I bounced around a few servers just to see how the community was and honestly I think it's fine. . .
Numbers aren't that important unless they become dismally low
There's still tons of great players out there and you can get into games fine
If you still want to base your argument off of numbers then wait till after all the sales are over before you judge
Many people are giddily trying out there new swag and may not swing in for a few weeks
I can only speak for myself. I played since Beta. I started more than a year ago. I have over 700 hours of NS2. I stopped playing somewhere after Gorgeous. Not because of special reason. I enjoy NS2. I just got a bit bored and tried other games. Like PlanetSide2, CoH2 and stuff. I came back to tryout b250 and I like it. Now I play NS2 again regularly but less hours. (Maybe one or two games per evening.)
It is fun most of the times. But if I should name one thing that stops me from playing it would be:
First post, just made my account yesterday, but I have been playing NS2 since the public launch.
I took a few months off NS2 recently, and just came back to play again this week. I'm not a great player, I can't seem to get the hang of wall-jumping, marine com and have terrible aim in general, but I know what all the buttons do. My KD ratio is at best 3:1, but can be as low as 1:2. I never played NS1. I am not a modder, and in general, avoid mods wherever possible. I'm a NS2 puritan, forgive me.
Anyways, why does NS2 not have a huge player base? I think first off, it's hard, and unforgiving to new players. Think about it, new players want to be an Exo, death on mechanical legs, or be a huge Onos and charge into the marine base and lay waste. I know that's hardly the ideal strategy, but that's what new players want to do. So they do that, have a glorious moment of fun, then get promptly killed, lose all that Pres and spend the rest of the game as a grunt, a big let down. That's if they figured out what was going on long enough to get that much Pres in first place.
Secondly, getting berated by other players for being shitty REALLY drives people from the game. No one wants to hear how much they suck because as a Gorge they should have been healing the Onos, or how stupid they were charging into a room and getting killed by one Skulk, when trying to join a new community. Believe me, they already know they suck, they are still learning.
So IMHO, I think the huge initial learning curve and unforgiving environment drive a lot of new people away. One thing I think people spend too much time on in this game is KD ratio. NS2 is not about killing players. It's about killing structures, it's an RTS, not COD. A Gorge who dies a lot, maybe going 3-20, but ends up wiping out 10 marine extractors over the course of the game does more for his team than the Fade doing 25-1. Maybe that's wrong, as the players can get in the way and the Gorge needs that Fade, but the point still stands, it's about structures, not players. That needs more emphasis I think.
As for the white elephant in the room, Balance? Well hasn't everyone in the forums and UWE been smashing their heads against the wall about Balance since NS1? Does anyone have an answer? 250 was all about Balance (yes, I know I'm capitalizing it every time, Balance seems to be a proper noun 'round these parts) but the game can seem to be as unBalanced as ever. But 249, 248, 247, 246..... were all about Balance to, one way or the other, but it never gets better. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe one MORE tweak...
Anyways, this is getting long. I could go on about comp vs pub and performance (which I have no problems with thanks to my Engineer girlfriend and her need for a beast of a computer) and so on. I just wanted to point out the rookie experience is different than the experienced player... experience.
From my pov they took way too much time addressing issues that the entire community could agree upon as the game withered down to a low number of players. Atm I feel the same thing is occurring with the feedback given in several topics. Features like Scatter describes are still not addressed I mean come on at least give us mouse wheel bind. Maps like docking which I assumed was changed to be more competitive friendly is still not being used a lot in competitive games and I sure do not like playing it in pubs so I do not see the point in doing that if it was not ready. Though the docking thing is just a personal opinion.
Other than the technical issues that still exist if you do not have a high end computer, this game causes a lot of frustration in many different ways that is hard to address given the nature of NS2. So it will most likely have a huge population as you have to have a lot of tolerance to keep playing with the downsides.
The whole Linux/Mac thing is not a bad move. If they manage it, their next game could be released on those platforms as well. I mean how many content patches does NS2 really have left after the one in August? Eventually UWE will have to shift to their other game.
