Well you have to ask yourself Wooza, what is really the meaning of this? I'm sorry to hear about the servers, but I am pretty sure if ns2large is good enough it will survive anyway. As a former regular i know that lately the flow of green players has increased on your servers, but as all ns2 servers they do not stay. Is a high player count worth it at any cost? I guess people have different opinion about this, no more no less. Be happy for the good times and wait a little before jumping to conclusions. We all know you put a lot of effort into the servers. Peace!
@wooza Tho some parts of your post are coming out of - quite understandable - frustration, I do support you as your servers are playing a significant role among the NS2 players and wannabee players.
When I go on your servers, I don't really care for performances, I don't really care about getting hit beyond a corner, I don't really care about lost bullets or bites, I know sometimes I'll get kicked with a unmatching file, I am aware of these inconvenients.
I go there because single individual FPS skills are less important and the real challenge is to coordinate decisive groups.
I hope that UWE can technically give us supported >24 servers, that's the way to favor the RTS side for those who and when they like it
I wish that UWE will show your servers in the default view in the meantime
I materialized my support to you by clicking the Donate button
You are hidding us from the server browser and trying to make people believe that new players got lost in modded servers, how silly is that. Can you provide any proof about rookies leaving the game so quick because they land on a Faded, Last Stand or Siege server?
This argument is flawed since those are a lot less prominent - there's only a handful, they are rarely populated, and if they are, they don't appear at the top of the server browser.
Second: You hide Favorite Servers from the default view in the server browser (When they run another game mode). People believe that my servers are offline since the day you introduce. It is a drastic design error you have done and again, by purpose to shut down or community, slowly but precisely.
"We're not shutting down Woozas". Of course not. This would be too obvious. You do it slowly so we can't do anything against.
If people wanted to play ns2large nothing is stopping them. If this change really killed all traffic to woozas then that tells me that the majority of people playing there are NOT there for the ns2large gameplay.. They are there because your ns2large server had open slots and the other lower pop servers didn't.
Maybe people found out now that the server also had a lot of people you randomly joined a server. They did not cared about size, community or mod, they were looking for a slot. Now you keep hiding the server for those people.
If it contine like this we will shut down the server and bring everyone to write a negative Steam Review and tell the world what had been going on. The only way UWE can't edit or delete our posts.
Oh come on, really? The devs are out to get you? I've always sympathized with you to a certain point but this is fucking ridiculous.
I'm really tempted to post an illuminati triangle and the x-files theme. Jesus.
People need to stop the over the top dramatisations after the patch has only been released for 1 day, I would give it a minimum of 1 week or 168 hours collating the data before saying this patch has destroyed my community and what not, collect the facts and present them first, not enough time has passed.
THE ONLY design error was the hackable server binaries. This shouldn't even have been possible in the first place and when the possibilty was discovered, UWE should have intervened and fixed this immediately!
>24 slots should never have established. You knew that UWE never supported >24 slots, and that for good reasons (performance / balance), but now that they actually somewhat (not really, they're still being merciful) compliance with their own policy, which you knew of, you want to blackmail them?
Exactly!!!
He hacks the game to create a broken horribly performing server, thus siphoning off players from servers running the game the way it was designed and balanced, building this community of high pop herp derp casual gameplay (Something ns2 has never been about) then when UWE tries to fix it without removing his server (his regulars are able to easily find it) he cries foul and threatens blackmail...
Making a bunch of misleading steam reviews to hurt the developers shows what kind of person wooza really is imo.. I bet none of those reviews would mention that his server was HACKED to have playercounts that are OVER TWICE the number the developers designed and balanced the game around.. Nor would they mention how game breaking the performance it's on his server.
THE ONLY design error was the hackable server binaries. This shouldn't even have been possible in the first place and when the possibilty was discovered, UWE should have intervened and fixed this immediately!
