1. How about an interactive, scripted tutorial for explaining map control fundamentals, game flow, and common tech/lifeform timings? It'd be rendered realtime using the game engine. It'd basically be an interactive demo 'hub' that takes place from the spectator's perspective. There would be a series of scenarios listed in a menu (where the commander ui would normally be). Click a scenario and watch it unfold. The player could pause the demo to look around while watching the events, zooming in and out, or rewinding the script to an earlier state.
I like this idea. Is it possible to do such a thing today?
I really liked the commander tutorials in the game. The voice actor did a really nice job, and the UI forced you to take specific actions. It was clear and beneficial with at least some level of representing a realistic scenario. Those commander tutorials could definitely go much further, since there's so much more to those roles. Just as an example: how does an alien commander learn what it means to ink a hive, what's necessary for doing so, and why you'd do it? Or all the special abilities the drifter can provide to your teammates in an intense battle? These skills would take a very long time to acquire just by playing the game without anyone guiding them. If there's an advanced tutorial describing and teaching these types of skills, maybe it'd make players less reluctant to jump into the commander role.
Or something like that. The more tiers the worse it gets so 3 is where it would be best. Or heck even 2 tiers might work. 1.) 0-1999, and 2.) 2k +.
This really wouldn't work for the reason ghoul mentioned in his post, except you made it the top 15%. By segregating rookies into their own servers, we already have a 50/50 split. Seeding servers is already an issue. NS2 does not have a large enough playerbase to support further segregation than that.
Nordic's first comment is already spot on. Rookie only servers are meant to provide a sandbox for new players to make their first steps and be able to get used to base mechanisms of the game without having to face off against any regular player. That concept doesn't work as soon as we allow any player with too much experience into given sandbox.
So rookie only is more about separating players by experience than by skill. Which brings us back to the real issue that most players do not enjoy playing against way higher skilled ns2 players (skill difference >1k) as the game design allows those players to just dominate the lower skilled players in quite a humiliating fashion.
To solve given issue I see the following two solutions:
[*] Segregate players by skill to ensure no player has to face another one they are unable to win against. But this would mean that the highest quartile of player would have a very hard time to start a round due to the low concurrent player numbers of that faction.
[*] Change the game so that high skilled players can't get too powerful over lower skilled players. Past questionnaires and short time experiences have shown that most long term ns2 players wouldn't really appreciate this solution.
That mindset should not be a huge issue 100% of the time, though I will agree it is an issue. Take me for example: I love playing against tougher opponents to try and better myself. I ask how things are done and pay attention to strategies and what works best.
You do that, but the vast majority do not in my own experience playing NS2. The simple fact that you are here practically makes you an outlier. You are in no way representative the typical new player.
The tutorial really should have been something mandatory and detailed.
NS2 used to force you to do the tutorial at least once if you were a rookie. This upset a lot of players who returned after not playing since before the rookie system was implemented. They were old players being forced to play the tutorial.
UWE then made it so that you had to play the tutorial to play on regular servers if you were a rookie. You could play on regular servers either by playing the tutorial or by reaching level 25. I am not sure if this is how UWE still handles it.
1. How about an interactive, scripted tutorial for explaining map control fundamentals, game flow, and common tech/lifeform timings? It'd be rendered realtime using the game engine. It'd basically be an interactive demo 'hub' that takes place from the spectator's perspective. There would be a series of scenarios listed in a menu (where the commander ui would normally be). Click a scenario and watch it unfold. The player could pause the demo to look around while watching the events, zooming in and out, or rewinding the script to an earlier state.
All units would be scripted and their actions would play out just to illustrate concepts. Narrated audio clips would play at the same time to explain what's happening (w/ subtitles). The map itself could have highlighted sections with a colored overlay to explain lanes / zones in simple terms. The intro tutorial would use an easy to understand map like tram, and then the advanced tutorial could focus on a more complicated map.
2. If we had the platform for it, the actual scripting of the tutorials could be outsourced to the community, with the best tutorials making the cut for inclusion in the game. It's too bad that NS2 doesn't have proper demo recording, because players could just play the scenarios out and record their actions for inclusion. The cleanest recordings would be selected. The community could generate timestamped plaintext for narration purposes. Hell, some of us are probably capable of doing the voiceover work, too.
This is really an argument for a robust tutorial system as opposed to prerecorded videos or one-off scripted intro tutorials like we have now. The game is too complex for the devs to do the lion's share of the actual tutorial scripting; I'd rather they spend time on developing a modular system that we can pipe data into, along with proper demo recording.
