I don't see a problem with the game going f2p. It surely would bring new players and opportunity for the scene to grow. It just seems that people find it as a threat since then there would be loads of "noobs" "ruining other players games". But like OwNzOr already said
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
I play on lots of pub servers without noob players on ithem. Low-skilled, maybe, but low-skill /= noob. Low skill players know how the game works, just aren't very good at the shooting/positional etc, noobs don't know what is going on and want comm to rush exos so they can stomp the aliens (ie haven't got a clue).
make it free, it'll double or triple the player base easily. A larger playerbase is what this game needs. UWE can make a nice income from selling vanity items indeed, i'd buy the cool ones for sure ^^.
Too many people are complaining that it'll turn ns2 into a noob infested game... truth is there isn't any single pub server out there without 70% noob players on it.
You are intechanging noob and unskilled.
There are a lot of players who get how the game works but are just not good at it. A noob has no idea what is going onat all and is extremely unexperienced in all of the game's mechanics.
The noobs fills a critical yet dangerous part of a game. The noob can be accepting, become inundated in the community, get better etc...
The noob can also (especially when there are tons of em) react violently against the game, fail to understand it and its mechanics, and blame the game and the dedicated player base for their failures.
Noobs are actually pretty scary for word of mouth reasons.
The idea of allowing the potential for a green sea of new players giving eachother poor advice, developen sect-like ideas about game balance and strategy, sounds scary. Furthermore, the impact this could have on real game balance and healthy servers is also alarming.
UWE are not perfect and have balanced the game in questionable directions before (exo balance is extremely confusing along with grenade launchers and the fade at times). Imagine what would happen if a large unexperienced player base came into the game complaining about the balance...
TLDR: F2P player bases, unless properly cradled, can be horrifying.
I don't think the problem of low playerbase is connected with this game having a cost associated with it. This game has had close to 10k (a long with other high peak numbers, most months between 3k-6k) unique people logged in at one point in time (http://steamcharts.com/app/4920), however we struggle to keep a consistent 1.5k average monthly which suggests other issues.
Other issue I see is how would server admins keep track of bans? I can just see an influx in troll comms. No thanks.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited March 2014
Exactly.
I welcome new players, and I'm pretty sure everyone else does too. That's not what the issue is.. We've had nothing but waves of green for years now.
I am afraid of the quality of players that come with F2P.. Especially without a robust and mandatory tutorial.
If you are one of those who delude themselves regarding the quality of players that come with F2P, you need only look at the resources, staff and money that the big wigs in the industry have to devote to combating said toxicity, as evidence. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/using-science-to-reform-toxic-player-behavior-in-league-of-legends/
They've hired PhDs and neuroscientists ffs!
It's real issue to the players who leave because of it, the new players who are inducted into it, and for the product's reputation.
Or you could just go play those games and experience it yourself.. But i wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Did you even read the article you posted?
It's an article on how riot games has tried to improve a toxic playerbase, it makes no mention to why that toxic playerbase chose to play the game.
You are simply making unfounded assumptions that they did because the game is F2P, despite the subject not being mentioned once in the article.
I mean of course it being F2P has to be the reason, because no other games have toxic players...right??
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
You're right, I'm sure the toxic players just ended up there because there was free mountain dew and doritos...
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an entry barrier like a credit card wasn't involved.
What was I thinking showing a developer with all the resources in the world having trouble dealing with toxic players... I'm sure a 9 man indie dev studio could just as easily handle such a thing... We just have to not offer them flavored chips..
I'm glad this started some discussion and some very good points have been made here and there. Whether or not going f2p is the right way to go, NS2 could use some more players and income for the developers, and I think most of us can agree with that. Sure there are players who don't care about playing in a small scene and people who just sit in forums writing stuff and really don't play that much at all and for that reason don't really know what is going on, but they are the minority.
Now let's think how UWE could get some more players, keep them and make some profit out of it. Let's start with cosmetics.
Selling harmless cosmetics is a really good way to make money. Look how much Reinforcement Program alone made profit with just few character skins and badges. Cool looking weapon skins that fit on the game's atmosphere (no pink eye blowing skins with ponies here even if someone likes that stuff), new character skins and even custom emblems would definitely be a selling point. Reinforcement Program even left many people craving for more onos badges, so there sure are people ready to pay for these things. Hell, I would even buy the black marine from NS1 and it wouldn't need a whole new character model, animations, voices, just some changes to the face. Cosmetic things also help players feel more devoted to their character and adds the feel of uniqueness, which I don't see as a bad thing at all.