100% true. BUT when you make a mistake, you either fix it right away or you adapt and try to make things run better from this mistake. Sometimes mistakes allow to move forward. You do not wait 2 years to slowly fix it. The community has adapted to those servers now since UWE allowed them to get a full and big community. Today is too late to do anything about it so maybe it should be about time for the devs to accommodate with what represents a notable part of this tiny community.
@MoFo1 so you're saying what Wooza did is outlaw. UWE never prevented it for about 2 years although they knew the issue. A whole community emerged and got used to it. People have fun on these servers. UWE still doing nothing about it. Larger servers community got bigger, reflects now what NS2 is, a community that adapts to any evolution. UWE slowly adds changes to make sure people are moving to <24 slot servers. Wooza's community complaining because UWE has done nothing to prevent their server to grow and now a whole community gathers around those servers, UWE act against larger servers which is Wooza's community basically. Did I sum up it well?
Technically, the use of outlaw is dumb, indeed since UWE never forbid to do it, people assumed it wasn't illegal and proved it since large servers have been here for a while without official counter measure from the devs.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2016
If a whole server-community cant find the button to deselect the filter, maybe the community isnt that large as some thinking?
Maybe the "community" are more new players who just join a server with a slot free?
And cause the nature of huge servers, there is nearly always a slot free.
So the 1st experience for new players should be a clusterfuck game with 30% and more fps drops?
CS:Go have these huge servers also, but you have to search them via server browser and they are unranked.
Thats the way to go for NS2 too.
If people like this clusterfuck, well, they still can play it.
I dont see a problem here.
While im sure we see a revert of the change soon, im glad the new Dev-Team had finally the courage todo this long needed change.
@MoFo1 so you're saying what Wooza did is outlaw. UWE never prevented it for about 2 years although they knew the issue. A whole community emerged and got used to it. People have fun on these servers. UWE still doing nothing about it. Larger servers community got bigger, reflects now what NS2 is, a community that adapts to any evolution. UWE slowly adds changes to make sure people are moving to <24 slot servers. Wooza's community complaining because UWE has done nothing to prevent their server to grow and now a whole community gathers around those servers, UWE act against larger servers which is Wooza's community basically. Did I sum up it well?
Not quite... UWE ****ed up big time not preventing it for sure, and Wooza hacking the binaries in order to run his server was definitely "outlaw" to use your terminology... However NS2large does NOT reflect what NS2 is... Not even remotely close. Moreover Wooza's community is complaining simply because new and casual players aren't seeing their servers by default anymore. Hence now the only people playing on Wooza's and other NS2large servers are those who are actually seeking the NS2large environment... (which judging from the small but very vocal outcry isn't as many people as they want us to believe)
Furthermore threatening to get his community to write a bunch of negative reviews (which we all know would be BS and wouldn't tell the true story) shows his "outlaw" character and how he doesn't give a flying rats *** about the NS2 community outside of his own server (which might even be a source of income for him through donations/selling reserve slots)
He hacks the game to create a broken horribly performing server, thus siphoning off players from servers running the game the way it was designed and balanced, building this community of high pop herp derp casual gameplay(Something ns2 has never been about)
It doesn't matter if new players leave because they joined a modded server. The metrics don't affect the fact that NS2, the game being advertised on the steam store, and the game that some rookie was interested enough in to buy, has an "intended" version and then everything else.
This change sounds like it was all about making it stupid simple for a player to start the game, and then join a server running NS2 more or less as it was intended to be played. I assume that it is quite effective at this.
An unfortunate side-effect to this is undercutting a server type with a large following. Players on that server type might very well believe that NS2Large isn't any different game-wise than NS2, and thus that there should be no distinction between the two. Well, think of this as the devs telling you you're wrong.
If anyone wants to go ahead and argue that NS2Large is in fact how NS2 was meant to be played, how it was marketed, how it was developed. Just go ahead and look at how many hoops wooza has had to jump through to get the Large to work, it just isn't.
Community building and management has always been the biggest thing for server ops to maintain successful servers, so it definitely sucks that this change undercut a significant portion of traffic to some of the popular servers.
The rookie argument is flawless since there is more rookies on smaller servers than on Wooza. Wooza is not the first experience for rookies, it's a lie.