3. In addition, it would be great to have actual combat tutorials which illustrated typical exchanges/combat scenarios. Something like this but rendered in-game using the same spectator principle above. The tutorial viewer would be able to switch from first-person to free spectator to top-down. Both marine-perspective and alien-perspective examples would be included. Examples of scenarios would be like those in the video linked above as well as some of the better tips/illustrations drawn from resources like the ENSL tutorial page. It'd ramp up from the basics to advanced skills.
Do you have any idea how long it took UWE to get the tutorials that we have now completed? It would take years to do what you described. Even then only a very small percentage of players would use it, which would be abnormal players like @skav2 who actually want to learn the game.
You also have to realize that the more casual players don't want to do tutorials. UWE used to have a very low tutorial participation rate even though they had rookie specific pop ups that encourage them to try the tutorials. Tutorial participation rates are still quite low.
I'd say you can't change those types of players. If they don't want to do tutorials, they probably don't want to devote the time and effort into getting better, and so they won't. They'll probably leave after passing the rookie level. But if there's even a small percentage of players who would find use out of the tutorials, and they actually serve the intent by improving their skillset, then maybe it's worth it. If player retention is important enough.
You highlight on EXACTLY what I am trying to say. The cost of implementing a more advanced tutorial system, like @NousWanderer has described, is EXTREMELY high and would only be used by a small percentage of players. The returns would be marginal. Player retention might be improved by a few percent which is so incredibly marginal. The opportunity cost is high in that UWE could be working on any number of things as they move through their already currently planned roadmap.
Yesterday there was a dude on 8bit, the aliens were trying to baserush with a tunnel and he went there as an onos and attacked the powernode.
He immediately got yelled at, even though he was just trying to help, with the limited gameplay knowledge he had.
I guess my point is, that fellow players are a huge factor, maybe even bigger than the game itself.
Very true. I don't know how to combat that type of player interaction... it may be that the ones doing the yelling aren't aware in the heat of battle as to what hiveskill or playtime their teammates have. With skilled players on both sides, victory is only possible with lots of communication and teamwork, and so their natural instinct is to try and correct behavior that might not be the most efficient route to achieving victory. It can come off as quite harsh, particularly to a new player who isn't used to such high levels of coordination. I've got 600 hours in, and I still get yelled at almost every time I play for doing something that someone else would disagree with.
There are veterans who in the heat of the moment might yell at players not behaving optimally. Some people just have that kind of personality. I even get yelled at sometimes despite having more than 3000 hours and a high hive skill value. I don't value winning as much as them, so I don't always act in a way to win like they want. Less skilled players just don't know better. There is no way to know that in the heat of battle, nor does it matter given the habits they have formed.
I have also seem truely toxic people who scream and yell and put down rookies even knowing they are rookies. They exist. NS2 is known for being a toxic game, even though I think most other competitive multiplayer games are equally or more toxic.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
edited March 2018
I think for the players who don't want to put in the time to improve that much a more shallow drop in drop out gamemode would (still) be amazing. Having one of those where people don't feel overwhelmed by the strategic elements of the game and can just enjoy the unique movement and gunplay. There were some very nice ideas for that in the past done by the modding community.
The top 3 I can think of right now are Combat, Gun Game and Skulks with Shotguns. (I never played mods like MvM or Siege so I can't comment on that)
Unfortunately I don't see any servers that run that being seeded. Skulks with Shotguns is still working afaik (maybe not with ns2+) so maybe that would be played more if people could vore for it in shine like I see with infested from time to time.
The tutorial really should have been something mandatory and detailed.
NS2 used to force you to do the tutorial at least once if you were a rookie. This upset a lot of players who returned after not playing since before the rookie system was implemented. They were old players being forced to play the tutorial.
You know... When I read stuff like that I always doubt the competence of the guys who implement these systems. Of course players get annoyed.. they ought to have forseen that... but is that an unresolvable issue? NO ... Simply resolve this by giving them a shortcut by proving that they're non-rookies.
This is a “normal issue” for which you need to prepare an “escaperoute” beforehand for these players… by asking advanced questions / using challenges / whatever means to know they’ve done the tutorial - or they are on a more advanced level.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
I have not seen a tutorial shortcut like that in a game yet. But implementing a written test before starting the tutorial seems like a nice idea.
There is no better feeling when you install a game, open it up and see in the menu a message:
Before you can play the mandatory tutorial you need to complete this written test first. You will have to answer 100 questions before and another 100 after the tutorial to determine your hive skill at the beginning based on your theoretical knowledge about the game and your learning capabilities, completely ignoring the mechanical skill you bring into the game. If you get 80+% of the first test right you will skip the tutorial and jump straight to the second test.
A test with no multiple answers, only written essays. @Mephilles I believe you just saved the game.