Now we need players that will pay for these things. And by that I mean we need players playing the game, we need numbers. If the game has more players, it also has more potential payers. Now the way of getting these players can, will and has been argued many times before. There has been Steam sales, Humble Bundle sales (1$), updates, tournaments, mods etc. but the problem has always been in retaining the player base. Sure there are many reasons why this game doesn't fit to the masses, mainly the game being complex and hard to get in and the word going around that the game is dead, which it is not as of yet. Now some of you may disagree with me here, but I believe that some of the major reasons is the lack of good matchmaking, feel of progress (all that CS:GO, BF4, COD leveling stuff that us old school players really don't even care about, but many people do) and character customization. Players need to feel somewhat more addicted. I know people who play CS:GO for just the sake of new weapon skins. UWE has done some ground work here already, which is fantastic. But when the work is finished, we still need to attract more new players for matchmaking to properly work and I don't think it can be done when there are only 200-800 players online. Now that steam sales has been used so many times that it doesn't even get attention anymore, Humble Bundle option is used, I don't know how this game could get that final burst of players coming in without using heavy and really expensive marketing OR going f2p. If there is something else that UWE could do to increase the player base and which I can't figure out now, then for the sake of this game do it.
If the game goes f2p, it needs to be ready for it. That means good matchmaking, stable build and all that stuff I mentioned in this post before. It needs to retain the players. F2p is the final option, feels scary in a way and shouldn't be taken lightly, so it needs to be done right once and for all. This was a long post and even longer post to be written by me, but I hope you give it a thought.
As long as there is some form of barrier for entry, if not a price tag..
I suggest a lengthy in depth and mandatory tutorial that you have to go through first.
Else you just end up with the masses stumbling into games, faces smashed into a wall, shouting obscenities... ruining the game for everyone else through saturation of incapable players permanently.
quake live accomplishes this, I remember when I first tried quake live I struggled with their advanced rocket jumping tutorial/bhop practice maps
Sure I could aim and destroy in quake - but my movement and map control was weak and a freaking tutorial even proved that to me haha
I have no problem with NS2 going free to play -- however I'd like to have a separation of servers or maybe have the rookie tag last longer for they could be on these separate servers - it'd be heavily frustrating when you actually want to play ns2 to always have a constant group of players who do not have an understanding of what's going on. But we could really use the extra players - It's the main thing that prevents me from launching NS2 more is that I know I'm always finding empty servers on the east coast
You're right, I'm sure the toxic players just ended up there because there was free mountain dew and doritos...
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an entry barrier like a credit card wasn't involved.
What was I thinking showing a developer with all the resources in the world having trouble dealing with toxic players... I'm sure a 9 man indie dev studio could just as easily handle such a thing... We just have to not offer them flavored chips..
F2P is also a server admin's nightmare. Unbannable Trolls.
Though I guess one could do more playtime filtering to combat that, would still be an issue on rookie/unlimited servers.
And I agree that F2P games generally have a very large amount of toxic players, even if they are good. I renember playing games in CB, later OB, where the community was great, and as soon it become released F2P the community simply turned horrible; in other games you have crazy amount of hackers, like APB, and many unmature players. TF2 essentially lost it's spirit when it became F2P (or rather when the trading came around, F2P only made it worse), so every just cares about the shitty items now, and not so much having fun and playing each other.
F2P can work, and in regards to money it surely does, but it still seems to hurt the attitude of the player severely. But also often these games with F2P were designed with F2P in mind.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
NS2 isnt made for the masses and never going to be.
A small enthusiast playerbase is way better than a large one 80% filled with idiots.
I have never played a online shooter before with nearly no cheaters for example. The few spotted in the last year are a joke compared to blockbuster games like CoD. MW2 was unplayble after 2 weeks for example cause cheaters on every server.
UWE made some big mistakes in the past to hold the playerbase after the steam- and humble bundle sales.
Dont let them make another big mistake .
Dont know if UWE/Max is still working on the engine.
If so, we should be ready for a last final steam sale.
What we need to bring and hold new players to the game is:
- Increased server and clientrates for an smoother gameplay (still not available)
- real rookie servers where the new players can play without getting stomped nonstop (option is available through shine now)
- real non rookie servers, where the experienced players can have a place to play (option is available through shine now)
- a votable alternative to random like the TGNS captains game (the gather system in the current form isnt working)
- Decrease the the price to 10€
- mark unplayble servers in the browser (real bad servers filled @ every sale in the past)
- dont show >24 slot servers in the browser (UWE use the 6v6 tourney as an commercial for the game and the new players going to play on clusterfuck servers)
What happen after the sales in the past:
New players joining 24 slots server running @ 4 ticks (rubberbanding from hell) and/or gettting nonstop stomped by 100-1 kd/r fades/gorges or whatever.
Im sure half of this players thought: "What an shitgame, BF4 is running better on my laptop", the other half thought "Nice game, but to many cheaters".
