You must realize that NS2, just like NS1, will never have the popularity of AAA games unless UWE actually starts to put some money into marketing/advertising the game.
You should have known this going into NS2 and realized there won't be as many players compared to those games, but still enough players to provide plenty of servers to play on....... Hell I mainly just play on 1 server only.. and it is pretty much full 24/7.
UKFX, you might benefit from joining a small European NS2 community in order to get the games you seek.
Our YOclan community server is virtually always full or very easy to fill, and most of the time, games are great. We have an admin team on-hand in case things go bad. There are many other EU communities like ours. You just have to look around.
A large playercount does not equal a good state of play. A small to medium number of playcount can result in good fun gameplay if you're willing to put the time into getting to know the available communities.
Btw. CoD: has only 300 players more right now at this time. And this is a AAA title where you don't even need your brain. The release of BO2 was even after NS2.
It seems the player count is stabilizing around 500 to 2000 players, the winter sales made a big increase but then the level quickly went down again. A free to play week-end would probably cause only a small temporary bump.
Rising the base level in the long run probably imply improving the game fundamentals (performance and mechanics), marketing seems to only cause short term effect.
Btw. CoD: has only 300 players more right now at this time. And this is a AAA title where you don't even need your brain. The release of BO2 was even after NS2.
So, yes your expectations are simply unreal.
You must have been looking at the single player BO2. Not the Multiplayer.
Also, I don't care. I get the point from all of you.
Thanks to those who have genuinely been helpful, I'll just play the game a bit later on in the afternoon and raise the ping to a max 110. I'll also be sure to pop on when the weekend rolls round.
You must have been looking at the single player BO2. Not the Multiplayer.
Also, I don't care. I get the point from all of you.
Thanks to those who have genuinely been helpful, I'll just play the game a bit later on in the afternoon and raise the ping to a max 110. I'll also be sure to pop on when the weekend rolls round.
Now all I have to wait for is good optimisation.
I just set ping to unlimited, and hide empty/modded servers.
I played on some euro servers last night, because the NA servers were dead.
Well, I share your concerns in regards to
1. performance
2. playerbase
Performance is something they promised they would continue working on, so we can only hope it continues getting better. IMO it was a poor decision to go with a completely new engine rather than just licensing a solid one, just look at Chivalry, it would've drastically cut development time and enabled the devs to focus on actually bringing us more content and better balance. But there's no point in flogging a dead horse, so we may as well just keep our fingers crossed and hope they don't abandon this game quite yet. (I honestly don't think they intend to any time soon, so no worries there)
The playerbase isn't as big as what this game truly deserves, but that being said, there's a steady and dedicated core group of players in NS 2 so I don't share your belief that NS 2 is dying at all. There's content patches, performance increases, free weekends and more sales coming, so I'm pretty sure that as time goes on more players are going to pick up this game. (Which will enable the devs to keep developing) I don't think we'll see another 7k+ player peak though, but who knows, if at least there's a steady income of new players and a continuous small growth in the core group of dedicated players then there's nothing to worry about. There's also a lot of stuff happening in the mod and mapping community so that too will ensure this game has a future for many years to come, even if the devs decide to abandon the project at one point.
As for not finding any games, I always see at least 10+ active EU servers when I try and play, even on 'early' EU times like right now. http://www.play4dead.com/ns2/ Just looking at the server tracker here I see 11 EU servers that are full or almost full.
It's the steep learning curve and poor performance that are the two main contributors to the lower player count in comparison to other fps titles.
If you're new to Natural Selection and you jump into the game for the first time it can be incredibly frustrating when you have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. That combined with poor performance on most machines will make people quit playing and go to something else. Which is a real shame because when you're familiar with how it plays its easily one of the best if not the best multiplayer game out there at the moment.
The best way to get people playing NS2 is by the community spreading the word and playing with friends. I've probably got around 20 friends playing the game, helping them out and explaining what's what and now they're all hooked. You can't teach someone how to play NS from an instructional video, it needs to be played.
I dont think the game is dead, however it does have the performance problem which most likely affects the player base most negatively.
E.g. me, I should be able to play the game fine, but since the performance is too poor, I just dont want to play the game. I am just waiting for patches and the only times I've played the game right now were to submit performance logs on these forums to help fix the issues.
Many games suffer from poor performance on launch which seriously affects the playerbase, not everyone likes to play a slideshow when every other game works just fine. I hope they will be able to fix the performance issues soon, so I could play the game as well!
