Reports of NS2's death have been greatly exaggerated.
List of Games with LESS players playing and patched less than NS2:
Left 4 Dead
Assassin's Creed II
Darksiders II
Portal
Sid Meier's Civilization III
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Planetary Annihilation
Metro 2033
Hotline Miami
Guns of Icarus Online
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
TrackMania Nations Forever
Mirror's Edge
Trine 2
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Bastion
Tribes: Ascend
Sanctum 2
Primal Carnage
Champions Online: Free For All
...and many, many more.
List valid as of today using steamcharts.com for the info.
every game will have a decline in players over time, that's only natural. but the steam-data only tells if people play less, not if they quit the game altogether.
thanks to UWE having balls the sizes of clogs and taking a lot of risks, this game turned out to be quite unique (they DID a lot of wild experimenting in the alpha and beta).
which means some people (like me) will come back to it again and again and again, simply because there is nothing similar (at this quality level). how many other sci-fi asymetrical rts/fps hybrids with human commanders are there?
example:
ns1 held up for many years. and these players were so enthusiastic about the game that they actually allowed ns2 to be finished by betting their money on something alpha (ns2). not only that, think about all the contributions regarding content, fixes and optimisations. several uwe employes are former fans. and even the game itself is now developed by the community!
to point out that i'm not just blindy speculating, regarding playerbase:
i've been modding several other games before, e.g. warcraft 3, putting emphasis on creating custom maps (read: mods) which were as unique as possible, such as a 4-player-sort-of-chess with real-time-arena-battles when attacking a piece, 8 factions, levelups, global spells and whatnot.
how did people react to something so bizarre and complicated? ofc many were alienated e.g. by the slower pace. but those who liked it were usually ridicolously enthusiastic, e.g. forming a clan on their own, specifically for this mod (considering the f*ckload of wc3 custom maps out there, i consider that quite a success for a 1-man-project). i continued developing it for 6 years (quite actively, because there was demand and i still had the time back then), afterwards passing it to some other guy who is still working on it. and even though the number of players was decreasing over time (wc3 is really old by now), there were always hardcore fans around, ready for a game every now and then.
now to compare that with a different wc3 map i made (a bit like FTL, with every crewmember being player-controlled and able to mount turrets), which was much more approachable: that map started out more popular initially, but the player-base was less enthusiastic and decreased much faster over time, eventually becoming smaller than the player base of the sort-of-chess-hybrid-map.
but why? i was more experienced when making it, it was SO much easier to balance and the overall player feedback was overwhelmingly positive (even though it also had some very unique (=risky) concepts) and the game seemed to appeal to a bigger audience. the decline was not because of FTL either, that game came a few years after i stopped modding wc3. however, it still wasn't as unique as the other map.
tl, dr: afaik well-made unique games keep a dedicated fanbase much longer than unoriginal ones. at least until a similar game comes along, but that's probably gonna take a while regarding ns2.
Reports of NS2's death have been greatly exaggerated.
List of Games with LESS players playing and patched less than NS2:
Left 4 Dead
Assassin's Creed II
Darksiders II
Portal
Sid Meier's Civilization III
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Planetary Annihilation
Metro 2033
Hotline Miami
Guns of Icarus Online
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
TrackMania Nations Forever
Mirror's Edge
Trine 2
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Bastion
Tribes: Ascend
Sanctum 2
Primal Carnage
Champions Online: Free For All
Awesome lets list a load of single player games. Even quite a few of the multiplayer ones on that list have had sequels released that are a lot more active with higher player counts.
Lets just face it, ns2 was doomed from the start, plagued with performance problems, balance overhaul after release, no wonder people didn't stick around.
This game has always been harsh on the casual gamer, and whilst I praise the game for it's depth sometimes it's hard for a new player, and also for the returning player to understand what is actually going on without going through change logs or hours of YouTube tutorials.
- 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.)
Siege maps, whilst myself was never too keen on them in ns1, were actually very popular with the community. The variation kept quite a lot of casual people playing and quite a lot of the active servers in the final days had at least one siege map in their vote rotation.
