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 July 2015
@Martigen Those are very good points! I did not consider some of that.
However I am hesitant to advocate for 24 player servers for rookies - despite agreeing with you regarding the mentality behind uninitiated players being more comfortable in non impactful environments - the whole purpose behind Rookie Only servers are to give the players a sense of what NS2 is supposed to be. Larger servers don't do this in multiple ways, despite being casually fun. We should take the opportunity to actually train Rookies so that they are prepared for what to experience once they leave these exclusive servers.
Remember, feeling like you don't want to be a "feeder" for your team is just as important as feeling like your actions actually have an impact on the game you are playing. That is a large part of the gratifying feeling that comes from playing NS2!
The second issue is performance : the servers we have provided in the past have typically barely handled 16- 18 players... those first impressions were bad enough, we do not want to worsen them!
I definitely do agree with your other points regarding server requirements, and would say that maybe two dozen (globally) could be enough.
I've always found that servers that are 18-20 players provide the best PUB experience.
Large enough to give the "at least I'm not holding my team back" feeling, but small enough to avoid having kills make no impact (always someone else to fill the gap).
The entire set of server operators worth their salt is saying rookie only servers is a terrible idea. Naturally the community development team has their advisor WHO THINKS OTHERWISE.
It's not dead quite yet, put some more effort in, CDT.
@babblerbling, you're just as obnoxious as @unknown w/ your disagreeing to every other damn post. Seems like it doesn't even matter the content of the post, but rather who posted it.
As much as I like to bash F2P games, I'm gonna be completely honest and say that my favorite NS2 games were often during the free weekends. I loved watching people learn the game and helping people figure the game out. If the tide of the battle turned sour, I liked becoming a hero and push back the field a bit until my team got proper footing again. So much fun. Sure, the games were sloppy and often lasted an hour or two. But there were so many little things. Lerks derping, a guy losing his goddamn mind the first time he sees an Onos, everyone coveting exosuits, people screaming about turrets as if they were actually worth something, the first time someone runs right into a shaded nest...
Usually by the end of the game, everyone is cheering and ready for the next round.
Just so people are aware, Babblerking is ATF. He has created a number of accounts to try and get around his forum ban. This should give you guys some perspective why he's so negative and pro Wooza server.
For the record, CDT dont want to destroy the Wooza server and community. We'd rather the server not be 24+ players, but there is no point in putting in effort to stop it. It would cause too many issues for our small CDT team to deal with, and NS2 needs all the communities we can get right now.
We're pretty close with the 275 patch now. Things are looking good, and some of the programmers are now moving onto 276. I suspect when people see NS2 had a patch, we'll get a decent bump in players checking out what's new. We'll be posting the changelog (maybe even early) so people can see the effort the CDT guys have put into this patch. I think the community will be pleasantly surprised.
Edit: and on the topic of F2P, it's not off the table, but we're not working on F2P. It's always an option if all else fails, but we're nowhere near that yet.
For the record, CDT dont want to destroy the Wooza server and community. We'd rather the server not be 24+ players, but there is no point in putting in effort to stop it. It would cause too many issues for our small CDT team to deal with, and NS2 needs all the communities we can get right now.
Hello, just registered to the forums, but I have been reading on the forums from time to time. First of all, I love NS2. Have been playing NS2 since 2013 and I've been following the game developing for many years before that. When I started to play I mostly played on Thursty Onos Bar Server, which had 36 (I think) slots at the time. After some time that server was shutdown and then Wooza's 42 player server was hosted, so I started to play on that. There was some times when the large servers was not available. Then I was forced on to smaller servers, and that was not as much fun. No action, slow gameplay, good players can lockdown a room and there is nothing you can do to get past them. And it's fewer player interactions and more resbiting. So that's far from the game I like to play. So when there was no larger servers up I didn't play the game at all. It was to boring. I know that there was/is more people like me that pefer the larger servers. If the larger servers would shut down those players would quit NS2 and if you look at the server browser, you can see that Wooza's two servers have around 25-65% of the total online population depending on time of day.
That's my backstory, and the question I have to you @Obraxis and the CDT. Why do you oppose 24+ servers? And What are you doing in terms of helping serveradmins for current 24+ servers and serveradmins trying to start 24+ servers? Are you focusing on providing patches that helps performance on 24+ servers?
(@Obraxis The community on Wooza's 42 and 32 player servers are there because of the size of the servers. If Wooza decides to lower the slots to 24 players, the community would die. 98% of the players on Wooza's play exclusivly on that server and would not play on smaller servers.)
