UWE stepping in only when things are in crisis mode. I kind of want dragon not to come back just to spite UWE now and their shit attitude in order to fuck ns2; it seems they only learn their lessons once the damage is irreparable.
Seems bizarre to me that despite all the concerns from modders when Hugh suggested the rapid iteration scheme, that you expect modders to raise the same concerns again in the future (with the expectation of being ignored). The fact that dragon has to use a nuclear option in order to get your attention is pathetic; feels like you want a competitive scene (loyal players) without treating them well.
Thank you dragon for compmod, your time, and patience. While I don't want to see compmod gone, I fully support your decision!
IxianDenmarkJoin Date: 2014-03-16Member: 194783Members, Squad Five Blue
edited March 2016
I dont care what decitions get made on a competitive level - The meta game changes, and that is inevitable. I would however love to see it influenced heavily by those who we can describe as competitive masters of ns2.
CompMod shouldnt have existed. Ns2 isn't two games, and treating it as such, can be considered ignoring flawed designs, that doesnt scale to the competitive level. Blaming UWE for this is unreasonable, as they never could have anticipated how high the level has become, or how seriously some people take the competitive gameplay. And for that reason xDragon and the comp mod team has my respect for seeing this evolve, and acting on it. It should however have been UWE doing this, but failed to do so - ignorant decition or not.
I will use Atmospheric Territories as an example, today we were working on a way for tournament mode to disable the use of this feature so that it would not effect say comp players who have voiced concern over it.
@WasabiOne Lets NOT make it two different games? Competitive and Casual should be playing the same game. AFAIK the concerns is the massive impact of a single cyst - one that is being adressed by mcclaspie already, according to his post on the topic of the new mod. You have time to make a proper change to the mod, with the recently deceased Comp mod and NSL mod, as the competitive community has already postponed their next season.
edit: above feels like what i should say - This is what i want to say
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited March 2016
So we have no red rooms anymore and this is killing NS2?
LOL
Jesus christ
"But please stop messing with core gameplay."
So a different colored room is part of core gameplay, wow.
Btw, did you use another crosshair or another alienvision?
Felt a bit strange in the 1st round after the patch but after 3 rounds i had zero problems with the new lightning anymore.
The funny thing is, i could be the father of most complaining players here, and im more flexible in my age than players who are around 25 years old?
We are not talking about a new op weapon here or changes on movement/damage or whatever.
This thread is about different ambient color.
Hillarious.
Yeah, UWE caved so the competitive players in their floating castle don't have to share features with the rest of the casual players.
The floating castle just fell to the earth though.
Any good story needs good villains I guess. It's good to ignore all the stuff getting in the way of a good narrative. Like the part where one cyst making an entire room dark is a problem, and was actually acknowledged by McGlaspie, etc. But you can keep your own version of the story if that makes you happy.
Yeah, UWE caved so the competitive players in their floating castle don't have to share features with the rest of the casual players.
The floating castle just fell to the earth though.
Half your bug fixes, map fixes, feature implementation and the biggest mod in ns2 (ns2+) are thanks to competitive players, are you retarded? They've only improved this game and kept it alive for years.
So we have no red rooms anymore and this is killing NS2?
LOL
Jesus christ
"But please stop messing with core gameplay."
So a different colored room is part of core gameplay, wow.
Btw, did you use another crosshair or another alienvision?
Felt a bit strange in the 1st round after the patch but after 3 rounds i had zero problems with the new lightning anymore.
The funny thing is, i could be the father of most complaining players here, and im more flexible in my age than players who are around 25 years old?
We are not talking about a new op weapon here or changes on movement/damage or whatever.
This thread is about different ambient color.
Hillarious.
Read what everyone else is saying before responding. Different colored room? How about dark rooms vs light - NOT COLOR! Lighting greatly effects any game and the way it's played...Period! It's called "core gameplay" when it's infused into the game and you can't change it...or in our case, shoved down our throats.
"This thread is about different ambient color..." Negative. It's about the lighting not color.
Apparently there is a problem, otherwise folks wouldn't be talking about it so much.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited March 2016
Well, you have no compmod anymore.
