I think he meant the topic, not so much the discussion itself. @pelargir there isn’t thanksgiving anywhere but murica.
I know, but I'm living in France. I'm waiting for you to visit our country by the way.
You can debate about F2P but I really don't think the quoted games are relevant. I even don't think there's any game that can prove anything here 'cause there isn't two similar games and NS2 can't be added in their category.
This is just sad to know how the things are usually turned away. People only want to play against more competitive teams. That's all, right?
F2P is not being worked on right now. It's not in any plans we have at this moment in time and the CDT are not working on it. However, if the playerbase drops to dangerous levels, it's something that can't be taken off the table and we would be negligent to do so.
However, for now, I dont see it being needed. It is always great to have options though, rather than no choices. Glad we're in a spot where this is possible and we can discuss ideas.
Exactly. But I have just no idea what "dangerous levels" mean for you. Even if we all agree to say this is not now anyway.
Just a thought, maybe offtopic. Why bring new players when there is thousands upon thousands of people who already got the game, but had bad performace, got significant others, had to game less, etc. They might be in completely different situation now, new PC, personal life, etc. Why not try to bring those back? Mass email to inform of new stuff, small reminder. People tend to forget pretty quick. There could be incentive, ilke play at least 4h this weekend and get this weekend badge/skin.
Bring back old players and have do something to retain those players.
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
For reasons stated in the dozen previous F2P threads... I think it would be a horrible idea for numerous reasons.
Most notable reason to me personally is that I love the community and loathe most F2P ones..
You can argue all day that it's those particular games that bring that level of toxicity, but all evidence points to the contrary, including our free to play weekends that we've had for NS2.
An article from last year stated that NS2 sold over 300,000 copies at the time of print. 350 people are playing as I write this. NS2's barrier to entry is not its price.
...have you ever been around in F2p weekends? I'm not particularly saying anything against newbies, it's just the way the community reacts to it.
In australia, 90% of the vet population.. ups and dissapears.
Excepting maybe comp players for our league, who kind of have to play a game a week to keep the admins away, right @bonage?
Most of the Australian vet community is already disappearing though, with people sticking around to run it. Most players that are playing league games don't even play public anyways. Idk what you are talking about with the last sentence though.
So to summ up all the answers so far (i may be missing a few comments, sorry for that)
Pros:
Bigger playerbase
Servers more filled
More teams in Competitive
Bigger community and maybe "livestream"
Cons:
Toxic,Hackers
UWE may loose money (But could be fixed with skins or more fun modes)
Many players may troll or just be bad and ruin for other members
Maybe it could also involve more work for the CDT team to adjust all the opinions people have
Am i missing something? Please add in, and i will fill in the 1st post.. This is just a first "sketch" of what i've collected so far
Have a lovely weekend everyone! And happy thanksgiving for the others across the atlantic
Boils down to the active playercounts imo. At current levels, it's fairly low, but still enough to fill up pub servers every night and have an enjoyable competitive scene. However, when the playerbase starts dropping to a "near-extinction-level" I wouldn't mind NS2 going f2p in the hope of extending the game's lifetime.
No one seem to address maybe the biggest blocker for F2P; how should NS2 be monetized when it's free to download?
There's a system in place for skins, would investing in lots of skin DLC and hope that sells better than the game be a sane thing to do? There isn't much else you can do without ruining the integrity of the game or splitting players into small groups.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Ok ok.. lets do this topic again. I do not believe it will work with f2p.
* Bigger playerbase: perhaps.. but the barrier is usually people not putting in time to learn.. Not the money.. I doubt, strongly, that the playerbase would grow THAT much.
* More teams in Competitive. The barrier for this is already quite low. Which is a good thing. But if I doubt that many new players join, the same goes for competitive.
* Toxic, Hackers: Yes, this has a far bigger chance. Like people said.. even ns1 wasnt 100% f2p because HL1 cost money.
