DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I think Pelargir explained it well. Where do you draw the line?
* Groups who are purely competitive like nsl?
* Groups who do competitive like taw?
* Groups who are just playing together like taw? (Im using ourselves as example as I know to few about other communities)
So yeh, you probably would want a group like nsl to do the frontpage work, giving the option to other communities to enter events.
Also you have the question if the community doing the frontpage work can handle the extra load. So in our example.. can nsl actually do this also and not be swamped with work?
Also when you do have communties, many are bound to eventually do events. (Maptesting among one of those)
It will take some work to figure out the best course of action. To promote all or pure competive, is probably the biggest what.
SamusDroidColoradoJoin Date: 2013-05-13Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited December 2014
If this were to happen I can pretty much guarantee that no one would manage content displayed in the game unless it were managed by UWE (which will not happen). It would be something like "Want to join a competitive team? Click here for more information!" linking to a thread on the forums that would be displayed in the game with information about the different leagues etc... made specifically to be displayed in game.
If this were to happen I can pretty much guarantee that no one would manage content displayed in the game unless it were managed by UWE (which will not happen). It would be something like "Want to join a competitive team? Click here for more information!" linking to a thread on the forums that would be displayed in the game with information about the different leagues etc... made specifically to be displayed in game.
If this were to happen I can pretty much guarantee that no one would manage content displayed in the game unless it were managed by UWE (which will not happen). It would be something like "Want to join a competitive team? Click here for more information!" linking to a thread on the forums that would be displayed in the game with information about the different leagues etc... made specifically to be displayed in game.
Why @SamusDroid ? Why can't someone manage the content and ask the CDT to change it up? Other than the fact that it's "too much work", I wonder if someone wanted to manage this content then why not facilitate that so they can add important news about the competitive scene?
NS2 is still UWE property. They would have to manage the quality, political and other aspects of it, because it is their product and it reflects on them professionally. The CDT don't have free will to do what they want. Everything they do will have to be approved by UWE at some point before UWE upload to steam as a new build. So logically, this means more work for UWE.
There have been many competitive scenes for many games over many years, and have you ever seen one where politics and arguments don't get sprawled across the front pages of the websites etc. Imagine how unprofessional that would look if something like that happened, and it is always a risk in communities.
NS2 is still UWE property. They would have to manage the quality, political and other aspects of it, because it is their product and it reflects on them professionally. The CDT don't have free will to do what they want. Everything they do will have to be approved by UWE at some point before UWE upload to steam as a new build. So logically, this means more work for UWE.
There have been many competitive scenes for many games over many years, and have you ever seen one where politics and arguments don't get sprawled across the front pages of the websites etc. Imagine how unprofessional that would look if something like that happened, and it is always a risk in communities.
If you're worried about the wrong message being sent across a possible and future competitive menu, I doubt that would happen with the proper quality checking of information.
A sample process would be:
1) Person creates content to spread news to community
2) Content is vetted by a group (i.e. CDT)
3) CDT send to UWE
4) Content approved
5) CDT posts
Those fears you have of people posting politics and arguments happen on places like forums because there isn't a quality control process here, only forum admins who have to react to issues. If you have the right processes in place, this idea can work well without fear of someone letting out others dirty laundry.
If it's more work for UWE, oh well? I don't see what's so difficult about them reading over a few lines of content. Doesn't sound like it would or should take hours to check and discuss, we'd be bringing it to them and they just sign off on it...we do the leg work.
Also, I don't really know how a build is made or pushed out but my thought is the CDT creates all the builds and patches from here on out and UWE just uploads them?
I understand your point @Soul_Rider, but there are solutions to your worries.
Points 3 & 4 illustrate my point, More work for UWE.
Yeah, but my question remains, does checking over content really put the kaibosh on this idea? Is that really going to be the straw that breaks the camels back? It's not like I'm suggesting you overhaul the engine, it's reading...
DecoyJoin Date: 2012-09-11Member: 159037Members, Super Administrators, Playtest Lead, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
edited December 2014
@UncleCrunch please knock off the derailing, thank you.
@Schwa I would be nervous about putting the PUG mumble's info just straight up on the front page. A lot of teams live out of that mumble and if rando's are just popping in and out through the channels, people are going to get irritated. Unlike the gather system through the NSL, there's no official listed rules or anything and there's nobody really to report someone to if there are issues / no way to do that if the admins aren't online or you don't know them.
It really would create more work for UWE. They would need to approve everything that got posted. They already approve everything that goes into each patch. I'm not saying there isn't a happy medium, but you shouldn't downplay the amount of time they already spend on NS2. They're in the process of developing two games - Subnautica and Future Perfect. They're quite busy. And you know, they have lives and families and hobbies outside of work. I'm sure there would be a way to make it function, but I pretty much agree with @Samusdroid on it. Additionally, if not the NSL twitter displayed somewhere, at least the important tweets being retweeted by @NS2 for front page visibility.