But this would be also a drama without the ambient light changes.
Looks like you mixing some stuff here.
OP was complaining about the lights, then we had the typical "hitreg is bad", "perfomance is bad" "bad decision by UWE blabla" posts and in the end XDragon left and no compmod anymore.
Yeah, UWE caved so the competitive players in their floating castle don't have to share features with the rest of the casual players.
The floating castle just fell to the earth though.
Any good story needs good villains I guess. It's good to ignore all the stuff getting in the way of a good narrative. Like the part where one cyst making an entire room dark is a problem, and was actually acknowledged by McGlaspie, etc. But you can keep your own version of the story if that makes you happy.
Competitive players are evil.
I don't think competitive players are evil nor are out to ruin the game. What I do dislike is the notion that some players should be exempt from core gameplay changes they do not like, this doesn't improve vanilla NS2. However, I mentioned before that for the cases of tournaments and such the rapid iteration testing version of NS2 should be treated as a mod so UWE doesn't kill another tournament again and the competitive players could schedule around a 2-3 week stable release build of the regular game.
I like the new lighting changes, I want to see them improved upon, but you aren't going to get any useful feedback if everyone just disables it entirely out of a knee jerk reaction.
Half your bug fixes, map fixes, feature implementation and the biggest mod in ns2 (ns2+) are thanks to competitive players, are you retarded? They've only improved this game and kept it alive for years.
This is entirely my personal opinion and feel free to call me retarded again, but while I do love and respect the balance/gameplay improvement mods people have done for ns2, they're a crutch to the game.(with the exemption of bug fixing)
For each and every reason or time someone makes a mod that picks up the slack for UWE's unfinished/imbalanced game, it lets them shift focus away from the improvements the modders do for them. NS2+ for example has many, many, many great features that should have been implemented into the vanilla game by now, but haven't. Instead we see NS2+ as mandatory for any good server to run. With how vital his mod is to the enjoyment of the game Mendasp should have been the first person asked to be in the PDT.
I'm not saying NS2 doesn't need these mods, I'm saying NS2 shouldn't need these mods.
Look, the bottom line is that there shouldn't be two versions of NS2, pub & comp in terms of "core gameplay." ...Dark/moody lighting for vanilla NS2 while competitive play is "normal" lighting.
The greatest changes that could ever be made to NS2 already exist. Incorporate many NS2+ features into the vanilla game and leave the comp/balance mod for competitive play.
Here's why. All you have to do is ask yourself the question: "If I were playing competitively, would I want Atmospheric Territories to exist in my match?" If the answer is no, then it shouldn't be in vanilla.
For each and every reason or time someone makes a mod that picks up the slack for UWE's unfinished/imbalanced game, it lets them shift focus away from the improvements the modders do for them. NS2+ for example has many, many, many great features that should have been implemented into the vanilla game by now, but haven't. Instead we see NS2+ as mandatory for any good server to run. With how vital his mod is to the enjoyment of the game Mendasp should have been the first person asked to be in the PDT.
I'm not saying NS2 doesn't need these mods, I'm saying NS2 shouldn't need these mods.
I think you have the sequence wrong. It is because UWE is not doing it that the modders are doing it. They aren't going to magically do it if the modders don't, and speaking of NS2+, they had ample opportunity to and did merge some of its features into the game when we had the CDT.
For each and every reason or time someone makes a mod that picks up the slack for UWE's unfinished/imbalanced game, it lets them shift focus away from the improvements the modders do for them. NS2+ for example has many, many, many great features that should have been implemented into the vanilla game by now, but haven't. Instead we see NS2+ as mandatory for any good server to run. With how vital his mod is to the enjoyment of the game Mendasp should have been the first person asked to be in the PDT.
I'm not saying NS2 doesn't need these mods, I'm saying NS2 shouldn't need these mods.
I think you have the sequence wrong. It is because UWE is not doing it that the modders are doing it. They aren't going to magically do it if the modders don't, and speaking of NS2+, they had ample opportunity to and did merge some of its features into the game when we had the CDT.