Overall granted the game has got better over time we just have to understand that ns2 has left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths and it will be very hard to try and persuade these people to come back.
I am grateful for the hard work the developers and the community put into the patches post release. Unfortunately quite a lot of these updates came a little too late for a lot of the player base, and even some might say still haven't even been fully addressed re: performance.
I myself have had a lot of fun and believe it was well worth the money I put down in the alpha and also for the countless hours I had with ns1.
I wish the best for the community development team, but the community must understand that the damage is done and it will be hard if at all impossible to increase player base size to what we saw around the release/humble bundle/free weekend.
I don't doubt the list its just those game as a comparison are well a bad joke. Hell Darksiders 2 is a game by a now defunct dev studio and dead publisher and it's holding almost as many. that's not something you should hold as a positive. @-)
I hope they republish and readvertise after they achieve a massive improvement on performance, probably, if possible, with Combat. I know NS2 development is no more relevant, but as they work on Substanica, they'll definately improve performance anyway.
Still, NS2 one of my best purchases on games among with Company of Heroes series and Valve Half-Life series and their kids like CS/DOD/TF.
I really think, republishing NS2 with the release of COMBAT however with far far better performance would bring some great results. NS2 is a really charming game, and even if the game dies tomorrow, no doubt NS2 is a great success and a great role model of indie-game industry. Only, it could've been more popular if with legit performance, and again, i think that means NS2 still has chance to be revived and for long-living
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited June 2014
@Neoken is correct, we've seen this thread and this claim before.. Even dating as far back as immediately after launch.
Yet if you actually looked at the entire time frame of those charts, you'd notice a core group of players remain throughout the surges from sales, mostly demonstrating a stable base through waves of variation.
The beginning of this month's numbers compared with the same time from last year's shows a difference of 100 players.... So excuse some of us if we roll our eyes when yet another person claims the sky is falling for NS2. ;-)
@the_tick I'm not really seeing a point to your thread, other than publicly displaying the community disagreeing with you and taking a the chance to point out issues with large servers.. Which makes me feel like this thread is just bait, all around.
Hilariously ironic. You should have asked that question to yourself about your post. At least his topic has several points for discussion and he even structured them neatly for you to read. Then there is your post, it's meaningless and adds nothing to the discussion.
And on to the topic discussion. OP, It's a rather dumb title that will just bring the masses to hate you and the topic. And while you do have some valid points, I think at this age of the game, they've all been discussed plenty of times and beaten like a dead horse at this point.
NS2 now is a much, much better game now than it was when it was first released and even up to Reinforced -- which had the unfortunate side effect of pushing people away when UWE decided to revamp the rendering engine before a sale, instead of putting its best foot forward.
And that's the key here. There's obviously a ceiling of how many people around the world are going to be interested in a game like NS2, and willing enough to buy it. After numerous Steam sales, we've probably already reached this.
So growing the playerbase isn't about reaching new players, it's about reaching those who've already bought it but stopped playing due to bugs/performance/balance/constant changes over the numerous patches and upgrades over the last few years.
People got burnt. It left a sour taste in their mouth, and they didn't come back. We want a larger community? We have to bring these people back into the fold. Show them the game is much improved now, a lot more stable, a lot more balanced, and peformance is pretty decent.
I myself have only started playing regularly again in the last six months. And I handed over my money since the pre-order. I just decided to fire it up a while ago after having 'left' it myself, and decided it wasn't too bad now. And then it's just been getting better.
So those who have said the problem is marketing are right. But not marketing to new players: marketing to old ones. We need to convince them to give it another go -- called it NS2.1 if you will, because it's not the same NS2 that UWE released way back.
When I told one of my old NS1 clan buddies that development had been handed over to a team of community members, he was a) impressed and b) agreed to fire it up again, after the world cup
Maybe if UWE would be willing to invest a little money in exposure with magazines and websites, generating stories on an evolution in design with the CDT (this is, itself, newsworthy) the community could grow -- which benefits UWE -- even as the bulk of the work is now handled by the CDT. I.e, it's pretty win/win for UWE if they can afford a little cash.
