@Loki I made that Derelict video 10 months ago. It's not teasing enough!
Seriously though, does the CDT have any plans on relaunching NS2? You are doing so many great things for the game but the updates are not attracting new players. I think it would be a good idea to keep fixing and improving the game until you're feeling somewhat done, then release all new content (maps, skins, badges and whatever you have) in an update coupled with a sale.
It could use a name like NS2 Evolved or something to indicate that this is not the same NS2 people might have played at launch but a much improved game.
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
edited May 2015
Well, the idea is to fix all/most of the issues that turns people off from NS2 first, then try a relaunch. Stuff like bad performance, long loadtimes, hitreg, redplugging etc have been/are being fixed ... but the big issues are learning curve and good matches.
Learning curve could be handled if NS2 had good enough bots so you could actually learn something by playing against them. Need not be full games; you can learn strategy on public servers. What you need to learn is how to aim, move and dodge with the various lifeforms and weapons - in a (reasonably) fun way.
Then there is good matches. Matchmaking won't work using a server browsers; we need a global pool of players around, and we need some good algorithms to make games at least decent. Oh, and a global pool of players willing to command would help a lot - it's kinda boring to wait for 10+ minutes for a marine commander....
Also need to support the social aspect. You gotto be able to say "I liked to play with/against that guy, please consider that when it comes to creating matches". Or form groups so you can say "me and my friends want to play together, get us a game"... stuff like that.
It's quite a lot of work. Not an impossible amount ... its just that it has to be done in peoples uncompensated spare time. So it is slow going.
Doing the relunch before all the pieces are available is just a waste of time though... so the task is to keep the NS2 community alive until then.
Thanks matso, that was exactly what I wanted to hear. Perhaps the CDT should communicate the long term goal more? Players with weaker faith are getting worried.
Thanks matso, that was exactly what I wanted to hear. Perhaps the CDT should communicate the long term goal more? Players with weaker faith are getting worried.
As I said in my previous post just two days ago. Once we get 275 out, much more will be revealed and the openness of development will be more than it ever has been in the past. But until 275 comes out and we know for sure our build machine is working, it's not worth putting it all out there.
As I said in my previous post just two days ago. Once we get 275 out, much more will be revealed and the openness of development will be more than it ever has been in the past. But until 275 comes out and we know for sure our build machine is working, it's not worth putting it all out there.
That sounds great. Like I said, I'm happy just knowing that you have a long term goal of relaunching the game. I don't want this to be the end of this game.
I mean, I wasn't even a gamer before I tried it and I ended up running NS2 servers and buying a high-end gaming PC just for it so there must be something special about it.
I've thrown $70 USD at this game and don't have any of the fancy skins (aside from one copy of deluxe edition, another friend who has an inactive deluxe edition and one free copy of ns2). But if you guys set up a patreon to pay for more work, I'm sure there's many of us out there that would throw $5 of our dollars at it each month.
I'm weird like that, I'll hesitate to buy something outright for $5 but I'm less likely to hesitate to give away $5 if it means everybody benefits.
As I said in my previous post just two days ago. Once we get 275 out, much more will be revealed and the openness of development will be more than it ever has been in the past. But until 275 comes out and we know for sure our build machine is working, it's not worth putting it all out there.
Please; don't do that. Whatever it is; It would be better not to talk about that 'something'. People will imagine a lot of things which will be far beyond what it is in reality (i'm guessing). Then, when it's out, people will complain about how the build changes are far below their expectations. I mean, the past attempts have been ... not that successful.
- Learning against most bot AI is boring - I'd much rather be playing against real people but with a handicap/buff and some kind of (visual/auditory) feedback helping me learn how to play. Of course, each server could limit this.
- Matchmaking only works with large pools of willing players. There's nothing wrong with implementing it, though.
- Commanding is the place I think bot AI should be implemented. It doesn't even have to be that smart. Just get the game going and, once the players get to understanding mechanics, they will eventually jump in the hot seat.