``Nice game but to many cheaters`` yeah lol, that was i think when one fade stomped whole mine team, was like 55-2, and second best in ther team 4-10, and we haved good team. But thing that most noob love is exos, and they are useless now, imao. To be honest all this game need is free wekends,but not just one time but more times. And exo related, that theme will be very popular when Titanfall gets out.
You're right, I'm sure the toxic players just ended up there because there was free mountain dew and doritos...
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an entry barrier like a credit card wasn't involved.
You are using faulty logic, a game has toxic players?, the game is also F2P?, it must be the fault of F2P!
That is oversimplifying the issue completely.
Having to pay for a game stops toxic players playing?, I guess that explains how CoD, RUST, WoW, counter strike, left 4 dead have such fabled communities /s
Every game has a sh#t side to its community, that's just life, you take a large enough group of people and you will find all sorts.
Its nothing new and has nothing to do with F2P, Google "why does *insert game* have a bad community" and you will almost certainty find people complaining about toxic players, trolls, hackers, general d##kish behavior.
What was I thinking showing a developer with all the resources in the world having trouble dealing with toxic players... I'm sure a 9 man indie dev studio could just as easily handle such a thing... We just have to not offer them flavored chips..
LoL and NS2 are hardly interchangeable, not only are the games vastly different, the total players is massively different. Even if NS2 went F2P the player base is hardly going to explode to where UWE are faced with some impossible mission to deal with a vast horde of the trolls.
That's another problem i have with the anti F2P argument, some people make it sound like there are masses of trolls rubbing their hands together thinking, "i can't wait till NS2 is F2P, cause im gonna troll the sh#t outta it"
I struggle to believe the reason the toxic players and trolls we are worried about don't play this game is the cost barrier, i suspect it has a lot more to do with NS2 being largely unknown with a small playerbase i.e. If my intention was to troll I'm not going to chose a game virtually no one plays.
When the game was on the humble bundle you could have got it for pennies (not quite free but its the closest we are going to get for arguments sake) and from my own personnal experience despite a quite large increase in players i experienced pretty much no increase in trolls or toxicity.
You're right, I'm sure the toxic players just ended up there because there was free mountain dew and doritos...
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an entry barrier like a credit card wasn't involved.
You are using faulty logic, a game has toxic players?, the game is also F2P?, it must be the fault of F2P!
That is oversimplifying the issue completely.
...
He never said F2P was causal. His point is that F2P is correlated with more toxic players.
You're the one oversimplifying. F2P increases toxic players. Why? Cause you have people who don't care about it. There's no deterrant to trolling. Someone that has paid for the game is less likely to constantly troll, or at least reduce the number of trollers because there are other easier (and less expensive) games to troll/be toxic in.
F2P for NS2 is not going to work until server performance is improved drastically, let alone matchmaking. I don't know the situation in other regions but the current state of servers in Australia is woeful.
We've recently been reduced to maybe one server provider that is hopefully of tolerable performance. With that being an individuals personal server providing a Max of 3 public servers and 1 public server. The official servers (multiplay?) Have begun to drop ticks regularly along with all other servers provided in Aus. This includes the AusNS2 servers which are also on multiplay.
Several builds ago we had a much larger choice but declining server performance has really limited us. I am dreading our 3-4 simultaneous league matches tonight.
Now how are you going to fit a F2P player base along with matchmaking into a situation like this? Maybe I'm wrong and it will not be an issue as Australia and the rest of the SEA area is only small. But this would put so many players off and I don't see it having a real growth impact on our community.
I must emphasise, the following opinion is that of my own, and not necessarily that of UWE as a company.
I would rather see NS2 have a second life and thrive as a F2P game with some nice cosmetics like badges and skins to purchase, rather than see the game & it's hardcore playerbase slowly wither away to nothingness like NS1 did. Sure NS1 & NS2 has had the hardcore fans to carry it along (myself included), but now UWE is a company with families to feed, bills to pay, and other games to develop. This all costs money.
NS2 is a game like NS1; a game where you can spend thousands of hours, for free* (one-time purchase), enjoying vast amounts of entertainment with little way of recurring revenue for UWE save for a few recent programs. Over time, sales dwindle. It's just the nature of the business. However, the F2P model shows that with a lower barrier to entry and numerous options of micro-revenue, NS2 could continue to pay for it's own development and more so. Involving the community in various forms to help generate value like in Dota2 and TF2 would also only encourage the game to flourish.
These are just my current thoughts, and are subject to change because I enjoy and appreciate different viewpoints and well-made arguments.
He never said F2P was causal. His point is that F2P is correlated with more toxic players.