Oh, another big gripe I have that I think may indeed be hurting the player base: The devs don't seem to check ideas and suggestions, at all. I put an idea in about a "did you enjoy that round" vote system to log games whether they were enjoyable or not by the majority of players. It got ignored after about a month of me keeping it on the first page.
Probably because that requires someone to implement the change, gather all the information, figure out what all the data means.
Why would they do that when they already have pretty obvious list of changes they can spend time working on right now. Not to mention the forums are constantly giving them more work.
Oh, another big gripe I have that I think may indeed be hurting the player base: The devs don't seem to check ideas and suggestions, at all. I put an idea in about a "did you enjoy that round" vote system to log games whether they were enjoyable or not by the majority of players. It got ignored after about a month of me keeping it on the first page.
What is surprising to me is that they removed the NS2 google moderator. It was a place that had several popular ideas up there and it even had dev feedback. Then one day bam removed and no comment since then. At this point it is obvious they never will give an official statement as to why but that was probably the closest thing they had to a decent feedback system with votes.
What If I told you playing a game 12v12 when its balanced for 6v6 is a stupid idea. This game will never survive unless the idea of balancing for the competitive play is followed in public games. Nobody plays League of Legends 10v10 with people randomly leaving, the game is balanced for 5v5, people play 5v5 in public. We don't even need a ranking system, just a way to play public matchmade games.
Speaking of stupid, that's actually not how this game is balanced.
Welcome to the conversations of the last several months.
Well, I believe it removes the main unique factor NS1 had that most other shooter's didn't. A balanced gameplay between two completely different playing styles. Now? Both teams are pretty much the exact mirror image of each other. All that changes are the names and looks of the units. Makes the replayability factor at least 50% smaller than before. Especially in the pub scene, keeping the gameplay fresh is a HUUUUGEEEE component. Now, you're forced to go down with the ship every round you play. Before, having a couple of good players on an alien team, was all that was needed to give them a fighting chance.
the game is too difficult and not worth the time to learn to the average player.
performance is awful, gameplay isn't great, both of which deter good competitive players.
summed it up i think.
edit: gorges need to be useful. my suggestion is to drop cysts/alien commander, but that isn't going to happen. coincidentally, those would help knock out both of the competitive issues.
Well, the game is balanced for 16 players. So the fact that the 18-24 player servers are having issues doesn't really matter to devs.
If the aliens for instance wipe out the marine team in the beginning of the round, it's really good for that team and would result in something big like losing an infantry portal. If the same thing happens towards the end of the game, then it'll barely change the outcome of the game. An infantry portal lost out of 3 infantry portals doesn't do much. As the RTS side of the game grows, the FPS side of the game matters less. The mass of health that belongs to the structures outpaces the damage of the players, to the point that they cannot affect it to make a comeback after a certain point.
If UWE upped the damage, not player versus player damage, but player versus structure damage over the course of the match, then the players could still influence the course of the game during later parts of the match. I'm not saying that the damage should be initially higher because that would make skulk rushes even more devastating at the start of the round, but damage over the course of the match should scale more appropriately.
The counter to this is that upping player versus structures will make undeserved base rush wins even easier... but you can counter that by having the teams invest in heavy security at heavy cost. If we buffed turrets except make them cost a lot more, then with all the player versus structure rebalancing, a commander will have to choose between the security of his own team and the elimination of the opposing team.
Resource towers also might need a review. If one out of 5 rts is taken out, it won't take long to build the resources to make another again. The more res towers you have, the less it matters to take out res towers, but taking out res towers is crucial to winning the game. I feel that I can identify this as a problem, but I can't offer a great solution. Perhaps RTs could build more resources over time, lets say they build only .2 res initially and then finally cap at 1.5 res, making front line RTs less risky to create, and spawn close RTs very expensive to lose during late game.
Yeah scatter really got a lot right in his post. So did mf.
On the one hand we shouldn't expect the game to last forever, its only natural that people move on. It is a bit surprising and disappointing that we're talking about the death of NS2 so frequently within the first year of release. But we're living in a time where games are flooding the market.
