To be honest, the steam forums are quite worrying - a lot of people are bitching and many of the threads relating to the steam sale have several people on there are outright telling potential new players not to buy it.
I'm wondering if it's just the US community that is so 'toxic'? The EU one is quite friendly and forgiving of newbies.
To be honest, the steam forums are quite worrying - a lot of people are bitching and many of the threads relating to the steam sale have several people on there are outright telling potential new players not to buy it.
I'm wondering if it's just the US community that is so 'toxic'? The EU one is quite friendly and forgiving of newbies.
The only reason I play NS2 is BECAUSE it has no unlocks, newbie tactics, experience points.Everyone has an equal footing when they start.
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.
Personally i won't mind a few unlocks in NS2, so long as they are purely cosmetic. Skins for weapons, players, etc.
It's kind of pointless to have cosmetic skins as rewards when the game allows them to be modded in for free. Also player skins can create an advantage, even particularly tasteful ones can do so unintentionally (like kouji's nostalgia aliens).
Statistics, rankings, and achievements can all be implemented without breaking balance though. They would go a long way towards helping retain newer players.
1. Aliens is inaccessible because its all about melee. Lets face it, new players would cope better if they could spit something out of the skulk like a gorge spit instead of having to run up and bite people.
Unknownworlds has made some big efforts with the Gorge (5 res, spit hitrego fixed) and Lerk (right click for spikes) but in the end you need to know a bit about the game to think to yourself "I'm going to go Gorge or Lerk" and by that point you're talking about people who are into the game already, not total news.
2. Aliens doesn't have a decent 10 res brawler to spend res on. A lot of new players would like a super skulk that lets them get into it and beat a marine one on one but is cheap enough that they can generate most of the res to buy another one before they die again.
3. A TDM combat mode wasn't part of the game. In short, if you get tired of NS2 after a few maps you have no quick pick me up game mode to freshen up on before you play more. The fact that the combat mod seems to have had problems staying working with new builds and also the fact combat has no persistent unlock system like Chivalry/CoD/etc means that a lot of news do not have the lifelines they normally expect.
My conclusion is simply this:
If NS2 wants big player numbers then it needs game modes that suite a lot of the current player base. The issue is these modes are closer to mass carnage/story modes than serious FPS contests.
Think about how Chivalry does the objective missions with different stages to a story of how the Order kills Agatha's king and then is crushed in turn through a series of iconic battles (sinking their ships, breaking down the walls, etc).
Also consider the TDM/capture/domination modes of CoD/Battlefield and Chivalry. These are mass carnage game play modes, not serious contests.
In short, some kind of rolling story-driven objectives game mode and some kind of TDM based on the current maps would go a long way to improving the accessibility of the game. Both of these are actually pretty easy to do.
The NS2 team has already shown the vision to create actual locations for their maps and story-driven maps do not need the same fine balancing as the current classic NS2 gamemode does. All the action centers around one or two objectives and with welding doors open or shut, infesting/hacking security systems, breaching open defences, protect the dropship! etc it would be easy enough to create some rolling maps with one side attacking and pushing through various objectives in order to win.
Likewise, the current maps are perfect for TDM. They are big and well divided. It would be easy to have a CoD style TDM mode that makes use of the current maps. Tech points could act as domination/capture points that you stand around to 'build'/hit +use on. Extractors could still be used for the economy with players capturing those two, one set of time to rip down the old harvester and another to build up your own one. Buying stuff from points you've captured could be easy to implement (have an armoury spawn with the chair) or a personal buy menu could just be implemented. A 'Classic'-lite mode would be pretty easy to do.
@beyond.wudge I was thinking for a while about making some kind of 'persistent world' mod for NS2, giving more players/boosts to a team the nearer the fight gets to their 'home' map. Some friends and I put together a big world for neverwinter nights which was database driven and contained some areas with a similar idea: you could choose which side of a battle to join and go and help out that team (orcs vs villagers for example), but the fight got increasingly harder as you got nearer the other team's base. The idea was that it would be a war without end. Easier to fit into NWN lore, I'll admit, but the mechanics could actually work in NS2 as well, I think.
Alas, I have no time for such a thing any more!
EDIT: to clarify, the fight would take place over a series of maps: win a round to progress into the next map in sequence towards the enemy base.
The steam forums are always full of bitching, no matter what game. Wouldn't worry about that.
Actually the steam forums are pretty good, steam discussions on the other hand require no sign-up process like the forum and honestly has children, some of the dumbest adults I've ever seen, and the usual countries which hop all over f2p games (not going specific here because people may find that 'offensive')
But to put it simple, use forums.steampowered.com and not steam discussions if you want an educated response (unless you're lucky enough to have the developers using the discussion page)
the game is made for one purpose only: to be sold!
the whole game is made to bring money,
not to hold a strong playerbase.
so they are working on looks and plattforms,
to reach out for more consumers,
so they can sell sell sell their engine and game to more of them.
