Player Retention
.trixX.
Budapest Join Date: 2007-10-11 Member: 62605Members
Budapest Join Date: 2007-10-11 Member: 62605Members
After ~2 years of butchering CDT and reinstating PDT, all in order to make sound decisions in-house and improve player retention:
https://steamcharts.com/app/4920
The graph havent budged for 4 years.
We have HP bars, bigger hitboxes, dumbed down marine economy, nerfed alien upgrades... but not more players.
You basically took a perfectly functioning muscle car with manual gearbox, and rebuilt it to be a family station wagon with automatic gears.
But it still has a V18 block and eats gas like it's 1950, so no family buys it, and the muscle car fans are kind of disappointed.
You fell between chairs, as a lot of us have warned you before.
Im a bit pissed that we turned out to be right, the game had potential if not for conflicting long-term ideas...
So when is NS3 coming? :P
https://steamcharts.com/app/4920
The graph havent budged for 4 years.
We have HP bars, bigger hitboxes, dumbed down marine economy, nerfed alien upgrades... but not more players.
You basically took a perfectly functioning muscle car with manual gearbox, and rebuilt it to be a family station wagon with automatic gears.
But it still has a V18 block and eats gas like it's 1950, so no family buys it, and the muscle car fans are kind of disappointed.
You fell between chairs, as a lot of us have warned you before.
Im a bit pissed that we turned out to be right, the game had potential if not for conflicting long-term ideas...
So when is NS3 coming? :P
Comments
Those changes you mention cannot be blamed for that decline, because we have compmod as well as other various balance mods.
Isn't health bars by the way an option that can be turned off by server ops? So if the community really wanted them off, they'd play on servers with them off.
The truth is, the competitive scene is declining because... nothing is going on. Nothing to draw in new competitive players. Our veterans are developing careers and personal lives that distract from the game or moving on to games where shit is going on. So the competitive scene is bleeding good and interesting players. This affects the gathers which have become a snoozefest as well.
It's so easy to blame uwe for all NS2's shortcomings. But I believe the community is equally to blame. There is many things the community could and should do themselves. Organise more events for starters. Start a podcast or a talkshow. Make a frag movie. It's difficult and time consuming as hell, I know.
There's practically no, recent anyway, NS2 content on youtube. That's not uwe's fault.
A lot of comp players got fed up at the time and left. In my reading, that's completely on UWE. How can you alienate your competitive player-base and expect growth?
What I'm trying to get at is that all the changes they have made in order to increase Player Retention failed miserably - based on what I know, please correct me with stats if i;m wrong.
There was no reason to spend effort and energy on those changes, because they had no effect. The player base is basically the same as in NS1: die-hard fans.
Also, swapping CDT with PDT was the worst decision they could've made. They haven't had the funds for a proper PDT, so the work is excruciatingly slow (not blaming the devs, im blaming strategic planning). They could've easily struck a deal with the community devs, UWE sets the goals, CDT implements it.
Anywho, I hope when they dust off the NS project again, they will learn from these mistakes.
PS: Still not trying to shit on the devs, I love you guys, im just speaking my mind without bullshitting :P
You are talking about season 9 which got canceled because dragon took down compmod because he disagreed with the rapid development which brought out small updates very quickly iirc. Maintaining the mod was relatively difficult (I thnk) and dragon did not agree with putting so much effort into it so he took it down and the season got canceled (since NSL doesn't want to play vanilla) (if I am wrong about that then pls correct me dragon)
Knowing that this would be a problem UWE had a solution prepared which was an extra steam branch for NSL to use so they would not have to deal with those updates. NSL head admin declined that offer back then so you can't say UWE alienated them. They tried to cooperate with them on that case.
Also I don't have the numbers but all you see is the daily playerbase which is consistent despite so many hardcore players leaving. I think the playerbase actually did increase but the average amount of hours per week by those players is just very low (1 hour per week or so?) in comparison to the hardcore players who played multiple hours per day.
A lot of what you just said it either (or both) Misinformation, or rumours.
