NS2 server operators to set something up for launch. Assuming you sell a few copies, three servers per region won't be enough (At least I hope it won't).
Let's talk about optimization now.
We all know Spark is demanding as an engine. Combat benefits from having many of the NS2 guts ripped out of it that weren't necessary to Combat's core. Things like infestation, or humongous maps with tons of props aren't issues for Combat. It performs well.
So, I've been lucky enough to play Combat as it is right now, and this has not been my experience so far. NS2:Combat has been performing worse than vanilla NS2 for me on equal settings (equal enough because no NS2+ in Combat). I'm not sure if this is the final build or if there is something wrong with my setup or whatever, but as it stands Combat has been performing worse for me on a pretty high spec machine. I will try and get some benchmarks done if that would be helpful information but it has been pretty hard to play in a full server in this period before launch.
I'm not trying to trash Combat at all, I just don't understand how it performs worse if infestation etc have been removed.
The second game mode is Capture Point. The mode functions similar to "King of The HIll", where players fight over control of specific areas on the map. This mode requires the same amount of teamwork, but mostly it requires good coordination and synergy with your team CP mode might be one of the most interesting modes one could ever play in an asymmetrical style.
Awesome. I've played it and I agree, however, I have no idea how I'm meant to choose to play capture point. The 'matchmaking' doesn't have any options that I can select to exclude maps or prefer game modes or even a lobby so I can invite my friends . As far as I can tell its the same quick join function that is in NS2, with an adjusted skill formula.
One more thing I'm kind of curious about. How did you guys prepare for launch from the server side of things. The video @MCMLXXXIV brough up shows that only seven test servers are currently up with three for Europe three for the US and one more for another region that may or may not be Australia.
The question being, did you reach out to some NS2 server operators to set something up for launch. Assuming you sell a few copies, three servers per region won't be enough (At least I hope it won't).
Currently, there aren't any Australian servers, and I haven't heard if there are going to be any officially, but that could just be a pre-release thing. Would be great to have answers on this as well.
Use the mailing list for server ops to contact the NS2 community operators: uwe-server-ops@googlegroups.com
And hurry.
There's bound to be some of them ready to at least help out with the initial demand.
One more thing I'm kind of curious about. How did you guys prepare for launch from the server side of things. The video @MCMLXXXIV brough up shows that only seven test servers are currently up with three for Europe three for the US and one more for another region that may or may not be Australia.
The question being, did you reach out to some NS2 server operators to set something up for launch. Assuming you sell a few copies, three servers per region won't be enough (At least I hope it won't).
There will be plenty of servers up for players at launch. Lots and lots of them. There's no point in us running 300 servers when there's only a fraction of players in comparison. We are/have been working with other server companies to allow ranked servers at launch as well. It will be up to the server companies to host ranked servers in specific locations other than the ones we provide.
Server performance is rocking on the latest build. Even our crappy build server hosted a game with lots of bots and human players and didn't even budge.
Wanted to point out something about specs. We're not going to lie when we reveal specifics for Combat. The "i series" processors are not new, they're over three years old, and the equivalent from AMD is just as good. This is our recommended spec for Combat. Something many developers forget to do is spend time testing on older machines and updating the specifics for the game as it's optimized for performance. We plan to do that.
best thing about that website for combat must be the color palette, if you look closely you can kinda see text when holding over the title :P I know you know what spoiler tags are by now rad...
One more thing I'm kind of curious about. How did you guys prepare for launch from the server side of things. The video @MCMLXXXIV brough up shows that only seven test servers are currently up with three for Europe three for the US and one more for another region that may or may not be Australia.
The question being, did you reach out to some NS2 server operators to set something up for launch. Assuming you sell a few copies, three servers per region won't be enough (At least I hope it won't).
There will be plenty of servers up for players at launch. Lots and lots of them. There's no point in us running 300 servers when there's only a fraction of players in comparison. We are/have been working with other server companies to allow ranked servers at launch as well. It will be up to the server companies to host ranked servers in specific locations other than the ones we provide.
