I think you are missing the point. No one is saying to have useless achievements, or suggesting a "full fledged coin based economy".
I said worst case. I even said why that may happen. Get these forum achievements here as a sample of what UWE is capable of if you request something like that.
In fact, the idea that most people are pushing towards is not achievements at all, its more toward tutorials and built-in guides. Achievements, while they may be tedious to make well, are in the end, much less work then a full fledged tutorial that most people will not play.
People are not suggesting they be useless, stupidity rewarding, pat-on-the-head things you seem to be making them out to be. They are suggesting they be a gentle guide people can look at and get an idea of good behavior from (such as welding players).
They are (e.g. weld for X hours, specifically you proposed those kinds of achievements. you can't get more achievementy than that). I kinda feel, I am the one offering "not achievements at all" alternatives (but you are wellcome to join) like "improve hint system we already have" and perhaps that thing in the video, that was originally posted as a point to make achievement system or make drill only servers where you could get mentored by a bored veteran player, giving it a nice social feel. But ok, make those simple achievements for < 10h players, but IMHO the hint system can do it better. Well the videos should be shown on loading screen and RR, not in middle of battle and should be more of them and better quality and so on.... But achievements only collect meaningless stat. Are hard to make(good luck with that "found sneaky tunnel X times" and "Patrolled PGs and prevented them from destruction X times, when nobody else would" and "not killed advantageous tunnel for surprise attack X times" and "responded to RT threat X times" and other must know for > 20 h player). The videos are simpler to make, and show exactly what, when, how, how does it look like when you are doing it and so on -> complete information to the player.
@krOoze
In any case, the achievements suggested are an idea toward player retention and training, which is a non-issue unless NS2 gets more publicity, such as a "remastered" version, as is the main topic of the title.
Really, that's the first thought that comes to your mind, when someone mentions NS3? Well okay, that's a one opinion too. I simply prefer content and good execution... I don't even care, that I lose often in that case, if I know vaguely why I lost.
I was gonna post something similar to @Nordic but nvm that then.
Edit: I'm amazed at how many prophetic claims @krOoze can spout though. How he gained this enlightenment I'm still waiting for with bated breath.
It's actually getting ridiculous how much he has posted in the last 2 months (came out of nowhere and now you can't go 2 feet on these forums without running into him).
As far as this discussion goes, I am all for player retention, and giving new players a sense of progression (especially if it unlocks a super duper new skin/badge/shoulder patch/whatever) can only be good for the game. Maybe at the end of a stacked round where a new player goes 4-22 and gets wrecked, maybe he can think "well at least I am a bit closer to reaching that "Do 500,000 structure damage as a skulk" badge or "Score 1,000,000 points as a marine" achievement, and maybe he plays another round. Making these achievements affect player behavior is just a bonus. In no way should these achievements be a replacement for a tutorial or cold hard experience learning the game. But I do think it would help affect the mindset of the rookie who plays 4 games, gets smashed, feels like he has learned nothing, accomplished nothing, is bad at the game, and leaves to go do something else.
Edit: Also, no one from the CDT has posted on how big of a project and if some sort of achievement system could be done. Maybe it's not even feasible given their limitations and how data is tracked in NS2.
It's actually getting ridiculous how much he has posted in the last 2 months (came out of nowhere and now you can't go 2 feet on these forums without running into him).
I am pretty much howering the forum for update on a technical issue. Don't worry about me. I shall be gone as mysteriously as I came. >-)
I am thinking you cannot compete with games you want to compete with, with the same weapons, that is if you don't want to become them. Also consider the possibility you are trying to attract people, who aren't/won't be loyal to the game in the first place. Retention many possible ways has.
CDT have their minds occupied doing other very usefull things judging by the trello and twitter.
I was gonna post something similar to @Nordic but nvm that then.
Edit: I'm amazed at how many prophetic claims @krOoze can spout though. How he gained this enlightenment I'm still waiting for with bated breath.
It's actually getting ridiculous how much he has posted in the last 2 months (came out of nowhere and now you can't go 2 feet on these forums without running into him).
