GISPBattle GorgeDenmarkJoin Date: 2004-03-20Member: 27460Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester, Forum staff
This is a community created event, supported by the game developer. - You will not see a slowdown in bug fixes or new content, its not like the programmers stop programming becouse a 3rd party is creating a turnament. - And as you all can clearly see, this is a croudfunded turnament and has no ties to the reinforcement program.
The lack of knowledge here about basic business accounting is astounding. All the money from the reinforcement program is probably already earmarked for development, as well as other revenue from the company. All companies have reserve cash to spend on other things, like maybe supporting community events/ideas. People thinking that the 30k is coming out of the reinforced donations are simply retarded or just don't know how cash flow/budget projections work.
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.
From Reinforced Program: But these monetisation methods do not fit with our culture. Knowing we must pay the bills to keep the lights on, we decided to introduce the Reinforcement Program.
Sounds like a dire situation, right?
. All companies have reserve cash to spend on other things, like maybe supporting community events/ideas
Barely able to keep servers running and they got that amount on the side for about 50 people to go to Germany and roughly 750 people watching this at most?
What they do with money in THEIR company that is earmarked for donations/sponsorships etc is none of our business.
Right, but still we donated for a totally different cause. We wouldn't have otherwise.
unforgiving bunch of jerks I have ever encountered. We're talking LoL level here, folks.
The level of the conversation was still somewhat civilzed (compared to LoL standards) all the negativity aside. Until you came in with your wall of text, Caps Lock and saying stuff like:
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.
I'm going to respond to this, since I think it sums up the core of people's issues well. In and of itself, I think it's a great thing that UWE are doing for some dedicated members of this community who want to produce more content. However, this World Championship is inevitably going to be uphill because Natural Selection 2 to this day is a prematurely-released game.
The real issue is, everyone is hungry for a good, polished Natural Selection 2, yet the cost of development to end users keep going up and opportunities for growth keep getting missed or squandered. I think the message is, the game needs improvement before it can become any sort of sensation.
To put it into perspective, if UWE's message was, "BIG SATURDAY ANNOUNCEMENT: We paid a third party $30,000 to create a working keybind system that is accessible to everyone", people would have been genuinely happy. Can you imagine? "OMG, Reinforced can afford to bring us FIVE of these sorts of bonuses!".
You guys need to understand that this world championship only benefits around 36 people at the very maximum- the very best players in ns2. This wont help the competitive scene in anyway and is a complete waste of ANY of uwe's money. If you actually "understood how business works" then you'd know that £100 out of UWE's bank account is £100 taken away from NS2, period.
Funds are limited, they have no other means of income except from low ns2 sales and the reinforced program. And that is why people are so angry.
A world championship would have been amazing at the right time... Just after or coinciding with the release of SABOT would have made much more sense. And instead of wasting money flying out the same best players in the world they could have taken the ENSL under their wing and spent it on integrating the website with new dynamic ladder formats and leagues and cups ect.
You guys need to understand that this world championship only benefits around 36 people at the very maximum- the very best players in ns2. This wont help the competitive scene in anyway and is a complete waste of ANY of uwe's money. If you actually "understood how business works" then you'd know that £100 out of UWE's bank account is £100 taken away from NS2, period.
Funds are limited, they have no other means of income except from low ns2 sales and the reinforced program. And that is why people are so angry.
A world championship would have been amazing at the right time... Just after or coinciding with the release of SABOT would have made much more sense. And instead of wasting money flying out the same best players in the world they could have taken the ENSL under their wing and spent it on integrating the website with new dynamic ladder formats and leagues and cups ect.
Its just one massive fail.
so advertisement at 50% cost is 100% money taken away from the company... ergo marketing is a loss?
damn, someone tell movie/game publishers, coca cola and those other mega coorporations that they're wasting their money!
Oh im sorry, because UWE put on 2 killer shows at the nsl invitational and European open? And the competitive community will obviously welcome new low level teams with open arms- when the next season starts in February.
Oh and good look finding practise matches against a team your own skill level. The members in the Div 4 teams will smash half of the public players on these forums.
The integration from public to competitive just isn't being made easy enough.
You guys need to understand that this world championship only benefits around 36 people at the very maximum- the very best players in ns2. This wont help the competitive scene in anyway and is a complete waste of ANY of uwe's money. If you actually "understood how business works" then you'd know that £100 out of UWE's bank account is £100 taken away from NS2, period.
Funds are limited, they have no other means of income except from low ns2 sales and the reinforced program. And that is why people are so angry.
A world championship would have been amazing at the right time... Just after or coinciding with the release of SABOT would have made much more sense. And instead of wasting money flying out the same best players in the world they could have taken the ENSL under their wing and spent it on integrating the website with new dynamic ladder formats and leagues and cups ect.
Its just one massive fail.
so advertisement at 50% cost is 100% money taken away from the company... ergo marketing is a loss?
damn, someone tell movie/game publishers, coca cola and those other mega coorporations that they're wasting their money!
They'll only gain from it if it leads to more than 30,000 dollars in NS2 sales, something I doubt greatly because the game is a) more than a year old b) broken and c) will likely be nearly dead by February or whenever this event happens. Not to mention that the past two live events were horribly handled by UWE and can only be described as utter failures.
So much /hate in this thread... Just read what GISP said.. and dont worry about your donation to the reinforcement program.. yeez. And on the topic of it being broken, sometimes some glitches here but overall its working just fine.
For some reason i missed this game when it was released and just stumbled upon it when it was on steam for a free weekend, but sofar worth every penny as its been a while since i enjoyed gaming like i do with ns2
This is a community created event, supported by the game developer. - You will not see a slowdown in bug fixes or new content, its not like the programmers stop programming becouse a 3rd party is creating a turnament. - And as you all can clearly see, this is a croudfunded turnament and has no ties to the reinforcement program.
First up, thank you for contributing to the Shadow tier - We really appreciate it. I understand your upset, but cannot agree fully, and here is why!
