The only way matchmaking would work is to have ranked/unranked ques. You'd have casuals playing unranked and ranked for serious tryhard mode people who expect to face stiffer competition.
How so? Matchmaking literally means it will match you with other players of equal or close-to skill. If you continue to perform as a casual player through months of playing, it is very likely you will be matched with people of the same effort. Those "tryhards" will be matched against other high-skilled opponents, not against those of lesser ability due to the system that would be in place.
Not to beat a dead-horse, but League/SC2 implements a league system within their MM system. (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Plat, etc. League.) Specifically designed for those who just want to get on and "shoot some aliens." without some guy "ordering you around.", or play some serious strategy with smart players.
However, we should ask the question: Would implementing a system like that end up biting players in the ass? Would we need some sort of abuse control? (ie: punishing players for leaving before a match is over, etc.)
Why does a team based game need to have a high individual skill cap? It makes no sense at all. NS2 is based off of outdated twitch shooter mechanics. Those days are long gone, and no one is interested in a game like that. That's why NS1/NS2 never took off; the game is already complex as it is to a new player, especially when it comes to properly commanding. Then on top of having to learn what does what, how to counter certain things, etc. then you have to deal with the fact that the absurdly high individual skill cap in the game. Sure, maybe diehard hardcore video gamers like it, but a large portion of the gaming community does not.
If you want the game to succeed, you have to give ground somewhere. Every single successful competitive game today allows lesser skilled players to win against higher skilled players. In SC2, you can be mechanically strong as you want, but if someone simply outsmarts you with a better build, they can have inferior mechanics and still beat you. In League of Legends,
Matchmaking doesn't solve the problem. It's too easy for a competitive player/high level pub player to go into a community server and wreck shop. You would have to make matchmaking actually the primary way of playing games, which is not something that is easy to do in a game like this where community servers are always far more prevalent. Sorry to say it, but NS is already complicated as it is for a new player, adding an extra layer of high skill cap on top of everything only discourages them further as they become more and more frustrated.
It makes no sense to say a team based game can't have a high skill ceiling. Those two are not mutually exclusive. It's like saying every football player should have to wear a fatsuit in order to drag everyone down to thesame level, because football is a team game and people who are excelling through their individual skillset are detrimental to the game. If you'd let players like Messi and Ronaldo do their thing unrestricted, they'd just ruin it for everyone else, right? And who'd want to watch that?
No, there are plenty of popular games out there with high skill ceilings. You just need to take some measures to deal with the inevitable skill disparity. One crucial thing is accessibility, giving new players the tools to quickly learn and improve. Another is making sure that new/casual players aren't repeatedly pit against veterans/pros in unbalanced matchups. The most common way is to deal with this is to divide the playerbase based on their skill levels.
Look at SCII and it's ranking system for instance. People can have fun, win some, lose some, regardless of their actual skill level, because they're always pit against players of a similar level. And if they improve significantly, start beating up the players in their league, they are moved up the ladder. It's the perfect example.
So if one could find a way to make sure the overall skill level of both alien and marine teams are somewhat equal to each other, everyone in that game is gonna have a better time. Matchmaking service would help, as would some form of randomisation option based on certain "skill parameters". I think the latter is a more realistic option though.
BUG ISSUES has killed this game, I literally am forced to only play as Sulk or as a Stock marine, it is absurdly retarded.
Sure the majority of players may not get this bug, but the players that do spread the word to their friends about it and it kills the potential the game could of had... that's just my 2 cents..
BUG ISSUES has killed this game, I literally am forced to only play as Sulk or as a Stock marine, it is absurdly retarded.
Sure the majority of players may not get this bug, but the players that do spread the word to their friends about it and it kills the potential the game could of had... that's just my 2 cents..
I'll spend some time trying to work on repro for this one this week, since that's definitely a bit of a weird one and no one seems to know about it.
Team stacking. 90% of the time it's unintentional, and I know that's the case since most games every player hops into random or votes with the rest of the server to randomize teams.