On the other hand, Charlie wanted to design the game to both casuals and competitive players. I remember having some concerns about the high level design document which had a section on that. Was able to dig up that post. Seems telling.
It's because of threads like this, just read through the replies. EVERYONE has a different hilarious 'reason', and what happened was NS2 was constantly changed because they are trying to cater to a different opinion from each person. Things went downhill with Gorgeous and only got worse, numbers bumped up during sales but didn't drop off a cliff a week later they didn't need to change anything unless we're talking very minor changes.
On the free weekend, I introduced NS2 to three gamer friends - one a fps fan, on an rts fan, and one in the middle. All three thought the game was fun and wanted to play more, but were totally turned off by being completely blown away by a single excellent player on the other team. This happened over multiple matches on a green "newb" server.
Performance was not an issue. Game complexity was not an issue. Berating bad players was not an issue. Knowing you're a newb and not generally winning was not an issue.
Footnote: Later, that excellent player joined our team and helped us summarily trounce the other team. Was it more fun for us? Barely -- we still had almost no effect on the round outcome, which is very disheartening.
Although this is a problem, the lack of a player base is why good players join any server that is remotely populated. I doubt most high level players specifically seek out green servers. Most of them probably do what I do. Sort by: Population -> Join a near-full server -> rinse, repeat.
steep learning curve, stacked teams and complete lack of progression between games. Those are your reasons.
Agree with these, especially no stats/levelling system, but the real issue is that it's not an AAA game. It's the same with Red Orchestra. No matter how good the game is, the player base will always be small and the same strange folks will continue to quote Call of Duty stats in comparison. It's like comparing sales of PS4 to Ouya. Not the same market.
NS2 could be a 10/10 game and still not attract players.
People who create these type of threads (every week it seems) are also part of the problem. They seem desperate to only play games that tons of other people are playing. It's like they can't accept they're playing something that all the cool kids aren't. As long as there are a bunch of full servers with a decent ping, I don't see what the problem is.
It's because of threads like this, just read through the replies. EVERYONE has a different hilarious 'reason', and what happened was NS2 was constantly changed because they are trying to cater to a different opinion from each person.
I went back and summerised all the complaints people have listed in this thread so far:
No ranking / match making system
Design for Casual vs competitive audience
Modding/buildings breaking
Competition (other games)
Performance
Round duration (too long)
Servers with too many slots
Difficulty curve
Alien commander
Snowballing
8/10 of those are serious problems contributing to a shrinking player base. 0/10 of them are hilarious.
I think the problem is that UWE have too few people for a game of this ambition.
The (certainly hard-working) devs are primarily focused on things that sell more copies, aka Content Updates, Female Marine, new maps, weapons, performance, etc... "big" changes and pretty selling points. This isn't bad and you can't blame them for it.
Meanwhile, the polishing, refining and balancing doesn't happen or takes way too long, because the devs lack time for that. A ton of standard and convenience features are just missing from the game, so it feels perpetually in beta.
Lack of a simple chat window.
Lack of mousewheel binds.
Lack of all the other features requested over and over.
Balancing should be faster, 2+ weeks of GL/FT/Exo spam just isn't fun.
There's just no reason for all these things, other that UWE can't do it because lack of manpower.
Usually the games that succeed at keeping players long time are the ones that are supremely polished. Surely NS2 isn't the game for everyone, but I guess a lot of players could have been retained if the game had more polish. If progress is too slow after weeks or months of some annoyance, many people just give up.
I hope UWEs next game is more simple and will mature faster for bigger success.
Heard an interesting response today from the office when NS2 went on sale just now. "That game is too serious for me. You join in and some guy is giving you orders, telling you to go do x or go to y, and I have no idea what those things are. I just want to run around and shoot monsters". That's just one quote, but it was generally the opinion minus some arguing. This from an office full of game devs who have all worked on FPS games. It's just too complex and doesn't appeal to a wide audience. All games die, NS2 isn't unique in this aspect. It just has fewer players to start, so it will seem "dead" quicker.