Yeah man I totally agree, people with a lot of post should really give other some space as well ;;)
I have been playing quite a bit of Depth lately (Sharks vs Scuba Divers deathmatch, similar to NS2 in a few ways but with far smaller player base :P ), and in Depth there is simply a "Learn" tab in the main menu that takes players to descriptions of game mechanics etc.
I get the feeling that something like this in NS2, where the player voluntarily decides to do a bit of learning rather than having videos shoved in their face during game play would be more productive. Does anyone else think the current videos dumb down mechanics and perhaps baby the newbies a bit too much? At worst they can be downright misleading.
Whoa this is off topic :P
I've always liked those server side stats screens listing general things you do ingame, where you see things listed like this at the end of a round:
TSF:
Medkit addict
Trigger happy, most shots fired
Glutton for punishment, most damage taken
Big Bertha, most damage done
Greasemonkey, most welding done
Dancing Joe, most bouncy/jumps while under attack not taking damage
Kharaa:
Bilebomb George
Epic Spacecow, longest Onos life?
A bat outah hell, longest Lerk life
Lork on the Clorf, most spike kills/damage
It Hovars without Flapping, longest gliding distance as Lerk?
and so on... randomly selected perhaps with a weight added to them if it is a rare event like an axe/babbler/xeno kill or something... Kinda fun to have at the end of a round and on a lower level as an incentive to get them. Maybe tied to achievements or something, that stuff is popular but should be tied into the game and not prone to grinding but actual unlocked by gameplay. hmm kinda puts the XXX amount of YYY done out on the time out bench, even though they are fun
The medic and repair stuff on a stats screen kinda pushed some people to do that stuff in ... I think it was Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Enemy Territory... I've seen them in action, just to get that stat on the end screen :P
Will it retain playas, dunno doubtful. Will it improve teamplay, maybe *sniff* maybe... I've yet to meet player who can outsmart incentives
I like this idea! Not perhaps as an 'achievement' system so much, but if the hive tracked number of times each achievement was awarded to them it would give players a number to wear with honor
i think it's great that the GL can do damage to aliens, i dislike how large the grenade itself is though. it makes landing them trivial to anybody with decent experience with projectiles from other games.
much smaller projectile + decrease in speed. in order to make it desirable you would want to lower the self-damage and the minimum travel distance for it to explode (think comp mod has done this already) as well I think, otherwise nobody would use a more difficult version of a weapon nobody uses currently.
Wat? They were made visually bigger (no change to the hitbox, I think) just 2-3 month ago. And it was done to help aliens dodge grenades.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I think the CDT 's time would be much better spent on actual in depth tutorials and new real content over "unlocks" (to include achievements) of any sort.
Based on steam reviews and these forums over the past years we know exactly where player retention is hindered.
I think the CDT 's time would be much better spent on actual in depth tutorials and new real content over "unlocks" (to include achievements) of any sort.
Based on steam reviews and these forums over the past years we know exactly where player retention is hindered.
I think that statements wrong. You know exactly where there was trouble retaining players long enough to even BEGIN playing proper. But not enough information why people stop playing after a certain number of hours threshold (say 20 hours)
The only reason we should be diverting resources to a tutorial system is if there's enough influx of new players for this to be worthwhile. Even sales are getting incredibly weak bumps in playercount. It's simply too late as the player retention problem needed to be solved while there were still players that could be retained. So unless UWE is planning to relaunch as F2P, or do some sort of promotion that might have a significant effect on sales/downloads, I don't see it being all that helpful anymore. If they are planning something like that, I fully support diversion of resources to tutorials and anything else that might help player retention.
By all means, implement a tutorial if there is value in having a better retention rate for the small handful of people that buy this game every month - I just don't see the value. More time will probably be spent developing the tutorials than the total time everybody in the world will use them. And a lot of those people won't even continue to play the game, even if more of them will than without a tutorial (although a larger chunk of a tiny pie is still tiny).
The best thing we can do for player retention at the moment is to focus on keeping the players we already have. We can't think about how to retain new players this late in the game when we're not even bringing in new players to retain.