- Waiting until everything is "perfect" has caused the death of 1000 mods. Big launches are cool, but a core userbase walking alongside is better.
I've thrown $70 USD at this game and don't have any of the fancy skins (aside from one copy of deluxe edition, another friend who has an inactive deluxe edition and one free copy of ns2). But if you guys set up a patreon to pay for more work, I'm sure there's many of us out there that would throw $5 of our dollars at it each month.
I'm weird like that, I'll hesitate to buy something outright for $5 but I'm less likely to hesitate to give away $5 if it means everybody benefits.
It's not that they need more money to get the work done, it's that they need more time. Most of them are holding down full-time jobs -- that is, jobs they can't just split a few hours off of because their patreon has a few extra dollars in it. hehehe... would need a few hundred thousand dollars in donations for even one person to consider quitting their job to work on this full-time.
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
As @BeigeAlert said, time is what the CDT needs the most. Pretty much the entire CDT has full-time commitments we cannot just shrug off on a whim. This is in fact my biggest problem with being in the CDT. I can't find the time, consistently, to devote to it that I'd like to. Trust me when I say, I'd much rather be doing CDT / Gamedev work full-time than my day job. However, that just isn't practical. Pile on the rest of the RL crap...and my CDT time dwindles...fast. Generally, I'm lucky if I can swing 8 hours a week for all things CDT. Which btw, is a very large part of why the new Build-Nexus-of-LEO-Awesomeness is taking so long for me to complete. Pile on other issues we've encountered (hardware failures, hosting issues, etc), and that all amounts to delays.
Sadly, this is just the type of situation that comes with an Unpaid Volunteer effort like the CDT. It just is. I can assure if the CDT had our way, we'd all be crunching on NS full-time. That's just not in the cards though. We're working on it folks! When we can, where we can.
Very well then, I'm sure that a couple members of the CDT would happily quit their day-jobs as long as that patreon hits about.... ohhh... let's say 10-15k per month. Assuming every currently active ns2 player decides to chip in (they wouldn't, not all ~400 of them), that's... $25-$37.50 per month... before taxes... and before whatever cut patreon gets...
And even then they'd still likely be taking a big hit on their livelihoods just for this game.
(Also I'm pretty sure there's some kind of legal mumbo jumbo as to why the CDT can't/won't accept monetary compensation... don't quote me on that though...)
we have several thousand active players, they just dont play every day. We'll be giving our user base a lot of incentive to play over the next few months once we're back working at full speed.
The relaunch sounds interesting but would you price the game? Would you give people who already had the base game a free code? Would it simply be a "pseudo-update"? Would you include combat standalone? DLC skins?
I've mentioned this before but honestly, most people who would care to buy the game likely already have it, the problem is player retention. Give people a BIG reason to try the game out again like the addition of combat standalone for free if this is possible, just a relaunch with better performance isn't going to do much because it isn't exciting despite how important as we all know, good performance is, is largely irrelevant when people are already playing CounterStrike and DOTA2.
Hell, what about including modes like Marine vs Marine or Siege as part of the base game? Give people a new environment to play around in, not just NS2 with quicker load times. I'm excited to see NS2 get a resurgence as I've barely played recently and I am looking forward to the future but I would like to see more. You guys put a lot of work in and I deeply respect that effort, lets see what you guys can do.
Everyone on the CDT and PT team wants this thing out desperately, probably moreso than you because we know all the goodies you'll get to play with, and hopefully the higher playercount that may occur as a result.
The moment a definitive release date can be given - it will be. We can't even estimate at this point due to the hurdles of the build machine. Once that is cleared, then we can.
Everyone on the CDT and PT team wants this thing out desperately, probably moreso than you because we know all the goodies you'll get to play with, and hopefully the higher playercount that may occur as a result.
Can someone give me the highlights of why this next build matters and why it will lead to a higher playercount? It seems like the CDT is hyped and I feel like I missed something.
