Natural Selection Free to Play

12467

Comments

  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    You twisted my arm. Moon walking marines is in b275. :) Hope I don't get axed from CDT for spilling the beans.
  • babblerblingbabblerbling Join Date: 2015-05-27 Member: 204951Members
    Everyone is on about matchmaking to boost compet scene.

    If you want to actually help the compet scene, make it accessible in the games main menu. Having to go find a website like ensl is, contrary to decoys belief, not helping.
    Those that already know these accesses, can't get it in their head that for a new player, it is too fucking difficult to figure out.

    There's also been a proposal to have a global readyroom kind of thing behind that button, where players gather to play organised.

    Most importantly, this can happen with a small playerbase and scales easily.
  • FrozenFrozen New York, NY Join Date: 2010-07-02 Member: 72228Members, Constellation
    HAH. @IeptBarakat you're a jerk ^.^
    BeigeAlert wrote: »
    You twisted my arm. Moon walking marines is in b275. :) Hope I don't get axed from CDT for spilling the beans.

  • 2cough2cough Rocky Mountain High Join Date: 2013-03-14 Member: 183952Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    Not joking: I've had dreams (yes multiple) where myself and lamp posts and vehicles are all moonwalking. I've also had this sort of dream w/ shuffling. Moonwalking marines would literally be a dream come true.
  • roxxkattroxxkatt Join Date: 2014-12-28 Member: 200431Members
    edited July 2015
    as someone with over three and a half thousand hours spent playing ns2 in the last few years since i bought it in a humble bundle, i have played a lot of games on a lot of differently sized servers.
    granted, i was late to the game and have never played ns1, so i have not been exposed to the entire dev history.

    i have played small servers, i have played standard servers, and i have spent a lot of time on the wooza servers.
    i dont take sides, because i have been burned by both sides and i know noone is on my side except me.

    the people who are against large servers are making 2 distinct and different arguments:
    1) the first argument is that more players change gameplay.
    2) the second argument is that more players cause lag, both for the client and the server.
    additional points:
    4) wooza servers are rookie traps and are largely unmoderated
    3) wooza and atf have personal defects

    this month i and others just released a free to play game on steam through greenlight which at any time has 300+ concurrent users and should be breaking into steams top 100 most played shortly.
    additionally, this game will be celebrating its 20th anniversary soon.
    this game has been running this long for two reasons: it is incredibly customizable through settings and the server structure is completely distributed, meaning it is community run.
    its success is due to the fact that its initial creators didnt try to force a single mindset for gameplay, and enabled a wide spectrum of gameplay types, just by changing a few numbers around.
    this developed into a wide variety of gameplay types, many of which are extremely different, but retain the same core gameplay mechanics and features.

    i am not seeing this happening in ns2, because the main developers are trying to force a strict mindset of how the game should be instead of what the game can be
    however, even with this mindset some variations like combat and siege have popped up, which uw has profited from to varying degrees.

    1) more players means different gameplay, variety is good, and people have a choice which server to play
    without a doubt, more players change gameplay. however, this increases variety in ns2 and is a good thing
    more variety means more gameplay and means better player retention, once those players can get past the "oh no more players is different and different is scary"
    tactics and strategy are different in large games than they are in small games, while things like shade hive become less of a viable option, things like spores and xeno become more viable.
    long hallways are soon filled with bullet hailstorms, but alternate routes are available, and gorge tunnels become far more critical
    it becomes a different game but with the same core gameplay.
    this is a good thing, once you get past the toxic "different is scary" mindset

    2) large servers highlight areas needing improvement
    yes, more players cause more lag. this is unavoidable and is undesirable.
    however, having large servers should be extremely important to uw and cdt, as large servers are stress testing their implementations, and the profiling data is extremely valuable, because it highlights the bottlenecks in their structures.
    playing on great hardware with most settings at maximum, i dont experience a large amount of client performance downsides, but large servers point out flaws in the system/protocol/methodology even to me through things like being commander while all 40 people are in the same room, then clicking minimap to that room from elsewhere on the map and having to sit through redplug for 5-10 seconds while (probably) the packet stack resolves itself, and having large map load times despite having fast hardware.
    it is my suspicion that uw and cdt are very conservative in their thinking, as i myself have written a mod to add more capability to alien vision, which was quickly shot down for performance concerns because it was not in line with the very orange alien vision, as i then wrote the mod and tested performance myself, and to this date it has not been tested by anyone else, and has not been added to the game.
    additionally, when i first started playing on the wooza servers there were crashes and performance shortcomings everywhere, and these days its barely noticeable.
    playing large servers over time allows players to see just how much progress wooza/cdt have made with performance optimizations.