Please exusce me for spelling errors, english is not my native language.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
@cyzed here I am the complete opposite of you hating each server that has more than 16 player slots. My favourite pub server is Hellarious Basterds which is a 7v7 server. I dislike large servers because of performance issues and the fact that important skills you need to apply to the game (like map awareness, where the enemy will be in like 15 seconds and what will you do to counter that/where do you need to be in 15 seconds). There is no way on large servers to count lifeforms on the map to say where the enemy is not and basically if you screw up it can be your fault that your team loses. It forces you to get your shit together. It also gives a possibility to show your skill even though you can't aim that well.
I love playing 6v6 competitive NS2 and it happens even to the most skilled players that you do a mistake and get yelled at. (or sometimes just a private talk to check if you just had a bad day or really are that stupid). This might sound a bit harsh but this happens because people want you to get better...
I drifted away somewhere... Basically on small servers more skill is needed and teamwork needs to be more precise which is why I love the game.
@cyzed - NS2 and the Spark engine were not designed or balanced for play on anything larger than 24 player servers. Servers which are bigger than this, hack the .exe to enable that.
It's like designing a car to seat and move 5 people, and you try and squeeze in 10+. Possible, but you might not get the desired results in terms of speed, reliability or fun.
This is why we focus on servers which the game is designed and intended for. I hope you understand.
@cyzed
Simply, the game was NOT balanced or created to be played w/ so many players. Imagine in a 6 v 6 you've got 3 marines in a room w/ full lmg clips. Then 2 skulks walk in and 150 bullets start flying their way. Imagine now these same 2 skulks walk into a room in a high pop server and there are 7 marines in one room. Now there are 350 bullets flying at them.
These skulks have no chance in this mele vs. ranged combat situation. I dont care if there's 7 skulks there, it only takes 9 - 12 bullets to kill a skulk, and they have to pass thru 350 bullets worth of rines to even get close enough to bite. This allows players to get away w/ bad accuracy and develop bad game-play habits in general. Add in the performance issues.. and it's just... not fun at all IMHO.
@cyzed - NS2 and the Spark engine were not designed or balanced for play on anything larger than 24 player servers. Servers which are bigger than this, hack the .exe to enable that.
It's like designing a car to seat and move 5 people, and you try and squeeze in 10+. Possible, but you might not get the desired results in terms of speed, reliability or fun.
This is why we focus on servers which the game is designed and intended for. I hope you understand.
Thanks for the reply. If we continue your simile with a car. It's more like 25-65% of the people using the car want to attach a trailer to it. So they modify their car to be able to do it. When you get informed that half of the people using your car/game is using a trailer/larger servers, will you support them or say that you car/game is not built for that and that they can go elsewhere if they don't use it as intended?
Maybe you should help the game evolve into a game with bigger servers? You know, by natural selection
So, my question is: Can you spend you developing resources like the community is using NS2? (25-65% towards larger servers improvements)
@Mephilles@2cough Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure you know what it's like to play on a larger server. It is similar to playing on a smaller server just more intense and more action. NS2 scales very well. If there is a room with 5-7 marines in it, they can still be overwhelmed by the aliens. And there is even more teamwork involved in the larger servers, because you need to group up to make a push against the other team. On smaller servers you just need one or two players to clear out a room, right? On a 42 player server you might need 6-8 players working together to clear out a room.
I'd like to see you all have a try and play at a larger server. If you join a 42 player server and try to stay open minded, then maybe you can see why we love to play NS2 on larger servers.
Edit: @BeigeAlert Then my question to you is: Why do the larger servers attract a larger number of (new?) players than other servers? Is it because they like them better? Or else they would join smaller servers, wouldn't they?
For the record, CDT dont want to destroy the Wooza server and community. We'd rather the server not be 24+ players, but there is no point in putting in effort to stop it. It would cause too many issues for our small CDT team to deal with, and NS2 needs all the communities we can get right now.
Hello, just registered to the forums, but I have been reading on the forums from time to time. First of all, I love NS2. Have been playing NS2 since 2013 and I've been following the game developing for many years before that. When I started to play I mostly played on Thursty Onos Bar Server, which had 36 (I think) slots at the time. After some time that server was shutdown and then Wooza's 42 player server was hosted, so I started to play on that. There was some times when the large servers was not available. Then I was forced on to smaller servers, and that was not as much fun. No action, slow gameplay, good players can lockdown a room and there is nothing you can do to get past them. And it's fewer player interactions and more resbiting. So that's far from the game I like to play. So when there was no larger servers up I didn't play the game at all. It was to boring. I know that there was/is more people like me that pefer the larger servers. If the larger servers would shut down those players would quit NS2 and if you look at the server browser, you can see that Wooza's two servers have around 25-65% of the total online population depending on time of day.