I guess you're right that just because people are fed up with parts of the game doesn't mean it'll get the attention it deserves, and especially right with the CDT merging the features we needed and wanted before UWE showed them the door.
Just to make it clearer though I'm not blaming the modders for the game's incompleteness, as at the end it all that fault is still on UWE. Sorry for pissing off the people who made the game better when no one else would.
At any rate, you had opportunity to respond to Dragon and Mendasp here and both them and myself were basically ignored/deflected.
You responded to my quotes but I didn't care, you should've responded to them and their questions.
Not to mention Discord. And you wonder why he got tired of it.
I mean you can just look at Dragon's last few comments before he got upset and see all the questions he asked that were ignored.
Answers finally came through on ENSL forums but it should not have had to come to this point. They say the squeaky wheel gets the oil but cleary this wheel needed to fall off first.
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
edited March 2016
@Webtrance
No, I dont. And idk why you're in a fighting mood over a simple question, calm down before you hurt yourself.
Please clarify : Should there be only one version of NS2 or should there also be comp mod that takes care of comp desires (Which may not always be in line with pub desires) ?
You appear to be advocating for both. Then you say pub can have dark lighting while comp has typical, but follow up with "stop messing with the game".
I honestly can't tell where you stand at this point.
@Webtrance
No, I dont. And idk why you're in a fighting mood over a simple question, calm down before you hurt yourself.
Please clarify : Should there be only one version of NS2 or should there also be comp mod that takes care of comp desires (Which may not always be in line with pub desires) ?
You appear to be advocating for both. Then you say pub can have dark lighting while comp has typical, but follow up with "stop messing with the game".
I honestly can't tell where you stand at this point.
You tell me. Should there be only one "core" version of NS2? Yes. There are balance issues, I'm sure, that would have to be incorporated into vanilla and comp due to playe count. I'm referring to "core gameplay." For example, graphical options (includes lighting), map design, etc, should remain the same whether vanilla or comp.
I never said "pubs can have dark lighting while comp has typical. Never said that and completely feel the opposite. Lighting is part of the core game...if vanilla gets it, so does comp.
If you plan to accommodate the comp scene with normal lighting or mods to eliminate atmospheric territories, then you essentially have two versions of NS2 if disabling it isn't available for vanilla.
So, let me restate what I had already written. "The bottom line is that there shouldn't be two versions of NS2, pub & comp in terms of "core gameplay." Again, graphical options (includes lighting), are part of core gameplay.
If you plan to accommodate the comp scene with normal lighting or mods to eliminate it, then you essentially have two versions of NS2 .
Isn't that what we've had for 2 years already and it worked just fine? One could easily argue that many of the changes in the non vanilla version of NS2 greatly affect the "core gameplay", too.
So what about changes going forward that apply to pub but not comp, that are disabled when comp is played?
What about changes going forward that apply to comp but not pub, that are disabled when pub is played?
I do not honestly believe that every improvement from either modding or UWE side fits in both camps perfectly... so does this mean new developments from anyone can't happen because neither side will be happy?
I used to support one single NS2 - idk about that anymore though, given the proven effectiveness of going the other route for 2 years.
If you plan to accommodate the comp scene with normal lighting or mods to eliminate it, then you essentially have two versions of NS2 .
Isn't that what we've had for 2 years already and it worked just fine? One could easily argue that many of the changes in the non vanilla version of NS2 greatly affect the "core gameplay", too.
So what about changes going forward that apply to pub but not comp, that are disabled when comp is played?
What about changes going forward that apply to comp but not pub, that are disabled when pub is played?
I do not honestly believe that every improvement from either modding or UWE side fits in both camps perfectly... so does this mean new developments from anyone can't happen because neither side will be happy?
I used to support one single NS2 - idk about that anymore though, given the proven effectiveness of going the other route for 2 years.
Well, just like camera animation, some use it...most probably don't. The same goes for lighting and graphical enhancements. You can enable/disable a lot of stuff as you know. You should be able to toggle atmospheric territories "lighting" as well. If it's not possible in vanilla, then it shouldn't be possible in comp...due to the fact that it's part of the "core" game as a lighting option. That's whether atmospheric territories is hard coded or comes to us as a mod.