The NS community has a long history of being worrywarts about the health of the game and its community. Take it easy guys, just have fun playing the game and if you like it tell your friends. Combat will have an active community for as long as people still enjoy playing it, as will NS2.
bonageJoin Date: 2012-10-13Member: 162230Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
@acid_rain - thank you for your detailed reply. It’s admirable to see you have invested a lot of time, passion, and money into the development of your game. I would like to offer some words of caution though.
When jumping into an established franchise, there will always be expectations about the product. Whether you’re indie or not, the product you put out will have to meet and rise above those expectations for it to be considered acceptable by an established, equally passionate community. On top of this, you have the additional challenge of trying to make something that will also appeal to those outside of the core community, and meet their expectations. This is not an easy task.
This is one of the reasons why I decided to make this thread. As good as aspirations of indie development are, sometimes there needs to be a reality check. The points and concerns I’ve raised are for the benefit of you and your studio moving forward, the greater community, as well as the NS franchise itself.
I guess one of the most disappointing aspects of reading all this is the lack of input from UWE as a publisher and custodian of NS2. I honestly thought you guys at FLG would be getting a bit more support from them in terms of website/forum hosting, and especially the marketing budget. After all, NS is still their franchise and I imagine they would want to present it in the best manner possible. Granted they are an indie studio with a limited budget as well, but it’s frustrating as a community member, player, and supporter of the franchise to see that perhaps there hasn’t been as much forethought and planning ahead of Combat’s release as there could have been.
The NS community has a long history of being worrywarts about the health of the game and its community. Take it easy guys, just have fun playing the game and if you like it tell your friends. Combat will have an active community for as long as people still enjoy playing it, as will NS2.
I think you're missing the point of my post Zek. It’s all well and good to say that we should be content with whoever is left playing NS in any capacity, but my one part of my job as a local community manager is not only to administrate but more importantly help GROW the number of people playing NS2. The longevity of the game is one of my biggest concerns. Let's look at the daily player average:
As you can see, we are down to pre-release numbers. Which brings me back to one of my original points – there is no mechanism to funnel players from combat into NS2, which means there is very little potential for direct growth for NS2 in terms of the number of people playing publicly and competitively. Also – one only has to look back at the original combat’s release for NS1 which drew players away from the core game, making it harder to populate servers, find games etc. In a larger community this wouldn't be an issue, but sadly we do not have the same player population as other games like csgo.
If you look at the scope of what the CDT are trying to achieve with NS2, you might forgive a few of them for wondering what’s the point of continuing with the work they’re doing if there’s going to be no one left to play the game in a few months.
Obviously at this point it’s too late for change and the wheels are in motion, so we’ll just have to wait and see how everything pans out. I wish all parties involved in both NS2 and Combat the best of luck.
My apologies on this short posting, however time is not on my side at the moment.
I'm the Community Manager / Director of Marketing and PR; recently hired by FaultLine Games.
I appreciate the comments, and agree that we need to bring down the walls and open this up to the public.
As such, I'm officially inviting you to bring your questions to our 96 hour MEGASTREAM starting Monday October 27th at 4pm EDT.
We invite you to see what is entailed in our fully polished NS2 : Combat as it's own standalone release.
On the twitch page, we are having scheduled times setup to discuss the different aspects of NS2 : Combat.
We will have an itinerary of topics to help you schedule your availability to align with the stream and our guest speakers.
As an added bonus, we are giving away unlocked copies of NS2 : Combat at a minimum rate of one every two hours.
We are not able to offer a pre-release, however what we will offer is the chance to purchase a badge just in time for Halloween.
These badges will be unlocked and we will do our best to have them implemented by release day. These badges will not be obtainable after release.
They will go on sale tomorrow night. All information will be posted to the twitch page.
We are also accepting donations to go towards fighting this devastating Ebola outbreak.
Thank you all in advance for your support, and we hope to see you online soon!
The NS community has a long history of being worrywarts about the health of the game and its community. Take it easy guys, just have fun playing the game and if you like it tell your friends. Combat will have an active community for as long as people still enjoy playing it, as will NS2.
