Congratulations UWE
Wingflier
Join Date: 2013-03-07 Member: 183769Members
Join Date: 2013-03-07 Member: 183769Members
I've just gotta say after 3 years, what a remarkable job you guys are continuing to do with this game.
I remember being hyped about NS2 when it was first announced, several years before it was released. That in itself was an emotional rollercoaster with tons of major design shifts and changes along the way, even before the game was released. Specifically, the decision to switch from the Valve Source engine to one that your developers had created from scratch was a nail-biter, because nobody knew how that was going to turn out.
When the game was first released it was riddled with problems and bugs, but also severe design flaws as well. That's to be expected with the new release of any game, but unfortunately these problems caused NS2 to garner less than stellar reviews, and so the potential success of the game was hamstrung right out of the gates.
Unfortunately, even these problems were overshadowed by an even bigger fundamental flaw: The game lacked matchmaking and/or any kind of meaningful team balancing mechanic. This meant that even if you looked past all of the engine and design (and arguably balance difficulties as well), the game was still extremely frustrating to play. It was not fun when 90% of games were just an uneven stomp one way or another. Sadly, even the Reinforcement program only served to reinforce this (pun intended). Because now, all the people spending money on the special supporter icons were stacking on the same team together, and all the new players were getting crushed by people who had spent hundreds or thousands of hours on the game. It was almost as if the reinforcement icons made it easier to turn the games into an unbalanced mess.
UWE eventually added a matchmaking feature but by then it was too late because the player population was too low to concurrently support it and/or keep it active.
At every turn, it seemed like UWE was hitting wall after wall. People complained about the engine, the FPS drops, the technical difficulties, the balance problems, the low population, the horribly uneven games, the struggling competitive scene, how the first game was so much better, and god knows what else and yet amazingly UWE never gave up. In fact they created a new game on the same engine just to continue financing NS2 and to keep it alive where ANY other developer would have given up on this sinking ship a long time ago. Hardly anybody appreciates it.
I'll be honest guys, I didn't expect this game to make it this far. By this point, I would have expected NS2 to be abandonware, not only because of the difficulty both maintaining the game and generating profit for it, but also the way in which the community finds to complain about the most inane things imaginable.
However, in my humble opinion the state that the game is now in is fantastic. I can log into the game, press "Play Now" and I'm immediately directed to a location within 10 seconds in which the server is responsive, the gameplay is smooth as butter, and the matches are enjoyable and balanced. It's not perfect, the playerbase is still low, the balance will never be flawless (that's simply the nature of asymmetrical design. If you want team clones play CoD), but in spite of all that, it feels good.
Maybe I'll get flamed for this post but I just want to say thanks guys. You've been afforded a million reasons to give up but only one reason to keep going, and that's because you love this game, and it definitely shines through in your work. I realize that a small part of the community has been a part of this as well, doing volunteer work on the game to help where they can, and I want to thank you guys too (and UWE for giving you the opportunity).
I love this game and look forward to playing it for many years to come.
I remember being hyped about NS2 when it was first announced, several years before it was released. That in itself was an emotional rollercoaster with tons of major design shifts and changes along the way, even before the game was released. Specifically, the decision to switch from the Valve Source engine to one that your developers had created from scratch was a nail-biter, because nobody knew how that was going to turn out.
When the game was first released it was riddled with problems and bugs, but also severe design flaws as well. That's to be expected with the new release of any game, but unfortunately these problems caused NS2 to garner less than stellar reviews, and so the potential success of the game was hamstrung right out of the gates.
Unfortunately, even these problems were overshadowed by an even bigger fundamental flaw: The game lacked matchmaking and/or any kind of meaningful team balancing mechanic. This meant that even if you looked past all of the engine and design (and arguably balance difficulties as well), the game was still extremely frustrating to play. It was not fun when 90% of games were just an uneven stomp one way or another. Sadly, even the Reinforcement program only served to reinforce this (pun intended). Because now, all the people spending money on the special supporter icons were stacking on the same team together, and all the new players were getting crushed by people who had spent hundreds or thousands of hours on the game. It was almost as if the reinforcement icons made it easier to turn the games into an unbalanced mess.
UWE eventually added a matchmaking feature but by then it was too late because the player population was too low to concurrently support it and/or keep it active.
At every turn, it seemed like UWE was hitting wall after wall. People complained about the engine, the FPS drops, the technical difficulties, the balance problems, the low population, the horribly uneven games, the struggling competitive scene, how the first game was so much better, and god knows what else and yet amazingly UWE never gave up. In fact they created a new game on the same engine just to continue financing NS2 and to keep it alive where ANY other developer would have given up on this sinking ship a long time ago. Hardly anybody appreciates it.
I'll be honest guys, I didn't expect this game to make it this far. By this point, I would have expected NS2 to be abandonware, not only because of the difficulty both maintaining the game and generating profit for it, but also the way in which the community finds to complain about the most inane things imaginable.
However, in my humble opinion the state that the game is now in is fantastic. I can log into the game, press "Play Now" and I'm immediately directed to a location within 10 seconds in which the server is responsive, the gameplay is smooth as butter, and the matches are enjoyable and balanced. It's not perfect, the playerbase is still low, the balance will never be flawless (that's simply the nature of asymmetrical design. If you want team clones play CoD), but in spite of all that, it feels good.
Maybe I'll get flamed for this post but I just want to say thanks guys. You've been afforded a million reasons to give up but only one reason to keep going, and that's because you love this game, and it definitely shines through in your work. I realize that a small part of the community has been a part of this as well, doing volunteer work on the game to help where they can, and I want to thank you guys too (and UWE for giving you the opportunity).
I love this game and look forward to playing it for many years to come.
Comments
It makes me really happy that "Play Now" is working so well for you.
Or was it?
Well, the main menu was made in Flash during beta, so there was some overlap, surely.