Unknown Worlds did not create the NS2WC, your fellow players did! If you do not like the idea, it is a debate you should have with them, not with us. We think it is fantastic that the community has chosen to undertake this endevour, and we are doing our best to help them make the dream a reality. Here is some recently posted information about how the NS2WC works, and how UWE is a helper not an organiser: http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-2-world-championship/
Matchmaking is an active project being worked on by Lucas and Andi. The prototype Hive website is already live, and will be publicised when ready. While you might consider it 'too late' for such a system to be introduced, we do not. There is never a 'too late' for a feature that will improve player's ability to play the game.
I don't understand what you mean by 'us and them' - You will have to give me some more explanation. We have been very open about our current priorities, and what the game plan is. Here is the most recent in depth State of the Game post: http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/state-of-development-september-2013/ - In it, you can find out what is being worked on, and what our plans are. If we don't give you enough information, I am sorry for that, truly. It is our mission to be extremely open and we try very hard to do it. If we don't talk loud enough, often enough and fast enough for you - It is not because we don't want to, but because our throats are hoarse from trying. Our human limits prevent us from telling you what everyone is up to at every moment of every day, and it is the nature of communication that not everything we say will be read, heard, and seen.
I've noticed since early beta it's almost like we have two communities, those at uwe, the playtesters, casters and top competitive players, then theres the rest of us, the majority of normal players who bought the game and just want to have fun with a game that runs well and is balanced, something that isn't so unforgiving that the winning team dominates and the losing one wishes to give up at any moment.
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.
Balance
Performance
Difficulty and learning curve
Lack of maps and content in general
No combat as standard along with the normal game
No matchmaking
No stats or rewards, games just end and seem meaningless, it's not enough to keep todays gamers playing
Game play feels chaotic and hopeless at times
Many games either end too soon or go on too long
Mods break on even small updates
The focus on competitive rather than public
If you want to break it down into two groups, its those who help and those who don't help, and those who don't help are the ones who complain the most/loudest.
How is complaining not helping? Complaining is a means of alerting the developers to shortcomings in the game. I would say the people who help the least are those that tell the complainers off for trying to point out flaws(often serious flaws) in the game.
Complaining is the most useful thing anyone can do to help any game project. The developers can then track the number of complaints and if that number is decreasing, they're doing a good job. There will never be zero complaints, but there's no reason to be terrified of a complaint, they're often made by people who genuinely care, and aren't a fanatic who will blindly accept the good and the bad.
Complainers don't want to just sit back, hope and wait for the problems to be fixed. They want the biggest problems to be focused on and fixed right now. For example, performance: Despite numberous patches and fps increases I still experience an unacceptable level of input lag at framerates lower than 180, this is ridiculous, there's something in the code that needs to be fixed. Telling someone to stop complaining about that tells uwe that it's not worth fixing right now, which means when new players come into the game, they go "ooh, this game doesn't feel right" and quit, never to return.
We're supposed to be here to give UWE feedback and allow them to make decisions on where to focus their efforts. But the fanboys and hopeful quiet people seem to want to leave UWE in the dark about real issues. This means UWE often has to stab blindly, guessing what needs working on.
This has to stop, whenever someone complains about someone, you need to seriously consider the implications of delaying a fix for any further amount of time.
Paid the equivalent monetary value of five copies of the game, got two copies (that second was a nice gesture), and none of them actually work.
/facepalm
Pretty much the same feeling I had when UWE announced they would be creating their own engine.
/facepalm
And, just weeks after donating that additional amount of money... "no longer wholly and only devoted to full time development of NS2."
/facepalm
I really don't want to know what that means, given past development traits. "We're a small team.." and so on. I can't imagine how this situation can be rectified by going forward with new projects, since it really seems like there's a lot of people that are not happy with the state of this game. Most of them appear to have made donations of some kind and probably were NS1 veterans.
I'm pretty sure this game exists because of the people that donated (or so has been said), but it's hard to contemplate such a future following given the current environment and events.
Just a few thoughts. Seems to be the norm for the time being. Thought I would chime in with my semi-negative but fully true opinion. I had to stop doing the facepalm thing after I realized there were limited memory resources on my computer.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I will put some money into the Championship. I actually don't have much interest in tournaments and the comp scene (I play pub, and would consider myself an average player). But you can see the passion the WC organisers put in to this, and for that I am willing to give a bit more to get the game advertised. Granted, I agree with some of the negative things previous posts have mentioned, but beg to differ on others, namely:
- Balance : I don't think balance is bad, I just wish they would release the possible change log before the patch is out. Whilst the Balance Test mod is nice to test things out, I still would have like to know what the changes they are considering are before it goes live (on the web site's front page, and not in a forum topic).
- Performance : This is a biggie, but I know I don't have the PC to make this perform to the way it was meant to (I have an old CPU with a new graphic card). It would still be nice to load faster and get a bit more fps (I would love improvements, but understand the limitation is not always because of th code).
- Learning curve : This isn't Plants vs. Zombies or Angry birds, it is a serious PC game from a yester-era. The learning curve is what it is if you want to enjoy the game, because this game has the depth, and there are no other game like it around atm. You could argue a better tutorial from the beginning (when the game was released) would probably capture and retain more players, that may be true, but with so many other games out there these days, it is debatable.
- No combat as standard : I think getting mods are as easy as it comes, no command line loading, you just join a server and the mods will download and run. My only beef with modding is that new build breaks mods, and that doesn't do much to encourage the modding community, when they have to re-code things after every patch. As to combat as standard, for me that was what kills NS1. I couldn't get a decent "normal" game of NS any more as everyone was just playing combat.
- Match making : this is coming, so I won't comment about it, some would say too little too late. But this is exactly why we need a WC event to advertise about NS2 to get more players back or buy the game.
- Long game / short game / Stompings : these are inherently skill stack issues, so there isn't much UWE can do about it (the Match making should help).
- Focus on Competitive no Pub players: This has been argued to death. I don't understand where people are coming from with this. They are playing the same game, if you say X is OP in the hands of a Pro in a Pub, you need to understand that just means the Pro is good, so no matter what X is, a Pro will find a way to get good at it and will dominate in a pub (there are no other players with this level of skill in a pub to counter it). But in a Comp. game, there are other good players that could counter it, so its not OP in a Comp game. If you make it so a average or decent pub player could counter X at a pro level, imagine what that would be like when 2 equally skill players meet in a Comp (one would destroy the other no matter the skill difference).