Rather than putting up pages of semi-rants on the forums, have you tried discussing concerns with the devs themselves? I regularly discuss with a few developers on many topics, they are very much approachable and will respond if they aren't busy with RL stuff pretty damn fast.
Yes you are right, I made assumptions based on what i've seen on the forums and heard from other players.
I did know about the rapid dev strategy announced by Hugh, and was one of the first to voice my misgivings about it. I also work as a software engineer, and we never release anything before a rigorous test schedule. Rapid dev (with all it's false assurances) simply does not allow for that.
I did not know about the separate NSL branch, but I kind of understand their refusal to play it. Also, what's good about a split-brain game, where people who got introduced to it by watching NSL games then join a pub server and it's not the same thing?
And we are back at which aspect should guide the development? Pub games or comp games? UWE went for optimizing for pub games (player retention, which im still not convinced had any effect, despite @Mephilles ' reasoning), instead of listening to comp players...
My advice for the future, if anyone's interested:
1. Don't dumb down the game because player retention is low. The game itself (rts+fps hybrid, topped with asymmetric teams) is unfriendly towards newbies by definition. It's not a casual game where you join up after an exhausting day and point-and-click. You have to communicate, think, plan, anticipate. It will never be casual friendly, no matter how much energy you spend on it. There's no other game that's anything close to NS2 in style, because it's a niche, and not for everyone (not trying to be elitist here, we all have different tastes).
2. Listen to competitive players, since they have the best performance to offer and know about edge-cases and strategy exploits.
3. Don't try to be like other games! (cod/overwatch)
4. Don't roll out major updates when there's a comp season on, it's disrespectful to players. They could've gone the other way around, push the rapid dev on a beta branch and let pub players test it. That would've made way more sense.
This is the COMMUNITIES decision, not uwe. If it were up to uwe, I'm sure they'd have us compete in vanilla ns2.. You've got it ass-backwards.
This is nonsense. Utter nonsense. UWE does not oversee comp games. Of course they are focused on pub games. That does not mean they don't listen to comp players though. They have several in their balance discussions.
Now about your advice for the future.
1. This is just mad rantings, nothing of real substance is said here.
2. They are.
3. They aren't.
4. They do have a beta branch for pub players to test.
This post is REALLY bad @.trixX.
That's really funny. They could have just played with the previous patch's balance like they do now (with the Frozen Build mods @Steelcap maintains)
As for the devs and casual players I'd presonally prefer that the combat gamemode (or something similar) would be supported officially and recommended to new players as a platform to learn the weapons and train lifeforms in an environment that does not punish the individual fuckups as hard and lock the ns2 gamemode we love to a set playercount ( I prefer 6v6, but would also be fine with 7v7 or 8v8). So anyone who plays casually can stay at combat and everyone who wants to deal with the strategic element of ns2 would switch over to the ns2 gamemode.
I think that would make the learning curve easier for players generally and maybe would be beneficial for competitive ns2 aswell.
The reason Frozen Build became a thing was because of the NSLs reluctance to use the separate branch provided. Which was provided before Dragon took down compmod (for a weekend).
The reason so many people returned to try out a season at the NSL for season 9 was due to the return of development on ns2... the reason they left was because the NSL failed, there was massive drama, there were many people pointing fingers in all directions.
The NSL was then and still is now, run terribly. There is a reason the current... ongoing season.... was supposed to have the group phase dates be -
Start - 15 April 2018
End - 27 May 2018
It is now the 22nd of August... division 1 had a total of 6 matches to be played during the above times... they have 2 left.
Just to give you an idea... the original plan was to have 1 match played per week... so far its been 18 weeks and 4 matches have been played.
The NSL made a rod for its own back, no one there cares, no one puts the time or the effort in to make the community thrive. That is not the fault of UWE, that is the fault of the admin team.
Im sorry you don't understand what im saying here, i guess you're not really reading. Ofc they would have us use vanilla ns2, but the problem is that it's not good for competitive play; advice #2. And if they were listening to comp players, how come there's a compmod?