I think you're missing the point of my post Zek. It’s all well and good to say that we should be content with whoever is left playing NS in any capacity, but my one part of my job as a local community manager is not only to administrate but more importantly help GROW the number of people playing NS2. The longevity of the game is one of my biggest concerns. Let's look at the daily player average:
As you can see, we are down to pre-release numbers. Which brings me back to one of my original points – there is no mechanism to funnel players from combat into NS2, which means there is very little potential for direct growth for NS2 in terms of the number of people playing publicly and competitively. Also – one only has to look back at the original combat’s release for NS1 which drew players away from the core game, making it harder to populate servers, find games etc. In a larger community this wouldn't be an issue, but sadly we do not have the same player population as other games like csgo.
If you look at the scope of what the CDT are trying to achieve with NS2, you might forgive a few of them for wondering what’s the point of continuing with the work they’re doing if there’s going to be no one left to play the game in a few months.
Obviously at this point it’s too late for change and the wheels are in motion, so we’ll just have to wait and see how everything pans out. I wish all parties involved in both NS2 and Combat the best of luck.
Well the tone of your posts is a little judgmental - everything costs money, and neither UWE nor FLG have a lot of it. To be honest most or your feedback boils down to either "spend more" or "do better", neither of which are very actionable. Everybody on an indie team is juggling their time between a dozen different things just to get the game out the door; it's fine to give feedback, but when they tell you "Yeah we know" you should take that for an answer.
The other night I played ns2:combat for the first time for 2 hours. I feel FLG has a winner on their hands. It plays like a very different game than ns2, but is similar enough for veteran ns2 players to feel at home. People have said ns2 is counter strike and starcraft mixed, I personally would say ns2: combat is like ns2 and tf2 mixed together. It is far improved off the combat mod too.
There are quite a few new upgrades that are new and interesting for a veteran ns2 player like myself to use. They are toys, very fun toys. There are at least a dozen tech paths you can choose for each team. One complaint I have heard before about ns2, is that you always feel weak. On both marines, and aliens once I got passed level 7-10 I feel OP. The other team is teched up about the same also yet I still feel OP. I am not saying the game is unbalanced, but is balanced in such a way that allows this. If you are worried about upgrades like hunger or nano armor, don't be because they don't show up till mid-late game by what I have seen.
Performance wise, I get about 30 fps more than I do in ns2 with an overclocked 3570k and nvidia 750ti.
I believe the big if when it comes to ns2: combat is sales. If rusty, gisp, and others of FLG can get the game to have half the sales of ns2 it won't have the same player retention problem. Gisp said he alone is putting in 10 hour days trying to get the word out, not counting everyone else. From my point of view things are looking good. Time will be the real judge though.
Well the tone of your posts is a little judgmental - everything costs money, and neither UWE nor FLG have a lot of it. To be honest most or your feedback boils down to either "spend more" or "do better", neither of which are very actionable. Everybody on an indie team is juggling their time between a dozen different things just to get the game out the door; it's fine to give feedback, but when they tell you "Yeah we know" you should take that for an answer.
The point of a discussion like this is that there are two or more sides that contribute to it. My feedback is pointing out areas which they need to improve upon - that's what feedback is. Future decisions are always shaped by feedback - whether it is positive, constructive, or negative.
As for my tone, all I am doing is expressing the opinions and concerns of those I represent in my local community in a civil manner. If that seems unreasonable to you then I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stop doing my job
Let's try not to call each other out and keep the discussion civil, all.
I wanted to point out a couple things super quickly. I feel like a jerk for posting so much text on my initial post and having people read that much really, really means a lot to me (and us at FLG).
