It was intimidating at times but in no way did any of that make me not want to play the game. Eventually I learned how to do all of that too and could hold my own, even tho I was never a pro at it.
I know games of the last several years haven't exactly been the pinnacle of skill cap type games, but I have a real hard time considering that gamers now are that big of pansies when it comes to getting better at video games.
Different generation, different breed of gamers. 10 years ago, if someone was smashing your face in a game you would try to beat them yourself. These days, people just leave the game and play the next new game which is progressively easier. 4-5 years of this and the result you have is there are only 3 fps games with a player base at the moment; cod4+, battlefield and cs.
10 years ago you were probably in your teens or early 20s and had the time to piss away playing against team nerd #1 and team nerd #2 joining servers over and over again.
The same "Back in my day" posts could be said that 10 years ago people didn't team stack as prolifically because who gives a shit if you won a round when 8/10 good players in the server were on your team, meaningless accomplishment in an already meaningless setting won with minimal effort. In fact if you didn't DIOL 10 years ago no one gave a shit what you did online, blbk gg noob.
And 9 years ago MF ur crapper clan in your signature joined in on the "R18 stop clan stacking" thread that you can still find on ausns.com through archive.org that resulted in mass butthurt across a lot of AusNS and a lot of kicks/bans from AusNS/GA servers for "res whoring" or "team stacking" or general crying to stf admins on IRC, there's a level of irony in you defending stacking when the clan you still link in your sig used to complain about the same thing quite regularly.
No other video game I can think of punishes the losing team so much because of the RTS elements, imagine if every consecutive round you lost in CS depleted the default cash turn over until it hit the minimum of $50 a round or whatever, you don't think it would drastically change how people play pub games in a matter of days/weeks?
"Hey guys if we save 3 more rounds in a row I can buy a frag nade for double doors" zzz.
The dude is also talking about Australian servers, I haven't found a single week of US play to even remotely compare to what playing in Australia was like from late Dec - middle of Mar, every pub player I spoke with all agreed that US servers were, without exaggerating, about a million times better to play on due to the skill difference being minimal between teams.
The dude is also talking about Australian servers, I haven't found a single week of US play to even remotely compare to what playing in Australia was like from late Dec - middle of Mar, every pub player I spoke with all agreed that US servers were, without exaggerating, about a million times better to play on due to the skill difference being minimal between teams.
I only started in march, but, generally the Aussie servers don't get stomped by clannies. At least from what i've seen the past, I dunno, 1.5 months.
There certainly still is stacking, but its done by public players.
I can't speak for other clans, but I will speak to 20% about playing on the same teams in pub games - try and even out the player distribution as much as possible.
I don't think we've constantly stacked games to the extent you said earlier though. We aren't good enough yet :P.
I mean, if people are going to quit because they sometimes have to lose (which is basically what the whole "omg team stacking" "omg there's just so much difference in skill" boils down too), then honestly I'm not going to miss those players.
It really doesn't. I've seen people lose and be happy about, I've seen the same people lose and be completely miserable about it. There's a world of difference between a well fought 20 minute game of back and forth leading to your loss, and an under 10 minute bottled into spawn loss.
And yes, sometimes players just aren't good and they can't help that either. But it doesn't mean they're going to be good in any other game or have more fun in any other game either.
Except they do. Because other a lot of other games either have smaller skill variations, match making or aren't competitive. I'm rubbish at StarCraft but it's rare that the matchmaking puts me against someone I have no chance against. Minecraft is loads of fun, takes no competitive skill at all.
It was intimidating at times but in no way did any of that make me not want to play the game. Eventually I learned how to do all of that too and could hold my own, even tho I was never a pro at it.
I know games of the last several years haven't exactly been the pinnacle of skill cap type games, but I have a real hard time considering that gamers now are that big of pansies when it comes to getting better at video games.
Different generation, different breed of gamers. 10 years ago, if someone was smashing your face in a game you would try to beat them yourself. These days, people just leave the game and play the next new game which is progressively easier. 4-5 years of this and the result you have is there are only 3 fps games with a player base at the moment; cod4+, battlefield and cs.
There's a lot more choice in games, and a lot more casual gamers. Not everyone has the time to play hours and hours every week to get good, they want a game that they can hop into at the weekend or the odd evening after work and have fun with. If it's going to take them ~200 hours (which if your only playing ~10 hours a week is nearly 5 months) to get good enough in the game to stand a chance against most other players they're going to drop it and find something else.
