What's the NS2 dev org chart look like these days?
Wyzcrak
Pot Pie Aficionado Join Date: 2002-12-04 Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Pot Pie Aficionado Join Date: 2002-12-04 Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Saw this asked in another thread and was curious to know the contemporary answer, but the question was unanswered and I didn't want to further derail that thread by bumping the question.
And, really, I've lost sight of the larger NS2 dev organizational landscape these days and could use a refresher. Like, who's doing what these days? Ideally, the answer is short and authoritative (I'm not even sure who authoritatively answers such questions). I don't have any follow-up.
Which dev is currently in charge of balance changes for future patches ? Is it one person or are balance choices democratized within the whole team?
And, really, I've lost sight of the larger NS2 dev organizational landscape these days and could use a refresher. Like, who's doing what these days? Ideally, the answer is short and authoritative (I'm not even sure who authoritatively answers such questions). I don't have any follow-up.
Comments
BeigeAlert - Technical artistic direction, 3D Art & Content tools, programmer.
Ghoul - High-level engineering & game-play script focus
IronHorse - Quality Assurance manager & technical support
McGlaspie - Technical/Engineering direction, build & network infrastructure
Fsfod - 64-bit Development
rantology - Artistic direction
WasabiOne - Operation direction, Game-play direction
Hugh - Finances
As far as the balance discussion goes, we make those decisions as a committee. Some changes and ideas are driven by community input or by lack of functionality or player understanding of use. Although our focus is not on balance, our orders from the Powers that be (Max & Charlie) are to not focus on that but game features and retention. We do occasionally make some tweaks but with the time we are allotted it is not deemed a priority.
Surely gameplay and balance are the drivers of fun and therefor a major factor in player retention?
Today many devs think the main drivers of fun in games would be achievements, unlocks and constant pop ups that tell you how great you are.
You'd be surprised how often we hear requests for more achievements and more badges and other stuff to earn/buy.
Would you be willing to go into detail with this thought? I mean more detail than say "healthbars are bad."
I was more talking in general, less about NS2 in specific. But no, I am not surprised, what makes it even more sad. I know there are a lot of people who wouldn't play a game only because they like playing the game. The question is if you want these people in your game.
If this is the case may I suggest thinking through the balance changes you DO make a little more thoroughly.
I mean seriously, the boneshield heal should have never made it into the game in the first place as it was CLEARLY overpowered as hell. Yet how long was it left untouched? (and how many things did you tweak to try to "balance" for it? - were ANY of them reverted alongside boneshield?)
Then when you finally do fix it, you go overboard and nerf Onos health and speed...
Maybe if the focus isn't balance, try smaller, less impactful changes (and less of them at once) so that when balance gets royally f***ed beyond belief (like it was with the boneshield heal, and still is now - such insanely long turtles!!) we aren't waiting months for a fix.
Just a thought.
If I may pick it up from here - not to speak for cooltic. I think the popularity of this game is hurting by the decline of the competitive scene.
The game has a very steep learning curve and a very high skill ceiling. But as the competitive scene declines, it becomes increasingly more difficult to justify investing a lot of time and effort in to becoming good at this game, when you can compete in games like cstrike or quake instead.
You might think "but it's only a tiny fraction of players that are even capable of competing anyway". That doesn't matter, because many players, that really don't have what it takes, still like to imagine that they do. They need something to look forward to or to strive for. Right now, the competitive scene is not really that attractive.
I think to revive the competitive scene is to revive the playerbase. But a lot of key features have always lacked in ns2, wrt the healthiness of a competitive scene.
Proper spectating for starters. Server and -clientside replays. Working first person spec. All of these are essential to foster a fragmovie community, which really helps advertise for the competitive scene. Fragmovies are almost non-existent for NS2, and the few that do, are of pub or gather games, never exciting tournament finals or anything like that.
And could you imagine making something like Day9's dailys for NS2? How cool would that be, I'm sure a lot of players could benefit by learning some in depth strategy of the game. But how in the world do you first of all; find the games to analyse, and second of all record the game, when what you want to analyse can easily be missed while you're recording? You need replays for this, so you can rewind and watch things from several perspectives etc.
