Not sure why you keep shoving "Play Now" down our throats. Yes, theoretically if everyone used it, there would be a better distribution of hive skill and probably better games. But NS2 is way too old and community servers have been far too established for it to work now. So please just stop.
You should favorite your favorite servers, and see how often you pick the top server in the server browser. It does basically what you are asking for, and if you find yourself usually picking the top one, Play Now just gets you there faster. It takes your favorited servers into account.
The way skulks detect if they're on walls or not is by firing out a "trace", which, if it hits something within a certain distance of where it started, then we know we're on a wall or ceiling. Before, it would fire 8 traces in a disc pattern around the skulk, plus 1 trace straight upwards to find a ceiling. This new patch adds 8 more traces in a 45 degree cone (basically just splitting the difference between the flat disc shape and the vertical trace).
The way skulks detect if they're on walls or not is by firing out a "trace", which, if it hits something within a certain distance of where it started, then we know we're on a wall or ceiling. Before, it would fire 8 traces in a disc pattern around the skulk, plus 1 trace straight upwards to find a ceiling. This new patch adds 8 more traces in a 45 degree cone (basically just splitting the difference between the flat disc shape and the vertical trace).
Makes sense, but if that is how it works, why isn't it possible to just add a sphere around the skulk to check that?
Why does the placement of the Arcade button in comparison to the others matter that much? Whats the difference between having arcade to the right instead of the bottom?
Because placement indicates importance. The only importance is Server Browser. Not Play Now or Training and expecially not Arcade.
As mentioned previously the Quick Play button was supposed to be used in conjunction with a Match Seeding feature that didn't make it in.. so while people do use that button already, (we have metrics for this) we have a feeling it'd be used even more if match seeding is tied to it.
Not sure why you are so set on Quick Play and Match Seeding. Sure it may have worked at the release date of NS2 with tons of players and servers have not established yet. However that train has departed long ago. Neither NS2 players beyond Rookies nor server maintainers could possibly have a good feeling about Quick Play or Match Seeding. NS2 players because they would not necessarily play in the community they are used to and server hosters because they can not gain a loyal community. Additionally I'm very much in doubt that the skill level will actually be even with that system.
Personally, I've never used the button instead of the server browser because I know where I want to go... BUT .. if it came with match seeding I'd probably use it, because I so often check the browser and after seeing no open servers and 14 other players searching at the top, I usually don't have the patience to wait around. Being immediately thrown into a server with those other 14 waiting players sounds like a much better option to me.
Who wants to play with 14 random people I don't know and whose skill level is likely way above or below mine? Certainly not me.
In conclusion, the devs should reverse their focus of trying to grap new players. They will only play for max 1 month anyway. Instead focus on player retention. This would mean fixing team balance, gameplay and probably new features and maps to play with. So much was waisted already on skins and useless Steam items, training modes (cute but essentially useless) and bad UI design. Stop dumbing the game down. Steamcharts is telling the story. The downward trend continues as the remaining loyal NS2 players bleed away.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
You may not use it but others do.
It's really not the end of the world, as you can still do what you've always done, except now yes there's 1 extra click so that we can help maintain that loyal base that you speak of, much of whom have asked for more focus and attention given to modified servers and mods, as well as solve the issue where all servers are full so you just quit the game.*
*It's not about having a feature for the sake of it or even purely for newer players.. we can have more populated servers and seed them much more efficiently and with less pain using that feature. It's something that aids a dwindling player base, I hope you can see how that's the case?
Also If you're upset about having to have an extra click to get where you want to go, I don't understand how you advocate for having a user perform another click to get back to the play menu when they could just click another tab?
How does this patch dumb down the game in any way?? Or is that just angry hyperbole?
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
The goal of the quick play button is to get you to the server you would have chosen by hand. If it isn't doing that, we should figure out why and what it isn't taking into account.
Additionally I'm very much in doubt that the skill level will actually be even with that system.
Who wants to play with 14 random people I don't know and whose skill level is likely way above or below mine? Certainly not me.
May I please know what mystical server you are playing on? Much appreciated, thanks.
While I like the design of the menu, it's kind of ungainly and redundant... From a UX point of view, it's even worse than it was (I'd echo @_INTER_ 's arguments)
You know what would be useful? Seeing the servers you've marked favourite in the main menu as soon as you fire up the game. That would be much more appreciated than the recent changelog :P
On the other hand;
gorge tunnels are awesome
skulk wallwalk is awesome
gj on those long awaited updates ;]
The goal of the quick play button is to get you to the server you would have chosen by hand. If it isn't doing that, we should figure out why and what it isn't taking into account.
