IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
He also indicated of being aware of the mod's support no more than he did of those disapproving of it.... (one could say him posting more in your concerned thread than any actual bt thread says otherwise - but i digress)
You really are still grabbing at straws..
We clearly understand what you are saying, no need to reiterate, multiple people including the one you quoted are trying to tell you that you are interpreting incorrectly.
He did not say "the only opposition are those that say 'Omg it sux'", you are creating that in your own head.. Despite Cory himself telling you plainly otherwise??
He merely gave instruction to "leave useful feedback and be sure to test it thoroughly beforehand" and from that you have extrapolated so much more, and will not come to understand this, despite him and others telling you otherwise.
:rolls eyes :
That's all I gotta say about that
So basically esekel you are happy about the aliens working exactly like the marines in a upgradable through time manner.
Wich was exactly my fear about this mod as stated earlier "the mod making the 2 sides symmetrical in term of macromanagement and strat".
The aliens are fun in a way because unlike marines they get stuck with a upgrade choice in the beginning bringing this "omg they got shade first!" in the viewer's minds.
This is, and i think it's what the mod wants to accomplish, what ns needs more: viable different upgrades paths for the aliens.
A big part of the fun playing marines is your team or especially your comm being able to respond or counter the alien choices.
We have plans to promote the mod through the official channels, soon. Sewlek has been working towards finalizing the features, and then we can put it into the final phase of testing and get the word out to more people through blog posts, twitter feed, in game news, etc, to let them know that this could be the future of NS2 and to start playing and giving feedback if they want to have a say.
When you start promoting, I think it might be a good idea to try to make it stand out a bit. During the years there have been so many hype spikes that at least I've grown quite resistant and indifferent to them already.
The BT probably represents a little different kind of step in NS2 development, so it might be good idea to also to put some new and fresh twists to the promotion also.
If this is all going in as one big mega patch I think it would be a good idea to give it a fancy marketing name, like the "Evolved" update or something, with a simple trailer. Pitch the mod as the beta for that update. These sort of changes were always part of a major update in NS1 and people loved it.
Yes Scatter I agree again to some extent, however my point was, leave modding to the modders, and mods are free to download and be used. UWE need to be investing time on performance and sustainable changes. Not porting mods into the core game.
Unfortunately, the dev team have specializations.
Which is to say, a decent chunk of them can't help with performance, because they wouldn't know how to, being practiced in other areas of game development.
It's entirely probable that the people working on things other than performance are doing so because there is nothing better for them to do, it's either that or have them sit and twiddle their thumbs.
Or.. It will keep the current playerbase interested in playing this game, and attract those who haven't played for a while to try it out again.
At least this is the only thing that is currently keeping me interested in playing.
Let's look at this from a financial viewpoint. UWE generates income when new licenses are sold. A fair amount of the game play changes will make it substantially harder for new players to survive as a marine. Consumer studies show that people with bad experiences tend to tell about 5 times as many people about their experience as people who have good experiences and as Free Weekend showed, new players gravitate towards Marines. So getting dominated over and over again as a new marine is going to leave a bad taste in your mouth. And what does a new player who gives up do? He badmouths the game to all his friends.
The game needs new players. Only the most deluded competitive player would disagree with that. I agree with a previous poster that the game really needs to be geared more towards casual players than competitive. Putting the desires of competitive players over everyone else is a surefire way to reduce the player base to a tiny fraction of the already small number. When you don't give a crap about the majority of your players, what makes you think they'll stay and recommend the game? None of the games that last decades do that. Blizzard never put the desires of competitive players above casual in Starcraft and people are still playing that.
I think it's totally fine to have BT mod as a mod. I think it's a giant mistake to replace the current system with it.
if you look at the people posting in this thread, you will notice that a vast majority are repeat posters (guilty ^^) who have membership dating from before 31-10-2012 - the games launch date. since then the game has sold more than 400,000 copies, 144,000 in the first week alone! while i dont mean to say that each of these 400,000 are anywhere near as committed to NS2 as some, the vast majority naturally dont play anymore, but if you ask me, the future of Natural Selection as a franchise lies much more in the 400,000 than the tiny smattering of 'Agrees' on any post in this forum. I am extremely hopeful and almost assume that NS2 will not be the last installment in the series. thats my future of NS - not an NS2 mod that some hope to play for the next 10 years.
Have you seen the in game steam numbers? It's not good. I see at MOST 1,200 players. On 400,000 copies? That's near wholesale desertion of the game.
Heck, NS2 isn't even in the top 100 games played on Steam.
Devil May Cry went on sale and it's #96 with a peak of 1,294. NS2 can't even beat that. Embarrassing.
And NS2's future lies in selling more games.
Putting the competitive desires of a small group of players over the majority of players when your revenue stream is selling new games is a surefire way to ensure you don't make future games.
Most of the talk revolves around game play changes, but basically no one is discussing how this is going to primarily impact new players. New players are the future.
So basically esekel you are happy about the aliens working exactly like the marines in a upgradable through time manner.
Wich was exactly my fear about this mod as stated earlier "the mod making the 2 sides symmetrical in term of macromanagement and strat".
