Brother, you started in with the "competitive" players point of view crap... how about we just fix the damn thing and worry about competition later, THIS WAS MY POINT - the echo of your resounding crap personal bashes, self important BS laden tude are part of what killed this community. It's been that way for awhile, unfriendly to new players, unfriendly to different points of view and flat out just hateful some times. Everyone screams they know best, your just another in the long line.
I'm pretty sure there is a huge chance that many good players will stop playing the game.
And still, it's as if everyone lives under a rock.. You can't have a game based solely on competitive players.. the foundation and community HAS TO BE THERE. You can't cater to a single group of players, and you can't build a group of players without a player base. 6 months is all that it took to wipe out a good number of players, I don't want to see another six of the same...
you came here spouting the point, I countered the point, you got butt hurt. Life moves on for me.
Yes I started it because I'm only concerned with the competitive point of view in this discussion. I said I'm not dismissing public because it's public, I'm dismissing it because it's not relevant in this discussion. I'm using this platform to discuss competitive scene, not to bash public play. I don't know how many ways or times you want me to rephrase this.
Yes "fixing the damn thing" is your point but it's not relevant in this discussion and therefore needless spam allowing yourself to introduce your way into the thread to bash competitive views. We don't want this public/competitive divide in this thread. This thread was only intended for competitive views. AGAIN, NOT TO DISMISS PUBLIC, BUT TO ADDRESS COMPETITIVE VIEWS.
Also this perception of "Us vs them" with public and competitive is what is adding to the detriment of the game. We are all individuals and we all have different opinions. Why you're lumping my view together with the whole of the competitive scene is bizarre. I stated that there are players on both sides of the BT and even other competitive players have spoken their different views. We are not all the same!
I don't believe that the competitive scene is more or less important to the game, I believe it's more important to me because this is what I play the game for! This is what I made this platform for! I don't understand why you're having problems understanding this.
I'll say this one last time for it to sink in.
This was a discussion from a competitive point of view, for the concern of the competitive scene. I was saying that competitive players (should) want to hear which features UWE are more likely to implement and an estimated time of arrival as to retain players (for reason's i've already posted). I didn't suggest which features anything should happen because it'll be good for comp ( or bad for public in your eyes). For the love of God, it's not a GO GO COMP SCENE, FUCK PUBLIC. Please see this and stop the comp bashing you have which is contributing to the divide between the public/competitive scenes.
Well I am not a competitive player, but I think current movement is crap and boring and while I have not played BT very much I must say that it is the only reason that I reinstalled the game. Because frankly, after some 500 odd hours the frustrations of vanilla (dubious performance, total absence of solid collision, jump spammy combat, proneness to one sided rolls, and a lack in variety in viable strategies) outweigh the fun by a very large margin.
This game has an asian comp scene? That I do not believe.
There have been so many incidences in the history of players threatening to boycott developers if they do X or don't do Y, but in the end most of them did not have the discipline to even make that threat true. MW2's dedicated servers are just one example; Origin would be another one.
Because of that, I can't really take any player serious anymore who says that he will definitely stop playing/supporting a game/developer if he doesn't get what he wants. Some players may really boycott it, but a lot will still find the game too fun and addictive even after the changes to leave it. They may gnarl and repeat again and again how it was so much better before, but the key is that they will still be there.
Is it still a boycott if I already paid but choose to stop playing?
I think you're also misunderstanding the reason why people are "threatening" to leave. It's not because they disagree with a business decision like that MW2 or Origin example. It's because they bought a game, enjoyed it, and now the game is being changed into something that is no longer what they paid for and enjoyed in the first place.
Or perhaps they bought a game that wasn't as good as they hoped, and that's why the game has hemorrhaged players since release. Considering NS1 is what even made NS2 possible, and the longevity of NS1, attempting to correct the errors of NS2 by moving gameplay towards NS1 just makes sense.
"Not sure I really care about the loss of player who think the game is dandy while player counts continue to plummet"
You don't want to play NS2 in its current state ? - it's a modders heaven apparently, show some skill off the pitch and make your own game for you and your friends. Then thank UWE for allowing you to do this without spending a cool US$1M on the U3 editor.
Really disappointed with this SOTG. There was a huge dearth in BT knowledge, the hosts were incredibly flippant with their remarks and Sewlek rarely got to speak. Despite Wasabi's good intentions and - uniquely - effort, the show was pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy. I was torn between real hope for NS2 through the introduction of the BT mod and tragic resignation at the inadequacy of our community figureheads.