Of course, I blame the stacking to the high skill ceiling.
The root of the problem is move speed is ludicrously high. As a result, the game is balanced around the majority of players. Most players don't have deadeye like the few highly skilled players. To compensate, weapons tend to do tons of damage so those luck shots really count.
Planetside 2 suffers from the same issue with it's fighter aircraft vs. ground targets. I can easily go 25:1 and I've even been as high as 110:1. The way they've so far attempted to solve this disparity is by significantly increasing effectiveness of ground-to-air counters like flak damage. A parallel to NS2 is the high damage of shotguns to fades. The fade is similar to a fighter aircraft in Planetside 2 -- it can swoop in and kill a marine "on the ground" before he can react.
So, I think a decent solution would be to both tone down move speed and damage to more tame levels to lower the skill ceiling. I can attest that a high skill ceiling doesn't make a game fun for everyone, and even scoring my 110:1 in Planetside 2, I felt bad for helpless guys on the ground, much like I sometimes feel bad for ridiculously epic Lerk and Fade runs.
Another idea is to see how SOE balances Planetside 2's air game, and if it works to draw parallels to NS2 and utilize what they've learned and solved to improve the enjoyability of NS2.
Team stacking. 90% of the time it's unintentional, and I know that's the case since most games every player hops into random or votes with the rest of the server to randomize teams.
Which game are you playing? 95% of games I've played over the last two weeks have been stæxx.
What is "worse" (or better, depending on your point of view lol) is that in this game, the effect of players working together is not additive but exponential. So if you have 3 players who stækkæd, they'll win 8 times more easily, not 3. That's just my experience.
Metal ManJoin Date: 2011-11-13Member: 132717Members
edited July 2013
You fuckers missed my goddamn post. I don't give a flying fuck if my name is familiar or you know who the fuck I am. You will reread and you will agree with it
I mean damn I just summed up everything about this stupid thread and noone cares to read it because my I don't have 500 posts. I solved EvERYTHING FOR ALL OF YOU. This is your last chance
I've said it before and I'll say it again, UWE putting more attention/catering to the comp scene would do nothing for the playerbase of this game and only serves to shrink it.
The latest patch is just another proof of this. Raising the learning curve, for example with the more complicated movement system does nothing for obtaining/retaining new players. If anything, it serves to persuade them away.
The damage is done though, at this point UWE is so deep into catering to the comp scene that it would be very difficult to turn things around to cater more towards obtaining and retaining new players.
The high skill ceiling is a really interesting point. I know the situations where one good player is wrecking havoc in the enemy team. But it isn't as easy as lowering the skill ceiling.
It is true, that people stop playing when they see that they can't overcome a good player in any way. A good fade can kill even 3 new marines that are trying to play together. In CS this is possible too. But it is much more unlikely. Or in other words harder to achieve.
If the skill ceiling is too high, you create a very big difference in possible skill. This leads to frustration for players that have not the time or ability to reach a high skill level. This players will stop playing NS2 when this frustration happens to often.
But there is also another side of this story. If you lower the skill ceiling to much, the hardcore player that try to get really good in this game will at some point see no chance to get any better. When they reached the skill ceiling they can't do much anymore to get better. They will get bored and stop playing.
The trick is to create an exponential curve. The better you get, the smaller the benefit is. It should not be restrictive. It should not stop you from getting better. It should just get more difficult as you progress. The possible skill difference of a normal and a hardcore player should be small. 1 exceptional Skulk should not be able to kill 3 normal skilled marines and vice versa. (Except maybe by luck.) He sure can increase his odds with tactic and skill. But it should be reasonable difficult.
This said, we should not forget that this game is a combination of an RTS / FPS.
It is inherent to an RTS that there are better units progressing the tech tree. This can get frustrating for new players that can't understand why a 40pres fade should be better than a 0pres marine and is not OP.
But we should discuss if this RTS approach is the right one or if it is determined to be frustrating in the FPS part of the game. An alternative would be to weaken all weapons and lifeforms to make them alternatives or counters to other weapons / lifeforms instead of an upgrade or an exceptional better thing than X. The prices would need to get down too in this case. And the winner of a game would be determined by who researches and equips his team with the right counters to the things that the enemy team does.