    3) large servers are rookie traps, and groups of people are groups of people, but will probably be the same elsewhere
    large servers are rookie traps. this is a bad thing and is a side effect.
    new players are far more likely to join servers with the most population in all games.
    the downside to this is that the rookie traps also fill up with people of lesser intelligence that arent necessarily new players, and those people are more likely to cause problems for other people.
    these are the people that only purchase a microphone to hear themselves speak.
    playing on the wooza servers i have personally had difficulties with about 5 individuals that unfortunately just will not go away, and because the servers are mostly unmoderated their insults and racism persist.

    4) yes, they are dicks. get over it. everyone else profits from your cooperation
    wooza basically lets atf do whatever he wants. atf is a dick to most people and makes a lot of bad decisions.
    i personally have had bad interactions with atf, and i believe he went as far as banning me from one of the servers, due to my partially successful removal of the above terrible people with no moderation powers as i am numerically less than the trolls they refuse to ban, and i chose not to sign up to their external website/forums which some of the trolls did, so i guess i missed out on the preferential treatment.
    i have since been boycotting the wooza servers, and am no longer writing mods for wooza.
    however, if i were on cdt i would look past the fact that atf is a terrible person and would only focus on the fact that he can bring me hard performance data which will benefit ns2.
    i would then use that data to improve ns2.
    any other path will be because i have a personal vendetta with that individual and through inaction will be harming ns2

    tl;dr larger servers are a good thing. end of discussion. wooza+friends and uw+cdt need to stop their feuds so the rest of us can benefit from their cooperation
  • roxxkattroxxkatt Join Date: 2014-12-28 Member: 200431Members
    i look forward to the new build system, and i look forward to the new fast map load system
  • roxxkattroxxkatt Join Date: 2014-12-28 Member: 200431Members
    also regarding f2p:

    dota, tf3, planetside2, and many more are having workshop and other user submitted content, and take a large cut out of player spending and give the creator a small cut.
    ns2 can do this, and in the long run it will be worth it even after legal fees for the isolated csgo howl type incidents that people love to point at.

    and if this is too much, than cdt can add someone dedicated to making dlc skins, because as everyone keeps saying cdt works for free, and since skinning isnt coding you can add more people for more output


    free to play is a great option for adding a lot new players, will revitalize the player base, and with more new players comes more new server operators, since anyone can run a server, as even i have for a bit before i turned it off for performance drains

    and personally if ns2 wasnt in a humble bundle or steam sale, i wouldnt have gotten the game, so heres one example of that
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    Disclaimer: This is my opinion as an individual and as such does not represent the entirety of the CDT; a varying team of personalities and opinions.

    @roxxkatt
    roxxkatt wrote: »
    because the main developers are trying to force a strict mindset of how the game should be instead of what the game can be

    Do not underestimate the performance issue.
    We can go round and round all day discussing the merits of what the game was actually balanced for and what "quality" of gameplay was intended to be sold to consumers - but performance is something that is easily measurable and noticeable and thus can give a much worse impression than balance.

    The CDT has been achieving sweeping optimizations across the board, and most of it are bottlenecks we've known all along.
    The larger servers have mostly* provided bugs that have predictably arisen due to running a hex edited executable - an unsupported mod - and we have since included (in multiple patches) fixes for them specifically, despite the downsides of taking development time supporting mods being outside of our scope and ability to reliably test. We have enough on our plate already ;)

    And that's really the place where large servers come in handy : they can be a testing environment for worst case scenarios. *And we have used them for such scenarios to everyone's benefit.
    But they're not exactly consistently able to show us new bottlenecks - UWE and the CDT have known for a long time what the limits are and the work involved. (namely LUA, entity count, player position etc)
    In fact, the major optimizations planned in our trello are all currently done without the need to test on any large server.


    So to me, the bottom line is this: The game is pretty open to modification but we as the CDT must officially focus solely on the VANILLA version of NS2 for the obvious reason that we just don't have the resources and ability to assist in maintaining everyone's mod alongside an actual game we wish to improve for everyone else. Even the amazing CDT members @Mendasp and @GhoulofGSG9 maintain their own HUGELY popular server mods, NS2+ and Shine while consistently working on vanilla NS2! Playtesters do not test either of their mods - we have enough on our plate already with vanilla NS2.

    So please, try to understand that this isn't about "forcing" anything... it's about actual volunteers' time put into a specific product we all love for the benefit of everyone.
    If someone in the community wants a different game or "mindset" out of NS2, no one on the CDT is going to stop them... hell if they are civil enough with us, some just might take the time to assist as we're just as part of the community as they are!
    But to expect anything more is not only unreasonable, it is simply impractical.