Ok, Rant over.
tl;dr: I am putting some money into the WC because it is a community organised event. They are guys like you and I, but are passionate enough to donate their time for our game. If successful, we get a bigger player base. Win-win.
i saw the gui of NS2, the position of the chat ( in the middle of the screen ROTFL ), the plastic movement, i said: this game is not good.
instantly, i dont spend my time in a such game like this, and probably others 1000 players were thinking this and quit instantly.
@hugh Thanks for replying!
The whole feeling in the competitive community is very negative at the moment. And if we take a page from the book of ns1 we can see that it's the competitive community that keeps the game going for years to come. If you look on the ensl website, even the players who have a chance of winning are saying season 3 will most likely be the last (slightly active) season.
If we wanted to send the snails on another holiday then we would have booked a nice little caravan in butlins.
I think you can see and agree that from the responses of the big announcement we are a very needy community who are scared about the uncertainty of our future. A merge in competitive and public play is what i would like and I'm sure people would like to know what to expect and how they can help.
As you said, ns1 was carried thanks to the competitive scene. Why are you just whining about this community-made event ? It's the best thing we ever had...
Seriously, this championship is great to have... First for the event itself that makes the game live, makes people train harder so, play more. Secondly, it's great for the communication and the image it gives to the game. Why do you think LoL and Dota2 are working so well ? Because the competitive scene is tremendous, supported by their developpers and streamings look professional.
Moreover, if you see only cons but no pros for this, just don't give a $ for this. You have the choice. The conclusion given by the thread you just created is absolutely not true. As Hugh sayd, the community takes care of organizing this event, it won't delay any developpement stuff there...
Firstly, train harder? We had to rename div 1 the 'premier league' because those guys are so untouchable. Ask any of the top guys, ns as a program is so demanding that it's all about who has the best computer, not the best aim.
I know UWE's financial support isn't delaying any progress as we speak but they are still putting money into it and they won't see a return -funds are very limited!
A world championship would have been great 3 months ago, in 3 months time (alongside performance fixes and new features), but not now. I will be very surprised if they reach the 30k goal.
It appeals to the minority, and if that's you then good job for donating.
Firstly, train harder? We had to rename div 1 the 'premier league' because those guys are so untouchable. Ask any of the top guys, ns as a program is so demanding that it's all about who has the best computer, not the best aim.
I know UWE's financial support isn't delaying any progress as we speak but they are still putting money into it and they won't see a return -funds are very limited!
A world championship would have been great 3 months ago, in 3 months time (alongside performance fixes and new features), but not now. I will be very surprised if they reach the 30k goal.
It appeals to the minority, and if that's you then good job for donating.
Do you realize the person you're answering to is actually "one of those premier guys"?
This is a bit of a tricky question for me, to support or not to support. All things considered i don't think UWE has dropped the ball just yet, and to me them sponsoring half the event is to show that they know they need their community. I gladly put in money for shadow badge in hopes of future patches with performance improvements and maybe some balance _TWEAKS_. Ns2 is in quite a good spot right now as far as im concerned, and it's fun to play competitive. The biggest problem I'm seeing coming from a div4 team (and i think same goes for other divs) is a bit the lack of teams in general. The step to take from public to competitive is huge, and you have to re-learn the pace of the game entirely since stuff you do actually starts mattering, being a good aim is not enough.
Yes, an event like this is good publicity and it will hopefully show many others that this game has something special to it, and people will hopefully buy it. But after buying it they join a server, find that they have no idea what they are doing, they get low performance, people running around like headless chickens, mute commanders, getting roflstomped by 1-2 comp players dominating the whole server. like someone mentioned, being in div4, hell being in comp in general pretty much teaches you how to roflstomp pubs. There are a few exceptions ofcourse, but this is to show how big the gap is at the moment.
I have full respect for ANY new team that gets founded, it's truly a tough thing to undertake, and you WILL loose all of your games for a long time before you get the hang of things. Main reason being that the teams that exist are tough as ******* compared to where you come from. yes the gap from premiere divison to div 4 is also huge, but imagine joining in and getting rolled over by karvalakki, the shittiest clan in ns2 still going strong in season 3.. You get a bad taste for the game. It took us forever to learn how to win as marines since we never got so far as to get 2 CC:s or jetpacks and whatnot since we never got past early/mid game from lack of skill. Once we gained skill we had to learn the strategies and so on. This game is not easy on anyone, but for a team that has good spirit it can be helluva rewarding at times, and i do mean that. Haven't had this much fun and adrenaline rushes for years.
Matchmaking will hopefully bring an answer to this long step from public to organized play. However, organizing this event now feels a bit rushed and early. Why should i pay money for the same(ish) top 4 teams flying (again?) to germany and watch same stuff going down again. Knowing that us from div4 have no chance of ever getting close to getting any screentime. Hell we got it tough already, our matches are rarely streamed, when streamed it's not a commentator it's a spectating critic talking bad about us (and the opposing team) for being bad at ns2. Not a great way to motivate the lower div teams of an already tiny scene. Some casters do it right, one guy keeping up the tension and citing whats happeing, then the co-caster throws in some deeper insight in between. Like in real sports. Instead of saying "what the *** is xxxx doing?" it should be "xxxx is doing yyy!" - "if xxx would have done zzzz, things would have gone better". Not saying I'm jealous for not getting streamed or anything, or that we would be playing for fame(LOL?), but showing some love to the lower teams would show also the newcomers and fresh teams that they are respected, wanted and loved for sticking around. A good tool for learning is to watch your own game from a stream afterwards, since the demo system is basically non existant. Watching premier div players battle it out looks easy but you can't just copy them, you need to learn from your own level opponents first. But i digress...
