Not to mention CO maps suck, show why the res-for-lifeforms is important, and are on virtually all of the servers.
It's hard sifting through the plug ins and the CO_map servers to find a vanilla with actual players. Hell, I had thought the Seige maps were enough of a slug fest for the newbies to learn what combat and commanding were like...
Imagine my surprise when I find CO_ after coming back to the game earlier this year.
I think co_ maps are fun in between intense rounds of NS. They're also a good place to practice abilities, such as fade blink/swipe, skulk leaping, or effective lerking. Seige maps are a good place to practice comming and for screwing around a little. I don't think either of them are replacements for NS. I don't think either of them are the reason that NS has seen a playerbase reduction.
I find it humourous so many people keep referring to the difficulty of NS to pick up. One, I think Flayra and the dev team did an excellent job of making the game as easy as it is to pick up, even though reading the manual or having a healthy pub atmosphere with people willing to help goes a long way. Either way, you have to admit the learning curve is helped tremendously by the amount of simplicity the dev team sought, esp the menu system, Waypointing, and other user interfaces.
Secondly, we wera ll NSPlayers once, and we are still around. Make a game unique and interesting enough, and people will figure out how to play it. The problem NS has run into int he last two years is the growing feeling that the community wasn't being heard when it came to the games direction (especially the voice of the "old school NS players"), and when the site went down, the combined effect of false hopes of getting back up and the new players' inability to find a good resource for info caused NS to quickly lose traction instead of a gradual demise.
I reinstalled NS and played it the other night, with complete glee, but the problems rest with NS as they did when I left, and now, most of the people I loved playing the game with are no longer playing. As its doubtful new communities are going to appear, and kudos to those communities that have adapted and thrived, my days of NS are mostly over. I loved those 4+ years of forum sniffing for new info, and daily marathons (much to my wife's dismay) of back to back comm chair action, and I'm sorry to see it go, but the "silent year" and many other development issues have made me walk away.
I still hope the best for NS, whether it's NS:S or NS2, and I hope to play the future iterations. I am actually shocked at the newest thread asking the community which one it would like to see, and excited for it. I just hope, for the future of NS, it isn't too little, too late.
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I just hope, for the future of NS, it isn't too little, too late. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can understand where you're coming from, but I think you're being rather overdramatic. You've hit the nail on the head as to how NS "lost traction" after the forums died. I think you're putting a little too much emphasis on the "Old School Players". There will be new "Old School Players" for NS2 or NS:S and any community that makes the transition will be a boon, but isn't completely neccesary. As you've alluded too, new players are the real life blood of a game. Older players tend to be more like antibodies, weeding out undesirable elements. True a good game needs both, but NS2/Source would be a new game and can take the time to develop that community. Basically as long as Flayra puts out a new game people will play it.
I wish you the best of luck with ID. I can see it was trying to fill a void and suddenly the void isn't quite as empty. If ID took the place of NS:S and Flayra got cracking on NS2 that would be the best of both worlds in my book.
<!--quoteo(post=1567865:date=Sep 25 2006, 12:11 PM:name=SnappyCrunch)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SnappyCrunch @ Sep 25 2006, 12:11 PM) [snapback]1567865[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I disagree, viper. I think that it's occasionally a good thing to point out the flaws without needing to offer solutions. I think it opens up the discussion to people who have good ideas, and allows the addressees to respond in their own way without needing to address all the points of the complainer's "solution".
Also, cutting down the morale of the people who can effectivly change things is, used judiciously, more effective than boosting their morale all the time, no matter what they do.
Understand, this the the NS forums. The people who are regulars here are the ones that love NS. Well reasoned criticism is going to be rare here, and I personally treasure it rather than trying to tell the criticiser that the dev team should be complimented all the time. I feel like you're one of the self-proclaimed "patriots" in the US right now that says people shouldn't criticize the president because we're in a time of war. They say the whole country should be behind him, right or wrong. To my mind, the better patriots are the ones who are willing to point out what the president it doing wrong, so that it can be fixed. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I know that you have to point out whats wrong, otherwise the whole structure of the community, the game, and the development team would break down into chaos. That goes for presidency as well. My point was aimed solely at the way Swift delivered his opinions. It just seemed cold and nasty.