I found the right server and play on TG. With a balance mod that uses such stats and captains games, it leads to many great games. I never go anywhere save some combat practice.
I'll have to check that server out. Visible rankings would also help a lot with the frustration because if you realise you were owned by a pro, you will feel less bad about it. NS2 is very wonky when it comes to demonstrate the skill of other players due to the hit reg system. Because the game reality where you died and the game reality of the one who killed you are not the same, it is often hard to grasp how you got hit. That makes people shout hacker and get frustrated. If said "hacker" can point at his rank to prove his skill to the newbie, this can take a lot of frustration out of the game.
If there is any real problem as far as the gameplay goes, it's mostly the enormous skill gap. I have to stop playing on a server sometimes because I feel bad for stomping. At the same time it's really not too much fun to be utterly dominated by comp players who have like 1500 hours or more in the game. While I'm pretty against forcing players to be forced onto servers at random I think something like a ranked match option wouldn't be too bad. Pushing people into games where they will be up against roughly equally skilled players would make games a bit more fun IMO.
Unfortunately another batch of new players about to hit the game with out of date tutorials no manual or explanations. I'm afraid the devs took for granted how complicated this game is relative to others.
I think UWE should emphasis on player retention. Steam Sales are great for getting a bunch of new people to play the game, but I think most would lose interest after several weeks due to some of the problems identified in previous posts.
I personally would like to see an expansion of NS2Stats enveloped and embedded into the official game so each player could have an RPG-esque profile. Badges and achievements could then be created to make you have a stake in the character and world and another reason for continuing to play, somewhat similar to what Valve did with Team Fortress 2.
Adding customization and microtransactions should be considered as well. Though NS2 should never be "pay to win", I think copying the hats philosophy of TF2 would make sense in the game. There are already multiple skins for marine characters available, why not allow for further customization at a cost? Since the game is so highly mod-able, the UWE team doesn't even have to do most of the work -- they can lean on the community to make content, which is then officially adopted into the game, and the modder gets a small cut, which would just be another way to build the community.
Eventually, UWE could even steal the TF2 model completely and make the game free to play, entirely relying on microtransactions through customization and continuously releasing new content (that again can be created by the community).
Lack of any sort of proper tutorial system that is current and up to date along with the fact (due to small player base and lack of any sort of match making) you regularly see terribly imbalanced teams in your average pub game making it even more frustrating for new and bad players.
Two reasons why I think player base is getting smaller.
everything gets old and boring over time. as time goes by, people will expect more and the game will deliver less...
the experience either needs to be high-quality or it needs to evolve to stay interesting...
The game experience just stagnates once you learn how to play and get some proficiency with the mechanics/tactics...
at that point there's just no adaptation, no evolution, nothing to keep the player interested if exchanging frags with stronger or weaker foes isn't enough
The conditions needed to avoid that (fair teams, close games, coordination/teamwork, fun rounds) are too rare
I think no matter what type of player you are, you will find that once you learn how to play only a small percentage of your games are enjoyable
Comments
Numbers aren't that important unless they become dismally low
There's still tons of great players out there and you can get into games fine
If you still want to base your argument off of numbers then wait till after all the sales are over before you judge
Many people are giddily trying out there new swag and may not swing in for a few weeks
It is fun most of the times. But if I should name one thing that stops me from playing it would be:
Unbalanced teams. (Roflstomps are really boring.)
I took a few months off NS2 recently, and just came back to play again this week. I'm not a great player, I can't seem to get the hang of wall-jumping, marine com and have terrible aim in general, but I know what all the buttons do. My KD ratio is at best 3:1, but can be as low as 1:2. I never played NS1. I am not a modder, and in general, avoid mods wherever possible. I'm a NS2 puritan, forgive me.
Anyways, why does NS2 not have a huge player base? I think first off, it's hard, and unforgiving to new players. Think about it, new players want to be an Exo, death on mechanical legs, or be a huge Onos and charge into the marine base and lay waste. I know that's hardly the ideal strategy, but that's what new players want to do. So they do that, have a glorious moment of fun, then get promptly killed, lose all that Pres and spend the rest of the game as a grunt, a big let down. That's if they figured out what was going on long enough to get that much Pres in first place.
