NS2 to new players.. Demo/Free Weekend?
DarkScythe
Join Date: 2012-08-30 Member: 156876Members
Join Date: 2012-08-30 Member: 156876Members
Hi, everyone,
First off, I want to congratulate UWE on their milestone this week on finally going up on Steam. Looks like the end is finally near!
I played the heck out of NS1, since v1.04 and got about 5 years of play time out of it. That's more than I played TF2, which is astonishing, considering one cost me money, and the other didn't.
I enthusiastically pre-ordered the Special Edition when it was available to help support you guys, and my fondest memory was of course, that very first night of the Alpha (or was it the Engine test?) It took about 2 hours to connect to any server, and once connected, no one got more than 4fps, and trying to walk to one of the "Join team" areas caused insane rubberbanding as if everyone on the server were playing with 4000 ping.
I'm very impressed now with how playable the beta is. There are still a lot of rough edges to smooth out, and balance tweaks to be made, but overall, I am very impressed with the progress that has been made, and I am extremely excited.
With the announcement of a free copy of NS2 to give to a friend, I'm even more excited. It was completely unexpected, and I did not expect, or even think UWE would or should do that, but now I'm thinking about who my friends and I should hand out our copies to.
This, however, got me thinking. Those of us with extra copies already know of NS. But now we want to give them to people who might not know about NS1 or NS2. It's hard to say whether or not this will be their type of game.
My question, then, is if UWE is planning on a type of demo (I can't see how this would work) or a Free weekend of some sort, to allow people to try it out and see if they enjoy this type of game. My main idea is basically to allow two or three of my friends to try out the game, and whoever falls in love with it will get my free copy.
In either case, thanks again for all your hard work, and I look forward to the 'Mythical 1.0!'
First off, I want to congratulate UWE on their milestone this week on finally going up on Steam. Looks like the end is finally near!
I played the heck out of NS1, since v1.04 and got about 5 years of play time out of it. That's more than I played TF2, which is astonishing, considering one cost me money, and the other didn't.
I enthusiastically pre-ordered the Special Edition when it was available to help support you guys, and my fondest memory was of course, that very first night of the Alpha (or was it the Engine test?) It took about 2 hours to connect to any server, and once connected, no one got more than 4fps, and trying to walk to one of the "Join team" areas caused insane rubberbanding as if everyone on the server were playing with 4000 ping.
I'm very impressed now with how playable the beta is. There are still a lot of rough edges to smooth out, and balance tweaks to be made, but overall, I am very impressed with the progress that has been made, and I am extremely excited.
With the announcement of a free copy of NS2 to give to a friend, I'm even more excited. It was completely unexpected, and I did not expect, or even think UWE would or should do that, but now I'm thinking about who my friends and I should hand out our copies to.
This, however, got me thinking. Those of us with extra copies already know of NS. But now we want to give them to people who might not know about NS1 or NS2. It's hard to say whether or not this will be their type of game.
My question, then, is if UWE is planning on a type of demo (I can't see how this would work) or a Free weekend of some sort, to allow people to try it out and see if they enjoy this type of game. My main idea is basically to allow two or three of my friends to try out the game, and whoever falls in love with it will get my free copy.
In either case, thanks again for all your hard work, and I look forward to the 'Mythical 1.0!'
Comments
Edit: For example someone plays it, gets killed alot and does not understand what is going on over the few hours they play on the weekend. If they had bought it, they would play it again since they had invested money in it. And perhaps they would like it then.
For a user who's being introduced to NS2 via a Free Weekend, they would not have bought it in the first couple months of launch, instead waiting for said free weekend to try it out first before investing money on an "unknown" game, or at least something that's very different from the usual slew of EA games.
In this case, whether it's on Day 1, or Day 100 of release does not matter; they will get killed repeatedly either way.
At best, a Day 100 trial will possibly be more polished on a balance perspective than Day 1.
My main concern is that if I give my copy to a friend who I want to try the game with me, and he/she winds up not liking the game, then I've essentially wasted the free copy. I want to give it to someone who will get as much enjoyment out of the game as I have.
At best, a Day 100 trial will possibly be more polished on a balance perspective than Day 1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, but if the trial is day 1 then people who were going to buy immediately may be put off. Putting the trial at day 100 will only put off people who weren't that interested anyway.
But yes, day 100 also has the advantage of more polish and hopefully an extremely vibrant modding scene.
However, it is very hard to gauge whether or not a friend will ultimately like this game, and if they're the more cautious type, they will simply avoid buying it at all.
Ultimately, I just don't want to "waste" my free copy on someone who winds up hating the game, lol.
<i>Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. </i>
Haha, maybe I should've clarified that - Meant the end to the wait for NS2 was finally near. :P
lack of servers !!!!
read this thread here : <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=120654" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=120654</a>
But there's currently no way for someone who has not heard of Natural Selection before to tell if it'd be worth their money to try the game.
But there's currently no way for someone who has not heard of Natural Selection before to tell if it'd be worth their money to try the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you clearly do not understand ... did you read the thread that i posted a link to ?
You have to realize that for most games where people set up servers, they already have a contract with some game service provider and are running servers for other games off of the same box. Most games that launch get alot of early servers thanks to these people, For example : they may drop a few idle TF2 servers and add some NS2 servers at launch ... this works for most games yet this wont happen for NS2 !
NS2 requires servers with extremely fast cpus, that game service providers dont offer. I assure you that we are going to see a huge influx of players when the game goes live. Releasing a game over steam tends to cause this ^_^ Every single server available will be full, you just wait and see :)
so when people are trying to get even more players in with a free weekend or demos, thats gonna make the problem much worse. Rather wait a few months before doing any free weekend type deals ^_^
But it is a solvable issue, and as I said, communities that come back to NS2, or spawn from NS2 will know what type of servers they need to build or rent. Just because they are not up right NOW during beta, does not mean they will not go up once the game goes live, and the game continues to mature.
I know a couple of the old NS1 communities I used to frequent (IAM-Clan, TacticalGamer, etc) are still looking at bringing their servers back online once their community comes back, which is currently happening rather slowly.
The servers will be there eventually. But it's hard to sell a friend onto the game if they are unable to play it since it's a very different type of game than most shooters out there. I can't in good conscience tell my friend to spend $25 on a game they might wind up hating.
With games like NS2, it has never been the responsibility of the developer to set up servers. Even with games like BF3, in which servers need to be controlled because of the centralised stat system, many many people set up private servers and quickly get them up and running.
It won't be a problem.