Do you want NS2 to be an elitist, niche game? If you do fine, but you can't have that and large player counts at the same time. There is too much competition for players attention to punish players for being bad and expecting them to stay.
allright, i have to say. as a realitively "new" player (220 hours, but still bad)
i think the biggest thing is the skill imbalances, obviously, the good players shouldn't be made to not play, but you can't jsut disregard the issue. i've played plenty of games where theres that one or two people that get 30+ kills and 1 or 2 deaths. and i can say from experience, that after 2 or 3 games of that, you don't want to play the game anymore.
this would be even more-so with brand new players. they have no idea what is going on, AND dieing every 30 secs or so.
usually for me, i play every month or so for a couple days, slowly get better, (by that i mean get more than 2 kills in a match XD.) then a series of frustrating matches that makes me not want to play i love the game, but i think it's a big problem. and there is no real way to fix it.
also i think it is worse on AU servers, because there is only around the same 50 or so people. that paly way more often than me, wheras i paly very irregularly, so it makes it hard for players like me, and new players to start playing the game again/for the first time.
for example, i bought the game for a friend, he played around 10 matches, obviously was put of by the amount of dieing involved. and hasn't played it since.
the best games i've played are ones where the teams are activly trying to work together, which is very rare. those matches are insanely fun, and coincidently i tend to do better in those matches.
They also have match making so the rookies never have to see this elite crowd. If every other SC2 game I got put up against someone higher than gold I would flat out stop playing it.
I am fine with their being an elite side of NS2, there should be a pro scene, the game should be primarily balanced around that pro scene. Just have some sort of system so that either rookies don't have to see these pro players (matchmaking) or so that they have a chance when they play against these players (handicaps or lower skill ceilings).
Personally I think match making is the best solution, but every time it's suggested the crys of "not enough players" comes out. Given that issue, and that I haven't ever seen a good thing said about lower skill ceilings, the only thing left is either some sort of handicap system or ignoring the problem.
Sadly, Emoo. Matchmaking is too late to have an impact. The playerbase is allready gone and there's not much we can do about it. Tell me what the real difference is in NS2 compared to a big game of TF2 24/24? One pro player can still dominate, and it has almost as big of an impact as in NS2. But I guess tf2 has a higher skill.. floor?, I don't really know. I mean you can just hang back and spam nades/rockets and get frags basically, and thats not really the case with NS2.
Handicaps will for a plethora of reasons not work, and that you either get punished for being good, or rewarded for being bad is so god damn ridiculous it should be self explanatory its a bad idea.
The best solution would have been to make Matchmaking ship with NS2 at release, and to remove all of the pub servers, like dota, or similar games. If you have pub servers with a lot of slots you will end up with people who are ten times better than you, and you either got to suck it up or switch server.
I remember when I started playing quake and loved to join servers with good players to learn how they were moving, aiming, tactics, special trick jumps etc. Now a days it seems that everybody thinks they are this special snow flake and that if they play against some one that is better than them he is obviously hacking or should be banned. WHAT THE FUCK happened?
All the PT posters singing from the same hymn sheet once again. The new build isn't a new game, it's just another tweaked rehash of a very badly formed variant of gameplay.
Matchmaking won't have an impact, CS:GO match making sometimes struggles to find players with 20,000 and DOTA 2 has 100,000 and that can take a minute or so. With such a low player count, expect 20 minute waiting times to find relevant skill with NS2.
NS at its roots, was about fast paced play, locking down an area of control not locking down routes to control areas. This is where the game is entirely wrong and this is why for me the gameplay is built up, around and formed in such a boring way.
Matchmaking won't have an impact, CS:GO match making sometimes struggles to find players with 20,000 and DOTA 2 has 100,000 and that can take a minute or so. With such a low player count, expect 20 minute waiting times to find relevant skill with NS2.
Matchmaking can be created in such a way that this won't happen... It's not that if you have 10 levels only level 1 can play against other level 1.
Ofcourse it will be a mix of level 1-3 (and maybe even 1-4 if there aren't a lot of players online). It's just a system to prevent it so that level 1 plays vs level 10. And if that level 1 player really wants to he can still join normal servers or private games.
They're going to advertise build 249/250 pretty heavily. Let's just hope it is effective.
Let me channel Miss Cleo for a bit here without the fake Jamaican accent.
NS2 sale <$10 combined with the content patch will at the very least double the player population for a few days. Then these players will disappear as they bang their heads against the wall and get reamed by more experienced players. I'd give an optimistic estimate of 3 weeks before everything is back to the status quo.
The game is just too 'hardcore' so to speak and has little to no appeal to the mainstream audience. I'd think the current player count is actually pretty good considering the niche gameplay NS2 has to offer as well as how it's more or less still a 'beta' in my book. Also doesn't help how you still need a rather decent rig just so your fps doesn't take a nosedive later in the game regardless of the massive improvements since release.
Actually this pretty much renders everything I wrote pointless as a picture is worth a thousand words...or something like that.
Spot on.
Despite the ongoing general ignorance to these facts by many people in the community i love ns2 and i'm going to keep supporting it by buying more copies when they are next on sale and giving them away to my friends, i'm also heavily advertising the game on my gaming website and launching true rookie friendly servers where new players can have fun and not have to stress out or rage quit because they keep getting killed over and over by the more experienced players.