That's my backstory, and the question I have to you @Obraxis and the CDT. Why do you oppose 24+ servers? And What are you doing in terms of helping serveradmins for current 24+ servers and serveradmins trying to start 24+ servers? Are you focusing on providing patches that helps performance on 24+ servers?
(@Obraxis The community on Wooza's 42 and 32 player servers are there because of the size of the servers. If Wooza decides to lower the slots to 24 players, the community would die. 98% of the players on Wooza's play exclusivly on that server and would not play on smaller servers.)
Please exusce me for spelling errors, english is not my native language.
/cyzed - with over 1500 hours of NS2 gameplay
The biggest issue IMO is that these servers attract a large number of new players who don't know that the poor performance is caused by the unusually high number of players. They may stop playing ns2, not realizing it was the server at fault, not ns2 itself.
PelargirJoin Date: 2013-07-02Member: 185857Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, WC 2013 - Silver, Forum staff
I honestly must say that I can enjoy games on 24+ servers as much as I do on 24- servers. I have, of course a trend to feel more fun on 16 slots servers and on 6 vs. 6 competitive rounds but I've also gotten some fun on Wooza' servers lately.
Gameplay are however much different from each other. I don't play the same game or, should I say, I play the same game but using different strategies and by adapting my playing style. I can join those larger servers and just wandering around the map, without feeling the need to play with my teammates. It remains better if all the team gathers up and plays together but my decisions will definitely have less consequences and impact that they do on smaller servers. Another difference is the skill level on those servers. Although it's true that the overall skill level of public players has decreased, I do not meet excellent players on those larger servers. It might be a result of the amount of slots, hiding even more those players when they have to face many enemies which is way tougher than facing only a couple of them (but it's part of the fun, isn't it?).
To be honest, I first hated to play on these 'too big' servers. But now I've changed my mind. Where a pleasant game is getting hard to find out on NS2 these days, Wooza and Thirsty Onos for instance provide both of them as much as good and bad games, regardless of their amount of slots.
NS2 wasn't maybe designed for a such large server at first. But when you see all those players joining Wooza & Co, that's for reasons. One thing leads to another, when the playerbase was much higher, there were more servers up running with less than 24 slots. Obviously, now those servers have shut down due to the difficulty to feed them. I have no patience to wait myself on a server with a couple of other players till we get it full. I'd rather want to connect on a server with games ongoing already and it's one of the advantages on Wooza. I imagine that when this server is full, its player amount goes down slower than on any other server and vice-versa but you get more chance to have people on it already for those very same reasons.
Right now, I can believe if you say those servers allow the playerbase to decrease slowly.
I'd like to see you all have a try and play at a larger server. If you join a 42 player server and try to stay open minded, then maybe you can see why we love to play NS2 on larger servers.
If we all more or less shit on Wooza's servers it's because we all played on them at some point. I remember playing on them as a rookie, then I left because of performance and poor ns2 gameplay experience
I'm not sure of the exact circumstances, and correlation is not causation, but there was this other rather popular server which became deserted when they increased their player slots, so I'm not sure there is a demand for more large servers.
As for the optimal player count for enjoyment of the game, I think people on opposite sides will never see eye to eye. I played on the 42 slot server once, I left after one round and I have never joined it since, but it is pretty clear that there are also people who enjoy playing on these servers and would never think of joining a regular server.
@cyzed - NS2 and the Spark engine were not designed or balanced for play on anything larger than 24 player servers. Servers which are bigger than this, hack the .exe to enable that.
It's like designing a car to seat and move 5 people, and you try and squeeze in 10+. Possible, but you might not get the desired results in terms of speed, reliability or fun.
This is why we focus on servers which the game is designed and intended for. I hope you understand.
It's more like 25-65% of the people using the car want to attach a trailer to it. So they modify their car to be able to do it.
A trailer would make it stable, and scale well - neither of which 24+ servers are capable of currently.
So, my question is: Can you spend you developing resources like the community is using NS2? (25-65% towards larger servers improvements)
We already have spent time and resources developing larger than supported server optimizations, to include fixing multiple bugs. The larger player servers have been very helpful with providing data and testing, which makes sense considering how it was never intended for in the first place so there was bound to be issues.