Your feeling was wrong anyway. I'm british born and bred, and I don't like Bush at all. I've heard him say too many dumb things. Although this war, I do support <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1566872:date=Sep 19 2006, 09:16 AM:name=puzl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(puzl @ Sep 19 2006, 09:16 AM) [snapback]1566872[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> NS 3.2 is almost complete, and we will be preparing to release it after the forums go public. Constellation testing of 3.2 will <b>probably</b> happen. We're not saying too much about what is in 3.2 just yet, but you can have a sneak peak at some info <a href="http://nsplayer.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=1120" target="_blank">on nsplayer.net</a>. We've been working on 3.2 on and off during the site downtime.
I still play NS more than any other game, with people that I get on very well with. Lately, I haven't been playing much due to the effort to get 3.2 100% complete. It is likely that 3.2 will be the last patch on HL, although we won't make decisions until the appropriate time arrives. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And hopefully there won't be any big balance or bug issues with it.
NS was once easy to pick up. Any game is easy to pick up when everyone is new. But these days whenever someone new joins a game they will understand the concept of it somewhat but just get smashed, eventually have a 0-10 score and quit in angst of how hard the game is.
Hey everyone, long time no see. Ns from my perspective has undergone a playerbase reduction due to site inactivity or just the fact the game was in a stagnit state for awhile. The only reason I'm not having as much fun as I did starting 2002 is that the game doesnt have that new feel to it. Everything seems to be a re-hash of stuff I have already done. Though, the game still has its fun points. I'm waiting for version 3.2 to see if it can re-captivate my interest as it did before.
Why all the doom and gloom people! Check these stats out for Sunday at 7:20 pst
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile!
note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash
<!--quoteo(post=1570121:date=Oct 15 2006, 10:32 PM:name=thane)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(thane @ Oct 15 2006, 10:32 PM) [snapback]1570121[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Why all the doom and gloom people! Check these stats out for Sunday at 7:20 pst
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile! note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
because CAL-NS just closed after 10 seasons. A smaller clan base usually means a smaller pub base.
<!--quoteo(post=1570124:date=Oct 15 2006, 11:03 PM:name=Gerald_R_Ford)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gerald_R_Ford @ Oct 15 2006, 11:03 PM) [snapback]1570124[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> because CAL-NS just closed after 10 seasons. A smaller clan base usually means a smaller pub base. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have noticed that many of the CAL clans had longtime players. Granted there were some newer player, and my info is out of date (I have been out of CAL for over a year), but I think it was the stagnate NS that killed CAL. I think the downtime of the forums played a large part in it too. If it was not for these forums, I would not have known about CAL. Even at the Ville with 3-4 DoD servers at a time, I rarely heard mention of CAL. So this tells me that the forum downtime may have accelerated the end of CAL (It was shrinking when I left, and the forums were still up).
I hope the devs will consider doing atleast some small updates after 3.2. The reason being that NS has a chance to pull a phonix routine if done right. If the release is done right, with the forums made public, and a good PR blitz on the HL news sites, we could see a decent revival in the next few months. However the key will be if the devs will keep supporting it until NS2/NS:S is ready. Otherwise it will just be a quick boost and die down again.
<!--quoteo(post=1570121:date=Oct 15 2006, 09:32 PM:name=thane)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(thane @ Oct 15 2006, 09:32 PM) [snapback]1570121[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Why all the doom and gloom people! Check these stats out for Sunday at 7:20 pst
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile! note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. Sorry dude you are partially wrong there. Garry's Mod 9 has out done Natural Selection for quite a few months now.
2. Stats like just cause injust praise. The numbers are down, almost cut in half from a year ago. When the forums were up, there were more server communities, more competitive teams, and overall more involvement.
3. Thats an illogical statement, we have no idea how much NS's popularity would be if people had to pay a retail price to play it at all, for all we know very few would pay for it, or perhaps their numbers would double.
I have a theory on the state of NS. I think the main reason that everything went downhill as fast as it did was because of the lack of official forums, the most part where new players went with questions, comments, stories, etc...
The downtime of the forums violates Flayra's premise of the game. Flayra wanted to create an enjoyable social experience. Having the forums down takes a large chunk of the social aspect out of the game. There are few things I noticed from when the time the NS forums went down, to now.
1. Server communities started dying off.
Server communities, again which provide another social aspect of the game were dying off due to the lack of community promotion. People were leaving and not becomming replaced, as the game to many has become boring and unworthy of their time. Without new members to generate the much needed lifeblood of members, they collapsed. 3 off the top of my head are Fr31ns, Lunixmonster, and NSarmslab.