The aliens are fun in a way because unlike marines they get stuck with a upgrade choice in the beginning bringing this "omg they got shade first!" in the viewer's minds.
This is, and i think it's what the mod wants to accomplish, what ns needs more: viable different upgrades paths for the aliens.
A big part of the fun playing marines is your team or especially your comm being able to respond or counter the alien choices.
You're still stuck with your upgrade choice. And you will still have that reaction "omg they got shade first!". Making the armor upgrades scale does not imply that the races are anywhere NEAR symmetrical.
In vanilla, aliens are playing from behind for most of the game, untill the mid-game where fade explosions happen. So basicly marines main objective early to mid-game, is to delay the mid-game as long as possible, so they have the appropriate upgrades when the fade explosion arrives. That calls for stale and repetitive gameplay.
Having the favour potentially swing several times early on, instead of just the once, during a match is exciting for players and possible viewers.
This way you actually have to make MORE choices in terms of countering strats, then just worry about what hivetech they went with. You have to worry about what level of carapace they have as well, because if they decided to only go cara 2 i.e. that would mean they're saving up for something else.
*I know I keep saying carapace, but I'm actually of the oppinion that all the current hivetech paths are viable and with each their own strengths.
Comments
You really are still grabbing at straws..
We clearly understand what you are saying, no need to reiterate, multiple people including the one you quoted are trying to tell you that you are interpreting incorrectly.
He did not say "the only opposition are those that say 'Omg it sux'", you are creating that in your own head.. Despite Cory himself telling you plainly otherwise??
He merely gave instruction to "leave useful feedback and be sure to test it thoroughly beforehand" and from that you have extrapolated so much more, and will not come to understand this, despite him and others telling you otherwise.
:rolls eyes :
That's all I gotta say about that
Wich was exactly my fear about this mod as stated earlier "the mod making the 2 sides symmetrical in term of macromanagement and strat".
The aliens are fun in a way because unlike marines they get stuck with a upgrade choice in the beginning bringing this "omg they got shade first!" in the viewer's minds.
This is, and i think it's what the mod wants to accomplish, what ns needs more: viable different upgrades paths for the aliens.
A big part of the fun playing marines is your team or especially your comm being able to respond or counter the alien choices.
The BT probably represents a little different kind of step in NS2 development, so it might be good idea to also to put some new and fresh twists to the promotion also.
Unfortunately, the dev team have specializations.
Which is to say, a decent chunk of them can't help with performance, because they wouldn't know how to, being practiced in other areas of game development.
It's entirely probable that the people working on things other than performance are doing so because there is nothing better for them to do, it's either that or have them sit and twiddle their thumbs.
Let's look at this from a financial viewpoint. UWE generates income when new licenses are sold. A fair amount of the game play changes will make it substantially harder for new players to survive as a marine. Consumer studies show that people with bad experiences tend to tell about 5 times as many people about their experience as people who have good experiences and as Free Weekend showed, new players gravitate towards Marines. So getting dominated over and over again as a new marine is going to leave a bad taste in your mouth. And what does a new player who gives up do? He badmouths the game to all his friends.
The game needs new players. Only the most deluded competitive player would disagree with that. I agree with a previous poster that the game really needs to be geared more towards casual players than competitive. Putting the desires of competitive players over everyone else is a surefire way to reduce the player base to a tiny fraction of the already small number. When you don't give a crap about the majority of your players, what makes you think they'll stay and recommend the game? None of the games that last decades do that. Blizzard never put the desires of competitive players above casual in Starcraft and people are still playing that.
I think it's totally fine to have BT mod as a mod. I think it's a giant mistake to replace the current system with it.
Have you seen the in game steam numbers? It's not good. I see at MOST 1,200 players. On 400,000 copies? That's near wholesale desertion of the game.
Heck, NS2 isn't even in the top 100 games played on Steam.
Devil May Cry went on sale and it's #96 with a peak of 1,294. NS2 can't even beat that. Embarrassing.
And NS2's future lies in selling more games.
Putting the competitive desires of a small group of players over the majority of players when your revenue stream is selling new games is a surefire way to ensure you don't make future games.
Most of the talk revolves around game play changes, but basically no one is discussing how this is going to primarily impact new players. New players are the future.
You're still stuck with your upgrade choice. And you will still have that reaction "omg they got shade first!". Making the armor upgrades scale does not imply that the races are anywhere NEAR symmetrical.
In vanilla, aliens are playing from behind for most of the game, untill the mid-game where fade explosions happen. So basicly marines main objective early to mid-game, is to delay the mid-game as long as possible, so they have the appropriate upgrades when the fade explosion arrives. That calls for stale and repetitive gameplay.
Having the favour potentially swing several times early on, instead of just the once, during a match is exciting for players and possible viewers.
This way you actually have to make MORE choices in terms of countering strats, then just worry about what hivetech they went with. You have to worry about what level of carapace they have as well, because if they decided to only go cara 2 i.e. that would mean they're saving up for something else.
*I know I keep saying carapace, but I'm actually of the oppinion that all the current hivetech paths are viable and with each their own strengths.