Cocurrent players are too few
MisterYoon
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
It's saturday on Europe, and there are only 700 people playing cocurrently.
While Chivalry has 8k cocurrent players on it.
Of course Chivalry is on 75% sale, but anyway they are very good at maintaining players.
Natural Selection 2 has more interesting gameplay, and better graphic?
But what should be a problem? NS2 is keep losing players while games like Chivalry keeps having at least x3 more players than NS2.
I even heard that optimization works really good recently.
It's still far from dead, but i hope i could play ns2 even next year and years after that.
Comments
If NS2 goes onto the steam sale / flash sale I'm sure player counts will spike again just like the last 2 times it was on sale.
I'm fairly sure Steam stats are more reliable than the NS2 front page one, and they showed 3000 players tops.
3000 tops really?
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920
Yeah..
(chivalry has always had more players than NS2 on average though, regarding OP)
NS2's area is competitive twitch shooter so good performance is essential and even with the latest speedups, the game still runs badly on the CPU side. Also, the market share for this type of game is probably a lot smaller than 10 years ago. Everyone is playing F2P and dota clones.
Chivalry uses a classic gameplay hook in persistent unlocks to keep you playing for the promise of new toys. I think ns could benefit from unlockable and/or microtransaction accessories (hats) but obviously there is a lot of work to make it happen.
What? No. Steam says the peak number of concurrent players was 3000 in the last 30 days, while the average is 777. The NS2 front page always shows more players playing than the Steam equivalent (on the NS2 community page), and I trust steam more.
Oh yes, you are correct sorry.
Not sure why the front page is so different that the steam graphs, I always assumed they use Sponitor for that.. ?
I can't believe the 2# top played on steam is currently [Football Manager 2013] with ~34,977 people playing
Well, not completely remaking the game every other while is probably a very good idea. A lot of people probably left after having their previous practice all nullified and ns2 being remade after the balance mod. The extra new people coming in from the sales offset it but it's going to be more damaging in the long term.
This. Reverting build 250 and it's ridiculous stalemate games would go a long way to improving pub play.
Chivalry is an easy game by comparison, which is not to say it has no depth, but its mechanics are very straight-forward and familiar. I honestly believe NS 2 could reach out to a much bigger audience but for that to happen they should have probably focussed a lot more on new player accessibility and less on trying to redo things that worked fine in NS 1. Additionally, of course, one must acknowledge that gamemodes like combat and siege, despite not being 'cool', were very popular in NS1 and a good learning school. It's something like that that NS 2 could probably use too. (Yes there is a combat mod but I doubt many new players actually roll into it, things could have been very different if it was included from the start or taken up and pushed as an official part of the game)
you also have to consider that:
a) it's a niche game for sure, very unforgiving with steep learning curve by design
b) new team fortress 2 mega update (of which im a victim)
If you really want to see player numbers go up noticeably, the #1 way to do that is probably to introduce an official Combat mode. That's not what anybody wants to hear but it's probably the safest bet. A mod isn't good enough to draw in new players - they want to see a proper polished game mode with the full support of the devs.
Tf2 just had a massive balance patch, and dota 2 just realeased/introduced a new hero. I wanna play ns2 but feel like I have to play those other games :S
Uptodate tutorials would've helped a great deal. But newer players don't ask questions and don't really put in the effort to learn. Therefore leaving.
As much as i don't like combat, it provides newer players with the ability to die and play with that fade, lerk, shotgun. time and time again. Learning it alot quicker then just insta-death in normal.
i'm thinking along the lines of a mountable sentry gun, a mountable alien static defense structure or vehicle, maybe a couple of in-base mountable utility/defense structures like a pillbox
...that would be amazing imo. just stuff that is useless in high level/comp games, but fun to play in pub and more accessible to casual players.
I'd also love to see Last Stand mod get put in as part of the game.....
I myself am currently not playing because ns2 is basicly a 'use headset/mic' game and due to operation I cant use a headset atm yet. (soon my precious ns2... soon).
but yes.. mostly due to the reasons of niche game & long time to learn.. Surely
'balance patch' they have a rocket launcher that can 1 hit scouts, anyway all those guns are banned in actual matches so it's still garbage to begin with
As for ns2, currently I think it's in the best state it has been in but I find myself more inactive not cause I'm playing something else but because I just don't have fun playing public anymore(and most of the servers keep hosting 20+ slots which I refuse to play/avoid), so if I get called for a pug or scrim then I'll gladly hop on for some great matches, the game itself is incredible but there's nothing really for me to do.. join a random server and get frustrated that a lot of people do not know what's going on? That's no fun.. teach them? tried that it's nearly impossible and there's just too many new players to teach.. not like any of them will listen to me
Just update the tutorial videos and implement some ranking system, so you dont get stuck with players, who have played NS2 since the universe began.
But for the love of god, do not make it more newbie friendly.(in the most general terms)