* UWE may loose money (But could be fixed with skins or more fun modes): uwe would have less income on f2p.. of course.. Skin packs in the past have not reached that high sales to warrant a lovely income. Also many MANY clients already run into issues AS IS because their texture memory maxes out. Adding many many more high res skins will only amplify this problem. And who is going to make these skins? Making stuff costs time.. lotsa time. And I strongly doubt the profit from sales would exceed costs. Especially if you add more and more skins.
Its been said before..
* If you want to retain more players you need to have a easier time for rookies while keeping the vets interested. Thats hard.
* Also performance (always) needs to be adressed. You will know if the game is free many MANY people who dont even remotely have the system specs required will try to run the game. They will then experience issues and complain. Who will handle the enormous surplus in support? DO you want to play in teams where half the folk can barely keep 15fps? Because why would they check specs? Its free.. if it doesn't work they lost nothing.
Also I find your view on the CDT extremely disrespectful. Yes many in the community add lots of time to run servers, help rookies, keep games going, run NSL etc.. But do you really think the CDT is doing useless work? First off they do a lot of work.. a lot a lot.
Second the work they do is NOT useless. Seen the bugfixes? I did.. Seen the long term performance gains? I did. Seen the new quality of life features? Yes, yes I did.
You may notice that many vets actually request these features and are very happy it gets included in the game. Their work is just as important as folk who run the NSL, train rookies etc.
So to summ up all the answers so far (i may be missing a few comments, sorry for that)
Pros: Possibly Bigger playerbase (doubtful)
-Possibly Servers more filled (refer to above)
-Possibly More teams in Competitive (refer to above)
-Possibly Bigger community and maybe "livestream" (refer to above)
Cons: Toxic,Hackers UWE may loose money (But could be fixed with skins or more fun modes) (too expensive to make for a lack of possible return) Many players may troll or just be bad and ruin for other members Maybe it couldIt would also involve more work for the CDT team to adjust all the opinions people have Player retention is poor
-Game is too hard for most gamers (even if we absolutely LOVE it)
-Ns2 is a niche game that does not have mass appeal
-Does not bring in the hundreds of thousands who bought the game but don't play Possibly smaller playerbase
-Possibly Servers less filled
-Possibly Less teams in Competitive
-Possibly Smaller community and maybe less "livestream"
Am i missing something? Please add in, and i will fill in the 1st post.. This is just a first "sketch" of what i've collected so far
Have a lovely weekend everyone! And happy thanksgiving for the others across the atlantic
F2P is not being worked on right now. It's not in any plans we have at this moment in time and the CDT are not working on it. However, if the playerbase drops to dangerous levels, it's something that can't be taken off the table and we would be negligent to do so.
However, for now, I don't see it being needed. It is always great to have options though, rather than no choices. Glad we're in a spot where this is possible and we can discuss ideas.
First - thank you for a direct answer that contributes to the discussion instead of a silly meme.
Let's talk about what dangerous levels are. I saw that graph you posted the other day comparing NS2 player count to other games like brink etc. I think that was a good piece of info to consider, but i think we should also consider the following:
As you can see, the average daily player count is down to what it was essentially before NS2's release. There have been spikes with events like the NS2WC, DLC packs etc, but the trend over the last year is a steady decline. At what average daily player count is it to be considered dangerously low?
In the Aus local community, we have started to see recently a rapid decline in both competitive and public player numbers. Many are moving onto to games like CS:GO. Comp wise, it is very hard for local teams to find other teams to scrim outside of scheduled league games. As such, many are spending the majority of their time in other games. Public wise, we used to have 3-4 full servers nightly, now we are down to 1-2 nightly.
In my mind, this is the time to lay the groundwork if you want to at the very least sustain the community, whether that be via F2P, micro-economy systems, or whatever else. This is why this discussion needs to be had, this is why it needs a dedicated thread about the mechanisms for it, and this is why it can't be shrugged off. CDT has done a great job so far since UWE handed over development. Your trello board is great for seeing technical improvements and other objectives you guys have in mind. It's not really a good place to discuss things though. So let's do it here.
You guys are essentially representatives for your community, so let's talk about it friends
No one seem to address maybe the biggest blocker for F2P; how should NS2 be monetized when it's free to download?