It's really not the end of the world, as you can still do what you've always done, except now yes there's 1 extra click so that we can help maintain that loyal base that you speak of, much of whom have asked for more focus and attention given to modified servers and mods, as well as solve the issue where all servers are full so you just quit the game.*
*It's not about having a feature for the sake of it or even purely for newer players.. we can have more populated servers and seed them much more efficiently and with less pain using that feature. It's something that aids a dwindling player base, I hope you can see how that's the case?
Also If you're upset about having to have an extra click to get where you want to go, I don't understand how you advocate for having a user perform another click to get back to the play menu when they could just click another tab?
How does this patch dumb down the game in any way?? Or is that just angry hyperbole?
Because it seems that at least some people here prefer a functional layout rather than an "aesthetically pleasing" one (emphasis on the quotation marks). I can most certainly say that most layouts that are made to be "aesthetically pleasing" and "intuitive" (like W8 Metro) tend not only to be less functional for me, but in fact appear cringe-worthy.
The goal of the quick play button is to get you to the server you would have chosen by hand. If it isn't doing that, we should figure out why and what it isn't taking into account.
Totally agree.. some servers take forever till they pop up
Just sayin'
Well, but I wanna know how many players are on that server... I might rather wait instead of joining a low/rookieserver.. that behaviour will the program never know.. and if TTO has 23/24 slots (2 specslots) I still need to press the "try to join button" for some reason.. after I used double-click... does the play now button still join?
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Oh I meant that because some servers need some time to pop up in the server list, they might not populate the backend of the "quick play" button and as such cannot be selected when you press "quick play" too quickly
I just wish that they'd swap "server browser" and "training" since
a) The vast majority will be clicking "server browser" and very few will be clicking "training"
b) "Play" is on the left, having to click twice isn't annoying, what is annoying is having to click the left, then move your mouse all the way down and to the right every time.
How does this patch dumb down the game in any way?? Or is that just angry hyperbole?
Yes, the updates are always awesome. A lot of effort and time goes into these patches. More goes into background stuff we don't even know of. Most tweaks and features were old issues. We can be lucky to even still get updates, given the game is so old.
Though, I looked up one year of changelogs and summarized them (heavy emphasis mine):
The last wow moment I had and that lasted longer than a week was Caged. That was one year ago. Most changes on the list are cool (some debatable), but just no real "wow" moment for old NS2 players. Maybe I've seen too much or expect too much. If you give next to zero care for Arcade Mods, Tutorial, Bots, Steam items, Badges, Achievements, Hive, UI apart from server browser, skins and minor tweaks, there just isn't so much. Some things even worsened for us. And that certainly can make you a little angry. And sad.
Imagine the dev team would condense the effort of 14 patches into an update like Gorgeous once a year (with a similar focus of course, unlike the 14 patches). That would be such a "wow" moment I missing. The dev team would definitly have the skills for that.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
A lot of changes happening at this time are part of a longterm effort to counteract the 'leaky bucket' that is ns2's new player retention issue.
Big content updates in the form of new maps and gameplay changes may still happen but require a community effort and lot of testing in order to not completely break the game.
I made a mouse script that will click the play button, then automatically mouse over and down the exact amount of pixels, and auto click the server browser button. It's a 50% reduction in mouse movements and clicking...and overall a great time saver meant only for those who actually wish to play the game by choosing the server they want to play on. It's only $2.99US through Pay-Pal if anyone is interested. lol
I made a mouse script that will click the play button, then automatically mouse over and down the exact amount of pixels, and auto click the server browser button. It's a 50% reduction in mouse movements and clicking...and overall a great time saver meant only for those who actually wish to play the game by choosing the server they want to play on. It's only $2.99US through Pay-Pal if anyone is interested. lol
A lot of changes happening at this time are part of a longterm effort to counteract the 'leaky bucket' that is ns2's new player retention issue.
Uhh... afaik, player retention has always been the #1 issue... Every crappy update we've seen (silence to shift, HP bars, bigger hitboxes) were all rationalized by the oh-so-important player retention doctrine. Unfortunately, this game is not for the masses, and instead of focusing on the niche players who would actually enjoy it, they dumb it down (hurr-durr)
A lot of changes happening at this time are part of a longterm effort to counteract the 'leaky bucket' that is ns2's new player retention issue.