Everyone on the CDT and PT team wants this thing out desperately, probably moreso than you because we know all the goodies you'll get to play with, and hopefully the higher playercount that may occur as a result.
Can someone give me the highlights of why this next build matters and why it will lead to a higher playercount? It seems like the CDT is hyped and I feel like I missed something.
No. So far i only see a standard advertising plan. Let's think about it for a moment.
Least probable
Big change (risky) in the game mechanics as it would cripple the already decaying (fast?) player base, whining in forums, etc. At least no intended big change. It would be 'unwise' to say the least.
Combat integration (someone suggested that) : They would have to solve the legal issues. Still... Combat isn't NS and NS isn't Combat. I mean by that ; Getting more players in Combat isn't a guarantee they will become NS2 players.
Probable / do-able
A map or two. While it's already difficult to get out of the Summit/Tram/Veil circle and avoid nasty maps like Eclipse (sorry); A new map won't make much of a difference. Any new stuff suffers from quick judgment. This won't be an exception. + Rookies won't notice.
Most probable
Cosmetics: Main menu, map bugs/little changes. If the match making system menu item could be removed as it doesn't get any click. It would make the menu 'lighter'.
No promotion of community work. No official stamp -> no map vote -> Summit/Tram/Veil.
Bugs fix (273) : Things like the re-downloading of any subscribed mod at start. It can be spotted in the server list ping column. All >200 = You are downloading something. I don't know why this even happens. But it would be great if it was fixed.
Some optimizations.
The usual stuff.
Problem is the time table
Summer holiday : Not a great moment to get new players.
September : Game releases preparing the mid-November releases. Big companies start to release games and advertise for the big ones. It usually hides everything else.
November : The big games are out. Everybody talk about that. -> "Natural what ?"
Christmas. "Natur... what ? Oh that game with the seasonal music that is killing my ears".
2016 NS3 announcement in 2026 (har har)
So... past experiences make me say "I'm afraid it won't be the case" (more players). It may look cynical but at least it's not a dream.
The CDT trello shows a lot of performacnce improvement cards, which i think may have the biggest impact on the player count
Absence of matchmaking and little variety have the biggest impact on player count.
I really don't understand why it is so hard to add more weapons for marines and make them available from the start or researched early. In Counter-strike you can choose from 8 pistols and several grenades on start, in LoL you have 100 of playable characters, in TF2 you have 9 roles with different weapons and only in NS2 you are forced to play marine with 1 rifle without choice.
I really don't understand why it is so hard to add more weapons for marines and make them available from the start or researched early. In Counter-strike you can choose from 8 pistols and several grenades on start, in LoL you have 100 of playable characters, in TF2 you have 9 roles with different weapons and only in NS2 you are forced to play marine with 1 rifle without choice.
Because all the games you listed are symmetric. Having a bazillion weapons with different stats and models isn't that much of a deal (given you'd actually have the resources to implement them all...) if your opposing team is choosing from the same palette of weapons as you are - it balances out (almost) automatically by people always going for the strongest combos - on *both* sides.
As the devs have stopped working on this game and kindly handed it over to the community in terms of future updates, has there ever been any thoughts/suggestions of ever making it Free2Play?
The game is slowly but surely losing its player base. It has had less than an average of 500 people playing it for the last 12 months and less than 300 in the last 3 months (steamcharts.com/app/4920). It would be a shame to see one of the greatest games ever made die away by the end of 2015.
F2P will get at least a few thousand playing it again. Most free to play games fail because of pay to win micro transaction systems. But the ones that are truly free2play tend to do really well, look at the player boost TF2 had, that game was almost dead and sold well under what was anticipated at release, it went F2P and was one of the most played games for years, it still averages 50K players at any one time.
There's also more chance people will stick around as NS2 is in a good place right now in terms of balance (both game and team/skill balance systems), content and optimisation, a lot of people that had performance issues a year ago probably don't realise they can play the game right now with 60-80 fps.