I see this world championship as some sort of emergency advertising for ns2 to get in more players, this time the only difference is that it is NOT UWE doing it for getting sales. It's the community and the comp community itself that loves to see ns2 continue so much they're willing to do something about it and invest their own money in it, instead of whining on forums about performance and balance. Thats some huge dedication right there. These things go hand in hand, more publicity- more players - more money - more fixing. I say if the community pulls this off and keeps ns2 alive until matchmaking comes in and the long awaited performance fixes, i think ns2 will have a chance of being around for a year or two more and hopefully the comp scene will stay healthy and bring in new teams from the pubs. We're getting mighty lonely having only 1-2 equally skilled teams to play over and over again, but we will stay around a while longer just to see where this goes in the near future.
So especially if you are a comp player, i think the right thing to do is to contribute, even if you won't ever come close to being part of the final event.
I just hope it brings enough interest from new people, pub people and gather people to set up more teams. if we suddenly get 10 noob teams in, they would still have a good time playing against each other in a lower division and slowly grow to be the new sauna/archaea/whatnot. Being the only newcomer is tough and many quit from lack of motivation after a while. Also the ensl page is a piece of ***** and impossible to navigate. If community and UWE would also take a merging step here on some level on top of the upcoming matchmaking, being a team would be less of a pain. And get the info out on how to make teams and where to start would be a nice touch for these events, or any streams in general.
I see a huge tendency towards negativity on the forums. Just remember ya'll that there's still a huge amount of people out there who are still having fun, who look forward to updates, events and all the good stuff, not being represented on the forums. That is not to say we are happy with the state things are in right now, but it's still the better experiences you can get from a multiplayer game. What UWE needs to do is to work closer with the community setting this comp stuff going, those are the loyal guys who will donate and stick with this game for years if you cater their needs. The average pub guys get tired at some point, and move on. you can't get adrenaline kicks from pubs after a certain amount of time, but close nsl games can give you sweaty hands two years later. Sponsoring this community driven event is absolutely a step in the right direction.
However; really bad timing on this event. like tallhotblonde said 3 months ago or in 3months would have been more like it. If we're still here 3months from now that is :P
(messy post but i'm multitasking at work, cut me some slack for making dough)
TL:DR
give love to lower div teams, give love to new teams, give love to community, give love to uwe, give love to casters, give money to wasabi.
Firstly, train harder? We had to rename div 1 the 'premier league' because those guys are so untouchable. Ask any of the top guys, ns as a program is so demanding that it's all about who has the best computer, not the best aim.
Any decent quad core and a GTX 560 can max out the game, doing it right now @ 60+ FPS constant @ 1920x1080/60hz vsync (SSAO off because no only does it perform bad, but it looks like garbage), client performance is hardly an issue, it's the server end that's taking a hit. If you can run battlefield 3 you can run this game.
My specs
AMD Phenom II 820 @ 2.8ghz OC 3.3ghz
6GB 1600mhz DDR3 Corsair XMS3
EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 1gb non OC
60gb Corsair Force Sata III SSD R525/W475 (Makes the difference when streaming textures, typical harddrives should run fine without texture streaming, but slows loading time.)
My PC in todays standard is mid range, running the game on a 32 bit operating system on a GTS 220, 3gb of DDR2 RAM on the latest 5400RPM harddrive with a mobile grade 2.2-2.6ghz CPU is not recommended for even todays lightest tasks, your argument is invalid.
I'm sure since the game is single threaded, dual threaded when loading, an Intel Pentium G2020 @ 3.1ghz based on Ivy Bridge dual core CPU for only $70 has more than enough core performance to even be up to par with i5 CPU's and can run single threaded games like DayZ and NS2 (cpu demanding games) maxed out. Toss in a GTX 650 for $120 or go cheaper and get a used 560ti for $100, 4gb of 1600mhz DDR3 for $30, slap a motherboard and harddrive in with a good 400w PSU, suddenly you're maxing out NS2 at a playable framerate (give or take SSAO/AA/Medium Texture Resolution) and also most modern games on a budget build. It's not UWE's fault people are attempting to play their gorgeous looking game on a 5 year old 2008 build.
The only concerns I see right now are the server performance, it's incredibly rough right now, but it's also another reason the game is optimized for 6v6/8v8, 12-16 slot servers do not take a lot to run stable, get into 20-32 slots, suddenly things get sketchy during late game, even if you overclock.
6v6 is playable and we've had good times playing vs US teams from EU. It's a horror experience to be on 18+ servers in lategame on pubs, even on local servers.
edit: but yes, we have started doing better after our team members upgraded their hardware. 2008 is so... 2008.
Firstly, train harder? We had to rename div 1 the 'premier league' because those guys are so untouchable. Ask any of the top guys, ns as a program is so demanding that it's all about who has the best computer, not the best aim.
I know UWE's financial support isn't delaying any progress as we speak but they are still putting money into it and they won't see a return -funds are very limited!
A world championship would have been great 3 months ago, in 3 months time (alongside performance fixes and new features), but not now. I will be very surprised if they reach the 30k goal.
It appeals to the minority, and if that's you then good job for donating.
Skyice, some people have ambitions when it comes to competition.
Some people want to train and try and break into that top 4 for the chance to go to Cologne.
Some people (most) don't want to. (Casual:Competitive ratio and even some players in the competitive scene themselves just play for organised fun show this)
Hugh said in the State of The Game that UWE does see spikes in revenue after events and free weekends. It seems very ignorant of you to state that they won't see a return.
Just because the announcement was the other day doesn't mean the tournament is tomorrow. I can't remember when it is but I'm sure it's a 2-3 months away which is great in your eyes, no?
It really angers me that people aren't seeing this for what it is. It's an opportunity; it's not a demand! Frankly, it also angers me that you think the "whole feeling in the competitive community is very negative" towards this. You think you represent me? Sorry, no. Attitudes and arguments like this bundling people together into "competitive" and "casual" communities is what causes frictions in the game as proven by the response to this announcement.
If $30,000 are raised by the community, let there be a tournament. If it only benefits the 36 top players I can't imagine them forking out ~$800 each. But say 6000 people donate $5 each, then that's 6000 people who want to see the tournament and benefit from it being put on! $30,000 is a respectable threshold and contribution from the community to hold such an event and I presume UWE's involvement isn't anything more than that, but if it is, so be it; it's another opportunity for them to advertise their game.