#1 is ranting? The game has complex rules and mechanisms that is HARDER to learn than most games. But that's due to the style of the game, not bad implementation. Im actually defending the devs here, the later modifications to address this issue were uncalled for, BECAUSE THE GAME ITSELF IS HARD.
#3 they most definitely were. they had a conscious effort to make the game noob friendly, and they were trying to pull things from popular titles. you know, HP bars.
Yes, it's awesome that the game still gets support from the devs, but that's irrelevant to what im talking about (unless you count the basic premise of having development at all).
I don't think this needs a response tbh.
Because the competitive players desire 6 vs 6 gameplay to be balanced at a very high skill level.
NS2 has player counts varying from 6 vs 6 all the way up to 12 vs 12 (higher also requires a mod, because that is not the way it is intended to play)
The variable playerbase and drastically varying skill levels combined, results in certain tech paths that would work well in high skill 6 vs 6 become ridiculously strong in 12 vs 12, and vice versa.
The devs have the excruciating task of trying to make everyone happy, rather than a tiny handful of players.
There has been a LOT of things brought over from compmod over the years and there are people from the comp community that take part in both balance team discussions and playtesting.
The compmod exists purely because some people don't think that the game plays well in a competitive 6 vs 6 environment... i'm yet to see any teams actually try out playing at a high skill level 6 vs 6 without compmod to prove this.
That may have been the original goal.
But having A2 > SG for 5 seasons straight and people fighting for compmod to be "how it used to be" doesn't sound like a mod designed to add flavor to me.
Vanilla ns2 needs very minor alterations to work well in a competitive 6 vs 6 environment. but most of the people in the nsl don't want to balance the game, they want season 6 back.
Screaming "revert" over and over again isn't a stimulating environment, its a perfect example of a stagnating one.
Pretty sure you can't unless you don't care about your server being whitelisted, even if its just to coloured damage numbers (effectively HP bars without the bars). Meanwhile, a certain server with too many mods gets to do anything they want and remain whitelisted.
I shortened the quote above, because I believe this is the most important part of it and that should be the main focus of discussion.
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I completely agree, but in order to gain interest or at least maintain it, you need to create/uphold a certain level of hype... which when the most recent post regarding the league itself from a current admin member was on the 3rd of February at 19:48 CET (Mega) and the most recent regarding the league that is from a former member of the admin team was the 10th of April at 18:39 CEST, it doesn't seem like any attempt is being made to create or maintain any level of hype.
The season itself didn't even have an announcement post stating that it started, nor did the playoffs for either division 2 or 3. There was no newcomer tournament made, no posts to reddit or the UWE forums regarding the season, no posts about potential projects or discussing map pools, future tournaments, plans to keep people engaged etc.
Basically, the league has died, because no one is breathing life into it and anytime someone tries to put effort in, they are immediately shouted down by a handful of people claiming that everything they are doing is wrong.
I tried to follow one of the tournaments earlier this year. There was barely any notifications & there was no real schedule. I only realised that it had ended once the next one had begun.
Its a complaint i've had for a very long time and it got to the point of being so bad, My team forfeited the "current" season in the finals because we were fed up with how badly run the league has gotten.
But since you have responded, i'll help you out:
Dumbed down marine tech, HP bars, enlarged hitboxes, removed silence.
These are trends, that in my eyes are a quasi proof of making the game more like overwatch (or any other popular title atm).
What I'm trying to warn against is the devs' desire of making the game more accessible resulting in the game losing it's unique charm. The very reason the remaining players are enjoying it.
this is something devs should think about if you care about players experience, improvement simply by editing couple of files (could not see spoiler button while editing post so picture is seen by default sry)
Hard to explain in words but hope this shows what i meant made in photoshop to simulate what i am trying to say:
1. less to download for new players 2. less to store and 3. less to load 4. looks 100% the same in game, so if you want to improve the game just look for more than 1 minute at what files are actually provided to us.