There's a system in place for skins, would investing in lots of skin DLC and hope that sells better than the game be a sane thing to do? There isn't much else you can do without ruining the integrity of the game or splitting players into small groups.
F2P games would also require some sort of income model, Reinforced is all well and good but the transactions aren't "micro" enough to entice new players to cough up money. There's also very little to gain in game from buying a Reinforced tier (other than the bloody shadow skins. I don't care what anyone says, for me, they are harder to see than the regular ones).
Games like Dota2 and LoL do indeed make most or all of their money from cosmetic changes, but those games have a ton of premium stuff to choose from as well as an engine built to support it (as far as I know, NS2 would have a hard time dealing with so many varying sound, skin and model assets).
The last thing we want is a bs Pay 2 Win variant, like "extended weapon clips", "additional weapon slots", "personal res packs" etc.
Long story short, as far as I know the engine wouldn't be able to handle so many varying assets. Someone from the CDT could confirm this though.
I think the main problem was that they were pushing the memory limit, though for simple weapon skins this should not be a problem anymore if I recall correctly. I'm a bit hazy on the details though.
Since we already have too many threads about this (and the devs already told us it would not happen), can we close this?
The last thread that was dedicated to f2p discussions was 7 months ago. Enough has changed since then to reopen the discussion. Being mentioned in passing in other threads does not mean there are "too many threads" on the subject. If you don't want to contribute to the discussion, it's easy, just don't open the thread.
@Obraxis should be banned from the forums for being too sensible.
With Combat Standalone coming soon and NS2 game still having a great group of regular players I don't see the point of F2P. I agree with Obraxis that if there are down to the last few people then F2P will inject life back into the game, but I hope we are a long way off from that.
With the release of NS:Combat, you should make NS2 F2P, to drag in players who want to experience the original. Ultimately the game will not achieve anything but fixes to current meta/engine, so why wait for the "last ditch effort", instead of solifying the current number of players?
This current ENSL season is a good example how teams are slowly becoming less and less interested to play the game, we are repeatedly nudging teams from lower divisions, to higher, just to keep the sizes of the divisions the same, even though nothing has changed regarding the teams skillwise.
At some point, you have to stop "trying to improve the game", and resort to methods like F2P. Who knows what kind of impact NS:Combat will have for NS2, we will see. But it is simply a naive and self destructive notion to ignore F2P as an option for the reasons posted before by people in this topic, we want more people to play this game, no we are not happy to simply have some servers with players.
@Ots I'm kind of on the fence about f2p for NS2, but you make an important point for discussion about the release of NS2:Combat. On the one hand, bringing more players into NS2 from the release of combat is an excellent and achievable goal. However, making NS2 f2p might cause problems for combat (which will not be free) - why buy combat when you can download the 'original' and more complex game (also with a combat mod) for free? It wouldn't be my view, but I can see it being a consideration for many propsective NS2/NS2:Combat buyers!
A sale on NS2 to coincide with combat would be a very sensible idea - or even also a discount pack where you can buy both at a good discount (the discount being on NS2, so combat still gets their asking price, if UWE would be amenable to that).
I worry about toxic players on the F2P model, but it isn't always the case that games suffer irreparably from this problem. With careful management, that could work - but that management takes resources and therefore funding to support the model would be required. And that means hats, basically. This is where I have the biggest issues with NS2 going free to play, but maybe they can be worked out?
It's something to consider, at some point you need to stop worrying about the worst outcome, and just go for it. F2P could be one way, package deals as you mentioned could be another, this does not have to happen now, today, but in the near future, it should.
I doubt we can ever really resort to 'hats', we're running on a voluntary staff at this point regardless, does UWE really care about the income from NS2 anymore? Isn't their main focus on other things at this point for 'income'. I doubt this is about finance anymore. It feels more about a healthy sized community, at least for me.
Another try.
1- Add skinz/hatz
2- F2P
3 - ???
4 - Ops, we got TF2 again!
Also F2P doesn't mean the game is totally free, there must be some payments in the game, I'm really doubt UWE wants to kickout NS2 totally free in the wild. But it will require a big job to be done: new paid content, ingame balance, fixing bugs and many many other things, or people will start the game, play for 5 min, and delete it. Also CDT won't handle all that stuff, and also the won't develop the game for free. And UWE have no time/money for it either.
