joshhh, you can re-launch, you can release NS2 every year (like BF:BC2, BF3, BF4, BF:HL and so on), but you have no money for that kind of things. UWE must release Subnautica first, make some money, and only then UWE can decide some things with NS2. NS2 is under CDT FREE development now!!! They can "go home" right now, and the whole world will be with the current NS2 state forever! But, UWE loves NS2, CDT loves NS2, and we love NS2&UWE&CDT xDDD So, right now in the nearest future NS2 will remain on the current evolving road.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
So far I have not seen a viable explenation to one big thing.. How will uwe make money on F2P?
* Right now even if only 1 person a week buys ns2, it still brings in money.. Effort on uwe's part? 0%
* If you make it F2P then no money will flow in. So compared to the previous thats a negative gain.
* Now you can also go F2P and try to make money with skinpacks, extra models etc.. While this brings up the old question of 'how much can you add before you hit memory limits' it also brings up the question 'who will make it?'. Making models and skins takes time and that costs money. So the profit from these skins should be higher then the production costs. Do we all seriously believe that would be the case? Do not forget you must account for people acquiring (new) skins long term to have a more steady income then having ns2 not F2P.
So F2P would boil down to 'is uwe wanting to perhaps lose money in order to make ns2 have possible more players with F2P'. Then assume its a company needing to keep running like any other... and ask yourself... really... would it happen on those terms?
joshhh, you can re-launch, you can release NS2 every year (like BF:BC2, BF3, BF4, BF:HL and so on), but you have no money for that kind of things. UWE must release Subnautica first, make some money, and only then UWE can decide some things with NS2. NS2 is under CDT FREE development now!!! They can "go home" right now, and the whole world will be with the current NS2 state forever! But, UWE loves NS2, CDT loves NS2, and we love NS2&UWE&CDT xDDD So, right now in the nearest future NS2 will remain on the current evolving road.
You obviously misunderstood my wording. Re launch is referring to simply marketing the game as a re release when f2p happens. Not investing money into the game by reskinning it like your examples.
I think F2P makes very good sense once UWE has a few more titles released.
A free NS2 could reel people into the company if it were branded as a "first go" into game design (you have to admit, NS2 as a first stand alone game is pretty impressive)
This way, people see a baseline, and SHOULD know that the quality only goes up from there.
F2P is not being worked on right now. It's not in any plans we have at this moment in time and the CDT are not working on it. However, if the playerbase drops to dangerous levels, it's something that can't be taken off the table and we would be negligent to do so.
However, for now, I don't see it being needed. It is always great to have options though, rather than no choices. Glad we're in a spot where this is possible and we can discuss ideas.
First - thank you for a direct answer that contributes to the discussion instead of a silly meme.
Let's talk about what dangerous levels are. I saw that graph you posted the other day comparing NS2 player count to other games like brink etc. I think that was a good piece of info to consider, but i think we should also consider the following:
As you can see, the average daily player count is down to what it was essentially before NS2's release. There have been spikes with events like the NS2WC, DLC packs etc, but the trend over the last year is a steady decline. At what average daily player count is it to be considered dangerously low?
In the Aus local community, we have started to see recently a rapid decline in both competitive and public player numbers. Many are moving onto to games like CS:GO. Comp wise, it is very hard for local teams to find other teams to scrim outside of scheduled league games. As such, many are spending the majority of their time in other games. Public wise, we used to have 3-4 full servers nightly, now we are down to 1-2 nightly.
In my mind, this is the time to lay the groundwork if you want to at the very least sustain the community, whether that be via F2P, micro-economy systems, or whatever else. This is why this discussion needs to be had, this is why it needs a dedicated thread about the mechanisms for it, and this is why it can't be shrugged off. CDT has done a great job so far since UWE handed over development. Your trello board is great for seeing technical improvements and other objectives you guys have in mind. It's not really a good place to discuss things though. So let's do it here.
You guys are essentially representatives for your community, so let's talk about it friends
To add to this - we don't know what the upcoming release of Combat will do to the playerbase. Sure, you could be optimistic and think that it will bring more people into vanilla NS2. However, that's not exactly what happened in NS1, and history could very well repeat itself again, and instead we could end up with a segmented community that is already close to dangerous levels (at least in the AUS region). The Australasian NS1 community was much healthier when Combat arrived than our NS2 community is now, and whilst it did not outright kill the classic NS1 scene, it did make it frustratingly more and more difficult to get a non-combat game going. There is potential for it to have an even worse segmenting effect now for NS2, considering they are separate games entirely, and the fact that the new Combat is presumably more polished than the old NS1 one.