2. CAL-NS is diminished.
While CAL has always complained about how NS is dying, their complaints became legitimate once the recycled players (players from other teams) started moving on to other games. Again, the lack of official forums significantly hurt the way competitive players could generate interest into the league. Now CAL has determined that the NS division is not worth their time or status, and has shut down the league.
3. A combination effect, overall lower players.
NS used to average over 1,200 players at once when the forums were still around, now they average just barely 500. I would have to assume that some of this is due to other games coming out, but without the forums, it lost many people because this was were a lot of the social experience that Flayra wanted happen. I mean look there are over 30,000 members with over 1 million posts. The forums were quite active and lively, and then were just taken away by one swoop, not even to be allowed to be viewed by the public over a year later.
While there were a lot of people on the forums that provided a wealth of information, I just don't understand why the forum's could not have been reset, and are STILL not open to the public despite how bad the community needs this communication ground to survive, and maybe even thrive again.
Of course this is insider information which I have no access to, but I just have a feeling that the forums were not worth the financial burden it cost to run them. I'm sure constellation payments were few and far between, but I do not know if that was the reason.
Thane, what you are doing is looking at NS at a single point in time (i.e now) completely out of context, and saying hey its doing amazing just from those stats. Its analagous to looking at a company share price for one single day and thinking wow! thats worth a fair bit, its doing great. What you miss out however, is the fact that the company share price is on a steep downward path and in fact, investing in that company would be a very unwise decision.
But... to be more balanced about this.. what i just said doesnt make your stats irrelevant.. it is still significant that NS is still, at the moment, not as small as other mods... But just keep in mind the trend please, and ask yourself why the trend is like that.
Well for me, I never stopped playing NS. In fact, it is the game I play the most. I have BF2, Splinter Cell:Cahos Theory, Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4, D3,BF1942,ET,RTCW and X3. I started playing back in 2002. Quite frankly, it is the first teamplay game I ever played where I found the most teamwork present of all the games (including demos) I ever played. I see people posting in forums and comparing other games to CS and say CS is the best game ever, but for me, its a game full of lonely Rambos out to win the game all by themselves. I rarely saw any teamwork at all. (don't get started on CS replies 'cause this thread isn't about it).
I agree that the NS forum being down for so long and not having any news/updates for so long, had started to shatter my faith in the game. But I kept playing. I play both NS and CO.
There are lots of server still available. But I find that even with close to 50 different servers with pings lower then 200, there are lots of them which I don't like playing on. Those servers including usages of special plugins, bots playing or those that I have to wait like 5 min or more to download files (I do not like to wait more then 2 min to play on a game, besides by the time you finished downloading, the game is already to much advanced (especialy in CO)).
I sometimes play on special plugin servers (/buildmenu, /xmenu, rollthedice) but I get tired of them because I pesonnaly think they ruine (excuse my english) and off balance the NS game.
I did play a few times on bots types of games but I find them either very boring because the bots are very stupid, or that the bots accuracy is like 200% and move all over the place like crazy, therefore reducing your chances to kill them). I sometimes try to go on the bot team to try to make things more interesting, but most of these servers don't allow you to.
Also, on some occasions, I find servers where there are admin abuses, people that keep talking (won't shut up), voice spaming or those that because you killed one player, he goes yapping about hacking !!!
Overall, there are still alot of servers I play on. I even tried a new type that recently appeared : AVA (ALien Versus Alien). I found that kind of different but a bit confusing.
There is a an apparent less volume of players over the few months. But that could be simply because of a combination of players moving on to other games, players geting tired of NS, previous wave of newbies that gave up, life issues, ... who knows for sure.
I am looking forwared for an NS version that will look more realistic from a graphic point of view and using new physics. I don't personnaly care if its NS:Source or NS2. As long as it achieves what I hope for.
Posting here to say that I still enjoy NS and play it semi-often. But it was really a downer when the forums and site disappeared and didn't come back for so long.
Here is to hoping the re-release of the site and forums can bring in some new players and new servers.
Readed all posts. I think the current state of NS website and community has some influence about NS population beign playing but thath influence is irrelevant IMHO. Counter-Strike doesn´t have an oficial CS community website. It´s just fan-sites. People just loose interest about the game. It´s a Half-Life <b>1</b> mod. Average Joe doesn´t really want to play anymore old hl mods. Thath is in my opinion what really shrink NS community. When UWE announce NS:S or NS2 the community will be alive again.