Any further improvement beyond the already achieved basic non-buggy functionality, will more than likely just be an indirect cause of general server optimizations.
No... sorry but it really does not.
Anyone familiar with NS2 can take the time to list the reasons.. they really are numerous, from the advantage that is given to marines, to structure HP not scaling with players etc. etc.
It's a long list.
Spend some more time, actually play some 6 v 6 the same amount you play 21 vs 21 and after some time you'll quickly realize how they are two different games entirely.
You may even be surprised at how rewarding smaller servers can be, from actual tension being achieved through your actions, to actually allowing you to solo a room without facing 8 marines that instantly put you down, to having to actually utilize your map to coordinate enemy player positions. Oh yea, and the server rates will be better too, as most 24+ servers artificially lower the server rates to account for poor performance, so gameplay will actually feel better on smaller servers.
Thank you for taking the time to register and give your feedback on the matter, however, it is greatly appreciated and I hope you continue to provide ideas and discussions
@cyzed - NS2 and the Spark engine were not designed or balanced for play on anything larger than 24 player servers. Servers which are bigger than this, hack the .exe to enable that.
It's like designing a car to seat and move 5 people, and you try and squeeze in 10+. Possible, but you might not get the desired results in terms of speed, reliability or fun.
This is why we focus on servers which the game is designed and intended for. I hope you understand.
Thanks for the reply. If we continue your simile with a car. It's more like 25-65% of the people using the car want to attach a trailer to it. So they modify their car to be able to do it. When you get informed that half of the people using your car/game is using a trailer/larger servers, will you support them or say that you car/game is not built for that and that they can go elsewhere if they don't use it as intended?
Maybe you should help the game evolve into a game with bigger servers? You know, by natural selection
So, my question is: Can you spend you developing resources like the community is using NS2? (25-65% towards larger servers improvements)
@Mephilles@2cough Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure you know what it's like to play on a larger server. It is similar to playing on a smaller server just more intense and more action. NS2 scales very well. If there is a room with 5-7 marines in it, they can still be overwhelmed by the aliens. And there is even more teamwork involved in the larger servers, because you need to group up to make a push against the other team. On smaller servers you just need one or two players to clear out a room, right? On a 42 player server you might need 6-8 players working together to clear out a room.
I'd like to see you all have a try and play at a larger server. If you join a 42 player server and try to stay open minded, then maybe you can see why we love to play NS2 on larger servers.
The runtime per tick complexity of NS2 is about O(n^2) (n := amount of entities).
Meaning if you double the amount of entities you increase the runtime by four times. And that doesn't change by using more potent hardware.
I mean even Wooza with it's extremely potent hardware has performance issues( just get 6+ marines with GLs spamming at a hive).
Beside all the technically aspects NS2 was clearly designed and balanced for 12-18 players. That it works at higher numbers just shows that the core mechanics scale just fine.
BUT NS2 is like NS1 a team oriented, tactic- and twitch-Shooter. With a player number of 30+ most of those aspects just get lost.
I mean that's the same reason you don't play Counterstrike with 30 players.
I know these days action focused FPS games are ways more popular and NS2 gets trimmed towards such kind of game at 30+ servers. But in fact NS2 is not meant to work that way.
If action focused combat is the way you want to play NS2 you are free to create a mod. But don't just expect the vanilla design to change.
Also i have to disagree with people calling "removing the max player slot limit" a modification. That modification is done with hex editors directly changing binary values.
It is known how to do that because the ns2 beta builds didn't have such a limit. And finding a jump byte inside a certain region is not that difficult.
But with e.g. the next build we change the used compiler which could mean the given jump ends up somewhere totally different.
There are just so many things that can go wrong if you edit the wrong bytes of the binary. And that's the reason we don't support those binary hacks.
Furthermore that the CDT wouldn't help "large slot servers" is just false: If we improve the server performance or fix a crash the large slot server will be effected as well as all other servers.
After all the issue with that large slot servers are "new player traps" will be solved soon by various things without having any direct impact on given servers.
ATF admirably tried to keep the flow of bug reports going, despite an insulting permban. That stopped for good the moment you proceeded to order every single CDT individual to hard-block all his contact attempts.
Unless he went public, none of the bug reports were looked at anyways the moment ATF revealed himself a Wooza's operator.
He was also particularly interested in making sure the community is informed how easy one can be considered CDT material by simply hating on my servers or players.