Really disappointed with this SOTG. There was a huge dearth in BT knowledge, the hosts were incredibly flippant with their remarks and Sewlek rarely got to speak. Despite Wasabi's good intentions and - uniquely - effort, the show was pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy. I was torn between real hope for NS2 through the introduction of the BT mod and tragic resignation at the inadequacy of our community figureheads.
Really disappointed with this SOTG. There was a huge dearth in BT knowledge, the hosts were incredibly flippant with their remarks and Sewlek rarely got to speak. Despite Wasabi's good intentions and - uniquely - effort, the show was pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy. I was torn between real hope for NS2 through the introduction of the BT mod and tragic resignation at the inadequacy of our community figureheads.
Yup.
you are just bitter cos you missed out on a t-shirt ;P
Really disappointed with this SOTG. There was a huge dearth in BT knowledge, the hosts were incredibly flippant with their remarks and Sewlek rarely got to speak. Despite Wasabi's good intentions and - uniquely - effort, the show was pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy. I was torn between real hope for NS2 through the introduction of the BT mod and tragic resignation at the inadequacy of our community figureheads.
A wasted opportunity. It's a real shame, I would have liked to hear more from sewlek at least, and the hosts should have at least admitted that they had not put enough interest in exploring the mod, although it was really obvious.
You don't want to play NS2 in its current state ? - it's a modders heaven apparently, show some skill off the pitch and make your own game for you and your friends. Then thank UWE for allowing you to do this without spending a cool US$1M on the U3 editor.
The licensing costs of the Unreal Engine 3 vary a lot on a per-case basis. It depends on how big the game is, which platforms you plan to release for and a lot of negotiation. But the general cost is more around $500k. It can be more and it can be less.
I don't think you understand that with only ~900 people playing every day, a HUGE chunk of the daily players are competitive. For example, in just north america, there are 4 divisions with either 5 or 6 teams each, each team with a minimum of 6 players. That's ~20 teams with 120+ players on them. EU is even bigger. We're probably closer to 10% of the active community. 10% of <1000 is a pretty big deal.
You do realize this is the path for fading into irrelevance no?
Furthermore, how does reliance upon competitive help UWE sell games? After all, don't you want an NS3? Putting competitive views way above everyone else is not a good way of selling games. That's in some ways as bad as putting short term revenue (how EA does it) above everything else.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
Really disappointed with this SOTG. There was a huge dearth in BT knowledge, the hosts were incredibly flippant with their remarks and Sewlek rarely got to speak. Despite Wasabi's good intentions and - uniquely - effort, the show was pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy. I was torn between real hope for NS2 through the introduction of the BT mod and tragic resignation at the inadequacy of our community figureheads.
Yup.
you are just bitter cos you missed out on a t-shirt ;P
I don't think you understand that with only ~900 people playing every day, a HUGE chunk of the daily players are competitive. For example, in just north america, there are 4 divisions with either 5 or 6 teams each, each team with a minimum of 6 players. That's ~20 teams with 120+ players on them. EU is even bigger. We're probably closer to 10% of the active community. 10% of <1000 is a pretty big deal.
You do realize this is the path for fading into irrelevance no?
Furthermore, how does reliance upon competitive help UWE sell games? After all, don't you want an NS3? Putting competitive views way above everyone else is not a good way of selling games. That's in some ways as bad as putting short term revenue (how EA does it) above everything else.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
I could name plenty of competition orientated games that also have successful public communities because the game has been improved with competitive feedback in mind. I'd like to think that Dota, LoL, CS:GO, SC2 and Quake are some examples of this. A competitive scene is born from its public community, we're all playing the same game and want it to be as successful and as popular as possible.
Why are you seemingly against making the game a deeper, variable and skill based experience? Don't you think that a game with these qualities makes it an easier product to continue playing into the future and recommend to others? Thus increasing player retention and sales at the same time. On a related note, I sincerely hope NS2 gets some much needed time devoted to in game interactive tutorials. The people who make it through the confusion, move on to leave shortly afterwards as the rounds stale.
Sewlek is hardly listening exclusively to competitive players. He's always in any active BT server and reads every bit of feedback given. I'm glad it seems like more preference in game play inclusions is being given to competitive players. I'd much rather influence be focused and taken from the feedback of people with experience in Natural Selections' mechanics and the workings of other successful competitive titles.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
You do realize this is the path for fading into irrelevance no?
