Was Gorgeous a success?
Crumbling Ego
Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164692Members
Join Date: 2012-10-30 Member: 164692Members
Comments
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=4920&from=1360818000000&to=End+Time
The first two peaks are the previous two weekends which see peaks ~2000 +/-100. That last giant peak is due to the release of gorgeous, the tournament, and the 50% steam sale all weekend. At the very least it effectively doubled the concurrent population through a mixture of returning players and new players. Obviously this will drop off, but I think gorgeous will be effective at keeping NS2 over that 2k mark for at least a month. We'll see.
For comparison, the release weekend and following 1-2 after sat at 6-7k concurrent player peaks. The christmas sale saw a peak of 6500, but averaged peaks of around 4k.
Link to concurrent player graph from release (~10/31/12) to today. About four months.
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=4920&from=1351483200000&to=End+Time
The game is ever improving, so hopefully these improvements increase player retention.
Peak weekend playercount of roughly 3800, so I think its a success. Only problem is it looks like they only store the last 4 weeks of data.
ehhhhhh i don't think it's so much becoming more annoying to play, but that it's always been annoying to play when the teams aren't skill balanced.
too much emphasis on unintuitive teamplay* is frustrating about 33% of the time (you're on the bad team), boring 33% of the time (you're on the good team) and 33% fun (both teams are closely matched).
the only way to reverse this frustration is to make comebacks more realistic. right now it seems hopeless to recover from 1 CS vs 3 hive, or 2 CS vs 1 hive. once a game slips into either category it turns into a boring/frustrating slog fest.
*especially the level of coordination required to kill fade/onos/exo/arc.
The game has enough going on it to foster a larger community Imo.
Too daunting a game for the inexperienced?
I personally think the reason that people lose interest so quickly is just because gamer nowadays have so many options.
There are so many genres of games out there that you can play.
Some require less thinking and strategy and others have rpg elements to get you hooked on playing the game and etc.
While I believe that NS2 should adopt some of these elements, like an achievement system with no in-game benefits, this does not make NS2 a bad game in any respect at all.
anyways i sold that game + entire origin account because the netcode was pretty badly delayed/coded + lowdetails for high fps.
The end of the story actually is that gorgeous not exceeds my expectations about performance and VERY IMPORTANT netcode improvements. its still like u need 25 shots from the rifle to kill an skulk caused by a ~200-300 MS delay with a ping of 20.
also those very annoying bugs like that one on the skulks slowing them down while jumping n stuff .. not funny to watch any marine favoured NSL matches atm. cuz its all the same. dunno how others feels about what I wrote but for me the important thing for a good competitive game is the FPS + non delayed netcode.
I guess it could be a hardware bottle neck given how cpu intensive the engine is. Time to revisit the code regardless though. Unless UWE is pulling an Uber
And of course, any sale will bring new players to the game, and any patch containing "MOAR maps/weapons/guns/blah" will bring back old players who don't play as frequently, as the graphs show.
How do you define "a success?"
Balance like it's better off, but at the cost of making skulks feel slightly lamer.
I've logged over 200 hours of NS2. Just this patch I've started getting severe headaches around 45 minutes of play. I will usually play 3-4 hours in one sitting no problem.
Whyyyyyyyyy. I haven't changed any setting. Lerk and Skulk are my favorite lifeforms. For now I'm simply taking a break from NS2 for a bit.
With all the new content and tweaks I would have expected more media coverage as well.
Your dull and boring remarks are tiring. Please stop posting. What kind of person chooses Hitler as his avatar anyway? Even when he's taken from Persona 2.
Yes there were a lot more players play since the patch came out but are those new players or just old ones hoping for a lot of new things. Aliens got nerfed all the way around save for the gorge butt-holes and the marines didn’t, in fact the mines got a huge increase.
I play both aliens and marines but like aliens since it’s just too easy for marines now.
I agree with that. But the only effective way I see this comebacks work, is with the implementation of some kind of upkeep. The more RTs you got, the smaller the reward should get. Don't get me wrong. When you have more RTs than the enemy, you should get more resources. But the differences in income should never be too big. Diminishing rewards in resources could weaken the snowballing that causes so many early concedes right now.
Sadly most people only see that as deserved rewards taken from them, instead of a way to make the game interesting even when not perfectly balanced teams fight each other.
-Liked a lot the new gorge tunnels, and have used them succesfully on games in witch they make a big difference,
-the skulk stealth nerf is ok for me it actually makes the skulks less stupidly godlike dodgers :-),
-The bablers, well I like the idea and they could be a lot of fun, but as they are now they are pretty much a usseles resource sink, their AI and speed are so bad that they rarely hit anything, hell when I am a marine and I see them I just ignore them lol.
-The new Exo, Is great, the old one mini gun exo was pretty much useles, so changing it for the new one was a good choice, and it is also fun to play with and against it.
So overall for me the games has become more fun with all of the changes, even the skulk change :-).
I thought it was just my Steam client, NS2 looked odd showing full price in the Specials list while all the other games had between 50% to 75% off. This was on Sunday morning (GMT). Still it was good to see NS2 in the top 10 that weekend
--Cory
We could call it the "Onos Zapper 2000".
And yes, I dare say Gorgeous is a success. A lot of features have been added, making it interesting for existing players and attracting a new crowd. Add to that the better balanced compared to the previous patch and we've got a success story.
Naturally, there's still more to be done, but I think it's a great patch.
Do the play testers actually test the game or just a very small portion of what their working on? If so that could explain how some serious bugs got through this patch. Maybe before the next patch the devs and play testers were to just play and average game and not look for something wrong, this way they might find something wrong.
If Duel Rails is too oppressive could we get Flame + Rail for the time being?
Honorable mention for 2 Fist Exo for 30 res as well
I know it does not fit into the style of the game but a melee EXO would be awesome. It could even get moves like grabbing a skulk out of mid air and splashing it against the wall...
They're not stupidly underpowered and yes, we also play regular games. We go through all bugs that have been fixed first, to see if they're actually fixed. After that, a few games are played to see how the game works in general.
Try to be less negative.
Just imagine what that would be like in the Marine vs. Marine mod...