If the target is not met, there is no loss.
If the target is met, there is gain to those who care.
I'm not in the top 4 teams but the whole event would be very entertaining in my eyes and so I'm going to donate and in fact I'm probably going to donate more than I would have to show my support. I understand a lot of people are not interested in trying to compete or even watch the event and they don't have to donate, but to bang on about it is ridiculous, insulting to Wasabi, Zefram, Reddog, and UWE, and childish.
because I was from l4d1 competitive game and that game has been released since 2008
As you all aware - the game is dead but the competitive players are still around just for pug. Moreover, l4d1 was totally banned in australia but the shitty l4d2 can still be accessed in australia as long as you change the setting to low violence (which is funny imo because the l4d competitive players usually set that setting to improve their performance)
The last l4d1 tournament was around early this year where the price i think around 50$ for the winner and it was supported by the community itself.
So seriously, the developers made this event to support us and why are we refusing this? the ns2 competitive players play the ensl tournaments every seasons and without realizing - you all are part of huge help to keep the community alive in ns2. The developers are trying to promote the game and helping the community to grow - why did we play ensl tournament in the first place? They never point a gun on our head to donate the reinforced nor NS2WC. Dont forget that the developers are consist of small members that are trying to make something big - its really tough! Help the developers so they can help us
The first time i ever launched this game - i knew that this game would work perfectly well on competitive level. I mean come on - im pretty sure that those who ever played any game OR with competitive personality would feel the same. Since i had no where to go after l4d1 competitive play i really hope that this game would be my new home for competitive scenes and i really do hope that this NS2WC will attract more players to play the game competitively.
Sometimes when you play the game and teach the rookie player about this game would be more valuable than donate the money
It's a little odd to have a "world championship" when the game barely hits 1000 players. The title loses its meaning to say the least.
Matchmaking is an active project being worked on by Lucas and Andi. The prototype Hive website is already live, and will be publicised when ready. While you might consider it 'too late' for such a system to be introduced, we do not. There is never a 'too late' for a feature that will improve player's ability to play the game.
I think what they meant is that MM systems in general require a decently sized pool of players to function properly, something that NS2 currently lacks; not to mention that NS2 is a hard game for traditional MM to cope with, this is not like counter-strike where a single player can win the match by killing 4/5 of the enemies.
Firstly, train harder? We had to rename div 1 the 'premier league' because those guys are so untouchable. Ask any of the top guys, ns as a program is so demanding that it's all about who has the best computer, not the best aim.
Any decent quad core and a GTX 560 can max out the game, doing it right now @ 60+ FPS constant @ 1920x1080/60hz vsync (SSAO off because no only does it perform bad, but it looks like garbage), client performance is hardly an issue, it's the server end that's taking a hit. If you can run battlefield 3 you can run this game.
My specs
AMD Phenom II 820 @ 2.8ghz OC 3.3ghz
6GB 1600mhz DDR3 Corsair XMS3
EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 1gb non OC
60gb Corsair Force Sata III SSD R525/W475 (Makes the difference when streaming textures, typical harddrives should run fine without texture streaming, but slows loading time.)
My PC in todays standard is mid range, running the game on a 32 bit operating system on a GTS 220, 3gb of DDR2 RAM on the latest 5400RPM harddrive with a mobile grade 2.2-2.6ghz CPU is not recommended for even todays lightest tasks, your argument is invalid.
Good to know you can run the game so well, but an often mentioned issue is the uneven performance with this game and different computers. I'm running 1280x720 with everything off or on low with a 555BE overclocked from 3.2 to 3.6, a 5850BE with 4 gigs of ram and although I usually start out the game with great fps, usually by the 10 minute mark and always by the 15 I'm usually bouncing between 40-60 with dips into the 20s every so often...
I still play and enjoy my time with ns2, so far i have 880 hours invested in the game and can see myself playing it for a good while yet. When i played the competitive scene i didn't enjoy it and i am happy to just play with the majority on pub servers for a fun game every now and then.
I think there is something wrong with the game, that is obvious since everytime there is a sale or free weekend we see an influx in players that quickly dies off by the end of the week. I believe it has to do with learning curve, The game is hardcore and it will always be difficult to address that issue, without having specific servers for newish players that only allow players with under so many hours of play time in them.
Comments
This guy knows whats up.
The amount of negativity is shocking
Barely able to keep servers running and they got that amount on the side for about 50 people to go to Germany and roughly 750 people watching this at most?
Right, but still we donated for a totally different cause. We wouldn't have otherwise.
The level of the conversation was still somewhat civilzed (compared to LoL standards) all the negativity aside. Until you came in with your wall of text, Caps Lock and saying stuff like:
I'm going to respond to this, since I think it sums up the core of people's issues well. In and of itself, I think it's a great thing that UWE are doing for some dedicated members of this community who want to produce more content. However, this World Championship is inevitably going to be uphill because Natural Selection 2 to this day is a prematurely-released game.
The real issue is, everyone is hungry for a good, polished Natural Selection 2, yet the cost of development to end users keep going up and opportunities for growth keep getting missed or squandered. I think the message is, the game needs improvement before it can become any sort of sensation.
To put it into perspective, if UWE's message was, "BIG SATURDAY ANNOUNCEMENT: We paid a third party $30,000 to create a working keybind system that is accessible to everyone", people would have been genuinely happy. Can you imagine? "OMG, Reinforced can afford to bring us FIVE of these sorts of bonuses!".
Sometimes, love is blind...
Funds are limited, they have no other means of income except from low ns2 sales and the reinforced program. And that is why people are so angry.
A world championship would have been amazing at the right time... Just after or coinciding with the release of SABOT would have made much more sense. And instead of wasting money flying out the same best players in the world they could have taken the ENSL under their wing and spent it on integrating the website with new dynamic ladder formats and leagues and cups ect.
Its just one massive fail.
so advertisement at 50% cost is 100% money taken away from the company... ergo marketing is a loss?
damn, someone tell movie/game publishers, coca cola and those other mega coorporations that they're wasting their money!