@Nordic I feel what you are saying, but if UWE just made it if you have X hours in Steam in NS2 then it would give the option to skip the tutorial or something implemented. Otherwise it should have been kept. A waste of resources for something that had an easy out.
As for the segregation I totally understand not wanting to do this because its already hard to seed games due to player counts. This is just an Idea I wanted to toss out and still believe it would work. Us veteran players have been getting frustrated for a long time because the lowbies make games more frustrating. In many other games this system of separating players works out very well and that is why I suggest it. In games like CSGO, LoL, etc you play against people who are of similar skill to you and have an about equal change of winning depending on skill, team, etc.
In @GhoulofGSG9 's post and something I understand very well is our player count is low. So this solution wouldn't work very well as it currently stands. A lot of my ideas I post are for something UWE could implement into their next installation of Natural Selection if that ever comes. With larger player counts this system works very well. If they decide to do it now, with a working tutorial system, I believe we could see a decent influx of players and if Combat ++ we could see even more. Still wouldnt be AAA numbers however hundreds to possibly a thousand players would be amazing.
I get this is a 5+ year old game and as shown on Trello and the forums this game is under minimal update status and we are lucky to even have that. Shout out to @BeigeAlert
The tutorial really should have been something mandatory and detailed.
NS2 used to force you to do the tutorial at least once if you were a rookie. This upset a lot of players who returned after not playing since before the rookie system was implemented. They were old players being forced to play the tutorial.
You know... When I read stuff like that I always doubt the competence of the guys who implement these systems. Of course players get annoyed.. they ought to have forseen that... but is that an unresolvable issue? NO ... Simply resolve this by giving them a shortcut by proving that they're non-rookies.
This is a “normal issue” for which you need to prepare an “escaperoute” beforehand for these players… by asking advanced questions / using challenges / whatever means to know they’ve done the tutorial - or they are on a more advanced level.
*shaking ones head in disbelief*
I am probably somehow oversimplifying when I try to provide context like this. I am not a dev. I was not apart of the decision making process. I am probably missing some information.
Skav2 If you are stating ideas for NS3 in a conversation about NS2 please be specific about when you change context. We have other threads talking about NS3.
As for the segregation I totally understand not wanting to do this because its already hard to seed games due to player counts. This is just an Idea I wanted to toss out and still believe it would work. Us veteran players have been getting frustrated for a long time because the lowbies make games more frustrating. In many other games this system of separating players works out very well and that is why I suggest it. In games like CSGO, LoL, etc you play against people who are of similar skill to you and have an about equal change of winning depending on skill, team, etc.
@Kasharic told me that the games become incredibly more enjoyable if both teams have a commander that know what they are doing. And if that is the case the low skill of certain individuals on the team don't bother as much anymore.
He suggested that raising the skill floor for commanders could work with that already, for example if the commander would have a bar on the side of the screen that shows the health status of your fieldplayers (similar to how it is in spectator). That way you know which marines are low on health and maybe if you click on them their name you camera jumps straight to them even. (I hope I remembered that right^^)
@Kasharic told me that the games become incredibly more enjoyable if both teams have a commander that know what they are doing. And if that is the case the low skill of certain individuals on the team don't bother as much anymore.
He suggested that raising the skill floor for commanders could work with that already, for example if the commander would have a bar on the side of the screen that shows the health status of your fieldplayers (similar to how it is in spectator). That way you know which marines are low on health and maybe if you click on them their name you camera jumps straight to them even. (I hope I remembered that right^^)
Almost. XD
The idea is relatively simple, have the marine commander see the same way spectators see... add in the panels, as you stated, of each player onto the commander HUD, my idea would be a single click selects the marine, a double click would immediately move to that marines location, you could drop medpacks/ammopacks directly onto the panels of those marines.
The panels could have alert icons on them "needs ammo" "requesting order" "in combat" etc.
This would make commanding a LOT easier for new players, but as would also result in the potential for 100% accuracy with medpacks which is a pretty big skill ceiling nerf and general play buff for marines.
But yes, in general, playing with a decent commander makes playing ns2 FAR more enjoyable in public matches.
Sorry I should have been clear. These ideas would be great for NS2 and I want them for NS2, however UWE / CDT is not equipped or have interest to change anything fundamental about the game. So if they use these ideas for future installments that would be cool. Thats the gist of it.
The Trello site for The development team https://trello.com/b/uFv64kH6/ns2-development-team has a suggestion of a "Coach's mode" that seemed to be an interesting idea. Kind if reminds me of the Veteran Commander mode for rookie servers idea. We just need a way to get new/ rookie players up to speed with the rest of us. Obviously the easier the better. Due to project constraints.
