@Sycho, could you be more precise with your points, give some examples...
@RequiemDK, Is it really so counter intuitive for the alien, who can run on walls to get a speedboost if he jumps off a wall? Obviously a tutorial explaining all this stuff would be great, with a narrative hive queen (khammander) voice that tells you the basics of the game and gives you little task to get used to your abilities.
@Hemi, I'm not even sure if the majority hardcore players mind ranks and achievements to be implemented. The HBZ server has a great mod that gives away ranks for people based on ELO and there is an option to assign the players into two teams with as equal as possible ELOs. Works really good imho, had some great games today.
@Sycho, could you be more precise with your points, give some examples...
@RequiemDK, Is it really so counter intuitive for the alien, who can run on walls to get a speedboost if he jumps off a wall? Obviously a tutorial explaining all this stuff would be great, with a narrative hive queen (khammander) voice that tells you the basics of the game and gives you little task to get used to your abilities.
@Hemi, I'm not even sure if the majority hardcore players mind ranks and achievements to be implemented. The HBZ server has a great mod that gives away ranks for people based on ELO and there is an option to assign the players into two teams with as equal as possible ELOs. Works really good imho, had some great games today.
If the speedboost is from jumping off a WALL, then no, there's absolutely no indication that one should have that benefit. Why should you get a speedboost from that? What in the game informs the player of that? If the speedboost is from JUMPING off a wall, well it's inconsistent because skulks don't get a speedboost from jumping off the floor. It's just another example of a hidden benefit - nothing in the game tells you about that speedboost. For that matter, even skulks being able to run on walls and ceilings and gorges not being able to is an inconsistent and potentially confusing experience for the new player because there's nothing in the game that hints at this, although NS1 players wouldn't even think twice about it. Then, we have the really odd issue of the skulk's view not rotating to reflect its orientation. Look, NS2 is many things, but intuitive is not one of them.
@Sycho, could you be more precise with your points, give some examples...
A Prime example of poor game mechanics and strategy: Biomass, researched at the hive, is something that costs team res that (for some reason) adds HP to players, but also allows researching of abilities, that are researched for more team res, at other structures placed on the map (that also cost team res) that linearly unlock abilities of the higher lifeforms. There is no deviation as to what path you chose to take. Biomass 2: Gorge Tunnels. Biomass 3: Umbra... etc etc. It is completely convoluted, and destroys the opportunity to deviate the strategy of how you play the game as an alien team.
Biomass was also something added to the game without explicitly and accurately telling anyone what it is, and how it works. If you hopped in the Hive to command Aliens (even knowing what you're doing in the previous build) you would have no idea what the "Research Biomass" button on the hive actually does.
Think about the mess this way: Leap. This is a great ability for your base alien unit. It really helps close the gap between a skulk and a marine, and I would argue is extremely helpful early game. Before the big biomass build, Leap was always one of the first things people asked for at the start. Now, Leap takes a second hive and a total of 125 (!!!) Tres to roll out. It makes leap the one of the mid to late game abilities that really diminishes its use when it finally researches as Marines are really starting to tech up at that point.
Why does the game have to be played like that? Why can't I push Leap at the start, and say eff Umbra and Gorge Tunnels, because I think Umbra and Gorge Tunnels suck. No, the devs made it that we have to linearly progress the abilities along this biomass train with no variation, and no way to diversify play styles.
This is why this game is dying. It's stagnant, and bloated.
Yeah, I'm getting tired of having to search for 249 servers just because UWE will not revert the majority of the 250 changes.
UWE, you should always remember that even though new players are silver, old players are golden, you have lost almost all your gold and don't have much silver left either.
hit me up on steam (Roobubba), I'll teach you how to use the new fade, as that seems to be a recurring problem you have.
250 isn't going to get reverted. adapt or die. my offer of a helping hand is extended.
I know how to use the new fade. I have played 250 for quite a while and stopped playing NS2 because I was dissatisfied. 250 messed up roles of weapons and aliens. GL and flamer are suppost to be support, fade should be agile/hit-and-run/risk-taker, onos supposed to be tank that leads the "army", and exos were supposed give marines "solid" but slow defensive/offensive elite units.