Furthermore, how does reliance upon competitive help UWE sell games? After all, don't you want an NS3? Putting competitive views way above everyone else is not a good way of selling games. That's in some ways as bad as putting short term revenue (how EA does it) above everything else.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
Dota and starcraft have matchmaking, dota also has easy mode classes. Reason they do this is because they dont have low skill floor.
CS and quake are simple and easy to learn, they have symmetrical teams and everything is fair game mechanic wise. Low skill floors and insanely high skill ceilings, they dont really have to cater to anyone, which is evident in that those games hardly changed at all from 1.0 onwards.
NS2 doesn't have a low skill floor, and i would argue that it doesn't have a very high skill ceiling either. It needs to cater to BOTH casual and comp players, not one or the other. You want to retain new and old players for as long as possible. Old players stay for the fun challenge of a high skill ceiling, new players stay if the game is fun, non frustrating, and if they can play it casually, at least until they become more competitive and start to enjoy the challenge.
NS2 doesn't have a low skill floor, and i would argue that it doesn't have a very high skill ceiling either.
It's an fps game with both tracking and twitch guns and extremely fast and diverse movement (jetpack, fade lerk etc). How does it have a low skill ceiling?
There seems to be two forms to game playercounts:
- Spike with diminishing returns (Torchlight II/FTL)
- Slow buildup but low peaks (Chivalry/Don't Starve)
Currently, NS2 is following the spike-like playercount mechanism, usually a result of release-day hype/advertisement. The slow buildup mechanism is interesting, but seems to require regular updates with new features (Don't Starve has an ETA to the next update on their splash screen and all their updates include new content).
While I dont think you can compare NS2 to TLII, Dont starve and FTL because they are all SP games, I think the comparison to Chivalry is very interesting.
They are both massively Multiplayer and by unknown developers. Actually NS2 is the AAA game in that regard.
Chivalry obviously has to work for its players as your graph shows. This ism imho simply for the fact that it was utterly unknown before release, made by some random dude, has a very unusual setting for a "FPS" and lastly had as good as no effective marketing.
BUT once you play it, it's quite fun. Easy to participate in fight but hard to really learn to pwn your enemies. Also for a casual player it is no problem to play the occasional 2 or 3 rounds without being hopelessly outclassed.
So Chivalry is able to contain quite a few of its "veteran" players while with each big content upgrade and steamsale there come some new players to the game.
NS2 on the other was quite hyped at the release. It had very good marketing (considering the size and budget of the devs). I mean, the only game with better trailers I know is BF3 which probably had more trailer-budget than UWe had for the whole development.
I convinced quite a few friends to buy NS2 just by showing the trailers. After seeing them everyone is convinced that it is this game full of Alien-Killing Marine-Eating Minigun-Awesomeness.
But when new players start the game they dont experience this Awesomeness. They get stomped. They get stomped hard before they get stomped prior to getting stomped. Considering the amount of time the average casual player can invest into a game, having fun in NS2 requires being butt-raped for at least two weeks.
As a result NS2 quite literally is survival of the fittest.
This resulted in NS2 having some huge peaks in player counts at the beginning because the Idea, Art and Trailers are fcking awesome. But losing players quickly as they get frustrated by the actual game.
Chivalry on the other hand had problems to get alot of players to begin with because of missing marketing and a -for FPS- very unusual Scenario but keeps on retaining and building up a playerbase because the actual game is better than expected.
NS2 on the other was quite hyped at the release. It had very good marketing (considering the size and budget of the devs). I mean, the only game with better trailers I know is BF3 which probably had more trailer-budget than UWe had for the whole development. ....
Chivalry on the other hand had problems to get alot of players to begin with because of missing marketing and a -for FPS- very unusual Scenario but keeps on retaining and building up a playerbase because the actual game is better than expected.
I'm sorry but i don't agree with this as i've seen something different..
After attending multiple PAX events, before and after release and with a moving crowd of 90,000 people at each event.. easily 98% of people never even heard of NS2.
There was even a chivalry booth a few meters away, and they experienced the same thing.