Now is the time to think about how we're going to bring in new players, not just retain them. More often than ever before I am seeing absolutely no populated servers in my area during peak times.
EDIT: Having reread IronHorse's post I realize he was just saying it would be more worthwhile than achievements, which I agree with.
The only reason we should be diverting resources to a tutorial system is if there's enough influx of new players for this to be worthwhile.
While I would have agreed with @IronHorse earlier on I think we have hit a point where we can't expect large influxes of new blood anymore without a very large content update to drive promotion. We've still got a lot of infrastructure work to do internally to be able to push out large updates. The first few patches we push out with our new infrastructure are going to be extremely conservative as the last thing we can afford to do at this point is break the game due to our own hubris.
THAT SAID - with time, and a bit of luck, the CDT will have greater capacity than ever before to push out updates in a timely fashion. The stuff @McGlaspie and Co. have been doing internally is very exciting and we've had a lot of cool plans since the beginning of the CDT that have been somewhat backburnered due to infrastructure limitations. If all goes well you guys should start seeing some of that this year!
Just, y'know, give us a bit. This stuff is hard even when you're getting paid to do it!
i think it's great that the GL can do damage to aliens, i dislike how large the grenade itself is though. it makes landing them trivial to anybody with decent experience with projectiles from other games.
much smaller projectile + decrease in speed. in order to make it desirable you would want to lower the self-damage and the minimum travel distance for it to explode (think comp mod has done this already) as well I think, otherwise nobody would use a more difficult version of a weapon nobody uses currently.
Wat? They were made visually bigger (no change to the hitbox, I think) just 2-3 month ago. And it was done to help aliens dodge grenades.
i think it's great that the GL can do damage to aliens, i dislike how large the grenade itself is though. it makes landing them trivial to anybody with decent experience with projectiles from other games.
much smaller projectile + decrease in speed. in order to make it desirable you would want to lower the self-damage and the minimum travel distance for it to explode (think comp mod has done this already) as well I think, otherwise nobody would use a more difficult version of a weapon nobody uses currently.
Wat? They were made visually bigger (no change to the hitbox, I think) just 2-3 month ago. And it was done to help aliens dodge grenades.
They shouldnt have to dodge grenades at all
I still keep seeing explosions at a different location than the actual grenade location if it bounces of structures or walls a bit too often... So tell me more about this dodging of those phantom grenades )
Banned myself from this here thread, imma off-topic too much mon [-(
Also I think when that time comes it'd be smart to do a free week or free to own weekend like a few games have done.
Free weekends are pointless. If I played either NS or NS2 under those conditions for the first time I would have called it dumb and left also. The game doesn't work with servers filled with rookies because the game will never go anywhere.
In my highly disagreed with opinion: If you want a free weekend to be successful in keeping some players you would need a scripted single player tutorial to take you through a full game on either side so you can teach what to look for in different, slow/stop motion, common scenarios like:
Marines: Game start-->Capturing the first res nodes w/ map checking tips-->First neutral engagement w/ map checking tips-->First enemy resource tower harass w/ map checking tips-->Getting your first welder and what to do with w/ map checking tips
Aliens: Game start-->Getting to first position and parasiting w/ map checking tips OR gorging yadada w/ map checking tips-->Using the map to identify res nodes for biting OR to identify res nodes for defending w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a lerk w/ map checking tips-->Continuing to bite res nodes w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a fade w/ map checking tips
But I don't think anyone has time for that, so all I've seen free weekends do is destroy POTENTIAL player base that could have been seen afterward. How do you get a paid customer who tried and hated the game to try again? I don't know but the only way I can see is by making this game Free2Play after the CDT improves it and hoping it that it catches on with whoever didn't want to pay during the first 2 years which might just make other people see it differently the second time.
Also I think when that time comes it'd be smart to do a free week or free to own weekend like a few games have done.
Free weekends are pointless. If I played either NS or NS2 under those conditions for the first time I would have called it dumb and left also. The game doesn't work with servers filled with rookies because the game will never go anywhere.
