Also, just adding that I find it hilarious that people whined for ages about there being no rank system, now that people can see it they whine about it being there.
Never change community.
Can we accept that people are different? There is no "people" with a same voiced opinion. One likes stuff differently than the other. No one is asking for a community-wide abandonement of the feature. There is specifically asked for a personal opt-out of the thing.
I'd think the gamer community would be a lot nicer if people would accept that instead of forcing opinions down peoples throats. And one could stretch that to humanity in its entirety.
@Asraniel 'just ignore it' does NOT work for people afflicted with the mentality that I also have.
It is one among many things I hate about myself, but it is what it is and I am not alone in feeling this way. Hiding the stats completely (with an opt in system for people who do want them) really is the only way to satisfy both camps.
I'll outright say that I think this is really twisted and I don't think you should be trying to push the effects of your strange mental illness onto everyone else.
However, I will concede that right now the stats are very, VERY poorly implemented and not only meaningless but also potentially harmful in the way they are currently harvested. As long as they are as bad as they currently are they probably shouldn't be shown at all for fear of encouraging the wrong behaviors.
Once a stat system is in place that actually creates meaningful rankings between players based on their contribution to winning then I fully support those stats being shown and pushed HARD. It should encourage a more competitive play-to-win mindset over the play-for-fun mindset supported by a lack of persistency and contributing to more goofing off and trolling rather than serious play. If wins mean nothing, and without any persistent thread between games they don't, then simply farming kills or even trolling your own team as com are equally valid modes of play as contributing to the win with your utmost.
Just ignore it. It really is here so that in the future we can have more balanced team/servers. Its really inaccurate so dont even try to play for skill points. The whole point of it is that at some point we can make the different between 3-4 player cathegories (beginners, normal, advanced, pro, just to give some examples).
Quoted because people ain't realising this.
I can understand @Roobubba saying that having a number on the main menu silently judging you is a detriment to fun gameplay, although I think this can at least largely offset if you bare in mind that at the moment, this number means nothing. It's like KDR or score in any regular game that existed before this particular number. Give it time and the number will grow to become something much more functional and polished (I hope! For the love of god I hope)
No, I'm sorry you're not getting it! I know that the number is meaningless, but the problem with it is not one borne of logic or common sense. It's not something that 'just ignore it' solves because it's not logical.
It may be the case that we're talking about the needs of the few outweighing the wishes of the many here.
I don't expect people to understand the problem, but I ask that you accept it at face value: however meaningless the number, it is absolutely detrimental to the game to have it anywhere that's by default accessible.
Ns2 stats has opt out, which is okay, and while I would greatly prefer an opt in system, I can certainly live with opt out. All it takes is a check box in the menu to opt out of stats and then simply blank out the hive page for that player.
However, my previously voiced concerns about rookie farming are still valid: it's going on all the time and it is at least in part exacerbated by the hive stats. That can't be the intention behind them but it is happening!
@Asraniel 'just ignore it' does NOT work for people afflicted with the mentality that I also have.
It is one among many things I hate about myself, but it is what it is and I am not alone in feeling this way. Hiding the stats completely (with an opt in system for people who do want them) really is the only way to satisfy both camps.
I'll outright say that I think this is really twisted and I don't think you should be trying to push the effects of your strange mental illness onto everyone else.
Perhaps you are the one with a strange mental illness.
@sotanaht different people have different attitudes. I am highly competitive and always want to do the best I can at everything I do. I don't need stats to encourage me to play better, I always push myself to play better whenever I play. Same with everything in life, I practice and train hard at everything because I'm determined to do my best.
If that is a mental illness then fetch the smelling salts and colour me sick.
If the outward measure of skill is changed from 'oh god here comes that roobubba, I've seen him before and he's really good' to 'what number do you have on hive?' then I would say that is detrimental. Plenty of people are perfectly happy to troll the hive system because it's public and Hell why not?
Maybe we should just use the stats system only for you if you can't work to improve your own gameplay without a number on the main menu?
I'm one of those people who almost never uses xeno because it adds a death. Yes I know that is sad (but xeno is such a stupid ability anyway, I don't want to sit in the spawn queue and run across the map again - boring), but again I'm not the only one who thinks that way. Hive stats mean I will NEVER use xeno (unless it's pure win/lose) because it reduces the 'objective' measure of skill and that goes against every fibre of my over-competitive nature.