We don't need people policing idea posts on the basis of whether or not they're best suited for NS2 or NS3. If something is such a huge idea ("let's add a third team!") that it's obviously out of scope, almost everyone already knows that it won't happen in NS2, and those who lack this understanding aren't harmed for having read or posted such ideas. It's an Idea & Suggestions forum, no?
Some ideas and suggestions will always be out of scope for future NS2 development, and that's fine. Brainstorming them is still productive work. Even the most complicated, outsized ideas often contain useful elements which might spark inspiration or be suitable for immediate development.
It should be obvious that most suggestions presuppose development hours. It's not called "ideas & suggestions that are likely to be implemented in the near future, and only those ideas, because we expect you to have internalized the specifics and timing of this aging game's development cycle before you post in this forum". It's also not clear that some of the people who take that tack are reliably informed as to the development team's longer term intent for the game. All we have to go off of is an outdated roadmap with ambitious milestones.
Posts which amount to "that's ridiculous, have you seen how little work they've done / how long it takes them to do stuff? this shit will never happen!" aren't meaningful.
I don't know. I'm basically describing a working demo system with a menu to select which tutorial demo to play (without reloading the map) using a specific POV that already exists (spectator). It would no doubt take a lot of work, but whether or not it would (or perhaps "should") take years is highly debatable. The bigger question is whether or not it would ever be prioritized. Is the juice worth the squeeze? I don't know - if this game ever goes F2P then demo recording would be a huge boon for the game's presence on social media. It would also dovetail with the idea I've described. What is and isn't a priority changes depending on the context being considered.
Even then only a very small percentage of players would use it, which would be abnormal players like @skav2 who actually want to learn the game.
As for a meta-level discussion about tutorial efficacy: tutorials exist for the people interested in them. Better tutorials are more useful, in general, to more people - partly because they're more interesting. The best tutorials are useful to almost everyone who experiences them, and are enjoyable to experience.
The tutorials we have now are simple introductions to the game's context, basic requirements, and win conditions. These tutorials emerged from a top-down development process in which most key features were handled in-house. The tutorials don't provide information that enhances typical play, or which results in skill refinement over time. They aren't designed to deeply educate. They're not bad per se; they're just limited by design.
If the developers are seeking a significant influx of players down the road either through an aggressive "rebrand" marketing campaign (mentioned on the roadmap), a series of tactical sales pushes, a f2p system, or some combination thereof, it behooves us to imagine how we might retain a significant portion of those players so that some of this game's other problems - like an insufficient population for proper skill bracketing - will fade. One facet of that process is developing a working rookie-to-veteran pipeline so that players understand how to skill up, and so that they have the proper environments to practice without getting annihilated as they do.
One tool that would aid in that process is a better tutorial system. A modular, demo-based tutorial system like the one I described would require development hours, yes. But the system's content could be outsourced to the community. Platforms take time to develop, but content often takes even more. NS2 lacks a robust development team, a big budget, and many characteristics that make rapid development possible. What it does have is a deeply invested core population of diehard addicts and fans. Many of these fans have already taken it upon themselves to create solid tutorial content that, unfortunately, just isn't that accessible or searchable to the players most in need of it. Figuring out how to leverage the resource that is our community for the betterment of NS2's population curve over time is a smart goal. As such, a tutorial system that could leverage that resource would be a smart tutorial system as far as NS2 is concerned. The system would impose necessary constraints and provide the integrated, searchable, accessible platform for sharing this information that we currently lack.
A deeper question is whether or not you believe NS2 has the legs needed to achieve a significant degree of revitalization. I think it does. Given this opinion, I should also make it clear that I think new players care more about tutorials for games they care about. And people tend to care about more popular games for obvious reasons. And so I leave you with a recommendation: assume that a significant percentage of the larger ideas being presented are being presented either as necessary steps en route to renewed popularity for NS2, or as popularity-solidifying steps to be taken after NS2 is revitalized via some other secret-UWE plan we're not yet privy to.
If the game's fate is actually just to get a few more patches before development goes silent a few months from now, fine. That would be an unfortunate fate, and yet it wouldn't change the validity of any of the preceding arguments.
We don't need people policing idea posts on the basis of whether or not they're best suited for NS2 or NS3. If something is such a huge idea ("let's add a third team!") that it's obviously out of scope, almost everyone already knows that it won't happen in NS2, and those who lack this understanding aren't harmed for having read or posted such ideas. It's an Idea & Suggestions forum, no?
Communication is a two way street. I thought we were talking about realistic solutions to problems in NS2. We have already moved way off topic from the OP, but the OP was about NS2. I apologize if it felt like I am policing you. That was not my intent. I was speaking under the assumption that we are within the context of seeking realistic solutions for NS2. If we want to move onto a more broad context, that is great, but I didn't know we were going there.