I was exaggerating for affect, but it is fairly clear ironhouse feels F2P increases the amount of toxic players and the such playing the game.
Yes, and it's clear I'm not the only one, either.
Noticed your join date ; did you play the entirety of the free to play weekends?
I spend my time coaching rookies, (i do everytime this game has had waves of green) and boy is there a huge difference between the sale weekends and those, Imo. And that was about as accurate of a measurement as you can get to if this actually occurred...
So i feel like my predictions or assumptions are more practical and realistic than you wish to accredit.
TF2 going F2P was awful. And that game was purposefully designed for casual fun and unintentional teamwork.
I would rather swallow a spoonful of hooker glitter than have NS2 go F2P.
TF2 was valves test bench with the F2p model
Valves first test at f2p was a game called 'alien swarm' (possibly valves best online game ever in terms of fun, hilariously ditched for no reason when it was pretty much the best thing they've ever made)
TF2 I use to play a boat load, it was extremely fun, and when you wanted to play it competitive/serious.. It was very competitive - while limited in certain aspects and a very simple objective, the actual player skill/teamwork was quite rewarding
Valve threw that all out the door with the introduction of their 'new items'
At first it was pretty acceptable, the medic got an extra healing gun which traded off being invincible for producing a guaranteed critical shot for x amount of time - a really well balanced weapon and heavily accepted by the community.
Valve also added server side commands to remove random crits, make shotguns static, and remove varying damage. Also all great things for the game competitive side
Then valve added hats.. (this led to heavy performance decrease over time, much like how csgo suffers the same issue - it's not huge but for people with lower end rigs those framerates are actually quite damaging)
Then they started added unbalanced weapons (force of nature etc) this eventually moved onto a super fast rocket launcher for the soldier, amongst other silly items and then the launch of a store - tons of random weapons with just RNG stats and the f2p model which essentially is what ruined TF2 for me and many others (I personally uninstalled tf2 before I even saw the release of the store because I saw where it was headed) -- heck people began leaving tf2 open to just idle the game to receive these idiotic hats, I even got a hat for not being a person who 'idled'
Onto ns2s side - if the game went F2P I personally wouldn't mind, badges are quite cool - and the extra marine and alien skins are quite cool -- along with shoulder emblems, if the payments for those styled cosmetics were all it would be then I'd be fully accepting of it - going tf2s path would just make me quit the game instantaneously. Also ns2s cosmetics haven't seem to have effected performance in anyway for me, not sure what makes games like TF2/CSGO lose so many frames over the extra items since it shouldn't really be that much for the client to render. Possibly a problem with the engine itself
I must emphasise, the following opinion is that of my own, and not necessarily that of UWE as a company.
I would rather see NS2 have a second life and thrive as a F2P game with some nice cosmetics like badges and skins to purchase, rather than see the game & it's hardcore playerbase slowly wither away to nothingness like NS1 did. Sure NS1 & NS2 has had the hardcore fans to carry it along (myself included), but now UWE is a company with families to feed, bills to pay, and other games to develop. This all costs money.
NS2 is a game like NS1; a game where you can spend thousands of hours, for free* (one-time purchase), enjoying vast amounts of entertainment with little way of recurring revenue for UWE save for a few recent programs. Over time, sales dwindle. It's just the nature of the business. However, the F2P model shows that with a lower barrier to entry and numerous options of micro-revenue, NS2 could continue to pay for it's own development and more so. Involving the community in various forms to help generate value like in Dota2 and TF2 would also only encourage the game to flourish.
These are just my current thoughts, and are subject to change because I enjoy and appreciate different viewpoints and well-made arguments.
One question though, is NS2 the kind of game you can put things for micro-revenue in without making the game silly or imbalanced? Hats are ruled out, different weapons are hard because of balance... Some armors with slightly different coloring isn't gonna carry far. (When was the last time you paid attention to a marines armor? Whether it was assault or the better assault?)
Personally I don't really care if someone got sniper-pistol back because they paid 20$ for it. But that might be because I'd be the first to buy it LOL! :P
P.S. About the low quality F2P players problem - just put a tutorial that is actually DEMANDING and COMPULSORY. Like if it takes 20min to play thru I'd say it'd be worth a lot. But yeah, considering our tutorials so far, I'm not very hopeful.
Noticed your join date ; did you play the entirety of the free to play weekends?
I spend my time coaching rookies, (i do everytime this game has had waves of green) and boy is there a huge difference between the sale weekends and those, Imo. And that was about as accurate of a measurement as you can get to if this actually occurred...
So i feel like my predictions or assumptions are more practical and realistic than you wish to accredit.
Funny you mention join date, just got an email telling me its my 1 year anniversary.