I'm not trying to say that the way I view things is 'right' or 'normal.' However, it is how some people are, myself included, and it is why I absolutely detest permanent stats in a game and why, for us, it completely strips all fun from the game.
I don't want to stop you accessing stats if that is something you want, and I'm not the one trying to force anything on someone else here. You do need to accept that there is a different view, though, and whether you understand that view or not, it IS valid and this is a major issue for me and people who are unfortunate enough to share some of the same character traits.
We all agree that the aim of matchmaking is a good one. I don't think public stats is the right way to reach that goal at least in part for the reasons I've gone into detail about.
The "mental illness" part is the level of OCD that won't let you look past the meaningless number on the menu. That's a personal problem and something you are going to have to deal with on your own. And rest assured that number is meaningless, hopefully that will eventually not be the case but at that point I imagine we will be having a different argument entirely.
Anyway, I currently believe that the skill rating should be based on wins/losses alone (weighted based on the composite skill of each team involved), and that it will average itself out such that players contributing more towards winning, whether by Xenociding or building the necessary extractors at the right time or singlehandedly killing the entire enemy team, will eventually end up with higher rankings.
I don't expect people to understand the problem, but I ask that you accept it at face value: however meaningless the number, it is absolutely detrimental to the game to have it anywhere that's by default accessible.
However, my previously voiced concerns about rookie farming are still valid: it's going on all the time and it is at least in part exacerbated by the hive stats. That can't be the intention behind them but it is happening!
I absolutely agree. This "skill" stat promotes team stacking on unmodded servers and the hive site should be hidden until the devs can implement their matchmaking system. Even then, just leave the stats-tracking to ns2stats.com.
Also, just adding that I find it hilarious that people whined for ages about there being no rank system, now that people can see it they whine about it being there.
Never change community.
Did I miss something? I never recall anyone asking for a publicly accessible statistical ranking system. I'm pretty sure the request was for a proper matchmaking system or better random teams option to rid the problem of teams being stacked nearly every round.
I don't think the majority of the community cares about the dumb stats. People like myself just want fairly matched teams so we don't have to play 10 horrid matches to get 1 good one.
Opting out of stat-tracking would negate the MM system. Perhaps, instead just have an option for your stats to remain hidden on the Hive website and on the main menu would suffice.
@nexus that would work for me. Like I said before, the aim behind it is good. If the implementation can be got right then no one should really need to see their stats at all and an opt in system to have them viewable (check box in menu options) would do. Opt out of visibility via the same mechanism would be second choice but also would do.
I agree. Seeing stats is just motivation for cheaters to get an insanely high rank. However, I feel some people would like to see their stats, I would. Just to see how I compare to others. Some may want to hide their stats for privacy reasons or whatever. I think having the option to hide or show stats would probably be best.
tl;dr; Me too. Not a "I hate you all so I quit!" post; I made my decision months ago so please don't feel obliged to tell me how much better the game will be without me.
Would like to hop on this thread too, I suffer from the same feelings of persecution as Roo has outlined above (yes we are different people, honest. We just grew up in gaming at the same time and place and formed our informal Bubba collective.) The introduction of hive stats was the reason I quit NS2 while he went on to have fun in the comp scene.
I had slipped behind him in terms of raw skill just before Hive was introduced but I put it aside as knowing he played harder and trained more than I did. I would try and spend as much time as I could getting smashed by higher skilled players in an attempt to improve my game in the knowledge that I was getting better, and that only in those individual player's memories would remain the proof of me getting my ass handed to me. Then the persistent tracking came in and I now couldn't escape the fact that I Just Wasn't Any Good At NS2 and that if I wanted to train myself to be better I would have to tank my statistics while playing against skilled players in order to up my game. I popped back in briefly to see Eclipse because I'd missed it, but the numerical dismissal of my worth plonked on the main menu made me quit again after one game, I have a steamlist full of interesting and fun things to play and I could not justify wasting my time on something that was going to inform me how numerically terrible I was every time I played. I have toyed with the thought of buying a second copy of the game to play for training so that I could discard its statistics when I felt more confident in my abilities, but I don't like rewarding companies for being dismissive of me, it feels masochistic.