In my highly disagreed with opinion: If you want a free weekend to be successful in keeping some players you would need a scripted single player tutorial to take you through a full game on either side so you can teach what to look for in different, slow/stop motion, common scenarios like:
Marines: Game start-->Capturing the first res nodes w/ map checking tips-->First neutral engagement w/ map checking tips-->First enemy resource tower harass w/ map checking tips-->Getting your first welder and what to do with w/ map checking tips
Aliens: Game start-->Getting to first position and parasiting w/ map checking tips OR gorging yadada w/ map checking tips-->Using the map to identify res nodes for biting OR to identify res nodes for defending w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a lerk w/ map checking tips-->Continuing to bite res nodes w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a fade w/ map checking tips
But I don't think anyone has time for that, so all I've seen free weekends do is destroy POTENTIAL player base that could have been seen afterward. How do you get a paid customer who tried and hated the game to try again? I don't know but the only way I can see is by making this game Free2Play after the CDT improves it and hoping it that it catches on with whoever didn't want to pay during the first 2 years which might just make other people see it differently the second time.
I don't think that is so disagreed with. I disagree free weekends are pointless, but the rest of your post sounds similar to what many of us imagine an in depth tutorial would be like.
Did you ever watch the casted rookie on rookie matches from awhile back? Rookies did better completely on their own that I expected, more than you expect too.
@mattji104 Why would you say that. I think in this case your opinion is relatively agreeable. The game needs to be polished a bit, for the try-then-buy scheme to work. Well I think free "weekend" IS useless (you need a whole week to do some personal progress in the game and build loyality to this game). But when that's solved, then I think it can bring many new players. I think there even doesn't need to be any new content for that like @IronHorse said. The old content is still new content for players, who never played this game yet.
To further this direction of the discussion, may I propose these relatively easy changes(compared to new content), which should improve the effect of free week(end):
1) Improve and advertise the tutorial menu.
In most of games, tutorials are a joke teaching you how to WSAD and mouse look around - so people will not even look for them(especialy if they are limited by the "free" duration). This game is a rare exception - it should strongly advise to the player to explore this tutorial menu, and inform why. For some reason I understood that, when I started. I watched most of the videos and played two games with bots. I think it helped tremendously and I didn't look around confused during the actual pub game after that.
Second of all the videos presented could be more complete and acurate. Basic things need to be in the play thru tutorial (are they? haven't played it for a year...) - that is movement, where do you heal, welding, using map(C) and tech tree(J), how do you build buildings and powernodes and why and try every weapon/liveform (to know, where do you buy them and how do you use them). It does not have to be oversmart for the sake of implementation simplicity. It may as well be the sandbox game showing some text and video and let the player copy it and continue the tutorial when he is ready.
Thirdly the previous may lead to some information overload, so new players need to be equipped with some golden rules like: Follow someone and copy what he does, check corners and watch his back. Your life is less than most buildings, so go save them if it is realistic, don't worry about death(perhaps hide the stupid K/D in tab, it's not a free for all deathmatch game). And opposite - structure damage is more important than kill count. Check your map(C) every ten seconds, check your tech tree(J) to know whats going on. EDIT: oh! and: Do not go commander unless you negotiate it upfront. With these he can then quickly be brought up to pace even in the pub game. EDIT2: If you have advanced liveform from lerk up, your concern should be not to die first, get kills/structure damage second.
2) Protect rookies from stompers.
Right now servers are protected from new players but not the opposite way. I think >1500 SP players have no bussiness in rookie servers unless they want to actively teach them. I think extra warning is needed when joining higher skill server as new player.
EDIT: The game pretty much lies when saying server is "rookie friendly", if nobody in there is actually friendly to rookies. Something needs to be done about that too.
3) The map and the tech tree needs to be more visible. I can't stress that enough. Maybe make small handles(e.g. near the mini-map) in the game with the hotkey written on it.
4) Having web and other UNused features, makes the game look imature. Try to do some quick fix like moving it down the biomass scale, or something. People always start with celerity, maybe make the camo and cara techtree insignificantly (like 10% discount :P ) cheaper for people to reconsider. Railgun exo is pretty rare, so maybe discount that too. Maybe discount cluster grenades, which are useless against anything but floor skulk, or reduce the cluster delay. Make the pulse grenade to slow movement - 20% attack speed for few seconds is not worth even throwing it. And other micro-changes. I admit these are bit subjective, so don't start shouting at me and just imagine what you would slightly adjust too.
