You can already do all this. The beauty of community servers. Most still don't do this because guess what, they don't want it. If you don't like it join a different server or start your own.
I'm not sure you grasp the core issue.
We NEED those A B C rules everywhere ON ALL RANKED SERVER otherwise skill rating means absolutely dogpoop and balanced games are never gonna happen at least never consistently.
Yeah perfect. Then don't wonder why half of the people would leave the server after a shuffle.
A. Make shuffle mandatory at the start of a game
B. Make switching team impossible for everyone all along the game
C. Make it so new people joining an ongoing game are forced toward the team that their own skill rating will cause less imbalance.
That would be all fine and good... IF we could choose which team shuffle puts us on the majority of the time.
I despise servers that force you onto a certain team because I get forced onto marine (which I absolutely hate playing) in at least 8 out of every 10 shuffles...
It also really sucks when you join a server and teams are even but it forces you to the team you hate... I've even had times where the average hive score on alien is lower yet shuffle forces me into the stacked marine team...
We need an option for shuffle preference that could be set to either Marine, Alien, or random.
If a game is absolutely free but nobody even want to play it then yes its a shitty game
Wrong, its all about marketing.
Warface has around 4000 players and its one of the worst games i have ever played.
4 years after release it still feels like its in beta with so many issues i cant count them.
You know Crytek? Yes. EVERYONE knows Crytek.
"Oh, look, a F2P game from Crytek with the allmighty Cryengine, awesome"
You remember SystemShock2?
One of the best games ever released.
All modern action adventures are based on the system SystemShock introduced.
The Gamepress that days was so excited about it, and it ended with countless awards.
But it looks like it was ways ahead of his time and it was a financial disaster.
In the end Looking Glass Studios had to close the doors.
So by saying:
If people dont play a game then its not good is wrong.
When you play F2P games these days, did you never ask yourself why they might be succesfull?
- All Half life engine based games are succesfull cause they are running on a toaster.
- The core mechanics of these games are easy to understand but you have room to master the game.
- The progress system is rewarding you with new weapons or other stuff
- A matchmaking is trying to balance the game for you
this might not be as relevant but its google search trends for ns2 evolve and warframe
Oh....my....god... Who would have ever thought something that is free would attract more people than something you have to pay for?
Mind = Blown!!
But seriously, were those little graphs supposed to show something relevant? I mean we all know that free games have more players, but the issue here is the quality of players, not the quantity.
More players does not equal a better game.
Well we are advocating for exactly more players, because the playerbase currently is WAAAAAY too low, and has been for ages, for many of us veterans to continue to care about this game, with so many other good options current and future on the market.
I'd like more players, so would many others, and I think it's hardheaded to be scared of new blood, because it might bring toxic players with it, we know it will, but we need new people.
I don't care how it's done, even if ns2 continues to cost money, but I don't see that happening compared to an f2p prep / relaunch.
Well we are advocating for exactly more players, because the playerbase currently is WAAAAAY too low, and has been for ages, for many of us veterans to continue to care about this game, with so many other good options current and future on the market.
I'd like more players, so would many others, and I think it's hardheaded to be scared of new blood, because it might bring toxic players with it, we know it will, but we need new people.
I don't care how it's done, even if ns2 continues to cost money, but I don't see that happening compared to an f2p prep / relaunch.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have more players... It's just that every single F2P game I have ever tried has had communities that are so ridiculously toxic (ignoring the overabundance of hackers altogether) that they aren't even worth playing... Like Team Fortress 2, a game I used to love playing. I can't stand it anymore now that it's gone F2P because the quality of games has gone so far downhill.. Not only do you get servers full of racist and sexist trolls spewing vile racial and sexual slurs back and forth.. but rarely do people ever try to actually play the game. I haven't been able to play a single decent game of TF2 since it went F2P because everyone is busy trolling, or spawncamping, or sniping, or herp derping TDM style in the center of the map... It's not uncommon to end up in a 60 minute game of CTF where the "intelligence" is never even picked up once, because nobody there is actually playing CTF... and that's pathetically sad.
Then of course you have the bots and/or players idling for hats/skins/crates/whatever...