I accept that I am the mentally damaged one, it is entirely my problem that I am ruled by the judgment of a number in a database. However it is entirely Unknown World's choice to ram this number down my throat and not keep all that data as hidden back end information to assist in their matchmaking. I also dispute that it is a choice, do claustrophobics make a conscious decision to be terrified when they are sealed in small rooms? Do glossophobics actively decide when they wake up in the morning that they will lock up when asked to speak in public that day? Are people who are afraid of certain animals, even harmless ones, voluntarily surrendering their dignity by running in terror from creatures 1/100th their mass? Everyone is damaged in some respect and I don't think that we, the deranged in this case, are asking for too much work to be done in the catering for our madness. It is certainly less onerous than implementing native language support for all the varied playerbases, or proper colourblind support for the statistically larger contingent of NS2 players who see the gameworld as a grey smudgey mess.
I am not saying no players should be allowed to see their stats, clearly there are some people who find the numbers as positive and important as I find them negative and demotivational, however for a company who wrote their own 3D engine because they couldn't get something off the shelf to do what they wanted, offering a checkbox to make all statistics hidden and private seems a small task.
Even NS2Stats managed to do it and they are a not for profit fan operation. (On that point, thank you NS2Stats for offering that opt out functionality, you saved me from quitting the game far, far sooner when every server started judging me because of your mod and allowed me to enjoy the game for longer )
So while I honestly believe this thread will accomplish nothing because I truly feel that UWE no longer cares about the diversity of its playerbase and the enjoyment of its players; they seem too focused on making certain that the public spectacle, eSports tier of their players are catered for (although I appreciate the fact that a member of a strong competitive team has also spoken out against the issue in this thread and many times before without carrying any weight).
I believe that I must make my presence known, if for no other reason than to explain why I pre-purchased the day NS2 was first announced all those years ago and then reinforced at shadow, but walked away. I liked that NS2 was a game I could play single rounds of without being judged for my failings and I still like the mechanics of the game. It is just a shame that the software I enjoyed so much doesn't exist anymore.
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
i'm impressed how serious some people take a feature that is still in development. as already mentioned in another thread, the skill and level numbers will not be shown in the menu anymore and its really your problem if you go on the hive website. that said, i can very well imagine an option to get implemented so that the stats are hidden on hive (you can already manage your badges then).
So this "i quit ns2 because of hive" is really just an excuse for not wanting to play the game anymore. which is fine! nobody forces anybody to play ns2, but dont pretend its a feature in development that makes you quit ns2.
I was aware that it was a feature in development Asraniel, though not that it was specifically stated that their intent was to remove it from the main menu, so thank you for clarifying my understanding there. However I maintain that if you're doing your alpha on your paying customers you must expect them to interpret that as your intention for release. I was borderline quitting over NS2Stats because it appeared that their intention was to enforce stats on all their users which was contrary to my desires, but swift responses (I believe the turnaround was less than a week from the first thread it was raised in to an official statement that opt out was coming) helped assuage that. As near as I can determine (again, I am not forum active so I appreciate your in depth knowledge) I have not seen anyone actually saying that stats are going secret in the future, and I see no reason for them to be public now other than they are intended to be public later.
On your observation of my intention, I maintain that this is not the case. I enjoy NS2's mechanics and gameplay a great deal, however I have a hangup over being judged (which is coming in to play even as I type with me trying to explain myself to you in the face of your judgment) and that is the factor which spoils games for me.
Team Fortress 2 remains one of my favourite online competitive experience as it was very demure in its presentation of your tracked information and made a bigger deal over when you were improving than what your absolute values were. K:D and W:L being the primary focus of a Hive profile is demotivating for me because everything is permanent, your record is marred forever with every D and L. One example my sportsfan brother mentioned to me in the discussion was that no one reports a premier league player's wins and losses in their high school football team as part of their lifetime stats nor their weekend friendlies with their children, yet games want to track you from the first moment you pick up the keyboard through every game you ever play. Why are games more serious than a profession?
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
the lack of response is most likely because this is christmas time. acedude works on hive, i'm sure he will be open to your suggestion to hide the stats (i will talk to him when i see him online, he isnt online that much these days with christmas etc)
It is for reasons like this I keep delaying implementing stats on my servers for as long as possible b/c I believe the way it will effect the psychology of the game is more negative than positive. However, knowing that the matchmaking is coming regardless and if I want my server in matchmaking I will be required to have it there is not much choice in the matter.