Secondly, getting berated by other players for being shitty REALLY drives people from the game. No one wants to hear how much they suck because as a Gorge they should have been healing the Onos, or how stupid they were charging into a room and getting killed by one Skulk, when trying to join a new community. Believe me, they already know they suck, they are still learning.
So IMHO, I think the huge initial learning curve and unforgiving environment drive a lot of new people away. One thing I think people spend too much time on in this game is KD ratio. NS2 is not about killing players. It's about killing structures, it's an RTS, not COD. A Gorge who dies a lot, maybe going 3-20, but ends up wiping out 10 marine extractors over the course of the game does more for his team than the Fade doing 25-1. Maybe that's wrong, as the players can get in the way and the Gorge needs that Fade, but the point still stands, it's about structures, not players. That needs more emphasis I think.
As for the white elephant in the room, Balance? Well hasn't everyone in the forums and UWE been smashing their heads against the wall about Balance since NS1? Does anyone have an answer? 250 was all about Balance (yes, I know I'm capitalizing it every time, Balance seems to be a proper noun 'round these parts) but the game can seem to be as unBalanced as ever. But 249, 248, 247, 246..... were all about Balance to, one way or the other, but it never gets better. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe one MORE tweak...
Anyways, this is getting long. I could go on about comp vs pub and performance (which I have no problems with thanks to my Engineer girlfriend and her need for a beast of a computer) and so on. I just wanted to point out the rookie experience is different than the experienced player... experience.
Other than the technical issues that still exist if you do not have a high end computer, this game causes a lot of frustration in many different ways that is hard to address given the nature of NS2. So it will most likely have a huge population as you have to have a lot of tolerance to keep playing with the downsides.
The whole Linux/Mac thing is not a bad move. If they manage it, their next game could be released on those platforms as well. I mean how many content patches does NS2 really have left after the one in August? Eventually UWE will have to shift to their other game.
Probably because that requires someone to implement the change, gather all the information, figure out what all the data means.
Why would they do that when they already have pretty obvious list of changes they can spend time working on right now. Not to mention the forums are constantly giving them more work.
What is surprising to me is that they removed the NS2 google moderator. It was a place that had several popular ideas up there and it even had dev feedback. Then one day bam removed and no comment since then. At this point it is obvious they never will give an official statement as to why but that was probably the closest thing they had to a decent feedback system with votes.
Speaking of stupid, that's actually not how this game is balanced.
Welcome to the conversations of the last several months.
Well, I believe it removes the main unique factor NS1 had that most other shooter's didn't. A balanced gameplay between two completely different playing styles. Now? Both teams are pretty much the exact mirror image of each other. All that changes are the names and looks of the units. Makes the replayability factor at least 50% smaller than before. Especially in the pub scene, keeping the gameplay fresh is a HUUUUGEEEE component. Now, you're forced to go down with the ship every round you play. Before, having a couple of good players on an alien team, was all that was needed to give them a fighting chance.
At least that's how I feel.
Well, the game is balanced for 16 players. So the fact that the 18-24 player servers are having issues doesn't really matter to devs.
If the aliens for instance wipe out the marine team in the beginning of the round, it's really good for that team and would result in something big like losing an infantry portal. If the same thing happens towards the end of the game, then it'll barely change the outcome of the game. An infantry portal lost out of 3 infantry portals doesn't do much. As the RTS side of the game grows, the FPS side of the game matters less. The mass of health that belongs to the structures outpaces the damage of the players, to the point that they cannot affect it to make a comeback after a certain point.
If UWE upped the damage, not player versus player damage, but player versus structure damage over the course of the match, then the players could still influence the course of the game during later parts of the match. I'm not saying that the damage should be initially higher because that would make skulk rushes even more devastating at the start of the round, but damage over the course of the match should scale more appropriately.
The counter to this is that upping player versus structures will make undeserved base rush wins even easier... but you can counter that by having the teams invest in heavy security at heavy cost. If we buffed turrets except make them cost a lot more, then with all the player versus structure rebalancing, a commander will have to choose between the security of his own team and the elimination of the opposing team.