I haven't felt this passionate about a game since Quake 3!
I will not let ignorance and stupidity kill this game damn it!
Sadly, Emoo. Matchmaking is too late to have an impact. The playerbase is allready gone and there's not much we can do about it. Tell me what the real difference is in NS2 compared to a big game of TF2 24/24? One pro player can still dominate, and it has almost as big of an impact as in NS2. But I guess tf2 has a higher skill.. floor?, I don't really know. I mean you can just hang back and spam nades/rockets and get frags basically, and thats not really the case with NS2.
I couldn't say I don't play TF2, but given the much larger starting playerbase (known developer, free game, standard mechanics) it's probably less likely to encounter a really good player (and if you do lots of servers to switch to).
Handicaps will for a plethora of reasons not work, and that you either get punished for being good, or rewarded for being bad is so god damn ridiculous it should be self explanatory its a bad idea.
The best solution would have been to make Matchmaking ship with NS2 at release, and to remove all of the pub servers, like dota, or similar games. If you have pub servers with a lot of slots you will end up with people who are ten times better than you, and you either got to suck it up or switch server.
I think we should add both. Like Midstorm said, it doesn't have to be strict matchmaking, anything would be better than what we have now. Add in some way for server admins to tweak player handicaps as well and the admins can then artificially tune a player down rather than having to kick them or put up with their pub stomp.
I remember when I started playing quake and loved to join servers with good players to learn how they were moving, aiming, tactics, special trick jumps etc. Now a days it seems that everybody thinks they are this special snow flake and that if they play against some one that is better than them he is obviously hacking or should be banned. WHAT THE FUCK happened?
It's good to play with people slightly better than you to learn from them (as they'll be playing with people slightly better than them thus giving transitive skill transfer), it's hard to learn anything from people much better than you. High skill play and cheating are indistinguishable to a rookie, they're not learning from it, just getting repeatedly killed. The number of hacking accusations in relation to how much hacking actually happens in NS2 shows this pretty well.
without exaggerating, about a million times better
I'm not sure you understand what exaggerating means.
Tbh, from my experience on both, I don't think stacking happens any more or less often on US servers than it does on Aussie servers. Whether or not it does and whether or not you legitimately believe it does or whether you're just the most committed troll I've ever seen, you'll always complain about it regardless of fact.
Remember complaining about Meow clan stacking "ruining" the I live for the stomp servers? That wasn't even an actual clan and was just someone playing with his girlfriend and wearing tags for kicks (and of course they prefer being on the same team).
Your opinions on the aussie community seem to be so set in stone that I wouldn't be surprised if you had the exact same issues with skill disparity on US servers and still convince yourself - "this is great! no stacks at all!", whilst experiencing just as many one-sided matches as you would anywhere else... Then play on an aussie server, see a clan tag on a side that happens to be winning, and cry "STACK!!!".
They also have match making so the rookies never have to see this elite crowd. If every other SC2 game I got put up against someone higher than gold I would flat out stop playing it.
I am fine with their being an elite side of NS2, there should be a pro scene, the game should be primarily balanced around that pro scene. Just have some sort of system so that either rookies don't have to see these pro players (matchmaking) or so that they have a chance when they play against these players (handicaps or lower skill ceilings).
Personally I think match making is the best solution, but every time it's suggested the crys of "not enough players" comes out. Given that issue, and that I haven't ever seen a good thing said about lower skill ceilings, the only thing left is either some sort of handicap system or ignoring the problem.
Yet, ignoring that "every other game" is a bit of an exaggeration since the chances of you getting such an elite person with a game of that population that often is highly unlikely, would you stop playing it if you *occasionally* had to play with someone like that? Let's think about this honestly, those games mentioned, and let's throw in LoL as well (I can relate to this one personally), would they die out if they didn't have matchmaking? Or can we just honestly say they're popular because they're all good games in their own right, and that matchmaking is just a part of that. Hell, in LoL's case matchmaking is just another thing for people to bitch about from what I've seen, just as NS2's lack of it is here. I'd still play LoL even if I got thrown up against a pro team every once in awhile. Hell, I'd be thrilled to get my ass kicked by them, because I know I'm just going to lose sometimes.
Yes I'm repeating the "sometimes you're going to lose" mantra, because like it or not it's the piece of the argument that everyone here pining for matchmaking and stacked teams are glossing over and trying to rationalize away. There have always been, in my experience, people in video games who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that sometimes not being good is going to result in them losing. And rather then focus their efforts on getting better they'd rather just complain about whatever a game lacks to take that off their shoulders on the forums because it's a hell of a lot easier to do. Shooters don't have matchmaking, I think CoD maybe the closest thing to it but even that isn't pure matchmaking.