One can only imagine how horrible NS2 would be under a F2P model. The sheer number of games that would be ruined by troll commanders alone would make it not worth even trying to play anymore. Then add in all the vile racist/sexual slurs spammed over chat, the lack of anyone ever trying to play the objective, the kids who are only there for the skins/items/achievements/whatever... It would be pure hell.
Simply put a cleansing factor that allows to lose smurf report over time, by not getting new ones, for example if for X days you have receive no smurf report, you lose 1 reports.
That X number can be tweaked until it equals the average rate of false smurf hackusation so that they basically cancel out.
You could lose your smurf status over time? Even if he/she was a smurf in the first place?
Do you really think going F2P in the current state would change this?
Im sure you know where this is from:
"Player retention hasn't been good in Natural Selection 2, but the game deserve so much more play than it does. One of the reasons is that it's an old school titel, with roots in the mindset of the hl1 times. Getting good as either marine or alien takes time and practice, also a fair bit of knowledge, and on top of that you have the commander aspect which is basicly an RTS game with real players (some may act like AI's).
Not many players has the patience of old times, where people would defrag in a mod for Quake3, for weeks, only to outrick their opponents movement wise the in their matches."
You can already do all this. The beauty of community servers. Most still don't do this because guess what, they don't want it. If you don't like it join a different server or start your own.
I'm not sure you grasp the core issue.
We NEED those A B C rules everywhere ON ALL RANKED SERVER otherwise skill rating means absolutely dogpoop and balanced games are never gonna happen at least never consistently.
Yeah perfect. Then don't wonder why half of the people would leave the server after a shuffle.
Yea that's the nature of shuffle, if you don't want shuffle go play on a non-ranked server, and between you and me, if you only like playing aliens or only marines, you can as well uninstall this game right now.
In general, if you can't accept change, you're gonna be stuck with the same problems of unbalanced games until this game dies and this current utterly broken system that REWARDS STACKING it is not acceptable anymore!
What could be an actual improvement is an option to chose alien/marine/commander in the PLAY NOW matchmaking.
Now instead of clicking disagree why can't you show me a better idea to solve unbalanced teams?
Oh wait you don't have one.
Pasting this for people who don't follow the whole thread
To reiterate my point how make stacking impossible:
A. Make shuffle mandatory at the start of a game
B. Make switching team impossible for everyone all along the game
C. Make it so new people joining an ongoing game are forced toward the team that their own skill rating will cause less imbalance.
About smurf,
Why can't we report smurf?? Make it possible devs that is VITAL to retention of both old and new players.
It's simple, once a player has received X smurf report make him/her unable to join ranked server and put a smurf badge next to his name.
That's the minimum that needs to be done.
About commanders
You can't have a minimum hive skill for commanding. What happens when nobody on the server has that hive skill? What if only 3 people hive that hive skill and refuse to command? Then you don't get games, and the server dies.
Yes you can set a fluctuating minimum skill that is a bit below the current average skill of people on said server. THat way it is restrictive but not too much.
Because again, if the commander is too bad it becomes a bottleneck, and the outcome of a game is determined by his/her incompetence, so it's a priority to have decent commanders.
It's good that we have a separated alien/marine skill rating for hive 2.0, but you shouldnt overlook the need of a commander one.
@RevanCorana Although those 3 things you propose would increase the quality of shuffles, most players find them unacceptable. They are non-solutions.
The real solution is increasing concurrent playerbase. That is not exactly happening, or possible, and free2play would likely not increase concurrent playercounts in the long run. Increasing the playerbase is effectively a non-solution.
Awhile back I tried an experiment that mirrors 2 of your mentioned solutions.
I convinced Ghoul to run a server that would force shuffle players, and not allow team switching. I also limited the server to be between ~850 and ~1550 hive skill, so that only middle skilled players would play.
In theory this server set up should create the most skill balanced games possible in NS2. That is because shuffle will work as intended because it was force shuffled, and because players could not switch teams. The most important setting that would result in skill balanced games is the fact that teams would be near skill.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problems with shuffle is the diversity of skill on the server. This is measured by the standard deviation of skill. A higher standard deviation means that the team is composed of wildly different skill levels. A low standard deviation means that teams is composed of players near in skill level. I typically see the standard deviation of team skill in the 400-1000 mark in games. Even 400 is a very high value. By restricting the server to only players between ~850 and ~1550 hive skill, you decrease the standard deviation in skill, creating near skilled games. The estimated standard deviation of skill was ~180.