Resource towers also might need a review. If one out of 5 rts is taken out, it won't take long to build the resources to make another again. The more res towers you have, the less it matters to take out res towers, but taking out res towers is crucial to winning the game. I feel that I can identify this as a problem, but I can't offer a great solution. Perhaps RTs could build more resources over time, lets say they build only .2 res initially and then finally cap at 1.5 res, making front line RTs less risky to create, and spawn close RTs very expensive to lose during late game.
On the one hand we shouldn't expect the game to last forever, its only natural that people move on. It is a bit surprising and disappointing that we're talking about the death of NS2 so frequently within the first year of release. But we're living in a time where games are flooding the market.
On the other hand, Charlie wanted to design the game to both casuals and competitive players. I remember having some concerns about the high level design document which had a section on that. Was able to dig up that post. Seems telling.
Performance was not an issue. Game complexity was not an issue. Berating bad players was not an issue. Knowing you're a newb and not generally winning was not an issue.
Footnote: Later, that excellent player joined our team and helped us summarily trounce the other team. Was it more fun for us? Barely -- we still had almost no effect on the round outcome, which is very disheartening.
NS2 could be a 10/10 game and still not attract players.
People who create these type of threads (every week it seems) are also part of the problem. They seem desperate to only play games that tons of other people are playing. It's like they can't accept they're playing something that all the cool kids aren't. As long as there are a bunch of full servers with a decent ping, I don't see what the problem is.
I think they should just get going on NS3.
8/10 of those are serious problems contributing to a shrinking player base. 0/10 of them are hilarious.
The (certainly hard-working) devs are primarily focused on things that sell more copies, aka Content Updates, Female Marine, new maps, weapons, performance, etc... "big" changes and pretty selling points. This isn't bad and you can't blame them for it.
Meanwhile, the polishing, refining and balancing doesn't happen or takes way too long, because the devs lack time for that. A ton of standard and convenience features are just missing from the game, so it feels perpetually in beta.
Lack of a simple chat window.
Lack of mousewheel binds.
Lack of all the other features requested over and over.
Balancing should be faster, 2+ weeks of GL/FT/Exo spam just isn't fun.
There's just no reason for all these things, other that UWE can't do it because lack of manpower.
Usually the games that succeed at keeping players long time are the ones that are supremely polished. Surely NS2 isn't the game for everyone, but I guess a lot of players could have been retained if the game had more polish. If progress is too slow after weeks or months of some annoyance, many people just give up.
I hope UWEs next game is more simple and will mature faster for bigger success.
But his name is McLawls. Everything must be funny to him.
I personally would like to see an expansion of NS2Stats enveloped and embedded into the official game so each player could have an RPG-esque profile. Badges and achievements could then be created to make you have a stake in the character and world and another reason for continuing to play, somewhat similar to what Valve did with Team Fortress 2.
Adding customization and microtransactions should be considered as well. Though NS2 should never be "pay to win", I think copying the hats philosophy of TF2 would make sense in the game. There are already multiple skins for marine characters available, why not allow for further customization at a cost? Since the game is so highly mod-able, the UWE team doesn't even have to do most of the work -- they can lean on the community to make content, which is then officially adopted into the game, and the modder gets a small cut, which would just be another way to build the community.
Eventually, UWE could even steal the TF2 model completely and make the game free to play, entirely relying on microtransactions through customization and continuously releasing new content (that again can be created by the community).
Two reasons why I think player base is getting smaller.
the experience either needs to be high-quality or it needs to evolve to stay interesting...
The game experience just stagnates once you learn how to play and get some proficiency with the mechanics/tactics...
at that point there's just no adaptation, no evolution, nothing to keep the player interested if exchanging frags with stronger or weaker foes isn't enough
The conditions needed to avoid that (fair teams, close games, coordination/teamwork, fun rounds) are too rare
I think no matter what type of player you are, you will find that once you learn how to play only a small percentage of your games are enjoyable