This update effectively killed wooza servers for now, it's a fact. In one week we'll be able to say if it's definitive or not.
And finally from a more personnal standpoint wanting the dead of wooza in an already dead game is kinda silly. Just let the people enjoy their servers. If they don't like wooza they will leave but you don't have to hide it in a already bugged server browser. What are you trying to accomplish ? Your next free weekend is going to be huge because wooza server is not visible from the start anymore ?
If as a developper you think wooza server should removed then you are coming way too late to the party : game is 3.5 years old, has 290 average players AND you stop any huge dev project a long time ago.
Community building and management has always been the biggest thing for server ops to maintain successful servers, so it definitely sucks that this change undercut a significant portion of traffic to some of the popular servers.
Actually it doesn't suck, it's a much needed change that may even help breathe some life back into NS2. I mean seriously think about it.
Now that "significant portion of traffic" is going to be joining other popular servers. Servers that will have lower player counts, which will lead to more servers being populated throughout the day, which in turn makes the game look more "alive" and provides more servers that could potentially have open slots. (less waiting yay) One NS2large server can potentially have enough players to populate THREE regular servers..
I think no matter how you look at it this is a very good thing for NS2. And as it has been said many times already, those wanting to play NS2 on large servers can still EASILY find them.
Community building and management has always been the biggest thing for server ops to maintain successful servers, so it definitely sucks that this change undercut a significant portion of traffic to some of the popular servers.
Actually it doesn't suck, it's a much needed change that may even help breathe some life back into NS2. I mean seriously think about it.
Now that "significant portion of traffic" is going to be joining other popular servers. Servers that will have lower player counts, which will lead to more servers being populated throughout the day, which in turn makes the game look more "alive" and provides more servers that could potentially have open slots. (less waiting yay) One NS2large server can potentially have enough players to populate THREE regular servers..
I think no matter how you look at it this is a very good thing for NS2. And as it has been said many times already, those wanting to play NS2 on large servers can still EASILY find them.
Correction of my statement: It sucks for the server ops in question.
Without wanting to take either side - I'm actually both curious and concerned about where those players are heading now. If in 2-3 weeks we see that the player base has stayed the same, but more smaller servers are populated... then the PDT accomplished the shift they desired and one can measure if smaller servers really make the game so much more enjoyable that people keep on playing it for a longer time (and thus increase player retention). But if the playerbase drops by 1/4 then I can hope that - not for my own interest, but in respect for those who enjoy playing on large servers - that whoever made the courageous decision to change the default filter will also have the courage to revert it.
First I want to ask again why clicking "all servers" doesn't provide a list of all the servers.
Second I want to ask, if Wooza's servers can be found by clicking the "NS2Large" tab (which disappeared for some reason), or if people who play there regularly have it as a favourite, why would it's restriction from the "all server" list actually affect player numbers?
I say this because with NS2 being the corpse of a game that it is, I would assume that most of the Wooza playerbase are now regulars. If they were there for the fun of playing on a large server, or for the fun of playing with others of the Wooza community, then those people would find a way to join the server somehow.
HOWEVER, if most of the players only ended up joining it because they saw a large player count with spaces available, then they really weren't much of a community. They were basically looking for any old team death match game, but with jetpacks and space rhinos, and joined the server for that reason. If they no longer play there because they can't see the server, then they weren't really a "community" at all, and they weren't really joining Wooza's in order to play on a 24v24 server. Their presence and filling of the server was just chance.
All that being said, I think engineering a system whereby the most popular community server is made invisible is rather manipulative. It's fine if you want it off the main "NS2" tab, but it should appear under the "all" tab -- unless you are trying to change the definition of the word "all". Otherwise, just come out and clearly put a ban on any playercount above 12 or 18 players.
Better to just have a warning on joining any server above 6v6, saying "this game doesn't support large playercounts, your experience may not be ideal, please try a smaller server if you have issues" would have been better than the intrigue we have instead.