He's the reason players can have fun in NS2. He's been my trusty babbler shield to foil all your attacks.
Your attempt to demonize him is speaking for itself.
In 2014 ATF still found time for daily deliveries of the badly needed performance profiling data to @matso while he saved his old mans life through months of devotion and care.
How come you failed to mention the reason for the ban? I'm sure there'd be no noticable backlash had you exposed your double standards.
Since you mention perspective without telling the rest of the story, what happened to your server, "YO-Clan" was it? You should try seeding, it looks kind of empty. Are you perhaps unhappy that players flock to servers where operators put actual effort in?
For the record, CDT dont want to destroy the Wooza server and community.
For almost two years, PT and CDT teams have fought relentlessly to destroy us. Some have crashed the server through network exploits and have yet to be reprimanded. It was all for the greater good.
Some have leaked dev chat plans about delisting my servers, to me. This led to the largest protest against the "community development team" from concerned community members. They just wanted to play.
Twice was the Playground and its accessory servers removed from Hive whitelist for bogus reasons. That caused a lot of extra work for us and Acedude, an UWE employee. Community members kept asking us: Why? Why would the CDT do such a thing?
Some undermined the CDTs credibility for their personal strive against us (this is a good one).
The cherry on the cake was my PT invitation that suddenly got scrapped when you realised who that guy with the awesome gear was. No actual reason was ever supplied. I wonder why.
Now you're suddenly claiming a change of mind? Do you believe to have any face left worth saving?
You're still beyond realisation it was ATFs planning all along to have you scapegoat him? He sacrificed himself for my server, so that the players who love it would remain undisturbed.
Why would you lie about not wanting to destroy us instead of a simple apology for the last 22 months of utter rage and relentless hate? Look, you don't even have to stop hating us. We're used to it by now.
Just apologise every now and then and we're good.
To gain sympathy from the remainder of the forum dwellers, of which most are dead set on hate already, you keep going on about how you have so few time as volunteer.
Yet, the amount of time you forced us to spent dealing with your shenanigans is magically not counted?. We are volunteers. We are not paid. In fact, running those servers ranges around EUR 300 per month. You dare to steal our time and cause grief to the community you're supposed to support.
This post is a good example. It's the truth you want to hide. Be quick to edit it and ban me.
Just don't forget to mention you forced a volunteer to spent yet another hour typing this.
Ah it sure is a nice timing with that post of yours, even mentioning the patch in it. Simple minds now can't help but agree with you. Otherwise they'd be -horrible- to the -volunteers-.
We'd rather the server not be 24+ players, but there is no point in putting in effort to stop it.
Are you perhaps running out of points to make against 24+? Hilarious.
For those that don't understand why that's hilarious: Back when Wooza's Playground started, it was a spectacular lagfest during some endgames. That wasn't good. There were actual reasons for complaint.
This has long since changed. The server copes with endgame scenarios better than many other, 'normal sized' ones.
There are no points left to make against it, there's only blind rage left. Keep it up, Obraxis. ATF will strike you down all over again.
(Free to play will come too late. Servers are a non issue.)
Apparently matso is not part of the CDT, or I'm not part of the CDT? or the other people that have helped you and your server even though you kept posting shit about "the CDT" everywhere?
We've fought to destroy your server? Are you serious? Because members of the CDT have never helped you, right? I really regret even having people like you and ATF in friends, shittalking like this.
It's disgusting to work on this game when you log into the forums and the same people that ask you for help also call you all kinds of names while thinking they're god's gift to this community.
Comments
*note: I bought it for me and three friends so I do like the game.
However I am hesitant to advocate for 24 player servers for rookies - despite agreeing with you regarding the mentality behind uninitiated players being more comfortable in non impactful environments - the whole purpose behind Rookie Only servers are to give the players a sense of what NS2 is supposed to be. Larger servers don't do this in multiple ways, despite being casually fun. We should take the opportunity to actually train Rookies so that they are prepared for what to experience once they leave these exclusive servers.
Remember, feeling like you don't want to be a "feeder" for your team is just as important as feeling like your actions actually have an impact on the game you are playing. That is a large part of the gratifying feeling that comes from playing NS2!
The second issue is performance : the servers we have provided in the past have typically barely handled 16- 18 players... those first impressions were bad enough, we do not want to worsen them!
I definitely do agree with your other points regarding server requirements, and would say that maybe two dozen (globally) could be enough.