Lastly I want to mention that a match making is an important point too and could help to decrease the frustration potential of many players. Global persistent stat tracking is needed for this and I hope UWE can implement something like this soon.
Match making doesn't work unless you have a playerbase that can support it, which NS2 does not.
I do agree with you about the skill ceiling being too high. Take TF2 as an example. They lowered the skill ceiling compared to TFC, yet it still has a decent comp scene
The solution to uneven games, which I've said many times in the past, is balanced teams, not limiting the skill cap. Decreasing skill cap decreases the game depth and makes it die faster. NS1 lasted so long because the game had huge amount of depth. I ran ENSL for many years because NS1 was a great game and deserved the competitive scene it had.
To get balanced teams, work on matchmaking, ranked servers or something to that extent. You could simply use the number of games as a rough skill number or K/D ratio, or ELO, or even TrueSkill if you want to go hardcore, and then let server admins use simple classes like "Beginner", where only those around a certain skill level can play (it could allow flexibility when there are less players).
To me this is an "engineering" problem, not a problem in the gameplay itself.
Match making doesn't work unless you have a playerbase that can support it, which NS2 does not.
I do agree with you about the skill ceiling being too high. Take TF2 as an example. They lowered the skill ceiling compared to TFC, yet it still has a decent comp scene
This brings up a good point. TF2 is much more Rock, Scissors, Paper, Lizard, Spock than NS2 is. I'm not sure anybody wants NS2 to lean closer to the TF2 model and I am not sure it would work as NS2 isn't classed based very much. But I do agree that something needs to be done to reduce the MASSIVE impact that a highly skilled player can have on a team game. Perhaps aliens need some sort of passive skill that augments their fighting ability when in groups? Maybe a new life form that does this? Maybe for the Marine side some sort of overwatch ability (was something like this proposed back in the day?); perhaps connected to the commander's focus being present?
What If I told you playing a game 12v12 when its balanced for 6v6 is a stupid idea. This game will never survive unless the idea of balancing for the competitive play is followed in public games. Nobody plays League of Legends 10v10 with people randomly leaving, the game is balanced for 5v5, people play 5v5 in public. We don't even need a ranking system, just a way to play public matchmade games.
If youre suggesting that the servers be enforced to play at the designed balance of 6v6 I won't be playing at all. Why? Because I'm a causual gamer. I've play >200 hours and I'm still not better at skulking. So if I play 6v6 I'm 20% of my team's firepower. If I suck then my team will likely suffer. In a 10v10 I'm only 11% of my team's firepower. If I suck my team isn't penalized for my lack of skill. That's why I play 10v10s. If I played 6v6 nearly 100% of my games would be terrible thanks to me.
What If I told you playing a game 12v12 when its balanced for 6v6 is a stupid idea. This game will never survive unless the idea of balancing for the competitive play is followed in public games. Nobody plays League of Legends 10v10 with people randomly leaving, the game is balanced for 5v5, people play 5v5 in public. We don't even need a ranking system, just a way to play public matchmade games.
If youre suggesting that the servers be enforced to play at the designed balance of 6v6 I won't be playing at all. Why? Because I'm a causual gamer. I've play >200 hours and I'm still not better at skulking. So if I play 6v6 I'm 20% of my team's firepower. If I suck then my team will likely suffer. In a 10v10 I'm only 11% of my team's firepower. If I suck my team isn't penalized for my lack of skill. That's why I play 10v10s. If I played 6v6 nearly 100% of my games would be terrible thanks to me.
This does explain a few things about large servers
But we should discuss if this RTS approach is the right one or if it is determined to be frustrating in the FPS part of the game. An alternative would be to weaken all weapons and lifeforms to make them alternatives or counters to other weapons / lifeforms instead of an upgrade or an exceptional better thing than X. The prices would need to get down too in this case. And the winner of a game would be determined by who researches and equips his team with the right counters to the things that the enemy team does.
