Has "Balancing" Doomed This Game?
m8r-vn05y31
Join Date: 2015-06-12 Member: 205425Members
Join Date: 2015-06-12 Member: 205425Members
I'd like members of the community, especially those of the CDT, to read and respond to this review:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/savant99/recommended/4920/
Note: I am not the author of this review; I feel as though this review sums up the viewpoints of many former players.
I was never a "veteran" player. I was never a "casual" player either.
I first played this game about 2 years ago. After getting spanked a few times, I watched every tutorial and playthrough I could find. I also read a few guides.
I played for hours and hours on end each day.
Definitely not an easy game, but I figured the bigger challenge would make it all the more satisfying - it did not.
Look I get it - the skilled players think it's an absolute tragedy to get killed by a bunch of casual players.
But now...what do you even have left?
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920
Now you may be asking: Why did you even bother to create a forum account and post here?
Well I want to like this game. I want to play this game. However, it just isn't worth the frustration.
I doubt this post will seriously get anything accomplished and I don't mean to make everyone playing feel bad, but this game has potential that seems to be continuously dwindling.
Maybe you've had this sort of discussion amongst yourselves a bunch, but if not I'd like to encourage you to join in on this.
Edit: Upon request the thread title has been changed; I do not know if it was -unfairly- pinning the blame on the CDT, so I will err on the side of caution. Please still read the review mentioned in the beginning of this post and discuss it.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/savant99/recommended/4920/
Note: I am not the author of this review; I feel as though this review sums up the viewpoints of many former players.
I was never a "veteran" player. I was never a "casual" player either.
I first played this game about 2 years ago. After getting spanked a few times, I watched every tutorial and playthrough I could find. I also read a few guides.
I played for hours and hours on end each day.
Definitely not an easy game, but I figured the bigger challenge would make it all the more satisfying - it did not.
Look I get it - the skilled players think it's an absolute tragedy to get killed by a bunch of casual players.
But now...what do you even have left?
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920
Now you may be asking: Why did you even bother to create a forum account and post here?
Well I want to like this game. I want to play this game. However, it just isn't worth the frustration.
I doubt this post will seriously get anything accomplished and I don't mean to make everyone playing feel bad, but this game has potential that seems to be continuously dwindling.
Maybe you've had this sort of discussion amongst yourselves a bunch, but if not I'd like to encourage you to join in on this.
Edit: Upon request the thread title has been changed; I do not know if it was -unfairly- pinning the blame on the CDT, so I will err on the side of caution. Please still read the review mentioned in the beginning of this post and discuss it.
Comments
About the 'you don't get armor when you go back to the armory' thing, it might have been changed to force people to move out of base and force teamplay/player interaction. To me, going back to base to get armor back equals a death (time-wise) unless you get an armory on advanced positions, which can seem pretty op.
What's funny is that I never felt frustrated in this game, even as a complete noob (when I started it). Comp-format games make you life more valuable and force you to be more careful, teamplay and aware of your role and impact. You can't just rambo into a room alone without repercussions.
It is true though imo that casual/noobie play isn't exactly fit for NS2 gameplay (you just wanna go out and shoot stuff). Everyone knows it takes time to understand how the game works, so the noobies can't just do things right from the get go, or at least know what and why they're doing (stuff).
I'd like to say as well that comp gameplay is a little different from pub gameplay now. If that helps.
I only agree with some points of this review
But balance changes are a really difficult topic for the CDT. Everyone of us basically has a different point of view on how ns2 should evolve balance wise.
As we are a kinda democratic team (at least i hope so) in matter of making choices we try to come up with solutions most of us can at least agree with.
And there it gets tricky: due to those different views on the matter it's almost impossible to come up with something even 50% of the CDT would agree to.
And so it's kinda pointless to prototype things before-ahead because you can't really say if your suggestion will ever make the cut into the live build.