Weeeell, and the hard to change things, like netcode, hitreg, performance (it is due in next patch, isn't it? well played CDT )
3) The map and the tech tree needs to be more visible. I can't stress that enough. Maybe make small handles(e.g. near the mini-map) in the game with the hotkey written on it.
4) Having web and other UNused features, makes the game look imature. Try to do some quick fix like moving it down the biomass scale, or something. People always start with celerity, maybe make the camo and cara techtree insignificantly (like 10% discount :P ) cheaper for people to reconsider.
What?! Noooo. Shift 1st is for noobs. Crag all the way tbh.
2) Protect rookies from stompers.
Right now servers are protected from new players but not the opposite way. I think >1500 SP players have no bussiness in rookie servers unless they want to actively teach them. I think extra warning is needed when joining higher skill server as new player.
EDIT: The game pretty much lies when saying server is "rookie friendly", if nobody in there is actually friendly to rookies. Something needs to be done about that too.
A. There are no rookie servers
B. There are no games for "stompers" to play where they can't stomp. It's not exactly fun to go into a room as a fade and kill 6 marines by yourself without leaving somehow, but it's even less fun to have to constantly hold back.
2) Protect rookies from stompers.
Right now servers are protected from new players but not the opposite way. I think >1500 SP players have no bussiness in rookie servers unless they want to actively teach them. I think extra warning is needed when joining higher skill server as new player.
EDIT: The game pretty much lies when saying server is "rookie friendly", if nobody in there is actually friendly to rookies. Something needs to be done about that too.
A. There are no rookie servers
B. There are no games for "stompers" to play where they can't stomp. It's not exactly fun to go into a room as a fade and kill 6 marines by yourself without leaving somehow, but it's even less fun to have to constantly hold back.
As a pleb pubber, I agree with you (hive skill 800). It isn't fun to have to hold back for the better players. I guess it would be nice for those carriers to split up instead of stacking the same team. But this is the eternal quest for NS2 (that will never be solved). People are people, and they want to play with friends. We have been down this road many times in the forum.
WRT stacking, I was having a conversation last night when I found myself saying "I dont even care about winning, its teh feeling of teamwork that is the best bit of this game"
Stacking isnt about winning, or probably even friends, its just about being on the same team as players that know how to work as a team. Most players just dont know how to recognise what that actually entails
WRT stacking, I was having a conversation last night when I found myself saying "I dont even care about winning, its teh feeling of teamwork that is the best bit of this game"
Stacking isnt about winning, or probably even friends, its just about being on the same team as players that know how to work as a team. Most players just dont know how to recognise what that actually entails
This is so true. Often times I have been completely frustrated because nobody on my team knows what to do, even though I was able to carry the whole team and win.
Other times, I've been completely crushed by the other team, but just having one player whom I have team synergy with makes it OK.
There are other things which make me sad regardless of which team is winning or losing, but probably one of the worst is teammates which don't react to things happening in the same room, not going in with you at all on alien side, or going in after you're already dead and the marine has reloaded (aliens) or barely starting to shoot when you're already dead (marines).
Other things are gorges not healing/bilebombing, lerks using spikes on buildings, fades hitting buildings...
Generally no or slow reaction time, zero effort to teamwork, fighting 1v(1-5) the entire game makes a round crap regardless of whether you win or lose in the end.
I couldn't agree more. This game is about playing with team work. Even when you lose, it doesn't feel so bad, because you worked together as a team and got beaten. Still not nice to lose, but easier to take a loss when your team worked together and didn't win (everyone did their best), to losing because 1-2 on the team just isn't doing the right thing (eg. giving away your position by running when they can see you sneaking). Shooting structures when the comm asked to NOT give yourself away because a ninja gate is coming etc...