I like this idea, though it's probably far too late to change NS2 to follow this formula. I do hope they table the idea for their next RTS/FPS game though; because I think it's a good compromise to get RTS and FPS to work together while being accessible to newbs.
Something I'd do would be:
Weapons/ lifeforms/ (and add in defensive affinity) upgrades would instead be rock/ paper/ scissors affinity versions of each other. Everything is drastically lowered in price and less about 1-hit kill, more about counters to defensive affinity. Some things could be brute force type weapons with no significant weaknesses, but at increased cost (like shotguns?).
Players buy their own equipment/ lifeforms/ upgrades.
Then rework the commander to be more about active support through skills like medpack/ nanosheild/ healing wave/ haste/ etc, and scouting. I'd even remove his ability to buy individual players their weapons and such, but instead give him an ability to change his players R/P/S defensive affinity at cost. Simplify the structure build trees to just a few main structures like RT, Obs, Turret (give turrets limited ammo to balance them?), and armory, that way commanders would have less impact on the game either towards or away from winning. That way he basically becomes a highly useful but not necessary support role for the team.
If the mod scene was alive in this game and I had a lot of hours to burn it would make a fun mod I think. Alas
Hey, sorry, orchaint.Sorry I made you leave NS2.XD
Would like to reinforce underline the idea of matchmaking again.Best time I had was on a russian server with mostly newbies.No ****s, who had played since the universe began.Everyone learned together.
1 guy can kill your entire team(I´ve gone on full on rage modes, by insulting the guy, it is basically my thing now; I usually get kicked, but it sure is satisfying to tell that selfish fade or shotgunner to watch his whole family get ra**ed and killed)
Having been on the receiving end of this specific abuse from you while on my own clan server, which I personally paid money for, I can tell you now that the pathetic, childish outburst turned your entire team against you and won you no friends. It was mildly entertaining, and of course flattering to have precipitated such an unwarranted attack through nothing more than a small amount of skill and some teamwork, though.
I am genuinely confused about what you're trying to achieve, though...
Not trying to achieve anything.You pissed me off by getting way too many kills, killing me too many times by some bs method and not dying enough in the process.(and in combination with your good ping and a good computer too).Not to mention you were in a stacked team.OH, my gosh it´s SOOOO hard to fight against the other team....
I REALLY want to know if you´ve EVER experienced frustration while playing this game.Because if you play like you have, I don´t see how you can criticise me for me being pissed off.Please try joining the loosing the team(in a different server) for a while and then loose 10 games in row and the try to not to get pissed off.I really want to see how long you can take it.
And if you manage to still win games after that, then you are still the reason this game needs matchmaking.
What if I told you that the lack of playerbase is because of a lack of matchmaking? NS2 obviously pulls in big numbers when it has sales on steam and the like, enough numbers to validate a MM system.
I find it really, really, close minded that people would say "Not enough players for MM" when we're discussing ways of retaining players.
What if I told you that the lack of playerbase is because of a lack of matchmaking? NS2 obviously pulls in big numbers when it has sales on steam and the like, enough numbers to validate a MM system.
I find it really, really, close minded that people would say "Not enough players for MM" when we're discussing ways of retaining players.
MM would not save enough of those new players. Lack of MM is not the only reason people stop playing after a sale.
What if I told you that the lack of playerbase is because of a lack of matchmaking? NS2 obviously pulls in big numbers when it has sales on steam and the like, enough numbers to validate a MM system.
I find it really, really, close minded that people would say "Not enough players for MM" when we're discussing ways of retaining players.
Because it is partly true. The player count spikes up when we have sales but usually goes below or at 1k around 2 weeks later from what I can gather from the previous sales. Maybe this sale will retain more players who knows. Plus that is only concurrent numbers for the day which means for an hour or so it reaches that level and then dwindles. Then you have to realize that these players are spread between the U.S, Europe and a few in Aus. Some people do not really feel like waiting for MM and will probably jump into a game already in progress. Then you have the issue of how many players MM will allow which if not suited to what they like, they will simply not use and continue to use the server browser. Plus if players are too good would they even be allowed to play with players of lower ranks? If not they will probably join a rookie or pub server so business as usual.
