The imminent death of natural selection 2
the_tick
Netherlands Join Date: 2014-01-20 Member: 193352Members
Netherlands Join Date: 2014-01-20 Member: 193352Members
Well looking at this there is a steady decline in the community, with the playerbase at an all time low,
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#1m
There are many reasons why this has happened, but to be honest, there were just a lot of wrong choices made that crushed the game.
- The long development time (6+ years?)
- The steep learning curve,
- The changes made to NS2 in comparison
- The lack of multiple game types, combat, siege maps
- The choice of the engine, visuals > gameplay (always ends up in game death) (guess you haven't learned from this one yet, See subnautica) and it the main reason why this game turned to shit
- The implementation of the alien commander, ( sorry but I have to include this, instead of 1 commander there are now 2 (and a lot of games get destroyed because of this)
- The fixed tech points, making the maps inflexible, rather they should have gone for making alien hive placement more flexible, instead of removing the cc flexibility of the marines
- The vantage point that this game is designed for a 6 vs 6, ( I mean what the hell was that, well we fucked up the game engine, let's use 6 vs 6 as a point to test balance so we don't have to deal with the other problems?)
- The inflexibility of the dev team, (example, see the above)
- The new abilities added to ns2 ( made the game even harder to understand)
- The many other minor frustrations, ( game breaking bugs, balance issues, Pre release game testing,
As a person who has played from the age of 4 playing commodore games I tell you this,
Develop a game that is fun to play from the first minute you touch it. It is a rookie mistake that visuals are more important, I still play the legend of zelda on a emulator, why? because of the gameplay! and not because of it's visuals!
And honestly, I don't care how insensitive I am right now, this is a wake up call for UWE, because they developed a great game I spend many hours on called Natural Selection, (the first, not the 2nd one) If they wish to ignore this, and with the path they are currently taking with subnautica, I fear the worst for this developer...
http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#1m
There are many reasons why this has happened, but to be honest, there were just a lot of wrong choices made that crushed the game.
- The long development time (6+ years?)
- The steep learning curve,
- The changes made to NS2 in comparison
- The lack of multiple game types, combat, siege maps
- The choice of the engine, visuals > gameplay (always ends up in game death) (guess you haven't learned from this one yet, See subnautica) and it the main reason why this game turned to shit
- The implementation of the alien commander, ( sorry but I have to include this, instead of 1 commander there are now 2 (and a lot of games get destroyed because of this)
- The fixed tech points, making the maps inflexible, rather they should have gone for making alien hive placement more flexible, instead of removing the cc flexibility of the marines
- The vantage point that this game is designed for a 6 vs 6, ( I mean what the hell was that, well we fucked up the game engine, let's use 6 vs 6 as a point to test balance so we don't have to deal with the other problems?)
- The inflexibility of the dev team, (example, see the above)
- The new abilities added to ns2 ( made the game even harder to understand)
- The many other minor frustrations, ( game breaking bugs, balance issues, Pre release game testing,
As a person who has played from the age of 4 playing commodore games I tell you this,
Develop a game that is fun to play from the first minute you touch it. It is a rookie mistake that visuals are more important, I still play the legend of zelda on a emulator, why? because of the gameplay! and not because of it's visuals!
And honestly, I don't care how insensitive I am right now, this is a wake up call for UWE, because they developed a great game I spend many hours on called Natural Selection, (the first, not the 2nd one) If they wish to ignore this, and with the path they are currently taking with subnautica, I fear the worst for this developer...
Comments
In comparison to what? huh.
Wut. What the hell does vantage point mean in this context?
I don't even...
You don't need a degree in theoretical physics to understand what bonewall does, or vortex, or whatever other abilities have been added.
LOL
Well I've been playing some Sniper Elite V2 recently and I think he means the point from which you can optimally give NS2 it's
coup de grace and disappear unseen, although I'm not entirely sure.
I completely agree that the steep learning curve of the game hurts its player retention. I don't think anybody is going to argue with you there. And yes, the game engine isn't the greatest, but they built it themselves, and it works, just not as well as some AAA title's multi million dollar game engine, and that's to be expected. However, it has been improved many, many times during the life of NS2, and I just don't think this is a valid point anymore.
It's impossible to develop a game that's fun from the minute you touch it. Sorry, but that's the way it is. If dev textures and buggy movement was "fun" then why bother "finishing" the game? Ever wondered why some games just plain suck? It's not that the developers have a different idea of what "fun" is, they just thought their finished product would be more "fun" than it ended up being. What a bunch of idiots -- you might say to yourself, how could they not know if their game was fun or not? Well -- and I don't have a source for this, it's just something I've heard repeated many many times, but -- games aren't fun until the last 10% of development. At that point, it's usually too late to add major gameplay changes.