Please optimize them, i say this as a fan of the game and as a player that recommend ns2 to literally anyone who ever played a game in their life. Even if its a small improvement it is still an improved to the game.
instead of having 6 signs and 6 identical alpha textures for the signs with different names you could have 8 textures total if 3 signs shared 1 alpha and 3 more having another alpha OR they can even be embedded into the original .dds file so instead of 12x or 8x .dds files you now have only the original 6 embedded translucency, a better solution than a totally separate file even if you only changed a handful of files the game would technically be better.
Just FYI the textures you posted are 86 KB. By comparison, the male.model marine file is 109107 KB. Re-using these particular textures is not gonna make a huge difference.
here is an example of original ns2 file: one is 5+ MB or 5595136 B (2048x2048 pixels) other is 128 KB i just made from same file compared next to each other with same results. With a real texture in game over it nobody would know. You decide wich is wich since i already forgot and that is kind of the point of why having 5 extra mb stored of the same exact thing is useless. I am not saying change literally every normal map this extremely but at least try ONE???
i understand it is a difficult task to distinguish the difference and no human playing in a full on ns2 battle are going to notice the actual texture on top of the depth thing even if the texture is 500 mb & 40.000 pixels or just the small one i made IDENTICAL but actually had 15% more sharpening so you COULD distinguish if you desperately wanted offline in photoshop but do this about 10x time & you saved over 50 mb again oh wait that is 100 mb improvement already!
whatever you do just don't look at exosuit_spec unless you want an actual laugh... lol 32.0 MB (33,554,592 bytes) just like rifle_view_spec.dds 32 mb for 1! not that it could ever be changed or anything...i already had low hope anyway.
With snarky statements like this, I would not be surprised if you do get completely ignored...
You do know that you could literally do all of this "2 minute" work yourself, pass on your work to UWE and it would be implemented with credit given and thanks shown etc... instead, you expect people with much more important work to be doing, to stop said work and do the tiny, insignificant task YOU want them to do.
I got frustrated with a few little niggling issues with Mineshaft recently... So... I fixed them, passed the level file over to the devs with a list of the changes that I'd made... check out the patch notes, i'm sure you'll see that they were incorporated... if this image issue bugs YOU so much, take the "short amount of time" and do it yourself rather than being snarky and passively aggressive because the devs aren't doing what you want... I mean seriously, if this is such a quick job, why make 2 posts explaining how easy it is to do instead of spending that time doing it yourself?
Also, what format is your file? NS2 requires DDS, and normal maps might appear the same to your eyes but could look very different in game.
To give a counter-point, there's a pretty good chance any contributed work gets forgotten or discarded for various reasons.
I have done the steps you described and some textures in "short amount of time" that end up in NS2 other in ns2-combat that i worked hours on and took time out of my life without compensation even if i never play combat so don't make it out as if i did not even try! don't turn an improvement into a negative twist i just say store less materials and less sized textures with lesser files and faster loading speeds, BUT those textures i provided was in the exact size UWE wanted not the optimized size since that would never be accepted (see the problem) so i could do what you just asked of me and send the normalmaps with lesser size to when im done converting them if i get the greenlight that it will ever even be looked at. I said 20 textures a day i could do in older posts or on steam to developers and mappers but since i made account around the same time you did there is over 1000+ people i spoken to throughout the years about ns2 so not sure what year that was but work 9-5 job & so my time is also limited just not with making ns2, i would be doing that i knew what i was doing haha but i dont so just letting you know there is massive files and duplicates thats all, people can make what they want with that info.
by the way how can i submit the deletion of an official ns2 file that exists twice...sounds so simple right? they would not just randomly take a person from a forum and say hey lets delete some files of ns2 but unfortunately that's where the extras are and there is where they can optimize (again i cant but somebody who cares about structure of game can)
here is a texture that maybe sparks your memory: well it shouldn't since thats the versions that got cut out by UWE haha it looks terrible with embedded opacity against white&black background but ingame:
i have only intent of making better content, however after many alterations and tweaks of the file this is the final decal that you now have in the game made from isomebody based on what i did, it is live in derelict somewhere: https://i.imgur.com/oRlFndx.png but that is the final result! hehe the good ones got discarded