But i joined the forums several months after i bought the game, which was 31st of october 2012, which if i'm not mistaken is a day after the steam launch of NS2, and so far i have 1350 hours logged.
So whilst I'm aware there are people who started playing the game considerably longer ago and for a longer time than myself, i have experienced the various steam sales and free weekends.
And my experience of the steam sales and free weekends are largely positive, sure there were some toxic players that came in, but that's to be expected whenever there's a sudden increase in players, however overall i personally experienced little toxicity from rookies.
I can't see this argument going on much longer, you're giving anecdotal evidence, i'm giving anecdotal evidence, short of UWE making the game F2P we have little sure fire way of knowing for sure.
One question though, is NS2 the kind of game you can put things for micro-revenue in without making the game silly or imbalanced? Hats are ruled out, different weapons are hard because of balance... Some armors with slightly different coloring isn't gonna carry far. (When was the last time you paid attention to a marines armor? Whether it was assault or the better assault?)
Personally I don't really care if someone got sniper-pistol back because they paid 20$ for it. But that might be because I'd be the first to buy it LOL! :P
P.S. About the low quality F2P players problem - just put a tutorial that is actually DEMANDING and COMPULSORY. Like if it takes 20min to play thru I'd say it'd be worth a lot. But yeah, considering our tutorials so far, I'm not very hopeful.
Maybe one day.
shoulder emblems and badges are enough for cosmetics
The question of NS2's business model has been actively discussed recently at Unknown Worlds. Flayra in particular has taken an interest in analysing whether it would be appropriate to change it. It is also one my personal favourite questions to debate inside my giant, obscure spreadsheets!
However: There are currently no plans to make NS2 a 'pay-to-play' rather than the 'pay-to-download' game it currently is. Note my careful choice of words: There is no such thing as 'free to play'. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
There are substantial costs, to both customers and ourselves, of adopting a model that replaces a one-off up-front cost with some other revenue source. There are pertinent data available that suggest that simply removing a pay gate from a game does not necessarily increase the number of people playing.
There are currently plans to conduct experiments that, if they prove various hypotheses, could change the future of NS2 and ensure that it receives attention, content, and events (for example, the World Championship) that belie its mature state and set it apart substantially from the traditional life cycle of mature products. The World Championship badge DLC was the first of those tests, and you will see another one within 30 days - Along with an explanation of what the hell we are testing.
@Fulgo, your question is controversial, and has clearly riled up an impassioned debate. That is a good thing!
Cosmetics could work. The Alien lifeforms are the most obvious. Who can say that they look "unnatural" anyway? Add away, and put a price tag on it. I'm sure there are people out that there are willing to pay for a scarier Fade or cuddlier Gorge. Marines on the other hand are a bit more complicated, but just look at Aliens (the movie): every character was a character with a patch on their uniform, cigarr, headscarf... How about new voices?
If I'm honest I can't say I really give a monkey's about cosmetic items, business models or the impact of F2P. There's more qualified, better informed people out there to think about and decide on this stuff. I just want to see NS2 continue to evolve and hopefully grow.
One of the thing that's kept me drawn to NS2 over the years is the way its been kept fresh and interesting through the constant development we've seen at the alpha stages and even post release.
While not everyone would agree all changes have been for the best, they have always perked my interest that little bit more and squeezed new life and fun out of the game for me. Whatever is on the horizon the fact that UWE have plans makes me a happy man.
Comments
There are a lot of players who get how the game works but are just not good at it. A noob has no idea what is going onat all and is extremely unexperienced in all of the game's mechanics.
The noobs fills a critical yet dangerous part of a game. The noob can be accepting, become inundated in the community, get better etc...
The noob can also (especially when there are tons of em) react violently against the game, fail to understand it and its mechanics, and blame the game and the dedicated player base for their failures.
Noobs are actually pretty scary for word of mouth reasons.
The idea of allowing the potential for a green sea of new players giving eachother poor advice, developen sect-like ideas about game balance and strategy, sounds scary. Furthermore, the impact this could have on real game balance and healthy servers is also alarming.
UWE are not perfect and have balanced the game in questionable directions before (exo balance is extremely confusing along with grenade launchers and the fade at times). Imagine what would happen if a large unexperienced player base came into the game complaining about the balance...
TLDR: F2P player bases, unless properly cradled, can be horrifying.
Other issue I see is how would server admins keep track of bans? I can just see an influx in troll comms. No thanks.
I welcome new players, and I'm pretty sure everyone else does too. That's not what the issue is.. We've had nothing but waves of green for years now.
I am afraid of the quality of players that come with F2P.. Especially without a robust and mandatory tutorial.
If you are one of those who delude themselves regarding the quality of players that come with F2P, you need only look at the resources, staff and money that the big wigs in the industry have to devote to combating said toxicity, as evidence.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/using-science-to-reform-toxic-player-behavior-in-league-of-legends/
They've hired PhDs and neuroscientists ffs!