It would be far too pessimistic to suggest that Combat is going to outright kill NS2 in our area. However, I think it is right to be at least a little bit concerned when we're already struggling to get a second server going most nights during peak hours. It's easy to say that F2P can be put back on the table. But it shouldn't be a reactionary move because if the groundwork isn't set in stone, active players could drop to levels below that which is needed to sustain even a single server in AUS. If the UWE/CDT wait until it is too late to do something about it, by the time F2P is implemented and the playerbase gets this necessary influx to sustain servers again in our region, a significant portion of the existing playerbase may have already moved on to other games, and those wishing to return may be further disuaded because so many have left already that there is not enough experienced players to balance out the newbies. If one of the arguments against F2P is "too many greens", then waiting until the absolute last minute to implement F2P will only make that worse because the ratio of whites/greens will be more problematic the lower we allow the playerbase to drop.
So far I have not seen a viable explenation to one big thing.. How will uwe make money on F2P?
* Right now even if only 1 person a week buys ns2, it still brings in money.. Effort on uwe's part? 0%
* If you make it F2P then no money will flow in. So compared to the previous thats a negative gain.
* Now you can also go F2P and try to make money with skinpacks, extra models etc.. While this brings up the old question of 'how much can you add before you hit memory limits' it also brings up the question 'who will make it?'. Making models and skins takes time and that costs money. So the profit from these skins should be higher then the production costs. Do we all seriously believe that would be the case? Do not forget you must account for people acquiring (new) skins long term to have a more steady income then having ns2 not F2P.
So F2P would boil down to 'is uwe wanting to perhaps lose money in order to make ns2 have possible more players with F2P'. Then assume its a company needing to keep running like any other... and ask yourself... really... would it happen on those terms?
if I missed anything feel free to fill me in.
I know this is an extreme example you're providing, but is 1 person buying NS2 a week even worth hanging onto? As joshhhy mentioned, NS2 has probably reached the end of its sales cycle. The revenue stream for whatever sales NS2 is generating at the moment can't be that high that it makes a significant impact for UWE's future, and if they're still relying on that revenue stream, then they have big problems. At some point, sales have to have dropped below a point where the goodwill generated from letting go of those sales to make sure NS2 retains a healthy playerbase is more beneficial to them as a company than bleeding the game dry of as many sales as they can, which is now fairly equivalent to drawing blood from a stone.
As for the last point, whilst I am admittedly ignorant of the technical aspects regarding memory limits, I think it's unreasonably pessimistic to suggest that the CDT might not be able to accomodate new skins/models into the game, if that is what you are suggesting. As for who's going to provide the skins/models and whether the profit outweighs the costs - I'm not sure how much money goes into paying somebody to make new models, but if that is a legitimate concern, then perhaps this could be drawn from community content. People could submit their skins/models for approval, and the best of these could make it into the game as DLC. We already have all of the skins/models from the workshop to draw from (pending the creators' approval of course). If the incentive of having your own creation make it into the game isn't large enough for people to bother, then giving a small portion of the proceeds from that DLC's sales might work. Money can also be made from shoulder-pads which I imagine wouldn't cost all that much to make and could also be drawn from community creations if costs are too high in comparison to the sales they would likely generate.
It is possible that UWE wouldn't even lose money from this. They might even have more to gain from microtransactions than they would off their current sales. Then include the fact that there is potentially more future customers from them for everybody who is hooked into NS2. Then include the goodwill from their current community for not allowing a game to die in favour of bleeding the game dry of sales, and how that will translate to future sales of Subnautica and whatever other games will come out in the future.
I guess only UWE knows just what sales are like at the moment and if they're worth hanging onto, and it's up to them to make the call. I don't see many new players coming into the game, even in sales weekends when they aren't really making much money from each individual sale anyway, so the revenue stream can't be that large, and I implore them to think long-term about the future of their flagship game.
F2P is not being worked on right now. It's not in any plans we have at this moment in time and the CDT are not working on it. However, if the playerbase drops to dangerous levels, it's something that can't be taken off the table and we would be negligent to do so.
You can argue all day that it's those particular games that bring that level of toxicity, but all evidence points to the contrary, including our free to play weekends that we've had for NS2.
Cons:
Maybe it could also involve more work for the CDT team to adjust all the opinions people have
My post had stated that many of the issues 'hundreds of thousands' of people who quit the game have ALREADY been addressed/improved... hence the whole idea of getting said players to try the game again was what I was going for.