I wanted to point out that we're not using funds as an excuse for lack of quality. We think the quality of Combat is absolutely fantastic! My intention on bringing up funds is not to tell people that you get what you get when there's no money involved, the intention is to remind the NS community that the game is being developed by a start-up game company. We know the quality isn't lacking, but the amount of extra fudge on the chocolate sundae is harder to achieve. In other words, we don't want you to expect things from us that we're not capable of doing, but we also hope you expect a good quality game, something I know for sure we've achieved. Faultline doesn't exist to create a boundary between NS2 and Combat, it exists solely for the purpose of creating Combat, extending the NS universe further than imagined and capturing players who would have otherwise never bothered with the NS universe. I'm so thankful that meaningful discussions like these can be brought to our attention in a mature manner, and it's specifically why I felt like it deemed an appropriate response to all the feedback. I hope that serves as a truth when I say we're listening to you. Our goal is to make Combat amazing, make it replayable again and again, and allow new faces to dive deep into the universe that NS offers.
Using any of the funds we earn from the game, our plans are to build a much more presentable website that encourages discussions just like these, new features in Combat that are unique not only to NS, but things that have not been seen or done before to allow a bright future for Combat and the NS universe.
I love every one of you to death. Sometimes people tend to forget that just because you turned into a game developer, you have feelings, a family and that you're still very much human. I absolutely appreciate that this community can stop and talk to us as humans who happen to also be developers of Combat. I never want that to stop, so I felt that approaching everyone not just as a figure for Faultline Games, but as a human being as well was and will always be the best way to talk to the community.
We truly do care about you all, and I don't think we'd be here if it weren't for the love shown for Combat and the NS universe. After all, it is you in which we place our faith in just as you do in us to create and share great memories in Combat. Having your support means everything to us.
As little explanations and documentation there is, at least easily accessable that is, regarding the new combat. It's a good thing you wrote as much, and tried to be as clear as you did, so don't worry about it.
I spent quite some time last night going through all available videos of the new game, and the only "reasonable" first person videos i found was the VOD's from FLG twitch channel to get even the slightest idea about the mechanics inside the game. There's so much vague all around descriptions, that only succeed in being an annoyance than a source for information.
I don't know about you, but when i need to resort to watching through videos and pausing them on the random occurance i see a tooltip, to see what the buildmenu actually has. It's pretty stupid.
Regardless of this annoyance, i will buy the game and play it. As it stands i have zero interest in NS2 public, and i hope this game fills the gap as the combat in NS1 did. I'll remain optimistic that since there is "some people" working on this game, that there is hope for it to not be a waste of time.
Since I started streaming NS2 on a fairly regular basis again, I'm making it a point to give you guys a little plug every time I play. My audience is tiny, but It'll hopefully get you a sale or two. Knowing more details about the game makes it a lot easier to talk about though.
I was just saying it shouldn't be an excuse at this point because I think people should have a better understanding of their funds. Not saying you guys dont. Just got tired of the development of ns2 being slowed or stopped because of cash issues.
Comments
The question being, did you reach out to some NS2 server operators to set something up for launch. Assuming you sell a few copies, three servers per region won't be enough (At least I hope it won't).
So, I've been lucky enough to play Combat as it is right now, and this has not been my experience so far. NS2:Combat has been performing worse than vanilla NS2 for me on equal settings (equal enough because no NS2+ in Combat). I'm not sure if this is the final build or if there is something wrong with my setup or whatever, but as it stands Combat has been performing worse for me on a pretty high spec machine. I will try and get some benchmarks done if that would be helpful information but it has been pretty hard to play in a full server in this period before launch.
I'm not trying to trash Combat at all, I just don't understand how it performs worse if infestation etc have been removed.
Awesome. I've played it and I agree, however, I have no idea how I'm meant to choose to play capture point. The 'matchmaking' doesn't have any options that I can select to exclude maps or prefer game modes or even a lobby so I can invite my friends
Currently, there aren't any Australian servers, and I haven't heard if there are going to be any officially, but that could just be a pre-release thing. Would be great to have answers on this as well.
And hurry.
There's bound to be some of them ready to at least help out with the initial demand.
We'll contribute with one server as well.
There will be plenty of servers up for players at launch. Lots and lots of them. There's no point in us running 300 servers when there's only a fraction of players in comparison. We are/have been working with other server companies to allow ranked servers at launch as well. It will be up to the server companies to host ranked servers in specific locations other than the ones we provide.
Server performance is rocking on the latest build. Even our crappy build server hosted a game with lots of bots and human players and didn't even budge.