So it may have been "hyped" and even "marketed" in your eyes, but those phrases typically apply to the Halos and LOLs and CODs and their *insane* budgets for it ... considering all that NS2 marketed with was facebook, a few gaming websites, and a steam popup.
can some please explain to me, how the f I jump faster as a skulk and a fade in bt? I didn't play ns1, I don't even know if the mechanic is the same, and its not the same as strafe jumping. its all fine to say give bt a try, but the mechanics are obscure as hell, and I've even played on sewleks team before, and he never responded when I asked him. as of now, wall jump is nice and intuitive, jumping off things.makes me go faster, but I feel as if bhopping could double my speed, and there is.noexplanation of how. also, lerks get retarded near the ground. and when they turn... is this another increased skill ceiling? can I turn better if I stick my thumb up someone's ass and wiggle my left toe? or is this a.straight up Nerf?
lerks are basicly infinitely manoeuvrable now - you can turn any direction you want instantly without losing momentum. as for the skulk - to gain speed, you basicly want to chain walljumps, or rather clip walls. for fade - tap blink, jump, jump, tap blink, jump, jump etc.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2013
Yeah, skulk movement is pretty dumb right now imo.
Instead of the sensible and proven quick but predictable movement, we now have the look unnatural move however you like 420 yolo but still move quickly anyway movement.
can some please explain to me, how the f I jump faster as a skulk and a fade in bt? I didn't play ns1, I don't even know if the mechanic is the same, and its not the same as strafe jumping. its all fine to say give bt a try, but the mechanics are obscure as hell, and I've even played on sewleks team before, and he never responded when I asked him. as of now, wall jump is nice and intuitive, jumping off things.makes me go faster, but I feel as if bhopping could double my speed, and there is.noexplanation of how. also, lerks get retarded near the ground. and when they turn... is this another increased skill ceiling? can I turn better if I stick my thumb up someone's ass and wiggle my left toe? or is this a.straight up Nerf?
This is one of the big problems facing games like NS2, and it's directly related to player retention. Putting aside that there will always be a large number of players who just breeze through, play for a bit and move on to the next thing. Focus on the small percentage of new players who would be prepared to stick around. What makes them leave?
A game either has a low skill ceiling and is accessible to new players or it has a high skill ceiling and it satisfies experienced players. With a very high skill ceiling, new players get smashed on pubs, don't feel like they're contributing and at worst they get verballed/harassed by teammates. It boils down to a less than enjoyable way to spend your time.
At the moment NS2 has problems at both ends of the spectrum - losing experienced players and not retaining new players.
My point is that it seems like a lot of veterans are desperately seeking changes that promote higher skill ceilings because it will entice likeminded players back to the game. I'm simply cautioning that veteran players can already smash newbies and higher skill ceilings will only exaggerate that. Personally, I'll enjoy higher skill caps because I've been around for long enough to develop my skills enough that I won't be scared off by the pros.
I've only played BT for a couple of hours so I can't comment on it, but the comments in this thread seem to suggest the BT raises skill caps. Fine, so be it. The next most important thing UWE could do to improve player retention is introduce skill based matchmaking.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
CS, Quake, Dota, Starcraft
Need to call you out on this one
Counter-strike? Nope.. view any competitive cs forum and you'll see how hard we're shitting all over valve for not listening to anybody. For fucks sake we were outrageous happy just a few days ago when they added their FIRST static crosshair. Yeah that's right a static crosshair, there was even a freaking thread on it. That's how much valve ignores the cs community
Quake? What version are you on about? Quake Live? Yeah you're pretty much handicapped now unless you're a premium sub, and it took them years to nerf the railgun when the obvious thing to do is to remove it
Dota 2? Somewhat, take note that valve has the original dota devs onboard (like they do with most games) they aren't doing much developing/ just supplying $ and publishing
Yeah, skulk movement is pretty dumb right now imo.
Instead of the sensible and proven quick but predictable movement, we now have the look unnatural move however you like 420 yolo but still move quickly anyway movement.
The walljump for velocity gain for me is annoying and I would rather just have regular bhop.
I'm for the older iteration we had of wallhop
Which was
You accel via strafe + A/D on ground, and also further gained accel from jumping off walls (Where strafing was a large part of the acceleration process) however a few competitive players all seem to disagree with me and prefer the double nerfed version, aka slower capped top speed and easier to do
Their issues with it seem to be
1) It's silent - ok this is true, but this is a separate issue, nerf the movement because of a sound issue? Why not work on fixing the sound
2) You get to RTs too quickly - True, but from playing matches on that iteration it's proven this really isn't that much of a change when marine RT was on regular vanilla HP. Very early game sure you'd see skulks much quicker where you were. I never found this to be an issue at any point, with improved performance coming in 249 hitting faster moving targets will be even easier; I also have no issue shooting skulks moving at this speed.