@Obraxis if there is 5 years of effort put into this game, and like 100 people playas it lets say next year, maby you get a cuple dollars from 1 or 2 sales but why not just release free on steam and let the legacy live on for years to come, new players will maby dont get same grasp of the game as 3000 of ns2 gameplay veterans, but you have to start somewhere and what better way then letting them discover the epic thing that ns2 is instead of letting it die off after all that hard work. All the millions have been earned by 2015 anyway just drop it on steam as a christmas gift for everyone to enjoy and let people experience it while you focus on the next game we all can buy while playing this.
I know it's not really related to F2P notion that much, but regarding the concern about NS:Combat, while it is generally 'the same' as the combat mod we have today. If you compare the situation to NS1, and how combat affected the scene when it came out, playerskill outright increased so rapidly because everyone had the tools to experiment in a public game, we saw a massive increase in the skills of public players simply due them being able to train their lifeform/weapons more freely than you ever could in 'vanilla NS'. This is going to be a huge selling point to rookies, as it stands when they join a game at the moment, it is very hard for any of them to learn the mechanics when they flash so quickly.
The point what i'm saying is, we have this huge learning curve for new players with vanilla NS, combat is the goto solution to learn all you need to learn, less penalty for failing, it's basicly a mode that UWE should have made for the game at launch. We will have this now, so we should use this opportunity to lure all the players who already did try to game and failed, and those potential new ones. If you get even a fraction of those players accustomed to the mechanics of NS2, and they get interested of vanilla NS2. Everyone will be happy.
I believe switching to F2P would be very toxic for NS2. Why?
Let’s look what we have: We have a tactical team shooter with strategy elements.
Let’s look what u need to play it: Teamplay, communications and get along with a big learning curve.
A lot of these elements were not used in public games of popular shooters like BF, CS and CoD. So if the players of this shooters try NS2, they mostly don’t understand how important it is to communicate, to stay alive and to protect your structures etc.
Then we have different types of rookies. We have the good guys, who talk and listen to you. Those are very nice to teach and they want to learn it usually even if it takes a while. But we also have those who do so as they would not hear you, they only run and die alone. How do you want to teach them? They only get depressed and after “loosing” 2-3 rounds with 1-15 K/D, they leave and never play it again.
And now you want to make NS2 F2P? About 80% of the new ones (and it will be a huge amount of players) will be like second type of rookies. So it’s more lost than won. The other thing is, sometimes I’m getting really tired of teaching rookies.
I believe in both cases (with F2P anyway) we need a better Tutorial with more content, which also explains how important teamplay, listening to the commander and all these things are. Make some scripts like defend/weld/grind the PG, like resbiting, a little more explaining of upgrades and all these things. I know, if u want to do something good it takes a lot of time. But I also think the community will help again to translate all the stuff to make it easier.
The other thing is, even with a small community we have some full servers... do we need more? Av. Player 400 = 20 Full Servers.
What are the Devs/CDTs plans/thoughts for the future, do u wanna get more players and how?
I love how so many people here correlate "free to play" with "toxic" as if having a dollar to drop on a humble somehow makes you a better person. It's all about the game, what kind of behaviour it brings out in people and more specifically the type of players that game tends to retain.
I love how so many people here correlate "free to play" with "toxic" as if having a dollar to drop on a humble somehow makes you a better person. It's all about the game, what kind of behaviour it brings out in people and more specifically the type of players that game tends to retain.
That's right, I also bought it in a humble. But 1st you still need to pay something. 2nd not everybody can buy something like this (cause of missing CreditCard or no PayPal). But I've also seen what happens when there is a humble or a sale. The rookiewave is horrible and it makes it difficult to play just a little bit organized. When there are 8 rookies (yes, even on no rookieservers) on a 20 slots, you play in fact 6v6 when the rookies don't stack into one team. When they stack it's over after 5 minutes.
And we still have the same problem, that the rookies are underpowered and only get killed by some normal skilled players and they leave the game cause they think it's unbalanced.
Or in other words, the change to F2P would miss the goal to get more players, or may the vets would even stop playing cause of the rookies.
That just reinforces the thought that rookies should play NS:Combat before venturing to "ruin your public experience". We still want these new players, but we are not happy about their performance, and they have a bad experience with the game, we don't need more prove of this as we already know it.
Sounds evil, but that's it. We don't want new players ruin our games. But I need to say, I don't have a problem with the missing skill of the new players, it's the missing knowledge about the necessary things in the game and teamplay. And I think you will not learn this in NS:Combat...
With the Reinforcement skins still available there's a way to monetize NS2 FTP already in place. I still think at the moment its not the right direction to go though.
There no point just in skins, you need to have an income from f2p game, so you must bring in a whole donation/paid system with various stuff and perks.