Separate topic but I am not too familiar with MM systems since I always use the server browser when available but how would it work in terms of server usage? Would you get good pings or would it place you in random parts of the world? Would UWE have to host those servers?
a high skill ceiling doesn't help competitive play as much as people may lead you to believe
competition is inherently about rivalry, and if the skill difference between teams is large then there is no rivalry
the player base is so small that the number of teams per tier of skill is miniscule
it's impossible to even plan a tournament where 90% of the matchups aren't sweeps
this encourages cheese tactics because there's no way the worse team will outplay the better one
it doesn't matter how different the game becomes mechanically. worse teams are going to get completely wrecked every single time
a more legitimate concern was that the game rewarded high-end PCs and visual hacks (changing gamma/colors) more than actual skill, and that still isn't fixed
what needed to change was the strategic level, because people can improve their strategy... they're not going to improve their mechanics.
NS1 & NS2 have always been, and probably always will be community games - i.e you find one or two servers and get to know others on it, and in time you become a regular. For me it's the YO-Clan server in the UK, any time I jump on there it's probably filled with 50%+ player names that I'll have played with countless times before, some worse, some better. It's fun getting to know the other regulars, tactics, play styles or even just their sense of humour when talking crap over the mic.
That to me, is a far better experience than being thrown onto a random server with random players you don't know.
NS1 & NS2 have always been, and probably always will be community games - i.e you find one or two servers and get to know others on it, and in time you become a regular. For me it's the YO-Clan server in the UK, any time I jump on there it's probably filled with 50%+ player names that I'll have played with countless times before, some worse, some better. It's fun getting to know the other regulars, tactics, play styles or even just their sense of humour when talking crap over the mic.
That to me, is a far better experience than being thrown onto a random server with random players you don't know.
counter-strike was a community game, then it turned to matchmaking; heck csgo is so awful I think the only reason I'd go on to play is because matchmaking is so simple to use and only 200~ people are searching at a time, not to mention valve a billionaire company is hosting low quality servers
People only play csgo cause the money and competition is there, the game itself is absolute garbage ask anyone in the scene and they'll describe in detail about everything they hate; or just flat out tell you it's trash we only play cause the money involved
You don't think if valve went back to 1.6 and implemented the same matching service on high quality servers every non-professional competitive player and their mothers would run back to it; add in money and everyone will go back to it.. people only stopped cause leagues stopped supporting it
anyway I'm rambling, but if csgo can do it with 230~ players searching at a time then ns2 can do it
difference was back in the days of ns1, the general skill of players/newcomers was much higher due to the only type of shooters around that era being more arena or hardcore based, which is the complete opposite of now.. many of those players grew old and stopped playing or still stay on their old games, while the newcomers starting on games like gears of crap and whatever come into something like this and get lost or don't properly understand what to do because it's not the typical spoonfed, hey go there and shoot this guy
Comments
How so? Matchmaking literally means it will match you with other players of equal or close-to skill. If you continue to perform as a casual player through months of playing, it is very likely you will be matched with people of the same effort. Those "tryhards" will be matched against other high-skilled opponents, not against those of lesser ability due to the system that would be in place.
Not to beat a dead-horse, but League/SC2 implements a league system within their MM system. (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Plat, etc. League.) Specifically designed for those who just want to get on and "shoot some aliens." without some guy "ordering you around.", or play some serious strategy with smart players.
However, we should ask the question: Would implementing a system like that end up biting players in the ass? Would we need some sort of abuse control? (ie: punishing players for leaving before a match is over, etc.)
It makes no sense to say a team based game can't have a high skill ceiling. Those two are not mutually exclusive. It's like saying every football player should have to wear a fatsuit in order to drag everyone down to thesame level, because football is a team game and people who are excelling through their individual skillset are detrimental to the game. If you'd let players like Messi and Ronaldo do their thing unrestricted, they'd just ruin it for everyone else, right? And who'd want to watch that?