As I have described, ghoul created a server that would theoretically have the most skill balanced games. They would have the most skill balanced games because shuffle would be force, team switching was allowed, and players would be near skilled to each other.
We tried to seed it for a few days, but we simply could not. First of all, the only people who could play were the middle 50% of skill level. So low skill and high skill players would be unable to join. We would get people who would join, but they would quickly leave complaining about forced shuffle.
Also, have you noticed how not one server anymore has forced shuffle? It is because players don't like that. Yes, it might create a better team balance, but players don't like it.
Looks like its not enough that a game cost nothing.
Hardly comparable, it's 22,99€ on Steam and that free beta is not even advertised on the store page. You wouldn't find that game if you were looking for free to play games on Steam.
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 2016
@RevanCorana your anti smurf plan has a giant gaping hole in it.
Returning skilled players who used to play before hive will show up looking like a rookie on their stats page, but their 2,000 hours recorded on their private steam profile will ensure they decimate others. Players in the server will scream murder and "smurf", and vote to kick or ban the returning player. (This isn't a theoretical example btw - it just happened yesterday)
We really don't need to drive away returning players..
Same thing for your other suggestions.. they're just not practical. They sound solid on paper but they are not pragmatic.
Hey guys i have an idea, what if we actually tackle the reason people smurf instead of trying to stop them from smurfing?
What if we create 2 types of server, 1 where players actually try to get balanced games and try hard and hive matters and another where you can fuck around/command/relax without being forced to carry every game...hmm this reminds me of something
What about a game mode to learn mechanics or just mess around completely based on pvp like deathmatch and then a regular mode
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Based on your agrees/disagrees i have a simple solution for your "i have to carry" problem @migalski
Play on wooza cause your hive skill doesnt matter that much there also you dont lose/gain skill points.
You can find it under the arcade tab.
Based on your agrees/disagrees i have a simple solution for your "i have to carry" problem @migalski
Play on wooza cause your hive skill doesnt matter that much there also you dont lose/gain skill points.
You can find it under the arcade tab.
Yeah dude lemme get on that server at 3 am est, i mean its full 24/7, its great!
Anytime i want to find a game i can just hop on, why haven't i ever thought of that, thanks man!
One can only imagine how horrible NS2 would be under a F2P model. The sheer number of games that would be ruined by troll commanders alone would make it not worth even trying to play anymore. Then add in all the vile racist/sexual slurs spammed over chat, the lack of anyone ever trying to play the objective, the kids who are only there for the skins/items/achievements/whatever... It would be pure hell.
The day NS2 goes F2P is the day to uninstall.
It would not actually be hard to implement a report system, we have an insanely mature community in this game compared to others, and even though they might flood in with racists / trolls and all kinds of vile gamers, we as a community, could still take charge in cleaning them out of ns2. The only reason LoL, dota and CS:GO along with many f2p titles are so drowned in toxic players, is because of their sheer popularity.. People come back on new accounts even you take away their main account.
Also they started with the report / overwatch systems way into the games life, and didn't have them in place when the people started coming in, we can do better, I know we can.
Do you really think going F2P in the current state would change this?
Im sure you know where this is from:
"Player retention hasn't been good in Natural Selection 2, but the game deserve so much more play than it does. One of the reasons is that it's an old school titel, with roots in the mindset of the hl1 times. Getting good as either marine or alien takes time and practice, also a fair bit of knowledge, and on top of that you have the commander aspect which is basicly an RTS game with real players (some may act like AI's).
Not many players has the patience of old times, where people would defrag in a mod for Quake3, for weeks, only to outrick their opponents movement wise the in their matches."
@dePARA, You quoted my recommended review about NS2, I wrote after around 1000h's. But ns2 being a hard game is still not a bad thing, there is a ton of players out there, like the ones you just quoted me about, and a whole new generation of them growing up, who are tired of watered down meta games, where you play them the same day in and day out. They'd love to come to ns2 and master a new shooter, they just don't want to PAY to get into a >500 people, 3 year old title... You can still to this day get Quake 3 for free, both Defrag, pro-mod, rocket arena and CPM, even though that greedy company turned Quake Live into a 5$ dollar title on steam, look how well that went for them after being free for 4 years. Quake live was emptying the old communities because it brought in a lot of new blood, and in time you'd be able to port the various versions of Q3 into it.. But instead the company opted for just keeping it as it was, and on top of that put a pricetag on it. Now the old communities in the vanilla Q3 client and its mods, are striving again.