Last time i suggested things like re-balancing the techs to have a better skill/power outcome ratio as described e.g. by this youtube video
i could almost "hear" other members getting torches ready to burn me alive
Edit: Some things the review got wrong:
The "armory repairs armor" change was mainly done as other said to stop players from moving back to the base alone all the time (and probably getting killed) and to actually get them using welders on teammates.
Also you can in fact "repair" yourself by repairing structures.
Also i don't really understand how it comes to the conclusion that the forum is toxic.
The ranking system is not intended to isolate anyone but to help to balance the teams more even. Those restriction systems are mods and not part of ns2 vanilla itself.
"What's worse is that the more appealing elements of the game--the highest level 'upgrades'--only show up when the outcome of the game is predetermined. (which happens within the first few minutes)"
I do agree with that. There has been a good discussion here on that recently about how there is a lack of comebacks options available. @ironhorse thinks about this a lot.
"The nail in the coffin for this game was when development for 'game balance' was put in the hands of volunteers. Since the game is easy to modify (in the LUA scripts), balance changes didn't have to be hard coded into the game. As such, a bunch of people who felt they 'knew better' how the game should be developed were able to markedly influence balance changes by verbally bullying anyone who disagreed with them. Anyone who dared question those who wanted to make the game harder were verbally ridiculed and harassed. The game forums became toxic as a result, and casual players began their exodus. "
This paragraph I do not understand. The last big balance patch was in b250, which was still developed by UWE. It was sewleks balance patch. There was even a sewleks balance mod, where he tested his ideas so anyone could give feedback and respond. This might be where the review says people were verbally abused if they disagreed with people who "knew better." I don't have a perfect memory, but I don't remember very many if any examples of actual verbal abuse. I do know that there are some very vocal people on this forum who hold peoples opinions to a high standard. There are, were, some very vocal people who have a high standard for argument. This demanded a person be able to defend their opinion well. I don't have anything wrong with that as long as it is positive and not abusive. This is not when the playerbase started leaving though. They were leaving as soon as the game released practically.
I personally feel the CDT is saving this game, or at least slowing its end. They have improved performance far beyond what UWE had. They have fixed many bugs and added features that have given the game a polish it should of had on release. Even with the playerbase as low as it is, they still have some really cool stuff coming. Look at this trello board. https://trello.com/b/91ApENY6/ns2-cdt-development-tracker
There is some good stuff in there.
Unrelated to the CDT, ns2 was even named the 18th best FPS of all time according to rock paper shotgun.
Will a game's community ever be a viable source of input for developing game balance?
Some video game companies boast that they have their ear to the ground and pay attention to the community when making decisions, but aren't the most radical members of the community going to be the ones heard?
Edit: Removed an example from another game; too lengthy and probably doesn't apply here anyways. Let's stick to NS discussion.
Would you say that this is a result of expectations of a better game in the future that didn't pay off (i.e. hype for a new game), or was it the result of changing the game from something fun to something overly competitive and too difficult? If it was both, was one of them a contributing factor moreso than the other?
Also, I'm pretty sure the welder change was done really early on, maybe before the game was officially released? Also wasn't armoury energy introduced to discourage armoury humping before that or something? Can't really recall now, but still definitely nothing to do with CDT as it was too early.
I have heard probably most of all that the game not being ns1 with hd textures is what ruined the game. I never played ns1, so I can not speak for that.
Beside the point that ns2 was too less ns1, actually the main reason i heard was that the performance was a "nightmare":
The mouse movement just felt weird. Animations felt laggy. The hit registration seemed to be totally off. You really needed a high end PC to even play the game to start with.
As great as ns2 was/is game design wise those points caused that most just didn't got warm with ns2 and left for other fps games.
In the end only i sticked to the ns2 because i really like the game design of ns and found other shooters kinda boring compared to it.
No, the competitive players don't get all the changes they want. No, the casual player was never ignored. New players have always been a prominent factor in any balance discussion I have been a part of. Accessibility was always a priority. Before the balance chat and before the CDT, this was even more true.
Neither CDT nor the compet scene are something NS2 would have flourished without. But factors within those two groups, are exactly that.
