ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
If ns2 cannot sustain a community on its own merits then it is not worth playing clearly. People stop playing games all the time in favour of more fun games, and if combat is the last thing that people find mildly amusing then so be it.
As an old gamer I went through wolfenstein all the way to modern games. NS is the game that stood out for me but much like complex games and pioneers of innovation such as battlezone it had selective audience. Instead of picking up audience from both genres previosly mentioned games actually only filtered people who like one AND the other (RTS/FPS) instead of people who like one OR the other. I consider myself one of those people who like both game types and one who truly appreciates complexity of a game.
NS2 however has issues that run a bit deeper than poorly marketed/unappreciated game...
First off, as complex as the game is initially, someone thought that its a good idea to add more complexity, even artificial one such as that s****y orange AV. For example, gameplay was fine but then we got increased its difficulty by adding bunnuhoping, strafejumping and so on. Pro player hyper dedicated individuals got new toys but pretty much 90% of casual audience got boned, doomed to be meat for better players. So instead of bringing the game closer to common gamer and earn his faithfulness, game took direction of supporting visions of pro players so even when we get influx of new people they pretty much get stomped out by overwhelming need to be dedicated and sheer amount of time needed to learn enjoy the game.
As previosly mentioned this game is not like chess at all, not even by a long shot. Its marketed as asymmetric. That's not entirely true though. NS was, ns2 is much less so with different models of strategic gameplay. NS2 its basically ranged vs melee and that's pretty much all asymmetry that one will get.
Could go on but game already took certain direction that a lot of people I know (and myself) do not like. There is a lot of nice things I can say about the game (art (technical/concept), sounds, inventive game) but direction seems to fix thing nobody really cared about (bhop/av) instead of making assault rifle being less recoil-less pea shooter/one hive aliens vs one cc rines/real auto balance/matchmaking/focusing on making game more accessible and dynamic for new players.
Combat mod with kill counter limit for win is needed as gamemode on Official UW servers
Official is key world
Too late.
Well crazy things hapend in gameing world all time, like Dark Souls , game so hard and so unfair that got ther rep on it. Directors have not expected such win, by reskin of console game, lots of tweaking just to get it to work, custom mods, etc
So the thing is u never know, fix Alien OP in late game, aka buff Exos , get combat mod, and rename it to deathmatch, get Marine vs Marine and rename it to some familiar from popular games, make biger diference of it server browser, and get free wikend on steam.
Get in contact with famos youtube comentators, it is not that hard to be honest, unless u are lazy. But u know, if dont move your hands u dont swimming boy
First of all, performance problems are still a huge problem
NS2 has a lot of problems, fundamentally, at a game design level that prevent it from being a really popular or great game. It's a game based around the dune model of rts games that has very little strategic depth. There are very few strategic decisions to be made, most of the decisions are tactical in nature (which makes the rts components pretty superfluous). There's also too big an emphasis on aim rather than other skills. The tactical skills are pretty straightforward and relatively obvious if you have any experience in fps, so all there is to develop is your aim. In comparison, a game like tribes has large emphasis on energy management, weapon selection, and movement that allows players to excel even if they don't have godlike tracking aim.
Having an rts game where there's few effective choices ruins the point of setting your game up in that framework. Tribes 2 has substantially more strategic depth than ns1 or ns2, and that game doesn't need a forced commander position or rts elements to do it. In addition it rewards a more wide variety of types of skill beyond mechanical aim (which also allows more people to contribute even without having fantastic aim).
It's a combination of multiple factors. Yes league is more approachable, but it also is a large company and spends millions in advertising. Aren't there like 8 guys who work at UWE?
I agree with Vlad that some changes are just mind blowing. But I would like to point out too, that the game doesn't attract some kind of players that NS1 did. Those are ppl that play games like minecraft. My friend did like NS1 cause he could go gorge, drop and build stuff all the time. NS2 doesn't allow you to do that.
i would love to see a top ns2 player who has never played quake go into it and be nearly as high level as an equally high level quake player would be if he came over to ns2. speaking of duels, of course.
spoiler - wouldn't happen.
I would love to be able to actually get better at ns2, but the lack of general skill prevents anyone who wants to get good, to simply train the game. I can't train on public nor combat. The only way for me to train in this game is to go play with a teammate 1v1 or go play another game. Top ns2 players are in no condition to be good enough to go dominate high level players on their own game.
