Marketing/rookie proofing/Minor Changes @UWE
xBlueXFoxx
Join Date: 2013-06-07 Member: 185497Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2013-06-07 Member: 185497Members, Reinforced - Supporter
To go along with my rambling I've also written a bug fix and balance topic.
Welcome, I'm going to say this topic will classify for a lot of people as TLDR warning, but I'm going to section it accordingly to point out some key flaws that I come across and see as a weak point in NS2 being a success. I may not be correct in all of my statements but here's a few what I see as facts that stop NS2 from being a triple A arousing success in today's industry. I would hope for a UWE take on this subject.
I'm going to avoid mentioning optimization, as I'm sure UWE understands that writing the game as a LUA mod on top of their Spark (C++) engine was a bad idea in the long run.
So here's my take on the following subjects underlined.
Matchmaking
The matchmaking system that is soon to be implemented will be a great idea and will be sort of a hard thing for users to take in. Matchmaking will need a lot of fine tuning of course but with the current player count, the only thing I really see beneficial to empty servers getting some players within them. I will personally still be connecting directly to my favorite servers, but what does matchmaking mean for the modding community? I feel players will not use this system so much, players will continue to join their favorite servers.
Marketing and pricing
UWE doesn't sell their name to a publisher, they do not have the dreaded EA logo smashed into their logos, they are their own publisher. Developing the game over the past year has been an up and down slope and a hard balance between content updates, bug fixes, and balance adjustments. UWE has been very actively working on NS2 as their primary successor, it is an amazing unique game that some developers want to replicate. It's a unique gem of its own genre in the video game world, but like earth being the only life baring planet that we've come across, where's the views?
NS2 has two key areas where it received it's promotion and sales from, competitive and community twitch streams, and Steam. NS2 has resorted to selling it's expensive gem for up to 75% off, along with a feel for it for free on defined weekends of large updates. I think it's time for a price drop, $25 is not a selling point for this game, $19.99, or just keeping the game on sell during a midweek madness for 25% off would keep in on the steam front page and get it some more views to give UWE a higher expense without needing to shoot themselves in the foot for a poor profit during it's huge peak period with a 75% off sale with an update that can come with unwanted or unexpected issues, unbalances, crashes, etc.
NS2 also should expand their marketing and partnership, the partnership I will mention later in this post, marketing however, can be handled in different ways, 2k for example is offering their game Mafia 2 currently for free limited supply with partnership of GMG, this gets themselves well known, getting their name more distributed and well known with gamers globally, a smart marketing move. Another thing that would also make for good marketing is placed advertisement on websites, Google Adwords is basically name your price, with about $2,500 budget @ $100 per 5 day week or optionally $100 on peak periods during weekends you can run banner advertisements for a quarter and get the name well known alongside a lot of sales, it can even be focused to be a bit intrusive on some videos unmentioned F2P games that are commonly mentioned here that are also very popular on Twitch. $100 on a weekend for x clicks/views directed on popular review sites/youtube videos would make a lot of sales, get the name better known with youtubers, with a new $19.99 price point, would guarantee sales.
Training System
The bot training system, if I'm not the first, I'll be the first to say is awful. It doesn't work, bots get caught on things, it's hardly strategic at all, it doesn't teach players how to play, and this is all without even accounting the poor performance. The game needs a tutorial mode, a pre scripted mode that can take advantage of the awesome videos from NS2HD to show users key strategies, how to build, weld other players, what structure does what to effect your team, how important sneaking and stealth approaches are along with how important resource is to your success. Many successful games IE StarCraft run you through a tutorial mode before throwing you into the action, with NS2's high learning curve, it should do the same. The bot mode is good for testing server mods, but when it comes to teaching users how to play, previous rookie weekends rely on experienced users to teach others how to play.
Partnership
The game is missing out on a large community, one of the leading on the internet, Youtube. Free copies should be given out to a select array of youtubers ranging between 25k-750k subscribers for review that their primary subscriber base is into PC gaming/indie games, with no motivation for biased opinions but for honest review, this is another place where the very affordable sounding $19.99 price point benefits long term sales.
Overview
Keep working vigilantly on bug fixing the game, these bugs and minor balance issues are what determine whether a player can play the game, and for the love of god up the shadow resolution on your UI menu screen.
[Edit]
I'd like to toss in a few minor changes to that game that I think are a bit necessary to go out of the way for, I listed these in my bugfix topic but it was locked and was restated in IronHorse's community bug report thread.
Visual Improvement
- Shadows on the main menu UI are low resolution and draw away from the visual appeal, I think it would be nice if it were like Portal 2/Left 4 Dead 2 where it transitions through different UI screens, such as the original, GORGEous, and Reinforced UI menu screen whenever going back to the main menu.
- Phase gates lack animation, they are a still image that seems to have poor resolution, but when power surged they have a nice square particle effect.
Proposal/Suggestion
The welder is an addon for the building tool in document in the deluxe edition concept art .pdf, however the welder replaces your switch-axe resulting in you carrying both the welder and build tool. I've mentioned that instead of this being a solution the right click instead of being a rifle butting bind, the rifle melee animation can be moved to a keybind and welding of marines/building of structures should be right click. That way you can weld marines and structures and more quickly switch back to your weapon when released, allowing a bit more agility to marines. To clarify why welding cannot be E, it's the use key, welding armories would result in you accessing the purchase screen and welding a MAC would result in it offering you a coffee. With this option, welding being the primary build tool when purchased would also make building things as a marine more stealthy as the welder makes a quieter sound.