Instead of questioning why so many players are flocking to Wooza's, they switch to auto-hate. It's the easier path.
Weak minds need a simplified explanation: All the fun was sucked out of NS2. Put it back in.
A number of 'facts' are wrong, and in fact myself and Wasabi consider ourselves Pub players. We like to take thoughts and ideas from all over the community for balance, not just comp or public players. It's how we've always worked and it's how we've balanced NS2 since we took over (we have in fact, changed very little overall up until now).
The game is harsh on newbies this is true, but it's never been easy. It's harder now because more of the dedicated 'hardcore' playerbase are left around, and their skill is obviously much higher than that of a green. We are going to do our best to address this as best we can in the future, hopefully without harming the playerbase and in fact helping it grow. We're not infallible, but we will do our very best.
Now our work on 275 is going at full pace, hopefully the community will rally behind us as we move forward with our work on NS2, moving it towards the future.
NS2 has always lacked accessibility, and in some ways is less accessible than NS1 was. That is completely unrelated to skill vs power and/or balancing changes / million other things.
Creating a system which guides you through the games basics but doesn't get in the way is not easy, and unfortunately a lot of the tips in NS2 fit in the 'get in the way' category IMO.
Introducing a complicated game to new players is always difficult. It's not surprising that it isn't done very effectively, and It's irritating that Savant thinks this must be due to some sort of bizarre favoritism by the devs and CDT. Everyone who is involved with the development of the game wants it to be fun for anyone who is interested in playing it.
Competitive players never made choices in regard to the builds. That's even why some of use started months ago to develop our own mod which would be used for any tournaments and matches (still in use for your information). Something that fits better with our criterias. We play a different version of the vanilla game. And yet, people, I do remember that keep claiming that we lead the direction of gameplay development with some features from CompMod (lol?).
I'm not sure to figure out whether he is addressing to UWE or the CDT. As far as I know, there's only 3 competitive players in the CDT at the very beginning, some more now since sirs Zavaro and IronHorse began to play competitive for instance. CDT leads can't be called competitive players neither. Wasabi casts official matches sometimes, at best.
Half a joke though because it's always been a group of people who lead the direction of the game. It was composed by competitive players and public players however. Most of them if not all of them are part of the CDT anyway. Which brings me back to what I said previously.
So no, competitive players are not alone to decide what is going on and what will be in this game, we actually have no more say than any other player outside the CDT. You can be sure most of us have different points of view of what's being done right now. And I personally am part of those who think that nothing is really being working on to improve the competitive side of the game. Whether it's dealt by UWE or the CDT, not better at this level. I will not complain more though since they're still working to improve the game, and allow it to not die. Not agreeing with decisions is another story that shouldn't be discussed in this thread in fact.
This aside, I quite agree with what's being said: tutorials, learning curve, and so forth.
He blames the pros for making the game too competitive to his taste. Yet, the competitive scene are lacking so much, I can just not remotely give him credit for this argument.
We have always lacked usable replay and spectator features, which has made it very difficult to make competitive content, like frag movies. Search for 'dirtybomb fragmovie' on youtube - this is a game which just launched its open beta, and is just as niche a game title as NS2, and already there are numerous competitive frag movies. NS2 is an old game now, but we don't really have anything similar, because we were never given the tools.
The competitive scene had to make a competitive mod on their own. If the 'pro' players had so much influence as this guy claims, then why was compMod ever needed? They could've just told uwe to make it however they wanted.
Many balance decisions have been made by uwe in spite of competitive players complaints, and many have been denied.
It saddens me, that this reviewer correctly identifies one of the major problems: Rookies are being stomped, steep learning curves, high skill gaps etc.
But the answer is not to make a 'casual mod'. The solution is: segregation based on skill.
I do not care, whether you segregate via matchmaking, or by making mandatory rookie only servers, or something entirely different.
I suppose making a 'casual mod' would in a sense allow for segregation - but the balance is not really the underlying issue. The game is very balanced between the factions - where the imbalance lies, is in the players' skill levels.