GL and flamer are now completely in-balanced (in terms of scaling with mid-late game) and are no longer support weapons, Fades are slow and tank-ier and completely lose their role, onos isn't as much as an elite unit that leads the attacking pack anymore, and exos aren't as "solid" nor are they as exclusive (in-terms of price) or elite as before.
Actually it's not dying. We were on 750 peek before the patch / sale and yesterday the peek was 1330. Sure it is decreasing from day to day. But this is every games curve.
like I mentioned in one of my posts, this is not how a game works. Only old games that are stale (in terms of updates) work how you say they do. The major decrease of players (like I said in the same post) has been caused by 250 and steam charts show that (if you go back enough).
Actually it's not dying. We were on 750 peek before the patch / sale and yesterday the peek was 1330. Sure it is decreasing from day to day. But this is every games curve.
like I mentioned in one of my posts, this is not how a game works. Only old games that are stale (in terms of updates) work how you say they do. The major decrease of players (like I said in the same post) has been caused by 250 and steam charts show that (if you go back enough).
So the fact that at the time of the introduction of the 2-month-old B250 the player numbers were dramatically boosted and they haven't still dropped close to the numbers pre-250 is called "the major decrease of players caused by 250"?
Actually it's not dying. We were on 750 peek before the patch / sale and yesterday the peek was 1330. Sure it is decreasing from day to day. But this is every games curve.
like I mentioned in one of my posts, this is not how a game works. Only old games that are stale (in terms of updates) work how you say they do. The major decrease of players (like I said in the same post) has been caused by 250 and steam charts show that (if you go back enough).
So the fact that at the time of the introduction of the 2-month-old B250 the player numbers were dramatically boosted and they haven't still dropped close to the numbers pre-250 is called "the major decrease of players caused by 250"?
Well to be fair no one can really tell if it would have an impact because of the sales. Though the numbers came close to pre 250 after the first Chivalry/NS2 weekend sale.
It was only when another sale was repeated 10 days later (Summer sale) which lasted for 10 days a few of which were NS2 at 75% off at the front page rest were 40% off that the numbers increased again. In a few weeks we will probably have another sale for the tournament and or content patch so as long as the sales keep coming the number should not go down.
So the fact that at the time of the introduction of the 2-month-old B250 the player numbers were dramatically boosted and they haven't still dropped close to the numbers pre-250 is called "the major decrease of players caused by 250"?
That's because of the mass sales. That's the only material reason the game is up.
The last recent sale on the 15th of July pushed the game to 3,506. In two weeks the game is down to 1,167. The game lost 66.71% of the players from the peak sale.
Look at the sale before that on the 1st. Game went to 2,924. Within two weeks it was down to 807. That again is nearly the same player loss rate as the later sale coming in at 66.7079%.
Compare that to pre-250 build. Game loses players weekly, but it's relatively flat and it generally recovers. At most 100 players between weeks which is about 10%.
June 13th was build 249. Player base was 823. June 26th, right before the sale was 718. That's a loss of 12.7%.
April 10th, player base 1,344, build 245.
June 26th, player based 717, build 249
A loss rate of 53.4% over three months.
Build 250 has lost more players in four weeks than players playing the game between April and June.
Well to be fair no one can really tell if it would have an impact because of the sales. Though the numbers came close to pre 250 after the first Chivalry/NS2 weekend sale.
It was only when another sale was repeated 10 days later (Summer sale) which lasted for 10 days a few of which were NS2 at 75% off at the front page rest were 40% off that the numbers increased again. In a few weeks we will probably have another sale for the tournament and or content patch so as long as the sales keep coming the number should not go down.