May I ask a question? Why is it that because someone says they were ignored you choose to believe it as gospel? I'm not saying he is right or wrong about being ignore, just asking the question. We seem like many in the world to jump to conclusions so quickly and become judgmental that it does us more harm than good. We have stressed from the beginning of this project that we want to work towards building the game up and not just sustaining whats there. Yes this community has amazing contributors like Mendasp and xDragon, and we work with them when we can to make sure their work doesn't suffer from our patches and changes. This doesn't always work, bugs happen even with testing. I hear the real argument being made by xDragon regarding the use of the extension system and why he thinks its overall a bad thing for modders. Our team will be discussing it at our next meeting Monday and take it from there. Again I will stress, if you have a specific question be sure to @ one of us in discord. We check this notifications throughout the day and we make every effort to respond.
I'm assuming this is directed towards my post but it's not faith that I'm basing my judgement on how it was handled but simply looking at the responses after their posts and seeing nothing until things exploded. It took an explosion to get a response.
They got their answers on the forums on ensl.org after I'm guessing rant pointed it out.
Clearly this was a communication issue and I am not saying you're doing a horrible job but communication is a two way street and you would think he would be someone people would be looking out for when he says things considering what he did to fix a few bigs recently ALONE. Not to mention other stuff he has done.
No one is asking for rewards or any crap. Just a little respect. Instead it seems like he's been sort of villianized in this situation and blamed for deciding to pack up shop.
I think it's a great idea to do this project but don't take this criticism as hating on you guys but simply as criticsm. We all care about the game or wouldn't be posting.
We seem like many in the world to jump to conclusions so quickly and become judgmental that it does us more harm than good.
According to you last cologne event it was suppose to be the ''swansong of ns2'', so dont't talk about being judgemental?
Maybe some people are a little sceptical about the people in charge of the ns2 project at the moment(me atleast), and how huge their understanding/motivation of the game really is. These issues wouldn't pop up every week otherwise. On the other I have to give credit to the few people that have actually paid attention to what people have to say, and how you are being judged about every change you make, can be tough I would imagine.
Yes this community has amazing contributors like Mendasp and xDragon, and we work with them when we can to make sure their work doesn't suffer from our patches and changes.
You just keep randomly naming them in topics/posts, but you don't listen to them that's the thing. The problem started when uwe couldn't even hire them in the first place when they clearly should have(not too late yet). How narrow minded can you be to not include such persons in your team and work as a group that has the same goal to make ns2 enjoyable and fun for everyone. What kind of hippie positive office do you need to have when you cant take obvious criticism about the game mechanics that would by adjusting them right benefit everyone, instead you leave people out because they have better understanding what people actually wanna play. You just cant take criticism or you blame them for being elitist, when they actually know what community wants.
Why would people actually maintaining the game playable to huge part of the community have to come to you in every thing and almost beg not to make mistakes you are making, when its clear you are just screwing things up from the gaming perspective, maybe you could contact the persons instead and ask their opinions before hand. This community isn't that huge that you wouldn't know who to talk to and who to listen if you actually cared about the core community.
Stop being so high and mighty in your positive workspace, just because you are the ''dev'' team doesen't mean you can just ignore the core persons in this game and try to hide the facts that you don't listen to them and you keep making stupid mistakes because of that, and dividing the players over and over again. Its the same thing weekly when someone important to the game has had enough, or you just randomly decide to make fanta visions or glowing rooms, and ignoring the modders(yes the ones that kept going when uwe didin't).
If you would have any respect to the community you would actually reach out to dragon+mendasp and the rest and ask them to contribute to the game the way the community wants, not just talk this nonsense about ''transparency and we are listening'' when you actually aren't and you keep making changes that aren't necessary or people don't need/want.