If the skulk was louder globally to other clients, this wouldn't really be an issue because using it in combat will rarely happen (only certain areas where you can do this, open spaces are a no-no) so the ground fighting part is still the same, just the fleeing/initiation/traveling is different. Sure you CAN use it in combat but that requires much practice
The skulk now feels slow, unfun, and like there's nothing behind it. Before I felt it could be "mastered" but not stop there, you could always find new routings on how to travel faster, or a specific area to jump off of to move you from place x to place x quickly (like a railjump on summit to fling yourself over a staircase) also I was finding new ways to try and use it in combat and combining it with leap and etc. I can't do this anymore and the nerf to doing 180-jump from walls further prevents me from having more advanced maneuvering. Something like this should be difficult but offer great reward, not be easy and offer little to nothing besides a minor speed boost
Vanilla skulk is crap (excuse me) and it seems like every week we're getting closer and closer to where we initially started, crap. As of recently aliens destroy because of TRes drops/umbra but even then I want to play marines only because aliens have become "unfun" again, fade last I played afaik while a bit slower was still enjoyable, only thing I don't like is the new lerk (however it may have changed just yesterday haven't touched upon that yet) and skulk your majority spent life form feeling bad again. Thus I don't even want to play aliens and I explained this point but a few seem to be agreeing that it shouldn't be hard/difficult it should be this easy to use gimped/nerfed version
Comments
Yes I started it because I'm only concerned with the competitive point of view in this discussion. I said I'm not dismissing public because it's public, I'm dismissing it because it's not relevant in this discussion. I'm using this platform to discuss competitive scene, not to bash public play. I don't know how many ways or times you want me to rephrase this.
Yes "fixing the damn thing" is your point but it's not relevant in this discussion and therefore needless spam allowing yourself to introduce your way into the thread to bash competitive views. We don't want this public/competitive divide in this thread. This thread was only intended for competitive views. AGAIN, NOT TO DISMISS PUBLIC, BUT TO ADDRESS COMPETITIVE VIEWS.
Also this perception of "Us vs them" with public and competitive is what is adding to the detriment of the game. We are all individuals and we all have different opinions. Why you're lumping my view together with the whole of the competitive scene is bizarre. I stated that there are players on both sides of the BT and even other competitive players have spoken their different views. We are not all the same!
I don't believe that the competitive scene is more or less important to the game, I believe it's more important to me because this is what I play the game for! This is what I made this platform for! I don't understand why you're having problems understanding this.
I'll say this one last time for it to sink in.
This was a discussion from a competitive point of view, for the concern of the competitive scene. I was saying that competitive players (should) want to hear which features UWE are more likely to implement and an estimated time of arrival as to retain players (for reason's i've already posted). I didn't suggest which features anything should happen because it'll be good for comp ( or bad for public in your eyes). For the love of God, it's not a GO GO COMP SCENE, FUCK PUBLIC. Please see this and stop the comp bashing you have which is contributing to the divide between the public/competitive scenes.
:bz :bz :bz :bz :bz
Thats not novel at all!
This game has an asian comp scene? That I do not believe.
Or perhaps they bought a game that wasn't as good as they hoped, and that's why the game has hemorrhaged players since release. Considering NS1 is what even made NS2 possible, and the longevity of NS1, attempting to correct the errors of NS2 by moving gameplay towards NS1 just makes sense.
You don't want to play NS2 in its current state ? - it's a modders heaven apparently, show some skill off the pitch and make your own game for you and your friends. Then thank UWE for allowing you to do this without spending a cool US$1M on the U3 editor.
http://download.udk.com/UDKInstall-2013-02-BETA2.exe
Yup.
you are just bitter cos you missed out on a t-shirt ;P
This was a very disappointing episode to watch.
The licensing costs of the Unreal Engine 3 vary a lot on a per-case basis. It depends on how big the game is, which platforms you plan to release for and a lot of negotiation. But the general cost is more around $500k. It can be more and it can be less.
You do realize this is the path for fading into irrelevance no?