35fps when shit hits the fan is pretty damn good -.- with min 35fps that should barely affect your performance if at all. Not to say there are no performance issues for other people, but you seem to be in good shape.
The game did lose alot of players from release for sure, but I think that we are seeing a leveling off now where the player base will hopefully stay somewhat steady for a while. A free weekend I am sure will be in the works but it probably won't be anytime soon considering there was just the winter sale recently. I personally enjoy the small community that NS has as I recognize or know a majority of the NA competitve players and pubstar which I think is nice. I am hoping that as more people get really good at the game, more players will start to turn to the competitive scene which I think is already happening a little bit as a few more teams seem to be forming up on the forums at least and gathers seem to have alot of "randoms" these days which is typically a stepping stone.
UKFX, you might benefit from joining a small European NS2 community in order to get the games you seek.
Our YOclan community server is virtually always full or very easy to fill, and most of the time, games are great. We have an admin team on-hand in case things go bad. There are many other EU communities like ours. You just have to look around.
A large playercount does not equal a good state of play. A small to medium number of playcount can result in good fun gameplay if you're willing to put the time into getting to know the available communities.
Imo ban people that are not using microphone or not communicating at all. Just saying.
1. Increase your ping limit, you can play fine up to ~150
2. Play in modded servers; most servers now run NS2Stats and maybe DAK Admin Kit, neither of which affects gameplay.
Not bitching folks. Any sort of expressed concern on a forum is usually followed by angry people who seem to think that someone is bitching or has something against their precious game. I do not.
An in regards to the 6870 OC, yes I know it isn't a high end card, but when I play many more visually pleasing games with solid performance, evidently it points to the lack of optimisation. Anyway, most people acknowledge performance issues on NS2, so there is no further need to discuss it here. The bit where you claim I am upset, is also unnecessary.
Not bitching folks. Any sort of expressed concern on a forum is usually followed by angry people who seem to think that someone is bitching or has something against their precious game. I do not.
An in regards to the 6870 OC, yes I know it isn't a high end card, but when I play many more visually pleasing games with solid performance, evidently it points to the lack of optimisation. Anyway, most people acknowledge performance issues on NS2, so there is no further need to discuss it here. The bit where you claim I am upset, is also unnecessary.
Attack, attack! Attack the forum user!
I noticed less and less full servers as well. I like to play mostly on the official servers since they offer the best performance usually and play at proper player counts. I have to start up official servers every night now which thankfully isn't hard (takes all but 5 min).
Not bitching folks. Any sort of expressed concern on a forum is usually followed by angry people who seem to think that someone is bitching or has something against their precious game. I do not.
An in regards to the 6870 OC, yes I know it isn't a high end card, but when I play many more visually pleasing games with solid performance, evidently it points to the lack of optimisation. Anyway, most people acknowledge performance issues on NS2, so there is no further need to discuss it here. The bit where you claim I am upset, is also unnecessary.
Attack, attack! Attack the forum user!
I noticed less and less full servers as well. I like to play mostly on the official servers since they offer the best performance usually and play at proper player counts. I have to start up official servers every night now which thankfully isn't hard (takes all but 5 min).
Who else? If the performance is bad and without any doubt, it is, who else's job is it to do something about it? No offense, but I kinda dislike the attitude of videoplayers to accept always look for excuses and explanations why it's okay that a piece of software has been released unpolished. I know the history of this game, I've participated in the beta but still, I'm a customer and as such I have certain expectations in what kind of state a product should be delivered. That it's nowadays and even expected by players that you have to wait for a few months until a game is actually finished is a quite odd understanding of patience and tolerance.
Still, I'm a player and just hope the game turns the corner. I guess it should be fine when the numbers stay stable as they currently are but then again, stable numbers itself just won't do the job - the game needs some fresh faces and telling a prospective customer to accuse the balance, the performance and such isn't the way you sell a product.
they released beta version of the game and just trying to patch up problems along the way basically. the release date completely failed to meet performance expectations, and they yet to get improved, its sad seeing top end machines dip below 30fps. The engine needs huge improvements, and the makeup they're adding to the game will not hide the problems, maybe buy them more time for players to ignore it.
For the new people, NS2 has nothing to do with NS1, watching ns2 compared to ns1 you quickly notice the huge gaps in gameplay, and serious competitive scene action its missing. I know they been pushing competitive matchs with ns2, they're just hollow games compared with ns1, sorry. They limited aliens and marines gameplay depth by adding so many restrictions, its insane how bad ideas gotten approved (looking at your charlie). Its mainly has something to do with catering to the causal players thus limiting (dumbing it down) much of the gameplay.
they did their best ignoring ns1. I find myself coming back every few weeks here to check on the so long progress, and I find myself seeing same old topics with new players wondering same things years ago we covered. the cycle never ends here it seems. its pretty sad seeing developers forcing bad ideas to work.