And to you that talk how stupid its to make game for comp players only, this game has never had that approach from the devs, the compscene is what it is now because of the people that are part of it, not because of the dev team. If this game would have been in the hands of the players that have played the game for around 15years you would have both worlds working compscene+balanced games = fun games, now you have this mix of something in between and splitted scene and forum drama twice a day. You can still have the pubbing experience with tournament mode, but if you just focus on one of them its over.
The problem now is that the game is more and more dividing the players because you don't have a clear vision, every change is being judged by someone and it is also holding the game back, maybe its time you actually brainstormed these ideas through with people that has the community support like mendasp,dragon and with your dev team, and stop this martyr attitude from both sides.
Make a clear vision what you wanna do, and ask for help and opinions and do it right, its done right with many games before...
Comments
Seems bizarre to me that despite all the concerns from modders when Hugh suggested the rapid iteration scheme, that you expect modders to raise the same concerns again in the future (with the expectation of being ignored). The fact that dragon has to use a nuclear option in order to get your attention is pathetic; feels like you want a competitive scene (loyal players) without treating them well.
Thank you dragon for compmod, your time, and patience. While I don't want to see compmod gone, I fully support your decision!
CompMod shouldnt have existed. Ns2 isn't two games, and treating it as such, can be considered ignoring flawed designs, that doesnt scale to the competitive level. Blaming UWE for this is unreasonable, as they never could have anticipated how high the level has become, or how seriously some people take the competitive gameplay. And for that reason xDragon and the comp mod team has my respect for seeing this evolve, and acting on it. It should however have been UWE doing this, but failed to do so - ignorant decition or not.
@WasabiOne Lets NOT make it two different games? Competitive and Casual should be playing the same game. AFAIK the concerns is the massive impact of a single cyst - one that is being adressed by mcclaspie already, according to his post on the topic of the new mod. You have time to make a proper change to the mod, with the recently deceased Comp mod and NSL mod, as the competitive community has already postponed their next season.
edit: above feels like what i should say - This is what i want to say
LOL
Jesus christ
"But please stop messing with core gameplay."
So a different colored room is part of core gameplay, wow.
Btw, did you use another crosshair or another alienvision?
Felt a bit strange in the 1st round after the patch but after 3 rounds i had zero problems with the new lightning anymore.
The funny thing is, i could be the father of most complaining players here, and im more flexible in my age than players who are around 25 years old?
We are not talking about a new op weapon here or changes on movement/damage or whatever.
This thread is about different ambient color.
Hillarious.
You mean the typical "UWE is killing NS2" whining?
Maybe i have a selective perception.
Any good story needs good villains I guess. It's good to ignore all the stuff getting in the way of a good narrative. Like the part where one cyst making an entire room dark is a problem, and was actually acknowledged by McGlaspie, etc. But you can keep your own version of the story if that makes you happy.
Competitive players are evil.
Selective reading and/or perception. We'll go with that.
Half your bug fixes, map fixes, feature implementation and the biggest mod in ns2 (ns2+) are thanks to competitive players, are you retarded? They've only improved this game and kept it alive for years.
Read what everyone else is saying before responding. Different colored room? How about dark rooms vs light - NOT COLOR! Lighting greatly effects any game and the way it's played...Period! It's called "core gameplay" when it's infused into the game and you can't change it...or in our case, shoved down our throats.
"This thread is about different ambient color..." Negative. It's about the lighting not color.
Apparently there is a problem, otherwise folks wouldn't be talking about it so much.
But this would be also a drama without the ambient light changes.
Looks like you mixing some stuff here.
OP was complaining about the lights, then we had the typical "hitreg is bad", "perfomance is bad" "bad decision by UWE blabla" posts and in the end XDragon left and no compmod anymore.
These are all different things, the only thing that the CDT team has changed, was the lighning. Thats all.
Well, and maybe how mods are handled now. But im not a programmer.
Im sure you know this post:
http://www.ensl.org/topics/1650#post_21215
So instead of forcing the drama with postings like this:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/140895/vanilla-draft-tournament-hosted-by-ensl-org
Just contact the dev team like Obraxix mentioned and everything will be ok.
Things can be so easy.