    Hope you understand, and thank you for taking the time to illustrate your points.
  • ghostdlrghostdlr Join Date: 2015-07-02 Member: 205950Members
    What's Vanilla NS2 ?
  • YojimboYojimbo England Join Date: 2009-03-19 Member: 66806Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    IronHorse wrote: »


    So to me, the bottom line is this: The game is pretty open to modification but we as the CDT must officially focus solely on the VANILLA version of NS2 for the obvious reason that we just don't have the resources and ability to assist in maintaining everyone's mod alongside an actual game we wish to improve for everyone else.

    This, you cannot build a house unless the foundations are strong already, we first must focus on getting the vanilla experience to a good acceptable standard (performance, stability and balance wise) until we can start focusing attention on mods I'm afraid.

    With each patch we are getting closer to our dream, it will come @roxxkatt you've waited this long, alittle longer won't hurt.
  • BensonBenson Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    @Wheeee

    Thatst how is was in NS1, and i felt it worked great. for populating servers. Most of the ones I played on had their map vote include NS and CO maps after a certain number of players joined, making seeding servers fun even with only a few people

    I had asked a few server admins a few years ago why this wasn't done in NS2 while Combat was still being actively developed as a mod for NS2.

    Responses ranged from:

    Combat segregates the community, and I don't want it on my server.

    If people want to play combat, they can join a combat server

    Loading the mods and maps for combat from the Workshop cause a lot of crashes, and I dont want my server to be unstable.
    ** This was the big one I think

    If we could get combat back as an official game mode, smaller playercount servers would most likely become more popular as they would become almost as resiliant to leavers as the larger ones.


    But that gravy train rolled out a while ago.
  • IeptBarakatIeptBarakat The most difficult name to speak ingame. Join Date: 2009-07-10 Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    Yeah any chance of Combat benefiting the ns2 community died out when it wanted to be it's own thing and failed.

    Now we have a dead mod and lost a portion of the playerbase as a result.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    I think pre game works better since it's essentially training and is the core of the combat mod itself without the rules / mechanics which would be counter intuitive to teaching a typical round of ns2.

    Also as an already existing mod it's waaayyy easier to implement officially, and thus far more of a practical candidate.
  • amoralamoral Join Date: 2013-01-03 Member: 177250Members
    Speaking personally, I've jumped into woozas because it was the only game in town.

    Higher player counts are naturally resistant to players leaving.

    Structures melt at higher player counts. It's frankly unplayable late game pushing any base.

    Medpacks don't scale.

    And it's super balanced because everybody is terrible due to hardware constraints.

    Also, a game that starts 18 man can end up 32 really screwing with build orders.
  • roxxkattroxxkatt Join Date: 2014-12-28 Member: 200431Members
    correct, unkillable marines drowning in medpacks can now actually die
  • FrozenFrozen New York, NY Join Date: 2010-07-02 Member: 72228Members, Constellation
    Why not just program a shotgun vs fade tournament mod for the pre-game. Or teams could vote for the other teams kit
  • NordicNordic Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    mattji104 wrote: »
    Why not just program a shotgun vs fade tournament mod for the pre-game. Or teams could vote for the other teams kit

    Fades vs lerks or gorges vs pistols
  • d0ped0gd0ped0g Join Date: 2003-05-25 Member: 16679Members
    roxxkatt wrote: »
    correct, unkillable marines drowning in medpacks can now actually die

    Learn to aim your bites and land them one after the other. Or learn to play as a team. Medspammed marines are not "unkillable".
  • roxxkattroxxkatt Join Date: 2014-12-28 Member: 200431Members
    right i forgot that marines stand in one spot and dont fire guns at you, mb
  • AnzestralAnzestral Join Date: 2013-05-21 Member: 185327Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester
    edited July 2015
    Well, if you think you are supposed to 1v1 a marine without getting a good ambush you should rethink your understanding of the games meta (on normal small servers I mean).

    Concerning the "normal" small server against Woozas:
    I sometimes play on Woozas if no other servers are populated or full. I have to admit that sometimes I find it quite funny to play there and I actually agree that playing with 42 players is in some way more of an immersive action game. Sometimes I even turned all graphic settings to high and just enjoyed not being able to see or hit anything because of the immersion (the game looks amazing like that btw compared to my clean competetive settings) but also because of the low fps (and it honestly drops significantly lower in the endgame compared to 6v6 or even 10v10 even on low settings, but maybe pub players do not need to keep 120fps up all the time).

    Although for me as a competetive player it is quite painfull that the single player has very small impact on the outcome of the game alone but I honestly do not expect to play a "real" round of vanilla NS2. I also think that the average player skill and understanding of the "normal" meta is a lot lower as compared to small vanilla servers. I think that is not a big problem for regulars playing only on the Woozas server as the meta there is very different as in my opinion most games tend to be pretty static with masses of players trying to push a specific location. But I think it might actually give a wrong impression of the game to new players regarding the performance but also regarding the game itself.