True, visuals don't make a game fun, but unfortunately in the world we live in today, visuals are what sells the game. Gameplay is what keeps the players, true, but without that initial punch of the cool visuals, players might not take it seriously. Ok, ok, I'm weasel-wording a little bit here, so I'll just use myself as an example: Say I have a choice between game A and game B. Game A and B both seem to be pretty solid games, but game A doesn't seem to have really put the effort into its visuals that game B has. Without spending the hundreds of hours necessary to learn all the nuances of every game and make a decision on which game is the best choice -- an odd decision seeing as how you've apparently put 100's of hours into it -- what more does one have to go off of than reviews and gameplay videos? At the moment, there's really only one reviewer I trust (zero punctuation, and he rarely does multiplayer-only games like ns2), and gameplay videos often are staged or show on the funnest parts of a game. So, without much else to go on, I often look at the visuals to judge -- NOT how "good" a game is, but how badly the developers wanted the game to be good! Example: Orcs Must Die has some great visuals, a nice art style, and I was pulled in by the gameplay, but had my doubts as to whether or not it would live up to what I saw in the videos. In the end, I find out I bought a great game, and had no regrets. Another example: Alone in the Dark (the newest version) I picked this one up from a store on a whim because it was so cheap (first warning sign ignored... AAA title offered for so cheap). One of the first things I noticed was how bad the graphics were. The second thing I noticed was how much I wanted to NOT be playing that game anymore when I was being attacked by monsters shorter than my knees, and my character refused to do anything but punch the air ABOVE them.
TLDR: Visuals don't make a game exciting, but they're a good indication of the developer's level of attention to detail.
i am investing about 10-20 hours per week on designing my own ns2 level so we can have mor content for the game and i know many others are investing plenty of their own time as well.
If you say the procedural generator they made favors graphics over game-play, well maybe you have a point...
Steep learning curve? Sure it may takes some hours to not be a "floor" skulk... BUT before someone can be able to play the game and be that idiot shooting the harvester and not the gorge tunnel ppl must know that there is a game called Natural Selection!
I would say the problem is spelled Marketing.
Solution? Talk to your friends, post on facebook (or similar) and let ppl know about the game, guide rookies to learn the flow of things and more will follow.
This is NS2, not NS1. Fortunately, the purpose of UWE isn't to develop the same game twice but with graphical improvements. And in my opinion, adding the Alien Commander was definitely one of the best choices they did.
+1
I agree, but I think plain_old_exposure now will not save it.
Marketing drives have got a lot of sales due to marketing the game around the action-packed aspect of the game. Perhaps we sold to the wrong people though. I think many of the concepts in this game are much more closely tied to MOBA style games (team-based single player RTS - basically everything NS2 is, except NS2 gives an FPS POV).
In the future, when we have got this game to the point where the game has the polish and tutorials etc that make it actually viable to retain new players, we should look at focusing on marketing this game for what it actually is, instead of letting people believe it's a brainless fragfest.
I think this right here is one of the main problems. A rookie trying to kill a veteran is a bit like a pug trying to kill a horse... It's just not going to happen. (unless the horse lays down so the pug can reach it's throat)
I've tried several times to get friends interested in NS2, and each time they quit because they get slaughtered so badly. It's just no fun at all for them, so they have no desire to continue playing.
I remember what it was like to be new, I was virtually helpless for like the first 200-300 hours or so. There were SO many times I was ready to quit and uninstall, yet I stuck it out because I had a lot of fun playing Alien (Lerk in particular)
Even now with 1000+ hours there are a quite a few players who are still so far above me I basically can't kill them. On my best day, playing my best life form (Lerk) I am still helpless against these guys, so imagine what chance a rookie has...
Though to be honest the worst thing about NS2 is high population servers with extremely bad performance. I won't name names, but there are several servers I see populated almost all the time, and they are without a doubt the worst performing servers in NS2. (I've tried them, the rubber banding lag is possibly the worst I've ever seen in any online game) - I even had one of these servers in my favorites list, and I frequented it for my first 10-20 hours or so before I realized it was the server itself that was the problem and not the game.
I wonder from time to time what NS2 would be like today if server owners had to meet requirements in order to have high player counts. It seems like some of these servers are running off of laptops or something.
This one excites me the most:
"ENGINE: Multithreaded client physics update"
https://trello.com/b/91ApENY6/ns2-cdt-development-tracker
Many people I know LOVE this game, but wont play it due to the super high performance requirements. This should be a strong step in the right direction
They've probably shipped the best part of 2 million copies of ns2, but concurrent players have always been very low for a game with pretty visuals and appealing themes. I wouldn't say its dying as it never really took off in a way it deserved. I purchased gift copies for a lot of friends, most of them report the game just didn't feel right. Weak shooting/moving mechanics and the general 'clunkyness' of the game rather than poor netcode/performance and learning curve is what I suspect turns more players off.