I hope this is resolved soon. But please, stop the political deviousness and just say what we all know you are thinking: "we want to ban large player counts because it makes our game look bad". (Although the game does have basic issues with hit registry and performance which are due to bad game design/coding and nothing to do with player counts.)
The server is still there, so why is this 1/4 not playing on it?
I can tell you:
Cause the real wooza community size is way lower than 1/4 of the playerbase.
Im sure 80% of the players there are not regular wooza player.
Or this community is to dumb to find his server, i dont know.
If anyone wants to go ahead and argue that NS2Large is in fact how NS2 was meant to be played, how it was marketed, how it was developed. Just go ahead and look at how many hoops wooza has had to jump through to get the Large to work, it just isn't.
It wasn't meant to play that way but it was marketed that way. I more often got from rookies the "where is the ennemy, i'm just running and dying from behind" than "i thought it was a hide and kill game, too much shit is hapenning". Rookies always loved last stands.
Anyone who played on wooza a few times knows it's 80% regulars. They all got their random community badge, their stupid e-celebrity and you find them only on this server.
Multiple reason can explain that the server is empty, they thought the server was closed (like wooza said) or maybe the lack of the last 20% made them leave since it wasn't the large ns2 experience anymore. We will see in 1 week, but if you lost 70 players (like yesterday compared to last week) you won't get them back as easily.
But i'm sure you will be glad to hear that these filthy players don't play the game anymore and you can play safe now.
Edit : wooza servers are currently closed. As you said dePara maintaining empty servers is expensive
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
Well NS2 is not balanced for thos high amount of players on one server. But maybe ns2large can balance this out. (similar like compmod does for 6v6 games) Also I would love some extra maps built for those number (ns2l_something maybe?) to have a more optimised experience for those high numbers (I have the feeling that small maps like summit feel horribily full with 42 people)
ns2_dark by @deathshroud might be a beginning of that?
Anyway if those things are done I think experience for ns2large will improve. I think then there is no need to be afraid of new players having a bad experience with that.
If anyone wants to go ahead and argue that NS2Large is in fact how NS2 was meant to be played, how it was marketed, how it was developed. Just go ahead and look at how many hoops wooza has had to jump through to get the Large to work, it just isn't.
It wasn't meant to play that way but it was marketed that way. I more often got from rookies the "where is the ennemy, i'm just running and dying from behind" than "i thought it was a hide and kill game, too much **** is hapenning". Rookies always loved last stands.
Watching those videos brought back a lot of memories. Haha!
The game turned out to be nowhere near as fun as those ads suggested.
Big maps where already played on the server. And summit wasn't very popular.
ns2_uplift, ns2_orbital, ns2_nothing, ns2_outerrimark, ns2_yana and of course ns2_Veil_FIVE. (i forgot the biggest of all, ns2_spaceship)
As for the balance I might be wrong but i think it was a deliberate choice to not change anything (like other large server tried too and failed at it). People knew it wasn't balance, but you can argue that stacks had also a lesser impact.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
ok but those maps were not specifically marked as ns2l maps. So the feedback I personally gave to those maps were concerned about 6v6 balance. And if a map tries to be an ns2 map I will always give balance feedback which is based on 6v6.
You win little to no point in wooza. In the meantime, i merced in 6v6 compmod 3 maps, went from 3200 to 3700 in a day and then proceed to lose them very slowly.
I agree that it shouldn't be wightlisted, but dev didn't approach the problem (if there is one ?) by this angle.
Actually if they wanted to change the order in the server browser a smarter thing (but maybe more complex) would have been to sort them by decrease number or free slot (while not taking in account reserved slot). That way we could have seen all the almost full server without having to sort them by number of players.
Which reinforces my belief that most ns2large regulars are simply those people who don't care about balance, ping, performance, or anything else besides joining a game instantly for some brainless casual fragging.
1. This will not affect the number of players on woozas because people will find them anyway, if that is not possible then i don't know know how they manage to dress in the morning.