Oh and good look finding practise matches against a team your own skill level. The members in the Div 4 teams will smash half of the public players on these forums.
The integration from public to competitive just isn't being made easy enough.
They'll only gain from it if it leads to more than 30,000 dollars in NS2 sales, something I doubt greatly because the game is a) more than a year old b) broken and c) will likely be nearly dead by February or whenever this event happens. Not to mention that the past two live events were horribly handled by UWE and can only be described as utter failures.
For some reason i missed this game when it was released and just stumbled upon it when it was on steam for a free weekend, but sofar worth every penny as its been a while since i enjoyed gaming like i do with ns2
First up, thank you for contributing to the Shadow tier - We really appreciate it. I understand your upset, but cannot agree fully, and here is why!
Unknown Worlds did not create the NS2WC, your fellow players did! If you do not like the idea, it is a debate you should have with them, not with us. We think it is fantastic that the community has chosen to undertake this endevour, and we are doing our best to help them make the dream a reality. Here is some recently posted information about how the NS2WC works, and how UWE is a helper not an organiser: http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-2-world-championship/
Matchmaking is an active project being worked on by Lucas and Andi. The prototype Hive website is already live, and will be publicised when ready. While you might consider it 'too late' for such a system to be introduced, we do not. There is never a 'too late' for a feature that will improve player's ability to play the game.
I don't understand what you mean by 'us and them' - You will have to give me some more explanation. We have been very open about our current priorities, and what the game plan is. Here is the most recent in depth State of the Game post: http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/state-of-development-september-2013/ - In it, you can find out what is being worked on, and what our plans are. If we don't give you enough information, I am sorry for that, truly. It is our mission to be extremely open and we try very hard to do it. If we don't talk loud enough, often enough and fast enough for you - It is not because we don't want to, but because our throats are hoarse from trying. Our human limits prevent us from telling you what everyone is up to at every moment of every day, and it is the nature of communication that not everything we say will be read, heard, and seen.
If you want to break it down into two groups, its those who help and those who don't help, and those who don't help are the ones who complain the most/loudest.
Complaining is the most useful thing anyone can do to help any game project. The developers can then track the number of complaints and if that number is decreasing, they're doing a good job. There will never be zero complaints, but there's no reason to be terrified of a complaint, they're often made by people who genuinely care, and aren't a fanatic who will blindly accept the good and the bad.
Complainers don't want to just sit back, hope and wait for the problems to be fixed. They want the biggest problems to be focused on and fixed right now. For example, performance: Despite numberous patches and fps increases I still experience an unacceptable level of input lag at framerates lower than 180, this is ridiculous, there's something in the code that needs to be fixed. Telling someone to stop complaining about that tells uwe that it's not worth fixing right now, which means when new players come into the game, they go "ooh, this game doesn't feel right" and quit, never to return.
We're supposed to be here to give UWE feedback and allow them to make decisions on where to focus their efforts. But the fanboys and hopeful quiet people seem to want to leave UWE in the dark about real issues. This means UWE often has to stab blindly, guessing what needs working on.
This has to stop, whenever someone complains about someone, you need to seriously consider the implications of delaying a fix for any further amount of time.
/facepalm
Pretty much the same feeling I had when UWE announced they would be creating their own engine.
/facepalm
And, just weeks after donating that additional amount of money... "no longer wholly and only devoted to full time development of NS2."
/facepalm
I really don't want to know what that means, given past development traits. "We're a small team.." and so on. I can't imagine how this situation can be rectified by going forward with new projects, since it really seems like there's a lot of people that are not happy with the state of this game. Most of them appear to have made donations of some kind and probably were NS1 veterans.
I'm pretty sure this game exists because of the people that donated (or so has been said), but it's hard to contemplate such a future following given the current environment and events.
Just a few thoughts. Seems to be the norm for the time being. Thought I would chime in with my semi-negative but fully true opinion. I had to stop doing the facepalm thing after I realized there were limited memory resources on my computer.
- Balance : I don't think balance is bad, I just wish they would release the possible change log before the patch is out. Whilst the Balance Test mod is nice to test things out, I still would have like to know what the changes they are considering are before it goes live (on the web site's front page, and not in a forum topic).
- Performance : This is a biggie, but I know I don't have the PC to make this perform to the way it was meant to (I have an old CPU with a new graphic card). It would still be nice to load faster and get a bit more fps (I would love improvements, but understand the limitation is not always because of th code).
- Learning curve : This isn't Plants vs. Zombies or Angry birds, it is a serious PC game from a yester-era. The learning curve is what it is if you want to enjoy the game, because this game has the depth, and there are no other game like it around atm. You could argue a better tutorial from the beginning (when the game was released) would probably capture and retain more players, that may be true, but with so many other games out there these days, it is debatable.
- No combat as standard : I think getting mods are as easy as it comes, no command line loading, you just join a server and the mods will download and run. My only beef with modding is that new build breaks mods, and that doesn't do much to encourage the modding community, when they have to re-code things after every patch. As to combat as standard, for me that was what kills NS1. I couldn't get a decent "normal" game of NS any more as everyone was just playing combat.
- Match making : this is coming, so I won't comment about it, some would say too little too late. But this is exactly why we need a WC event to advertise about NS2 to get more players back or buy the game.
- Long game / short game / Stompings : these are inherently skill stack issues, so there isn't much UWE can do about it (the Match making should help).
- Focus on Competitive no Pub players: This has been argued to death. I don't understand where people are coming from with this. They are playing the same game, if you say X is OP in the hands of a Pro in a Pub, you need to understand that just means the Pro is good, so no matter what X is, a Pro will find a way to get good at it and will dominate in a pub (there are no other players with this level of skill in a pub to counter it). But in a Comp. game, there are other good players that could counter it, so its not OP in a Comp game. If you make it so a average or decent pub player could counter X at a pro level, imagine what that would be like when 2 equally skill players meet in a Comp (one would destroy the other no matter the skill difference).