F2P can work with a community-run tiered system. Any server admin who wants to can set their server to only accept players who have donated to the reinforced program (the details are saved on the hive so must be easy to detect, right?). Remember, the $1 donation is there so if you want to play on adminned servers with far lower risk of trolls and hackers, you just donate the $1 or more through reinforced. It gives an incentive to donate, thereby supporting UWE longer term, but still opens up NS2 as F2P. It would also massively reduce the risk that toxic players pose (sorry @joshhh, while I share the goal of opening up NS2 to as many people as possible, I don't think it's delusional to suggest that toxic players are a potential threat that should be considered seriously).
Of course, if you don't want to donate, or can't afford the $1 to do so (...) then no problem, the UWE servers at least should remain open, and any other server admin who doesn't choose to restrict their server to reinforcement donors.
The risk is you split the community - honestly I don't think this is even an issue at this point. People would be getting the game completely free and have the option to access all servers with a truly nominal cost.
There no point just in skins, you need to have an income from f2p game, so you must bring in a whole donation/paid system with various stuff and perks.
Uh oh, better go tell valve they're doing it wrong.
Seriously though, donations are already in place and perks would unbalance the game. The only reasonable way to do it would be with cosmetic changes. A store with premium skins (both player and structure), huds, announcers and maybe some sort of progression system with cosmetic rewards for bragging rights (like icons, special unpurchasable skins etc.) with the option to buy boosters for faster progression xp. Of course, for that to bring in money you would need a large player base and a dedicated team of people cranking out new premium content, which is a problem. That's also assuming that the engine could be tailored to support such a thing.
At the moment the game isn't dead enough to worry about free to play and I doubt it will ever be popular enough to make any real money from such a model.
As a multiplayer only game, it exists as long as someone is playing. If there's no players, no one will buy it. If no one is buying then there's no players.The only reason NS2 should ever go f2p is to keep it on life support when the player base shrinks to critical level.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I think a longer free to try time would be good to draw in new players (like 2 weeks), its not quiet f2p, but it will give enough time for people to try it out properly (cos its free for 2 weeks). With the CDT's new performance improvements and also ISE's basic how to plays and my manual, NS2 is at its most easy to learn and most optimized ever.
No, ns2 is not a game to be f2p. Developers must focus to polish NS2 and Spark and so on, and not to create a silly skins.
The only option to f2p model come true I see a creation a separate NS2 client, as I mentioned before. Like a demoversion, based on some previous stable build, with less options, no mods, less maps, vanilla only, only UWE servers. And people can play it for free. Then they can buy/upgrade for a "big" NS2. Everyone happy.
Or you use the reinforced program like I outlined above: go F2P and allow community mods to run a 'only allow reinforced donors' mode. Anyone who can be bothered to spend $1 can then play on all servers, thereby protecting the vast majority of us dedicated NS2ers from the very worst of the potential f2p toxicity.
a) it's already in place, no need for skins/hats etc
b) it provides additional revenue at very little to no continued investment of resource
c) it allows us to reap the potential benefits of going F2P
d) it protects the core playerbase from the worst aspects of F2P, and promotes communities within NS2.
Roobubba, IMHO, reinforced program pursued a different goal. Also, 1$ donation is a very low plank. And all of that, you suggest a community servers admins to decided on allowing players, while whole NS2 is totally free?
I mean many of the custom servers were bought by a community members, yes, for the whole NS2 community, but there are also some limits, and community won't invest money for the entire life for UWE's sake. It is very complicated question.
Bear in mind that NS2 has been in the humble bundles essentially at ~$1 - this is nothing new. The fact that people have to go to even the smallest of effort does wonders for weeding out most people who genuinely don't care about the game.
If NS2 does go F2P, I would want some protection against the great unwashed horde. I imagine others might also appreciate somewhere to play where you might expect a slightly better quality gaming experience than the UWE officials. On the front NS2 page in game, you then simply advertise the reinforcement program with links, and link that to the server browser. It becomes your 'premium' membership status. If you think $1 is too low, make it the $10 tier instead. It's all coded already, it would take very little effort to implement.
Yes, reinforced was designed to fulfil a different role when it was implemented, but that's a long time ago now and it could easily be re-purposed to fit the new era of NS2. This wouldn't negatively affect anyone who has already donated to it (in fact, it would only positively affect them in the way I have described).
F2P wouldn't fix NS2 and I'll provide some reasons and analogies as to why.
1. Loadout, a relatively skillful shooter with team based play that has one of the most consumer friendly F2P models out there. It also had an enormous playerbase at one point, 30k concurrent near release and only got released this year. Not to mention it got a huge amount of marketing from big Youtubers like Totalbiscuit and Birgirpall. Where is it now? Looking at steam charts, it averages < 1000 players now.