Your game is NEVER gonna grow without proper cheat and smurf report, f2p or not.
And the player retention will remain low while the crushing majority of the pub games are simply very unfun because unbalanced or commanded by a clueless person.
Ok so let me start of by saying there is a lot of misinformed (retarded )comments here ...face palm skills over 9000.
I know I wanted to start or stir up the topic of f2p and I think a few of you have some awesome ideas .
I dont think ns2 will truly die until ns3 , I was wondering what uwe are actually doing now with subnautica atm if there were a free to play model uwe could get stuck into the real work of making ns3 ( haha never going to happen but a logical thought none the less ) or even a graphical update for ns2 had a few people deny wanting to play because of graphics but really who cares , beigealert is on the money i think with the f2p , we will need a sort of server ranking more fleshed out tutorials that are life form specific . i am willing to start a go fund or something if there were to be graphics update and f2p model ( i would want a badge but its all about le badges ) and the whole thing of making the people play game with health bars is just rood it should be a server side option not enforced ...because most of the people that play ns2 these days are 1000+ hrs and if you havent figured out that 75 = 1 bite by then you never will i feel like this a a personal update for a filthy scrub dev .
also on a further note we will need a comp mod returning soon because atm ns2 is garbage for 6v6 , deck has something up in the workshop i believe but i just found it funny that as soon as comp mod was out and about people started returning , people want to play ns2 but not in its current state or the direction it is heading ( not that i know but its smelly ) because its garbage . i could be wrong and probs just need to stop whining, why dont the devs listen to the community , most other big name titles do to a certain extent and it works for them
were actually struggling to fill aus servers these days , and if ns2 is to go free to play uwe dont need servers ppl will rent them if they want them perhaps off uwe ? like there is a logical way of doing things and there is the retarded way . i am simply asking who ever is in charge of ns2 ( because lets be honest it gets passed from one hand to another like a dirty bong that ppl have a toke on and realize there is nothing in the bong but broken dreams and empty promises)
Another suggestion that I think could be nice for a f2p conversion of NS2 in 64bit would be alternate versions of various items (weapons, structures, com abilities) that have slightly different effects (a bit like TF2 weapons), for example a shotgun with 8 shot per clip but less damage per shot, or an extractor that give slightly more Tres but with less HP, or a medpack that applies a long duration slow regenartion effect etc.. all being tradoffs to avoid "pay to win" unbalance
Much more customizability compared to a solely cosmetic approach but it could be hard to balance
Another suggestion that I think could be nice for a f2p conversion of NS2 in 64bit would be alternate versions of various items (weapons, structures, com abilities) that have slightly different effects (a bit like TF2 weapons), for example a shotgun with 8 shot per clip but less damage per shot, or an extractor that give slightly more Tres but with less HP, or a medpack that applies a long duration slow regenartion effect etc.. all being tradoffs to avoid "pay to win" unbalance
Much more customizability compared to a solely cosmetic approach but it could be hard to balance
CSGO
Pokemon GO
NS2 GO anyone ? ( you can only play 1 map with this trial free version , people who are new to this game will starting to like and buy the Full version , introduce theirs passion with other friends )
and about pay2win , i cant even get a knife in CSGO to "get gud" . Gaben pz have mercy on my wallet
This game isn't ever making a comeback. We may get a healthy amount of new players ever now and then, and, hell, we might even retain them, but a "comeback" just isn't going to happen. You want to do some testing? Fine, but preferably have a beta testing mod for that. You want to improve the game for players? Also fine. But the "Natural Selection" franchise will not have an opportunity to become big until NS3, and that isn't going to happen until quite some time later.