NS2 has game phases... For a new player to hop in and start learning all of them at once may be overwhelming. By game phases: early game (skulks vs marines), mid game (lerks vs marines) and late game (you get the point here...). Maybe putting current game time or past game time (i.e. 10 minutes since the round started/10 minutes since the last round ended) in the server browsers for players looking to improve at a specific time frame would be a nice add. Also what sucks, when joining alien/marine mid-late game, you're minuscule... Your res blows and you're either a skulk vsing shotguns or a marine with an lmg shooting a fade/onos. Don't get me wrong though, if you're skilled, you could probably kill the marine/onos but you would've also done that and better with a fair amount of pres coinciding with the game time. The game seems to be out of the players control when joining mid-late game unless you're GOLDEN. (+2 joshhhy) There needs to be a better system for players joining the game. Give them the res they would've had if they were there since the start of the game or a bit less, maybe? Coming up with a solution may be difficult but recognizing the issue at hand is the first step.
Skulks vs marines half dmg mod is good if anyone wants to make it. A great player won't spank you so badly and guess what? You might even killem ! The game lacks practice mods/modes and on top of that don't forget that NS2 demands a phat system for you to play at an optimal level.
Congratulations on the championship successes. NS2 deserves great esports fame. NS2 is immensely rewarding to play when everyone is past the newbie stages, particularly because of the great strategic depth. It is the best kind of game.
Makes me yet again wonder why essentially mindless action shooters like call of duty, unreal tournament, or quake have always been more popular then games like natural selection, savage, or firearms. If a game genre like MOBA can attract players to complicated games with difficult learning curves, why is it the opposite with shooting games?
I guess Blizzard saw this because they are about to dumb the shit out of the MOBA genre with HotS, CCG's too with Hearthstone.
My guess is its some psychological crap about gratification or feeling of rewards? It sucks though. NS2 has steadily increased its player base, but I honestly thought it would have achieved 10 times the current playerbase when I first played the first feature-rich stable beta build.
So why do you think that typically shooters that have a high learning curve are less successful than games like Starcraft or MOBA's which also have steep learning curve's?
Is it because we just expect shooters in general to be a mindless activity? Does thinking and shooting put a lot of people off? What do you think?
wtf did that guy just say quake is a mindless action game? Lol - there's so much that goes into playing a 1v1 on quake it'd make your head spin
Anyway - I think the game suffers player issues because of performance, and I'm sticking by that
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
I have already mentioned, ignore the guy and his lack of knowledge of Quake, but the general point is, avoiding NS2 specifically...
Why are games with a lot of depth, GENERALLY, less successful than those with not a lot of depth in the FPS category, while other really deep and difficult games in other Genres don't have this issue.
Why are games with a lot of depth, GENERALLY, less successful than those with not a lot of depth in the FPS category, while other really deep and difficult games in other Genres don't have this issue.
Can you name some examples of unsuccesful deep FPS games? I simply don't think there are many, even less so on recent years.
In general, I think there's now some demand for deeper games over all genres, but reaching and retaining the audience requires more than just middle of the road safe design and huge advertising budged. Not many big companies are willing to risk their project and not all the smaller ones have the skills and resources to pull one off.
To be honest, from my experience the masses much prefer button-mashing style games where they can feel a sense of satisfaction (by getting kills) even when they are really bad, so any game that requires a decent level of personal skill, a high end gaming PC (120Hz monitor etc), teamwork and communication, is already asking too much of today's PC gamer. These guys came to NS2, did poorly, and then quit. And to be honest, I think the game is better off for it. Last thing any of us wants is 3/4 of your team being 1v1 heroes that never use comms and don't listen to the commander. As long as UWE get the money from them, I can live with that.
Team Fortress 2 is a great example of a game that catered to the majority, because each class caters to a different style of play. Bad players love their crutches, so Soldier rocket spam, Demoman sticky bombs, Spy stealth and backstabs, Sniper bodyshots on slow Heavies, Engineer turrets etc. caters to them in way that might bore the rest of us. It all boils down to low skill floor, high skill ceiling, something that is pretty difficult for an FPS unless you create classes that have varying floors and ceilings.
Depth is great, but if you want a high player count, then the skill floor needs to be lowered considerably so that button-mashers can feel rewarded.
Comments
NS2 however has issues that run a bit deeper than poorly marketed/unappreciated game...
