Quick question, what is NS2s playerbase goal?
Karrd
Join Date: 2005-02-26 Member: 42555Members
Join Date: 2005-02-26 Member: 42555Members
Becuase it would be really useful to a number of conversations on this forum, what type of playerbase is UWE hoping for and/or expecting for NS2?
First line, (such as halo, half life, madden, with millions of copies sold)
Mainstream, (with hundreds of thousands of copies sold and tens of thousands of active players)
Large, (with tens of thousands of copies sold, a few thousand active players)
Small, (a lot of copies sold but only a thousand or two active players)
Community, (basically NS as it is, hundreds of active players)
Niche, (games such as ricochet, with usually under a hundred active players)
[By active players I mean the number you would expect on during any given moment.]
You don't have to use those definitions, but what are you going for? What are you expecting?
Also, I'd like to know what the community thinks about this. I'm sure there are alot of people who might not like the idea of NS going mainstream. When the playerbase size changes, the way the game feels can change.
First line, (such as halo, half life, madden, with millions of copies sold)
Mainstream, (with hundreds of thousands of copies sold and tens of thousands of active players)
Large, (with tens of thousands of copies sold, a few thousand active players)
Small, (a lot of copies sold but only a thousand or two active players)
Community, (basically NS as it is, hundreds of active players)
Niche, (games such as ricochet, with usually under a hundred active players)
[By active players I mean the number you would expect on during any given moment.]
You don't have to use those definitions, but what are you going for? What are you expecting?
Also, I'd like to know what the community thinks about this. I'm sure there are alot of people who might not like the idea of NS going mainstream. When the playerbase size changes, the way the game feels can change.
Comments
So, i'll say First Line games
I'd personally like to see it at least become a "small" game, even if it would mean having to deal with the problems associated with it. Reaching for "Large" size would be even better, but that requires a much more significant initial investment in support for the game.
I'd easily be happy if it is in the Community size but I would also be saddened because of the potential the game has.
Just my 2 res... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
While I want NS2 to be successful in the long term, I would prefer if it took the path of long slow growth to a small-large size, to ease the rate of any such changes. I would hate to see the change from NS2 1.x to 2.x be as great as it was for NS1. Both versions were great, it's just that they were very different games.
Any idea how much other steam published products have sold? Defcon for example.
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In talk that Introversion gave at this year's GDC they said they sold 30,000 copies in the first month and they implied that the sales have been fairly steady -- what I'd expect for an indie game that will get most of its marketing from word-of-mouth.
We don't really have any idea of how NS2 will sell since this is new territory and information on similar game's sales is not generally available. The reality is that we need to sell quite a few copies to make back the cost of development of NS2 and the Natural Selection franchise, but we feel pretty confident that will happen.
Max
Again, the reason why I ask is that depending on the size of the game, different things need to be considered. If the game is the size of NS right now is, then it can pretty much take care of many things by itself (such as cheaters, community support, etc.). When you get to larger sizes though, new issues need to be dealt with, such as not only banning cheaters but actively countering them, not only providing community sites but also sorting through them so they don't become a mess of trolls and flamewars. Much more attention ends up being needed on details, becuase whereas 1 glitch now can be an annoyance, if 40,000 people experience that glitch it can be blown far out of proportion. Subtle things such as how easy it is to set up a server can have a large impact on the entire playerbase. I'm having a little difficulty exactly describing it, but I'm hoping you get my point.
<i>I have things that need doing, but I should be back later. Hopefully with a better way of explaining it.</i>
I know a lot of people from the LAN center that I used to work at (and different roomdogs) who tried NS. Of the twenty or so people, the guy who most liked it was also the most casual gamer of the twenty (at least in not taking it seriously. He spent a lot of time gaming, but never really took it seriously [never got angry or frustrated--he'd just chuckle lol).
----------------------------- //part about the guy who really liked it.
The guy played on custom servers (he was the only guy who of the twenty that really tried the custom servers). He enjoyed the custom servers, b/c there was a lot of time for goofing around in them. You could build things and hop around..and phase through and get uber weapons quickly. Also, the atmosphere and the gamers were noobs like him. If you've ever looked into those custom servers, about 50% of the people who play on them aren't that great. So either they're new to the game, or...i guess they just can't get better.
-----------------// part about the other 20.
The other twenty people who tried it, never really tried custom b/c it was kinda 'ridiculous'. It wasn't even combat! You got uber weapons..and the opponents got uber weapons. They weren't even the same! And oftentimes, noobs gets pwned if both teams have uber weapons @ the same time, b/c they dont know how to use the 'uber' powers given them.
The other twenty people tried combat and regular NS. Combat was simple, but very boring. No depth and yet, YET, it still took a lot of skill to play. You needed high sensitivity to aim properly (and these were CS, DoD, MoH guys! Low Sens, big mousepad!). They didn't have that much fun in combat for lots of reasons:
--not a large community online to play against,
--they were getting rocked b/c they were noobs, and NS is a lot about knowledge at the basic levels. Not aim. Though, aim at higher levels of gameplay is much more important that knowledge [as everyone has the same tier of knowledge after...a while].