True we can't, but we can look at player churn between sales to get a grasp of how well the game is sticking. And it's looking pretty darn grim. Most companies would freak out if they saw a 66% drop in usage in two weeks from a sale. That's happened twice to NS2. It's clear that some players are in fact sticking around, but the retention rate is really awful. If we assume based on the survey list that about 16% of players have stopped playing because of Build 250, we have a base starting rate of 718*84% = 603 base players. Since the last patch is up to 1,167 all of these sales have only netted a mere 563.88 new players who stick around.
It gets worse. At a peak of 3,506 that includes the 16% of players who have stopped playing as they tried out and realized they don't like the game for whatever reason. So we take 3,560-115 = 3,391 left players after the veteran quitters. Then 3,391-1167 = 2,224 new players who have quit. That's 65.58% of the peak from the sales. If we take the 3,506 less the existing 718 veterans, we have 2,788 new players. Now, let's divide new players that are still playing to total new players who bought the game, 563.88/2,788 = 79.77% new player quit rate.
And this is being generous. I haven't added in the additional new players from the second major sale. So the new player quit rate is likely to be substantially higher.
Jesus. I hope someone at UWE is crapping bricks over this.
NS1 A group of people making it a game for fun, as a result it did extremely well.
NS2 A group of people making it a game for a paycheck, as a result nothing but problems.
Wow...things changed around here.... What the hell is all this entitled gamer crap. This dev team has one of the best track records regarding listening to the fans. And all of the sudden they are a bunch of money grubbing bastards, that don't listen to the fans? The game is €15 euro's for fcks sake, Aliens Colonial Marines is still €49,95 and has the most shittiest support known to mankind. I suggest you all head over to GearBox's forums. Thats how you screw over a franchise and it's fans. I think NS2 did/is doing a great job in supporting the game, specially for that price.
The last recent sale on the 15th of July pushed the game to 3,506. In two weeks the game is down to 1,167. The game lost 66.71% of the players from the peak sale.
Look at the sale before that on the 1st. Game went to 2,924. Within two weeks it was down to 807. That again is nearly the same player loss rate as the later sale coming in at 66.7079%.
Compare that to pre-250 build. Game loses players weekly, but it's relatively flat and it generally recovers. At most 100 players between weeks which is about 10%.
June 13th was build 249. Player base was 823. June 26th, right before the sale was 718. That's a loss of 12.7%.
April 10th, player base 1,344, build 245.
June 26th, player based 717, build 249
A loss rate of 53.4% over three months.
Build 250 has lost more players in four weeks than players playing the game between April and June.
So if I understand you right. You say, that the game lost more players in 2 weeks after a sale as it lost in 3 month without a sale? And you use this to back up that 250 is the cause of player drop?
Maybe... Just maybe you chose bad examples? Because after a sale the player drop is normally higher, because many people that bought the game for little money simply don't like it? Player numbers sink logarithmic after sales. If you really want to compare to the earlier builds 245 - 249 than you need to start before march 22 to get the effects of this sale too.
A Prime example of poor game mechanics and strategy: Biomass, researched at the hive, is something that costs team res that (for some reason) adds HP to players, but also allows researching of abilities, that are researched for more team res, at other structures placed on the map (that also cost team res) that linearly unlock abilities of the higher lifeforms. There is no deviation as to what path you chose to take. Biomass 2: Gorge Tunnels. Biomass 3: Umbra... etc etc. It is completely convoluted, and destroys the opportunity to deviate the strategy of how you play the game as an alien team.
Biomass was also something added to the game without explicitly and accurately telling anyone what it is, and how it works. If you hopped in the Hive to command Aliens (even knowing what you're doing in the previous build) you would have no idea what the "Research Biomass" button on the hive actually does.
Part way through the game I'll generally have six biomass and only three upgrades. I'll get tunnels, bile bomb and then rush for leap by getting 3 biomass on first hive. While that strategy works for me, I imagine someone else could do things differently (e.g. getting umbra, or waiting on the second hive to be built before getting the extra biomass, etc.)
Supposing all upgrades could be researched at any time, what would be the advantage of getting stomp before anyone has onos? Or exocide early game? The only real variation seems to be fade abilities, but fade-ball is currently OP at the moment and I wouldn't want to have shadowstep and vortex appear earlier.