Uhh... afaik, player retention has always been the #1 issue... Every crappy update we've seen (silence to shift, HP bars, bigger hitboxes) were all rationalized by the oh-so-important player retention doctrine. Unfortunately, this game is not for the masses, and instead of focusing on the niche players who would actually enjoy it, they dumb it down (hurr-durr)
Which is why I only play NS2 for Siege ever since. Congrats on retaining players, UWE.
While I like the design of the menu, it's kind of ungainly and redundant... From a UX point of view, it's even worse than it was (I'd echo @_INTER_ 's arguments)
You know what would be useful? Seeing the servers you've marked favourite in the main menu as soon as you fire up the game. That would be much more appreciated than the recent changelog :P
This is a good idea. It'd also be cool to show the game that play now is going to choose inside the button.
A lot of changes happening at this time are part of a longterm effort to counteract the 'leaky bucket' that is ns2's new player retention issue.
Big content updates in the form of new maps and gameplay changes may still happen but require a community effort and lot of testing in order to not completely break the game.
I'm convinced that the patches one year back are aimed at gaining new players, making it easier for them to get into NS2. Player retention measures look different. First of all you need to figure out the current NS2 demographics: The players that play now. Those players hardly rejoice when "You won a game as a commander!" or "15 hours of playtime".
Uhh... afaik, player retention has always been the #1 issue... Every crappy update we've seen (silence to shift, HP bars, bigger hitboxes) were all rationalized by the oh-so-important player retention doctrine. Unfortunately, this game is not for the masses, and instead of focusing on the niche players who would actually enjoy it, they dumb it down (hurr-durr)
This. If they were doing this as practise for an impending NS3, I'd be more sympathetic...
How about an option for "play now" to ONLY look at you favorited servers???? take it a step further and add a slider that allows us to set the minimum number of players for a server that we wish to play.
Ex: TG, ISBS, Diamond are all favorited and I set my minimum player count to 10. If TG and ISBS are full and diamond has 9 I end up just waiting. As soon as a slot opens up on TG/ISBS or someone joins diamond boom it auto joins.
I was excited about the change to tunnels... except now after having spent some time playing, it seems like a superficial change at best.
I've only managed to find a handful of places where I've been able to set the tunnel at an angle, when this should've opened up a LOT more areas (like next to the rt point in crossroads on summit for one example!)
If I have time I might try to make a little video showing all the places where we should be able to drop tunnels but can't.
"Example mod showing how to properly implement this: Dropbox, Github"
This looks like it should have a link to Github, but I am not able to find the example mod on the Unknown Worlds github.
I like the idea of a play button. I used it earlier and it worked well.
I don't think it needs the second page, it looks a bit like a web page from 15 years ago with the massive graphics. I would prefer that when the cursor was hovered over the Play button that a sub menu would appear to the right with the four options.
Comments
The way skulks detect if they're on walls or not is by firing out a "trace", which, if it hits something within a certain distance of where it started, then we know we're on a wall or ceiling. Before, it would fire 8 traces in a disc pattern around the skulk, plus 1 trace straight upwards to find a ceiling. This new patch adds 8 more traces in a 45 degree cone (basically just splitting the difference between the flat disc shape and the vertical trace).
Makes sense, but if that is how it works, why isn't it possible to just add a sphere around the skulk to check that?
NS2 is technically an oldschool game, sometimes I wonder if them devs forget that
Except that we now have to jump through a useless middleman page.
Not sure why you are so set on Quick Play and Match Seeding. Sure it may have worked at the release date of NS2 with tons of players and servers have not established yet. However that train has departed long ago. Neither NS2 players beyond Rookies nor server maintainers could possibly have a good feeling about Quick Play or Match Seeding. NS2 players because they would not necessarily play in the community they are used to and server hosters because they can not gain a loyal community. Additionally I'm very much in doubt that the skill level will actually be even with that system.
Who wants to play with 14 random people I don't know and whose skill level is likely way above or below mine? Certainly not me.
In conclusion, the devs should reverse their focus of trying to grap new players. They will only play for max 1 month anyway. Instead focus on player retention. This would mean fixing team balance, gameplay and probably new features and maps to play with. So much was waisted already on skins and useless Steam items, training modes (cute but essentially useless) and bad UI design. Stop dumbing the game down. Steamcharts is telling the story. The downward trend continues as the remaining loyal NS2 players bleed away.