Furthermore, how does reliance upon competitive help UWE sell games? After all, don't you want an NS3? Putting competitive views way above everyone else is not a good way of selling games. That's in some ways as bad as putting short term revenue (how EA does it) above everything else.
Can you name a single game in the past 15 years that's still played where the developers placed the desires of the small vocal competitive players over everyone else?
http://www.mediafire.com/view/myfiles/#0e5nb9ymkq347j5
L2PNS2 is me, rofl @ them not seeing what is clear as day.
I could name plenty of competition orientated games that also have successful public communities because the game has been improved with competitive feedback in mind. I'd like to think that Dota, LoL, CS:GO, SC2 and Quake are some examples of this. A competitive scene is born from its public community, we're all playing the same game and want it to be as successful and as popular as possible.
Why are you seemingly against making the game a deeper, variable and skill based experience? Don't you think that a game with these qualities makes it an easier product to continue playing into the future and recommend to others? Thus increasing player retention and sales at the same time. On a related note, I sincerely hope NS2 gets some much needed time devoted to in game interactive tutorials. The people who make it through the confusion, move on to leave shortly afterwards as the rounds stale.
Sewlek is hardly listening exclusively to competitive players. He's always in any active BT server and reads every bit of feedback given. I'm glad it seems like more preference in game play inclusions is being given to competitive players. I'd much rather influence be focused and taken from the feedback of people with experience in Natural Selections' mechanics and the workings of other successful competitive titles.
CS, Quake, Dota, Starcraft
Dota and starcraft have matchmaking, dota also has easy mode classes. Reason they do this is because they dont have low skill floor.
CS and quake are simple and easy to learn, they have symmetrical teams and everything is fair game mechanic wise. Low skill floors and insanely high skill ceilings, they dont really have to cater to anyone, which is evident in that those games hardly changed at all from 1.0 onwards.
NS2 doesn't have a low skill floor, and i would argue that it doesn't have a very high skill ceiling either. It needs to cater to BOTH casual and comp players, not one or the other. You want to retain new and old players for as long as possible. Old players stay for the fun challenge of a high skill ceiling, new players stay if the game is fun, non frustrating, and if they can play it casually, at least until they become more competitive and start to enjoy the challenge.
It's an fps game with both tracking and twitch guns and extremely fast and diverse movement (jetpack, fade lerk etc). How does it have a low skill ceiling?
While I dont think you can compare NS2 to TLII, Dont starve and FTL because they are all SP games, I think the comparison to Chivalry is very interesting.
They are both massively Multiplayer and by unknown developers. Actually NS2 is the AAA game in that regard.
Chivalry obviously has to work for its players as your graph shows. This ism imho simply for the fact that it was utterly unknown before release, made by some random dude, has a very unusual setting for a "FPS" and lastly had as good as no effective marketing.
BUT once you play it, it's quite fun. Easy to participate in fight but hard to really learn to pwn your enemies. Also for a casual player it is no problem to play the occasional 2 or 3 rounds without being hopelessly outclassed.
So Chivalry is able to contain quite a few of its "veteran" players while with each big content upgrade and steamsale there come some new players to the game.
NS2 on the other was quite hyped at the release. It had very good marketing (considering the size and budget of the devs). I mean, the only game with better trailers I know is BF3 which probably had more trailer-budget than UWe had for the whole development.
I convinced quite a few friends to buy NS2 just by showing the trailers. After seeing them everyone is convinced that it is this game full of Alien-Killing Marine-Eating Minigun-Awesomeness.
But when new players start the game they dont experience this Awesomeness. They get stomped. They get stomped hard before they get stomped prior to getting stomped. Considering the amount of time the average casual player can invest into a game, having fun in NS2 requires being butt-raped for at least two weeks.
As a result NS2 quite literally is survival of the fittest.
This resulted in NS2 having some huge peaks in player counts at the beginning because the Idea, Art and Trailers are fcking awesome. But losing players quickly as they get frustrated by the actual game.
Chivalry on the other hand had problems to get alot of players to begin with because of missing marketing and a -for FPS- very unusual Scenario but keeps on retaining and building up a playerbase because the actual game is better than expected.
After attending multiple PAX events, before and after release and with a moving crowd of 90,000 people at each event.. easily 98% of people never even heard of NS2.
There was even a chivalry booth a few meters away, and they experienced the same thing.