NS2 IS a shooter, it's not just an RTS, and it's sure as hell much more of a shooter then an RTS. And not only is it a shooter but it's an old-school type shooter with an actual server browser list and server communities that develop from that. Yes, even my server has a community through a steam group. You don't see that nowadays in games like COD because you randomly get thrown in with people you may or may not ever play against again. So you basically get molded into a selfish, introverted asshole playing a mediocre game. I'm the same way when I'm solo-queuing in LoL as well, I couldn't give a fuck about those people I get queued in against, because that's just how solo queue is in that game.
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
Once afk kick, spectator and ready room campers are eliminated to ensure even teams, NS2 game play is far more rewarding than any COD.
NS2 doesn't perform as well as the last COD but then the COD teams comprise of 200+ staff and millions in budget.
Even with all these resources, Black Ops 1 was highly unoptimised for the first 3 months of its launch.
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
Once afk kick, spectator and ready room campers are eliminated to ensure even teams, NS2 game play is far more rewarding than any COD.
NS2 doesn't perform as well as the last COD but then the COD teams comprise of 200+ staff and millions in budget.
Even with all these resources, Black Ops 1 was highly unoptimised for the first 3 months of its launch.
Even the more modern CoDs uses a modified Quake 3 engine apparently.
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
depends which version you're talking about, don't forget call of duty has no developer support/replies and the most recent titles have no mod tools, some of them still use peer2peer servers, and the game is made in such a way that you can barely show off your skill; me I've played cod on a high level, in the latest cod I can have brick walls actually kill me (for me this in unacceptable) if I'm that much better I should never die, but turning a corner with no footsteps dying to over 1200ms of lag compensation to a guy with 300 ping using a shotgun that killed me before I can even see the player, yeah great game
If you just leave cod4 as your last memory, it'll be a good one
I'll agree again that this game needs a matching service; just today playing 250 I went onto a server as marine, actually played (normally I tone it down in public matches) even had my glasses on so I could see better; and savaged a 26-0 until surrender, then I've done a 57-3 as fade in BT as well
While the score is not something to be impressed about, compare that to when I face very good players and I'll have something more like a 16-8; the difference is one opponent is giving me a challenge, and the other is free cake for the eating
While I enjoy both, the one player(s) being dominated probably do not enjoy it, I know if I went 0-18 while actually trying to play I wouldn't feel too great (not that it would ever happen ) )
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
Once afk kick, spectator and ready room campers are eliminated to ensure even teams, NS2 game play is far more rewarding than any COD.
NS2 doesn't perform as well as the last COD but then the COD teams comprise of 200+ staff and millions in budget.
Even with all these resources, Black Ops 1 was highly unoptimised for the first 3 months of its launch.
Haha, I remember Black Ops 1 launch. People thought performance in NS2 was bad after launch, they have no idea. And it's even more amazing considering the difference in development teams on the two games.
Even the more modern CoDs uses a modified Quake 3 engine apparently.
Correct, all Treyarch and Infinity Ward keep doing is slightly updating the well over a decade old id Tech 3 (otherwise known as the Quake 3 engine).
They have now tweaked it so much over the years that they can now legally call it their own engine, lol
All those countless billions in profit made over the last decade and they are still too tight to build their own engine from scratch yet a small humble company like Unknown Worlds did.
I love how people use COD has a "bad example" of gaming. Especially when being elite.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
Once afk kick, spectator and ready room campers are eliminated to ensure even teams, NS2 game play is far more rewarding than any COD.
NS2 doesn't perform as well as the last COD but then the COD teams comprise of 200+ staff and millions in budget.
Even with all these resources, Black Ops 1 was highly unoptimised for the first 3 months of its launch.
Haha, I remember Black Ops 1 launch. People thought performance in NS2 was bad after launch, they have no idea. And it's even more amazing considering the difference in development teams on the two games.
Black Ops 1 launch was the biggest facepalm disaster for a game launch i've ever witnessed in my life, it literally took them 3 months to stop the crashing and connectivity problems, it was pathetic, lmao
And the annoying thing is, people forgot about those 3 months of hell and continued to buy the COD games, i stopped buying the COD games after the farce that was Black Ops 1.
World at War was the last great COD but hey we are so far off track, back to NS2
10 years ago you were probably in your teens or early 20s and had the time to piss away playing against team nerd #1 and team nerd #2 joining servers over and over again.
heh good point, NS2 is a demanding game one of the most demanding around ive played, if the average age of gamers is 31 that means their senses have begun to decline, and through no fault of their own they simply cannot compete like they used to or more importantly may wish too, I know myself a load of people trying to dominate each other gets tiresome fast and being that gaming is a release to indulge in at the end of the day you want to feel validated for putting your time into it.
Personally ive been PC gaming since 1994 with a Packard Bell, i'm probably getting too old now to be going on forums to bemoan the state of things but I think were seeing the results of the past 10 years of the FPS genre becoming the race to the bottom of the COD margin and taking with it the players leaving games like this a stagnant circle jerk but this is so much the obvious.
They also have match making so the rookies never have to see this elite crowd. If every other SC2 game I got put up against someone higher than gold I would flat out stop playing it.
