Open letter to UWE

clankill3r

dear UWE,

Some day NS2 will die, and I hope we can delay that as much as possible.

I have a idea, some things are discussed on the forum but not in this combination.

Lately I enjoy NS2 less, the variation in skill is to much which takes the fun out of it. (And ensl can take long).
Lately I felt in love with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because of the matchmaking.
For those who don't know it.

CS:GO has 18 different skills. When joining a match with matchmaking you have a 5 vs 5 with people that are close to the same skill level. If you leave the match before it ends you will get a competitive cooldown.
The times for those cooldowns are 30 min, 2 hours, 24 hours, 7 days. The more you leave during a competitive match the longer cooldown time you get. It takes a week to go back to a lower level.
Your skill is based on wins as well personal stats. Your skill ranking changes slowly, so 1 rank up or down at the time.

I think something like that could have helped NS2 a lot, it's only to late for it now cause you need a quite large player base to make it work.
I know F2P is brought up some times. And NS2 is not designed to work with F2P. Cosmetics don't really fir into NS2, and that is like the most common way to get money of a F2P game.
And I understand you just don't want to make the game for free without a return since it's still the main income for you guys.

If we look at the reinforced program:
http://www.naturalselection2.com/reinforced/

Then the counter is on $260,304 of the 550.000.
So where 289.696 short.

Here comes the deal I had in mind,
create a kickstarter for $289.696. If we make that amount, you guys make a matchmaking system and make NS2 free to play.
The amount stated above is probably a lot more then you will get from now on by selling NS2.
If the kickstarter fails, where back to how it is now. If it succeeds where all happy, and not only NS2 will be more populair. So will UWE which means a lot of attention for subnautica.

I hope you guys think about it.

best Doeke

SantaClaws

Guys, guys.. If you raise $290,000 - I will make matchmaking for you... rofl xDDD

AurOn2

The reinforced program was to encourage Further Development by UWE, on NS2. Expansions etc. It failed, so they moved on, and handed ns2's development to the community. (HENCE CDT)
They have enough money (right?) To make and release Subnautica to supplement their income.


Anyway, the guys at faultline are working on (or have worked on - haven't got it yet to check) a Matchmaking system, it being on the same engine, it can be ported over to NS2.
A kickstarter isn't necessary.

SantaClaws

@AurOn2‌ I'd like for FLG to chime in here if possible, but from what I've heard, they're basically going to fuse the quickjoin feature with the ELO, and that's what they call "matchmaking". If that's true, it's not the matchmaking that we're talking about in the context of CS:GO etc.

It won't be a 5v5 or 6v6 organized match, you will just be thrown in a server and auto assigned to a team.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

2cough

It's hard enough to find a server with a slot open, let alone one of equal skill rating. I think there's simply not enough people at this point to have a very functional matchmaking system. Who knows how long you'd have to wait to be properly set in a 6v6, evenly skilled match..

Van_Tuz

I think that it's important to note that NS is different from CS due to its nature.

Yesterday i have played a match where one alien was significantly better than marines. But due to good map control and some sneak attacks to remote extractors marines were able to put up quite a fight. Even when said player took fade, we held him back with exos.

Personal "skill" here is only one half (or even 1/3) of the victory. The other part is teamwork and strategy that can't be effectively measured by ELO or predicted by matchmaker.

Nordic

Van_Tuz wrote: »

Personal "skill" here is only one half (or even 1/3) of the victory. The other part is teamwork and strategy that can't be effectively measured by ELO or predicted by matchmaker.

I do agree teamwork goes further than individual skill.

I would disagree on that teamwork and strategy can't be measured. In a team game, I would call ability to work in a team a part of skill. Since ns2's skill rating is mostly affected by win or lose, if you can work with the team you will generally win more.

I don't know the global statistics of how well ns2's skill ranking is working, but in my experience it works well. Most veterans have logged enough hours into hive for it to have a good idea of your skill vs theirs. When the servers I play on use force even teams it often works out great.
Read up on it if you like. http://moultano.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/a-skill-ranking-system-for-natural-selection-2/

Van_Tuz

Nordic wrote: »

I would disagree on that teamwork and strategy can't be measured. In a team game, I would call ability to work in a team a part of skill. Since ns2's skill rating is mostly affected by win or lose, if you can work with the team you will generally win more.

Yes, i've used slightly incorrect term. When i said "personal skill" i've meant "twitch" - your ability to aim, move etc. The other part is "tactics" - your ability to interact with the team and make good decisions. The "Skill"="twitch" + "tactics"

Judging only by the win/lose ratio is not an accurate measure. It's only statistical analysis. It's indirect measurement method. You can say "today is warmer than yesterday" but it says very little in the absolute scale. (I'm not saying that i know better method though)

Anyway, regardless of how accurate it is, i'd not forced matchmaking for public matches. We can vote for it and i think it's enough for now.