UKFX, your post was disingenuous. The inclusion of screenshot of a server browser that has not stopped refreshing or is set to filter out servers is downright dishonest. It is also, if you care for NS as much as you say, shameful given less informed readers may actually believe it to be real. Whatever respect you may have commanded for your concern vapourised in an instant the moment you chose to include that lie as evidence.
Futher, whatever your motivation for wishing to share your pessimism, it is not valid. Brilliant (ongoing) sales numbers, vibrant community, ongoing updates and growing modding scene are a testament to the outsize, unexpected and of course imperfect success of NS2.
Your needle about concurrent player numbers is particularly ridiculous given the titles NS2 consistently beats in the Steam 100 list. It is a wonderful, happy fact that today's gamer has far more choice of where to spend their hours than they did ten years ago. NS2 is part of a rich, high quality patchwork quilt of games vying for the attention of gamers. Player numbers will naturally ebb and flow based on the relative vogue of games and the degree to which they reward players for consistent participation.
If your inclusion of that screenshot was simply an overreach driven by passion, if you truly love NS2 as much as you say, and if you actually want to help it grow for the future, then the way you treat it has to change. These forums are filled with legitimate posts about optimisation, balance, feature requests and other concerns that UWE strives to address every single day. But those posts maintain a healthy degree of honesty and optimism. Two qualities you would do well to emulate.
Comments
http://hypernovadesign.co.uk/nanogrid/
You should have known this going into NS2 and realized there won't be as many players compared to those games, but still enough players to provide plenty of servers to play on....... Hell I mainly just play on 1 server only.. and it is pretty much full 24/7.
Our YOclan community server is virtually always full or very easy to fill, and most of the time, games are great. We have an admin team on-hand in case things go bad. There are many other EU communities like ours. You just have to look around.
A large playercount does not equal a good state of play. A small to medium number of playcount can result in good fun gameplay if you're willing to put the time into getting to know the available communities.
So, yes your expectations are simply unreal.
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=4920&from=0
Rising the base level in the long run probably imply improving the game fundamentals (performance and mechanics), marketing seems to only cause short term effect.
Shhh! They'll find out!
/me hides from incoming boss...
+1 point out the obvious.
You must have been looking at the single player BO2. Not the Multiplayer.
Also, I don't care. I get the point from all of you.
Thanks to those who have genuinely been helpful, I'll just play the game a bit later on in the afternoon and raise the ping to a max 110. I'll also be sure to pop on when the weekend rolls round.
Now all I have to wait for is good optimisation.
Acknowledged.
I just set ping to unlimited, and hide empty/modded servers.
I played on some euro servers last night, because the NA servers were dead.
1. performance
2. playerbase
Performance is something they promised they would continue working on, so we can only hope it continues getting better. IMO it was a poor decision to go with a completely new engine rather than just licensing a solid one, just look at Chivalry, it would've drastically cut development time and enabled the devs to focus on actually bringing us more content and better balance. But there's no point in flogging a dead horse, so we may as well just keep our fingers crossed and hope they don't abandon this game quite yet. (I honestly don't think they intend to any time soon, so no worries there)
The playerbase isn't as big as what this game truly deserves, but that being said, there's a steady and dedicated core group of players in NS 2 so I don't share your belief that NS 2 is dying at all. There's content patches, performance increases, free weekends and more sales coming, so I'm pretty sure that as time goes on more players are going to pick up this game. (Which will enable the devs to keep developing) I don't think we'll see another 7k+ player peak though, but who knows, if at least there's a steady income of new players and a continuous small growth in the core group of dedicated players then there's nothing to worry about. There's also a lot of stuff happening in the mod and mapping community so that too will ensure this game has a future for many years to come, even if the devs decide to abandon the project at one point.
As for not finding any games, I always see at least 10+ active EU servers when I try and play, even on 'early' EU times like right now.
http://www.play4dead.com/ns2/ Just looking at the server tracker here I see 11 EU servers that are full or almost full.
2) See over9000 full servers
3) PROFIT
Ping actually no longer matters very much with lag compensation. It can actually give u the advantage.
If you're new to Natural Selection and you jump into the game for the first time it can be incredibly frustrating when you have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. That combined with poor performance on most machines will make people quit playing and go to something else. Which is a real shame because when you're familiar with how it plays its easily one of the best if not the best multiplayer game out there at the moment.