For the rest of us -- go through your Steam friends list, find those who used to play NS1 or played NS2 and gave up, and invite them to a game or three. Tell them about the CDT. Tell them your experience of the game now. Threaten to paint their house pink or fill their car with donuts, whatever it takes -- but get them in-game!
Make sure you're there with them, remind them of the fun of playing with friends. And if they like it and stay, they'll pass on the word, and the community will grow again.
And then we can look back at threads like this and realise it's been in our hands all along
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2014
Of course the core playerbase will remain intact, albeit the very small core like the twilight years of ns1, which will probably be split smaller due to standalone combat.
Also a bunch of co-op games, singleplayer games, and games that don't require Steam doesn't make a good comparison. Sure you could compare ns2 to cod4:mw and say we have more players, but that game has had yearly sequels since then.
Reports of NS2's death have been greatly exaggerated.
List of Games with LESS players playing and patched less than NS2:
Left 4 Dead
Assassin's Creed II
Darksiders II
Portal
Sid Meier's Civilization III
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Planetary Annihilation
Metro 2033
Hotline Miami
Guns of Icarus Online
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
TrackMania Nations Forever
Mirror's Edge
Trine 2
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Bastion
Tribes: Ascend
Sanctum 2
Primal Carnage
Champions Online: Free For All
...and many, many more.
List valid as of today using steamcharts.com for the info.
Are you serious? While I agree with your point of ns2 death, some of these comparisons are comical. Mirror's edge? Hey guys look at this single player game with a very short campaign and low replay value that was released over 6 years ago. Nobody plays it! lol, come on.
And, L4D2 has all the content from L4D1, so everyone's moved over. Portal 1, again everyone's moved to Portal 2, and these are puzzle games, lol. COD4 destroys every game on that list (had like 70,000+ players last time I played a few months ago according to gametracker) , steam doesn't track players outside the steam client that run the DRM free copy. Tribes Ascend also has a standalone client that isn't logged by steam stats.
Are you serious? While I agree with your point of ns2 death, some of these comparisons are comical. Mirror's edge? Hey guys look at this single player game with a very short campaign and low replay value that was released over 6 years ago. Nobody plays it! lol, come on.
And on that note, I looked it up for giggles and found this hilarious(yes i know it's currently a flash sale):
- 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?)
Wut. What the hell does vantage point mean in this context?
To all the people who say, they got bang for their buck, good for you, but that's not the point. Guess reading is not your strong point. And yes Obraxis, you have proven my point with your list. It is among the games that are old singleplayer games. At primetime, 0.000315% of the players ingame steam play ns2. That is not a percentage to be proud of, CS 1.6 is still in the top 10, the days that ns1 was the 4th biggest mod of half life are long gone and the hundreds of servers to choose from have long past.
People can disagree with me all they want, I don't care, and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbers, so I tried to fix it, you don't like it, fine, don't join. I don't see why you bring that up in here.
I just say what most ppl don't have the balls for to say, people here are in denial, I am just giving them a wake up call,
For a multiplayer game released in 2012 it is doing quite badly, looking at the statistics, statistics also tell you 10% of the playerbase is lost every month, with good reason, the people here on the forum don't seem to get it. It is a shame, really...
and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbersservers that have hex edited the executable in order to create something entirely unintended by the developers
FTFY
<:-P
On topic: So your thread is supposed to accomplish what, exactly? Are you just providing a public service announcement for the playercount? o.0
and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbersservers that have hex edited the executable in order to create something entirely unintended by the developers
FTFY
<:-P
On topic: So your thread is supposed to accomplish what, exactly? Are you just providing a public service announcement for the playercount? o.0
I'm no rocket scientist, but I believe this a discussion forum. It also looks like he is expressing his opinion on his experience with the game.