Couldn't disagree more. Every single point you've made is flat out wrong, with the arguable exception of performance. However, the performance has improved and is really not that bad any more, and more is being done (at UWE's expense) to still further improve performance.
Not really anything more to add... you're just... so... wrong.
Comments
I'm wondering if it's just the US community that is so 'toxic'? The EU one is quite friendly and forgiving of newbies.
Regarding
Personally i won't mind a few unlocks in NS2, so long as they are purely cosmetic. Skins for weapons, players, etc.
The steam forums are always full of bitching, no matter what game. Wouldn't worry about that.
It's kind of pointless to have cosmetic skins as rewards when the game allows them to be modded in for free. Also player skins can create an advantage, even particularly tasteful ones can do so unintentionally (like kouji's nostalgia aliens).
Statistics, rankings, and achievements can all be implemented without breaking balance though. They would go a long way towards helping retain newer players.
1. Aliens is inaccessible because its all about melee. Lets face it, new players would cope better if they could spit something out of the skulk like a gorge spit instead of having to run up and bite people.
Unknownworlds has made some big efforts with the Gorge (5 res, spit hitrego fixed) and Lerk (right click for spikes) but in the end you need to know a bit about the game to think to yourself "I'm going to go Gorge or Lerk" and by that point you're talking about people who are into the game already, not total news.
2. Aliens doesn't have a decent 10 res brawler to spend res on. A lot of new players would like a super skulk that lets them get into it and beat a marine one on one but is cheap enough that they can generate most of the res to buy another one before they die again.
3. A TDM combat mode wasn't part of the game. In short, if you get tired of NS2 after a few maps you have no quick pick me up game mode to freshen up on before you play more. The fact that the combat mod seems to have had problems staying working with new builds and also the fact combat has no persistent unlock system like Chivalry/CoD/etc means that a lot of news do not have the lifelines they normally expect.
My conclusion is simply this:
If NS2 wants big player numbers then it needs game modes that suite a lot of the current player base. The issue is these modes are closer to mass carnage/story modes than serious FPS contests.
Think about how Chivalry does the objective missions with different stages to a story of how the Order kills Agatha's king and then is crushed in turn through a series of iconic battles (sinking their ships, breaking down the walls, etc).
Also consider the TDM/capture/domination modes of CoD/Battlefield and Chivalry. These are mass carnage game play modes, not serious contests.
In short, some kind of rolling story-driven objectives game mode and some kind of TDM based on the current maps would go a long way to improving the accessibility of the game. Both of these are actually pretty easy to do.
The NS2 team has already shown the vision to create actual locations for their maps and story-driven maps do not need the same fine balancing as the current classic NS2 gamemode does. All the action centers around one or two objectives and with welding doors open or shut, infesting/hacking security systems, breaching open defences, protect the dropship! etc it would be easy enough to create some rolling maps with one side attacking and pushing through various objectives in order to win.
Likewise, the current maps are perfect for TDM. They are big and well divided. It would be easy to have a CoD style TDM mode that makes use of the current maps. Tech points could act as domination/capture points that you stand around to 'build'/hit +use on. Extractors could still be used for the economy with players capturing those two, one set of time to rip down the old harvester and another to build up your own one. Buying stuff from points you've captured could be easy to implement (have an armoury spawn with the chair) or a personal buy menu could just be implemented. A 'Classic'-lite mode would be pretty easy to do.
Don't create such an awesome post I'm still learning lua and now it's itching that I can't do all of this at once
Alas, I have no time for such a thing any more!
EDIT: to clarify, the fight would take place over a series of maps: win a round to progress into the next map in sequence towards the enemy base.
performance SUX!
the game is made for one purpose only: to be sold!
the whole game is made to bring money,
not to hold a strong playerbase.
so they are working on looks and plattforms,
to reach out for more consumers,
so they can sell sell sell their engine and game to more of them.
Actually the steam forums are pretty good, steam discussions on the other hand require no sign-up process like the forum and honestly has children, some of the dumbest adults I've ever seen, and the usual countries which hop all over f2p games (not going specific here because people may find that 'offensive')
But to put it simple, use forums.steampowered.com and not steam discussions if you want an educated response (unless you're lucky enough to have the developers using the discussion page)
Couldn't disagree more. Every single point you've made is flat out wrong, with the arguable exception of performance. However, the performance has improved and is really not that bad any more, and more is being done (at UWE's expense) to still further improve performance.
Not really anything more to add... you're just... so... wrong.