We are working on some new things that "SHOULD" I say should not will, make it easier/ more accessible for people, but it requires tonnes of work.
People have mentioned using the HL1 hazard course as a training level. This is somthing that ive wanted to do since september LAST YEAR. However in order to make this work it will require a lot of time from myself, but also from our programmers implementing new things that I will need to make it work and then I will need voice actors lol!
It would be a big undertaking, however to this date I have got no further than a simple cube room with some button triggering cinematics. Thats it. Could it be done before a possible relaunch ? I dont know (though I guess its needed) BUT it depends on if anyone has time to implement the requirements to make it work.
Is that your first review or what?
I guess so. It still hasn't shown up though... maybe I already wrote one and it won't let me re-write it. I just click "Post Review", the button disappears, and nothing appears to happen.
I'm afraid to say that no review can do what the game should do by itself : Being enjoyable (from beginner to pros) without any external help. While i disagree with some reviews, I'm fairly confident to say that more "words" about it won't change things for the better.
2+ years ago, i played this game for about 50 hours a month
now i don't even play 5 hours a month
i do feel like i lost a lot of knowledge and skill with all the gameplay redesigns.
the types of changes were just way too radical for a game that was no longer in beta.
i would have been more okay with it if it led to much better experiences, but i didn't really feel that was happening.
almost all the games were fun/boring for exactly the same reasons as before the changes
i think it's wrong to blame competitive players though.
competitive players can be really good at coming up with solutions if you give them the right problem to solve.
the problem they were given was to balance the game. they problem they should have been given was something else entirely.
Now that there's nobody left, perfect chance to pick out the individuals that have caused it, remove them from their positions, and start focusing on making the game more fun.
Between all the expected medpack showers, marine commanders barely have to time properly work on strategy on the fly. Add plus one to the cost of a medpack. Allow players who buy a welder to heal teammates during battle (like a gorge, or medic in tf2).
Taking xenocide out of the game and leaving the current variation of spores is another good example of pretending to want to improve the game but actually removing fun once again.
Shoulda left xeno alone and improved the robofac. (One tiny such improvement actually exists: powersurge icons directly on buildings). But that's not enough. Arcs, Macs and sentries all need to become rather useful again.
All the issues with stacking also need sorting. Plenty of suggestions already posted, some where deleted.
Which is one of the main issues the review focuses on: The fact that some individuals just bullshit themselves to the top, not allowing ANY other opinion than their own. Including - of course - the relentless hate against the community that provides players of NS2 with the most fun you can have in the game.
Now imagine how those individuals stir up the dev chat secret society.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/128827/armory-and-armor/p1
He ends up having an argument with some pretty patient and persistent people who happen to be comp players. As far as I can tell, the thing has very little to do with competitive play vs pub play or anything like that. To me it seems like he's blaming the comp community for requesting changes that quite likely had to be made anyway to allow NS2 to grow and develop further.
It seems quite alike the NS1 1.0 era where the gameplay had some wonderful stuff that worked when everybody was terrible at the game and had no clue on how to abuse the vulnerable gameplay structure. Once things got figured out, the system had to go and a new one had to be introduced. A lot of the things had to be sacrificed since they were limiting the long term development of the game. At such point it's pretty easy to blame comp players as they're the first to push the system to the limits and expose the weaknesses, but in realilty they're bringing up a lot of the things that would've caused massive issues to public games sooner rather than later anyway. Maybe different solutions were an option, but the many of the sweet old things had ran their course and needed to go to keep the game healthier long term.
As far as I can tell, the comp play prioritisation has never been a thing with NS2. Most of the comp play driven patches were hastily implemented right before the big UWE tournaments to make the game hold together a little better so that the rounds weren't total stomps for one side over the other. If anything, I think UWE could've used more comp player feedback to adjust the skill scaling and give NS2 healthier base design that holds together better as the understanding and skill in NS2 unavoidably increased over time in all types of games.