Another suggestion that I think could be nice for a f2p conversion of NS2 in 64bit would be alternate versions of various items (weapons, structures, com abilities) that have slightly different effects (a bit like TF2 weapons), for example a shotgun with 8 shot per clip but less damage per shot, or an extractor that give slightly more Tres but with less HP, or a medpack that applies a long duration slow regenartion effect etc.. all being tradoffs to avoid "pay to win" unbalance
Much more customizability compared to a solely cosmetic approach but it could be hard to balance
CSGO
Pokemon GO
NS2 GO anyone ? ( you can only play 1 map with this trial free version , people who are new to this game will starting to like and buy the Full version , introduce theirs passion with other friends )
and about pay2win , i cant even get a knife in CSGO to "get gud" . Gaben pz have mercy on my wallet
Team Fortress 2 is f2p and very fun (and not p2w).
@coolitic Customization is a part of the process of transforing a game to f2p.
If a game is absolutely free but nobody even want to play it then yes its a shitty game
You remember SystemShock2?
One of the best games ever released.
All modern action adventures are based on the system SystemShock introduced.
The Gamepress that days was so excited about it, and it ended with countless awards.
But it looks like it was ways ahead of his time and it was a financial disaster.
In the end Looking Glass Studios had to close the doors.
SS2 was not a financial disaster, it made money... barely. having profits tied to the performance of Flight Unlimited 3 and Jane's Attack Squadron didn't help. Also LGS provided the dark engine, Irrational games made the game. LGS also closed it's doors when their deal with Eidos fell through, due to them pumping something along the lines of $40m into Daikatana.
you are correct though, System Shock 2 is incredible. Along with Thief.
This game isn't ever making a comeback. We may get a healthy amount of new players ever now and then, and, hell, we might even retain them, but a "comeback" just isn't going to happen. You want to do some testing? Fine, but preferably have a beta testing mod for that. You want to improve the game for players? Also fine. But the "Natural Selection" franchise will not have an opportunity to become big until NS3, and that isn't going to happen until quite some time later.
Comments
Yeah perfect. Then don't wonder why half of the people would leave the server after a shuffle.
That would be all fine and good... IF we could choose which team shuffle puts us on the majority of the time.
I despise servers that force you onto a certain team because I get forced onto marine (which I absolutely hate playing) in at least 8 out of every 10 shuffles...
It also really sucks when you join a server and teams are even but it forces you to the team you hate... I've even had times where the average hive score on alien is lower yet shuffle forces me into the stacked marine team...
We need an option for shuffle preference that could be set to either Marine, Alien, or random.
Wrong, its all about marketing.
Warface has around 4000 players and its one of the worst games i have ever played.
4 years after release it still feels like its in beta with so many issues i cant count them.
You know Crytek? Yes. EVERYONE knows Crytek.
"Oh, look, a F2P game from Crytek with the allmighty Cryengine, awesome"
You remember SystemShock2?
One of the best games ever released.
All modern action adventures are based on the system SystemShock introduced.
The Gamepress that days was so excited about it, and it ended with countless awards.
But it looks like it was ways ahead of his time and it was a financial disaster.
In the end Looking Glass Studios had to close the doors.
So by saying:
If people dont play a game then its not good is wrong.
When you play F2P games these days, did you never ask yourself why they might be succesfull?
- All Half life engine based games are succesfull cause they are running on a toaster.
- The core mechanics of these games are easy to understand but you have room to master the game.
- The progress system is rewarding you with new weapons or other stuff
- A matchmaking is trying to balance the game for you
NS2 has NOTHING of that.
But hey;
This and skins should be enough. Lets go.
Well we are advocating for exactly more players, because the playerbase currently is WAAAAAY too low, and has been for ages, for many of us veterans to continue to care about this game, with so many other good options current and future on the market.
I'd like more players, so would many others, and I think it's hardheaded to be scared of new blood, because it might bring toxic players with it, we know it will, but we need new people.
I don't care how it's done, even if ns2 continues to cost money, but I don't see that happening compared to an f2p prep / relaunch.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have more players... It's just that every single F2P game I have ever tried has had communities that are so ridiculously toxic (ignoring the overabundance of hackers altogether) that they aren't even worth playing... Like Team Fortress 2, a game I used to love playing. I can't stand it anymore now that it's gone F2P because the quality of games has gone so far downhill.. Not only do you get servers full of racist and sexist trolls spewing vile racial and sexual slurs back and forth.. but rarely do people ever try to actually play the game. I haven't been able to play a single decent game of TF2 since it went F2P because everyone is busy trolling, or spawncamping, or sniping, or herp derping TDM style in the center of the map... It's not uncommon to end up in a 60 minute game of CTF where the "intelligence" is never even picked up once, because nobody there is actually playing CTF... and that's pathetically sad.