So what I'm getting from this thread is that NS2 competitive can never be successful if UWE can't and won't invest more time and effort into flourishing it. That's why people get so upset.
And by successful I mean community growth, exciting tournaments, sponsors... standards of esports other games get that NS2 is far from.
We've been approached by Schwa to market his tournament in our motd. While we are certainly willing, I've raised the question about it's effectiveness.
If we mention it with a link, that cannot be clicked, how many players do you think will check it out/participate? Way too few if any.
If we additionally put the link into the clickable shine MOTD button, how many will check it out/participate? Way too few if any. This makes me sad.
It points to a general problem with access to the compet scene; a problem that most it's members fail to see:
Schwa summed it up nicely here:
... it's about conveying the message about a competitive scene and communicating it to the public scene. Atm, what is lacking is an effective marketing technique to garner long-term players in NS2 and bringing the community together. Competitive players know about the pub scene, pubs may not necessarily know there is a competitive scene.
You don't approach this by doing the same mistakes all over again. A button in the main menu needs to be a one-click-direct-access to the competetive side of NS2. Do not bother with
3) "Get Involved" or "How to Join the Competitive Scene"
PelargirJoin Date: 2013-07-02Member: 185857Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, WC 2013 - Silver, Forum staff
@eightyef; Sorry but, what server are you running?
I do think that some kind of advertising through publics and famous servers is a nice and helpful thing, at least, as long as there's no new main menu.
So what I'm getting from this thread is that NS2 competitive can never be successful if UWE can't and won't invest more time and effort into flourishing it. That's why people get so upset.
And by successful I mean community growth, exciting tournaments, sponsors... standards of esports other games get that NS2 is far from.
That is not what people in this thread are saying at all. People are just saying that whatever form factor a competitive tab in the main menu would have to be basic and not create addition maintenance work for UWE, which is completely understandable. That doesn't mean not giving the competitive scene a helping hand, it just means that it has to be designed correctly.
Let's be realistic here - UWE is not Riot, nor were they ever striving to be. They may have designed NS2 with some competitive factors in mind, but 2 years after release and as an indie studio they have absolutely no obligation to foster competitive community growth, sponsor tournaments etc. We already have had a number of wonderful tournaments sponsored by them - and it's a miracle we even got those.
The standards of other e-sports you speak of - community growth, exciting tournaments, sponsors etc - all of these come with loads of money in the bank of the companies making and publishing these games. All of the big profile competitive e-sport game makers like Valve, Riot, 343 industries, Blizzard etc all have deep pockets to dig into for a heap of marketing, tournaments and other events to promote interest in their games. UWE does not, and won't ever unless they win the lottery sometime soon.
What UWE can and should be doing at this point in NS2's lifespan is realistic promotion and support of the competitive scene. By this I mean the following:
1. Provide an easy in game access point for public players to get directions to and a quick insight into the competitive scene.
2. Use their official social media handles to spread the word of major worldwide events and matches.
3. Use their connections to negotiate more sponsors for more events like the NS2WC should these events become viable.
4. Help Co-sponsor said tournaments like an NS2WC II if it's financially viable for them.
5. Using in-game micro transactions to attract more public players to the game who may in turn try out competitive play.
6. Using money made from micro-transactions to help sponsor competitive events.
Here is a rough example of what a realistic main menu competitive tab could be based on current trello concepts:
Opening Blog Paragraph: This should be a permanent short paragraph introduction into competitive stuff which doesn't change, but can be changed by UWE for major events like an NS2WC or similar event.
First Row: All the major league tabs which when clicked link to the front pages of the the respective leagues (made up the french one just as a placeholder). . On these front pages is where you can hit people with information on tournaments, match details, mumble details etc.
Second Row: The twitch and YouTube replay tabs could be discarded if deemed too hard to make or maintain, but there should be a link to the official UWE comp forums somewhere.
Something to this effect can and should be the first point of entry for people for competitive NS2. After this, the onus is on the community to build and foster local scenes.
A/ This game won't be saved by the competitive side. Let's face it. If it was the case, it would already be done.
B/ A Menu like this would need maintenance on a regular basis. What happens if AusNS2.org ends (for example) ? And many issue of the kind. I prefer CDT to focus on the more pressing matters.
Before talking about competition and so; talking about people who are able to compete. It needs:
1/ Bring new people (or get them back).
2/ Making them stay long enough to learn the games and progress. Pressing matters like performances, etc. They have to feel comfortable in there.
3/ Introduce the competitive side which doesn't play the same as public server (i hope everybody understands that).
4/ Making them stay longer.
NS2 barely hit the 1000 players at the same time for Christmas 2014. It's decreasing since then. We're gonna be back soon to 300-500 players.
