The real reason why so few people go back to NS2
gnoarch
Join Date: 2012-08-29 Member: 156802Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2012-08-29 Member: 156802Members, Reinforced - Gold
Ok, we had all these balance, performance and cheater discussions but now I want to tell you the truth why UWE sold more than 100k copies of the game and still the max playercount is around 2,5k at tops:
Losing in this game is one of the most painful game-experiences out there.
And:
Losing as Aliens in this game is the single most painful game-experiance out there.
I mean, I would say I got some experience in (online)gaming and of course I got my share of losses.
I lost in CS, Q3, UT, DoD, FLF, AHL, BF:2142, BF3, SC1, SC2, WC3, DOTA as well as NS1.
But let me tell you this: In none of these games is loosing a game so excruciatingly painful and unfun as in NS2.
Losing in NS2 is like boxing against both Klitchko brothers at the same time with your hand cuffed. It's like racing against a ferrarri with a 20 yrs. orld toyota corolla. It's like destructing a medieval castle with your only tool being your head that you have to constantly smash into walls in order to collapse them.
It's painful, without any hope and no fun at all.
Especially losing as alien, being on 1 hive and 2 rts for like 10 minutes and fighting with celerity only against W3/A3 shitgun marines ... that just the worst thing you can experience.
I mean just consider this: I really am the gamer type, but besides my work and my girlfriend im happy if I can catch 2 hrs per day to spend on gaming. So having to play out 3 of these really bad games where you have lost from min. 2 every day really lowers my quality gaming time.
We all know NS2 makes for THE BEST games when teams are balanced skillwise. But we also all know that for every great game there are 2 good, 4 bad and 1 or 2 abyssal ones. That's kind of normal for online games, just consider for instance how often you get cheesed in SC2.
BUT (here comes the ultimate truth) in SC2 after just another 2 proxy gate cheese I will gg as soon as I know there is no hope and hop into another game. In BF3 who cares which team wins, you can still shoot shit. In CS the round are so short that after 1 or 2 ragequits the balance is alright again and even if not, you can still kill people.
In NS2 I HAVE TO FCKING PLAY IT OUT. I know there is "concede" but:
1) the real bad games are lost after 2 minutes
2) Bringing people to concede is quite hard. A fair amount of people still dont know there is something like concede. And there are always far too many people who obviously are contempt with just playing out another painful roflstomp instead of starting a new, potentially good, game.
I really don't get this "never give up, never surrender" mentality especially as in NS2 you have virtually 0 chance to recover from a certain point forward because of the overimportance of rts.
I get why a SC2 pro like boxer will proclaim this mentality as he plays for a living and even a 0,001% to win big money is worth it. I really don't get why people on public servers act like this.
Losing in this game is one of the most painful game-experiences out there.
And:
Losing as Aliens in this game is the single most painful game-experiance out there.
I mean, I would say I got some experience in (online)gaming and of course I got my share of losses.
I lost in CS, Q3, UT, DoD, FLF, AHL, BF:2142, BF3, SC1, SC2, WC3, DOTA as well as NS1.
But let me tell you this: In none of these games is loosing a game so excruciatingly painful and unfun as in NS2.
Losing in NS2 is like boxing against both Klitchko brothers at the same time with your hand cuffed. It's like racing against a ferrarri with a 20 yrs. orld toyota corolla. It's like destructing a medieval castle with your only tool being your head that you have to constantly smash into walls in order to collapse them.
It's painful, without any hope and no fun at all.
Especially losing as alien, being on 1 hive and 2 rts for like 10 minutes and fighting with celerity only against W3/A3 shitgun marines ... that just the worst thing you can experience.
I mean just consider this: I really am the gamer type, but besides my work and my girlfriend im happy if I can catch 2 hrs per day to spend on gaming. So having to play out 3 of these really bad games where you have lost from min. 2 every day really lowers my quality gaming time.