Not to mention that unknown worlds would probably generate more revenue from NS2 if they released it as F2P and just made re-skin DLC packs people could buy for a couple of £ than they ever would in future sales of the game. Plus it would serve as advertising on what they are capable of producing and would more than likely increase sales of Subnautica...
Comments
Seriously though, does the CDT have any plans on relaunching NS2? You are doing so many great things for the game but the updates are not attracting new players. I think it would be a good idea to keep fixing and improving the game until you're feeling somewhat done, then release all new content (maps, skins, badges and whatever you have) in an update coupled with a sale.
It could use a name like NS2 Evolved or something to indicate that this is not the same NS2 people might have played at launch but a much improved game.
Learning curve could be handled if NS2 had good enough bots so you could actually learn something by playing against them. Need not be full games; you can learn strategy on public servers. What you need to learn is how to aim, move and dodge with the various lifeforms and weapons - in a (reasonably) fun way.
Then there is good matches. Matchmaking won't work using a server browsers; we need a global pool of players around, and we need some good algorithms to make games at least decent. Oh, and a global pool of players willing to command would help a lot - it's kinda boring to wait for 10+ minutes for a marine commander....
Also need to support the social aspect. You gotto be able to say "I liked to play with/against that guy, please consider that when it comes to creating matches". Or form groups so you can say "me and my friends want to play together, get us a game"... stuff like that.
It's quite a lot of work. Not an impossible amount ... its just that it has to be done in peoples uncompensated spare time. So it is slow going.
Doing the relunch before all the pieces are available is just a waste of time though... so the task is to keep the NS2 community alive until then.
Keep the faith.
As I said in my previous post just two days ago. Once we get 275 out, much more will be revealed and the openness of development will be more than it ever has been in the past. But until 275 comes out and we know for sure our build machine is working, it's not worth putting it all out there.
That sounds great. Like I said, I'm happy just knowing that you have a long term goal of relaunching the game. I don't want this to be the end of this game.
I mean, I wasn't even a gamer before I tried it and I ended up running NS2 servers and buying a high-end gaming PC just for it so there must be something special about it.
I've thrown $70 USD at this game and don't have any of the fancy skins (aside from one copy of deluxe edition, another friend who has an inactive deluxe edition and one free copy of ns2). But if you guys set up a patreon to pay for more work, I'm sure there's many of us out there that would throw $5 of our dollars at it each month.
I'm weird like that, I'll hesitate to buy something outright for $5 but I'm less likely to hesitate to give away $5 if it means everybody benefits.
Please; don't do that. Whatever it is; It would be better not to talk about that 'something'. People will imagine a lot of things which will be far beyond what it is in reality (i'm guessing). Then, when it's out, people will complain about how the build changes are far below their expectations. I mean, the past attempts have been ... not that successful.
- Matchmaking only works with large pools of willing players. There's nothing wrong with implementing it, though.
- Commanding is the place I think bot AI should be implemented. It doesn't even have to be that smart. Just get the game going and, once the players get to understanding mechanics, they will eventually jump in the hot seat.
- Waiting until everything is "perfect" has caused the death of 1000 mods. Big launches are cool, but a core userbase walking alongside is better.
It's not that they need more money to get the work done, it's that they need more time. Most of them are holding down full-time jobs -- that is, jobs they can't just split a few hours off of because their patreon has a few extra dollars in it. hehehe... would need a few hundred thousand dollars in donations for even one person to consider quitting their job to work on this full-time.
Sadly, this is just the type of situation that comes with an Unpaid Volunteer effort like the CDT. It just is. I can assure if the CDT had our way, we'd all be crunching on NS full-time. That's just not in the cards though. We're working on it folks! When we can, where we can.
Srsly tho, thanks for all your work.