You got to stop desiping fellow NS2 players, even tho they don't see it your way.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2016
A communty has a webpage normally and they are steamfriends.
So even if the server is not shown with standardsettings in the browser should not be a problem within a community cause the information channels from above.
Something like:
"Oh my god, wooza is down"
Answer via steam:
"Its up, just click that" or "Im on the server follow me"
After a few days all in this community should know how to join.
Problem solved.
Not speaking for the PDT, but I suppose bad player retention is easier to take when you know its your failure rather than others possibly sabotaging it. Its a small sample size but the bulk of the new players in the technical support forum plays on Wooza.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2016
@dePARA, but why cause a problem in the first place if there is no issue... Heck that newbie protection? That could've be handled much better with the use of a simple popup. And eventually making a proper server browser with proper information about a server in extra tabs. Like most other games do, instead of the excel sheet we have now as a serverlist
Besides, like I said... ALL gameplay mods are now invisible at first, where they were already quite invisible in the first place
The server is still there, so why is this 1/4 not playing on it?
I can tell you:
Cause the real wooza community size is way lower than 1/4 of the playerbase.
Im sure 80% of the players there are not regular wooza player.
Or this community is to dumb to find his server, i dont know.
Maybe they don't want to hang around douchebags? Nice squad 5 badge btw. Way to promote NS2 to other players!
Comments
When I go on your servers, I don't really care for performances, I don't really care about getting hit beyond a corner, I don't really care about lost bullets or bites, I know sometimes I'll get kicked with a unmatching file, I am aware of these inconvenients.
I go there because single individual FPS skills are less important and the real challenge is to coordinate decisive groups.
This argument is flawed since those are a lot less prominent - there's only a handful, they are rarely populated, and if they are, they don't appear at the top of the server browser.
Oh come on, really? The devs are out to get you? I've always sympathized with you to a certain point but this is fucking ridiculous.
I'm really tempted to post an illuminati triangle and the x-files theme. Jesus.
Exactly!!!
He hacks the game to create a broken horribly performing server, thus siphoning off players from servers running the game the way it was designed and balanced, building this community of high pop herp derp casual gameplay (Something ns2 has never been about) then when UWE tries to fix it without removing his server (his regulars are able to easily find it) he cries foul and threatens blackmail...
Making a bunch of misleading steam reviews to hurt the developers shows what kind of person wooza really is imo.. I bet none of those reviews would mention that his server was HACKED to have playercounts that are OVER TWICE the number the developers designed and balanced the game around.. Nor would they mention how game breaking the performance it's on his server.
The server performance just reflects the work of UWE.
While the server was able to run with default ratings (before b279), we are now forced to play with a move- and tickrate of 21.
There is a lot of other community servers out there that performing as worse as Wooza's with 24 or less slots.
100% true. BUT when you make a mistake, you either fix it right away or you adapt and try to make things run better from this mistake. Sometimes mistakes allow to move forward. You do not wait 2 years to slowly fix it. The community has adapted to those servers now since UWE allowed them to get a full and big community. Today is too late to do anything about it so maybe it should be about time for the devs to accommodate with what represents a notable part of this tiny community.
@MoFo1 so you're saying what Wooza did is outlaw. UWE never prevented it for about 2 years although they knew the issue. A whole community emerged and got used to it. People have fun on these servers. UWE still doing nothing about it. Larger servers community got bigger, reflects now what NS2 is, a community that adapts to any evolution. UWE slowly adds changes to make sure people are moving to <24 slot servers. Wooza's community complaining because UWE has done nothing to prevent their server to grow and now a whole community gathers around those servers, UWE act against larger servers which is Wooza's community basically. Did I sum up it well?
Technically, the use of outlaw is dumb, indeed since UWE never forbid to do it, people assumed it wasn't illegal and proved it since large servers have been here for a while without official counter measure from the devs.
Maybe the "community" are more new players who just join a server with a slot free?
And cause the nature of huge servers, there is nearly always a slot free.
So the 1st experience for new players should be a clusterfuck game with 30% and more fps drops?