--they didn't know which upgrades to get,
--they didn't know what sensitivity was good for the game and got frustrated (and these are ALL people who played competitively for CS, DoD and MoH (AND Halo & Halo2 & lots of other games such as warcraft and World of Warcraft [powerlvl'ing to be one of the first 60's and stuff like that]).
--Huge aliens that ate them...or swiped them to death...or bit them or structures that they couldn't get past. Or marines with huge f'ing guns that just pwned them. They really hated things that just totally 'pwned' them, b/c they didn't understand it. They didn't like not being on an equal footing.
--The outdated engine and FPS. Lagorama in the early days. UT was prettier as were a lot of other FPS's.
--All twenty who later quit the game after less than 10-20hrs of playtime were all very frustrated because of the amount of
A) Confusing map space and twisting corriders and stuff. They would literally get lost and not be able to find their way back unless they knew about the map button... (knowledge)
B) The extraordinary learning curves of just WTH to do. It's worse than playing chess (and few have that kind of patience [at least to get -good- at it]). (knowledge)
C) Things that would just annihilate them, yet they didn't seem capable of annihilating anything themselves. They would go alien (skulk) and die everytime--even if they BH'd around, b/c they other team was roving around in packs and shooting -everything-. They would go marine and get swiped to death, OC'd to death, eaten to death, gored to death, spored to death OMG...they'd get angry! Of course, this situation wasn't what happened everytime, but they only remembered them getting WTH PWNED by people who weren't even really GOOD at video gaming. They'd get WTH PWNED by video game noobs that just had the knowledge of what to do. Knowledge that took too long for their patience level to obtain. Not to mention the mind's selective memory for only those occurences that are VERY fun or VERY WTH-messed-up. So as a result, they only remembered themselves getting WTH-pwned and people dont like that very much unless they're masochistic biznatches.
D) Not 'realistic', though those same people played WoW--so I dont take that complaint too too seriously LOL.
E) None of their friends played it, so why play it?
------------------// part about the 20 people over.
If UW can fix what I outlined above as the 20+ people's top peeves about the game (even if they dont change teh gameplay at all), they will sell so many copies and make so much money that it will boggle their minds.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I also think, that if you separate gameplay sorting through how fast the 'tech' progresses, then this will enable people to get some sort of idea of whether this particular session of gaming that they're joining into is FAST&FURIOUS, Fast, Paced, Slow, or Strategic. =D. Or any derivative of the suggestion above.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll stop now before I ramble on about fixing that again.
Anyways, when is a developer going to actually reply to the purpose of this topic? Even a "We haven't settled on one yet" would be nice.
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I think that fairly well translates into "We haven't settled on one yet". As for your other concerns, such as a player manual and the like, rest assured we are aware of them and they are under control.
If this game had a commercial it would sell like hotcakes. Natural-Selection is so unique and well developed that I don't doubt its potential to sell. It's only limited by how many people know of it.
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I dunno what your definition of "hotcakes" is, but it had better be some number lower than the number of people playing now. Because it's impossible to argue a free game would have anything but a smaller number of players if you were charging for it, unless you somehow magically advertised it <i>so well</i> that you were able to overcome the price and somehow attract even more people.
In NS you can change your class and thus your role at a moments notice due to the needs of your team. The question is- can the general public accoustom themselves to playing for a team rather than on one? Even now I find that the groups I play with tend to play the Kahraa in groups of several types to play their skills off of each other. THis is how it should be because it is a TEAM game. Even now in games like BF1942 (I havent tried the new one yet) or Halo2; while you are on a team it seems like the co-ordinated attacks do not occure. Each player is attempting to do his own thing and it is the players with the best reflexes that tend to run the maps. I have only rarely seen any great level of coordination on these games but find it daily on just about any NS server I join.
I feel that NS has the ability to reach Major level at least for a while. I also foresee a large following oversees (if it is marketed there) due to players in other places than America having a larger willingness to follow a learning curve and then stick with the game.
I personally am one of those so called "casual" gamers and enjoy NS partly due to the fact that having the knowledge from gameplay I can do quite well and still not have to devote hours and hours to honing my skills. Thus I can balance my gametime with having (and keeping) a wife and 2 kids. My current clan contains quite a mix of players and I like it that way. THe ages range from 16 to 65 with both men and women players. If the "hard core" gamers dont like getting owned by me... they better start asking questions fast. On our servers most of the clan is willing to answer questions and do on a regular basis.
As for helping newbs to learn...just put up some dedicated learning servers perhaps with bots on the Kahraa since they are more complicated and let em have at it. I started on the 2 marine trainer servers and found that the community was a) very willing to answer questions about thing here more readily than on the regular servers and b) tended to squelch very quickly anyone who started asking newb questions on such servers. It was after all a training server. Seems like a simple enough solution to continue such servers into NS2.
aka a big long tutorial that is entertaining.