I do agree that alien khamm is a bit more laid back than marine comm, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
For those who compare numbers of playing NS2 owner.
This chart is showing the activity not the actual number of players who own the game. Once it's sold, UWE doesn't get money any more.
it's ok for now but the income is gonna dry out one way or another unless they do some DLC stuff or work for another company in the game/image industry as a side thing.
Changes mean activity. Not quite the same on other games isn't it.
But (yes; but) i do believe they should focus on technical and/or ergonomic issues. You can't balance a game upon bugs/lag or constraints like KEYBINDINGS!!!!!!! (joking... or not).
Also working on the "easy to create map" stuff will make it last longer. As a comparison. Any game i know that did have a real potent editor to make maps had a steady income of players 3 years later (Far cry, Morrowind etc...). And you could always find help.
Once ppl feels ok in there; things will cool down and the only thing needed is more maps.
So if I understand you right. You say, that the game lost more players in 2 weeks after a sale as it lost in 3 month without a sale? And you use this to back up that 250 is the cause of player drop?
I wouldn't attribute the entire loss to Build 250. Plenty of my Steam Friends bought plenty of games during the Summer Sale, so it's likely that they found a game more interesting to spend their time. That doesn't make NS2 a bad game, just less enjoyable to them. Yet at the same time, having effectively identical abandonment rates between both sales does suggest that there is something wrong with the current build when it comes to retaining players. Then there is the issue of bad tutorials and player stacking that has nothing to do with the build. The game is obviously unbalanced in an extreme way. Build 249 had roughly equal win rates at both competitive and pub. Now it's horribly lopsided. I'm not willing to place much blame on the lack of tutorials as that was always a problem in recent builds.
The average loss per week between builds 247 and 249 were between 10% and 15%. That's obviously a much smaller number than the shocking 67% loss rates we just saw. Ultimately what should bother fans of this game is the massive new player quit rate. Game is keeping (at a generous assumption) 1 out of 5 new players. No professional in the world would keep their job if their client retention rate was that low.
I look at the low loss rate on previous builds over time and I look at the massive loss rates on the new build and I can't help but think that B250 is a big part of it.
Furthermore, the 16% number of quitters from the survey is unrealistic as many people who quit wouldn't have looked at the survey at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual new player quit rate was in the 90+% when you account for total veteran quitters and incorporating the smaller but earlier sale numbers of new players. UWE should be crapping bricks over this. The metrics are unquestionably grim.
Maybe... Just maybe you chose bad examples? Because after a sale the player drop is normally higher
Loss rates after sales are high, but not like this and not this fast. The last sale only no big patch in December saw a 49% drop in two weeks. That's big no question, but it's not 2/3rd and it's not 2/3rd twice in a row. The February Gorgeous update and sale was a 48.8% drop rate in two weeks.
because many people that bought the game for little money simply don't like it?
Huh? Where did you get that?
Player numbers sink logarithmic after sales. If you really want to compare to the earlier builds 245 - 249 than you need to start before march 22 to get the effects of this sale too.
I did and their loss rates are substantially lower than build 250.
For those who compare numbers of playing NS2 owner.
This chart is showing the activity not the actual number of players who own the game. Once it's sold, UWE doesn't get money any more.
We know. Total licenses sold isn't a number that steam releases. Furthermore, outside of cash flow, it doesn't matter. What we want to know is how many players play, how many new players stick around and how many quit. And the Steam Metric provides a relatively decent method of going about this. I know a few players who bought it on sale and have yet to install the game, it's sitting in their steam inventory with 0.0 hours played. They, in my opinion do not count in what we're looking at.
I had another few games last night (I even ventured into US servers but my ping was too bad to be anything but a gorge really). I also had a go at commanding aliens. It has been a while since I last time I commanded aliens. I'll sum up my experience as follows. WTF have you done.