Ok you can have a competitive side with 10 000 regular players. But we never got there. The best was 9500 players (Feb 2013). And that's the point. Marketing this game on "competitive only" side just did not interested people. Me first while i love the concept. Or maybe some people were impressed and stuff.
I would have worked better it there was a single player mode with a story to set up the back ground. People love stories. Those things and ideas submitted but not done for X or Y reason. I'm not judging here.
So... you wanna make it better ? Make bullet N°1 a reality first.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
@UncleCrunch I think ns2 has a background story. Maybe adding something like a story log into the menu for those who are interested (or make it a book with some chapters and unlock chapters for getting achievements that don't exist yet?)
Anyway for bringing in new players (or the old ones back)... that is not the largest problem we have. I mean we get eough guys with sales and old ones might return with some marketing on larger updates (like performance increased tremendously since CDT)
Making them stay is a bigger problem. One guy during winter sales, who played ns2 long time ago but quitted after like 20 hours again, started playing ns2 and this time he won't quit because he has found friends in ns2 this time. Maybe people will stay longer if they find friends to play with more regulary. As we know this game is awesome if you have regular people to play with. That's kinda the early stages of competitive ns2 I guess.
Introducing them to competitive play... yeah TAW does this quite actively actually
Making them stay longer happens automatically when they find a nice team to play with
Comments
* Groups who are purely competitive like nsl?
* Groups who do competitive like taw?
* Groups who are just playing together like taw? (Im using ourselves as example as I know to few about other communities)
So yeh, you probably would want a group like nsl to do the frontpage work, giving the option to other communities to enter events.
Also you have the question if the community doing the frontpage work can handle the extra load. So in our example.. can nsl actually do this also and not be swamped with work?
Also when you do have communties, many are bound to eventually do events. (Maptesting among one of those)
It will take some work to figure out the best course of action. To promote all or pure competive, is probably the biggest what.
...Nah forget about it.
In that case, maybe a version of this would do the trick?
Why @SamusDroid ? Why can't someone manage the content and ask the CDT to change it up? Other than the fact that it's "too much work", I wonder if someone wanted to manage this content then why not facilitate that so they can add important news about the competitive scene?
Btw Seb, nice link
NS2 is still UWE property. They would have to manage the quality, political and other aspects of it, because it is their product and it reflects on them professionally. The CDT don't have free will to do what they want. Everything they do will have to be approved by UWE at some point before UWE upload to steam as a new build. So logically, this means more work for UWE.
There have been many competitive scenes for many games over many years, and have you ever seen one where politics and arguments don't get sprawled across the front pages of the websites etc. Imagine how unprofessional that would look if something like that happened, and it is always a risk in communities.
If you're worried about the wrong message being sent across a possible and future competitive menu, I doubt that would happen with the proper quality checking of information.
A sample process would be:
1) Person creates content to spread news to community
2) Content is vetted by a group (i.e. CDT)
3) CDT send to UWE
4) Content approved
5) CDT posts
Those fears you have of people posting politics and arguments happen on places like forums because there isn't a quality control process here, only forum admins who have to react to issues. If you have the right processes in place, this idea can work well without fear of someone letting out others dirty laundry.
If it's more work for UWE, oh well? I don't see what's so difficult about them reading over a few lines of content. Doesn't sound like it would or should take hours to check and discuss, we'd be bringing it to them and they just sign off on it...we do the leg work.
Also, I don't really know how a build is made or pushed out but my thought is the CDT creates all the builds and patches from here on out and UWE just uploads them?
I understand your point @Soul_Rider, but there are solutions to your worries.
Yeah, but my question remains, does checking over content really put the kaibosh on this idea? Is that really going to be the straw that breaks the camels back? It's not like I'm suggesting you overhaul the engine, it's reading...
@Schwa I would be nervous about putting the PUG mumble's info just straight up on the front page. A lot of teams live out of that mumble and if rando's are just popping in and out through the channels, people are going to get irritated. Unlike the gather system through the NSL, there's no official listed rules or anything and there's nobody really to report someone to if there are issues / no way to do that if the admins aren't online or you don't know them.
It really would create more work for UWE. They would need to approve everything that got posted. They already approve everything that goes into each patch. I'm not saying there isn't a happy medium, but you shouldn't downplay the amount of time they already spend on NS2. They're in the process of developing two games - Subnautica and Future Perfect. They're quite busy. And you know, they have lives and families and hobbies outside of work. I'm sure there would be a way to make it function, but I pretty much agree with @Samusdroid on it. Additionally, if not the NSL twitter displayed somewhere, at least the important tweets being retweeted by @NS2 for front page visibility.
And by successful I mean community growth, exciting tournaments, sponsors... standards of esports other games get that NS2 is far from.