Hmmm, I don't think lack of teamwork irks me more, than any other lack in my or other's skill (e.g. aim, enemy spotting, weak spot detection, hopping around...). It's simply another thing to train and gain experience in. To be honest, what irks me are players thinking, they have personally superior teamwork and skill or whatever and then just are playing for kills or are constantly going to the nearest enemy techpoint and shouting "Where is everybody??", while having 5 other people at hand and others are engaged elsewhere arguably in more important places, trying to defend RTs and whatever they can, while others try to attack well defended hive unsuccessfully.
Teamwork is about team. If someone does not go into the room with you simultaneously, it's your fault as much as his. Use your mic, if you have one or be more obvious to your team while less so to your enemy. You can always improve your teamplay. Part of that is the ability to judge your teammembers and what you can expect from them and work with what you get. Team is not you and 10 other copies of you.
There is little bit of trouble with commanders. I mean I played a BOT game for fun and the bot commander gave us PGs in 5 min and GL in 7, while having 4 RTs. In pub games it is more like 10 mins and 15 respectively. Not enough commanders advertise what the strategy is at all too, so people just go unorganized.
Comments
Really, that's the first thought that comes to your mind, when someone mentions NS3? Well okay, that's a one opinion too. I simply prefer content and good execution... I don't even care, that I lose often in that case, if I know vaguely why I lost.
It's actually getting ridiculous how much he has posted in the last 2 months (came out of nowhere and now you can't go 2 feet on these forums without running into him).
As far as this discussion goes, I am all for player retention, and giving new players a sense of progression (especially if it unlocks a super duper new skin/badge/shoulder patch/whatever) can only be good for the game. Maybe at the end of a stacked round where a new player goes 4-22 and gets wrecked, maybe he can think "well at least I am a bit closer to reaching that "Do 500,000 structure damage as a skulk" badge or "Score 1,000,000 points as a marine" achievement, and maybe he plays another round. Making these achievements affect player behavior is just a bonus. In no way should these achievements be a replacement for a tutorial or cold hard experience learning the game. But I do think it would help affect the mindset of the rookie who plays 4 games, gets smashed, feels like he has learned nothing, accomplished nothing, is bad at the game, and leaves to go do something else.
Edit: Also, no one from the CDT has posted on how big of a project and if some sort of achievement system could be done. Maybe it's not even feasible given their limitations and how data is tracked in NS2.
I am thinking you cannot compete with games you want to compete with, with the same weapons, that is if you don't want to become them. Also consider the possibility you are trying to attract people, who aren't/won't be loyal to the game in the first place. Retention many possible ways has.
CDT have their minds occupied doing other very usefull things judging by the trello and twitter.
...wait just one minute here :-?
I get the feeling that something like this in NS2, where the player voluntarily decides to do a bit of learning rather than having videos shoved in their face during game play would be more productive. Does anyone else think the current videos dumb down mechanics and perhaps baby the newbies a bit too much? At worst they can be downright misleading.
Whoa this is off topic :P
I like this idea! Not perhaps as an 'achievement' system so much, but if the hive tracked number of times each achievement was awarded to them it would give players a number to wear with honor
Wat? They were made visually bigger (no change to the hitbox, I think) just 2-3 month ago. And it was done to help aliens dodge grenades.
Based on steam reviews and these forums over the past years we know exactly where player retention is hindered.
I think that statements wrong. You know exactly where there was trouble retaining players long enough to even BEGIN playing proper. But not enough information why people stop playing after a certain number of hours threshold (say 20 hours)
Are there any plans to start that kind of massive undertaking, cause that would be AMAZING.
You can take any text from the manual I wrote if a "Learn" or similar function is needed.
By all means, implement a tutorial if there is value in having a better retention rate for the small handful of people that buy this game every month - I just don't see the value. More time will probably be spent developing the tutorials than the total time everybody in the world will use them. And a lot of those people won't even continue to play the game, even if more of them will than without a tutorial (although a larger chunk of a tiny pie is still tiny).
The best thing we can do for player retention at the moment is to focus on keeping the players we already have. We can't think about how to retain new players this late in the game when we're not even bringing in new players to retain.