I don't think competitive players are evil nor are out to ruin the game. What I do dislike is the notion that some players should be exempt from core gameplay changes they do not like, this doesn't improve vanilla NS2. However, I mentioned before that for the cases of tournaments and such the rapid iteration testing version of NS2 should be treated as a mod so UWE doesn't kill another tournament again and the competitive players could schedule around a 2-3 week stable release build of the regular game.
I like the new lighting changes, I want to see them improved upon, but you aren't going to get any useful feedback if everyone just disables it entirely out of a knee jerk reaction.
This is entirely my personal opinion and feel free to call me retarded again, but while I do love and respect the balance/gameplay improvement mods people have done for ns2, they're a crutch to the game.(with the exemption of bug fixing)
For each and every reason or time someone makes a mod that picks up the slack for UWE's unfinished/imbalanced game, it lets them shift focus away from the improvements the modders do for them. NS2+ for example has many, many, many great features that should have been implemented into the vanilla game by now, but haven't. Instead we see NS2+ as mandatory for any good server to run. With how vital his mod is to the enjoyment of the game Mendasp should have been the first person asked to be in the PDT.
I'm not saying NS2 doesn't need these mods, I'm saying NS2 shouldn't need these mods.
The greatest changes that could ever be made to NS2 already exist. Incorporate many NS2+ features into the vanilla game and leave the comp/balance mod for competitive play.
Here's why. All you have to do is ask yourself the question: "If I were playing competitively, would I want Atmospheric Territories to exist in my match?" If the answer is no, then it shouldn't be in vanilla.
Touchy-feely / Gen Z players will disagree.
I think you have the sequence wrong. It is because UWE is not doing it that the modders are doing it. They aren't going to magically do it if the modders don't, and speaking of NS2+, they had ample opportunity to and did merge some of its features into the game when we had the CDT.
I guess you're right that just because people are fed up with parts of the game doesn't mean it'll get the attention it deserves, and especially right with the CDT merging the features we needed and wanted before UWE showed them the door.
Just to make it clearer though I'm not blaming the modders for the game's incompleteness, as at the end it all that fault is still on UWE. Sorry for pissing off the people who made the game better when no one else would.
Seriously? Are we picking a fight here? Do those question marks mean you just absolutely have ZERO clue whatsoever?
Here...let me explain it for you and for others. STOP MESSING WITH THE FREAKING GAME!! There...get it??
At any rate, you had opportunity to respond to Dragon and Mendasp here and both them and myself were basically ignored/deflected.
You responded to my quotes but I didn't care, you should've responded to them and their questions.
Not to mention Discord. And you wonder why he got tired of it.
I mean you can just look at Dragon's last few comments before he got upset and see all the questions he asked that were ignored.
Answers finally came through on ENSL forums but it should not have had to come to this point. They say the squeaky wheel gets the oil but cleary this wheel needed to fall off first.
No, I dont. And idk why you're in a fighting mood over a simple question, calm down before you hurt yourself.
Please clarify : Should there be only one version of NS2 or should there also be comp mod that takes care of comp desires (Which may not always be in line with pub desires) ?
You appear to be advocating for both. Then you say pub can have dark lighting while comp has typical, but follow up with "stop messing with the game".
I honestly can't tell where you stand at this point.
You tell me. Should there be only one "core" version of NS2? Yes. There are balance issues, I'm sure, that would have to be incorporated into vanilla and comp due to playe count. I'm referring to "core gameplay." For example, graphical options (includes lighting), map design, etc, should remain the same whether vanilla or comp.
I never said "pubs can have dark lighting while comp has typical. Never said that and completely feel the opposite. Lighting is part of the core game...if vanilla gets it, so does comp.
If you plan to accommodate the comp scene with normal lighting or mods to eliminate atmospheric territories, then you essentially have two versions of NS2 if disabling it isn't available for vanilla.
So, let me restate what I had already written. "The bottom line is that there shouldn't be two versions of NS2, pub & comp in terms of "core gameplay." Again, graphical options (includes lighting), are part of core gameplay.