I just hope that it remains hidden from access within the game so players do not even realize there are stats.
Comments
Can we accept that people are different? There is no "people" with a same voiced opinion. One likes stuff differently than the other. No one is asking for a community-wide abandonement of the feature. There is specifically asked for a personal opt-out of the thing.
I'd think the gamer community would be a lot nicer if people would accept that instead of forcing opinions down peoples throats. And one could stretch that to humanity in its entirety.
I wasn't for or against the rank system, I don't really care. Though I do care if it's done incorrectly.
I'll outright say that I think this is really twisted and I don't think you should be trying to push the effects of your strange mental illness onto everyone else.
However, I will concede that right now the stats are very, VERY poorly implemented and not only meaningless but also potentially harmful in the way they are currently harvested. As long as they are as bad as they currently are they probably shouldn't be shown at all for fear of encouraging the wrong behaviors.
Once a stat system is in place that actually creates meaningful rankings between players based on their contribution to winning then I fully support those stats being shown and pushed HARD. It should encourage a more competitive play-to-win mindset over the play-for-fun mindset supported by a lack of persistency and contributing to more goofing off and trolling rather than serious play. If wins mean nothing, and without any persistent thread between games they don't, then simply farming kills or even trolling your own team as com are equally valid modes of play as contributing to the win with your utmost.
Quoted because people ain't realising this.
I can understand @Roobubba saying that having a number on the main menu silently judging you is a detriment to fun gameplay, although I think this can at least largely offset if you bare in mind that at the moment, this number means nothing. It's like KDR or score in any regular game that existed before this particular number. Give it time and the number will grow to become something much more functional and polished (I hope! For the love of god I hope)
It may be the case that we're talking about the needs of the few outweighing the wishes of the many here.
I don't expect people to understand the problem, but I ask that you accept it at face value: however meaningless the number, it is absolutely detrimental to the game to have it anywhere that's by default accessible.
Ns2 stats has opt out, which is okay, and while I would greatly prefer an opt in system, I can certainly live with opt out. All it takes is a check box in the menu to opt out of stats and then simply blank out the hive page for that player.
However, my previously voiced concerns about rookie farming are still valid: it's going on all the time and it is at least in part exacerbated by the hive stats. That can't be the intention behind them but it is happening!
If that is a mental illness then fetch the smelling salts and colour me sick.
If the outward measure of skill is changed from 'oh god here comes that roobubba, I've seen him before and he's really good' to 'what number do you have on hive?' then I would say that is detrimental. Plenty of people are perfectly happy to troll the hive system because it's public and Hell why not?
Maybe we should just use the stats system only for you if you can't work to improve your own gameplay without a number on the main menu?
I'm one of those people who almost never uses xeno because it adds a death. Yes I know that is sad (but xeno is such a stupid ability anyway, I don't want to sit in the spawn queue and run across the map again - boring), but again I'm not the only one who thinks that way. Hive stats mean I will NEVER use xeno (unless it's pure win/lose) because it reduces the 'objective' measure of skill and that goes against every fibre of my over-competitive nature.
I'm not trying to say that the way I view things is 'right' or 'normal.' However, it is how some people are, myself included, and it is why I absolutely detest permanent stats in a game and why, for us, it completely strips all fun from the game.
I don't want to stop you accessing stats if that is something you want, and I'm not the one trying to force anything on someone else here. You do need to accept that there is a different view, though, and whether you understand that view or not, it IS valid and this is a major issue for me and people who are unfortunate enough to share some of the same character traits.
We all agree that the aim of matchmaking is a good one. I don't think public stats is the right way to reach that goal at least in part for the reasons I've gone into detail about.
Anyway, I currently believe that the skill rating should be based on wins/losses alone (weighted based on the composite skill of each team involved), and that it will average itself out such that players contributing more towards winning, whether by Xenociding or building the necessary extractors at the right time or singlehandedly killing the entire enemy team, will eventually end up with higher rankings.
Did I miss something? I never recall anyone asking for a publicly accessible statistical ranking system. I'm pretty sure the request was for a proper matchmaking system or better random teams option to rid the problem of teams being stacked nearly every round.
I don't think the majority of the community cares about the dumb stats. People like myself just want fairly matched teams so we don't have to play 10 horrid matches to get 1 good one.