Now is the time to think about how we're going to bring in new players, not just retain them. More often than ever before I am seeing absolutely no populated servers in my area during peak times.
EDIT: Having reread IronHorse's post I realize he was just saying it would be more worthwhile than achievements, which I agree with.
While I would have agreed with @IronHorse earlier on I think we have hit a point where we can't expect large influxes of new blood anymore without a very large content update to drive promotion. We've still got a lot of infrastructure work to do internally to be able to push out large updates. The first few patches we push out with our new infrastructure are going to be extremely conservative as the last thing we can afford to do at this point is break the game due to our own hubris.
THAT SAID - with time, and a bit of luck, the CDT will have greater capacity than ever before to push out updates in a timely fashion. The stuff @McGlaspie and Co. have been doing internally is very exciting and we've had a lot of cool plans since the beginning of the CDT that have been somewhat backburnered due to infrastructure limitations. If all goes well you guys should start seeing some of that this year!
Just, y'know, give us a bit. This stuff is hard even when you're getting paid to do it!
They shouldnt have to dodge grenades at all
I still keep seeing explosions at a different location than the actual grenade location if it bounces of structures or walls a bit too often... So tell me more about this dodging of those phantom grenades
Banned myself from this here thread, imma off-topic too much mon [-(
Also I think when that time comes it'd be smart to do a free week or free to own weekend like a few games have done.
forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/136986/how-to-get-lots-of-new-and-old-players
Free weekends are pointless. If I played either NS or NS2 under those conditions for the first time I would have called it dumb and left also. The game doesn't work with servers filled with rookies because the game will never go anywhere.
In my highly disagreed with opinion: If you want a free weekend to be successful in keeping some players you would need a scripted single player tutorial to take you through a full game on either side so you can teach what to look for in different, slow/stop motion, common scenarios like:
Marines: Game start-->Capturing the first res nodes w/ map checking tips-->First neutral engagement w/ map checking tips-->First enemy resource tower harass w/ map checking tips-->Getting your first welder and what to do with w/ map checking tips
Aliens: Game start-->Getting to first position and parasiting w/ map checking tips OR gorging yadada w/ map checking tips-->Using the map to identify res nodes for biting OR to identify res nodes for defending w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a lerk w/ map checking tips-->Continuing to bite res nodes w/ map checking tips-->Engaging marines with a fade w/ map checking tips
But I don't think anyone has time for that, so all I've seen free weekends do is destroy POTENTIAL player base that could have been seen afterward. How do you get a paid customer who tried and hated the game to try again? I don't know but the only way I can see is by making this game Free2Play after the CDT improves it and hoping it that it catches on with whoever didn't want to pay during the first 2 years which might just make other people see it differently the second time.
I don't think that is so disagreed with. I disagree free weekends are pointless, but the rest of your post sounds similar to what many of us imagine an in depth tutorial would be like.
Did you ever watch the casted rookie on rookie matches from awhile back? Rookies did better completely on their own that I expected, more than you expect too.
To further this direction of the discussion, may I propose these relatively easy changes(compared to new content), which should improve the effect of free week(end):
1) Improve and advertise the tutorial menu.
In most of games, tutorials are a joke teaching you how to WSAD and mouse look around - so people will not even look for them(especialy if they are limited by the "free" duration). This game is a rare exception - it should strongly advise to the player to explore this tutorial menu, and inform why. For some reason I understood that, when I started. I watched most of the videos and played two games with bots. I think it helped tremendously and I didn't look around confused during the actual pub game after that.
Second of all the videos presented could be more complete and acurate. Basic things need to be in the play thru tutorial (are they? haven't played it for a year...) - that is movement, where do you heal, welding, using map(C) and tech tree(J), how do you build buildings and powernodes and why and try every weapon/liveform (to know, where do you buy them and how do you use them). It does not have to be oversmart for the sake of implementation simplicity. It may as well be the sandbox game showing some text and video and let the player copy it and continue the tutorial when he is ready.