<!--quoteo(post=1571568:date=Oct 28 2006, 11:16 AM:name=Nero)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Nero @ Oct 28 2006, 11:16 AM) [snapback]1571568[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> When UWE announce NS:S or NS2 the community will be alive again.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
BadMouthIt ceases to be exclusive when you can have a custom member titlJoin Date: 2004-05-21Member: 28815Members
Now that the forums and everything are up again, there will almost be a confirmed surge in players. Pity I can't play at the moment. But once my exams are over, it's back to shooting skulks.
<!--quoteo(post=1569065:date=Oct 5 2006, 05:25 AM:name=lagger)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lagger @ Oct 5 2006, 05:25 AM) [snapback]1569065[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The only reason I'm not having as much fun as I did starting 2002 is that the game doesnt have that new feel to it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the main cause for this stems from the fact that vanilla ns pub servers are VERY limited in scope (eventually having a detrimental effect everywhere) where in there is very little involvement anywhere in the game, peoples drive to win or work as team seems totally nonexistent; To the point that the highest strategic epiphany is very little more than people moaning at each other to "ALL BUILD NODES" or "OMG SAVE THIS ITS UNDER ATTACK" with nil appreciation for positional strategy or squad tactics. Its not the quality of skill that worries me, that varies from player to player. Its the attitude that is the crushing blow to anyone looking for an alternative. For something more casual than scrimming and something more serious than "Barney the Dinosaur's public freak show". << if you agree with such sentiments then it is possible to do something about it by trying to promote teamplay in your everyday gaming, but as it falls on deaf ears 95% of the time (not to mention a lot of people capable of doing so are just plain ignorant <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />) this eventually gets killed out of every ns player in the world until youre just a dead shell of a person crying for better days and lost treasures of ns past >>
Lost treasures of NS past can be found in present day. You just need the right server. It was hard to find any community that offered all the types of ns that people loved. Aero came close before they shutdown.
I know it's hard to believe, but there are communities out there trying to keep ns alive for everyone, including the siege freaks, the buildmenu combat fanatics, and the old school ns lovers. NS will live on as long as those who want it to, support those who are trying to make it so.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1571860:date=Oct 31 2006, 10:51 PM:name=ZiGGY)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZiGGY @ Oct 31 2006, 10:51 PM) [snapback]1571860[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I think the main cause for this stems from the fact that vanilla ns pub servers are VERY limited in scope (eventually having a detrimental effect everywhere) where in there is very little involvement anywhere in the game, peoples drive to win or work as team seems totally nonexistent; To the point that the highest strategic epiphany is very little more than people moaning at each other to "ALL BUILD NODES" or "OMG SAVE THIS ITS UNDER ATTACK" with nil appreciation for positional strategy or squad tactics. Its not the quality of skill that worries me, that varies from player to player. Its the attitude that is the crushing blow to anyone looking for an alternative. For something more casual than scrimming and something more serious than "Barney the Dinosaur's public freak show". << if you agree with such sentiments then it is possible to do something about it by trying to promote teamplay in your everyday gaming, but as it falls on deaf ears 95% of the time (not to mention a lot of people capable of doing so are just plain ignorant <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />) this eventually gets killed out of every ns player in the world until youre just a dead shell of a person crying for better days and lost treasures of ns past >> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think your just playing on the wrong servers, see sig.
<!--quoteo(post=1572290:date=Nov 2 2006, 12:39 PM:name=BadMouth)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BadMouth @ Nov 2 2006, 12:39 PM) [snapback]1572290[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Hard to find a decent server in Asia. Most I see are full of plug-ins I don't like. And too many bots. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> korean servers are nice...sometimes <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1566868:date=Sep 19 2006, 02:49 PM:name=ZiGGY)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZiGGY @ Sep 19 2006, 02:49 PM) [snapback]1566868[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> my experience trying to play ns again after a damn long time **cant join server youre banned from this server** **kicked from server reason: YOURE BANNED** **blah blah blah**
so meh <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Same for me (but only when a try to join a french server) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
NS used to have the most players of any HL mod behind CS and DOD. It's now below TFC and HLDM. Of course, it's possible that those mods grew <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just looked at the stats for this game... and I'm utterly shocked! 300 players? Gosh, when I was at my peak playing this game, there were well over 800 players listed.