I had difficulty understanding what was happening and how to do things. Upgrading abilities in the hive was madness, I couldn't see them (I at least knew that shells/veils/spurs had changed function). My 41 year old eyes aren't what they used to be but im not THAT bad and can still pass a snellen test. New cysting was good until I want to place a "dot" cyst. It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't place any more crags or shifts. When did that "drifter limit" or whatever it is called appear? Can you recycle buildings, in the madness I didn't see how. Im sure there are people out there who like alien commanding but count me out. You can also count of the aliens on Mavicks server (2 mins sat waiting for an alien comm), KingKahuna often started without an alien comm (guess how those matches went, in fact most of the time alien side emptied), voogru had some good games. SWE servers had a couple of "no alien comm so RQ" rounds.
Marine comm sort of makes sense. Research phase at obs, weapons/armour at arms lab, jps exos at proto. I guess most newbies don't know about nano. Aliens makes NO SENSE at all. Why do you have abilities at each individual hive? Why not a central research area? Why not have a research structure that is cheap/free if you are short of "slots" to click on? Alien comm is a mess - hats off to the people who are good at it. I did like echo though.
I'll check back in a few weeks, back to red orchestra 2 I go.
Unless something has changed NS2stats does not collect info from every public ns2 servers...only those running the mod.
Does that mean that the 2000+ games it recorded are irrelevant?
Considering server admin can choose to remove this, one can say it is not accurate. I still don't get why it is mod. It should be integrated as it doesn't require much resources from the server. It could be a start for having an "in-game interface" for PCW or something.
It's a bad sign when a game can't even keep a few hundred players playing after a week or two of a sale, uwe are a good dev and the game itself is quite decent now but they do keep making odd choices like focusing competitive stuff instead of what the majority cares about which is a fun balanced game in general.
There's a serious lack of maps and relying on the community to make more was a bad idea, too few maps in a purely multiplayer game is foolish and so are the changes that break balance and mods every update, it seems a bit late now to really fix as people have so much choice with gaming it's doubtful many will come back.
I think we'll see a few more sales and spikes in player count but as always it will quickly drop back to normal which is about between 800 and 1200, i suspect this time next year we'll see between 400 and 800 on average and it will stay like that for a few years but thats the best we can expect unless they do something big or just make the game free.
Edit: Also why does this thread fail to appear at the top after a post, a bit suspicious...
It's a bad sign when a game can't even keep a few hundred players playing after a week or two of a sale, uwe are a good dev and the game itself is quite decent now but they do keep making odd choices like focusing competitive stuff instead of what the majority cares about which is a fun balanced game in general.
There's a serious lack of maps and relying on the community to make more was a bad idea, too few maps in a purely multiplayer game is foolish and so are the changes that break balance and mods every update, it seems a bit late now to really fix as people have so much choice with gaming it's doubtful many will come back.
I think we'll see a few more sales and spikes in player count but as always it will quickly drop back to normal which is about between 800 and 1200, i suspect this time next year we'll see between 400 and 800 on average and it will stay like that for a few years but thats the best we can expect unless they do something big or just make the game free.
Edit: Also why does this thread fail to appear at the top after a post, a bit suspicious...
I love this game, but I get so sad to see how UWE continues to ignore the obviously flaring problem that the reason the game is dying is NOT because of lack of content, but because OF THE TERRIBLE BALANCE. Hell, I don't understand how people can even stand to play competitive. The competitive scene has even WORSE balance! Aliens have an 80% winrate!
Comments
@RequiemDK, Is it really so counter intuitive for the alien, who can run on walls to get a speedboost if he jumps off a wall? Obviously a tutorial explaining all this stuff would be great, with a narrative hive queen (khammander) voice that tells you the basics of the game and gives you little task to get used to your abilities.
@Hemi, I'm not even sure if the majority hardcore players mind ranks and achievements to be implemented. The HBZ server has a great mod that gives away ranks for people based on ELO and there is an option to assign the players into two teams with as equal as possible ELOs. Works really good imho, had some great games today.