I am fine with their being an elite side of NS2, there should be a pro scene, the game should be primarily balanced around that pro scene. Just have some sort of system so that either rookies don't have to see these pro players (matchmaking) or so that they have a chance when they play against these players (handicaps or lower skill ceilings).
Personally I think match making is the best solution, but every time it's suggested the crys of "not enough players" comes out. Given that issue, and that I haven't ever seen a good thing said about lower skill ceilings, the only thing left is either some sort of handicap system or ignoring the problem.
Yet, ignoring that "every other game" is a bit of an exaggeration since the chances of you getting such an elite person with a game of that population that often is highly unlikely, would you stop playing it if you *occasionally* had to play with someone like that? Let's think about this honestly, those games mentioned, and let's throw in LoL as well (I can relate to this one personally), would they die out if they didn't have matchmaking? Or can we just honestly say they're popular because they're all good games in their own right, and that matchmaking is just a part of that. Hell, in LoL's case matchmaking is just another thing for people to bitch about from what I've seen, just as NS2's lack of it is here. I'd still play LoL even if I got thrown up against a pro team every once in awhile. Hell, I'd be thrilled to get my ass kicked by them, because I know I'm just going to lose sometimes.
Yes I'm repeating the "sometimes you're going to lose" mantra, because like it or not it's the piece of the argument that everyone here pining for matchmaking and stacked teams are glossing over and trying to rationalize away. There have always been, in my experience, people in video games who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that sometimes not being good is going to result in them losing. And rather then focus their efforts on getting better they'd rather just complain about whatever a game lacks to take that off their shoulders on the forums because it's a hell of a lot easier to do. Shooters don't have matchmaking, I think CoD maybe the closest thing to it but even that isn't pure matchmaking.
NS2 IS a shooter, it's not just an RTS, and it's sure as hell much more of a shooter then an RTS. And not only is it a shooter but it's an old-school type shooter with an actual server browser list and server communities that develop from that. Yes, even my server has a community through a steam group. You don't see that nowadays in games like COD because you randomly get thrown in with people you may or may not ever play against again. So you basically get molded into a selfish, introverted asshole playing a mediocre game. I'm the same way when I'm solo-queuing in LoL as well, I couldn't give a fuck about those people I get queued in against, because that's just how solo queue is in that game.
Every once in a while isn't an issue. I've encountered a few high levels in SC2, but you reach a point where if it queues you up against a diamond/master league player you just insta-quit. But that's not the issue with NS2, nearly every single game I've played this week has been predicated around 1 or 2 players. For a team game that really sucks.
"sometimes you're going to lose", yes you are. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT. I said it earlier, there's a world of difference between losing after a good fight and being KO'd instantly. At the end of the day a lot of people are playing for fun. NS2 is not that fun when someone on the other team is of much higher skill, it's even worse if there's 2 or 3 of them.
I'm not directly blaming the ones who are doing this, I'm guilty of throwing games myself and while your playing you just don't notice. It's generally only at the end when you look at the final scores and see yourself on 30:3 and everyone else at 5:10 that you think "balls I really shafted the balance in that".
The servers would be filled to the brim if performance wasn't an ongoing issue.
Fastest way to ruin a players immersion is to give them an environment that is wonderful to look at but horrible to play in.
Maybe in a couple years performance issues might level out and people won't need super computers to play ns2. This game is going the nuclear dawn route release unpolished game and try to play catchup. Problem is your fan base is only going to wait so long. Time to start working on a new IP and hope the second game doesn't have performance issues like your first one. Sorry if I come off as crotchity but I am tired of gaming companies creating sequels of the games I loved, and not understanding what made them a success to begin with.
There is still potentially time to save the game and bring back re-playability but performance absolutely hands down has to be the top priority. Beyond that you remove things that create frustrating game play. Power nodes need to go, tech points need to go, alien commanders need to go, heavy armor needs to be re-added, hmgs need to be re-added, electrified nodes need to be re-added, and lastly return marine movement back to where it was and get rid of sprint. I thought Charlie understood why ns1 was awesome and had thousands of hours of re-playability, but I question how we ended up here.
/signed one of the most die hard competitive old school commanders there was in this game.
Comments
Different generation, different breed of gamers. 10 years ago, if someone was smashing your face in a game you would try to beat them yourself. These days, people just leave the game and play the next new game which is progressively easier. 4-5 years of this and the result you have is there are only 3 fps games with a player base at the moment; cod4+, battlefield and cs.
The same "Back in my day" posts could be said that 10 years ago people didn't team stack as prolifically because who gives a shit if you won a round when 8/10 good players in the server were on your team, meaningless accomplishment in an already meaningless setting won with minimal effort. In fact if you didn't DIOL 10 years ago no one gave a shit what you did online, blbk gg noob.