Next there needs to be more competitions other than the nsl. Monthly or weekly cups to keep fans engaged. Showmatches. That sort of thing. <--This is on the community though, not UWE.
And of course performance is still an issue, however I have the impression that UWE are working the best they can on that, so I can't reasonably criticise them on that point.
EDIT: And one more point. Less important than the others, but I still think it's worth mentioning. The game lacks projectile weapons. I'm a huge hitscan guy, I love the lightning gun in quake. But not everybody does love hitscan. Add relevant grenades and possibly a rocket launcher to the game; does two things. It removes the hitscan/shotgun monopoly. And it attracts arena fps players from quake, ut, tf2 etc. Remove railgun exo, replace it with Rocketlauncher exo!
The last time competitive had real worth was at the NS2WC 3 years ago. After that the competitive scene thrived and people had an amazing season at the NSL. Giving a badge for season winners is a nice start here tbh but I am not sure how many pub players saw a badge like that and thought "I want that!"
"To revive the comp scene is to revive the playerbase" ... well... kind of... I guess. I would say making the experience that the NSL provides more accessible for anyplayer in the game is the key here.
Like Santa said the game has a very steep learning curve and a high skill ceiling (even though compmod beta raises that ceiling by quite a bit atm). But also this game is very dependant on teamwork and with the ability to form a team and play against others you can get a grasp of the full awesomeness that ns2 can provide. However the steps for a rookie to get there are insane atm.
And as I said before (and I know it's being worked on by the devs) a lobby system to group up with friends and queue up for a ranked game simultaneously with a marketing campaign to boost playernumbers so queuing times get reduced.
Another thing this game should provide is the ability for each player to find an hone their own playstyle. That's why I do support the idea of projectile weapons (don't have to be rocket launchers though)
But generally, I would like more content and more marine marine weaponry. At the moment there is only Rifle, Shotgun and GL. And Exos sadly.
The thing I am not sure about is: I would expect projectile weapons to be much more dependant on ping and lag... Not sure if this could play well.
Two reasons: 1. "New player retention" (TM) doesn't actually solve the main problems that prevent new player retention, largely too late now anyways. 2. Because many changes that were made for new players are doing so at the expense of veterans (aka, think they should simplify things, which comes at the cost of lasting appeal).
These are both because UWE is misguided into thinking that "game is too hard! Waghh!" or "Waghh, not mainsteam enough!!!" is the problem (though the tutorials needed/still need improvement), instead of the game having lasting appeal. You want to know why the game lost all it's players at launch, UWE? Your performance was garbage, you had no decent tutorials, loading times were abysmal, and you didn't have matchmaking from the damn start. This is coming from a guy who prefers server browsers btw, and although most of these have gotten better over time, you lost the first few initial waves of players, and I doubt a relaunch would be effective.
Now UWE is focusing on making the game more casual and simple (The new UI, healthbars, hitbox change, etc.) and keeping the rounds short and straightforward (rounds are too much on a timer, making them predictable/less interesting). It's a lot like watching DOTA 2 gradually become like HotS because they thought it was cool and trendy, despite leaving a lot of veterans and people who liked the unique, high-skill gameplay dissatisfied. The only thing that could possibly bring and keep new players is by offering a unique, lasting experience that people can invest into (requiring focus on high-skill ceiling), which obv isn't UWE's focus at this point.
Veterans and enthusiasts are what keep a game together. They are the ones who will greet new players, introduce it to others, and advocate for it in general.
Maybe it's the ping compensation that skulks with higher ping bite you from huge distances and it's the same with spits/ gls.. whatever the reason, this makes this game feel random
Think he pretty much means that cysts and powernodes are an unncessary addition to the game which causes massive complications and consequences onto the game balance & flow in ways that never reward the players for their time or their individual contribution to their team's economy.
I'll use this opportunity to remind everyone that NS2 still needs sellable hats. (I mean customizable everything: models/structures/units/abilities/map elements)