Sure he could have probably worded things better and lost the overused cliche title, but I hate how this forum attacks and disagree bombs nearly everyone that criticizes this game like they're an enemy. But I get it, this forum attracts mostly a large audience that generally care about the game. It's like going to a soccer team forum and saying their team sucks, everyone would attack the person and defend their beloved team.
lol, buddy you're confused as hell about that entire situation. kodiak was a failure, in terms of the goals they had set for themselves. they said "we want to make this much money" and they didn't make that much money. so it was a failure.
and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbersservers that have hex edited the executable in order to create something entirely unintended by the developers
FTFY
I swear I'm not following you Ironhorse, just reading the same threads this monring
Unintended doesn't mean it's any less valid. All modding is unintended from the developer's original vision. And yet this is what keeps games fresh and alive.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Crashes, imbalances, client fps issues and 1/3 the server performance, teaching new players bad habits and an experience that doesn't translate anywhere else =/= keeping the game fresh and alive, imho
Crashes, imbalances, client fps issues and 1/3 the server performance, teaching new players bad habits and an experience that doesn't translate anywhere else =/= keeping the game fresh and alive, imho
To try and put that blame on Tick isn't fair. I personally dislike his servers and would never recommend them(no offense tick), but to pretend that only happens on his servers is a joke. That happens on EVERY server! Just because it happens less on other servers than on his crazy player count server, doesn't mean he is entitled to receive the blame for the underlying issues.
And the handful of times I've played his server, I've never crashed. The other points I agree though, it's not properly balanced and performance issues typically get worse. But the balance topic is my OPINION. Just like someone can come in here and say the 24 slot servers are unbalanced compared to 6v6, so please stop acting like you're passing off facts, IronHorse.
But let's be honest, the devs could most likely block the crazy counts if they choose to if you're really that worried about the new players experience and perception. The very least that should have be done was a warning message before joining the server of possible performance issues, but that message would need to be applied to every server. I think that's why they don't do it, lol. The game is so demanding on client and server that I've even seen the official servers drop tickrate to low teens and struggle with performance at times.
But let's be honest, the devs could most likely block the crazy counts if they choose to if you're really that worried about the new players experience and perception. The very least that should have be done was a warning message before joining the server of possible performance issues, but that message would need to be applied to every server. I think that's why they don't do it, lol. The game is so demanding on client and server that I've even seen the official servers drop tickrate to low teens and struggle with performance at times.
I'm sure it's ok to say this as the CDT tracker is public, but they are looking at adding a warning message in the next build, but only for large servers.
Focibly preventing them though would be a mistake, pissing off close to 1/5 of our currently active player base who enjoy them. I had a chat with the team through Obraxis recently and though we disagree on some things, I can fairly say they've got their heads screwed on right
and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbersservers that have hex edited the executable in order to create something entirely unintended by the developers
FTFY
I swear I'm not following you Ironhorse, just reading the same threads this monring
Unintended doesn't mean it's any less valid. All modding is unintended from the developer's original vision. And yet this is what keeps games fresh and alive.
And if you mod anything this critical its up to the modder to support his mod. Not up to the dev of the original software who had those limits in mind while designing the software.
Anyone aware of software designing will agree with me on that its important to have some fixed value which should not be changed for every project you develop.
If uwe would have had higher slot servers in mind they would have done some stuff in the netcode in a different way. ( e.g the range of network packets limits, did you know that ns2 only supports up to max 4k ents? )
Overall this come down to that you can't expect devs to support a mod which is outside the fixed values they set for their project.
UWE never expected anyone to change the engine, only the gameplay code ( lua code ).
I'm sure you'll find many threads like these going back all the way to 2012. No need for another.
Which is why it's one of the most tiresomely boring topics that ever occur on these forums. I have heard the whole "ns2 is dying" shtick pretty much since release. Even back then there were people who were like "trust me, it'll be dead in a month" to which I've just rolled my eyes. And here we are 2 years later and I still open up ns2 and see 2-3 active servers in my region - exactly the same as it has ever been. Colour me unsurprised that "imminent death" that these oh-so-enlightened soothsayers have prophesized every couple months has not come to pass. Really, these threads are just thinly veiled outlets to be negative towards uwe/ns2.
Looking at the hard numbers - they are where they are because it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and there hasn't been a sale in a while. This year's numbers around this time are only slightly lower than last year. There's a number of things that might attribute to last year having 100 odd more players total. Proximity to free-weekend, sale, modjam, NSL grand final. Also the BT mod had a lot of veterans returning or playing more than usual due to trying out/testing the new features. So no, I don't think the very minor decline from last year is evidence that the ns2 scene is about to suddenly keel over and die. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous.