And 9 years ago MF ur crapper clan in your signature joined in on the "R18 stop clan stacking" thread that you can still find on ausns.com through archive.org that resulted in mass butthurt across a lot of AusNS and a lot of kicks/bans from AusNS/GA servers for "res whoring" or "team stacking" or general crying to stf admins on IRC, there's a level of irony in you defending stacking when the clan you still link in your sig used to complain about the same thing quite regularly.
@Mav
No other video game I can think of punishes the losing team so much because of the RTS elements, imagine if every consecutive round you lost in CS depleted the default cash turn over until it hit the minimum of $50 a round or whatever, you don't think it would drastically change how people play pub games in a matter of days/weeks?
"Hey guys if we save 3 more rounds in a row I can buy a frag nade for double doors" zzz.
The dude is also talking about Australian servers, I haven't found a single week of US play to even remotely compare to what playing in Australia was like from late Dec - middle of Mar, every pub player I spoke with all agreed that US servers were, without exaggerating, about a million times better to play on due to the skill difference being minimal between teams.
I only started in march, but, generally the Aussie servers don't get stomped by clannies. At least from what i've seen the past, I dunno, 1.5 months.
There certainly still is stacking, but its done by public players.
I can't speak for other clans, but I will speak to 20% about playing on the same teams in pub games - try and even out the player distribution as much as possible.
I don't think we've constantly stacked games to the extent you said earlier though. We aren't good enough yet :P.
It really doesn't. I've seen people lose and be happy about, I've seen the same people lose and be completely miserable about it. There's a world of difference between a well fought 20 minute game of back and forth leading to your loss, and an under 10 minute bottled into spawn loss.
Except they do. Because other a lot of other games either have smaller skill variations, match making or aren't competitive. I'm rubbish at StarCraft but it's rare that the matchmaking puts me against someone I have no chance against. Minecraft is loads of fun, takes no competitive skill at all.
There's a lot more choice in games, and a lot more casual gamers. Not everyone has the time to play hours and hours every week to get good, they want a game that they can hop into at the weekend or the odd evening after work and have fun with. If it's going to take them ~200 hours (which if your only playing ~10 hours a week is nearly 5 months) to get good enough in the game to stand a chance against most other players they're going to drop it and find something else.
Do you want NS2 to be an elitist, niche game? If you do fine, but you can't have that and large player counts at the same time. There is too much competition for players attention to punish players for being bad and expecting them to stay.
Dota 2
Starcraft 2
Counter Strike
COD4
All have elite crowds, all very popular.
i think the biggest thing is the skill imbalances, obviously, the good players shouldn't be made to not play, but you can't jsut disregard the issue. i've played plenty of games where theres that one or two people that get 30+ kills and 1 or 2 deaths. and i can say from experience, that after 2 or 3 games of that, you don't want to play the game anymore.
this would be even more-so with brand new players. they have no idea what is going on, AND dieing every 30 secs or so.
usually for me, i play every month or so for a couple days, slowly get better, (by that i mean get more than 2 kills in a match XD.) then a series of frustrating matches that makes me not want to play
also i think it is worse on AU servers, because there is only around the same 50 or so people. that paly way more often than me, wheras i paly very irregularly, so it makes it hard for players like me, and new players to start playing the game again/for the first time.
for example, i bought the game for a friend, he played around 10 matches, obviously was put of by the amount of dieing involved. and hasn't played it since.
the best games i've played are ones where the teams are activly trying to work together, which is very rare. those matches are insanely fun, and coincidently i tend to do better in those matches.
They also have match making so the rookies never have to see this elite crowd. If every other SC2 game I got put up against someone higher than gold I would flat out stop playing it.
I am fine with their being an elite side of NS2, there should be a pro scene, the game should be primarily balanced around that pro scene. Just have some sort of system so that either rookies don't have to see these pro players (matchmaking) or so that they have a chance when they play against these players (handicaps or lower skill ceilings).
Personally I think match making is the best solution, but every time it's suggested the crys of "not enough players" comes out. Given that issue, and that I haven't ever seen a good thing said about lower skill ceilings, the only thing left is either some sort of handicap system or ignoring the problem.
Handicaps will for a plethora of reasons not work, and that you either get punished for being good, or rewarded for being bad is so god damn ridiculous it should be self explanatory its a bad idea.
The best solution would have been to make Matchmaking ship with NS2 at release, and to remove all of the pub servers, like dota, or similar games. If you have pub servers with a lot of slots you will end up with people who are ten times better than you, and you either got to suck it up or switch server.
I remember when I started playing quake and loved to join servers with good players to learn how they were moving, aiming, tactics, special trick jumps etc. Now a days it seems that everybody thinks they are this special snow flake and that if they play against some one that is better than them he is obviously hacking or should be banned. WHAT THE FUCK happened?
Matchmaking won't have an impact, CS:GO match making sometimes struggles to find players with 20,000 and DOTA 2 has 100,000 and that can take a minute or so. With such a low player count, expect 20 minute waiting times to find relevant skill with NS2.