No, there are plenty of popular games out there with high skill ceilings. You just need to take some measures to deal with the inevitable skill disparity. One crucial thing is accessibility, giving new players the tools to quickly learn and improve. Another is making sure that new/casual players aren't repeatedly pit against veterans/pros in unbalanced matchups. The most common way is to deal with this is to divide the playerbase based on their skill levels.
Look at SCII and it's ranking system for instance. People can have fun, win some, lose some, regardless of their actual skill level, because they're always pit against players of a similar level. And if they improve significantly, start beating up the players in their league, they are moved up the ladder. It's the perfect example.
So if one could find a way to make sure the overall skill level of both alien and marine teams are somewhat equal to each other, everyone in that game is gonna have a better time. Matchmaking service would help, as would some form of randomisation option based on certain "skill parameters". I think the latter is a more realistic option though.
BUG ISSUES has killed this game, I literally am forced to only play as Sulk or as a Stock marine, it is absurdly retarded.
Sure the majority of players may not get this bug, but the players that do spread the word to their friends about it and it kills the potential the game could of had... that's just my 2 cents..
Of course, I blame the stacking to the high skill ceiling.
The root of the problem is move speed is ludicrously high. As a result, the game is balanced around the majority of players. Most players don't have deadeye like the few highly skilled players. To compensate, weapons tend to do tons of damage so those luck shots really count.
Planetside 2 suffers from the same issue with it's fighter aircraft vs. ground targets. I can easily go 25:1 and I've even been as high as 110:1. The way they've so far attempted to solve this disparity is by significantly increasing effectiveness of ground-to-air counters like flak damage. A parallel to NS2 is the high damage of shotguns to fades. The fade is similar to a fighter aircraft in Planetside 2 -- it can swoop in and kill a marine "on the ground" before he can react.
So, I think a decent solution would be to both tone down move speed and damage to more tame levels to lower the skill ceiling. I can attest that a high skill ceiling doesn't make a game fun for everyone, and even scoring my 110:1 in Planetside 2, I felt bad for helpless guys on the ground, much like I sometimes feel bad for ridiculously epic Lerk and Fade runs.
Another idea is to see how SOE balances Planetside 2's air game, and if it works to draw parallels to NS2 and utilize what they've learned and solved to improve the enjoyability of NS2.
Which game are you playing? 95% of games I've played over the last two weeks have been stæxx.
What is "worse" (or better, depending on your point of view lol) is that in this game, the effect of players working together is not additive but exponential. So if you have 3 players who stækkæd, they'll win 8 times more easily, not 3. That's just my experience.
I mean damn I just summed up everything about this stupid thread and noone cares to read it because my I don't have 500 posts. I solved EvERYTHING FOR ALL OF YOU. This is your last chance
*zooms in on last chance*
*zooms closer*
O_O
ERMAGHERD
The latest patch is just another proof of this. Raising the learning curve, for example with the more complicated movement system does nothing for obtaining/retaining new players. If anything, it serves to persuade them away.
The damage is done though, at this point UWE is so deep into catering to the comp scene that it would be very difficult to turn things around to cater more towards obtaining and retaining new players.
It is true, that people stop playing when they see that they can't overcome a good player in any way. A good fade can kill even 3 new marines that are trying to play together. In CS this is possible too. But it is much more unlikely. Or in other words harder to achieve.
If the skill ceiling is too high, you create a very big difference in possible skill. This leads to frustration for players that have not the time or ability to reach a high skill level. This players will stop playing NS2 when this frustration happens to often.
But there is also another side of this story. If you lower the skill ceiling to much, the hardcore player that try to get really good in this game will at some point see no chance to get any better. When they reached the skill ceiling they can't do much anymore to get better. They will get bored and stop playing.