If the speedboost is from jumping off a WALL, then no, there's absolutely no indication that one should have that benefit. Why should you get a speedboost from that? What in the game informs the player of that? If the speedboost is from JUMPING off a wall, well it's inconsistent because skulks don't get a speedboost from jumping off the floor. It's just another example of a hidden benefit - nothing in the game tells you about that speedboost. For that matter, even skulks being able to run on walls and ceilings and gorges not being able to is an inconsistent and potentially confusing experience for the new player because there's nothing in the game that hints at this, although NS1 players wouldn't even think twice about it. Then, we have the really odd issue of the skulk's view not rotating to reflect its orientation. Look, NS2 is many things, but intuitive is not one of them.
A Prime example of poor game mechanics and strategy: Biomass, researched at the hive, is something that costs team res that (for some reason) adds HP to players, but also allows researching of abilities, that are researched for more team res, at other structures placed on the map (that also cost team res) that linearly unlock abilities of the higher lifeforms. There is no deviation as to what path you chose to take. Biomass 2: Gorge Tunnels. Biomass 3: Umbra... etc etc. It is completely convoluted, and destroys the opportunity to deviate the strategy of how you play the game as an alien team.
Biomass was also something added to the game without explicitly and accurately telling anyone what it is, and how it works. If you hopped in the Hive to command Aliens (even knowing what you're doing in the previous build) you would have no idea what the "Research Biomass" button on the hive actually does.
Why does the game have to be played like that? Why can't I push Leap at the start, and say eff Umbra and Gorge Tunnels, because I think Umbra and Gorge Tunnels suck. No, the devs made it that we have to linearly progress the abilities along this biomass train with no variation, and no way to diversify play styles.
This is why this game is dying. It's stagnant, and bloated.
I know how to use the new fade. I have played 250 for quite a while and stopped playing NS2 because I was dissatisfied. 250 messed up roles of weapons and aliens. GL and flamer are suppost to be support, fade should be agile/hit-and-run/risk-taker, onos supposed to be tank that leads the "army", and exos were supposed give marines "solid" but slow defensive/offensive elite units.
GL and flamer are now completely in-balanced (in terms of scaling with mid-late game) and are no longer support weapons, Fades are slow and tank-ier and completely lose their role, onos isn't as much as an elite unit that leads the attacking pack anymore, and exos aren't as "solid" nor are they as exclusive (in-terms of price) or elite as before.
like I mentioned in one of my posts, this is not how a game works. Only old games that are stale (in terms of updates) work how you say they do. The major decrease of players (like I said in the same post) has been caused by 250 and steam charts show that (if you go back enough).
So the fact that at the time of the introduction of the 2-month-old B250 the player numbers were dramatically boosted and they haven't still dropped close to the numbers pre-250 is called "the major decrease of players caused by 250"?
Well to be fair no one can really tell if it would have an impact because of the sales. Though the numbers came close to pre 250 after the first Chivalry/NS2 weekend sale.
It was only when another sale was repeated 10 days later (Summer sale) which lasted for 10 days a few of which were NS2 at 75% off at the front page rest were 40% off that the numbers increased again. In a few weeks we will probably have another sale for the tournament and or content patch so as long as the sales keep coming the number should not go down.
That's because of the mass sales. That's the only material reason the game is up.
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#All
Look at the player losses between sales.
The last recent sale on the 15th of July pushed the game to 3,506. In two weeks the game is down to 1,167. The game lost 66.71% of the players from the peak sale.
Look at the sale before that on the 1st. Game went to 2,924. Within two weeks it was down to 807. That again is nearly the same player loss rate as the later sale coming in at 66.7079%.
Compare that to pre-250 build. Game loses players weekly, but it's relatively flat and it generally recovers. At most 100 players between weeks which is about 10%.
June 13th was build 249. Player base was 823. June 26th, right before the sale was 718. That's a loss of 12.7%.
April 10th, player base 1,344, build 245.
June 26th, player based 717, build 249
A loss rate of 53.4% over three months.
Build 250 has lost more players in four weeks than players playing the game between April and June.