Then of course you have the bots and/or players idling for hats/skins/crates/whatever...
One can only imagine how horrible NS2 would be under a F2P model. The sheer number of games that would be ruined by troll commanders alone would make it not worth even trying to play anymore. Then add in all the vile racist/sexual slurs spammed over chat, the lack of anyone ever trying to play the objective, the kids who are only there for the skins/items/achievements/whatever... It would be pure hell.
The day NS2 goes F2P is the day to uninstall.
You could lose your smurf status over time? Even if he/she was a smurf in the first place?
Do you really think going F2P in the current state would change this?
Im sure you know where this is from:
"Player retention hasn't been good in Natural Selection 2, but the game deserve so much more play than it does. One of the reasons is that it's an old school titel, with roots in the mindset of the hl1 times. Getting good as either marine or alien takes time and practice, also a fair bit of knowledge, and on top of that you have the commander aspect which is basicly an RTS game with real players (some may act like AI's).
Not many players has the patience of old times, where people would defrag in a mod for Quake3, for weeks, only to outrick their opponents movement wise the in their matches."
Yea that's the nature of shuffle, if you don't want shuffle go play on a non-ranked server,
In general, if you can't accept change, you're gonna be stuck with the same problems of unbalanced games until this game dies and this current utterly broken system that REWARDS STACKING it is not acceptable anymore!
What could be an actual improvement is an option to chose alien/marine/commander in the PLAY NOW matchmaking.
Now instead of clicking disagree why can't you show me a better idea to solve unbalanced teams?
Oh wait you don't have one.
The real solution is increasing concurrent playerbase. That is not exactly happening, or possible, and free2play would likely not increase concurrent playercounts in the long run. Increasing the playerbase is effectively a non-solution.
Awhile back I tried an experiment that mirrors 2 of your mentioned solutions.
I convinced Ghoul to run a server that would force shuffle players, and not allow team switching. I also limited the server to be between ~850 and ~1550 hive skill, so that only middle skilled players would play.
In theory this server set up should create the most skill balanced games possible in NS2. That is because shuffle will work as intended because it was force shuffled, and because players could not switch teams. The most important setting that would result in skill balanced games is the fact that teams would be near skill.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problems with shuffle is the diversity of skill on the server. This is measured by the standard deviation of skill. A higher standard deviation means that the team is composed of wildly different skill levels. A low standard deviation means that teams is composed of players near in skill level. I typically see the standard deviation of team skill in the 400-1000 mark in games. Even 400 is a very high value. By restricting the server to only players between ~850 and ~1550 hive skill, you decrease the standard deviation in skill, creating near skilled games. The estimated standard deviation of skill was ~180.
As I have described, ghoul created a server that would theoretically have the most skill balanced games. They would have the most skill balanced games because shuffle would be force, team switching was allowed, and players would be near skilled to each other.
We tried to seed it for a few days, but we simply could not. First of all, the only people who could play were the middle 50% of skill level. So low skill and high skill players would be unable to join. We would get people who would join, but they would quickly leave complaining about forced shuffle.
Also, have you noticed how not one server anymore has forced shuffle? It is because players don't like that. Yes, it might create a better team balance, but players don't like it.
People that dont like it can go play casual unranked.
Awesome news for you. I have another NS2 style game here for you. Its BRANDNEW.
And the best is: At the moment its free.
http://www.savrez.com/beta/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/366440/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1
But, well. Noone is playing it:
http://steamcharts.com/app/366440
Looks like its not enough that a game cost nothing.
Hardly comparable, it's 22,99€ on Steam and that free beta is not even advertised on the store page. You wouldn't find that game if you were looking for free to play games on Steam.
Returning skilled players who used to play before hive will show up looking like a rookie on their stats page, but their 2,000 hours recorded on their private steam profile will ensure they decimate others. Players in the server will scream murder and "smurf", and vote to kick or ban the returning player. (This isn't a theoretical example btw - it just happened yesterday)
We really don't need to drive away returning players..