But not only that. UWE will have to pull out their servers (to rent, of course), cuz more then 50% community servers will be locked down from influx of noobs. Yeah, you can tolerate noobs on NS2's sales, but you can't tolerate them forever, so expect more "passworded or rookie-not-friendly" servers and less community "green" servers.
Or there is another way for UWE.
UWE likes to experiment! Like they did with Kodiak DLC or the upcoming NS2:Combat. UWE can also make a standalone NS2:F2P (or hire a 3rd party for that like Faultline Games). NS2:F2P can be somesort of demoversion: no mods support, less maps, only UWE's servers, only vanilla mode, less graphics options. But it will also be very stable.
And only very major and stable things can be implemented to NS2:F2P from original NS2.
People can play and learn with NS2:F2P and if the liked it, they can buy full version NS2.
I would like to see something longer than a free weekend if possible falling in line with combat release. Like all of november free. Let people play, get hooked.
AurOn2COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS!AustraliaJoin Date: 2012-01-13Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
edited October 2014
...can we wait till the ausns2 league is over, first, at least?
maybe NSL Season 5?
...that way all the dissenting vets can go on a holiday.
i was joking seb
Seeing that last year I spoke with the devs for a good hour about F2P, I can hardly see why people are saying its never going to happen.
NS2 probably has reached the end of its possible sales cycle. At this point in time, the vast majority of steam users who 'would' play this type of game have bought it already, tried it, and have left for various reasons. The potential for this game to keep bringing in new players without being on sale is extremely slim. A HUGE chunk of the initial player base of this game left because of performance and balance during the launch months. As most players who have been around since beta can attest, we have come a long way in that aspect.
So the goal of going F2P would be to re-relaunch the game, per se, which could potentially get players who quit to try the game again (something that simple steam sales cannot do.)
As for previously stated points...
-The notion that the CDT would have more work is ridiculous. Yes the CDT does listen to potential ideas from the community but for the most part, they have been cleaning up game bugs and increasing performance. The CDT is not there to 'adjust the game based on opinions of people on this forum.' It never has been.
-Toxic community/hackers... Seeing that almost 100% of the NS2 community plays on community servers, I can hardly see this being a problem. The notion that NS2 will automatically become the toxic cesspool like the League of Legends community is just plain delusional.
tl;dr The player base has been shrinking for a long time now. The possible gains of going F2P outweighs any of the 'risks' I have read in this thread so far.
Comments
I know, but I'm living in France. I'm waiting for you to visit our country by the way.
You can debate about F2P but I really don't think the quoted games are relevant. I even don't think there's any game that can prove anything here 'cause there isn't two similar games and NS2 can't be added in their category.
This is just sad to know how the things are usually turned away. People only want to play against more competitive teams. That's all, right?
Exactly. But I have just no idea what "dangerous levels" mean for you. Even if we all agree to say this is not now anyway.
Bring back old players and have do something to retain those players.
Most notable reason to me personally is that I love the community and loathe most F2P ones..
You can argue all day that it's those particular games that bring that level of toxicity, but all evidence points to the contrary, including our free to play weekends that we've had for NS2.
Balance between Casual and competitive like Counter Strike GO for example >> if you want casual cheking server list
>>> if you want match making for Competitive >> join lobby to search 10 players and start
Most of the Australian vet community is already disappearing though, with people sticking around to run it. Most players that are playing league games don't even play public anyways. Idk what you are talking about with the last sentence though.
Pros:
Bigger playerbase
Servers more filled
More teams in Competitive
Bigger community and maybe "livestream"
Cons:
Toxic,Hackers
UWE may loose money (But could be fixed with skins or more fun modes)
Many players may troll or just be bad and ruin for other members
Maybe it could also involve more work for the CDT team to adjust all the opinions people have
Am i missing something? Please add in, and i will fill in the 1st post.. This is just a first "sketch" of what i've collected so far
Have a lovely weekend everyone! And happy thanksgiving for the others across the atlantic
Bigger player base is really the only pro since the other 3 are more or less a direct result of having a bigger playerbase...