Posts which amount to "that's ridiculous, have you seen how little work they've done / how long it takes them to do stuff? this shit will never happen!" aren't meaningful.
This again was not what I was trying to say. I used to be a playtester. I have been apart of the development process. Even then I often am prone to ideas that are way outside of development potential. I am not trying to say something so negative as what you have paraphrased. I am trying to say that programming is hard, the devs have a full plate already, and I was questioning if your suggestion really worth the opportunity cost. Again, this was all under what I thought was a shared context of seeking realistic solutions for NS2.
I think it is clear that I lost track of where this discussion has traveled.
@NousWanderer with the in-game demo system, could you describe a bit more on how you would think it should work and how the new players can learn from it? Would it work where it puts you into the perceptive of an advanced player so the new player gets a first hand account of those players actions ? Or would it be more along the lines of a top down look at tactics/positioning/John Madden highlighting? Or both.
@NousWanderer with the in-game demo system, could you describe a bit more on how you would think it should work and how the new players can learn from it? Would it work where it puts you into the perceptive of an advanced player so the new player gets a first hand account of those players actions ? Or would it be more along the lines of a top down look at tactics/positioning/John Madden highlighting? Or both.
NS2 lacks a proper demo/recording system. You're likely familiar with the concept. With a demo, gameplay is recorded as-is using the game engine. Graphical settings can be adjusted with changes reflected realtime via demo playback. The perspective can either be a first-person limited demo or something like a GOTV demo (e.g., via HLTV in CS:GO) which allows you to navigate the footage as a spectator, or from multiple perspectives. Either method produces a lightweight file. This technology has many uses. It makes it easy for players to record their own gameplay, the gameplay of important matches, create frag compilations or fan trailers more easily, create match databases for future review, etc. The storage and performance impact requirements are minimal.
It also allows more advanced editing and manipulation of the game footage since you're working with the engine. For example, consider this timestamp from an ancient Team Fortress Classic compilation video created by a Japanese clan in the early 00s: -- you'll note the wireframing and other comparable effects throughout the video. That's possible due to the footage being derived from a demo. Point being: demo files are flexible.
Given the intense, unique nature of NS2's gameplay, this would have been great to have from the beginning to show off the game to wider audiences. Alas. It's likely that players would have come up with some amazing compilations, whereas we only have a few of note.
I suspect but cannot confirm that something along the lines of demo recording would also be necessary for us to have a proper killcam: potentially one of the best learning tools for players to see how / why they died, and avoid making the same mistake in the future.
I based the tutorial idea around demo recordings because they're easy to record, lightweight, and multipurpose. I view it as a development time investment with a high upfront cost, but low maintenance and content generation requirements thereafter. I'm envisioning something like this:
-You load the tutorial system
-You're given a spectator pov of a map (tram, for example)
-There's an additional menu with with a series of tutorials ordered in a logical sequence
-If you click a tutorial, it loads the demo without reloading the map (this may not be easy to do but it would be ideal)
-The tutorial would have a timebar and playback controls for rewinding / jumping ahead / pausing
-The tutorial would have subtitles/text at a minimum, but also be able to playback an optional timesynced audio file for narration
-Ideally, tutorial creators would also be able to specify certain effects like room highlighting or movement arrow overlays in order to illustrate important concepts
I was envisioning something exclusively from the spectator/commander POV for illustrating things like "a top down look at tactics/positioning/John Madden highlighting" - especially re: lanes/zones - but a series of combat tutorials would also be suitable, especially from the first-person or free view perspectives. Things that could be outsourced to the community if this system existed include:
-The actual list of tutorials and their logical ordering
-The text / script for each tutorial
-The actual content of each tutorial via demo recording (as long as it isn't necessary to reload the map when selecting a new tutorial, then it should be possible for a single tutorial to contain multiple recorded blocks of footage, as opposed to everything having to be recorded in one "take" - this would allow tutorial editors to splice things together, for example: "now let's see what might have happened if X did Z instead of Y...")
-The narration and recording of the tutorial
There have been so many attempts at creating video / tutorial content for NS2 which suggests that the will is there. For example: ISEGaming's videos, the ENSL tutorials, the various live tutorials strewn throughout Twitch, etc. These all wind up being less than super effective. That's because:
-The game changes over time, making old videos less useful
-The videos themselves are cumbersome to record and often involve a single take with a lot of unnecessary footage
-The videos are often difficult to find
etc.
