my fear

douchebagatron

<div class="IPBDescription">of lua</div>since this game is going to be so easily moddable by basically anyone, im afraid that there are going to be so many varying gametypes that each server is going to be different, which could tear apart the community since none of it has a whole lot in common anymore. kinda like the split between people who love class vs people who love combat. except this time its going to be dozens of smaller groups of people.

its also one of the things i stopped playing wolfenstein: enemy territory. every server you join has something completely different going on and 20 minutes of downloading before you get to where you can play.

if i want to play ns2, what guarantee is there that ill be able to play it?

Droggog

I fear that as well. Nothing against plugins like the improved votemap for amx/NS1, but i just simply... hate... gameplay-altering modifications. Added to the fact that bad/community-dividing decisions (imo) have been made in the past with NS1 (combat, mp_blockscripts, for example), i fear that with the power of lua scripting in NS2 it will be worse and that we're not learning from past mistakes. Right now we have;

- Classic, mp_blockscripts 0 servers
- Classic, mp_blockscripts 1 servers
- Combat, mp_blockscripts 0 servers
- Combat, mp_blockscripts 1 servers
- Siege/funmaps, mp_blockscripts 0 servers
- Siege/funmaps, mp_blockscripts 1 servers

Now for each category, add a bunch of variations cause of "mods" (lerklift, extralvls, for example...) and we're left with a really, really divided community. Oh yeah, not to mention the gap between competitive/pubbing scenes, but that's another story.

It's like taking a bag of rice (representing the NS community), opening it, and throwing it as far as you can. *Splat*. Divided, spread-out. And an empty bag. Now we're giving everyone an <a href="http://www.solousa.com/store/shop_image/product/7cf477c2ec481de590e818184397ecd4.jpg" target="_blank">air blower</a> to add to the mess?!

Ah well, i may be overreacting, but to resume; i share the same concerns.

Abra

I have to say, I'm with you guys on this one. The Enemy territory example is what I would have used. It really brought the game to the dirt.

KungFuDiscoMonkey

I believe Flayra mentioned that there would be something in the server browsers to search for clean servers.

sherpa

Which will simply show us 10 out of the 600 servers.

I made a flame a while back- which I still stand by- saying it's a bad idea to support modding for an indie game where the population won't be large enough to support everyones tastes.

Games like Halo get away with it as there's over a million players and the gameplay is so simple that hugely different gametypes still feel like Halo. When I join a 30 player combat server and see a gorge planting an OC and marines zipping around the map with level 10 cybernetics I'm like "WTF MR BEN GG"

schkorpio

i must agree aswell - i would hold off on letting people loose with the lua coding until the game has established itself at the very least.

KungFuDiscoMonkey

Just don't play on the modded servers then. If they don't have players then they'll either remove the mods or remove the servers. Personally, as soon as a server makes me download anything beyond the map file itself, I hit cancel and move to another one.

douchebagatron

im not afraid of accidentally playing on a server running some mods, im afraid of there not being any servers running any one specific gametype, just a thousand servers all running a completely different game.

KungFuDiscoMonkey

Again, you just need to vote with your playtime by playing on servers known to be clean. I would imagine NS2 will bring back many of the servers that people have fond memories of. I would imagine that most clan servers would need to be clean or at least consistent.

Drfuzzy

I like the idea of having it, there will be a longer lasting mod life because of it. Only reason i play NS as long as I have is because of the modding, it keeps the game fresh and new. But I will agree that there will be some very, very ######ty mods coming from this, but fear not i'm sure that there will be tons of clean servers once the server admins learn that people dont like their stupid little play mods.

Mindmeldme

I see the point the original poster was trying to make. I can see how you might think that given the total number of expected servers of a decent size and speed, say 300 or so. You could be concerned that most would have some crazy mod on them so after a few months of release you see only a dozen or so playing "classic" NS2. Hopefully as everyone says once the players start going elsewhere this spat of random mods will slow down and more and more will play classic or slightly moded NS2.

Just have to wait and see though in the end.

Swiftspear

See... I don't really see it as a problem.

Seige and funmaps were never really a problem pre-co mode, they were just obscure side distractions, something to do if you got bored. CO mode was the problem, and the problem was FAR less the community and FAR more the fact that development all of a sudden had to support two fundamentally dissimilar game modes with all the same player classes.

From a game perspective it's just not beneficial to force people to play the game a certain way. People who would only play NS mode will only play NS mode weather or not Co mode exists, and people who would only play Co mode would only play Co mode weather or not NS mode exists, people who like playing both have the fun option of doing either. It's not a problem to the PLAYER to have multiple game modes, frankly it's just selfish to tell everyone else they should be playing the game the same way you do, the problem is simply developmental, one development team can't support two fundamentally different games sharing all the same content in any fair sane way.

Lua is just expounding what people can do in terms of third party modification and server customization, it's not the responsibility of the dev team to ensure any modification is balanced or fair, it's the responsibility of the lua dev, and therefore it's not a problem. It's not creating a split in the community, it's just putting more options out there for people who are interested. More game modes doesn't matter when one dev team doesn't have to diplomatically negotiate between two sides of a community wanting changes and balance in the game that would ruin the other game mode.

Hisao

<!--quoteo(post=1653966:date=Oct 4 2007, 10:27 AM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Swiftspear @ Oct 4 2007, 10:27 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1653966"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->More game modes doesn't matter when one dev team doesn't have to diplomatically negotiate between two sides of a community wanting changes and balance in the game that would ruin the other game mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree.

