An open letter to UWE- you've dropped the ball...
tallhotblonde
Join Date: 2012-12-11 Member: 174770Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-12-11 Member: 174770Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow
Dear UWE
After the huge disappointment of the big announcement, the dwindling player base and an ever more stale competitive scene - I wanted to briefly express my views on why you have got things so, so wrong.
- firstly, a world championship? The competitive scene is the most inactive it's ever been! The reason? A poorly run, boring league ran on the ensl that should have been ran THROUGH the UWE site and have been more open to the community. The admins there don't listen and while I respect their work, it's not enough. Hundreds have offered help and it falls on death ears. We need to stop pleasing the top 12 and bring in new players. I play in div 2 but fuck, I got no chance of even getting to the play offs, let alone the other 1000 people hungry for something new.
-this brings me to sabot/matchmaking. In my opinion, this is the best possible mechanic that will make ns2 public/competitive merge and thrive. It bridges the gap, shows new players how ns2 is supposed to be played. BUT LETS BE HONEST. By the time (if ever) this is released it will be too late!
- and finally, this "us and them" stuff needs to stop. We are all you have left UWE and there are less and less of us each day. Be more open, talk to us, we have bought the game and then donated double that again and we are feeling pretty stupid right now. Start a poll, a open discussion, ask the community what we want you to focus on. I can assure you that a new map, female marines and world championship is at the bottom of the list. Everyone knows you are at a crossroads with ns2 right now, the question is, will I be playing ns2 in 2014? If it stays this way no. And Ill wish I never donated to ns1, preordered ns2 and donated to the reinforcement program. For god sake UWE at least let us know the game plan....
After the huge disappointment of the big announcement, the dwindling player base and an ever more stale competitive scene - I wanted to briefly express my views on why you have got things so, so wrong.
- firstly, a world championship? The competitive scene is the most inactive it's ever been! The reason? A poorly run, boring league ran on the ensl that should have been ran THROUGH the UWE site and have been more open to the community. The admins there don't listen and while I respect their work, it's not enough. Hundreds have offered help and it falls on death ears. We need to stop pleasing the top 12 and bring in new players. I play in div 2 but fuck, I got no chance of even getting to the play offs, let alone the other 1000 people hungry for something new.
-this brings me to sabot/matchmaking. In my opinion, this is the best possible mechanic that will make ns2 public/competitive merge and thrive. It bridges the gap, shows new players how ns2 is supposed to be played. BUT LETS BE HONEST. By the time (if ever) this is released it will be too late!
- and finally, this "us and them" stuff needs to stop. We are all you have left UWE and there are less and less of us each day. Be more open, talk to us, we have bought the game and then donated double that again and we are feeling pretty stupid right now. Start a poll, a open discussion, ask the community what we want you to focus on. I can assure you that a new map, female marines and world championship is at the bottom of the list. Everyone knows you are at a crossroads with ns2 right now, the question is, will I be playing ns2 in 2014? If it stays this way no. And Ill wish I never donated to ns1, preordered ns2 and donated to the reinforcement program. For god sake UWE at least let us know the game plan....
Comments
The majority should have been the focus, if the competitive stuff was left as just a bit of fun for those interested i don't think anyone would be bothered but there seems to have been a clear push for that at the expense of a fun game for all, there's a reason ns2 has lost so many players.
In no particular order these are the issues i think the game has had since release.
Comp scene worse it ever was? ESKUSME?
I actually think there are quite a bit of maps at the moment (and we still have Discovery in the pipeline). Take a look at the NS2 maps (we'll exclude popular custom/community maps like Jambi, etc.): Docking, Veil, Tram, Summit, Mineshaft, Refinery, Descent, Biodome. For all intents and purposes, NS2 has only one game mode, and there are 8 maps to choose from.
Now let's take a look at, for example, Counter-Strike, NS1's highly successful predecessor. Pretty much the only game mode worth playing is bomb plant/defuse: Dust, Dust2, Inferno, Cbble, Aztec, Nuke, Train, Prodigy. Interestingly enough, ALL 8 of these maps were utilized in competitive play, while pretty much only Dust2, Inferno, Cbble, Aztec, and Train were played in pubs. NS2 is actually the opposite, with Docking/Mineshaft/Refinery excluded from competitive play.
So NS2 has an 8-map rotation for public servers, compared to the 5-map rotation of CS that was utilized for over half a decade.