It's real issue to the players who leave because of it, the new players who are inducted into it, and for the product's reputation.
Or you could just go play those games and experience it yourself.. But i wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Pretty sure over half of them already bailed long ago.
Did you even read the article you posted?
It's an article on how riot games has tried to improve a toxic playerbase, it makes no mention to why that toxic playerbase chose to play the game.
You are simply making unfounded assumptions that they did because the game is F2P, despite the subject not being mentioned once in the article.
I mean of course it being F2P has to be the reason, because no other games have toxic players...right??
Who previously worked for valve, in relation to dota 2 (which is F2P) and games like left 4 dead 2 which is not, so your point is?
I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an entry barrier like a credit card wasn't involved.
What was I thinking showing a developer with all the resources in the world having trouble dealing with toxic players... I'm sure a 9 man indie dev studio could just as easily handle such a thing... We just have to not offer them flavored chips..
Now let's think how UWE could get some more players, keep them and make some profit out of it. Let's start with cosmetics.
Selling harmless cosmetics is a really good way to make money. Look how much Reinforcement Program alone made profit with just few character skins and badges. Cool looking weapon skins that fit on the game's atmosphere (no pink eye blowing skins with ponies here even if someone likes that stuff), new character skins and even custom emblems would definitely be a selling point. Reinforcement Program even left many people craving for more onos badges, so there sure are people ready to pay for these things. Hell, I would even buy the black marine from NS1 and it wouldn't need a whole new character model, animations, voices, just some changes to the face. Cosmetic things also help players feel more devoted to their character and adds the feel of uniqueness, which I don't see as a bad thing at all.
Now we need players that will pay for these things. And by that I mean we need players playing the game, we need numbers. If the game has more players, it also has more potential payers. Now the way of getting these players can, will and has been argued many times before. There has been Steam sales, Humble Bundle sales (1$), updates, tournaments, mods etc. but the problem has always been in retaining the player base. Sure there are many reasons why this game doesn't fit to the masses, mainly the game being complex and hard to get in and the word going around that the game is dead, which it is not as of yet. Now some of you may disagree with me here, but I believe that some of the major reasons is the lack of good matchmaking, feel of progress (all that CS:GO, BF4, COD leveling stuff that us old school players really don't even care about, but many people do) and character customization. Players need to feel somewhat more addicted. I know people who play CS:GO for just the sake of new weapon skins. UWE has done some ground work here already, which is fantastic. But when the work is finished, we still need to attract more new players for matchmaking to properly work and I don't think it can be done when there are only 200-800 players online. Now that steam sales has been used so many times that it doesn't even get attention anymore, Humble Bundle option is used, I don't know how this game could get that final burst of players coming in without using heavy and really expensive marketing OR going f2p. If there is something else that UWE could do to increase the player base and which I can't figure out now, then for the sake of this game do it.
If the game goes f2p, it needs to be ready for it. That means good matchmaking, stable build and all that stuff I mentioned in this post before. It needs to retain the players. F2p is the final option, feels scary in a way and shouldn't be taken lightly, so it needs to be done right once and for all. This was a long post and even longer post to be written by me, but I hope you give it a thought.
quake live accomplishes this, I remember when I first tried quake live I struggled with their advanced rocket jumping tutorial/bhop practice maps
Sure I could aim and destroy in quake - but my movement and map control was weak and a freaking tutorial even proved that to me haha
I have no problem with NS2 going free to play -- however I'd like to have a separation of servers or maybe have the rookie tag last longer for they could be on these separate servers - it'd be heavily frustrating when you actually want to play ns2 to always have a constant group of players who do not have an understanding of what's going on. But we could really use the extra players - It's the main thing that prevents me from launching NS2 more is that I know I'm always finding empty servers on the east coast
F2P is also a server admin's nightmare. Unbannable Trolls.
Though I guess one could do more playtime filtering to combat that, would still be an issue on rookie/unlimited servers.
And I agree that F2P games generally have a very large amount of toxic players, even if they are good. I renember playing games in CB, later OB, where the community was great, and as soon it become released F2P the community simply turned horrible; in other games you have crazy amount of hackers, like APB, and many unmature players. TF2 essentially lost it's spirit when it became F2P (or rather when the trading came around, F2P only made it worse), so every just cares about the shitty items now, and not so much having fun and playing each other.
F2P can work, and in regards to money it surely does, but it still seems to hurt the attitude of the player severely. But also often these games with F2P were designed with F2P in mind.
A small enthusiast playerbase is way better than a large one 80% filled with idiots.