I think I know what happened.
The downtime, lack information, and the constant "don't worry, it'll be up soon" lies that were posted on the main page.
I know it affected me greatly. But now that the site is back, my interest for this game as well as the community has returned full force. See you in the servers!
<!--quoteo(post=1566868:date=Sep 19 2006, 08:49 AM:name=ZiGGY)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZiGGY @ Sep 19 2006, 08:49 AM) [snapback]1566868[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> my experience trying to play ns again after a damn long time **cant join server youre banned from this server** **kicked from server reason: YOURE BANNED** **blah blah blah**
so meh <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I quit playing NS about a year ago now.
Ive been banned from 47 or so servers.. I know what you mean... LOL <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wow.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":0" border="0" alt="wow.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1572478:date=Nov 2 2006, 03:51 PM:name=StryckNyne)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(StryckNyne @ Nov 2 2006, 03:51 PM) [snapback]1572478[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I quit playing NS about a year ago now.
Ive been banned from 47 or so servers.. I know what you mean... LOL <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wow.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":0" border="0" alt="wow.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1572491:date=Nov 2 2006, 04:34 PM:name=Exploder)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Exploder @ Nov 2 2006, 04:34 PM) [snapback]1572491[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Why did you get banned so many times? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Getting banned from a server, once you have reached a certain level of "skill" used to be pretty easy in NS. Want an instruction?
Join an extralevel co server Join aliens
unlock1 cele fade cara regen whatever you feel like it ... ... ...
Sometimes you manage to kill 3-5 marines in a row, at the start of the game. Thats more than 2 levels. With this kind of advance you can easily stay ahead of the marine players. Do this on a server, where the admins dont know you and you get the boot. I guess i got banned from about 20 servers. But I dont know which ones are still active <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
NOTE: Getting banned from an pure NS server is a completely diffrent matter and usually not achieved that easily. If you want the boot its either gotta be co or siege maps...
Comments
It's hard sifting through the plug ins and the CO_map servers to find a vanilla with actual players. Hell, I had thought the Seige maps were enough of a slug fest for the newbies to learn what combat and commanding were like...
Imagine my surprise when I find CO_ after coming back to the game earlier this year.
Secondly, we wera ll NSPlayers once, and we are still around. Make a game unique and interesting enough, and people will figure out how to play it. The problem NS has run into int he last two years is the growing feeling that the community wasn't being heard when it came to the games direction (especially the voice of the "old school NS players"), and when the site went down, the combined effect of false hopes of getting back up and the new players' inability to find a good resource for info caused NS to quickly lose traction instead of a gradual demise.
I reinstalled NS and played it the other night, with complete glee, but the problems rest with NS as they did when I left, and now, most of the people I loved playing the game with are no longer playing. As its doubtful new communities are going to appear, and kudos to those communities that have adapted and thrived, my days of NS are mostly over. I loved those 4+ years of forum sniffing for new info, and daily marathons (much to my wife's dismay) of back to back comm chair action, and I'm sorry to see it go, but the "silent year" and many other development issues have made me walk away.
I still hope the best for NS, whether it's NS:S or NS2, and I hope to play the future iterations. I am actually shocked at the newest thread asking the community which one it would like to see, and excited for it. I just hope, for the future of NS, it isn't too little, too late.
I can understand where you're coming from, but I think you're being rather overdramatic. You've hit the nail on the head as to how NS "lost traction" after the forums died. I think you're putting a little too much emphasis on the "Old School Players". There will be new "Old School Players" for NS2 or NS:S and any community that makes the transition will be a boon, but isn't completely neccesary. As you've alluded too, new players are the real life blood of a game. Older players tend to be more like antibodies, weeding out undesirable elements. True a good game needs both, but NS2/Source would be a new game and can take the time to develop that community. Basically as long as Flayra puts out a new game people will play it.
I wish you the best of luck with ID. I can see it was trying to fill a void and suddenly the void isn't quite as empty. If ID took the place of NS:S and Flayra got cracking on NS2 that would be the best of both worlds in my book.
I disagree, viper. I think that it's occasionally a good thing to point out the flaws without needing to offer solutions. I think it opens up the discussion to people who have good ideas, and allows the addressees to respond in their own way without needing to address all the points of the complainer's "solution".