IMO, there's a healthy amount of maps at the moment, and the map pool should be the least of UWE's worries.
since when were people motivated by 'rewards' ? (to play a game)
because the cod game was so awfully boring with no variation, you needed a mindnumbing 'grind' as motivation to play?
when i look at some of the best games, like unreal tournament and counterstrike, there was no reward necessary - the reward was improving at the game and being able to kick more ass. is the current generation of gamers so distracted and impatient that they can't be driven purely to improve any more? - it's a game/hobby, fun is all the reward you should hope for - and if you want reward badges then maybe you should play an MMO forever more.
i think counterstrike:GO has rewards, but they're certainly not a motivator to play... because the game has all of the competitiveness and thrilling gameplay of CSS. not to mention that valve are a gigantic company and they can afford to be frivolous with their development time.
additionally, on the subject of the game feeling hopeless or steep learning curve, take a look at starcraft 2. challenge is a good thing, and i think NS2 brings challenge and fun for casuals together - i was certainly having fun when i was a noob.
balance, performance and lack of content are non-issues because every game in history has struggled with them - especially indie games.
I think ns2 was released with about 5 maps, two of those were done by the community but made official, not ideal and it's taken us a year to get up to a reasonable amount, we have the one mode ignoring the few mods, combat being the only real popular one, im not sure it's good enough for a purely multiplayer game.
Im not hugely fussed about rewards like in cod but i do see how it adds something thats expected by many, at least it keeps people coming back and shows some sort of progress, even a good list of stats would be nice, small cosmetic things like badges, skins etc wouldn't hurt as long as they're sensible.
The funny part is that those type of games (including ns2) are now nowhere near as popular as they once were. If you look at current active players, in highest to lowest order it goes: ut -> ut2004 -> ut3, that's REVERSE date order.
As much as we all hate drip-feeding unlocks, they are a useful mechanic to keep players engaged, which will inevitably also increase their competence and hopefully give them more incentive to stick with a game, even if the unlocks are just visual/cosmetic.
there are soooo many games out there that most people just choose one that other people play, because more people playing usually means better game as well as the comfort of being part of a bigger community (i'm sure none of us want to repeat that sad day where our old favourite online game stopped having enough players to get a decent game).
an NS2 tournament is probably the most effective way at courting the gaming community.
imo ns2 is now more popular in terms of loyal community than it ever was - the player count was always going to be super inflated at the start.
yes, UT died - sad times - but i'm not surprised that ut2004 and ut3 are less popular because they just weren't as good as UT nor were they released in a good year. the only thing ut2004 did 'special' was vehicles in onslaught - the rest was old news - and ut3 was years later than it's heyday.
i think ns2 is future-proof. there's nothing else like it on the market. as long as it keeps getting support by the devs and community, i think it will maintain a reasonable playerbase for an indie game. even though i'm personally disappointed that the playerbase isn't larger, but like i said before - tournaments and exposure are the best way to change that.
What are you trying to show by mentioning the popularity of the UT series here? If anything, it only counters your actual argument.
The original UT was always super popular because there were quite a few players who didn't like the new, faster movement of UT2k4 and thus stick with the previous title. Plus it has a huge backlog of modding and is just quick fun on any LAN. (That's a problem with NS2 anyway: it takes about 4 minutes between starting the game and actually getting into a match due to loading times, server browser, etc. In UT(2k4) does it take me 30 seconds to get into a multiplayer game, making it a lot more feasible for a quick match in between.)
I personally joined the UT series with the 2k3 iteration and stuck with 2k4 and modding for years after its release. To many of us UT2k4 players was UT3 a big disappointment because
- the movement was a lot slower again (jumping feels like some awkward heavy armor space marine)
- the skill ceiling got lowered (a good player could take on any vehicle in 2k4 whereas you are screwed as footsoldier against vehicles most of the time in UT3)
- you always had the feeling that the game was clearly developed for consoles first
- post-processing ruined your vision and made everything look brown compared to the colorful lightness of 2k4
- modding the game got harder than in 2k4, even though modding has always been a vital part of the UT series
- the level design felt shallow and many maps were clearly designed around showing off gimmicky new engine features rather than providing good gameplay (most Warfare maps had a linear linksetup, even though every UT2k4 Onslaught mapper knows that this is an absolute no-go)
- most of the new mechanics felt rather gimmicky (the Orb in Warfare was hated by many because it replaces engaging long fights between positions with fast cheese tactics)
- due to the introduction of Necris and their vehicles, a game that is supposed to be perfectly symmetric often ended up with asymmetric maps and gameplay balance
- you could control other player's AVRiL missile with your own AVRiL launcher - wtf?!
- pointlessly dark campaign replaced fun tournament context and ended with cliffhanger
UT3 never surpassed UT2k4 from the start because it seemed just worse than its predecessor. And the community knew that.
If anything we should be saying thank you to the guys that are organising this, as well as offering additional ideas for future tournaments, to encourage lower skill teams to take part.