True we can't, but we can look at player churn between sales to get a grasp of how well the game is sticking. And it's looking pretty darn grim. Most companies would freak out if they saw a 66% drop in usage in two weeks from a sale. That's happened twice to NS2. It's clear that some players are in fact sticking around, but the retention rate is really awful. If we assume based on the survey list that about 16% of players have stopped playing because of Build 250, we have a base starting rate of 718*84% = 603 base players. Since the last patch is up to 1,167 all of these sales have only netted a mere 563.88 new players who stick around.
It gets worse. At a peak of 3,506 that includes the 16% of players who have stopped playing as they tried out and realized they don't like the game for whatever reason. So we take 3,560-115 = 3,391 left players after the veteran quitters. Then 3,391-1167 = 2,224 new players who have quit. That's 65.58% of the peak from the sales. If we take the 3,506 less the existing 718 veterans, we have 2,788 new players. Now, let's divide new players that are still playing to total new players who bought the game, 563.88/2,788 = 79.77% new player quit rate.
And this is being generous. I haven't added in the additional new players from the second major sale. So the new player quit rate is likely to be substantially higher.
Jesus. I hope someone at UWE is crapping bricks over this.
NS2 A group of people making it a game for a paycheck, as a result nothing but problems.
Lol, I dunno.
opinions of course.
So if I understand you right. You say, that the game lost more players in 2 weeks after a sale as it lost in 3 month without a sale? And you use this to back up that 250 is the cause of player drop?
Maybe... Just maybe you chose bad examples? Because after a sale the player drop is normally higher, because many people that bought the game for little money simply don't like it? Player numbers sink logarithmic after sales. If you really want to compare to the earlier builds 245 - 249 than you need to start before march 22 to get the effects of this sale too.
Part way through the game I'll generally have six biomass and only three upgrades. I'll get tunnels, bile bomb and then rush for leap by getting 3 biomass on first hive. While that strategy works for me, I imagine someone else could do things differently (e.g. getting umbra, or waiting on the second hive to be built before getting the extra biomass, etc.)
Supposing all upgrades could be researched at any time, what would be the advantage of getting stomp before anyone has onos? Or exocide early game? The only real variation seems to be fade abilities, but fade-ball is currently OP at the moment and I wouldn't want to have shadowstep and vortex appear earlier.
I do agree that alien khamm is a bit more laid back than marine comm, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
This chart is showing the activity not the actual number of players who own the game. Once it's sold, UWE doesn't get money any more.
it's ok for now but the income is gonna dry out one way or another unless they do some DLC stuff or work for another company in the game/image industry as a side thing.
Changes mean activity. Not quite the same on other games isn't it.
But (yes; but) i do believe they should focus on technical and/or ergonomic issues. You can't balance a game upon bugs/lag or constraints like KEYBINDINGS!!!!!!! (joking... or not).
Also working on the "easy to create map" stuff will make it last longer. As a comparison. Any game i know that did have a real potent editor to make maps had a steady income of players 3 years later (Far cry, Morrowind etc...). And you could always find help.
Once ppl feels ok in there; things will cool down and the only thing needed is more maps.
I wouldn't attribute the entire loss to Build 250. Plenty of my Steam Friends bought plenty of games during the Summer Sale, so it's likely that they found a game more interesting to spend their time. That doesn't make NS2 a bad game, just less enjoyable to them. Yet at the same time, having effectively identical abandonment rates between both sales does suggest that there is something wrong with the current build when it comes to retaining players. Then there is the issue of bad tutorials and player stacking that has nothing to do with the build. The game is obviously unbalanced in an extreme way. Build 249 had roughly equal win rates at both competitive and pub. Now it's horribly lopsided. I'm not willing to place much blame on the lack of tutorials as that was always a problem in recent builds.
The average loss per week between builds 247 and 249 were between 10% and 15%. That's obviously a much smaller number than the shocking 67% loss rates we just saw. Ultimately what should bother fans of this game is the massive new player quit rate. Game is keeping (at a generous assumption) 1 out of 5 new players. No professional in the world would keep their job if their client retention rate was that low.