The system I'm proposing is envisioned as having multiple uses, or at least involving technology that could be used across multiple features. If NS2 gets a significant (> 1000) influx of players via F2P or a major "NS2.5" marketing push then I think we'd see the real benefit of demo recording. Better social media presence, better tutorials, possibly a killcam, etc. Also, because the tutorial system I've described would be modular, it'd be easy enough to update over time. If a tutorial is outdated, it'd be easy enough to replace. Or, if we identified a topic that really needed some illustration, the developers would just have to do a review of the content we produce, as opposed to having to handle it themselves.
Comments
I like this idea. Is it possible to do such a thing today?
I really liked the commander tutorials in the game. The voice actor did a really nice job, and the UI forced you to take specific actions. It was clear and beneficial with at least some level of representing a realistic scenario. Those commander tutorials could definitely go much further, since there's so much more to those roles. Just as an example: how does an alien commander learn what it means to ink a hive, what's necessary for doing so, and why you'd do it? Or all the special abilities the drifter can provide to your teammates in an intense battle? These skills would take a very long time to acquire just by playing the game without anyone guiding them. If there's an advanced tutorial describing and teaching these types of skills, maybe it'd make players less reluctant to jump into the commander role.
You do that, but the vast majority do not in my own experience playing NS2. The simple fact that you are here practically makes you an outlier. You are in no way representative the typical new player.
NS2 used to force you to do the tutorial at least once if you were a rookie. This upset a lot of players who returned after not playing since before the rookie system was implemented. They were old players being forced to play the tutorial.
UWE then made it so that you had to play the tutorial to play on regular servers if you were a rookie. You could play on regular servers either by playing the tutorial or by reaching level 25. I am not sure if this is how UWE still handles it.
Do you have any idea how long it took UWE to get the tutorials that we have now completed? It would take years to do what you described. Even then only a very small percentage of players would use it, which would be abnormal players like @skav2 who actually want to learn the game.
You highlight on EXACTLY what I am trying to say. The cost of implementing a more advanced tutorial system, like @NousWanderer has described, is EXTREMELY high and would only be used by a small percentage of players. The returns would be marginal. Player retention might be improved by a few percent which is so incredibly marginal. The opportunity cost is high in that UWE could be working on any number of things as they move through their already currently planned roadmap.
For those that do not already know, these are the trello boards that describe UWE's plans for NS2.
*) Long term plans: https://trello.com/b/njrpasjl/ns2-roadmap
*) Near term: https://trello.com/b/uFv64kH6/ns2-development-team
*) Current projects and bug reports: https://trello.com/b/TVyLggmS/ns2-bug-reports
It is helpful to think about opportunity cost and marginal returns with your ideas.
There are veterans who in the heat of the moment might yell at players not behaving optimally. Some people just have that kind of personality. I even get yelled at sometimes despite having more than 3000 hours and a high hive skill value. I don't value winning as much as them, so I don't always act in a way to win like they want. Less skilled players just don't know better. There is no way to know that in the heat of battle, nor does it matter given the habits they have formed.
I have also seem truely toxic people who scream and yell and put down rookies even knowing they are rookies. They exist. NS2 is known for being a toxic game, even though I think most other competitive multiplayer games are equally or more toxic.
The top 3 I can think of right now are Combat, Gun Game and Skulks with Shotguns. (I never played mods like MvM or Siege so I can't comment on that)
Unfortunately I don't see any servers that run that being seeded. Skulks with Shotguns is still working afaik (maybe not with ns2+) so maybe that would be played more if people could vore for it in shine like I see with infested from time to time.
This is a “normal issue” for which you need to prepare an “escaperoute” beforehand for these players… by asking advanced questions / using challenges / whatever means to know they’ve done the tutorial - or they are on a more advanced level.
*shaking ones head in disbelief*
There is no better feeling when you install a game, open it up and see in the menu a message:
#sarcasm
@Nordic I feel what you are saying, but if UWE just made it if you have X hours in Steam in NS2 then it would give the option to skip the tutorial or something implemented. Otherwise it should have been kept. A waste of resources for something that had an easy out.
As for the segregation I totally understand not wanting to do this because its already hard to seed games due to player counts. This is just an Idea I wanted to toss out and still believe it would work. Us veteran players have been getting frustrated for a long time because the lowbies make games more frustrating. In many other games this system of separating players works out very well and that is why I suggest it. In games like CSGO, LoL, etc you play against people who are of similar skill to you and have an about equal change of winning depending on skill, team, etc.
In @GhoulofGSG9 's post and something I understand very well is our player count is low. So this solution wouldn't work very well as it currently stands. A lot of my ideas I post are for something UWE could implement into their next installation of Natural Selection if that ever comes. With larger player counts this system works very well. If they decide to do it now, with a working tutorial system, I believe we could see a decent influx of players and if Combat ++ we could see even more. Still wouldnt be AAA numbers however hundreds to possibly a thousand players would be amazing.