I'm sorry. But - the death of ns2 is imminent? That's just sensationalist tripe. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.
It's Super Effective!Join Date: 2012-08-28Member: 156625Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2014
Few games I've played in my life have given me so much entertainment for what I paid for
$30 - NS2 Pre-order to support UWE, in my eyes I was thanking UWE for NS1 being free, and 1000+ hours in exchange.
$60 - Left 4 Dead 1 - 766 Hours, worth it, wanted more...
$60 - Left 4 Dead 2 - 1458 Hours, worth it easily... hoping for EVOLVE to be just as great.
$75 - NS2 Shadow Reinforcement Tier - 1874 hours of entertainment in exchange making it, THE longest game I have ever played to date.
and in contrast...
$60 + $90 for Battlefield 4 + Premium - I don't play it any more, I think I clocked about 200-300 hours.
$60 - Pre-order Payday 2 - Played for 26 Pathetic Hours.
so while everyone will have their own opinion, NS2 for me = Great Game, and I don't regret it one bit.
*My post here represents me as a player of this game and does not represent the opinions of any other groups or members thereof to whom I am affiliated with.
But let's be honest, the devs could most likely block the crazy counts if they choose to if you're really that worried about the new players experience and perception. The very least that should have be done was a warning message before joining the server of possible performance issues, but that message would need to be applied to every server. I think that's why they don't do it, lol. The game is so demanding on client and server that I've even seen the official servers drop tickrate to low teens and struggle with performance at times.
I'm sure it's ok to say this as the CDT tracker is public, but they are looking at adding a warning message in the next build, but only for large servers.
Focibly preventing them though would be a mistake, pissing off close to 1/5 of our currently active player base who enjoy them. I had a chat with the team through Obraxis recently and though we disagree on some things, I can fairly say they've got their heads screwed on right
Well, if that's the case, I hope they are fair about it and put it on everything above 6v6 that everyone claims the game was designed for, or test load on every server to see if it can properly handle the game. There are plenty of 16/22/24/32 slot servers that also lag and can't handle the game in some way or the other.
Comments
List of Games with LESS players playing and patched less than NS2:
Left 4 Dead
Assassin's Creed II
Darksiders II
Portal
Sid Meier's Civilization III
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Planetary Annihilation
Metro 2033
Hotline Miami
Guns of Icarus Online
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
TrackMania Nations Forever
Mirror's Edge
Trine 2
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Bastion
Tribes: Ascend
Sanctum 2
Primal Carnage
Champions Online: Free For All
...and many, many more.
List valid as of today using steamcharts.com for the info.
1 things u will miss tho, it's not NS2
Nope, check for yourself.
thanks to UWE having balls the sizes of clogs and taking a lot of risks, this game turned out to be quite unique (they DID a lot of wild experimenting in the alpha and beta).
which means some people (like me) will come back to it again and again and again, simply because there is nothing similar (at this quality level). how many other sci-fi asymetrical rts/fps hybrids with human commanders are there?
example:
ns1 held up for many years. and these players were so enthusiastic about the game that they actually allowed ns2 to be finished by betting their money on something alpha (ns2). not only that, think about all the contributions regarding content, fixes and optimisations. several uwe employes are former fans. and even the game itself is now developed by the community!
to point out that i'm not just blindy speculating, regarding playerbase:
i've been modding several other games before, e.g. warcraft 3, putting emphasis on creating custom maps (read: mods) which were as unique as possible, such as a 4-player-sort-of-chess with real-time-arena-battles when attacking a piece, 8 factions, levelups, global spells and whatnot.
how did people react to something so bizarre and complicated? ofc many were alienated e.g. by the slower pace. but those who liked it were usually ridicolously enthusiastic, e.g. forming a clan on their own, specifically for this mod (considering the f*ckload of wc3 custom maps out there, i consider that quite a success for a 1-man-project). i continued developing it for 6 years (quite actively, because there was demand and i still had the time back then), afterwards passing it to some other guy who is still working on it. and even though the number of players was decreasing over time (wc3 is really old by now), there were always hardcore fans around, ready for a game every now and then.