The best way to get people playing NS2 is by the community spreading the word and playing with friends. I've probably got around 20 friends playing the game, helping them out and explaining what's what and now they're all hooked. You can't teach someone how to play NS from an instructional video, it needs to be played.
E.g. me, I should be able to play the game fine, but since the performance is too poor, I just dont want to play the game. I am just waiting for patches and the only times I've played the game right now were to submit performance logs on these forums to help fix the issues.
Many games suffer from poor performance on launch which seriously affects the playerbase, not everyone likes to play a slideshow when every other game works just fine. I hope they will be able to fix the performance issues soon, so I could play the game as well!
The game did lose alot of players from release for sure, but I think that we are seeing a leveling off now where the player base will hopefully stay somewhat steady for a while. A free weekend I am sure will be in the works but it probably won't be anytime soon considering there was just the winter sale recently. I personally enjoy the small community that NS has as I recognize or know a majority of the NA competitve players and pubstar which I think is nice. I am hoping that as more people get really good at the game, more players will start to turn to the competitive scene which I think is already happening a little bit as a few more teams seem to be forming up on the forums at least and gathers seem to have alot of "randoms" these days which is typically a stepping stone.
Imo ban people that are not using microphone or not communicating at all. Just saying.
2. Play in modded servers; most servers now run NS2Stats and maybe DAK Admin Kit, neither of which affects gameplay.
An in regards to the 6870 OC, yes I know it isn't a high end card, but when I play many more visually pleasing games with solid performance, evidently it points to the lack of optimisation. Anyway, most people acknowledge performance issues on NS2, so there is no further need to discuss it here. The bit where you claim I am upset, is also unnecessary.
Attack, attack! Attack the forum user!
I noticed less and less full servers as well. I like to play mostly on the official servers since they offer the best performance usually and play at proper player counts. I have to start up official servers every night now which thankfully isn't hard (takes all but 5 min).
I'm not the only one then. 1K currently on NS2
Who else? If the performance is bad and without any doubt, it is, who else's job is it to do something about it? No offense, but I kinda dislike the attitude of videoplayers to accept always look for excuses and explanations why it's okay that a piece of software has been released unpolished. I know the history of this game, I've participated in the beta but still, I'm a customer and as such I have certain expectations in what kind of state a product should be delivered. That it's nowadays and even expected by players that you have to wait for a few months until a game is actually finished is a quite odd understanding of patience and tolerance.
Still, I'm a player and just hope the game turns the corner. I guess it should be fine when the numbers stay stable as they currently are but then again, stable numbers itself just won't do the job - the game needs some fresh faces and telling a prospective customer to accuse the balance, the performance and such isn't the way you sell a product.
For the new people, NS2 has nothing to do with NS1, watching ns2 compared to ns1 you quickly notice the huge gaps in gameplay, and serious competitive scene action its missing. I know they been pushing competitive matchs with ns2, they're just hollow games compared with ns1, sorry. They limited aliens and marines gameplay depth by adding so many restrictions, its insane how bad ideas gotten approved (looking at your charlie). Its mainly has something to do with catering to the causal players thus limiting (dumbing it down) much of the gameplay.
they did their best ignoring ns1. I find myself coming back every few weeks here to check on the so long progress, and I find myself seeing same old topics with new players wondering same things years ago we covered. the cycle never ends here it seems. its pretty sad seeing developers forcing bad ideas to work.
Futher, whatever your motivation for wishing to share your pessimism, it is not valid. Brilliant (ongoing) sales numbers, vibrant community, ongoing updates and growing modding scene are a testament to the outsize, unexpected and of course imperfect success of NS2.
Your needle about concurrent player numbers is particularly ridiculous given the titles NS2 consistently beats in the Steam 100 list. It is a wonderful, happy fact that today's gamer has far more choice of where to spend their hours than they did ten years ago. NS2 is part of a rich, high quality patchwork quilt of games vying for the attention of gamers. Player numbers will naturally ebb and flow based on the relative vogue of games and the degree to which they reward players for consistent participation.
If your inclusion of that screenshot was simply an overreach driven by passion, if you truly love NS2 as much as you say, and if you actually want to help it grow for the future, then the way you treat it has to change. These forums are filled with legitimate posts about optimisation, balance, feature requests and other concerns that UWE strives to address every single day. But those posts maintain a healthy degree of honesty and optimism. Two qualities you would do well to emulate.
*Edited for spelling error.