Thirdly the previous may lead to some information overload, so new players need to be equipped with some golden rules like: Follow someone and copy what he does, check corners and watch his back. Your life is less than most buildings, so go save them if it is realistic, don't worry about death(perhaps hide the stupid K/D in tab, it's not a free for all deathmatch game). And opposite - structure damage is more important than kill count. Check your map(C) every ten seconds, check your tech tree(J) to know whats going on. EDIT: oh! and: Do not go commander unless you negotiate it upfront. With these he can then quickly be brought up to pace even in the pub game. EDIT2: If you have advanced liveform from lerk up, your concern should be not to die first, get kills/structure damage second.
2) Protect rookies from stompers.
Right now servers are protected from new players but not the opposite way. I think >1500 SP players have no bussiness in rookie servers unless they want to actively teach them. I think extra warning is needed when joining higher skill server as new player.
EDIT: The game pretty much lies when saying server is "rookie friendly", if nobody in there is actually friendly to rookies. Something needs to be done about that too.
3) The map and the tech tree needs to be more visible. I can't stress that enough. Maybe make small handles(e.g. near the mini-map) in the game with the hotkey written on it.
4) Having web and other UNused features, makes the game look imature. Try to do some quick fix like moving it down the biomass scale, or something. People always start with celerity, maybe make the camo and cara techtree insignificantly (like 10% discount :P ) cheaper for people to reconsider. Railgun exo is pretty rare, so maybe discount that too. Maybe discount cluster grenades, which are useless against anything but floor skulk, or reduce the cluster delay. Make the pulse grenade to slow movement - 20% attack speed for few seconds is not worth even throwing it. And other micro-changes. I admit these are bit subjective, so don't start shouting at me and just imagine what you would slightly adjust too.
Weeeell, and the hard to change things, like netcode, hitreg, performance (it is due in next patch, isn't it? well played CDT
What?! Noooo. Shift 1st is for noobs. Crag all the way tbh.
A. There are no rookie servers
B. There are no games for "stompers" to play where they can't stomp. It's not exactly fun to go into a room as a fade and kill 6 marines by yourself without leaving somehow, but it's even less fun to have to constantly hold back.
As a pleb pubber, I agree with you (hive skill 800). It isn't fun to have to hold back for the better players. I guess it would be nice for those carriers to split up instead of stacking the same team. But this is the eternal quest for NS2 (that will never be solved). People are people, and they want to play with friends. We have been down this road many times in the forum.
Stacking isnt about winning, or probably even friends, its just about being on the same team as players that know how to work as a team. Most players just dont know how to recognise what that actually entails
Other times, I've been completely crushed by the other team, but just having one player whom I have team synergy with makes it OK.
There are other things which make me sad regardless of which team is winning or losing, but probably one of the worst is teammates which don't react to things happening in the same room, not going in with you at all on alien side, or going in after you're already dead and the marine has reloaded (aliens) or barely starting to shoot when you're already dead (marines).
Other things are gorges not healing/bilebombing, lerks using spikes on buildings, fades hitting buildings...
Generally no or slow reaction time, zero effort to teamwork, fighting 1v(1-5) the entire game makes a round crap regardless of whether you win or lose in the end.
I couldn't agree more. This game is about playing with team work. Even when you lose, it doesn't feel so bad, because you worked together as a team and got beaten. Still not nice to lose, but easier to take a loss when your team worked together and didn't win (everyone did their best), to losing because 1-2 on the team just isn't doing the right thing (eg. giving away your position by running when they can see you sneaking). Shooting structures when the comm asked to NOT give yourself away because a ninja gate is coming etc...
Teamwork is about team. If someone does not go into the room with you simultaneously, it's your fault as much as his. Use your mic, if you have one or be more obvious to your team while less so to your enemy. You can always improve your teamplay. Part of that is the ability to judge your teammembers and what you can expect from them and work with what you get. Team is not you and 10 other copies of you.
There is little bit of trouble with commanders. I mean I played a BOT game for fun and the bot commander gave us PGs in 5 min and GL in 7, while having 4 RTs. In pub games it is more like 10 mins and 15 respectively. Not enough commanders advertise what the strategy is at all too, so people just go unorganized.