2. Renegade X. A completely free shooter game in beta but still perfectly playable with no micro-transactions whatsoever. Quite tough to learn like NS2 and has big strategic and economic aspect to the gameplay. Averages < 100 players concurrent.
3. Blacklight: Retribution. A more call of duty-esque F2P shooter with various gamemodes, item progression, etc. Has had praise from Youtubers like Totalbiscuit but has a punishing F2P model. Averages < 1000 players.
4. Tribes Ascend. A challenging F2P shooter that got abandoned by the devs in favor of developing Smite. Has even less players than NS2.
5. Quake Live/3. F2P and regarded as the Hardest FPS out there. Before steam and even now, QL had a small community and quite often had more people watching tournaments on twitch than actually playing even though the tournament scene is much smaller than SC2 or the MOBA scene. Averages 1000-1500 players a month after release on steam but seems to be going down.
Point is that F2P is kinda redundant if there aren't sufficient basic qualities in the game itself but also taking into account the current scene. MOBAs and sandbox games are sucking the potential players of steam/PC that would otherwise play something else.
I would argue that in order for F2P to be successful, you also need these key elements to sustain a stable playerbase.
- Matchmaking elements are almost required for the average player to enjoy a game, captains mode attempts to eliminate the pub stomping problem but because it requires a vocal and familiar community, isn't represented as much. Pub stomping is very uncommon in modern gaming even in call of duty and WoW where the system is largely random.
- Some sort of progression/unlock system that keeps players playing. We can all appreciate progression of skill, I'm still learning a lot about this game 1300 hours in and I feel like a much better player than I was 500 hours ago in game but most players can't today. They want to go for skins, items, unlocks, etc.
- A competent tutorial and smoothed learning curve. In the case of NS2, as I've mentioned in other threads, some sort of rookie mode that accelerates pres gain in order to give more time to play as higher tech. It's too punishing throwing a rookie into learning how to fade or onos and expect them not to die before even getting 1 kill and going back to skulk for another 15 mins.
- Performance optimization. We have this.
- A dedicated community/development team. We have this.
The highest priority I would say is either addressing the enormous learning curve or matchmaking that NS2 struggles with.
People just get rolled in the first few hours and the only thing pushing people to keep going is being able to understand the game. Time is precious to people and being forced to sit through get owned repeatedly for hours on end is not conducive to player retention. No amount of F2P or skins or unlocks is going to help this without addressing the stomping problem. You throw a child into the deep end of the pool and expect them to learn how to swim or die trying, that's what NS2 feels like for a new player which is why I think its too late for NS2 to address this. Maybe if UWE releases NS3, they will consider looking into addressing the problem.
Bear in mind that NS2 has been in the humble bundles essentially at ~$1 - this is nothing new. The fact that people have to go to even the smallest of effort does wonders for weeding out most people who genuinely don't care about the game.
And what? It was only for a few days. Also Humble bundle is a two sided coin: on the other side, people don't want to give a full price for NS2 (~30$ ?) anymore. Or...
If NS2 does go F2P, I would want some protection against the great unwashed horde.
...mb NS2 already took a bite of market's pie? Mb it's NS2's limit? Or curse? Do you really believe F2P will bring a new constant players? NS2 do not need a permanent "green flow", tho'...
I really don't want to buy reinforced when I bought the black armor.. so reinforced only servers... probably won't get money.
Anyway, having a huge green wave isn't necessarily going to bring terrible game. More servers that are labelled 'rookie' and the server is green, aren't really rookie friendly. Setup servers for certain hours played... noob vs noob and they'd learn on their own (obviously they won't be pros or anything). I know this would have to be managed by server owners and may be a pain in the ass.
Comments
* Right now even if only 1 person a week buys ns2, it still brings in money.. Effort on uwe's part? 0%
* If you make it F2P then no money will flow in. So compared to the previous thats a negative gain.
* Now you can also go F2P and try to make money with skinpacks, extra models etc.. While this brings up the old question of 'how much can you add before you hit memory limits' it also brings up the question 'who will make it?'. Making models and skins takes time and that costs money. So the profit from these skins should be higher then the production costs. Do we all seriously believe that would be the case? Do not forget you must account for people acquiring (new) skins long term to have a more steady income then having ns2 not F2P.
So F2P would boil down to 'is uwe wanting to perhaps lose money in order to make ns2 have possible more players with F2P'. Then assume its a company needing to keep running like any other... and ask yourself... really... would it happen on those terms?
if I missed anything feel free to fill me in.
You obviously misunderstood my wording. Re launch is referring to simply marketing the game as a re release when f2p happens. Not investing money into the game by reskinning it like your examples.