If we mention it with a link, that cannot be clicked, how many players do you think will check it out/participate? Way too few if any.
If we additionally put the link into the clickable shine MOTD button, how many will check it out/participate? Way too few if any.
This makes me sad.
It points to a general problem with access to the compet scene; a problem that most it's members fail to see:
Schwa summed it up nicely here:
You don't approach this by doing the same mistakes all over again. A button in the main menu needs to be a one-click-direct-access to the competetive side of NS2.
Do not bother with
Instead, give it to them, in a single click !
I do think that some kind of advertising through publics and famous servers is a nice and helpful thing, at least, as long as there's no new main menu.
That is not what people in this thread are saying at all. People are just saying that whatever form factor a competitive tab in the main menu would have to be basic and not create addition maintenance work for UWE, which is completely understandable. That doesn't mean not giving the competitive scene a helping hand, it just means that it has to be designed correctly.
Let's be realistic here - UWE is not Riot, nor were they ever striving to be. They may have designed NS2 with some competitive factors in mind, but 2 years after release and as an indie studio they have absolutely no obligation to foster competitive community growth, sponsor tournaments etc. We already have had a number of wonderful tournaments sponsored by them - and it's a miracle we even got those.
The standards of other e-sports you speak of - community growth, exciting tournaments, sponsors etc - all of these come with loads of money in the bank of the companies making and publishing these games. All of the big profile competitive e-sport game makers like Valve, Riot, 343 industries, Blizzard etc all have deep pockets to dig into for a heap of marketing, tournaments and other events to promote interest in their games. UWE does not, and won't ever unless they win the lottery sometime soon.
What UWE can and should be doing at this point in NS2's lifespan is realistic promotion and support of the competitive scene. By this I mean the following:
1. Provide an easy in game access point for public players to get directions to and a quick insight into the competitive scene.
2. Use their official social media handles to spread the word of major worldwide events and matches.
3. Use their connections to negotiate more sponsors for more events like the NS2WC should these events become viable.
4. Help Co-sponsor said tournaments like an NS2WC II if it's financially viable for them.
5. Using in-game micro transactions to attract more public players to the game who may in turn try out competitive play.
6. Using money made from micro-transactions to help sponsor competitive events.
Here is a rough example of what a realistic main menu competitive tab could be based on current trello concepts:
Opening Blog Paragraph: This should be a permanent short paragraph introduction into competitive stuff which doesn't change, but can be changed by UWE for major events like an NS2WC or similar event.
First Row: All the major league tabs which when clicked link to the front pages of the the respective leagues (made up the french one just as a placeholder). . On these front pages is where you can hit people with information on tournaments, match details, mumble details etc.
Second Row: The twitch and YouTube replay tabs could be discarded if deemed too hard to make or maintain, but there should be a link to the official UWE comp forums somewhere.
Something to this effect can and should be the first point of entry for people for competitive NS2. After this, the onus is on the community to build and foster local scenes.
A/ This game won't be saved by the competitive side. Let's face it. If it was the case, it would already be done.
B/ A Menu like this would need maintenance on a regular basis. What happens if AusNS2.org ends (for example) ? And many issue of the kind. I prefer CDT to focus on the more pressing matters.
Before talking about competition and so; talking about people who are able to compete. It needs:
1/ Bring new people (or get them back).
2/ Making them stay long enough to learn the games and progress. Pressing matters like performances, etc. They have to feel comfortable in there.
3/ Introduce the competitive side which doesn't play the same as public server (i hope everybody understands that).
4/ Making them stay longer.
NS2 barely hit the 1000 players at the same time for Christmas 2014. It's decreasing since then. We're gonna be back soon to 300-500 players.
Ok you can have a competitive side with 10 000 regular players. But we never got there. The best was 9500 players (Feb 2013). And that's the point. Marketing this game on "competitive only" side just did not interested people. Me first while i love the concept. Or maybe some people were impressed and stuff.
I would have worked better it there was a single player mode with a story to set up the back ground. People love stories. Those things and ideas submitted but not done for X or Y reason. I'm not judging here.
So... you wanna make it better ? Make bullet N°1 a reality first.
Anyway for bringing in new players (or the old ones back)... that is not the largest problem we have. I mean we get eough guys with sales and old ones might return with some marketing on larger updates (like performance increased tremendously since CDT)
Making them stay is a bigger problem. One guy during winter sales, who played ns2 long time ago but quitted after like 20 hours again, started playing ns2 and this time he won't quit because he has found friends in ns2 this time. Maybe people will stay longer if they find friends to play with more regulary. As we know this game is awesome if you have regular people to play with. That's kinda the early stages of competitive ns2 I guess.
Introducing them to competitive play... yeah TAW does this quite actively actually
Making them stay longer happens automatically when they find a nice team to play with