Wanted to point out something about specs. We're not going to lie when we reveal specifics for Combat. The "i series" processors are not new, they're over three years old, and the equivalent from AMD is just as good. This is our recommended spec for Combat. Something many developers forget to do is spend time testing on older machines and updating the specifics for the game as it's optimized for performance. We plan to do that.
I know you know what spoiler tags are by now rad...
Good stuff. Looking forward to friday.
NS2 is a bit too awesome to be killed that easily.
When jumping into an established franchise, there will always be expectations about the product. Whether you’re indie or not, the product you put out will have to meet and rise above those expectations for it to be considered acceptable by an established, equally passionate community. On top of this, you have the additional challenge of trying to make something that will also appeal to those outside of the core community, and meet their expectations. This is not an easy task.
This is one of the reasons why I decided to make this thread. As good as aspirations of indie development are, sometimes there needs to be a reality check. The points and concerns I’ve raised are for the benefit of you and your studio moving forward, the greater community, as well as the NS franchise itself.
I guess one of the most disappointing aspects of reading all this is the lack of input from UWE as a publisher and custodian of NS2. I honestly thought you guys at FLG would be getting a bit more support from them in terms of website/forum hosting, and especially the marketing budget. After all, NS is still their franchise and I imagine they would want to present it in the best manner possible. Granted they are an indie studio with a limited budget as well, but it’s frustrating as a community member, player, and supporter of the franchise to see that perhaps there hasn’t been as much forethought and planning ahead of Combat’s release as there could have been.
I think you're missing the point of my post Zek. It’s all well and good to say that we should be content with whoever is left playing NS in any capacity, but my one part of my job as a local community manager is not only to administrate but more importantly help GROW the number of people playing NS2. The longevity of the game is one of my biggest concerns. Let's look at the daily player average:
As you can see, we are down to pre-release numbers. Which brings me back to one of my original points – there is no mechanism to funnel players from combat into NS2, which means there is very little potential for direct growth for NS2 in terms of the number of people playing publicly and competitively. Also – one only has to look back at the original combat’s release for NS1 which drew players away from the core game, making it harder to populate servers, find games etc. In a larger community this wouldn't be an issue, but sadly we do not have the same player population as other games like csgo.
If you look at the scope of what the CDT are trying to achieve with NS2, you might forgive a few of them for wondering what’s the point of continuing with the work they’re doing if there’s going to be no one left to play the game in a few months.
Obviously at this point it’s too late for change and the wheels are in motion, so we’ll just have to wait and see how everything pans out. I wish all parties involved in both NS2 and Combat the best of luck.
My apologies on this short posting, however time is not on my side at the moment.
I'm the Community Manager / Director of Marketing and PR; recently hired by FaultLine Games.
I appreciate the comments, and agree that we need to bring down the walls and open this up to the public.
As such, I'm officially inviting you to bring your questions to our 96 hour MEGASTREAM starting Monday October 27th at 4pm EDT.
We invite you to see what is entailed in our fully polished NS2 : Combat as it's own standalone release.
On the twitch page, we are having scheduled times setup to discuss the different aspects of NS2 : Combat.
We will have an itinerary of topics to help you schedule your availability to align with the stream and our guest speakers.
As an added bonus, we are giving away unlocked copies of NS2 : Combat at a minimum rate of one every two hours.
We are not able to offer a pre-release, however what we will offer is the chance to purchase a badge just in time for Halloween.
These badges will be unlocked and we will do our best to have them implemented by release day. These badges will not be obtainable after release.
They will go on sale tomorrow night. All information will be posted to the twitch page.
We are also accepting donations to go towards fighting this devastating Ebola outbreak.
Thank you all in advance for your support, and we hope to see you online soon!
~Rusty
Well the tone of your posts is a little judgmental - everything costs money, and neither UWE nor FLG have a lot of it. To be honest most or your feedback boils down to either "spend more" or "do better", neither of which are very actionable. Everybody on an indie team is juggling their time between a dozen different things just to get the game out the door; it's fine to give feedback, but when they tell you "Yeah we know" you should take that for an answer.