We all know NS2 makes for THE BEST games when teams are balanced skillwise. But we also all know that for every great game there are 2 good, 4 bad and 1 or 2 abyssal ones. That's kind of normal for online games, just consider for instance how often you get cheesed in SC2.
BUT (here comes the ultimate truth) in SC2 after just another 2 proxy gate cheese I will gg as soon as I know there is no hope and hop into another game. In BF3 who cares which team wins, you can still shoot shit. In CS the round are so short that after 1 or 2 ragequits the balance is alright again and even if not, you can still kill people.
In NS2 I HAVE TO FCKING PLAY IT OUT. I know there is "concede" but:
1) the real bad games are lost after 2 minutes
2) Bringing people to concede is quite hard. A fair amount of people still dont know there is something like concede. And there are always far too many people who obviously are contempt with just playing out another painful roflstomp instead of starting a new, potentially good, game.
I really don't get this "never give up, never surrender" mentality especially as in NS2 you have virtually 0 chance to recover from a certain point forward because of the overimportance of rts.
I get why a SC2 pro like boxer will proclaim this mentality as he plays for a living and even a 0,001% to win big money is worth it. I really don't get why people on public servers act like this.
Comments
Can you imagine what losing it SC2 would be like if you didn't gg. It would be a drawn out painful stomp with no chance of coming back. Players there are smart enough to realize that it's a waste of everyone time playing beyond a certain point and gg is seen as good etiquette.
And we have exactly the same situation in NS2. There comes a point where you have bugger all chance of winning and it's just a drawn out stomp. The ONLY issue is that people in this community haven't cottoned on to gg being good practice yet. Yeh it's sometime fun to try and do a last stand an survive as long as possible, but people really need to start seeing concede as an honorable and good finish to the game.
I've mentioned the idea before, but people just try and tell me I need to 'l2p'
Which is what this thread is going to devolve into. Sorry but the community just isn't open to the idea, that maybe, maybe... 20 minute end games aren't the best thing ever and that you just need to play better.
The main reason why there are only 2,500 people playing is because this game went on sale on steam. A large number of people simply bought the game impulsively with no intention on actually playing it. This game also has a high skill ceiling and many new players get quickly turned off by the ensuing slaughter when they start playing. That's why all of the veterans need to be friendly and helpful to the newbies so that the "greens" (NS2 newbies) can get over the initial learning curve to really start enjoying the game.
In NS2 its atleats 10 min, then the game is over and you can start a new one.
What I would suggest as one factor of this is the lack of a tutorial level type thing.
Something where newbies are introduced to the game on a more in-depth level than reading a few reviews and the product description. I know, there's a ton of great videos out there for people to watch, but I think we can all agree that watching someone and doing something yourself are two very different things.
Most games out there, certainly many FPS and RTS, have either a campaign that starts you off slow and builds up your knowledge and skill, or a tutorial level where you learn some basic mechanics of the game ("This is a gun, that is an alien, shoot it", sort of thing). SC 1,2 had campaign; TF2 has a super basic tutorial; CS:GO has a more in depth boot-camp; those are all the ones from the OP I've played, but I can't really think of any game that doesn't start you off by sitting you down and teaching you a little bit, other than NS2 (except maybe minecraft, but that's minecraft).
Explore mode is great, that was the first thing I did after I saw the run times for the tutorial videos in the "training" and I learned a fair amount. But I think that a level/scenario specifically designed to give newbies an overview of how a game should go is something to work for.
NS2's lack of something like this certainly can't help retention rates.
Marines sometimes have a similar issue ending the game quickly but in their case I think it's a result of their vulnerabilities. It's easy to very quickly lose your lead as the marine team if you get careless and lose a critical power node. Spamming Exos just puts you in even more danger of this. This vulnerability makes it difficult for marines to launch an all-out offensive to end the game since the aliens are always probing for an opening in their defenses. I don't know whether or not this needs to be solved, just making observations.