CS:Go have these huge servers also, but you have to search them via server browser and they are unranked.
Thats the way to go for NS2 too.
If people like this clusterfuck, well, they still can play it.
I dont see a problem here.
While im sure we see a revert of the change soon, im glad the new Dev-Team had finally the courage todo this long needed change.
Not quite... UWE ****ed up big time not preventing it for sure, and Wooza hacking the binaries in order to run his server was definitely "outlaw" to use your terminology... However NS2large does NOT reflect what NS2 is... Not even remotely close. Moreover Wooza's community is complaining simply because new and casual players aren't seeing their servers by default anymore. Hence now the only people playing on Wooza's and other NS2large servers are those who are actually seeking the NS2large environment... (which judging from the small but very vocal outcry isn't as many people as they want us to believe)
Furthermore threatening to get his community to write a bunch of negative reviews (which we all know would be BS and wouldn't tell the true story) shows his "outlaw" character and how he doesn't give a flying rats *** about the NS2 community outside of his own server (which might even be a source of income for him through donations/selling reserve slots)
All I need to know.
This change sounds like it was all about making it stupid simple for a player to start the game, and then join a server running NS2 more or less as it was intended to be played. I assume that it is quite effective at this.
An unfortunate side-effect to this is undercutting a server type with a large following. Players on that server type might very well believe that NS2Large isn't any different game-wise than NS2, and thus that there should be no distinction between the two. Well, think of this as the devs telling you you're wrong.
If anyone wants to go ahead and argue that NS2Large is in fact how NS2 was meant to be played, how it was marketed, how it was developed. Just go ahead and look at how many hoops wooza has had to jump through to get the Large to work, it just isn't.
Community building and management has always been the biggest thing for server ops to maintain successful servers, so it definitely sucks that this change undercut a significant portion of traffic to some of the popular servers.
This update effectively killed wooza servers for now, it's a fact. In one week we'll be able to say if it's definitive or not.
And finally from a more personnal standpoint wanting the dead of wooza in an already dead game is kinda silly. Just let the people enjoy their servers. If they don't like wooza they will leave but you don't have to hide it in a already bugged server browser. What are you trying to accomplish ? Your next free weekend is going to be huge because wooza server is not visible from the start anymore ?
If as a developper you think wooza server should removed then you are coming way too late to the party : game is 3.5 years old, has 290 average players AND you stop any huge dev project a long time ago.
-> steamcharts.com/app/4920 <-
Wooza was at least 1/4 of your player base.
Actually it doesn't suck, it's a much needed change that may even help breathe some life back into NS2. I mean seriously think about it.
Now that "significant portion of traffic" is going to be joining other popular servers. Servers that will have lower player counts, which will lead to more servers being populated throughout the day, which in turn makes the game look more "alive" and provides more servers that could potentially have open slots. (less waiting yay) One NS2large server can potentially have enough players to populate THREE regular servers..
I think no matter how you look at it this is a very good thing for NS2. And as it has been said many times already, those wanting to play NS2 on large servers can still EASILY find them.
And if that 1/4th of the player base actually wants to play on Wooza's server, then guess what... They still can!! That's the best part!
Correction of my statement: It sucks for the server ops in question.
Without wanting to take either side - I'm actually both curious and concerned about where those players are heading now. If in 2-3 weeks we see that the player base has stayed the same, but more smaller servers are populated... then the PDT accomplished the shift they desired and one can measure if smaller servers really make the game so much more enjoyable that people keep on playing it for a longer time (and thus increase player retention). But if the playerbase drops by 1/4 then I can hope that - not for my own interest, but in respect for those who enjoy playing on large servers - that whoever made the courageous decision to change the default filter will also have the courage to revert it.
Second I want to ask, if Wooza's servers can be found by clicking the "NS2Large" tab (which disappeared for some reason), or if people who play there regularly have it as a favourite, why would it's restriction from the "all server" list actually affect player numbers?