    I actually think all Servers should have some sort of minimum ingame hour or skill requirement (just a very low number tho) so that new players have the chance to experience the game the way it was origionally intended to be played on medium sized (8v8 to 10v10 Rookie only servers). Rremember a lot of casual palyers might not have very strong compters to handle the game with a high amount of enteties as on Woozas. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying they shouldn't paly on Woozas servers. Maybe they are the type of players who enjoy that more over vanilla NS2. I just think they need to see who the game actually is ment to be and after a short amount of time should be able to decide if they want to join a normal server or a high playercount server.

    Another thing is that I don't like Woozas beeing whitelisted for hive skill. It just is a different game so it should at least have a seperate hive rating as it really can mess up the skill system (even more).
  • FrozenFrozen New York, NY Join Date: 2010-07-02 Member: 72228Members, Constellation
    d0ped0g wrote: »
    roxxkatt wrote: »
    correct, unkillable marines drowning in medpacks can now actually die

    Learn to aim your bites and land them one after the other. Or learn to play as a team. Medspammed marines are not "unkillable".

    They should be though. Medpack delay is lame. I hate that change, alot.
  • BensonBenson Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    edited July 2015
    @IronHorse

    Its not so much the training part of it that made it work in NS1, it was having a full, alternate game mode that people could enjoy even with only a few people while the server filled up, and could also be used as a break from playing "ns" games.

    It was being able to vote in between the two game modes (4 including mvm and siege for the servers i played on) on a per-match basis that drew me into the game and kept me playing for years.

    While yes, pre-game, is the "core" of combat mode in terms of fighting, the maps, leveling system, and play styles of Combat all combined to make it much more engaging than running around an empty, large map looking for someone who is willing to "practice" with you.
  • Cannon_FodderAUSCannon_FodderAUS Brisbane, AU Join Date: 2013-06-23 Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    d0ped0g wrote: »
    roxxkatt wrote: »
    correct, unkillable marines drowning in medpacks can now actually die

    Learn to aim your bites and land them one after the other. Or learn to play as a team. Medspammed marines are not "unkillable".

    Actually, sometimes, a med happy comm isn't the best thing. Recent game I played, we asked the comm to stop medding, because it was delaying upgrades. Point medding a single marine vs. 3 skulks. Marine "might" win, but not likely, that same 4 meds is almost half a SG research done. So a med happy comm isn't always a good thing.
  • NoMNoM Join Date: 2015-04-13 Member: 203407Members, NS2 Playtester
    McGlaspie wrote: »
    full-blown ranking, and matchmaker into the Hive revamp. However, we wouldn't be enabling said system unless the *required* consistent player numbers rose to the levels they have to be for said system to work.

    Perhaps separating alien/marine stats could be on the agenda.
  • natostanconatostanco Join Date: 2011-02-15 Member: 81912Members
    edited July 2015
    i play on wooza servers because they are the only full atm and with good latency(<50ms), then there is one russian server with 100ms+ but considering the awfully high interp of ns2 i prefer not play since I already die enough as a skulk against ghost bullets behind corners, and the rest of the servers are totally deserted, maybe there is one mod server with a handful of players once in a while.

    I remember tf2, when people complained of bad performances on 32 slots servers when the game was designed for 24 (30% increase), and ns2 that aims at even less 18(?) has numbers like that 42 players server (130% increase), and tf2 maps were mostly very open with vast fields and could support the spamfest, whereas ns2 is 90% claustrophobic and it is awfully common for a bunch of skulks to die in one grenade

    its true that in bigger servers the strongest strats are different but they are pretty much the spamming/zergrush kind of strats so no wonder there, also when you play in such servers your playstyle changes too because the survivor instinct kicks in and you let the rest of your team go in to absorb the bullets or you just spam with a GL in a spot even if you don't know if anyone is there because with so many players you might just as well get a frag, again no wonders here, higher player servers are all the same imho
  • cooliticcoolitic Right behind you Join Date: 2013-04-02 Member: 184609Members
    edited July 2015
    Wooza's isnt the only full server with good latency (at least where I am) and latency isn't what causes network problems in most NS2 servers. You should be looking at tick rate and stability as a measure of network performance.
  • StardogStardog Join Date: 2004-10-25 Member: 32448Members
    Nordic wrote: »
    Stardog wrote: »
    modern gameplay "feel".

    Can you elaborate on this?
    The movement would be smoothed out, weapon sway added, iron sights and hit indicators. I'm not sure how NS2 handles mouse-look, but it doesn't seem as tight as other FPS's. Maybe it's something to do with my framerate.
Sign In or Register to comment.