It's more unfortunate so many of the casual rounds played go well past 20 minutes, and ns2 is really only any fun between 10 minutes to a maximum of 20 minutes. I'd say 15 is the maximum duration per round you would want to see on average.
The game is just spammy, laggy, unenjoyable, etc past that point. I'd say that's more a significant design flaw than anything else like lack of tutorials or whatever else you might think is causing it.
So no, while losing a game isn't a fun experience by any means, I very much doubt it's really the reason why this game has such a seemingly low player 'retention rate'. Instead, I'd look at performance and game complexity (no tutorials, relatively complex game mechanics, ...) being the true culprits.
Also, since much of NS2's early stages is learning how to aim at the little fast moving things, I'd rather have a game drag on a little bit so people get more practice in with the later game weapons and upgrades.
I find turtling for a few minutes at the end of a game more fun by far than just hitting x and voting concede. Now if a game drags on longer than that, ie. if the aliens can't get their act together to take down the last base, then things get tedious.
tbh 5-10min pub concedes are a lot worse than drawn out games
I've said this time and time again. In NS2 there is very little forgiveness. This means if you make a single mistake at a certain point (like losing a few early extractors/harvesters) you are pretty much assured to lose the game. That's not the crux of the problem. If the mistake made the game end and the team that allowed it lose, then many people would likely accept it. The problem is that you can be stuck playing a game you know you are going to lose. That's the real problem here.
No one likes playing a game they KNOW they are going to lose.
No one.
It doesn't matter how good the game is, people want to have a CHANCE to win, even if it is a slim one. That doesn't exist though. There are many circumstances in NS2 where - after a certain setback - the game is over.
This is why they had to put in a concede function since so many games had no hope of winning, that people needed a way to get out of it and start a new one. The problem is that it still doesn't negate the fact that people were in a game they knew they were going to lose.
I don't mind losing games. I've had some amazing NS1 (and a few NS2) games where my team lost, but it was in a good fight right to the end where both sides could have won. Playing a game for 10-15 minutes sitting in marine spawn waiting for aliens to finish it isn't fun. There is no hope of a win, no matter what marines do. Personally I feel this violates a key gaming principle in that a team should ALWAYS have a way to win. If they don't have a way or means to win, then the action that brought them to that point should end the game right then and there.
Simple example, for the marines, if losing your main starting tech point is effectively a game ender, then end the game right away if the marines lose their main base command chair. If the chance of marines coming back from such a loss is so low as to be near nil, then why are we still playing?
That's why losing some games is so painful. Not because of the loss, but because the team likely had to play for ten minutes knowing they would lose, and/or they had to concede early in the game because there was no hope for win.
While I don't agree with the ragey tone. I do have to agree that something should allow the game to end faster.
I personally don't think its that bad, there's a vote concede button and mods for different gameplay modes.
Its still a young game but its damn fun and great. I mean if the team really wants to kill you and they have such a huge advantage as 2 rts and 1 hive vs w3a3+shirtguns, they would. Sounds like the game is just being drawn out.
However maybe making some of the mods out there official by endorsing it and adding it to the main menu, it could keep the attention of gamers longer. Its hard for indie games to compete in this market of triple A titles with huge resources and staff.
But UWE is brand new and this is their first big game! And you can't argue with the game's quality, the staff's constant work towards patching after launch.
Other game developers and companies have been shown to not give as much attention to their community with hard patches like that, not to mention their constant interactivity with the community.
And don't forget Feb content patch!! GORGEOUS!! woo!
Can't wait
I agree with this, if it sounded like I was being overly pushy on conceding that was phrased badly. Especially with lots of rookies it's good to keep it running a bit for some extra target practice and to see how to try and win "properly". If you've got two teams who know what there doing but just can't break the last turtle the losing team should concede. Likewise if your just being stomped (mostly happens to aliens) but it's taking to long to finish just concede.
An interesting idea would be to try for a not-quite-loss; once one side realizes they can't win, they can call for a retreat which starts a timer; if they are still alive once the timer expires, its considered a not-quite-loss/draw. Marines can call for an evacuation ship, the aliens ... well, their last hive can mutate into an escape-pod or something.