I get this is a 5+ year old game and as shown on Trello and the forums this game is under minimal update status and we are lucky to even have that. Shout out to @BeigeAlert
I am probably somehow oversimplifying when I try to provide context like this. I am not a dev. I was not apart of the decision making process. I am probably missing some information.
Skav2 If you are stating ideas for NS3 in a conversation about NS2 please be specific about when you change context. We have other threads talking about NS3.
@Kasharic told me that the games become incredibly more enjoyable if both teams have a commander that know what they are doing. And if that is the case the low skill of certain individuals on the team don't bother as much anymore.
He suggested that raising the skill floor for commanders could work with that already, for example if the commander would have a bar on the side of the screen that shows the health status of your fieldplayers (similar to how it is in spectator). That way you know which marines are low on health and maybe if you click on them their name you camera jumps straight to them even. (I hope I remembered that right^^)
Almost. XD
The idea is relatively simple, have the marine commander see the same way spectators see... add in the panels, as you stated, of each player onto the commander HUD, my idea would be a single click selects the marine, a double click would immediately move to that marines location, you could drop medpacks/ammopacks directly onto the panels of those marines.
The panels could have alert icons on them "needs ammo" "requesting order" "in combat" etc.
This would make commanding a LOT easier for new players, but as would also result in the potential for 100% accuracy with medpacks which is a pretty big skill ceiling nerf and general play buff for marines.
But yes, in general, playing with a decent commander makes playing ns2 FAR more enjoyable in public matches.
Sorry I should have been clear. These ideas would be great for NS2 and I want them for NS2, however UWE / CDT is not equipped or have interest to change anything fundamental about the game. So if they use these ideas for future installments that would be cool. Thats the gist of it.
The Trello site for The development team https://trello.com/b/uFv64kH6/ns2-development-team has a suggestion of a "Coach's mode" that seemed to be an interesting idea. Kind if reminds me of the Veteran Commander mode for rookie servers idea. We just need a way to get new/ rookie players up to speed with the rest of us. Obviously the easier the better. Due to project constraints.
Some ideas and suggestions will always be out of scope for future NS2 development, and that's fine. Brainstorming them is still productive work. Even the most complicated, outsized ideas often contain useful elements which might spark inspiration or be suitable for immediate development.
It should be obvious that most suggestions presuppose development hours. It's not called "ideas & suggestions that are likely to be implemented in the near future, and only those ideas, because we expect you to have internalized the specifics and timing of this aging game's development cycle before you post in this forum". It's also not clear that some of the people who take that tack are reliably informed as to the development team's longer term intent for the game. All we have to go off of is an outdated roadmap with ambitious milestones.
Posts which amount to "that's ridiculous, have you seen how little work they've done / how long it takes them to do stuff? this shit will never happen!" aren't meaningful.
Yes.
I don't know. I'm basically describing a working demo system with a menu to select which tutorial demo to play (without reloading the map) using a specific POV that already exists (spectator). It would no doubt take a lot of work, but whether or not it would (or perhaps "should") take years is highly debatable. The bigger question is whether or not it would ever be prioritized. Is the juice worth the squeeze? I don't know - if this game ever goes F2P then demo recording would be a huge boon for the game's presence on social media. It would also dovetail with the idea I've described. What is and isn't a priority changes depending on the context being considered.
As for a meta-level discussion about tutorial efficacy: tutorials exist for the people interested in them. Better tutorials are more useful, in general, to more people - partly because they're more interesting. The best tutorials are useful to almost everyone who experiences them, and are enjoyable to experience.
The tutorials we have now are simple introductions to the game's context, basic requirements, and win conditions. These tutorials emerged from a top-down development process in which most key features were handled in-house. The tutorials don't provide information that enhances typical play, or which results in skill refinement over time. They aren't designed to deeply educate. They're not bad per se; they're just limited by design.
If the developers are seeking a significant influx of players down the road either through an aggressive "rebrand" marketing campaign (mentioned on the roadmap), a series of tactical sales pushes, a f2p system, or some combination thereof, it behooves us to imagine how we might retain a significant portion of those players so that some of this game's other problems - like an insufficient population for proper skill bracketing - will fade. One facet of that process is developing a working rookie-to-veteran pipeline so that players understand how to skill up, and so that they have the proper environments to practice without getting annihilated as they do.