now to compare that with a different wc3 map i made (a bit like FTL, with every crewmember being player-controlled and able to mount turrets), which was much more approachable: that map started out more popular initially, but the player-base was less enthusiastic and decreased much faster over time, eventually becoming smaller than the player base of the sort-of-chess-hybrid-map.
but why? i was more experienced when making it, it was SO much easier to balance and the overall player feedback was overwhelmingly positive (even though it also had some very unique (=risky) concepts) and the game seemed to appeal to a bigger audience. the decline was not because of FTL either, that game came a few years after i stopped modding wc3. however, it still wasn't as unique as the other map.
tl, dr: afaik well-made unique games keep a dedicated fanbase much longer than unoriginal ones. at least until a similar game comes along, but that's probably gonna take a while regarding ns2.
Awesome lets list a load of single player games. Even quite a few of the multiplayer ones on that list have had sequels released that are a lot more active with higher player counts.
Lets just face it, ns2 was doomed from the start, plagued with performance problems, balance overhaul after release, no wonder people didn't stick around.
This game has always been harsh on the casual gamer, and whilst I praise the game for it's depth sometimes it's hard for a new player, and also for the returning player to understand what is actually going on without going through change logs or hours of YouTube tutorials.
Siege maps, whilst myself was never too keen on them in ns1, were actually very popular with the community. The variation kept quite a lot of casual people playing and quite a lot of the active servers in the final days had at least one siege map in their vote rotation.
Overall granted the game has got better over time we just have to understand that ns2 has left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths and it will be very hard to try and persuade these people to come back.
I am grateful for the hard work the developers and the community put into the patches post release. Unfortunately quite a lot of these updates came a little too late for a lot of the player base, and even some might say still haven't even been fully addressed re: performance.
I myself have had a lot of fun and believe it was well worth the money I put down in the alpha and also for the countless hours I had with ns1.
I wish the best for the community development team, but the community must understand that the damage is done and it will be hard if at all impossible to increase player base size to what we saw around the release/humble bundle/free weekend.
RIP NS2
I don't doubt the list its just those game as a comparison are well a bad joke. Hell Darksiders 2 is a game by a now defunct dev studio and dead publisher and it's holding almost as many. that's not something you should hold as a positive. @-)
Still, NS2 one of my best purchases on games among with Company of Heroes series and Valve Half-Life series and their kids like CS/DOD/TF.
I really think, republishing NS2 with the release of COMBAT however with far far better performance would bring some great results. NS2 is a really charming game, and even if the game dies tomorrow, no doubt NS2 is a great success and a great role model of indie-game industry. Only, it could've been more popular if with legit performance, and again, i think that means NS2 still has chance to be revived and for long-living
Yet if you actually looked at the entire time frame of those charts, you'd notice a core group of players remain throughout the surges from sales, mostly demonstrating a stable base through waves of variation.
The beginning of this month's numbers compared with the same time from last year's shows a difference of 100 players.... So excuse some of us if we roll our eyes when yet another person claims the sky is falling for NS2. ;-)
@the_tick I'm not really seeing a point to your thread, other than publicly displaying the community disagreeing with you and taking a the chance to point out issues with large servers..
Which makes me feel like this thread is just bait, all around.
Hilariously ironic. You should have asked that question to yourself about your post. At least his topic has several points for discussion and he even structured them neatly for you to read. Then there is your post, it's meaningless and adds nothing to the discussion.
And on to the topic discussion. OP, It's a rather dumb title that will just bring the masses to hate you and the topic. And while you do have some valid points, I think at this age of the game, they've all been discussed plenty of times and beaten like a dead horse at this point.
NS2 now is a much, much better game now than it was when it was first released and even up to Reinforced -- which had the unfortunate side effect of pushing people away when UWE decided to revamp the rendering engine before a sale, instead of putting its best foot forward.