I look at the low loss rate on previous builds over time and I look at the massive loss rates on the new build and I can't help but think that B250 is a big part of it.
Furthermore, the 16% number of quitters from the survey is unrealistic as many people who quit wouldn't have looked at the survey at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual new player quit rate was in the 90+% when you account for total veteran quitters and incorporating the smaller but earlier sale numbers of new players. UWE should be crapping bricks over this. The metrics are unquestionably grim.
Loss rates after sales are high, but not like this and not this fast. The last sale only no big patch in December saw a 49% drop in two weeks. That's big no question, but it's not 2/3rd and it's not 2/3rd twice in a row. The February Gorgeous update and sale was a 48.8% drop rate in two weeks.
Huh? Where did you get that?
I did and their loss rates are substantially lower than build 250.
We know. Total licenses sold isn't a number that steam releases. Furthermore, outside of cash flow, it doesn't matter. What we want to know is how many players play, how many new players stick around and how many quit. And the Steam Metric provides a relatively decent method of going about this. I know a few players who bought it on sale and have yet to install the game, it's sitting in their steam inventory with 0.0 hours played. They, in my opinion do not count in what we're looking at.
I'm gonna take a guess and say that no actual survey or something like that was taken to make that picture qualified.
Well, seeing as how it's from http://ns2stats.org/ and it collects information from every public NS2 server, I'd say it's accurate, yes.
EDIT: I set special options to keep from skewing the results of the picture, they are as follows:
Public games only
Build 251 only
No combat mod (all 'mods' with "Combat" in them were unchecked)
No classic mod
No marine vs marine
There may be a few other mods that I missed, but they couldn't have accounted for more than 30 games.
I had difficulty understanding what was happening and how to do things. Upgrading abilities in the hive was madness, I couldn't see them (I at least knew that shells/veils/spurs had changed function). My 41 year old eyes aren't what they used to be but im not THAT bad and can still pass a snellen test. New cysting was good until I want to place a "dot" cyst. It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't place any more crags or shifts. When did that "drifter limit" or whatever it is called appear? Can you recycle buildings, in the madness I didn't see how. Im sure there are people out there who like alien commanding but count me out. You can also count of the aliens on Mavicks server (2 mins sat waiting for an alien comm), KingKahuna often started without an alien comm (guess how those matches went, in fact most of the time alien side emptied), voogru had some good games. SWE servers had a couple of "no alien comm so RQ" rounds.
Marine comm sort of makes sense. Research phase at obs, weapons/armour at arms lab, jps exos at proto. I guess most newbies don't know about nano. Aliens makes NO SENSE at all. Why do you have abilities at each individual hive? Why not a central research area? Why not have a research structure that is cheap/free if you are short of "slots" to click on? Alien comm is a mess - hats off to the people who are good at it. I did like echo though.
I'll check back in a few weeks, back to red orchestra 2 I go.
Does that mean that the 2000+ games it recorded are irrelevant?
Considering server admin can choose to remove this, one can say it is not accurate. I still don't get why it is mod. It should be integrated as it doesn't require much resources from the server. It could be a start for having an "in-game interface" for PCW or something.
Especially considering that's more games than there are active players o_O
There's a serious lack of maps and relying on the community to make more was a bad idea, too few maps in a purely multiplayer game is foolish and so are the changes that break balance and mods every update, it seems a bit late now to really fix as people have so much choice with gaming it's doubtful many will come back.
I think we'll see a few more sales and spikes in player count but as always it will quickly drop back to normal which is about between 800 and 1200, i suspect this time next year we'll see between 400 and 800 on average and it will stay like that for a few years but thats the best we can expect unless they do something big or just make the game free.
Edit: Also why does this thread fail to appear at the top after a post, a bit suspicious...
I love this game, but I get so sad to see how UWE continues to ignore the obviously flaring problem that the reason the game is dying is NOT because of lack of content, but because OF THE TERRIBLE BALANCE. Hell, I don't understand how people can even stand to play competitive. The competitive scene has even WORSE balance! Aliens have an 80% winrate!