I was about to say that.
There's a system in place for skins, would investing in lots of skin DLC and hope that sells better than the game be a sane thing to do? There isn't much else you can do without ruining the integrity of the game or splitting players into small groups.
* Bigger playerbase: perhaps.. but the barrier is usually people not putting in time to learn.. Not the money.. I doubt, strongly, that the playerbase would grow THAT much.
* More teams in Competitive. The barrier for this is already quite low. Which is a good thing. But if I doubt that many new players join, the same goes for competitive.
* Toxic, Hackers: Yes, this has a far bigger chance. Like people said.. even ns1 wasnt 100% f2p because HL1 cost money.
* UWE may loose money (But could be fixed with skins or more fun modes): uwe would have less income on f2p.. of course.. Skin packs in the past have not reached that high sales to warrant a lovely income. Also many MANY clients already run into issues AS IS because their texture memory maxes out. Adding many many more high res skins will only amplify this problem. And who is going to make these skins? Making stuff costs time.. lotsa time. And I strongly doubt the profit from sales would exceed costs. Especially if you add more and more skins.
Its been said before..
* If you want to retain more players you need to have a easier time for rookies while keeping the vets interested. Thats hard.
* Also performance (always) needs to be adressed. You will know if the game is free many MANY people who dont even remotely have the system specs required will try to run the game. They will then experience issues and complain. Who will handle the enormous surplus in support? DO you want to play in teams where half the folk can barely keep 15fps? Because why would they check specs? Its free.. if it doesn't work they lost nothing.
Also I find your view on the CDT extremely disrespectful. Yes many in the community add lots of time to run servers, help rookies, keep games going, run NSL etc.. But do you really think the CDT is doing useless work? First off they do a lot of work.. a lot a lot.
Second the work they do is NOT useless. Seen the bugfixes? I did.. Seen the long term performance gains? I did. Seen the new quality of life features? Yes, yes I did.
You may notice that many vets actually request these features and are very happy it gets included in the game. Their work is just as important as folk who run the NSL, train rookies etc.
First - thank you for a direct answer that contributes to the discussion instead of a silly meme.
Let's talk about what dangerous levels are. I saw that graph you posted the other day comparing NS2 player count to other games like brink etc. I think that was a good piece of info to consider, but i think we should also consider the following:
As you can see, the average daily player count is down to what it was essentially before NS2's release. There have been spikes with events like the NS2WC, DLC packs etc, but the trend over the last year is a steady decline. At what average daily player count is it to be considered dangerously low?
In the Aus local community, we have started to see recently a rapid decline in both competitive and public player numbers. Many are moving onto to games like CS:GO. Comp wise, it is very hard for local teams to find other teams to scrim outside of scheduled league games. As such, many are spending the majority of their time in other games. Public wise, we used to have 3-4 full servers nightly, now we are down to 1-2 nightly.
In my mind, this is the time to lay the groundwork if you want to at the very least sustain the community, whether that be via F2P, micro-economy systems, or whatever else. This is why this discussion needs to be had, this is why it needs a dedicated thread about the mechanisms for it, and this is why it can't be shrugged off. CDT has done a great job so far since UWE handed over development. Your trello board is great for seeing technical improvements and other objectives you guys have in mind. It's not really a good place to discuss things though. So let's do it here.
You guys are essentially representatives for your community, so let's talk about it friends
Long story short, as far as I know the engine wouldn't be able to handle so many varying assets. Someone from the CDT could confirm this though.
There is absolutely no cause for alarm.
The wings are NOT on fire.
I'm fairly certain this is un-true.
Arent all the ingame models rendered individually?
The last thread that was dedicated to f2p discussions was 7 months ago. Enough has changed since then to reopen the discussion. Being mentioned in passing in other threads does not mean there are "too many threads" on the subject. If you don't want to contribute to the discussion, it's easy, just don't open the thread.