A free NS2 could reel people into the company if it were branded as a "first go" into game design (you have to admit, NS2 as a first stand alone game is pretty impressive)
This way, people see a baseline, and SHOULD know that the quality only goes up from there.
You're nitpicking things irrelevant to my post friend.
To add to this - we don't know what the upcoming release of Combat will do to the playerbase. Sure, you could be optimistic and think that it will bring more people into vanilla NS2. However, that's not exactly what happened in NS1, and history could very well repeat itself again, and instead we could end up with a segmented community that is already close to dangerous levels (at least in the AUS region). The Australasian NS1 community was much healthier when Combat arrived than our NS2 community is now, and whilst it did not outright kill the classic NS1 scene, it did make it frustratingly more and more difficult to get a non-combat game going. There is potential for it to have an even worse segmenting effect now for NS2, considering they are separate games entirely, and the fact that the new Combat is presumably more polished than the old NS1 one.
It would be far too pessimistic to suggest that Combat is going to outright kill NS2 in our area. However, I think it is right to be at least a little bit concerned when we're already struggling to get a second server going most nights during peak hours. It's easy to say that F2P can be put back on the table. But it shouldn't be a reactionary move because if the groundwork isn't set in stone, active players could drop to levels below that which is needed to sustain even a single server in AUS. If the UWE/CDT wait until it is too late to do something about it, by the time F2P is implemented and the playerbase gets this necessary influx to sustain servers again in our region, a significant portion of the existing playerbase may have already moved on to other games, and those wishing to return may be further disuaded because so many have left already that there is not enough experienced players to balance out the newbies. If one of the arguments against F2P is "too many greens", then waiting until the absolute last minute to implement F2P will only make that worse because the ratio of whites/greens will be more problematic the lower we allow the playerbase to drop.
I know this is an extreme example you're providing, but is 1 person buying NS2 a week even worth hanging onto? As joshhhy mentioned, NS2 has probably reached the end of its sales cycle. The revenue stream for whatever sales NS2 is generating at the moment can't be that high that it makes a significant impact for UWE's future, and if they're still relying on that revenue stream, then they have big problems. At some point, sales have to have dropped below a point where the goodwill generated from letting go of those sales to make sure NS2 retains a healthy playerbase is more beneficial to them as a company than bleeding the game dry of as many sales as they can, which is now fairly equivalent to drawing blood from a stone.
As for the last point, whilst I am admittedly ignorant of the technical aspects regarding memory limits, I think it's unreasonably pessimistic to suggest that the CDT might not be able to accomodate new skins/models into the game, if that is what you are suggesting. As for who's going to provide the skins/models and whether the profit outweighs the costs - I'm not sure how much money goes into paying somebody to make new models, but if that is a legitimate concern, then perhaps this could be drawn from community content. People could submit their skins/models for approval, and the best of these could make it into the game as DLC. We already have all of the skins/models from the workshop to draw from (pending the creators' approval of course). If the incentive of having your own creation make it into the game isn't large enough for people to bother, then giving a small portion of the proceeds from that DLC's sales might work. Money can also be made from shoulder-pads which I imagine wouldn't cost all that much to make and could also be drawn from community creations if costs are too high in comparison to the sales they would likely generate.
It is possible that UWE wouldn't even lose money from this. They might even have more to gain from microtransactions than they would off their current sales. Then include the fact that there is potentially more future customers from them for everybody who is hooked into NS2. Then include the goodwill from their current community for not allowing a game to die in favour of bleeding the game dry of sales, and how that will translate to future sales of Subnautica and whatever other games will come out in the future.
I guess only UWE knows just what sales are like at the moment and if they're worth hanging onto, and it's up to them to make the call. I don't see many new players coming into the game, even in sales weekends when they aren't really making much money from each individual sale anyway, so the revenue stream can't be that large, and I implore them to think long-term about the future of their flagship game.
See:
What? You want all the reasons why hundreds of thousands of players left to be fixed - but somehow without the CDT having to do more work? 0.o
My post had stated that many of the issues 'hundreds of thousands' of people who quit the game have ALREADY been addressed/improved... hence the whole idea of getting said players to try the game again was what I was going for.
Hopefully that clears things up for you.
The point what i'm saying is, we have this huge learning curve for new players with vanilla NS, combat is the goto solution to learn all you need to learn, less penalty for failing, it's basicly a mode that UWE should have made for the game at launch. We will have this now, so we should use this opportunity to lure all the players who already did try to game and failed, and those potential new ones. If you get even a fraction of those players accustomed to the mechanics of NS2, and they get interested of vanilla NS2. Everyone will be happy.
Yes?
Let’s look what we have: We have a tactical team shooter with strategy elements.