About underlined
Why should it be comp players ? Because they see better or whatever? Trust me I've seen more than i want to count of these so called comp that have a sooooooo wrong idea about this game mechanic and such that i'm afraid i can't agree with you on that point.
I won't deny their potential good remarks with their own point of view. It is good to have their opinions as well. But not only.
The problem was the game :
So UWE had to make choices:
Those things raised many topics like : License to NS; Pub vs Comp version (since NS1 BTW); Lock players by hours played (officially) etc.
I believe it failed at "public play" & learning curve.
But not only:
-Removing brick by brick the potential of Shade strategy (especially with high/low graphic settings. What a joke.)
-Making the skulk a little more difficult to play. Wall jump never had a in-game hint or "achievement". Same for "shadow step" at the time. A Skill graduation would have been great. Ex: wall jump success in some special tutos.
-Exo... do i have to explain ?
What a new player would see is first : "i can shoot aliens, yay!",
Then : "Hey i can haz exzoz!"
Then : "Darn i died, no more exo???"
Then : "why did we lost? what do you mean 'no base' ?", etc.
They finally realize that the game needs to be understood quite accurately before being played properly and also as the game is in reality unforgiving (flash fade etc...). It is more and more unforgiving as you level up. I mean by "level up" when you play with stronger people. No wonder they quit as they probably feel they have to swim upstream in some kind of waterfalls.
It's gone to a point that more and more players just don't know how to use the last items of the tech tree as :
So what i believe is : It should have been a mix of both "casual" and comp that would bring some temperance in some decision UWE made. Favoring a "show" isn't that compatible with "balance" (and the proper way to deal with it).
As the high level competetive players are normaly the ones with the best knowledge about the game and the best understanding of the meta they would find ways to exploit unbalanced mechanics within a very short time. In any game whenever there is a new patch the pros find out what is op really quick and abuse it. As soon as a lot of players hear about an op mechanic they start to abuse it as well and eventually it gets nerfed. So all in all most developers balance around the top players anyway. If you would balance NS2 around the average pubber you would need to change so many things that would be exploited by the pros making games even more frustrating for most of the players.
Edit: Also, watching a game with only really new/bad players on both teams doesn't look unbalanced to me. A bad aimer can track a slow moving alien probably as well as a good aimer can track a good alien player. The problem is (as every NS player agrees I guess) the small playerbase forcing players of different skill levels to play on one server creating a hughe skillgap. If you let a korean proleauge SC2 player play against a bronze-leaguer the beginner is probably gonna think the game is unbalanced as well
By no means competitive players are the only resource you've got or should use as a game developer, but they're a damn useful resource nevertheless. Being skilled doesn't make them good game designers by any means, but it makes them very useful when you're trying to assess how the skill progression works as players get better. In NS2 some of the mechanics ended up being built so that they didn't work particularly well when the performance increased and people started playing on a higher skill level. Some of these design dead ends might have been avoidable, saving valuable development resources for other things and allowing the rest of the game to be built on a more solid and permanent foundation.
And to be very clear: Doing everything comp players want is rarely a good development method. Meanwhile getting feedback on certain aspects of gameplay from competitive gamers and using that information to shape the game further can be a very beneficial part of the development - especially in a game that has as complex asymmetrical interactions as NS2 does.
Why do we actually waste time to discuss about a post of someone who would rather use /kill to suicide because he has no armor and is more likely to die in the field and by his own words can't make it out of base to achive something without dying? How did this guy expect to improve in the game if he pus*ied before an engagement even happened, lol... Sounds just like someone who was really really bad at this game and couldn't just accept it and quit (or at least learn) but instead needed his 5 minutes of attention and wrote a whiny post to blame everyone else (UWE, CDT, competetive players) for killing the game. Very sad to see that this review by itself made a handfull of people not buy NS2.
The most funny thing is that his post seemed to attracted players very similar to him. Some of the guys complaining there have <100h in the game and think they know if the game was balanced or not or think they could distingush skill and hacks.