Ok, Rant over.
tl;dr: I am putting some money into the WC because it is a community organised event. They are guys like you and I, but are passionate enough to donate their time for our game. If successful, we get a bigger player base. Win-win.
instantly, i dont spend my time in a such game like this, and probably others 1000 players were thinking this and quit instantly.
bye
The whole feeling in the competitive community is very negative at the moment. And if we take a page from the book of ns1 we can see that it's the competitive community that keeps the game going for years to come. If you look on the ensl website, even the players who have a chance of winning are saying season 3 will most likely be the last (slightly active) season.
If we wanted to send the snails on another holiday then we would have booked a nice little caravan in butlins.
I think you can see and agree that from the responses of the big announcement we are a very needy community who are scared about the uncertainty of our future. A merge in competitive and public play is what i would like and I'm sure people would like to know what to expect and how they can help.
Seriously, this championship is great to have... First for the event itself that makes the game live, makes people train harder so, play more. Secondly, it's great for the communication and the image it gives to the game. Why do you think LoL and Dota2 are working so well ? Because the competitive scene is tremendous, supported by their developpers and streamings look professional.
Moreover, if you see only cons but no pros for this, just don't give a $ for this. You have the choice. The conclusion given by the thread you just created is absolutely not true. As Hugh sayd, the community takes care of organizing this event, it won't delay any developpement stuff there...
I know UWE's financial support isn't delaying any progress as we speak but they are still putting money into it and they won't see a return -funds are very limited!
A world championship would have been great 3 months ago, in 3 months time (alongside performance fixes and new features), but not now. I will be very surprised if they reach the 30k goal.
It appeals to the minority, and if that's you then good job for donating.
Do you realize the person you're answering to is actually "one of those premier guys"?
Yes, an event like this is good publicity and it will hopefully show many others that this game has something special to it, and people will hopefully buy it. But after buying it they join a server, find that they have no idea what they are doing, they get low performance, people running around like headless chickens, mute commanders, getting roflstomped by 1-2 comp players dominating the whole server. like someone mentioned, being in div4, hell being in comp in general pretty much teaches you how to roflstomp pubs. There are a few exceptions ofcourse, but this is to show how big the gap is at the moment.
I have full respect for ANY new team that gets founded, it's truly a tough thing to undertake, and you WILL loose all of your games for a long time before you get the hang of things. Main reason being that the teams that exist are tough as ******* compared to where you come from. yes the gap from premiere divison to div 4 is also huge, but imagine joining in and getting rolled over by karvalakki, the shittiest clan in ns2 still going strong in season 3.. You get a bad taste for the game. It took us forever to learn how to win as marines since we never got so far as to get 2 CC:s or jetpacks and whatnot since we never got past early/mid game from lack of skill. Once we gained skill we had to learn the strategies and so on. This game is not easy on anyone, but for a team that has good spirit it can be helluva rewarding at times, and i do mean that. Haven't had this much fun and adrenaline rushes for years.
Matchmaking will hopefully bring an answer to this long step from public to organized play. However, organizing this event now feels a bit rushed and early. Why should i pay money for the same(ish) top 4 teams flying (again?) to germany and watch same stuff going down again. Knowing that us from div4 have no chance of ever getting close to getting any screentime. Hell we got it tough already, our matches are rarely streamed, when streamed it's not a commentator it's a spectating critic talking bad about us (and the opposing team) for being bad at ns2. Not a great way to motivate the lower div teams of an already tiny scene. Some casters do it right, one guy keeping up the tension and citing whats happeing, then the co-caster throws in some deeper insight in between. Like in real sports. Instead of saying "what the *** is xxxx doing?" it should be "xxxx is doing yyy!" - "if xxx would have done zzzz, things would have gone better". Not saying I'm jealous for not getting streamed or anything, or that we would be playing for fame(LOL?), but showing some love to the lower teams would show also the newcomers and fresh teams that they are respected, wanted and loved for sticking around. A good tool for learning is to watch your own game from a stream afterwards, since the demo system is basically non existant. Watching premier div players battle it out looks easy but you can't just copy them, you need to learn from your own level opponents first. But i digress...
I see this world championship as some sort of emergency advertising for ns2 to get in more players, this time the only difference is that it is NOT UWE doing it for getting sales. It's the community and the comp community itself that loves to see ns2 continue so much they're willing to do something about it and invest their own money in it, instead of whining on forums about performance and balance. Thats some huge dedication right there. These things go hand in hand, more publicity- more players - more money - more fixing. I say if the community pulls this off and keeps ns2 alive until matchmaking comes in and the long awaited performance fixes, i think ns2 will have a chance of being around for a year or two more and hopefully the comp scene will stay healthy and bring in new teams from the pubs. We're getting mighty lonely having only 1-2 equally skilled teams to play over and over again, but we will stay around a while longer just to see where this goes in the near future.
So especially if you are a comp player, i think the right thing to do is to contribute, even if you won't ever come close to being part of the final event.
I just hope it brings enough interest from new people, pub people and gather people to set up more teams. if we suddenly get 10 noob teams in, they would still have a good time playing against each other in a lower division and slowly grow to be the new sauna/archaea/whatnot. Being the only newcomer is tough and many quit from lack of motivation after a while. Also the ensl page is a piece of ***** and impossible to navigate. If community and UWE would also take a merging step here on some level on top of the upcoming matchmaking, being a team would be less of a pain. And get the info out on how to make teams and where to start would be a nice touch for these events, or any streams in general.
I see a huge tendency towards negativity on the forums. Just remember ya'll that there's still a huge amount of people out there who are still having fun, who look forward to updates, events and all the good stuff, not being represented on the forums. That is not to say we are happy with the state things are in right now, but it's still the better experiences you can get from a multiplayer game. What UWE needs to do is to work closer with the community setting this comp stuff going, those are the loyal guys who will donate and stick with this game for years if you cater their needs. The average pub guys get tired at some point, and move on. you can't get adrenaline kicks from pubs after a certain amount of time, but close nsl games can give you sweaty hands two years later. Sponsoring this community driven event is absolutely a step in the right direction.