So it may have been "hyped" and even "marketed" in your eyes, but those phrases typically apply to the Halos and LOLs and CODs and their *insane* budgets for it ... considering all that NS2 marketed with was facebook, a few gaming websites, and a steam popup.
Instead of the sensible and proven quick but predictable movement, we now have the look unnatural move however you like 420 yolo but still move quickly anyway movement.
This is one of the big problems facing games like NS2, and it's directly related to player retention. Putting aside that there will always be a large number of players who just breeze through, play for a bit and move on to the next thing. Focus on the small percentage of new players who would be prepared to stick around. What makes them leave?
A game either has a low skill ceiling and is accessible to new players or it has a high skill ceiling and it satisfies experienced players. With a very high skill ceiling, new players get smashed on pubs, don't feel like they're contributing and at worst they get verballed/harassed by teammates. It boils down to a less than enjoyable way to spend your time.
At the moment NS2 has problems at both ends of the spectrum - losing experienced players and not retaining new players.
My point is that it seems like a lot of veterans are desperately seeking changes that promote higher skill ceilings because it will entice likeminded players back to the game. I'm simply cautioning that veteran players can already smash newbies and higher skill ceilings will only exaggerate that. Personally, I'll enjoy higher skill caps because I've been around for long enough to develop my skills enough that I won't be scared off by the pros.
I've only played BT for a couple of hours so I can't comment on it, but the comments in this thread seem to suggest the BT raises skill caps. Fine, so be it. The next most important thing UWE could do to improve player retention is introduce skill based matchmaking.
Need to call you out on this one
Counter-strike? Nope.. view any competitive cs forum and you'll see how hard we're shitting all over valve for not listening to anybody. For fucks sake we were outrageous happy just a few days ago when they added their FIRST static crosshair. Yeah that's right a static crosshair, there was even a freaking thread on it. That's how much valve ignores the cs community
Quake? What version are you on about? Quake Live? Yeah you're pretty much handicapped now unless you're a premium sub, and it took them years to nerf the railgun when the obvious thing to do is to remove it
Dota 2? Somewhat, take note that valve has the original dota devs onboard (like they do with most games) they aren't doing much developing/ just supplying $ and publishing
starcraft, never played so no comment
I'm for the older iteration we had of wallhop
Which was
You accel via strafe + A/D on ground, and also further gained accel from jumping off walls (Where strafing was a large part of the acceleration process) however a few competitive players all seem to disagree with me and prefer the double nerfed version, aka slower capped top speed and easier to do
Their issues with it seem to be
1) It's silent - ok this is true, but this is a separate issue, nerf the movement because of a sound issue? Why not work on fixing the sound
2) You get to RTs too quickly - True, but from playing matches on that iteration it's proven this really isn't that much of a change when marine RT was on regular vanilla HP. Very early game sure you'd see skulks much quicker where you were. I never found this to be an issue at any point, with improved performance coming in 249 hitting faster moving targets will be even easier; I also have no issue shooting skulks moving at this speed.
If the skulk was louder globally to other clients, this wouldn't really be an issue because using it in combat will rarely happen (only certain areas where you can do this, open spaces are a no-no) so the ground fighting part is still the same, just the fleeing/initiation/traveling is different. Sure you CAN use it in combat but that requires much practice
The skulk now feels slow, unfun, and like there's nothing behind it. Before I felt it could be "mastered" but not stop there, you could always find new routings on how to travel faster, or a specific area to jump off of to move you from place x to place x quickly (like a railjump on summit to fling yourself over a staircase) also I was finding new ways to try and use it in combat and combining it with leap and etc. I can't do this anymore and the nerf to doing 180-jump from walls further prevents me from having more advanced maneuvering. Something like this should be difficult but offer great reward, not be easy and offer little to nothing besides a minor speed boost
Vanilla skulk is crap (excuse me) and it seems like every week we're getting closer and closer to where we initially started, crap. As of recently aliens destroy because of TRes drops/umbra but even then I want to play marines only because aliens have become "unfun" again, fade last I played afaik while a bit slower was still enjoyable, only thing I don't like is the new lerk (however it may have changed just yesterday haven't touched upon that yet) and skulk your majority spent life form feeling bad again. Thus I don't even want to play aliens and I explained this point but a few seem to be agreeing that it shouldn't be hard/difficult it should be this easy to use gimped/nerfed version