And that's the key here. There's obviously a ceiling of how many people around the world are going to be interested in a game like NS2, and willing enough to buy it. After numerous Steam sales, we've probably already reached this.
So growing the playerbase isn't about reaching new players, it's about reaching those who've already bought it but stopped playing due to bugs/performance/balance/constant changes over the numerous patches and upgrades over the last few years.
People got burnt. It left a sour taste in their mouth, and they didn't come back. We want a larger community? We have to bring these people back into the fold. Show them the game is much improved now, a lot more stable, a lot more balanced, and peformance is pretty decent.
I myself have only started playing regularly again in the last six months. And I handed over my money since the pre-order. I just decided to fire it up a while ago after having 'left' it myself, and decided it wasn't too bad now. And then it's just been getting better.
So those who have said the problem is marketing are right. But not marketing to new players: marketing to old ones. We need to convince them to give it another go -- called it NS2.1 if you will, because it's not the same NS2 that UWE released way back.
When I told one of my old NS1 clan buddies that development had been handed over to a team of community members, he was a) impressed and b) agreed to fire it up again, after the world cup
Maybe if UWE would be willing to invest a little money in exposure with magazines and websites, generating stories on an evolution in design with the CDT (this is, itself, newsworthy) the community could grow -- which benefits UWE -- even as the bulk of the work is now handled by the CDT. I.e, it's pretty win/win for UWE if they can afford a little cash.
For the rest of us -- go through your Steam friends list, find those who used to play NS1 or played NS2 and gave up, and invite them to a game or three. Tell them about the CDT. Tell them your experience of the game now. Threaten to paint their house pink or fill their car with donuts, whatever it takes -- but get them in-game!
Make sure you're there with them, remind them of the fun of playing with friends. And if they like it and stay, they'll pass on the word, and the community will grow again.
And then we can look back at threads like this and realise it's been in our hands all along
Also a bunch of co-op games, singleplayer games, and games that don't require Steam doesn't make a good comparison. Sure you could compare ns2 to cod4:mw and say we have more players, but that game has had yearly sequels since then.
Are you serious? While I agree with your point of ns2 death, some of these comparisons are comical. Mirror's edge? Hey guys look at this single player game with a very short campaign and low replay value that was released over 6 years ago. Nobody plays it! lol, come on.
And, L4D2 has all the content from L4D1, so everyone's moved over. Portal 1, again everyone's moved to Portal 2, and these are puzzle games, lol. COD4 destroys every game on that list (had like 70,000+ players last time I played a few months ago according to gametracker) , steam doesn't track players outside the steam client that run the DRM free copy. Tribes Ascend also has a standalone client that isn't logged by steam stats.
And on that note, I looked it up for giggles and found this hilarious(yes i know it's currently a flash sale):
Vantage is used correctly. Though point is a bit redundant.
Best playtime to dollar ratio since wolf:et... Oh wait.
People can disagree with me all they want, I don't care, and I don't care what you think of my server, I think the game is broken on large numbers, so I tried to fix it, you don't like it, fine, don't join. I don't see why you bring that up in here.
I just say what most ppl don't have the balls for to say, people here are in denial, I am just giving them a wake up call,
For a multiplayer game released in 2012 it is doing quite badly, looking at the statistics, statistics also tell you 10% of the playerbase is lost every month, with good reason, the people here on the forum don't seem to get it. It is a shame, really...
<:-P
On topic: So your thread is supposed to accomplish what, exactly? Are you just providing a public service announcement for the playercount? o.0
I'm no rocket scientist, but I believe this a discussion forum. It also looks like he is expressing his opinion on his experience with the game.
Sure he could have probably worded things better and lost the overused cliche title, but I hate how this forum attacks and disagree bombs nearly everyone that criticizes this game like they're an enemy. But I get it, this forum attracts mostly a large audience that generally care about the game. It's like going to a soccer team forum and saying their team sucks, everyone would attack the person and defend their beloved team.
lol, buddy you're confused as hell about that entire situation. kodiak was a failure, in terms of the goals they had set for themselves. they said "we want to make this much money" and they didn't make that much money. so it was a failure.