The trick is to create an exponential curve. The better you get, the smaller the benefit is. It should not be restrictive. It should not stop you from getting better. It should just get more difficult as you progress. The possible skill difference of a normal and a hardcore player should be small. 1 exceptional Skulk should not be able to kill 3 normal skilled marines and vice versa. (Except maybe by luck.) He sure can increase his odds with tactic and skill. But it should be reasonable difficult.
This said, we should not forget that this game is a combination of an RTS / FPS.
It is inherent to an RTS that there are better units progressing the tech tree. This can get frustrating for new players that can't understand why a 40pres fade should be better than a 0pres marine and is not OP.
But we should discuss if this RTS approach is the right one or if it is determined to be frustrating in the FPS part of the game. An alternative would be to weaken all weapons and lifeforms to make them alternatives or counters to other weapons / lifeforms instead of an upgrade or an exceptional better thing than X. The prices would need to get down too in this case. And the winner of a game would be determined by who researches and equips his team with the right counters to the things that the enemy team does.
Lastly I want to mention that a match making is an important point too and could help to decrease the frustration potential of many players. Global persistent stat tracking is needed for this and I hope UWE can implement something like this soon.
I do agree with you about the skill ceiling being too high. Take TF2 as an example. They lowered the skill ceiling compared to TFC, yet it still has a decent comp scene
To get balanced teams, work on matchmaking, ranked servers or something to that extent. You could simply use the number of games as a rough skill number or K/D ratio, or ELO, or even TrueSkill if you want to go hardcore, and then let server admins use simple classes like "Beginner", where only those around a certain skill level can play (it could allow flexibility when there are less players).
To me this is an "engineering" problem, not a problem in the gameplay itself.
This brings up a good point. TF2 is much more Rock, Scissors, Paper, Lizard, Spock than NS2 is. I'm not sure anybody wants NS2 to lean closer to the TF2 model and I am not sure it would work as NS2 isn't classed based very much. But I do agree that something needs to be done to reduce the MASSIVE impact that a highly skilled player can have on a team game. Perhaps aliens need some sort of passive skill that augments their fighting ability when in groups? Maybe a new life form that does this? Maybe for the Marine side some sort of overwatch ability (was something like this proposed back in the day?); perhaps connected to the commander's focus being present?
Population will go up, don't worry. I'm new myself and am having a blast. Not really seeing this "steep learning curve" people talk about.
If youre suggesting that the servers be enforced to play at the designed balance of 6v6 I won't be playing at all. Why? Because I'm a causual gamer. I've play >200 hours and I'm still not better at skulking. So if I play 6v6 I'm 20% of my team's firepower. If I suck then my team will likely suffer. In a 10v10 I'm only 11% of my team's firepower. If I suck my team isn't penalized for my lack of skill. That's why I play 10v10s. If I played 6v6 nearly 100% of my games would be terrible thanks to me.
This does explain a few things about large servers
You need a large playerbase for matchmaking to reduce what he finds frustrating, that just isn't there.
I like this idea, though it's probably far too late to change NS2 to follow this formula. I do hope they table the idea for their next RTS/FPS game though; because I think it's a good compromise to get RTS and FPS to work together while being accessible to newbs.
Something I'd do would be:
Weapons/ lifeforms/ (and add in defensive affinity) upgrades would instead be rock/ paper/ scissors affinity versions of each other. Everything is drastically lowered in price and less about 1-hit kill, more about counters to defensive affinity. Some things could be brute force type weapons with no significant weaknesses, but at increased cost (like shotguns?).
Players buy their own equipment/ lifeforms/ upgrades.
Then rework the commander to be more about active support through skills like medpack/ nanosheild/ healing wave/ haste/ etc, and scouting. I'd even remove his ability to buy individual players their weapons and such, but instead give him an ability to change his players R/P/S defensive affinity at cost. Simplify the structure build trees to just a few main structures like RT, Obs, Turret (give turrets limited ammo to balance them?), and armory, that way commanders would have less impact on the game either towards or away from winning. That way he basically becomes a highly useful but not necessary support role for the team.