Same thing for your other suggestions.. they're just not practical. They sound solid on paper but they are not pragmatic.
What if we create 2 types of server, 1 where players actually try to get balanced games and try hard and hive matters and another where you can fuck around/command/relax without being forced to carry every game...hmm this reminds me of something
What about a game mode to learn mechanics or just mess around completely based on pvp like deathmatch and then a regular mode
Play on wooza cause your hive skill doesnt matter that much there also you dont lose/gain skill points.
You can find it under the arcade tab.
Yeah dude lemme get on that server at 3 am est, i mean its full 24/7, its great!
Anytime i want to find a game i can just hop on, why haven't i ever thought of that, thanks man!
It would not actually be hard to implement a report system, we have an insanely mature community in this game compared to others, and even though they might flood in with racists / trolls and all kinds of vile gamers, we as a community, could still take charge in cleaning them out of ns2. The only reason LoL, dota and CS:GO along with many f2p titles are so drowned in toxic players, is because of their sheer popularity.. People come back on new accounts even you take away their main account.
Also they started with the report / overwatch systems way into the games life, and didn't have them in place when the people started coming in, we can do better, I know we can.
@dePARA, You quoted my recommended review about NS2, I wrote after around 1000h's. But ns2 being a hard game is still not a bad thing, there is a ton of players out there, like the ones you just quoted me about, and a whole new generation of them growing up, who are tired of watered down meta games, where you play them the same day in and day out. They'd love to come to ns2 and master a new shooter, they just don't want to PAY to get into a >500 people, 3 year old title... You can still to this day get Quake 3 for free, both Defrag, pro-mod, rocket arena and CPM, even though that greedy company turned Quake Live into a 5$ dollar title on steam, look how well that went for them after being free for 4 years. Quake live was emptying the old communities because it brought in a lot of new blood, and in time you'd be able to port the various versions of Q3 into it.. But instead the company opted for just keeping it as it was, and on top of that put a pricetag on it. Now the old communities in the vanilla Q3 client and its mods, are striving again.
And the player retention will remain low while the crushing majority of the pub games are simply very unfun because unbalanced or commanded by a clueless person.
I know I wanted to start or stir up the topic of f2p and I think a few of you have some awesome ideas .
I dont think ns2 will truly die until ns3 , I was wondering what uwe are actually doing now with subnautica atm if there were a free to play model uwe could get stuck into the real work of making ns3 ( haha never going to happen but a logical thought none the less ) or even a graphical update for ns2 had a few people deny wanting to play because of graphics but really who cares , beigealert is on the money i think with the f2p , we will need a sort of server ranking more fleshed out tutorials that are life form specific . i am willing to start a go fund or something if there were to be graphics update and f2p model ( i would want a badge but its all about le badges ) and the whole thing of making the people play game with health bars is just rood it should be a server side option not enforced ...because most of the people that play ns2 these days are 1000+ hrs and if you havent figured out that 75 = 1 bite by then you never will i feel like this a a personal update for a filthy scrub dev .
also on a further note we will need a comp mod returning soon because atm ns2 is garbage for 6v6 , deck has something up in the workshop i believe but i just found it funny that as soon as comp mod was out and about people started returning , people want to play ns2 but not in its current state or the direction it is heading ( not that i know but its smelly ) because its garbage . i could be wrong and probs just need to stop whining, why dont the devs listen to the community , most other big name titles do to a certain extent and it works for them
Much more customizability compared to a solely cosmetic approach but it could be hard to balance
CSGO
Pokemon GO
NS2 GO anyone ? ( you can only play 1 map with this trial free version , people who are new to this game will starting to like and buy the Full version , introduce theirs passion with other friends )
and about pay2win , i cant even get a knife in CSGO to "get gud" . Gaben pz have mercy on my wallet
@coolitic Customization is a part of the process of transforing a game to f2p.
SS2 was not a financial disaster, it made money... barely. having profits tied to the performance of Flight Unlimited 3 and Jane's Attack Squadron didn't help. Also LGS provided the dark engine, Irrational games made the game. LGS also closed it's doors when their deal with Eidos fell through, due to them pumping something along the lines of $40m into Daikatana.
you are correct though, System Shock 2 is incredible. Along with Thief.
Fall 2019