Also, cutting down the morale of the people who can effectivly change things is, used judiciously, more effective than boosting their morale all the time, no matter what they do.
Understand, this the the NS forums. The people who are regulars here are the ones that love NS. Well reasoned criticism is going to be rare here, and I personally treasure it rather than trying to tell the criticiser that the dev team should be complimented all the time. I feel like you're one of the self-proclaimed "patriots" in the US right now that says people shouldn't criticize the president because we're in a time of war. They say the whole country should be behind him, right or wrong. To my mind, the better patriots are the ones who are willing to point out what the president it doing wrong, so that it can be fixed.
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I know that you have to point out whats wrong, otherwise the whole structure of the community, the game, and the development team would break down into chaos. That goes for presidency as well. My point was aimed solely at the way Swift delivered his opinions. It just seemed cold and nasty.
Your feeling was wrong anyway. I'm british born and bred, and I don't like Bush at all. I've heard him say too many dumb things. Although this war, I do support <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
NS 3.2 is almost complete, and we will be preparing to release it after the forums go public. Constellation testing of 3.2 will <b>probably</b> happen. We're not saying too much about what is in 3.2 just yet, but you can have a sneak peak at some info <a href="http://nsplayer.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=1120" target="_blank">on nsplayer.net</a>. We've been working on 3.2 on and off during the site downtime.
I still play NS more than any other game, with people that I get on very well with. Lately, I haven't been playing much due to the effort to get 3.2 100% complete.
It is likely that 3.2 will be the last patch on HL, although we won't make decisions until the appropriate time arrives.
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And hopefully there won't be any big balance or bug issues with it.
NS was once easy to pick up. Any game is easy to pick up when everyone is new. But these days whenever someone new joins a game they will understand the concept of it somewhat but just get smashed, eventually have a 0-10 score and quit in angst of how hard the game is.
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile!
note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash
Why all the doom and gloom people! Check these stats out for Sunday at 7:20 pst
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile!
note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash
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because CAL-NS just closed after 10 seasons. A smaller clan base usually means a smaller pub base.
because CAL-NS just closed after 10 seasons. A smaller clan base usually means a smaller pub base.
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I have noticed that many of the CAL clans had longtime players. Granted there were some newer player, and my info is out of date (I have been out of CAL for over a year), but I think it was the stagnate NS that killed CAL. I think the downtime of the forums played a large part in it too. If it was not for these forums, I would not have known about CAL. Even at the Ville with 3-4 DoD servers at a time, I rarely heard mention of CAL. So this tells me that the forum downtime may have accelerated the end of CAL (It was shrinking when I left, and the forums were still up).
I hope the devs will consider doing atleast some small updates after 3.2. The reason being that NS has a chance to pull a phonix routine if done right. If the release is done right, with the forums made public, and a good PR blitz on the HL news sites, we could see a decent revival in the next few months. However the key will be if the devs will keep supporting it until NS2/NS:S is ready. Otherwise it will just be a quick boost and die down again.
Why all the doom and gloom people! Check these stats out for Sunday at 7:20 pst
1) It is still the number ONE independent HL:1 mod, and laughs and any independent HL:2 mod
2) It is the number TWO most played independent mod of all games
3) If HL:NS was it's own retail game it would be number 24 in online popularity, considering there has been zero promotion of this game in years, thats incredibile!
note: these numbers don't include mmorpgs, and probably include a few bots, but other games probably have bots counted as well, so its a wash
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1. Sorry dude you are partially wrong there. Garry's Mod 9 has out done Natural Selection for quite a few months now.
2. Stats like just cause injust praise. The numbers are down, almost cut in half from a year ago. When the forums were up, there were more server communities, more competitive teams, and overall more involvement.
3. Thats an illogical statement, we have no idea how much NS's popularity would be if people had to pay a retail price to play it at all, for all we know very few would pay for it, or perhaps their numbers would double.
I have a theory on the state of NS. I think the main reason that everything went downhill as fast as it did was because of the lack of official forums, the most part where new players went with questions, comments, stories, etc...
The downtime of the forums violates Flayra's premise of the game. Flayra wanted to create an enjoyable social experience. Having the forums down takes a large chunk of the social aspect out of the game. There are few things I noticed from when the time the NS forums went down, to now.