Would like to hop on this thread too, I suffer from the same feelings of persecution as Roo has outlined above (yes we are different people, honest. We just grew up in gaming at the same time and place and formed our informal Bubba collective.) The introduction of hive stats was the reason I quit NS2 while he went on to have fun in the comp scene.
I had slipped behind him in terms of raw skill just before Hive was introduced but I put it aside as knowing he played harder and trained more than I did. I would try and spend as much time as I could getting smashed by higher skilled players in an attempt to improve my game in the knowledge that I was getting better, and that only in those individual player's memories would remain the proof of me getting my ass handed to me. Then the persistent tracking came in and I now couldn't escape the fact that I Just Wasn't Any Good At NS2 and that if I wanted to train myself to be better I would have to tank my statistics while playing against skilled players in order to up my game. I popped back in briefly to see Eclipse because I'd missed it, but the numerical dismissal of my worth plonked on the main menu made me quit again after one game, I have a steamlist full of interesting and fun things to play and I could not justify wasting my time on something that was going to inform me how numerically terrible I was every time I played. I have toyed with the thought of buying a second copy of the game to play for training so that I could discard its statistics when I felt more confident in my abilities, but I don't like rewarding companies for being dismissive of me, it feels masochistic.
I accept that I am the mentally damaged one, it is entirely my problem that I am ruled by the judgment of a number in a database. However it is entirely Unknown World's choice to ram this number down my throat and not keep all that data as hidden back end information to assist in their matchmaking. I also dispute that it is a choice, do claustrophobics make a conscious decision to be terrified when they are sealed in small rooms? Do glossophobics actively decide when they wake up in the morning that they will lock up when asked to speak in public that day? Are people who are afraid of certain animals, even harmless ones, voluntarily surrendering their dignity by running in terror from creatures 1/100th their mass? Everyone is damaged in some respect and I don't think that we, the deranged in this case, are asking for too much work to be done in the catering for our madness. It is certainly less onerous than implementing native language support for all the varied playerbases, or proper colourblind support for the statistically larger contingent of NS2 players who see the gameworld as a grey smudgey mess.
I am not saying no players should be allowed to see their stats, clearly there are some people who find the numbers as positive and important as I find them negative and demotivational, however for a company who wrote their own 3D engine because they couldn't get something off the shelf to do what they wanted, offering a checkbox to make all statistics hidden and private seems a small task.
Even NS2Stats managed to do it and they are a not for profit fan operation. (On that point, thank you NS2Stats for offering that opt out functionality, you saved me from quitting the game far, far sooner when every server started judging me because of your mod and allowed me to enjoy the game for longer
So while I honestly believe this thread will accomplish nothing because I truly feel that UWE no longer cares about the diversity of its playerbase and the enjoyment of its players; they seem too focused on making certain that the public spectacle, eSports tier of their players are catered for (although I appreciate the fact that a member of a strong competitive team has also spoken out against the issue in this thread and many times before without carrying any weight).
I believe that I must make my presence known, if for no other reason than to explain why I pre-purchased the day NS2 was first announced all those years ago and then reinforced at shadow, but walked away. I liked that NS2 was a game I could play single rounds of without being judged for my failings and I still like the mechanics of the game. It is just a shame that the software I enjoyed so much doesn't exist anymore.
Edit: correcting TERRIBLE spelling >_<
So this "i quit ns2 because of hive" is really just an excuse for not wanting to play the game anymore. which is fine! nobody forces anybody to play ns2, but dont pretend its a feature in development that makes you quit ns2.
On your observation of my intention, I maintain that this is not the case. I enjoy NS2's mechanics and gameplay a great deal, however I have a hangup over being judged (which is coming in to play even as I type with me trying to explain myself to you in the face of your judgment) and that is the factor which spoils games for me.
Team Fortress 2 remains one of my favourite online competitive experience as it was very demure in its presentation of your tracked information and made a bigger deal over when you were improving than what your absolute values were. K:D and W:L being the primary focus of a Hive profile is demotivating for me because everything is permanent, your record is marred forever with every D and L. One example my sportsfan brother mentioned to me in the discussion was that no one reports a premier league player's wins and losses in their high school football team as part of their lifetime stats nor their weekend friendlies with their children, yet games want to track you from the first moment you pick up the keyboard through every game you ever play. Why are games more serious than a profession?
I just hope that it remains hidden from access within the game so players do not even realize there are stats.