There are quite a few new upgrades that are new and interesting for a veteran ns2 player like myself to use. They are toys, very fun toys. There are at least a dozen tech paths you can choose for each team. One complaint I have heard before about ns2, is that you always feel weak. On both marines, and aliens once I got passed level 7-10 I feel OP. The other team is teched up about the same also yet I still feel OP. I am not saying the game is unbalanced, but is balanced in such a way that allows this. If you are worried about upgrades like hunger or nano armor, don't be because they don't show up till mid-late game by what I have seen.
Performance wise, I get about 30 fps more than I do in ns2 with an overclocked 3570k and nvidia 750ti.
I believe the big if when it comes to ns2: combat is sales. If rusty, gisp, and others of FLG can get the game to have half the sales of ns2 it won't have the same player retention problem. Gisp said he alone is putting in 10 hour days trying to get the word out, not counting everyone else. From my point of view things are looking good. Time will be the real judge though.
The point of a discussion like this is that there are two or more sides that contribute to it. My feedback is pointing out areas which they need to improve upon - that's what feedback is. Future decisions are always shaped by feedback - whether it is positive, constructive, or negative.
As for my tone, all I am doing is expressing the opinions and concerns of those I represent in my local community in a civil manner. If that seems unreasonable to you then I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stop doing my job
I wanted to point out a couple things super quickly. I feel like a jerk for posting so much text on my initial post and having people read that much really, really means a lot to me (and us at FLG).
I wanted to point out that we're not using funds as an excuse for lack of quality. We think the quality of Combat is absolutely fantastic! My intention on bringing up funds is not to tell people that you get what you get when there's no money involved, the intention is to remind the NS community that the game is being developed by a start-up game company. We know the quality isn't lacking, but the amount of extra fudge on the chocolate sundae is harder to achieve. In other words, we don't want you to expect things from us that we're not capable of doing, but we also hope you expect a good quality game, something I know for sure we've achieved. Faultline doesn't exist to create a boundary between NS2 and Combat, it exists solely for the purpose of creating Combat, extending the NS universe further than imagined and capturing players who would have otherwise never bothered with the NS universe. I'm so thankful that meaningful discussions like these can be brought to our attention in a mature manner, and it's specifically why I felt like it deemed an appropriate response to all the feedback. I hope that serves as a truth when I say we're listening to you. Our goal is to make Combat amazing, make it replayable again and again, and allow new faces to dive deep into the universe that NS offers.
Using any of the funds we earn from the game, our plans are to build a much more presentable website that encourages discussions just like these, new features in Combat that are unique not only to NS, but things that have not been seen or done before to allow a bright future for Combat and the NS universe.
I love every one of you to death. Sometimes people tend to forget that just because you turned into a game developer, you have feelings, a family and that you're still very much human. I absolutely appreciate that this community can stop and talk to us as humans who happen to also be developers of Combat. I never want that to stop, so I felt that approaching everyone not just as a figure for Faultline Games, but as a human being as well was and will always be the best way to talk to the community.
We truly do care about you all, and I don't think we'd be here if it weren't for the love shown for Combat and the NS universe. After all, it is you in which we place our faith in just as you do in us to create and share great memories in Combat. Having your support means everything to us.
I spent quite some time last night going through all available videos of the new game, and the only "reasonable" first person videos i found was the VOD's from FLG twitch channel to get even the slightest idea about the mechanics inside the game. There's so much vague all around descriptions, that only succeed in being an annoyance than a source for information.
I don't know about you, but when i need to resort to watching through videos and pausing them on the random occurance i see a tooltip, to see what the buildmenu actually has. It's pretty stupid.
Regardless of this annoyance, i will buy the game and play it. As it stands i have zero interest in NS2 public, and i hope this game fills the gap as the combat in NS1 did. I'll remain optimistic that since there is "some people" working on this game, that there is hope for it to not be a waste of time.
Wait, what?
96 HOURS?
That is gonna be pretty darn interesting.
BTW - watched some videos and looks pretty good.
http://twitch.tv/faultlinegames