1. Server communities started dying off.
Server communities, again which provide another social aspect of the game were dying off due to the lack of community promotion. People were leaving and not becomming replaced, as the game to many has become boring and unworthy of their time. Without new members to generate the much needed lifeblood of members, they collapsed. 3 off the top of my head are Fr31ns, Lunixmonster, and NSarmslab.
2. CAL-NS is diminished.
While CAL has always complained about how NS is dying, their complaints became legitimate once the recycled players (players from other teams) started moving on to other games. Again, the lack of official forums significantly hurt the way competitive players could generate interest into the league. Now CAL has determined that the NS division is not worth their time or status, and has shut down the league.
3. A combination effect, overall lower players.
NS used to average over 1,200 players at once when the forums were still around, now they average just barely 500. I would have to assume that some of this is due to other games coming out, but without the forums, it lost many people because this was were a lot of the social experience that Flayra wanted happen. I mean look there are over 30,000 members with over 1 million posts. The forums were quite active and lively, and then were just taken away by one swoop, not even to be allowed to be viewed by the public over a year later.
While there were a lot of people on the forums that provided a wealth of information, I just don't understand why the forum's could not have been reset, and are STILL not open to the public despite how bad the community needs this communication ground to survive, and maybe even thrive again.
Of course this is insider information which I have no access to, but I just have a feeling that the forums were not worth the financial burden it cost to run them. I'm sure constellation payments were few and far between, but I do not know if that was the reason.
Anyways, thats my theory, take it as you will.
Thane, what you are doing is looking at NS at a single point in time (i.e now) completely out of context, and saying hey its doing amazing just from those stats. Its analagous to looking at a company share price for one single day and thinking wow! thats worth a fair bit, its doing great. What you miss out however, is the fact that the company share price is on a steep downward path and in fact, investing in that company would be a very unwise decision.
But... to be more balanced about this.. what i just said doesnt make your stats irrelevant.. it is still significant that NS is still, at the moment, not as small as other mods... But just keep in mind the trend please, and ask yourself why the trend is like that.
I agree that the NS forum being down for so long and not having any news/updates for so long, had started to shatter my faith in the game. But I kept playing. I play both NS and CO.
There are lots of server still available. But I find that even with close to 50 different servers with pings lower then 200, there are lots of them which I don't like playing on. Those servers including usages of special plugins, bots playing or those that I have to wait like 5 min or more to download files (I do not like to wait more then 2 min to play on a game, besides by the time you finished downloading, the game is already to much advanced (especialy in CO)).
I sometimes play on special plugin servers (/buildmenu, /xmenu, rollthedice) but I get tired of them because I pesonnaly think they ruine (excuse my english) and off balance the NS game.
I did play a few times on bots types of games but I find them either very boring because the bots are very stupid, or that the bots accuracy is like 200% and move all over the place like crazy, therefore reducing your chances to kill them). I sometimes try to go on the bot team to try to make things more interesting, but most of these servers don't allow you to.
Also, on some occasions, I find servers where there are admin abuses, people that keep talking (won't shut up), voice spaming or those that because you killed one player, he goes yapping about hacking !!!
Overall, there are still alot of servers I play on. I even tried a new type that recently appeared : AVA (ALien Versus Alien). I found that kind of different but a bit confusing.
There is a an apparent less volume of players over the few months. But that could be simply because of a combination of players moving on to other games, players geting tired of NS, previous wave of newbies that gave up, life issues, ... who knows for sure.
I am looking forwared for an NS version that will look more realistic from a graphic point of view and using new physics. I don't personnaly care if its NS:Source or NS2. As long as it achieves what I hope for.
Here is to hoping the re-release of the site and forums can bring in some new players and new servers.
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tsa.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::tsa::" border="0" alt="tsa.gif" />
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tsa.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::tsa::" border="0" alt="tsa.gif" />
I think the current state of NS website and community has some influence about NS population beign playing but thath influence is irrelevant IMHO. Counter-Strike doesn´t have an oficial CS community website. It´s just fan-sites.
People just loose interest about the game. It´s a Half-Life <b>1</b> mod. Average Joe doesn´t really want to play anymore old hl mods. Thath is in my opinion what really shrink NS community.
When UWE announce NS:S or NS2 the community will be alive again.
When UWE announce NS:S or NS2 the community will be alive again.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Haha !