Unintended doesn't mean it's any less valid. All modding is unintended from the developer's original vision. And yet this is what keeps games fresh and alive.
To try and put that blame on Tick isn't fair. I personally dislike his servers and would never recommend them(no offense tick), but to pretend that only happens on his servers is a joke. That happens on EVERY server! Just because it happens less on other servers than on his crazy player count server, doesn't mean he is entitled to receive the blame for the underlying issues.
And the handful of times I've played his server, I've never crashed. The other points I agree though, it's not properly balanced and performance issues typically get worse. But the balance topic is my OPINION. Just like someone can come in here and say the 24 slot servers are unbalanced compared to 6v6, so please stop acting like you're passing off facts, IronHorse.
But let's be honest, the devs could most likely block the crazy counts if they choose to if you're really that worried about the new players experience and perception. The very least that should have be done was a warning message before joining the server of possible performance issues, but that message would need to be applied to every server. I think that's why they don't do it, lol. The game is so demanding on client and server that I've even seen the official servers drop tickrate to low teens and struggle with performance at times.
Focibly preventing them though would be a mistake, pissing off close to 1/5 of our currently active player base who enjoy them. I had a chat with the team through Obraxis recently and though we disagree on some things, I can fairly say they've got their heads screwed on right
And if you mod anything this critical its up to the modder to support his mod. Not up to the dev of the original software who had those limits in mind while designing the software.
Anyone aware of software designing will agree with me on that its important to have some fixed value which should not be changed for every project you develop.
If uwe would have had higher slot servers in mind they would have done some stuff in the netcode in a different way. ( e.g the range of network packets limits, did you know that ns2 only supports up to max 4k ents? )
Overall this come down to that you can't expect devs to support a mod which is outside the fixed values they set for their project.
UWE never expected anyone to change the engine, only the gameplay code ( lua code ).
Which is why it's one of the most tiresomely boring topics that ever occur on these forums. I have heard the whole "ns2 is dying" shtick pretty much since release. Even back then there were people who were like "trust me, it'll be dead in a month" to which I've just rolled my eyes. And here we are 2 years later and I still open up ns2 and see 2-3 active servers in my region - exactly the same as it has ever been. Colour me unsurprised that "imminent death" that these oh-so-enlightened soothsayers have prophesized every couple months has not come to pass. Really, these threads are just thinly veiled outlets to be negative towards uwe/ns2.
Looking at the hard numbers - they are where they are because it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and there hasn't been a sale in a while. This year's numbers around this time are only slightly lower than last year. There's a number of things that might attribute to last year having 100 odd more players total. Proximity to free-weekend, sale, modjam, NSL grand final. Also the BT mod had a lot of veterans returning or playing more than usual due to trying out/testing the new features. So no, I don't think the very minor decline from last year is evidence that the ns2 scene is about to suddenly keel over and die. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous.
I'm sorry. But - the death of ns2 is imminent? That's just sensationalist tripe. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.
$30 - NS2 Pre-order to support UWE, in my eyes I was thanking UWE for NS1 being free, and 1000+ hours in exchange.
$60 - Left 4 Dead 1 - 766 Hours, worth it, wanted more...
$60 - Left 4 Dead 2 - 1458 Hours, worth it easily... hoping for EVOLVE to be just as great.
$75 - NS2 Shadow Reinforcement Tier - 1874 hours of entertainment in exchange making it, THE longest game I have ever played to date.
and in contrast...
$60 + $90 for Battlefield 4 + Premium - I don't play it any more, I think I clocked about 200-300 hours.
$60 - Pre-order Payday 2 - Played for 26 Pathetic Hours.
so while everyone will have their own opinion, NS2 for me = Great Game, and I don't regret it one bit.
*My post here represents me as a player of this game and does not represent the opinions of any other groups or members thereof to whom I am affiliated with.
KARMA TORNADO!
Well, if that's the case, I hope they are fair about it and put it on everything above 6v6 that everyone claims the game was designed for, or test load on every server to see if it can properly handle the game. There are plenty of 16/22/24/32 slot servers that also lag and can't handle the game in some way or the other.