It's really not the end of the world, as you can still do what you've always done, except now yes there's 1 extra click so that we can help maintain that loyal base that you speak of, much of whom have asked for more focus and attention given to modified servers and mods, as well as solve the issue where all servers are full so you just quit the game.*
*It's not about having a feature for the sake of it or even purely for newer players.. we can have more populated servers and seed them much more efficiently and with less pain using that feature. It's something that aids a dwindling player base, I hope you can see how that's the case?
Also If you're upset about having to have an extra click to get where you want to go, I don't understand how you advocate for having a user perform another click to get back to the play menu when they could just click another tab?
How does this patch dumb down the game in any way?? Or is that just angry hyperbole?
May I please know what mystical server you are playing on? Much appreciated, thanks.
You know what would be useful? Seeing the servers you've marked favourite in the main menu as soon as you fire up the game. That would be much more appreciated than the recent changelog :P
On the other hand;
gorge tunnels are awesome
skulk wallwalk is awesome
gj on those long awaited updates ;]
Just sayin'
Because it seems that at least some people here prefer a functional layout rather than an "aesthetically pleasing" one (emphasis on the quotation marks). I can most certainly say that most layouts that are made to be "aesthetically pleasing" and "intuitive" (like W8 Metro) tend not only to be less functional for me, but in fact appear cringe-worthy.
Well, but I wanna know how many players are on that server... I might rather wait instead of joining a low/rookieserver.. that behaviour will the program never know.. and if TTO has 23/24 slots (2 specslots) I still need to press the "try to join button" for some reason.. after I used double-click... does the play now button still join?
a) The vast majority will be clicking "server browser" and very few will be clicking "training"
b) "Play" is on the left, having to click twice isn't annoying, what is annoying is having to click the left, then move your mouse all the way down and to the right every time.
Yes, the updates are always awesome. A lot of effort and time goes into these patches. More goes into background stuff we don't even know of. Most tweaks and features were old issues. We can be lucky to even still get updates, given the game is so old.
Though, I looked up one year of changelogs and summarized them (heavy emphasis mine):
14 patches, really a crazy amount. However:
The last wow moment I had and that lasted longer than a week was Caged. That was one year ago. Most changes on the list are cool (some debatable), but just no real "wow" moment for old NS2 players. Maybe I've seen too much or expect too much. If you give next to zero care for Arcade Mods, Tutorial, Bots, Steam items, Badges, Achievements, Hive, UI apart from server browser, skins and minor tweaks, there just isn't so much. Some things even worsened for us. And that certainly can make you a little angry. And sad.
Imagine the dev team would condense the effort of 14 patches into an update like Gorgeous once a year (with a similar focus of course, unlike the 14 patches). That would be such a "wow" moment I missing. The dev team would definitly have the skills for that.
Big content updates in the form of new maps and gameplay changes may still happen but require a community effort and lot of testing in order to not completely break the game.
Uhh... afaik, player retention has always been the #1 issue... Every crappy update we've seen (silence to shift, HP bars, bigger hitboxes) were all rationalized by the oh-so-important player retention doctrine. Unfortunately, this game is not for the masses, and instead of focusing on the niche players who would actually enjoy it, they dumb it down (hurr-durr)
Which is why I only play NS2 for Siege ever since. Congrats on retaining players, UWE.
This is a good idea. It'd also be cool to show the game that play now is going to choose inside the button.
This. If they were doing this as practise for an impending NS3, I'd be more sympathetic...
Ex: TG, ISBS, Diamond are all favorited and I set my minimum player count to 10. If TG and ISBS are full and diamond has 9 I end up just waiting. As soon as a slot opens up on TG/ISBS or someone joins diamond boom it auto joins.
I've only managed to find a handful of places where I've been able to set the tunnel at an angle, when this should've opened up a LOT more areas (like next to the rt point in crossroads on summit for one example!)
If I have time I might try to make a little video showing all the places where we should be able to drop tunnels but can't.
This looks like it should have a link to Github, but I am not able to find the example mod on the Unknown Worlds github.
I don't think it needs the second page, it looks a bit like a web page from 15 years ago with the massive graphics. I would prefer that when the cursor was hovered over the Play button that a sub menu would appear to the right with the four options.