I think the main cause for this stems from the fact that vanilla ns pub servers are VERY limited in scope (eventually having a detrimental effect everywhere) where in there is very little involvement anywhere in the game, peoples drive to win or work as team seems totally nonexistent; To the point that the highest strategic epiphany is very little more than people moaning at each other to "ALL BUILD NODES" or "OMG SAVE THIS ITS UNDER ATTACK" with nil appreciation for positional strategy or squad tactics. Its not the quality of skill that worries me, that varies from player to player. Its the attitude that is the crushing blow to anyone looking for an alternative. For something more casual than scrimming and something more serious than "Barney the Dinosaur's public freak show".
<< if you agree with such sentiments then it is possible to do something about it by trying to promote teamplay in your everyday gaming, but as it falls on deaf ears 95% of the time (not to mention a lot of people capable of doing so are just plain ignorant <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />) this eventually gets killed out of every ns player in the world until youre just a dead shell of a person crying for better days and lost treasures of ns past >>
I know it's hard to believe, but there are communities out there trying to keep ns alive for everyone, including the siege freaks, the buildmenu combat fanatics, and the old school ns lovers. NS will live on as long as those who want it to, support those who are trying to make it so.
I think the main cause for this stems from the fact that vanilla ns pub servers are VERY limited in scope (eventually having a detrimental effect everywhere) where in there is very little involvement anywhere in the game, peoples drive to win or work as team seems totally nonexistent; To the point that the highest strategic epiphany is very little more than people moaning at each other to "ALL BUILD NODES" or "OMG SAVE THIS ITS UNDER ATTACK" with nil appreciation for positional strategy or squad tactics. Its not the quality of skill that worries me, that varies from player to player. Its the attitude that is the crushing blow to anyone looking for an alternative. For something more casual than scrimming and something more serious than "Barney the Dinosaur's public freak show".
<< if you agree with such sentiments then it is possible to do something about it by trying to promote teamplay in your everyday gaming, but as it falls on deaf ears 95% of the time (not to mention a lot of people capable of doing so are just plain ignorant <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />) this eventually gets killed out of every ns player in the world until youre just a dead shell of a person crying for better days and lost treasures of ns past >>
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I think your just playing on the wrong servers, see sig.
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me too. lol
Hard to find a decent server in Asia. Most I see are full of plug-ins I don't like. And too many bots.
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korean servers are nice...sometimes <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
my experience trying to play ns again after a damn long time
**cant join server youre banned from this server**
**kicked from server reason: YOURE BANNED**
**blah blah blah**
so meh
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Same for me (but only when a try to join a french server)
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
<a href="http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats" target="_blank">steam stats</a>
NS used to have the most players of any HL mod behind CS and DOD. It's now below TFC and HLDM. Of course, it's possible that those mods grew <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
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I just looked at the stats for this game... and I'm utterly shocked! 300 players? Gosh, when I was at my peak playing this game, there were well over 800 players listed.
I think I know what happened.
The downtime, lack information, and the constant "don't worry, it'll be up soon" lies that were posted on the main page.
I know it affected me greatly. But now that the site is back, my interest for this game as well as the community has returned full force. See you in the servers!
my experience trying to play ns again after a damn long time
**cant join server youre banned from this server**
**kicked from server reason: YOURE BANNED**
**blah blah blah**
so meh
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I quit playing NS about a year ago now.
Ive been banned from 47 or so servers.. I know what you mean... LOL <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wow.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":0" border="0" alt="wow.gif" />
I quit playing NS about a year ago now.
Ive been banned from 47 or so servers.. I know what you mean... LOL <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wow.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":0" border="0" alt="wow.gif" />
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Why did you get banned so many times?
Why did you get banned so many times?
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Getting banned from a server, once you have reached a certain level of "skill" used to be pretty easy in NS.
Want an instruction?
Join an extralevel co server
Join aliens
unlock1
cele
fade
cara
regen
whatever you feel like it
...
...
...
Sometimes you manage to kill 3-5 marines in a row, at the start of the game. Thats more than 2 levels. With this kind of advance you can easily stay ahead of the marine players. Do this on a server, where the admins dont know you and you get the boot. I guess i got banned from about 20 servers. But I dont know which ones are still active <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
NOTE:
Getting banned from an pure NS server is a completely diffrent matter and usually not achieved that easily.
If you want the boot its either gotta be co or siege maps...