Let’s look what u need to play it: Teamplay, communications and get along with a big learning curve.
A lot of these elements were not used in public games of popular shooters like BF, CS and CoD. So if the players of this shooters try NS2, they mostly don’t understand how important it is to communicate, to stay alive and to protect your structures etc.
Then we have different types of rookies. We have the good guys, who talk and listen to you. Those are very nice to teach and they want to learn it usually even if it takes a while. But we also have those who do so as they would not hear you, they only run and die alone. How do you want to teach them? They only get depressed and after “loosing” 2-3 rounds with 1-15 K/D, they leave and never play it again.
And now you want to make NS2 F2P? About 80% of the new ones (and it will be a huge amount of players) will be like second type of rookies. So it’s more lost than won. The other thing is, sometimes I’m getting really tired of teaching rookies.
I believe in both cases (with F2P anyway) we need a better Tutorial with more content, which also explains how important teamplay, listening to the commander and all these things are. Make some scripts like defend/weld/grind the PG, like resbiting, a little more explaining of upgrades and all these things. I know, if u want to do something good it takes a lot of time. But I also think the community will help again to translate all the stuff to make it easier.
The other thing is, even with a small community we have some full servers... do we need more? Av. Player 400 = 20 Full Servers.
What are the Devs/CDTs plans/thoughts for the future, do u wanna get more players and how?
That's right, I also bought it in a humble. But 1st you still need to pay something. 2nd not everybody can buy something like this (cause of missing CreditCard or no PayPal). But I've also seen what happens when there is a humble or a sale. The rookiewave is horrible and it makes it difficult to play just a little bit organized. When there are 8 rookies (yes, even on no rookieservers) on a 20 slots, you play in fact 6v6 when the rookies don't stack into one team. When they stack it's over after 5 minutes.
And we still have the same problem, that the rookies are underpowered and only get killed by some normal skilled players and they leave the game cause they think it's unbalanced.
Or in other words, the change to F2P would miss the goal to get more players, or may the vets would even stop playing cause of the rookies.
F2P can work with a community-run tiered system. Any server admin who wants to can set their server to only accept players who have donated to the reinforced program (the details are saved on the hive so must be easy to detect, right?). Remember, the $1 donation is there so if you want to play on adminned servers with far lower risk of trolls and hackers, you just donate the $1 or more through reinforced. It gives an incentive to donate, thereby supporting UWE longer term, but still opens up NS2 as F2P. It would also massively reduce the risk that toxic players pose (sorry @joshhh, while I share the goal of opening up NS2 to as many people as possible, I don't think it's delusional to suggest that toxic players are a potential threat that should be considered seriously).
Of course, if you don't want to donate, or can't afford the $1 to do so (...) then no problem, the UWE servers at least should remain open, and any other server admin who doesn't choose to restrict their server to reinforcement donors.
The risk is you split the community - honestly I don't think this is even an issue at this point. People would be getting the game completely free and have the option to access all servers with a truly nominal cost.
Uh oh, better go tell valve they're doing it wrong.
Seriously though, donations are already in place and perks would unbalance the game. The only reasonable way to do it would be with cosmetic changes. A store with premium skins (both player and structure), huds, announcers and maybe some sort of progression system with cosmetic rewards for bragging rights (like icons, special unpurchasable skins etc.) with the option to buy boosters for faster progression xp. Of course, for that to bring in money you would need a large player base and a dedicated team of people cranking out new premium content, which is a problem. That's also assuming that the engine could be tailored to support such a thing.
At the moment the game isn't dead enough to worry about free to play and I doubt it will ever be popular enough to make any real money from such a model.
As a multiplayer only game, it exists as long as someone is playing. If there's no players, no one will buy it. If no one is buying then there's no players.The only reason NS2 should ever go f2p is to keep it on life support when the player base shrinks to critical level.
The only option to f2p model come true I see a creation a separate NS2 client, as I mentioned before. Like a demoversion, based on some previous stable build, with less options, no mods, less maps, vanilla only, only UWE servers. And people can play it for free. Then they can buy/upgrade for a "big" NS2. Everyone happy.
Or you use the reinforced program like I outlined above: go F2P and allow community mods to run a 'only allow reinforced donors' mode. Anyone who can be bothered to spend $1 can then play on all servers, thereby protecting the vast majority of us dedicated NS2ers from the very worst of the potential f2p toxicity.
a) it's already in place, no need for skins/hats etc
b) it provides additional revenue at very little to no continued investment of resource
c) it allows us to reap the potential benefits of going F2P
d) it protects the core playerbase from the worst aspects of F2P, and promotes communities within NS2.