Very well then, I'm sure that a couple members of the CDT would happily quit their day-jobs as long as that patreon hits about.... ohhh... let's say 10-15k per month. Assuming every currently active ns2 player decides to chip in (they wouldn't, not all ~400 of them), that's... $25-$37.50 per month... before taxes... and before whatever cut patreon gets...
And even then they'd still likely be taking a big hit on their livelihoods just for this game.
(Also I'm pretty sure there's some kind of legal mumbo jumbo as to why the CDT can't/won't accept monetary compensation... don't quote me on that though...)
Just how much awesomeness is coming our way?
free vet badges?
pointy gorge skins for everyone?
SN steam keys for all our dedicated NS2 players? (:
a room full of bees?
I've mentioned this before but honestly, most people who would care to buy the game likely already have it, the problem is player retention. Give people a BIG reason to try the game out again like the addition of combat standalone for free if this is possible, just a relaunch with better performance isn't going to do much because it isn't exciting despite how important as we all know, good performance is, is largely irrelevant when people are already playing CounterStrike and DOTA2.
Hell, what about including modes like Marine vs Marine or Siege as part of the base game? Give people a new environment to play around in, not just NS2 with quicker load times. I'm excited to see NS2 get a resurgence as I've barely played recently and I am looking forward to the future but I would like to see more. You guys put a lot of work in and I deeply respect that effort, lets see what you guys can do.
Understand that the decaying pace of the player base is a ticking clock. So the "when it's done" answer...
Any target ? At least.
Everyone on the CDT and PT team wants this thing out desperately, probably moreso than you because we know all the goodies you'll get to play with, and hopefully the higher playercount that may occur as a result.
The moment a definitive release date can be given - it will be. We can't even estimate at this point due to the hurdles of the build machine. Once that is cleared, then we can.
Can someone give me the highlights of why this next build matters and why it will lead to a higher playercount? It seems like the CDT is hyped and I feel like I missed something.
No. So far i only see a standard advertising plan. Let's think about it for a moment.
Least probable
Probable / do-able
Most probable
The usual stuff.
Problem is the time table
So... past experiences make me say "I'm afraid it won't be the case" (more players). It may look cynical but at least it's not a dream.
Or the almighty...
The CDT trello shows a lot of performacnce improvement cards, which i think may have the biggest impact on the player count
Absence of matchmaking and little variety have the biggest impact on player count.
I really don't understand why it is so hard to add more weapons for marines and make them available from the start or researched early. In Counter-strike you can choose from 8 pistols and several grenades on start, in LoL you have 100 of playable characters, in TF2 you have 9 roles with different weapons and only in NS2 you are forced to play marine with 1 rifle without choice.
Because all the games you listed are symmetric. Having a bazillion weapons with different stats and models isn't that much of a deal (given you'd actually have the resources to implement them all...) if your opposing team is choosing from the same palette of weapons as you are - it balances out (almost) automatically by people always going for the strongest combos - on *both* sides.
The game is slowly but surely losing its player base. It has had less than an average of 500 people playing it for the last 12 months and less than 300 in the last 3 months (steamcharts.com/app/4920). It would be a shame to see one of the greatest games ever made die away by the end of 2015.
F2P will get at least a few thousand playing it again. Most free to play games fail because of pay to win micro transaction systems. But the ones that are truly free2play tend to do really well, look at the player boost TF2 had, that game was almost dead and sold well under what was anticipated at release, it went F2P and was one of the most played games for years, it still averages 50K players at any one time.
There's also more chance people will stick around as NS2 is in a good place right now in terms of balance (both game and team/skill balance systems), content and optimisation, a lot of people that had performance issues a year ago probably don't realise they can play the game right now with 60-80 fps.
Not to mention that unknown worlds would probably generate more revenue from NS2 if they released it as F2P and just made re-skin DLC packs people could buy for a couple of £ than they ever would in future sales of the game. Plus it would serve as advertising on what they are capable of producing and would more than likely increase sales of Subnautica...