If the mod scene was alive in this game and I had a lot of hours to burn it would make a fun mod I think. Alas
Not trying to achieve anything.You pissed me off by getting way too many kills, killing me too many times by some bs method and not dying enough in the process.(and in combination with your good ping and a good computer too).Not to mention you were in a stacked team.OH, my gosh it´s SOOOO hard to fight against the other team....
I REALLY want to know if you´ve EVER experienced frustration while playing this game.Because if you play like you have, I don´t see how you can criticise me for me being pissed off.Please try joining the loosing the team(in a different server) for a while and then loose 10 games in row and the try to not to get pissed off.I really want to see how long you can take it.
And if you manage to still win games after that, then you are still the reason this game needs matchmaking.
I find it really, really, close minded that people would say "Not enough players for MM" when we're discussing ways of retaining players.
MM would not save enough of those new players. Lack of MM is not the only reason people stop playing after a sale.
Do you have any reasoning to back up that statement? Or are you just bandwagoning?
Pick any game that is in the steam sale, then look at player numbers next week.
http://steamgraph.net/index.php
Because it is partly true. The player count spikes up when we have sales but usually goes below or at 1k around 2 weeks later from what I can gather from the previous sales. Maybe this sale will retain more players who knows. Plus that is only concurrent numbers for the day which means for an hour or so it reaches that level and then dwindles. Then you have to realize that these players are spread between the U.S, Europe and a few in Aus. Some people do not really feel like waiting for MM and will probably jump into a game already in progress. Then you have the issue of how many players MM will allow which if not suited to what they like, they will simply not use and continue to use the server browser. Plus if players are too good would they even be allowed to play with players of lower ranks? If not they will probably join a rookie or pub server so business as usual.
Separate topic but I am not too familiar with MM systems since I always use the server browser when available but how would it work in terms of server usage? Would you get good pings or would it place you in random parts of the world? Would UWE have to host those servers?
competition is inherently about rivalry, and if the skill difference between teams is large then there is no rivalry
the player base is so small that the number of teams per tier of skill is miniscule
it's impossible to even plan a tournament where 90% of the matchups aren't sweeps
this encourages cheese tactics because there's no way the worse team will outplay the better one
it doesn't matter how different the game becomes mechanically. worse teams are going to get completely wrecked every single time
a more legitimate concern was that the game rewarded high-end PCs and visual hacks (changing gamma/colors) more than actual skill, and that still isn't fixed
what needed to change was the strategic level, because people can improve their strategy... they're not going to improve their mechanics.
NS1 & NS2 have always been, and probably always will be community games - i.e you find one or two servers and get to know others on it, and in time you become a regular. For me it's the YO-Clan server in the UK, any time I jump on there it's probably filled with 50%+ player names that I'll have played with countless times before, some worse, some better. It's fun getting to know the other regulars, tactics, play styles or even just their sense of humour when talking crap over the mic.
That to me, is a far better experience than being thrown onto a random server with random players you don't know.
counter-strike was a community game, then it turned to matchmaking; heck csgo is so awful I think the only reason I'd go on to play is because matchmaking is so simple to use and only 200~ people are searching at a time, not to mention valve a billionaire company is hosting low quality servers
People only play csgo cause the money and competition is there, the game itself is absolute garbage ask anyone in the scene and they'll describe in detail about everything they hate; or just flat out tell you it's trash we only play cause the money involved
You don't think if valve went back to 1.6 and implemented the same matching service on high quality servers every non-professional competitive player and their mothers would run back to it; add in money and everyone will go back to it.. people only stopped cause leagues stopped supporting it
anyway I'm rambling, but if csgo can do it with 230~ players searching at a time then ns2 can do it
difference was back in the days of ns1, the general skill of players/newcomers was much higher due to the only type of shooters around that era being more arena or hardcore based, which is the complete opposite of now.. many of those players grew old and stopped playing or still stay on their old games, while the newcomers starting on games like gears of crap and whatever come into something like this and get lost or don't properly understand what to do because it's not the typical spoonfed, hey go there and shoot this guy