However; really bad timing on this event. like tallhotblonde said 3 months ago or in 3months would have been more like it. If we're still here 3months from now that is :P
(messy post but i'm multitasking at work, cut me some slack for making dough)
TL:DR
give love to lower div teams, give love to new teams, give love to community, give love to uwe, give love to casters, give money to wasabi.
Peas.
Any decent quad core and a GTX 560 can max out the game, doing it right now @ 60+ FPS constant @ 1920x1080/60hz vsync (SSAO off because no only does it perform bad, but it looks like garbage), client performance is hardly an issue, it's the server end that's taking a hit. If you can run battlefield 3 you can run this game.
My specs
AMD Phenom II 820 @ 2.8ghz OC 3.3ghz
6GB 1600mhz DDR3 Corsair XMS3
EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 1gb non OC
60gb Corsair Force Sata III SSD R525/W475 (Makes the difference when streaming textures, typical harddrives should run fine without texture streaming, but slows loading time.)
My PC in todays standard is mid range, running the game on a 32 bit operating system on a GTS 220, 3gb of DDR2 RAM on the latest 5400RPM harddrive with a mobile grade 2.2-2.6ghz CPU is not recommended for even todays lightest tasks, your argument is invalid.
I'm sure since the game is single threaded, dual threaded when loading, an Intel Pentium G2020 @ 3.1ghz based on Ivy Bridge dual core CPU for only $70 has more than enough core performance to even be up to par with i5 CPU's and can run single threaded games like DayZ and NS2 (cpu demanding games) maxed out. Toss in a GTX 650 for $120 or go cheaper and get a used 560ti for $100, 4gb of 1600mhz DDR3 for $30, slap a motherboard and harddrive in with a good 400w PSU, suddenly you're maxing out NS2 at a playable framerate (give or take SSAO/AA/Medium Texture Resolution) and also most modern games on a budget build. It's not UWE's fault people are attempting to play their gorgeous looking game on a 5 year old 2008 build.
The only concerns I see right now are the server performance, it's incredibly rough right now, but it's also another reason the game is optimized for 6v6/8v8, 12-16 slot servers do not take a lot to run stable, get into 20-32 slots, suddenly things get sketchy during late game, even if you overclock.
edit: but yes, we have started doing better after our team members upgraded their hardware. 2008 is so... 2008.
Skyice, some people have ambitions when it comes to competition.
Some people want to train and try and break into that top 4 for the chance to go to Cologne.
Some people (most) don't want to. (Casual:Competitive ratio and even some players in the competitive scene themselves just play for organised fun show this)
Hugh said in the State of The Game that UWE does see spikes in revenue after events and free weekends. It seems very ignorant of you to state that they won't see a return.
Just because the announcement was the other day doesn't mean the tournament is tomorrow. I can't remember when it is but I'm sure it's a 2-3 months away which is great in your eyes, no?
It really angers me that people aren't seeing this for what it is. It's an opportunity; it's not a demand! Frankly, it also angers me that you think the "whole feeling in the competitive community is very negative" towards this. You think you represent me? Sorry, no. Attitudes and arguments like this bundling people together into "competitive" and "casual" communities is what causes frictions in the game as proven by the response to this announcement.
If $30,000 are raised by the community, let there be a tournament. If it only benefits the 36 top players I can't imagine them forking out ~$800 each. But say 6000 people donate $5 each, then that's 6000 people who want to see the tournament and benefit from it being put on! $30,000 is a respectable threshold and contribution from the community to hold such an event and I presume UWE's involvement isn't anything more than that, but if it is, so be it; it's another opportunity for them to advertise their game.
If the target is not met, there is no loss.
If the target is met, there is gain to those who care.
I'm not in the top 4 teams but the whole event would be very entertaining in my eyes and so I'm going to donate and in fact I'm probably going to donate more than I would have to show my support. I understand a lot of people are not interested in trying to compete or even watch the event and they don't have to donate, but to bang on about it is ridiculous, insulting to Wasabi, Zefram, Reddog, and UWE, and childish.
because I was from l4d1 competitive game and that game has been released since 2008
As you all aware - the game is dead but the competitive players are still around just for pug. Moreover, l4d1 was totally banned in australia but the shitty l4d2 can still be accessed in australia as long as you change the setting to low violence (which is funny imo because the l4d competitive players usually set that setting to improve their performance)
The last l4d1 tournament was around early this year where the price i think around 50$ for the winner and it was supported by the community itself.
So seriously, the developers made this event to support us and why are we refusing this? the ns2 competitive players play the ensl tournaments every seasons and without realizing - you all are part of huge help to keep the community alive in ns2. The developers are trying to promote the game and helping the community to grow - why did we play ensl tournament in the first place? They never point a gun on our head to donate the reinforced nor NS2WC. Dont forget that the developers are consist of small members that are trying to make something big - its really tough! Help the developers so they can help us
The first time i ever launched this game - i knew that this game would work perfectly well on competitive level. I mean come on - im pretty sure that those who ever played any game OR with competitive personality would feel the same. Since i had no where to go after l4d1 competitive play i really hope that this game would be my new home for competitive scenes and i really do hope that this NS2WC will attract more players to play the game competitively.
Sometimes when you play the game and teach the rookie player about this game would be more valuable than donate the money
xxx
I think what they meant is that MM systems in general require a decently sized pool of players to function properly, something that NS2 currently lacks; not to mention that NS2 is a hard game for traditional MM to cope with, this is not like counter-strike where a single player can win the match by killing 4/5 of the enemies.
Good to know you can run the game so well, but an often mentioned issue is the uneven performance with this game and different computers. I'm running 1280x720 with everything off or on low with a 555BE overclocked from 3.2 to 3.6, a 5850BE with 4 gigs of ram and although I usually start out the game with great fps, usually by the 10 minute mark and always by the 15 I'm usually bouncing between 40-60 with dips into the 20s every so often...
I think there is something wrong with the game, that is obvious since everytime there is a sale or free weekend we see an influx in players that quickly dies off by the end of the week. I believe it has to do with learning curve, The game is hardcore and it will always be difficult to address that issue, without having specific servers for newish players that only allow players with under so many hours of play time in them.