I think that aslong as the devs don't try to alter the gameplay by compromising between two dissimilar gameplay modes, the original game play could work and be popular alongside other, more obscure, modes. Also, I think that any third-party game modes will effectively be regulated and voted on purely by the amount of traffic and playtime each modification receives.

After all, LUA brings with it greater control of the game, and is therefore bound to bring with it many very decent modifications that aren't game play altering, aswell as a load of awful ones. It's really just up to players to sort the good ones from the ###### ones.

Furthermore, as KungFuDiscoMonkey also mentioned earlier in the thread, the clan scene is likely to provide clean, or at least consistent servers.

NATURAL SELECTION OF MODS HO HO HO I WIN AT PUNS.

Swiftspear

Also worth pointing out. Even with lua being as easy to work with as it is, it's not like any reasonably quality lua mods are going to be out for a good 3-6 months after the initial release of NS2. The fact that game development takes time alone will mean that most people will have a nice buffer of time before lua content becomes a distraction.

If NS2 is boring enough to spark 500 lua projects intent on fixing what NS2 did wrong in the first place, I don't really see the downside to lua. If the game, NS, is good, by default people will take longer to get around to modifying it since they'ed rather be playing for the most part.

Flayra

I hear your concern on this. The way I think we'll address this is a) make NS2 awesome so people won't feel like they need to mod it right off and b) make the default "join game" join totally vanilla servers. If you want to join custom games you can do that, but it won't be the default.

I want to make sure that when people play NS2, they don't end up playing siege/Instagib/BGH by accident. No reason to put in all our work for that...

Sarisel

And if for some unlikely reason you fail at a), then at least now somebody would be able to make a mod of NS2 that could be awesome. Many will try, but only the best mods will get players. Natural Selection at its finest.

Testosteron

I don't think that LUA will tear the community apart. Just compare it to the current situation in NS1: There are Combat Maps, Classic Maps, Siege and other funmaps and of course the competitive scene. Obviously there are people who play on one side of the scene (XMenu Combat, Funmaps) or the other (PCW, gather, public on vanilla classic).

But many people play in more than one region of the NS server topology and that will still be possible with more custom modded servers, since the changes will be server-side, not client-side (as far as I understood the concept of LUA).

Remember the territory-plugin fo combat? It was kinda big for some time and everybody liked it. After a few month noone wanted to play it anymore and all the servers dropped it. That is exactly what will happen to heavy modifications in NS2. Some features will be loved and spread of many servers, others wont and will be forgotten soon.

tankefugl

Well, by opening up for modification of the game, it might also gain a longer lifespan as well as attract a wider audience due to the versatility of the gaming scene. And besides, spending time actually modding a game is tremendous fun, perhaps even more than actually playing it!

Of course, it might jeopardize parts of the consistent/static environment of equal servers, but I believe the net benefit from it will be larger, both for the players and UW. The fact that modification is openly accepted from the start might make it easier for the community to also accept and encompass all different varieties the modded game might have to offer.

All in all I can't wait to see what comes out of the large bunch of creative players after NS2 has been released.

After enjoying the real, released game first and playing it to death, of course.

Braveheart

I think that there should not be any server mods made with out express permission from Flarya.

kurupt

<!--quoteo(post=1655553:date=Oct 12 2007, 11:30 AM:name=Braveheart)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Braveheart @ Oct 12 2007, 11:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1655553"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think that there should not be any server mods made with out express permission from Flarya.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lol custom mod server has more people playing 24/7 then normal NS server u should be thanking Mod server because by now NS would of been DEAD to the world and no 1 would look back at

StixNStonz

<!--quoteo(post=1655718:date=Oct 13 2007, 09:54 AM:name=kurupt)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kurupt @ Oct 13 2007, 09:54 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1655718"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->lol custom mod server has more people playing 24/7 then normal NS server u should be thanking Mod server because by now NS would of been DEAD to the world and no 1 would look back at<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Guns is always full. You cant be more full than full.

I dont know if there actually are modded (likely CO) servers that are always full, cuz i just filter by mapname 'ns'. Either way, Vanilla NS is still alive and kicking.

Hybridclaw

<!--quoteo(post=1655972:date=Oct 14 2007, 04:33 PM:name=StixNStonz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(StixNStonz @ Oct 14 2007, 04:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1655972"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Guns is always full. You cant be more full than full.

I dont know if there actually are modded (likely CO) servers that are always full, cuz i just filter by mapname 'ns'. Either way, Vanilla NS is still alive and kicking.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

It seems to me that most NS server are full of bots

StixNStonz

Yeah, and it annoyed the hell out of me, until i found the Bot Filter.

Right click on the top bar of the server list, near the Lock symbol. You'll see 'Bots' in the little menu thing, click that and suddenly there'll be a new symbol column. That shows what servers have bots.

And bots are in all types of servers, NS and CO alike. At worst, theres 2 NS servers with people in them (and no accompanying bots.. many servers are people vs bots on separate teams). At best, around peak hours, theres like 10 NS servers without bots.

I also find an odd bug in the server listing. Many times i'll refresh the list, and not see BAD for example. My filters are 'ns' (so no combat), an Must Not Be Empty. Then i go into my Favourites and see that Bad is half full and on an NS server. After that, it shows in my main server listing. Very weird bug that I hope doesnt happen to everyone, because that could easily kill a server over time.