One thing before I preorder
Whiteblade
Join Date: 2010-04-10 Member: 71299Members
Join Date: 2010-04-10 Member: 71299Members
I am seriously interested in this game but want to know how the game will fare outside of a competitive environment. Playing Natural Selection was awesome even with the learning curve but the game had a hard time catering to pubs as much as a game of say, Team Fortress 2. I'm not looking for something like Call of Duty but a game where you can jump in and play every so often after breaking the curve and not constantly having to play to keep up while still having a competitive side for those who want to pursue it. Will this be one of those games?
Comments
It's designed for the masses, but with the pros in mind
Flayra is like that one guy who is big cojone in smash brothers who loves casual players more than competitive
I also think the primary barrier between pubs and competitive in NS1 was the initial learning curve. There isn't anything different in the way matches play from pubs except that on pubs you have almost a majority of the team with basically no idea what they should be doing. And people that have figured out how to play NS can take really long breaks and come back and still dominate, for the most part. So if the learning curve is a bit smoother pub play will be more enjoyable without hurting the viability of competitive play.
I have some ideas how that might be possible but I have no idea what steps UWE is taking in that regard. Tho, like others said, they've said they're interested in making that kind of a game.
So yeah, so far I wouldn't be that worried about the casual play at this point. I don't think anything indicates any bias towards the competetive play so far. Of course I haven't got a clue how it'll turn out, but so far so good for casual gaming.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think a competitive mod is pretty inevitable no matter how much they cater to our style of play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hardly anyone wants to go there until we see the final product, since that cuts away the player intake by a lot. The lack of new players has been the curse of the NS comp community for the last 5 years. Nobody in the competetive community wants NS2 to be an awesome game without a healthily regenerating community. We've already got that in NS1.
Smaller maps, more action, easier to jump into, less reliant on organised teamwork, far quicker to get to higher level weapons/alien classes, and more rewarding to individual skill (faster you kill, quicker you level up - a good player can dominate etc). It's not everyone's cup of tea and there are some who hate it, but it is certainly more in line with the more popular FPS games ala CS/MW/BC2/etc, which is what appeals to the masses - but with the brilliant and more fun NS mechanics/gameplay/aliens instead of bog standard warfare.
UWE should take a leaf out of Valve's book, and make NS2 as versatile as possible rather than catering to a minority who want it their way and their way only. I'm sure there are many TF2 players who dislike Payload maps, or the new Arena maps, or the King of the Hill maps, or the RPG style crafting of hats, or the versatile weapons, etc, and similarly for L4D I'm sure there are many who dislike modes liks Scavanger or Survival, but there are plenty who do like it, and it's pretty much been proven by the popularity of these games that even if some don't like changes or additions or different modes/maps to the core game, then releasing them wont stop those players from playing the maps/modes they do like.
Supporting versatile gamemodes by default would be a great idea, but we're dealing with a pretty small studio here, UW already officially stated that they'll rely on community-made maps to ship with the game and so on.
I doubt it.
Perhaps there will be an initial rush of confusion, but the better maintained ones will rise to the top and become the unofficial official gamemode. Kinda like WC3 maps translated into DotA and the like. Or how NS1 modding has given rise to a set of tools most people use (admin mod, mapvote, xmenu, etc)
Not a problem as long as we can filter servers by mods (and no mods).
Official support would be a lot better, you have a point there, I just doubt it's feasible for a developer like UW.
From my understanding, they are putting alot of effort in to making the average play experience more accessible. Of course the competitive players are horrified that the game is being balanced for scrubs. But honestly, we don't know how it's going to turn out until it goes live... So just so you know that both things are, in theory anyways, a priority.
no game has this though - the more people play a game the better they will get - even something like call of duty is like this
NS (in ns game mode) has done a good base job of being accessible to new players (but could be improved upon -- especially in making it easier to identify squadmates... squads are heavily underused). One problem I think we won't have to worry about immediately is elitism, which is really what plagues NS right now. I was a pretty good NS player and knew my way around the comm chair and maps very well when I was in high school and could play NS as a job, but now that I pop in on current-day servers, it's easy to get server admins threatening to kick you because you don't have the newest maps memorized. That sort of behavior just further popularizes the CO game mode, where you're not really accountable to anyone.