Isn't that what we've had for 2 years already and it worked just fine? One could easily argue that many of the changes in the non vanilla version of NS2 greatly affect the "core gameplay", too.
So what about changes going forward that apply to pub but not comp, that are disabled when comp is played?
What about changes going forward that apply to comp but not pub, that are disabled when pub is played?
I do not honestly believe that every improvement from either modding or UWE side fits in both camps perfectly... so does this mean new developments from anyone can't happen because neither side will be happy?
I used to support one single NS2 - idk about that anymore though, given the proven effectiveness of going the other route for 2 years.
Well, just like camera animation, some use it...most probably don't. The same goes for lighting and graphical enhancements. You can enable/disable a lot of stuff as you know. You should be able to toggle atmospheric territories "lighting" as well. If it's not possible in vanilla, then it shouldn't be possible in comp...due to the fact that it's part of the "core" game as a lighting option. That's whether atmospheric territories is hard coded or comes to us as a mod.
They got their answers on the forums on ensl.org after I'm guessing rant pointed it out.
Clearly this was a communication issue and I am not saying you're doing a horrible job but communication is a two way street and you would think he would be someone people would be looking out for when he says things considering what he did to fix a few bigs recently ALONE. Not to mention other stuff he has done.
No one is asking for rewards or any crap. Just a little respect. Instead it seems like he's been sort of villianized in this situation and blamed for deciding to pack up shop.
I think it's a great idea to do this project but don't take this criticism as hating on you guys but simply as criticsm. We all care about the game or wouldn't be posting.
Maybe some people are a little sceptical about the people in charge of the ns2 project at the moment(me atleast), and how huge their understanding/motivation of the game really is. These issues wouldn't pop up every week otherwise. On the other I have to give credit to the few people that have actually paid attention to what people have to say, and how you are being judged about every change you make, can be tough I would imagine.
You just keep randomly naming them in topics/posts, but you don't listen to them that's the thing. The problem started when uwe couldn't even hire them in the first place when they clearly should have(not too late yet). How narrow minded can you be to not include such persons in your team and work as a group that has the same goal to make ns2 enjoyable and fun for everyone. What kind of hippie positive office do you need to have when you cant take obvious criticism about the game mechanics that would by adjusting them right benefit everyone, instead you leave people out because they have better understanding what people actually wanna play. You just cant take criticism or you blame them for being elitist, when they actually know what community wants.
Why would people actually maintaining the game playable to huge part of the community have to come to you in every thing and almost beg not to make mistakes you are making, when its clear you are just screwing things up from the gaming perspective, maybe you could contact the persons instead and ask their opinions before hand. This community isn't that huge that you wouldn't know who to talk to and who to listen if you actually cared about the core community.
Stop being so high and mighty in your positive workspace, just because you are the ''dev'' team doesen't mean you can just ignore the core persons in this game and try to hide the facts that you don't listen to them and you keep making stupid mistakes because of that, and dividing the players over and over again. Its the same thing weekly when someone important to the game has had enough, or you just randomly decide to make fanta visions or glowing rooms, and ignoring the modders(yes the ones that kept going when uwe didin't).
If you would have any respect to the community you would actually reach out to dragon+mendasp and the rest and ask them to contribute to the game the way the community wants, not just talk this nonsense about ''transparency and we are listening'' when you actually aren't and you keep making changes that aren't necessary or people don't need/want.
And to you that talk how stupid its to make game for comp players only, this game has never had that approach from the devs, the compscene is what it is now because of the people that are part of it, not because of the dev team. If this game would have been in the hands of the players that have played the game for around 15years you would have both worlds working compscene+balanced games = fun games, now you have this mix of something in between and splitted scene and forum drama twice a day. You can still have the pubbing experience with tournament mode, but if you just focus on one of them its over.
The problem now is that the game is more and more dividing the players because you don't have a clear vision, every change is being judged by someone and it is also holding the game back, maybe its time you actually brainstormed these ideas through with people that has the community support like mendasp,dragon and with your dev team, and stop this martyr attitude from both sides.
Make a clear vision what you wanna do, and ask for help and opinions and do it right, its done right with many games before...