Large enough to give the "at least I'm not holding my team back" feeling, but small enough to avoid having kills make no impact (always someone else to fill the gap).
It's not dead quite yet, put some more effort in, CDT.
If they were to go F2P, I would prefer it was with NS3 and it was built from scratch in Unity with a more modern gameplay "feel".
Can you elaborate on this?
Usually by the end of the game, everyone is cheering and ready for the next round.
For the record, CDT dont want to destroy the Wooza server and community. We'd rather the server not be 24+ players, but there is no point in putting in effort to stop it. It would cause too many issues for our small CDT team to deal with, and NS2 needs all the communities we can get right now.
We're pretty close with the 275 patch now. Things are looking good, and some of the programmers are now moving onto 276. I suspect when people see NS2 had a patch, we'll get a decent bump in players checking out what's new. We'll be posting the changelog (maybe even early) so people can see the effort the CDT guys have put into this patch. I think the community will be pleasantly surprised.
Edit: and on the topic of F2P, it's not off the table, but we're not working on F2P. It's always an option if all else fails, but we're nowhere near that yet.
Hello, just registered to the forums, but I have been reading on the forums from time to time. First of all, I love NS2. Have been playing NS2 since 2013 and I've been following the game developing for many years before that. When I started to play I mostly played on Thursty Onos Bar Server, which had 36 (I think) slots at the time. After some time that server was shutdown and then Wooza's 42 player server was hosted, so I started to play on that. There was some times when the large servers was not available. Then I was forced on to smaller servers, and that was not as much fun. No action, slow gameplay, good players can lockdown a room and there is nothing you can do to get past them. And it's fewer player interactions and more resbiting. So that's far from the game I like to play. So when there was no larger servers up I didn't play the game at all. It was to boring. I know that there was/is more people like me that pefer the larger servers. If the larger servers would shut down those players would quit NS2 and if you look at the server browser, you can see that Wooza's two servers have around 25-65% of the total online population depending on time of day.
That's my backstory, and the question I have to you @Obraxis and the CDT. Why do you oppose 24+ servers? And What are you doing in terms of helping serveradmins for current 24+ servers and serveradmins trying to start 24+ servers? Are you focusing on providing patches that helps performance on 24+ servers?
(@Obraxis The community on Wooza's 42 and 32 player servers are there because of the size of the servers. If Wooza decides to lower the slots to 24 players, the community would die. 98% of the players on Wooza's play exclusivly on that server and would not play on smaller servers.)
Please exusce me for spelling errors, english is not my native language.
/cyzed - with over 1500 hours of NS2 gameplay
I love playing 6v6 competitive NS2 and it happens even to the most skilled players that you do a mistake and get yelled at. (or sometimes just a private talk to check if you just had a bad day or really are that stupid). This might sound a bit harsh but this happens because people want you to get better...
I drifted away somewhere... Basically on small servers more skill is needed and teamwork needs to be more precise which is why I love the game.
It's like designing a car to seat and move 5 people, and you try and squeeze in 10+. Possible, but you might not get the desired results in terms of speed, reliability or fun.
This is why we focus on servers which the game is designed and intended for. I hope you understand.
Simply, the game was NOT balanced or created to be played w/ so many players. Imagine in a 6 v 6 you've got 3 marines in a room w/ full lmg clips. Then 2 skulks walk in and 150 bullets start flying their way. Imagine now these same 2 skulks walk into a room in a high pop server and there are 7 marines in one room. Now there are 350 bullets flying at them.
These skulks have no chance in this mele vs. ranged combat situation. I dont care if there's 7 skulks there, it only takes 9 - 12 bullets to kill a skulk, and they have to pass thru 350 bullets worth of rines to even get close enough to bite. This allows players to get away w/ bad accuracy and develop bad game-play habits in general. Add in the performance issues.. and it's just... not fun at all IMHO.
Call it 'mod' and all of a sudden it has a positive feel to it.
Thanks for the reply. If we continue your simile with a car. It's more like 25-65% of the people using the car want to attach a trailer to it. So they modify their car to be able to do it. When you get informed that half of the people using your car/game is using a trailer/larger servers, will you support them or say that you car/game is not built for that and that they can go elsewhere if they don't use it as intended?
Maybe you should help the game evolve into a game with bigger servers? You know, by natural selection
So, my question is: Can you spend you developing resources like the community is using NS2? (25-65% towards larger servers improvements)
@Mephilles @2cough Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure you know what it's like to play on a larger server. It is similar to playing on a smaller server just more intense and more action. NS2 scales very well. If there is a room with 5-7 marines in it, they can still be overwhelmed by the aliens. And there is even more teamwork involved in the larger servers, because you need to group up to make a push against the other team. On smaller servers you just need one or two players to clear out a room, right? On a 42 player server you might need 6-8 players working together to clear out a room.