With Combat Standalone coming soon and NS2 game still having a great group of regular players I don't see the point of F2P. I agree with Obraxis that if there are down to the last few people then F2P will inject life back into the game, but I hope we are a long way off from that.
This current ENSL season is a good example how teams are slowly becoming less and less interested to play the game, we are repeatedly nudging teams from lower divisions, to higher, just to keep the sizes of the divisions the same, even though nothing has changed regarding the teams skillwise.
At some point, you have to stop "trying to improve the game", and resort to methods like F2P. Who knows what kind of impact NS:Combat will have for NS2, we will see. But it is simply a naive and self destructive notion to ignore F2P as an option for the reasons posted before by people in this topic, we want more people to play this game, no we are not happy to simply have some servers with players.
A sale on NS2 to coincide with combat would be a very sensible idea - or even also a discount pack where you can buy both at a good discount (the discount being on NS2, so combat still gets their asking price, if UWE would be amenable to that).
I worry about toxic players on the F2P model, but it isn't always the case that games suffer irreparably from this problem. With careful management, that could work - but that management takes resources and therefore funding to support the model would be required. And that means hats, basically. This is where I have the biggest issues with NS2 going free to play, but maybe they can be worked out?
I doubt we can ever really resort to 'hats', we're running on a voluntary staff at this point regardless, does UWE really care about the income from NS2 anymore? Isn't their main focus on other things at this point for 'income'. I doubt this is about finance anymore. It feels more about a healthy sized community, at least for me.
2- ???
3- PROFIT
2 - F2P
3- ???
4- Ops, we got Shadowgun: Deadzone again!
Another try.
1- Add skinz/hatz
2- F2P
3 - ???
4 - Ops, we got TF2 again!
Also F2P doesn't mean the game is totally free, there must be some payments in the game, I'm really doubt UWE wants to kickout NS2 totally free in the wild. But it will require a big job to be done: new paid content, ingame balance, fixing bugs and many many other things, or people will start the game, play for 5 min, and delete it. Also CDT won't handle all that stuff, and also the won't develop the game for free. And UWE have no time/money for it either.
But not only that. UWE will have to pull out their servers (to rent, of course), cuz more then 50% community servers will be locked down from influx of noobs. Yeah, you can tolerate noobs on NS2's sales, but you can't tolerate them forever, so expect more "passworded or rookie-not-friendly" servers and less community "green" servers.
Or there is another way for UWE.
UWE likes to experiment! Like they did with Kodiak DLC or the upcoming NS2:Combat. UWE can also make a standalone NS2:F2P (or hire a 3rd party for that like Faultline Games). NS2:F2P can be somesort of demoversion: no mods support, less maps, only UWE's servers, only vanilla mode, less graphics options. But it will also be very stable.
And only very major and stable things can be implemented to NS2:F2P from original NS2.
People can play and learn with NS2:F2P and if the liked it, they can buy full version NS2.
maybe NSL Season 5?
...that way all the dissenting vets can go on a holiday.
i was joking seb
NS2 probably has reached the end of its possible sales cycle. At this point in time, the vast majority of steam users who 'would' play this type of game have bought it already, tried it, and have left for various reasons. The potential for this game to keep bringing in new players without being on sale is extremely slim. A HUGE chunk of the initial player base of this game left because of performance and balance during the launch months. As most players who have been around since beta can attest, we have come a long way in that aspect.
So the goal of going F2P would be to re-relaunch the game, per se, which could potentially get players who quit to try the game again (something that simple steam sales cannot do.)
As for previously stated points...
-The notion that the CDT would have more work is ridiculous. Yes the CDT does listen to potential ideas from the community but for the most part, they have been cleaning up game bugs and increasing performance. The CDT is not there to 'adjust the game based on opinions of people on this forum.' It never has been.
-Toxic community/hackers... Seeing that almost 100% of the NS2 community plays on community servers, I can hardly see this being a problem. The notion that NS2 will automatically become the toxic cesspool like the League of Legends community is just plain delusional.
tl;dr The player base has been shrinking for a long time now. The possible gains of going F2P outweighs any of the 'risks' I have read in this thread so far.
Edit: autocorrect is an evil thing.