I mean many of the custom servers were bought by a community members, yes, for the whole NS2 community, but there are also some limits, and community won't invest money for the entire life for UWE's sake. It is very complicated question.
Bear in mind that NS2 has been in the humble bundles essentially at ~$1 - this is nothing new. The fact that people have to go to even the smallest of effort does wonders for weeding out most people who genuinely don't care about the game.
If NS2 does go F2P, I would want some protection against the great unwashed horde. I imagine others might also appreciate somewhere to play where you might expect a slightly better quality gaming experience than the UWE officials. On the front NS2 page in game, you then simply advertise the reinforcement program with links, and link that to the server browser. It becomes your 'premium' membership status. If you think $1 is too low, make it the $10 tier instead. It's all coded already, it would take very little effort to implement.
Yes, reinforced was designed to fulfil a different role when it was implemented, but that's a long time ago now and it could easily be re-purposed to fit the new era of NS2. This wouldn't negatively affect anyone who has already donated to it (in fact, it would only positively affect them in the way I have described).
1. Loadout, a relatively skillful shooter with team based play that has one of the most consumer friendly F2P models out there. It also had an enormous playerbase at one point, 30k concurrent near release and only got released this year. Not to mention it got a huge amount of marketing from big Youtubers like Totalbiscuit and Birgirpall. Where is it now? Looking at steam charts, it averages < 1000 players now.
2. Renegade X. A completely free shooter game in beta but still perfectly playable with no micro-transactions whatsoever. Quite tough to learn like NS2 and has big strategic and economic aspect to the gameplay. Averages < 100 players concurrent.
3. Blacklight: Retribution. A more call of duty-esque F2P shooter with various gamemodes, item progression, etc. Has had praise from Youtubers like Totalbiscuit but has a punishing F2P model. Averages < 1000 players.
4. Tribes Ascend. A challenging F2P shooter that got abandoned by the devs in favor of developing Smite. Has even less players than NS2.
5. Quake Live/3. F2P and regarded as the Hardest FPS out there. Before steam and even now, QL had a small community and quite often had more people watching tournaments on twitch than actually playing even though the tournament scene is much smaller than SC2 or the MOBA scene. Averages 1000-1500 players a month after release on steam but seems to be going down.
Point is that F2P is kinda redundant if there aren't sufficient basic qualities in the game itself but also taking into account the current scene. MOBAs and sandbox games are sucking the potential players of steam/PC that would otherwise play something else.
I would argue that in order for F2P to be successful, you also need these key elements to sustain a stable playerbase.
- Matchmaking elements are almost required for the average player to enjoy a game, captains mode attempts to eliminate the pub stomping problem but because it requires a vocal and familiar community, isn't represented as much. Pub stomping is very uncommon in modern gaming even in call of duty and WoW where the system is largely random.
- Some sort of progression/unlock system that keeps players playing. We can all appreciate progression of skill, I'm still learning a lot about this game 1300 hours in and I feel like a much better player than I was 500 hours ago in game but most players can't today. They want to go for skins, items, unlocks, etc.
- A competent tutorial and smoothed learning curve. In the case of NS2, as I've mentioned in other threads, some sort of rookie mode that accelerates pres gain in order to give more time to play as higher tech. It's too punishing throwing a rookie into learning how to fade or onos and expect them not to die before even getting 1 kill and going back to skulk for another 15 mins.
- Performance optimization. We have this.
- A dedicated community/development team. We have this.
The highest priority I would say is either addressing the enormous learning curve or matchmaking that NS2 struggles with.
People just get rolled in the first few hours and the only thing pushing people to keep going is being able to understand the game. Time is precious to people and being forced to sit through get owned repeatedly for hours on end is not conducive to player retention. No amount of F2P or skins or unlocks is going to help this without addressing the stomping problem. You throw a child into the deep end of the pool and expect them to learn how to swim or die trying, that's what NS2 feels like for a new player which is why I think its too late for NS2 to address this. Maybe if UWE releases NS3, they will consider looking into addressing the problem.
And what? It was only for a few days. Also Humble bundle is a two sided coin: on the other side, people don't want to give a full price for NS2 (~30$ ?) anymore. Or...
...mb NS2 already took a bite of market's pie? Mb it's NS2's limit? Or curse? Do you really believe F2P will bring a new constant players? NS2 do not need a permanent "green flow", tho'...
Anyway, having a huge green wave isn't necessarily going to bring terrible game. More servers that are labelled 'rookie' and the server is green, aren't really rookie friendly. Setup servers for certain hours played... noob vs noob and they'd learn on their own (obviously they won't be pros or anything). I know this would have to be managed by server owners and may be a pain in the ass.