One tool that would aid in that process is a better tutorial system. A modular, demo-based tutorial system like the one I described would require development hours, yes. But the system's content could be outsourced to the community. Platforms take time to develop, but content often takes even more. NS2 lacks a robust development team, a big budget, and many characteristics that make rapid development possible. What it does have is a deeply invested core population of diehard addicts and fans. Many of these fans have already taken it upon themselves to create solid tutorial content that, unfortunately, just isn't that accessible or searchable to the players most in need of it. Figuring out how to leverage the resource that is our community for the betterment of NS2's population curve over time is a smart goal. As such, a tutorial system that could leverage that resource would be a smart tutorial system as far as NS2 is concerned. The system would impose necessary constraints and provide the integrated, searchable, accessible platform for sharing this information that we currently lack.
A deeper question is whether or not you believe NS2 has the legs needed to achieve a significant degree of revitalization. I think it does. Given this opinion, I should also make it clear that I think new players care more about tutorials for games they care about. And people tend to care about more popular games for obvious reasons. And so I leave you with a recommendation: assume that a significant percentage of the larger ideas being presented are being presented either as necessary steps en route to renewed popularity for NS2, or as popularity-solidifying steps to be taken after NS2 is revitalized via some other secret-UWE plan we're not yet privy to.
If the game's fate is actually just to get a few more patches before development goes silent a few months from now, fine. That would be an unfortunate fate, and yet it wouldn't change the validity of any of the preceding arguments.
This again was not what I was trying to say. I used to be a playtester. I have been apart of the development process. Even then I often am prone to ideas that are way outside of development potential. I am not trying to say something so negative as what you have paraphrased. I am trying to say that programming is hard, the devs have a full plate already, and I was questioning if your suggestion really worth the opportunity cost. Again, this was all under what I thought was a shared context of seeking realistic solutions for NS2.
I think it is clear that I lost track of where this discussion has traveled.
It also allows more advanced editing and manipulation of the game footage since you're working with the engine. For example, consider this timestamp from an ancient Team Fortress Classic compilation video created by a Japanese clan in the early 00s:
Given the intense, unique nature of NS2's gameplay, this would have been great to have from the beginning to show off the game to wider audiences. Alas. It's likely that players would have come up with some amazing compilations, whereas we only have a few of note.
I suspect but cannot confirm that something along the lines of demo recording would also be necessary for us to have a proper killcam: potentially one of the best learning tools for players to see how / why they died, and avoid making the same mistake in the future.
I based the tutorial idea around demo recordings because they're easy to record, lightweight, and multipurpose. I view it as a development time investment with a high upfront cost, but low maintenance and content generation requirements thereafter. I'm envisioning something like this:
-You load the tutorial system
-You're given a spectator pov of a map (tram, for example)
-There's an additional menu with with a series of tutorials ordered in a logical sequence
-If you click a tutorial, it loads the demo without reloading the map (this may not be easy to do but it would be ideal)
-The tutorial would have a timebar and playback controls for rewinding / jumping ahead / pausing
-The tutorial would have subtitles/text at a minimum, but also be able to playback an optional timesynced audio file for narration
-Ideally, tutorial creators would also be able to specify certain effects like room highlighting or movement arrow overlays in order to illustrate important concepts
I was envisioning something exclusively from the spectator/commander POV for illustrating things like "a top down look at tactics/positioning/John Madden highlighting" - especially re: lanes/zones - but a series of combat tutorials would also be suitable, especially from the first-person or free view perspectives. Things that could be outsourced to the community if this system existed include:
-The actual list of tutorials and their logical ordering
-The text / script for each tutorial
-The actual content of each tutorial via demo recording (as long as it isn't necessary to reload the map when selecting a new tutorial, then it should be possible for a single tutorial to contain multiple recorded blocks of footage, as opposed to everything having to be recorded in one "take" - this would allow tutorial editors to splice things together, for example: "now let's see what might have happened if X did Z instead of Y...")
-The narration and recording of the tutorial
There have been so many attempts at creating video / tutorial content for NS2 which suggests that the will is there. For example: ISEGaming's videos, the ENSL tutorials, the various live tutorials strewn throughout Twitch, etc. These all wind up being less than super effective. That's because:
-The game changes over time, making old videos less useful
-The videos themselves are cumbersome to record and often involve a single take with a lot of unnecessary footage
-The videos are often difficult to find
etc.
The system I'm proposing is envisioned as having multiple uses, or at least involving technology that could be used across multiple features. If NS2 gets a significant (> 1000) influx of players via F2P or a major "NS2.5" marketing push then I think we'd see the real benefit of demo recording. Better social media presence, better tutorials, possibly a killcam, etc. Also, because the tutorial system I've described would be modular, it'd be easy enough to update over time. If a tutorial is outdated, it'd be easy enough to replace. Or, if we identified a topic that really needed some illustration, the developers would just have to do a review of the content we produce, as opposed to having to handle it themselves.