I'd like to see you all have a try and play at a larger server. If you join a 42 player server and try to stay open minded, then maybe you can see why we love to play NS2 on larger servers.
@CCTEE That's how I look at it
Edit:
@BeigeAlert Then my question to you is: Why do the larger servers attract a larger number of (new?) players than other servers? Is it because they like them better? Or else they would join smaller servers, wouldn't they?
The biggest issue IMO is that these servers attract a large number of new players who don't know that the poor performance is caused by the unusually high number of players. They may stop playing ns2, not realizing it was the server at fault, not ns2 itself.
Gameplay are however much different from each other. I don't play the same game or, should I say, I play the same game but using different strategies and by adapting my playing style. I can join those larger servers and just wandering around the map, without feeling the need to play with my teammates. It remains better if all the team gathers up and plays together but my decisions will definitely have less consequences and impact that they do on smaller servers. Another difference is the skill level on those servers. Although it's true that the overall skill level of public players has decreased, I do not meet excellent players on those larger servers. It might be a result of the amount of slots, hiding even more those players when they have to face many enemies which is way tougher than facing only a couple of them (but it's part of the fun, isn't it?).
To be honest, I first hated to play on these 'too big' servers. But now I've changed my mind. Where a pleasant game is getting hard to find out on NS2 these days, Wooza and Thirsty Onos for instance provide both of them as much as good and bad games, regardless of their amount of slots.
NS2 wasn't maybe designed for a such large server at first. But when you see all those players joining Wooza & Co, that's for reasons. One thing leads to another, when the playerbase was much higher, there were more servers up running with less than 24 slots. Obviously, now those servers have shut down due to the difficulty to feed them. I have no patience to wait myself on a server with a couple of other players till we get it full. I'd rather want to connect on a server with games ongoing already and it's one of the advantages on Wooza. I imagine that when this server is full, its player amount goes down slower than on any other server and vice-versa but you get more chance to have people on it already for those very same reasons.
Right now, I can believe if you say those servers allow the playerbase to decrease slowly.
As for the optimal player count for enjoyment of the game, I think people on opposite sides will never see eye to eye. I played on the 42 slot server once, I left after one round and I have never joined it since, but it is pretty clear that there are also people who enjoy playing on these servers and would never think of joining a regular server.
We already have spent time and resources developing larger than supported server optimizations, to include fixing multiple bugs. The larger player servers have been very helpful with providing data and testing, which makes sense considering how it was never intended for in the first place so there was bound to be issues.
Any further improvement beyond the already achieved basic non-buggy functionality, will more than likely just be an indirect cause of general server optimizations. No... sorry but it really does not.
Anyone familiar with NS2 can take the time to list the reasons.. they really are numerous, from the advantage that is given to marines, to structure HP not scaling with players etc. etc.
It's a long list.
Spend some more time, actually play some 6 v 6 the same amount you play 21 vs 21 and after some time you'll quickly realize how they are two different games entirely.
You may even be surprised at how rewarding smaller servers can be, from actual tension being achieved through your actions, to actually allowing you to solo a room without facing 8 marines that instantly put you down, to having to actually utilize your map to coordinate enemy player positions. Oh yea, and the server rates will be better too, as most 24+ servers artificially lower the server rates to account for poor performance, so gameplay will actually feel better on smaller servers.
Thank you for taking the time to register and give your feedback on the matter, however, it is greatly appreciated and I hope you continue to provide ideas and discussions
It's not that easy!
The runtime per tick complexity of NS2 is about O(n^2) (n := amount of entities).
Meaning if you double the amount of entities you increase the runtime by four times. And that doesn't change by using more potent hardware.
I mean even Wooza with it's extremely potent hardware has performance issues( just get 6+ marines with GLs spamming at a hive).
Beside all the technically aspects NS2 was clearly designed and balanced for 12-18 players. That it works at higher numbers just shows that the core mechanics scale just fine.
BUT NS2 is like NS1 a team oriented, tactic- and twitch-Shooter. With a player number of 30+ most of those aspects just get lost.
I mean that's the same reason you don't play Counterstrike with 30 players.
I know these days action focused FPS games are ways more popular and NS2 gets trimmed towards such kind of game at 30+ servers. But in fact NS2 is not meant to work that way.