I have never played a online shooter before with nearly no cheaters for example. The few spotted in the last year are a joke compared to blockbuster games like CoD. MW2 was unplayble after 2 weeks for example cause cheaters on every server.
UWE made some big mistakes in the past to hold the playerbase after the steam- and humble bundle sales.
Dont let them make another big mistake .
Dont know if UWE/Max is still working on the engine.
If so, we should be ready for a last final steam sale.
What we need to bring and hold new players to the game is:
- Increased server and clientrates for an smoother gameplay (still not available)
- real rookie servers where the new players can play without getting stomped nonstop (option is available through shine now)
- real non rookie servers, where the experienced players can have a place to play (option is available through shine now)
- a votable alternative to random like the TGNS captains game (the gather system in the current form isnt working)
- Decrease the the price to 10€
- mark unplayble servers in the browser (real bad servers filled @ every sale in the past)
- dont show >24 slot servers in the browser (UWE use the 6v6 tourney as an commercial for the game and the new players going to play on clusterfuck servers)
What happen after the sales in the past:
New players joining 24 slots server running @ 4 ticks (rubberbanding from hell) and/or gettting nonstop stomped by 100-1 kd/r fades/gorges or whatever.
Im sure half of this players thought: "What an shitgame, BF4 is running better on my laptop", the other half thought "Nice game, but to many cheaters".
You are using faulty logic, a game has toxic players?, the game is also F2P?, it must be the fault of F2P!
That is oversimplifying the issue completely.
Having to pay for a game stops toxic players playing?, I guess that explains how CoD, RUST, WoW, counter strike, left 4 dead have such fabled communities /s
Every game has a sh#t side to its community, that's just life, you take a large enough group of people and you will find all sorts.
Its nothing new and has nothing to do with F2P, Google "why does *insert game* have a bad community" and you will almost certainty find people complaining about toxic players, trolls, hackers, general d##kish behavior.
LoL and NS2 are hardly interchangeable, not only are the games vastly different, the total players is massively different. Even if NS2 went F2P the player base is hardly going to explode to where UWE are faced with some impossible mission to deal with a vast horde of the trolls.
That's another problem i have with the anti F2P argument, some people make it sound like there are masses of trolls rubbing their hands together thinking, "i can't wait till NS2 is F2P, cause im gonna troll the sh#t outta it"
I struggle to believe the reason the toxic players and trolls we are worried about don't play this game is the cost barrier, i suspect it has a lot more to do with NS2 being largely unknown with a small playerbase i.e. If my intention was to troll I'm not going to chose a game virtually no one plays.
When the game was on the humble bundle you could have got it for pennies (not quite free but its the closest we are going to get for arguments sake) and from my own personnal experience despite a quite large increase in players i experienced pretty much no increase in trolls or toxicity.
You're the one oversimplifying. F2P increases toxic players. Why? Cause you have people who don't care about it. There's no deterrant to trolling. Someone that has paid for the game is less likely to constantly troll, or at least reduce the number of trollers because there are other easier (and less expensive) games to troll/be toxic in.
We've recently been reduced to maybe one server provider that is hopefully of tolerable performance. With that being an individuals personal server providing a Max of 3 public servers and 1 public server. The official servers (multiplay?) Have begun to drop ticks regularly along with all other servers provided in Aus. This includes the AusNS2 servers which are also on multiplay.
Several builds ago we had a much larger choice but declining server performance has really limited us. I am dreading our 3-4 simultaneous league matches tonight.
Now how are you going to fit a F2P player base along with matchmaking into a situation like this? Maybe I'm wrong and it will not be an issue as Australia and the rest of the SEA area is only small. But this would put so many players off and I don't see it having a real growth impact on our community.
I was exaggerating for affect, but it is fairly clear ironhouse feels F2P increases the amount of toxic players and the such playing the game.
I would rather see NS2 have a second life and thrive as a F2P game with some nice cosmetics like badges and skins to purchase, rather than see the game & it's hardcore playerbase slowly wither away to nothingness like NS1 did. Sure NS1 & NS2 has had the hardcore fans to carry it along (myself included), but now UWE is a company with families to feed, bills to pay, and other games to develop. This all costs money.
NS2 is a game like NS1; a game where you can spend thousands of hours, for free* (one-time purchase), enjoying vast amounts of entertainment with little way of recurring revenue for UWE save for a few recent programs. Over time, sales dwindle. It's just the nature of the business. However, the F2P model shows that with a lower barrier to entry and numerous options of micro-revenue, NS2 could continue to pay for it's own development and more so. Involving the community in various forms to help generate value like in Dota2 and TF2 would also only encourage the game to flourish.
These are just my current thoughts, and are subject to change because I enjoy and appreciate different viewpoints and well-made arguments.