First off, as complex as the game is initially, someone thought that its a good idea to add more complexity, even artificial one such as that s****y orange AV. For example, gameplay was fine but then we got increased its difficulty by adding bunnuhoping, strafejumping and so on. Pro player hyper dedicated individuals got new toys but pretty much 90% of casual audience got boned, doomed to be meat for better players. So instead of bringing the game closer to common gamer and earn his faithfulness, game took direction of supporting visions of pro players so even when we get influx of new people they pretty much get stomped out by overwhelming need to be dedicated and sheer amount of time needed to learn enjoy the game.
As previosly mentioned this game is not like chess at all, not even by a long shot. Its marketed as asymmetric. That's not entirely true though. NS was, ns2 is much less so with different models of strategic gameplay. NS2 its basically ranged vs melee and that's pretty much all asymmetry that one will get.
Could go on but game already took certain direction that a lot of people I know (and myself) do not like. There is a lot of nice things I can say about the game (art (technical/concept), sounds, inventive game) but direction seems to fix thing nobody really cared about (bhop/av) instead of making assault rifle being less recoil-less pea shooter/one hive aliens vs one cc rines/real auto balance/matchmaking/focusing on making game more accessible and dynamic for new players.
Still playing it still hoping for better game.
Well crazy things hapend in gameing world all time, like Dark Souls , game so hard and so unfair that got ther rep on it. Directors have not expected such win, by reskin of console game, lots of tweaking just to get it to work, custom mods, etc
So the thing is u never know, fix Alien OP in late game, aka buff Exos , get combat mod, and rename it to deathmatch, get Marine vs Marine and rename it to some familiar from popular games, make biger diference of it server browser, and get free wikend on steam.
Get in contact with famos youtube comentators, it is not that hard to be honest, unless u are lazy. But u know, if dont move your hands u dont swimming boy
NS2 has a lot of problems, fundamentally, at a game design level that prevent it from being a really popular or great game. It's a game based around the dune model of rts games that has very little strategic depth. There are very few strategic decisions to be made, most of the decisions are tactical in nature (which makes the rts components pretty superfluous). There's also too big an emphasis on aim rather than other skills. The tactical skills are pretty straightforward and relatively obvious if you have any experience in fps, so all there is to develop is your aim. In comparison, a game like tribes has large emphasis on energy management, weapon selection, and movement that allows players to excel even if they don't have godlike tracking aim.
Having an rts game where there's few effective choices ruins the point of setting your game up in that framework. Tribes 2 has substantially more strategic depth than ns1 or ns2, and that game doesn't need a forced commander position or rts elements to do it. In addition it rewards a more wide variety of types of skill beyond mechanical aim (which also allows more people to contribute even without having fantastic aim).
I would love to be able to actually get better at ns2, but the lack of general skill prevents anyone who wants to get good, to simply train the game. I can't train on public nor combat. The only way for me to train in this game is to go play with a teammate 1v1 or go play another game. Top ns2 players are in no condition to be good enough to go dominate high level players on their own game.
Skulks vs marines half dmg mod is good if anyone wants to make it. A great player won't spank you so badly and guess what? You might even killem ! The game lacks practice mods/modes and on top of that don't forget that NS2 demands a phat system for you to play at an optimal level.
wtf did that guy just say quake is a mindless action game? Lol - there's so much that goes into playing a 1v1 on quake it'd make your head spin
Anyway - I think the game suffers player issues because of performance, and I'm sticking by that
Why are games with a lot of depth, GENERALLY, less successful than those with not a lot of depth in the FPS category, while other really deep and difficult games in other Genres don't have this issue.
In general, I think there's now some demand for deeper games over all genres, but reaching and retaining the audience requires more than just middle of the road safe design and huge advertising budged. Not many big companies are willing to risk their project and not all the smaller ones have the skills and resources to pull one off.
Team Fortress 2 is a great example of a game that catered to the majority, because each class caters to a different style of play. Bad players love their crutches, so Soldier rocket spam, Demoman sticky bombs, Spy stealth and backstabs, Sniper bodyshots on slow Heavies, Engineer turrets etc. caters to them in way that might bore the rest of us. It all boils down to low skill floor, high skill ceiling, something that is pretty difficult for an FPS unless you create classes that have varying floors and ceilings.
Depth is great, but if you want a high player count, then the skill floor needs to be lowered considerably so that button-mashers can feel rewarded.