If action focused combat is the way you want to play NS2 you are free to create a mod. But don't just expect the vanilla design to change.
Also i have to disagree with people calling "removing the max player slot limit" a modification. That modification is done with hex editors directly changing binary values.
It is known how to do that because the ns2 beta builds didn't have such a limit. And finding a jump byte inside a certain region is not that difficult.
But with e.g. the next build we change the used compiler which could mean the given jump ends up somewhere totally different.
There are just so many things that can go wrong if you edit the wrong bytes of the binary. And that's the reason we don't support those binary hacks.
Furthermore that the CDT wouldn't help "large slot servers" is just false: If we improve the server performance or fix a crash the large slot server will be effected as well as all other servers.
After all the issue with that large slot servers are "new player traps" will be solved soon by various things without having any direct impact on given servers.
ATF admirably tried to keep the flow of bug reports going, despite an insulting permban. That stopped for good the moment you proceeded to order every single CDT individual to hard-block all his contact attempts.
Unless he went public, none of the bug reports were looked at anyways the moment ATF revealed himself a Wooza's operator.
He was also particularly interested in making sure the community is informed how easy one can be considered CDT material by simply hating on my servers or players.
He's the reason players can have fun in NS2. He's been my trusty babbler shield to foil all your attacks.
Your attempt to demonize him is speaking for itself.
In 2014 ATF still found time for daily deliveries of the badly needed performance profiling data to @matso while he saved his old mans life through months of devotion and care.
How come you failed to mention the reason for the ban? I'm sure there'd be no noticable backlash had you exposed your double standards.
Since you mention perspective without telling the rest of the story, what happened to your server, "YO-Clan" was it? You should try seeding, it looks kind of empty. Are you perhaps unhappy that players flock to servers where operators put actual effort in?
For almost two years, PT and CDT teams have fought relentlessly to destroy us. Some have crashed the server through network exploits and have yet to be reprimanded. It was all for the greater good.
Some have leaked dev chat plans about delisting my servers, to me. This led to the largest protest against the "community development team" from concerned community members. They just wanted to play.
Twice was the Playground and its accessory servers removed from Hive whitelist for bogus reasons. That caused a lot of extra work for us and Acedude, an UWE employee. Community members kept asking us: Why? Why would the CDT do such a thing?
Some undermined the CDTs credibility for their personal strive against us (this is a good one).
The cherry on the cake was my PT invitation that suddenly got scrapped when you realised who that guy with the awesome gear was. No actual reason was ever supplied. I wonder why.
Now you're suddenly claiming a change of mind? Do you believe to have any face left worth saving?
You're still beyond realisation it was ATFs planning all along to have you scapegoat him? He sacrificed himself for my server, so that the players who love it would remain undisturbed.
Why would you lie about not wanting to destroy us instead of a simple apology for the last 22 months of utter rage and relentless hate? Look, you don't even have to stop hating us. We're used to it by now.
Just apologise every now and then and we're good.
To gain sympathy from the remainder of the forum dwellers, of which most are dead set on hate already, you keep going on about how you have so few time as volunteer.
Yet, the amount of time you forced us to spent dealing with your shenanigans is magically not counted?. We are volunteers. We are not paid. In fact, running those servers ranges around EUR 300 per month. You dare to steal our time and cause grief to the community you're supposed to support.
This post is a good example. It's the truth you want to hide. Be quick to edit it and ban me.
Just don't forget to mention you forced a volunteer to spent yet another hour typing this.
Ah it sure is a nice timing with that post of yours, even mentioning the patch in it. Simple minds now can't help but agree with you. Otherwise they'd be -horrible- to the -volunteers-.
Are you perhaps running out of points to make against 24+? Hilarious.
For those that don't understand why that's hilarious: Back when Wooza's Playground started, it was a spectacular lagfest during some endgames. That wasn't good. There were actual reasons for complaint.
This has long since changed. The server copes with endgame scenarios better than many other, 'normal sized' ones.
There are no points left to make against it, there's only blind rage left. Keep it up, Obraxis. ATF will strike you down all over again.
(Free to play will come too late. Servers are a non issue.)
We've fought to destroy your server? Are you serious? Because members of the CDT have never helped you, right? I really regret even having people like you and ATF in friends, shittalking like this.
It's disgusting to work on this game when you log into the forums and the same people that ask you for help also call you all kinds of names while thinking they're god's gift to this community.
Disgusting.