NS at its roots, was about fast paced play, locking down an area of control not locking down routes to control areas. This is where the game is entirely wrong and this is why for me the gameplay is built up, around and formed in such a boring way.
Matchmaking can be created in such a way that this won't happen... It's not that if you have 10 levels only level 1 can play against other level 1.
Ofcourse it will be a mix of level 1-3 (and maybe even 1-4 if there aren't a lot of players online). It's just a system to prevent it so that level 1 plays vs level 10. And if that level 1 player really wants to he can still join normal servers or private games.
Despite the ongoing general ignorance to these facts by many people in the community i love ns2 and i'm going to keep supporting it by buying more copies when they are next on sale and giving them away to my friends, i'm also heavily advertising the game on my gaming website and launching true rookie friendly servers where new players can have fun and not have to stress out or rage quit because they keep getting killed over and over by the more experienced players.
I haven't felt this passionate about a game since Quake 3!
I will not let ignorance and stupidity kill this game damn it!
I couldn't say I don't play TF2, but given the much larger starting playerbase (known developer, free game, standard mechanics) it's probably less likely to encounter a really good player (and if you do lots of servers to switch to).
I think we should add both. Like Midstorm said, it doesn't have to be strict matchmaking, anything would be better than what we have now. Add in some way for server admins to tweak player handicaps as well and the admins can then artificially tune a player down rather than having to kick them or put up with their pub stomp.
It's good to play with people slightly better than you to learn from them (as they'll be playing with people slightly better than them thus giving transitive skill transfer), it's hard to learn anything from people much better than you. High skill play and cheating are indistinguishable to a rookie, they're not learning from it, just getting repeatedly killed. The number of hacking accusations in relation to how much hacking actually happens in NS2 shows this pretty well.
I'm not sure you understand what exaggerating means.
Tbh, from my experience on both, I don't think stacking happens any more or less often on US servers than it does on Aussie servers. Whether or not it does and whether or not you legitimately believe it does or whether you're just the most committed troll I've ever seen, you'll always complain about it regardless of fact.
Remember complaining about Meow clan stacking "ruining" the I live for the stomp servers? That wasn't even an actual clan and was just someone playing with his girlfriend and wearing tags for kicks (and of course they prefer being on the same team).
Your opinions on the aussie community seem to be so set in stone that I wouldn't be surprised if you had the exact same issues with skill disparity on US servers and still convince yourself - "this is great! no stacks at all!", whilst experiencing just as many one-sided matches as you would anywhere else... Then play on an aussie server, see a clan tag on a side that happens to be winning, and cry "STACK!!!".
Yet, ignoring that "every other game" is a bit of an exaggeration since the chances of you getting such an elite person with a game of that population that often is highly unlikely, would you stop playing it if you *occasionally* had to play with someone like that? Let's think about this honestly, those games mentioned, and let's throw in LoL as well (I can relate to this one personally), would they die out if they didn't have matchmaking? Or can we just honestly say they're popular because they're all good games in their own right, and that matchmaking is just a part of that. Hell, in LoL's case matchmaking is just another thing for people to bitch about from what I've seen, just as NS2's lack of it is here. I'd still play LoL even if I got thrown up against a pro team every once in awhile. Hell, I'd be thrilled to get my ass kicked by them, because I know I'm just going to lose sometimes.
Yes I'm repeating the "sometimes you're going to lose" mantra, because like it or not it's the piece of the argument that everyone here pining for matchmaking and stacked teams are glossing over and trying to rationalize away. There have always been, in my experience, people in video games who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that sometimes not being good is going to result in them losing. And rather then focus their efforts on getting better they'd rather just complain about whatever a game lacks to take that off their shoulders on the forums because it's a hell of a lot easier to do. Shooters don't have matchmaking, I think CoD maybe the closest thing to it but even that isn't pure matchmaking.
NS2 IS a shooter, it's not just an RTS, and it's sure as hell much more of a shooter then an RTS. And not only is it a shooter but it's an old-school type shooter with an actual server browser list and server communities that develop from that. Yes, even my server has a community through a steam group. You don't see that nowadays in games like COD because you randomly get thrown in with people you may or may not ever play against again. So you basically get molded into a selfish, introverted asshole playing a mediocre game. I'm the same way when I'm solo-queuing in LoL as well, I couldn't give a fuck about those people I get queued in against, because that's just how solo queue is in that game.
Better yet when you see thousands more gamers playing COD than their elite game.
Popular does not mean quality. I'm sure McDonald's serves more people than most Michelin Star restaurants. This does not mean McDonald's is better than any of them...
Perfect
Flawed example to say NS2 is higher quality than COD. Performance for example, is something COD does not have an issue with. NS2 still does. Next terrible example please.
Wow what a red herring.