Welcome, I'm going to say this topic will classify for a lot of people as TLDR warning, but I'm going to section it accordingly to point out some key flaws that I come across and see as a weak point in NS2 being a success. I may not be correct in all of my statements but here's a few what I see as facts that stop NS2 from being a triple A arousing success in today's industry. I would hope for a UWE take on this subject.
I'm going to avoid mentioning optimization, as I'm sure UWE understands that writing the game as a LUA mod on top of their Spark (C++) engine was a bad idea in the long run.
So here's my take on the following subjects underlined.
Matchmaking
The matchmaking system that is soon to be implemented will be a great idea and will be sort of a hard thing for users to take in. Matchmaking will need a lot of fine tuning of course but with the current player count, the only thing I really see beneficial to empty servers getting some players within them. I will personally still be connecting directly to my favorite servers, but what does matchmaking mean for the modding community? I feel players will not use this system so much, players will continue to join their favorite servers.
Marketing and pricing
UWE doesn't sell their name to a publisher, they do not have the dreaded EA logo smashed into their logos, they are their own publisher. Developing the game over the past year has been an up and down slope and a hard balance between content updates, bug fixes, and balance adjustments. UWE has been very actively working on NS2 as their primary successor, it is an amazing unique game that some developers want to replicate. It's a unique gem of its own genre in the video game world, but like earth being the only life baring planet that we've come across, where's the views?
NS2 has two key areas where it received it's promotion and sales from, competitive and community twitch streams, and Steam. NS2 has resorted to selling it's expensive gem for up to 75% off, along with a feel for it for free on defined weekends of large updates. I think it's time for a price drop, $25 is not a selling point for this game, $19.99, or just keeping the game on sell during a midweek madness for 25% off would keep in on the steam front page and get it some more views to give UWE a higher expense without needing to shoot themselves in the foot for a poor profit during it's huge peak period with a 75% off sale with an update that can come with unwanted or unexpected issues, unbalances, crashes, etc.
NS2 also should expand their marketing and partnership, the partnership I will mention later in this post, marketing however, can be handled in different ways, 2k for example is offering their game Mafia 2 currently for free limited supply with partnership of GMG, this gets themselves well known, getting their name more distributed and well known with gamers globally, a smart marketing move. Another thing that would also make for good marketing is placed advertisement on websites, Google Adwords is basically name your price, with about $2,500 budget @ $100 per 5 day week or optionally $100 on peak periods during weekends you can run banner advertisements for a quarter and get the name well known alongside a lot of sales, it can even be focused to be a bit intrusive on some videos unmentioned F2P games that are commonly mentioned here that are also very popular on Twitch. $100 on a weekend for x clicks/views directed on popular review sites/youtube videos would make a lot of sales, get the name better known with youtubers, with a new $19.99 price point, would guarantee sales.
Training System
The bot training system, if I'm not the first, I'll be the first to say is awful. It doesn't work, bots get caught on things, it's hardly strategic at all, it doesn't teach players how to play, and this is all without even accounting the poor performance. The game needs a tutorial mode, a pre scripted mode that can take advantage of the awesome videos from NS2HD to show users key strategies, how to build, weld other players, what structure does what to effect your team, how important sneaking and stealth approaches are along with how important resource is to your success. Many successful games IE StarCraft run you through a tutorial mode before throwing you into the action, with NS2's high learning curve, it should do the same. The bot mode is good for testing server mods, but when it comes to teaching users how to play, previous rookie weekends rely on experienced users to teach others how to play.
Partnership
The game is missing out on a large community, one of the leading on the internet, Youtube. Free copies should be given out to a select array of youtubers ranging between 25k-750k subscribers for review that their primary subscriber base is into PC gaming/indie games, with no motivation for biased opinions but for honest review, this is another place where the very affordable sounding $19.99 price point benefits long term sales.
Overview
Keep working vigilantly on bug fixing the game, these bugs and minor balance issues are what determine whether a player can play the game, and for the love of god up the shadow resolution on your UI menu screen.
[Edit]
I'd like to toss in a few minor changes to that game that I think are a bit necessary to go out of the way for, I listed these in my bugfix topic but it was locked and was restated in IronHorse's community bug report thread.
Visual Improvement
- Shadows on the main menu UI are low resolution and draw away from the visual appeal, I think it would be nice if it were like Portal 2/Left 4 Dead 2 where it transitions through different UI screens, such as the original, GORGEous, and Reinforced UI menu screen whenever going back to the main menu.
- Phase gates lack animation, they are a still image that seems to have poor resolution, but when power surged they have a nice square particle effect.
Proposal/Suggestion
The welder is an addon for the building tool in document in the deluxe edition concept art .pdf, however the welder replaces your switch-axe resulting in you carrying both the welder and build tool. I've mentioned that instead of this being a solution the right click instead of being a rifle butting bind, the rifle melee animation can be moved to a keybind and welding of marines/building of structures should be right click. That way you can weld marines and structures and more quickly switch back to your weapon when released, allowing a bit more agility to marines. To clarify why welding cannot be E, it's the use key, welding armories would result in you accessing the purchase screen and welding a MAC would result in it offering you a coffee. With this option, welding being the primary build tool when purchased would also make building things as a marine more stealthy as the welder makes a quieter sound.