Puts some pressures on the winning team to finish things off, and a reason for the defenders to keep up the fight.
I was comm on Docking and lost much of Terminal late game. Arms lab gone, IPs gone, Adv Armory gone, Proto Lab gone. Basically everything but the CC.
We were able to redrop in Cafe then from there made an all out thrust to Generator and killed the hive and harassed Departures from there. Took a while to redrop the Proto lab, but once it was down we got some Exos and took Locker.
Anyway, big setback... long game, rare Marine win. Proud of my team. I was almost ready to concede once losing Terminal.
PS: Why do Marines always start in Terminal while the Alien base is randomized?
Maybe the aliens can have a vote and, if approved, the final hive is taken away and all the aliens are upgraded to Onos. They get 60secs (or something) to take out as much marine expansion as possible and build enough res to setup a new hive.
Whatever, if they fail it's game over.
The rarity of sneaky phase gates also make come-back much harder for marines compared to NS1.
"Vote last man standing" For both teams. renders the command station/hive unusable. but, as the name suggests, ONE LIFE. so infantery portals and eggs are rendered useless. trust me, this is fun, i've orchestrated the ariens to find me on many occasions, it usualy ends in lots of giggling for most involved.
Commanders with no mic are also another issue.
Rookies that join Normal servers are also tiresome as every player in a 5v56v67v7 are critical.
The ONLY time i really enjoyed NS2 was when there was an intermediate/expert comm, WHOM HAD A MIC and guided the marines to victory. Teaching us the gameplay of NS2 of harassment/pressure on rts.
Ahhh, let's not forget hackers...Since first person viewing isnt up for spectators at the moment. Every time there's always someone being accused of hacking and with no 100% guarantee proof this issue wont end. That itself drives off NS2 players.
Another thing would be the graphics xD Haha i can barely go over 40 fps and at times i get these 13fps spikes. Where there's a delay in everything T_T
It wouldn't be a big deal if the game was still fun when the round was over.
One team is down to their last hive/tech point and less than 3 extractors
*and* the game has been running for over 10 (15?) minutes
*and* the other team has 2 or more hives/tech points
*and* the other team has 3 or more res nodes under control
Should these conditions be met, the weaker team can invoke a 'doomsday' option. Timer starts and stronger team gets (10?) minutes within which to end the game. If they do not they lose the game. For marines it could be that they've got nukes in the hives. (anyone from NS1 remember the nukes?) The comm can trigger the final countdown.
For aliens they could spawn massive infestation. A 'hive rupture' causes all hives to cover the map in infestation, which disables all marine structures. From here it's a quick end. The variables are open for debate, these are arbitrary numbers I picked out. It's the principle of it that I support.
Either way, once this happens *everyone* will want to stay in the game since the losing team is suddenly right back in it. They have a chance to WIN. They will fight to the last man. No quitters. No team balance. No whining about playing a game that you've already lost. Now they have a chance, albeit a slim one.
All that you have to do is give people something to play for and they will play.
Besides the technical/design issues that arise late game, I really think NS2 still needs rfk come back to act as a soft timer against prolonged games. Just like it did in ns1. It's a simple enough concept that adds depth and keeps relevancy of player action in end game when the res/map control game is over.
There are other things probably coming that should help alot as well though such as decreased spawn rates. The problem is mostly not lack of strong end game tech, but too high defensive pressure.
Sounds like an amazing idea, to have ½ a victory
I feel the original post in this topic reflects the problem with most of todays youth (which I feel very sorry for)... lazy, entitled and having very poor coping skills. People are not taught to lose and learn from it anymore. The evidence is all around us in our daily lives.
A losing team feeling it is hopeless should just surrender if they all agree to do so... problem solved.
More or less it is the shining example of boring gameplay in ns2 imo as well as the best example of a "cut the fluff" type feature in the game.