I say this because with NS2 being the corpse of a game that it is, I would assume that most of the Wooza playerbase are now regulars. If they were there for the fun of playing on a large server, or for the fun of playing with others of the Wooza community, then those people would find a way to join the server somehow.
HOWEVER, if most of the players only ended up joining it because they saw a large player count with spaces available, then they really weren't much of a community. They were basically looking for any old team death match game, but with jetpacks and space rhinos, and joined the server for that reason. If they no longer play there because they can't see the server, then they weren't really a "community" at all, and they weren't really joining Wooza's in order to play on a 24v24 server. Their presence and filling of the server was just chance.
All that being said, I think engineering a system whereby the most popular community server is made invisible is rather manipulative. It's fine if you want it off the main "NS2" tab, but it should appear under the "all" tab -- unless you are trying to change the definition of the word "all". Otherwise, just come out and clearly put a ban on any playercount above 12 or 18 players.
Better to just have a warning on joining any server above 6v6, saying "this game doesn't support large playercounts, your experience may not be ideal, please try a smaller server if you have issues" would have been better than the intrigue we have instead.
I hope this is resolved soon. But please, stop the political deviousness and just say what we all know you are thinking: "we want to ban large player counts because it makes our game look bad". (Although the game does have basic issues with hit registry and performance which are due to bad game design/coding and nothing to do with player counts.)
The server is still there, so why is this 1/4 not playing on it?
I can tell you:
Cause the real wooza community size is way lower than 1/4 of the playerbase.
Im sure 80% of the players there are not regular wooza player.
Or this community is to dumb to find his server, i dont know.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cgVDGefyNtI
Marines + Exo against infinite aliens
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hp-4iaKXP68
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aZzW23gAtyY
4 marines push against 3 lerks, GL spam, 4 marines pushing a harvester with 4 aliens in it.
It wasn't meant to play that way but it was marketed that way. I more often got from rookies the "where is the ennemy, i'm just running and dying from behind" than "i thought it was a hide and kill game, too much shit is hapenning". Rookies always loved last stands.
Multiple reason can explain that the server is empty, they thought the server was closed (like wooza said) or maybe the lack of the last 20% made them leave since it wasn't the large ns2 experience anymore. We will see in 1 week, but if you lost 70 players (like yesterday compared to last week) you won't get them back as easily.
But i'm sure you will be glad to hear that these filthy players don't play the game anymore and you can play safe now.
Edit : wooza servers are currently closed. As you said dePara maintaining empty servers is expensive
ns2_dark by @deathshroud might be a beginning of that?
Anyway if those things are done I think experience for ns2large will improve. I think then there is no need to be afraid of new players having a bad experience with that.
Watching those videos brought back a lot of memories. Haha!
The game turned out to be nowhere near as fun as those ads suggested.
ns2_uplift, ns2_orbital, ns2_nothing, ns2_outerrimark, ns2_yana and of course ns2_Veil_FIVE. (i forgot the biggest of all, ns2_spaceship)
As for the balance I might be wrong but i think it was a deliberate choice to not change anything (like other large server tried too and failed at it). People knew it wasn't balance, but you can argue that stacks had also a lesser impact.
But the Hive didn't know that.
You have to clean your elo after ns2large.
I agree that it shouldn't be wightlisted, but dev didn't approach the problem (if there is one ?) by this angle.
Actually if they wanted to change the order in the server browser a smarter thing (but maybe more complex) would have been to sort them by decrease number or free slot (while not taking in account reserved slot). That way we could have seen all the almost full server without having to sort them by number of players.
You got to stop desiping fellow NS2 players, even tho they don't see it your way.
So even if the server is not shown with standardsettings in the browser should not be a problem within a community cause the information channels from above.
Something like:
"Oh my god, wooza is down"
Answer via steam:
"Its up, just click that" or "Im on the server follow me"
After a few days all in this community should know how to join.
Problem solved.
Besides, like I said... ALL gameplay mods are now invisible at first, where they were already quite invisible in the first place
Maybe they don't want to hang around douchebags? Nice squad 5 badge btw. Way to promote NS2 to other players!