That first sentence had nothing to do with the rest of your post.. =D>
please think for a few seconds before you post this kind of drivel
Once afk kick, spectator and ready room campers are eliminated to ensure even teams, NS2 game play is far more rewarding than any COD.
NS2 doesn't perform as well as the last COD but then the COD teams comprise of 200+ staff and millions in budget.
Even with all these resources, Black Ops 1 was highly unoptimised for the first 3 months of its launch.
Even the more modern CoDs uses a modified Quake 3 engine apparently.
depends which version you're talking about, don't forget call of duty has no developer support/replies and the most recent titles have no mod tools, some of them still use peer2peer servers, and the game is made in such a way that you can barely show off your skill; me I've played cod on a high level, in the latest cod I can have brick walls actually kill me (for me this in unacceptable) if I'm that much better I should never die, but turning a corner with no footsteps dying to over 1200ms of lag compensation to a guy with 300 ping using a shotgun that killed me before I can even see the player, yeah great game
If you just leave cod4 as your last memory, it'll be a good one
I'll agree again that this game needs a matching service; just today playing 250 I went onto a server as marine, actually played (normally I tone it down in public matches) even had my glasses on so I could see better; and savaged a 26-0 until surrender, then I've done a 57-3 as fade in BT as well
While the score is not something to be impressed about, compare that to when I face very good players and I'll have something more like a 16-8; the difference is one opponent is giving me a challenge, and the other is free cake for the eating
While I enjoy both, the one player(s) being dominated probably do not enjoy it, I know if I went 0-18 while actually trying to play I wouldn't feel too great (not that it would ever happen
Haha, I remember Black Ops 1 launch. People thought performance in NS2 was bad after launch, they have no idea. And it's even more amazing considering the difference in development teams on the two games.
Correct, all Treyarch and Infinity Ward keep doing is slightly updating the well over a decade old id Tech 3 (otherwise known as the Quake 3 engine).
They have now tweaked it so much over the years that they can now legally call it their own engine, lol
All those countless billions in profit made over the last decade and they are still too tight to build their own engine from scratch yet a small humble company like Unknown Worlds did.
Black Ops 1 launch was the biggest facepalm disaster for a game launch i've ever witnessed in my life, it literally took them 3 months to stop the crashing and connectivity problems, it was pathetic, lmao
And the annoying thing is, people forgot about those 3 months of hell and continued to buy the COD games, i stopped buying the COD games after the farce that was Black Ops 1.
World at War was the last great COD but hey we are so far off track, back to NS2
heh good point, NS2 is a demanding game one of the most demanding around ive played, if the average age of gamers is 31 that means their senses have begun to decline, and through no fault of their own they simply cannot compete like they used to or more importantly may wish too, I know myself a load of people trying to dominate each other gets tiresome fast and being that gaming is a release to indulge in at the end of the day you want to feel validated for putting your time into it.
Personally ive been PC gaming since 1994 with a Packard Bell, i'm probably getting too old now to be going on forums to bemoan the state of things but I think were seeing the results of the past 10 years of the FPS genre becoming the race to the bottom of the COD margin and taking with it the players leaving games like this a stagnant circle jerk but this is so much the obvious.
Every once in a while isn't an issue. I've encountered a few high levels in SC2, but you reach a point where if it queues you up against a diamond/master league player you just insta-quit. But that's not the issue with NS2, nearly every single game I've played this week has been predicated around 1 or 2 players. For a team game that really sucks.
"sometimes you're going to lose", yes you are. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT. I said it earlier, there's a world of difference between losing after a good fight and being KO'd instantly. At the end of the day a lot of people are playing for fun. NS2 is not that fun when someone on the other team is of much higher skill, it's even worse if there's 2 or 3 of them.
I'm not directly blaming the ones who are doing this, I'm guilty of throwing games myself and while your playing you just don't notice. It's generally only at the end when you look at the final scores and see yourself on 30:3 and everyone else at 5:10 that you think "balls I really shafted the balance in that".
Fastest way to ruin a players immersion is to give them an environment that is wonderful to look at but horrible to play in.
Maybe in a couple years performance issues might level out and people won't need super computers to play ns2. This game is going the nuclear dawn route release unpolished game and try to play catchup. Problem is your fan base is only going to wait so long. Time to start working on a new IP and hope the second game doesn't have performance issues like your first one. Sorry if I come off as crotchity but I am tired of gaming companies creating sequels of the games I loved, and not understanding what made them a success to begin with.
There is still potentially time to save the game and bring back re-playability but performance absolutely hands down has to be the top priority. Beyond that you remove things that create frustrating game play. Power nodes need to go, tech points need to go, alien commanders need to go, heavy armor needs to be re-added, hmgs need to be re-added, electrified nodes need to be re-added, and lastly return marine movement back to where it was and get rid of sprint. I thought Charlie understood why ns1 was awesome and had thousands of hours of re-playability, but I question how we ended up here.
/signed one of the most die hard competitive old school commanders there was in this game.