1500 hours in i still love the game and have a lot of faith that community dev team can bring some people back, its just going to require some balls to culling/fix some of the established poor mechanics that really hold the game back.
don't get too excited. this may improve performance in some scenarios, but it's not gonna just increase your overall fps generally speaking. obviously it's a step in the right direction for engine optimization work to be happening at all.
you know, you're right. this game is dying. i guess the only consolation that we'll have is the knowledge that while the game dies, you're also a fucking idiot. yeah, the game is dying. everything else about your post is nonsense. the only points that matter are:
-steep learning curve
-performance
those are the reasons the game is dying. it's not complicated. the rest of the shit in your post though, jesus.
- The long development time (6+ years?)
how is this relevant?
- The changes made to NS2 in comparison
to ns1? you seem to be thinking that retention of the ns1 community would somehow be critical for ns2 to succeed. while i'm sure it would help, that's just not the case. basically you're saying ns2 is too different from ns1 so people won't want to play it. that doesn't make sense.
- The lack of multiple game types, combat, siege maps
i guess? do you mean when the game was first released? combat has certainly been around for a while. very few people actually care about seige maps, in my experience (and it's kind of a dumb game mode tbh.)
- The choice of the engine, visuals > gameplay (always ends up in game death) (guess you haven't learned from this one yet, See subnautica) and it the main reason why this game turned to ****
what? the gameplay of ns2 is incredibly complex and nuanced compared to that of other modern shooters. it also has more stuff in it than ns1 did. so i mean, obviously more work was accomplished on gameplay than most other games. the choice of engine? the engine was chosen to support the gameplay style they wanted. ??????
- The implementation of the alien commander, ( sorry but I have to include this, instead of 1 commander there are now 2 (and a lot of games get destroyed because of this)
a lot of games get destroyed because both sides have rts-mode commanders? like what games? what other games have alien commanders? or do you mean games of ns2 get destroyed, like they're bad matches because there's an alien commander? because that's also nonsensical.
- The fixed tech points, making the maps inflexible, rather they should have gone for making alien hive placement more flexible, instead of removing the cc flexibility of the marines
ns2 is different from ns1. it's a different game. different isn't worse. if you wanted the same game you should have continued playing ns1. you can't argue that ns2 is just worse because the gameplay is different, you have to explain what about that makes it less fun.
- The vantage point that this game is designed for a 6 vs 6, ( I mean what the hell was that, well we **** up the game engine, let's use 6 vs 6 as a point to test balance so we don't have to deal with the other problems?)
what? so, how is 6v6 used for balance? and what do you mean by balance? the game is pretty well balanced for pubs. i've brought this up elsewhere but i'm doing it again, according to ns2stats aliens win 57% of matches and marines win 43%.
- The inflexibility of the dev team, (example, see the above)
what example above? how is anything above an example of the inflexibility of the dev team?
- The new abilities added to ns2 ( made the game even harder to understand)
what? harder to understand for who? and it's worse because it's different?
- The many other minor frustrations, ( game breaking bugs, balance issues, Pre release game testing,
mmmm ns2 has minor frustrations, but I don't think these are good examples. game breaking bugs? I dunno, what's your definition of game breaking? there have been bugs that can indirectly cause one side to win or lose, like the beacon bug that was recently fixed. balance issues, again the game has usually been pretty balanced, and uwe has been pretty good about adjusting balance when necessary. what about pre-release game testing? there wasn't enough of it? i don't understand.
i don't understand guys. somebody please help me understand.
To see your server empty most of the time while it was always full a few weeks ago is somewhat disappointing from an admin view.
But there different reasons why the playercount is low:
- >24 slot server giving players a wrong impression of the game. This clusterfuck is fun for a few rounds maybe but boring in the long term.
Performance is horrible on this servers also. 30 ticks on an 28 slot server are not the same like 30ticks on an 18 slot clientside. You lose many fps on an 28 slot with same tickrate.
- The typical pub stompers farming one rookie server after another.
- NSL season is over and many clan-players having nothing todo. Most of them didnt play Pub btw.
- A yellow shiny thing called sun.
- Soccer WM (im sure many watching this)
And I think its awesome that UWE didnt go with the trend of dumbed down games.
If the CoD crowd dont want to learn new things, well, who cares.
Never heard of it
No, I won't contribute anything useful to the conversation, because
edit: spoiler because this is not an imageboard, yes, i know..
Only thing is, don't say "I agree with you, but its gotten better" when it comes to making excuses of bad game development (assuming you are arguing with someone who thinks it's had bad game development, such as tick). That doesn't change the original statement that you agreed to. Getting "better" is short of "fixed" (what's fixed? Another discussion).
Still a dumb thread. And I'm dumb for posting. Just bored. Wtf is going on over there in the middle east and Ukraine, right?
^That's why I started playing, I bought the game right after i got the trailer. I think UWE delivered on what they were advertising.. for the most part. Except for that when I bought the game the website said it had the same min specs as hl2 xD
how so?
"kodiak was a failure"