Noticed your join date ; did you play the entirety of the free to play weekends?
I spend my time coaching rookies, (i do everytime this game has had waves of green) and boy is there a huge difference between the sale weekends and those, Imo. And that was about as accurate of a measurement as you can get to if this actually occurred...
So i feel like my predictions or assumptions are more practical and realistic than you wish to accredit.
I would rather swallow a spoonful of hooker glitter than have NS2 go F2P.
TF2 was valves test bench with the F2p model
Valves first test at f2p was a game called 'alien swarm' (possibly valves best online game ever in terms of fun, hilariously ditched for no reason when it was pretty much the best thing they've ever made)
TF2 I use to play a boat load, it was extremely fun, and when you wanted to play it competitive/serious.. It was very competitive - while limited in certain aspects and a very simple objective, the actual player skill/teamwork was quite rewarding
Valve threw that all out the door with the introduction of their 'new items'
At first it was pretty acceptable, the medic got an extra healing gun which traded off being invincible for producing a guaranteed critical shot for x amount of time - a really well balanced weapon and heavily accepted by the community.
Valve also added server side commands to remove random crits, make shotguns static, and remove varying damage. Also all great things for the game competitive side
Then valve added hats.. (this led to heavy performance decrease over time, much like how csgo suffers the same issue - it's not huge but for people with lower end rigs those framerates are actually quite damaging)
Then they started added unbalanced weapons (force of nature etc) this eventually moved onto a super fast rocket launcher for the soldier, amongst other silly items and then the launch of a store - tons of random weapons with just RNG stats and the f2p model which essentially is what ruined TF2 for me and many others (I personally uninstalled tf2 before I even saw the release of the store because I saw where it was headed) -- heck people began leaving tf2 open to just idle the game to receive these idiotic hats, I even got a hat for not being a person who 'idled'
Onto ns2s side - if the game went F2P I personally wouldn't mind, badges are quite cool - and the extra marine and alien skins are quite cool -- along with shoulder emblems, if the payments for those styled cosmetics were all it would be then I'd be fully accepting of it - going tf2s path would just make me quit the game instantaneously. Also ns2s cosmetics haven't seem to have effected performance in anyway for me, not sure what makes games like TF2/CSGO lose so many frames over the extra items since it shouldn't really be that much for the client to render. Possibly a problem with the engine itself
jk, good disclaimer & good point.
Personally I don't really care if someone got sniper-pistol back because they paid 20$ for it. But that might be because I'd be the first to buy it LOL! :P
P.S. About the low quality F2P players problem - just put a tutorial that is actually DEMANDING and COMPULSORY. Like if it takes 20min to play thru I'd say it'd be worth a lot. But yeah, considering our tutorials so far, I'm not very hopeful.
Maybe one day.
Funny you mention join date, just got an email telling me its my 1 year anniversary.
But i joined the forums several months after i bought the game, which was 31st of october 2012, which if i'm not mistaken is a day after the steam launch of NS2, and so far i have 1350 hours logged.
So whilst I'm aware there are people who started playing the game considerably longer ago and for a longer time than myself, i have experienced the various steam sales and free weekends.
And my experience of the steam sales and free weekends are largely positive, sure there were some toxic players that came in, but that's to be expected whenever there's a sudden increase in players, however overall i personally experienced little toxicity from rookies.
I can't see this argument going on much longer, you're giving anecdotal evidence, i'm giving anecdotal evidence, short of UWE making the game F2P we have little sure fire way of knowing for sure.
shoulder emblems and badges are enough for cosmetics
However: There are currently no plans to make NS2 a 'pay-to-play' rather than the 'pay-to-download' game it currently is. Note my careful choice of words: There is no such thing as 'free to play'. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
There are substantial costs, to both customers and ourselves, of adopting a model that replaces a one-off up-front cost with some other revenue source. There are pertinent data available that suggest that simply removing a pay gate from a game does not necessarily increase the number of people playing.
There are currently plans to conduct experiments that, if they prove various hypotheses, could change the future of NS2 and ensure that it receives attention, content, and events (for example, the World Championship) that belie its mature state and set it apart substantially from the traditional life cycle of mature products. The World Championship badge DLC was the first of those tests, and you will see another one within 30 days - Along with an explanation of what the hell we are testing.
@Fulgo, your question is controversial, and has clearly riled up an impassioned debate. That is a good thing!
One of the thing that's kept me drawn to NS2 over the years is the way its been kept fresh and interesting through the constant development we've seen at the alpha stages and even post release.
While not everyone would agree all changes have been for the best, they have always perked my interest that little bit more and squeezed new life and fun out of the game for me. Whatever is on the horizon the fact that UWE have plans makes me a happy man.