As far as NS2 goes, yeah, it could use some work, but that is more a symptom of the laziness and stupidity of the modern PC gaming community, that require rewards and tutorials as part of their comfort zone before they will even look at a game. Any game worth playing long term requires depth, and games with depth require a steep time investment just for learning how to play them. Back in the day players were willing to put that time in, but these days if a game isn't retard friendly from day one it will tend to lose a lot of players very quickly.
These days games need activity based tutorials (i.e. make the player use a welder on a damaged building or a 0 armour bot, instead of just telling them about it via a read-once text message) and any skill based game these days is going to require a matchmaker to keep the vets and the nimrods separated (because the vets are low in number but high in skill, whereas the reverse is true for the nimrods). Game developers need to start making these features a priority for their games to be available from day 1 if they want to grow a large community (the sheeple effect not withstanding).
No, that is not all it is. UWE are putting up 50% of the cash to fund this too.
The tiny portion that is the aus community doesn't really make up for it tbh.
@Ghosthree3: It is tiny, compared to Legue of Legends or Counter Strike, so what? At least they are doing something, they build something up.
@MrRadicalEd: I say you need to support it, especially if it is small and fragile like ours. And you say that the casual players should be supported? And how else? By fixing, improving the game, adding content, which UWE is doing all the time for free. I admit that the game can still be improved on many spots, but I see too many complaints and little appreciation for UWEs constant efforts. People are too fast with blaiming, chose harsh words, and many are even wrong or not thought through to the end. It must be very hard to stay motivated, when you have to read stuff like this all the time.
UWE is funding the studio rental + the twitch coverage. We don't know how much it is. Please stick to the facts.
UWE said it here
The way I see it is this; its not for who you tailor the game for, but what you tailor the game for. The distinction between the players and their motivations need to be acknowledged.
I say these things from experience. With the NS1 clan I was in, we had a farm team that brought in prospective players whom wanted to try their hand at competitive games. From the farm team, we grew our roster. I observed the full cycle from my position there. "Regular" players whom aspire and associate themselves with highly organized games will learn(just like learning the game for first time) and adapt to new concepts and rules-- not that all different when you join public games; learning the game for the first time.
The game was the same.. but these players were cultivated with strategies that were developed after many hours of play. The take away is.. the game is the same for everyone
Now I hear that UWE is giving $30,000 dollars of that money to pay for a dying comp scene's life support and I'm wondering if that 75 dollars was a good investment.
I honestly can't figure out how they would arrive at such a conclusion. The only reason I can imagine this coming about is the narcissistic tendencies of certain people heavily involved in ns2 who adore being in front of camera, at any expense.
This is just a colossal waste of time energy and resources on UWE's part. And to drag the community into is like an invitation for whoever remains to just move on.
What a joke. Why would anyone help fund NS2 if this is where the money goes?
Good point, i also was asking myself how they can dish out 30.000 $ for a meaningless tournament, when they pointed out how lots and lots of money got spent on the Reinforced patch just a month ago? Unless they have a second income source, which I doubt, I would automatically assume that the half of the NS2 world championship prize money is paid by Reinforced donation money.
Needs clarification.
crowdsource for improvements to the game - no new content => Reinforced Programm
Would our funds be matched? => Reinforced Programm currently at 160'000$+
.. and I understood the reinforced program to recoup costs from the last big content update.
The negativity around this entire thing is astounding which has sadly overshadowed what a few guys in the community are trying to do FOR the community. I mean, they HAD to get a sponsor somehow, right? To help pay the other half of the costs (studio rental, twitch, etc). God forbid they asked the company that made the game.
People are STILL saying this is UWE's thing, I want to bash their heads into a wall. They are just helping sponsor it, that's it. The whole thing is being organized by community members. What they do with money in THEIR company that is earmarked for donations/sponsorships etc is none of our business.
It looks like everyone is pissed because UWE is spending their own money here to support people in their own community. And for some reason that means development of EVERYTHING ELSE comes to a halt. How you guys are coming to that brain dead idea, I have no clue.
So, if the twitch guys got the money from Logitech or some other sponsor, would people still be so angry at the tournament? If UWE was completely hands off this, would it still be this big of an outcry? In my opinion, no.
Come off it already - the developments and fixes are still happening and will happen. Give them a break. Yes, they made a mistake with the hype, get over it. Lesson learned. I used to think this was one of the best communities I've been apart of. But after reading some posts, this is probably the most cruel-hearted, unforgiving bunch of jerks I have ever encountered. We're talking LoL level here, folks.
I'm not convinced that stimulating the competitive scene will actually increase our playerbase in any significant quantity. There are too many outstanding issues involving game performance, the lack of matchmaking and consistent stat tracking to be spending money on the minority of players in a dying community.