no co_gameplay? sounds like shooting urself in teh foot..
jamangler
Join Date: 2009-05-07 Member: 67367Members
Join Date: 2009-05-07 Member: 67367Members
Will NS2 include Combat mode from NS?
No, we are not developing a Combat mode for NS2. Combat mode was intended to be a simplified version of NS to help introduce new players to the game. For NS2 we've decided to focus all of our efforts into creating a single game mode and make the game accessible in other ways. NS2 will include all of the modding tools necessary for the community to develop a Combat-like game mode as well as other variations on the gameplay.
source: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/faq/#faq-1003" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/faq/#faq-1003</a>
why? I mean seriously.. it even states "Combat mode was intended to be a simplified version of NS to help introduce new players to the game." -so in saying that then not putting a lot of co_ into NS2 you dont want to help introduce new players to the game? sounds bad for business.. i mean honestly with out co_ your going to lose alot of fan base, and i know you said people can make their own mods bla bla bla.. but that just kinda sounds lazy not to put good co gameplay into the game right off the bat.
I would strongly consider rethinking this decision. If you can invest solid co gameplay/maps into this game to give it more of a chance for it being a MAJOR success why not do it?
seems a little silly to me.. I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks of this?
No, we are not developing a Combat mode for NS2. Combat mode was intended to be a simplified version of NS to help introduce new players to the game. For NS2 we've decided to focus all of our efforts into creating a single game mode and make the game accessible in other ways. NS2 will include all of the modding tools necessary for the community to develop a Combat-like game mode as well as other variations on the gameplay.
source: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/faq/#faq-1003" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/faq/#faq-1003</a>
why? I mean seriously.. it even states "Combat mode was intended to be a simplified version of NS to help introduce new players to the game." -so in saying that then not putting a lot of co_ into NS2 you dont want to help introduce new players to the game? sounds bad for business.. i mean honestly with out co_ your going to lose alot of fan base, and i know you said people can make their own mods bla bla bla.. but that just kinda sounds lazy not to put good co gameplay into the game right off the bat.
I would strongly consider rethinking this decision. If you can invest solid co gameplay/maps into this game to give it more of a chance for it being a MAJOR success why not do it?
seems a little silly to me.. I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks of this?
Comments
And when the game comes out, you can write up a code for co_ gameplay.
I'd agree with what slayer said. CO is not the only way to introduce new people into NS. There are other mediums such as tutorials which UWE should design and if they don't, well, then something is seriously wrong. Besides, i think CO mode is not an 100% effective way of teaching newbies about NS. It is oversimplified and it only tells you how abilities/weapons/items work and not really about core gameplay.
I'd agree with what slayer said. CO is not the only way to introduce new people into NS. There are other mediums such as tutorials which UWE should design and if they don't, well, then something is seriously wrong. Besides, i think CO mode is not an 100% effective way of teaching newbies about NS. It is oversimplified and it only tells you how abilities/weapons/items work and not really about core gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hopefully the learning curve for NS2 isn't as intimidating as the original.
Combat kinda failed. It was just a shooting range.
People could play co_ maps for a year and still wouldn't know how to play ns_ maps.
And the ridiculous amount of plugins didn't help either.
I'm glad they don't waste their time on that.
Also, this forum needs a mod. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
So many threads that don't belong here.
I think the combat will be a lot easier to reconstruct than proper NS gameplay. Co has never been about in depth choises or finely crafted gameplay, while NS relies heavily on them in the latest version. At least I want the professional game designers and programmers to pay attention to the gameplay details, while the LUA script can easily add more action and fun plugins once the fanbase starts modding the game.
Just because CO was billed as a way to introduce people doesn't mean it's the best or only way to do that. Dropping CO doesn't mean they want it to be hard to get to grips with the game.
Idk i didnt really want to make this a big issue or debate but i guess i look at it this way.. take cs 1.6 for an example. There is a large audience of players in this game which prefer to waste time playing csdm, warcraft3 mod or even gun game mod. Ok so maybe its not the real game and its not the way it was intended to be played but lets face the facts because of these different "mods of play" (-call em what ever you like) cs is able to pleases to a larger number of people. Sure maybe some are silly or maybe you dont prefer to play anything but the original game type but at the very least you are able to build a larger fan base by offering a larger game to people.
Now i know what most of you are going to say: but those are mods and people could make the same for ns2 or well why dont you go play cs then bla bla bla.. but seriously you cant disagree with the fact that if there is a player base out there of even 10% that would rather waste time playing co (or maybe something different) than the reg play style its better to grab that 10% more players than not grab them at all..
IMO offer the full package game. Appeal to as many people as you can and i wouldn't count on the community to develop the gameplay which may open the door to a larger audience.
(sorry for the spelling and grammar was in a hurry)
Idk i didnt really want to make this a big issue or debate but i guess i look at it this way.. take cs 1.6 for an example. There is a large audience of players in this game which prefer to waste time playing csdm, warcraft3 mod or even gun game mod. Ok so maybe its not the real game and its not the way it was intended to be played but lets face the facts because of these different "mods of play" (-call em what ever you like) cs is able to pleases to a larger number of people. Sure maybe some are silly or maybe you dont prefer to play anything but the original game type but at the very least you are able to build a larger fan base by offering a larger game to people.
Now i know what most of you are going to say: but those are mods and people could make the same for ns2 or well why dont you go play cs then bla bla bla.. but seriously you cant disagree with the fact that if there is a player base out there of even 10% that would rather waste time playing co (or maybe something different) than the reg play style its better to grab that 10% more players than not grab them at all..
IMO offer the full package game. Appeal to as many people as you can and i wouldn't count on the community to develop the gameplay which may open the door to a larger audience.
(sorry for the spelling and grammar was in a hurry)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The FPS/RTS hybrid mode, if done very well (since this is a new game in comparison to NS1), will probably draw more players than having a generic team DM mode implemented.
And when the game comes out, you can write up a code for co_ gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't know why no one did a tutorial for ns1, some one should...
Someone did, although it was more like a demo than a tutorial.
And I'm glad that they'll be focusing their limited map making time on the NS maps. And I'm also glad that the community wont be fractured at launch. That can wait till the mods come out.
Funny you used that as an example, seeing as they're all mods. Including CS for that matter. The community created what it wanted, maybe by not adding a CO mode someone will create a mod that's a big improvement on CO. At least by not adding a mode to the game a few similar mods might get a fair chance of proving themselves, so the best one survives, not the one included in the game, let's call this natural selection of mods.
1) It made it much easier for people to jump in-jump out of an NS game without having to worry about strategizing, etc. ie. it didn't really capture the spirit of NS, but made it easier for those not familiar with NS to have some exposure to it.
2) It gave those that had played the standard maps over and over and over, for many years, something different to do - a diversion to keep NS fresh and alive.
Going into NS2, neither of the above are still applicable. New players will have a much easier ride this time round working out how NS plays, as many of the features have been streamlined and quirks of the Source engine ironed out with the UW proprietary engine. And with fresh gameplay features and fresh maps, veterans to NS have many years ahead of them to cut their teeth on new stuff <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Plus, with the extensive mod tools being made available to everyone, we can foresee a community-created combat mode, or something else entirely taking off in the relative future, without the devs wasting their own valuable time on it.
As always, people massively overstate the "bad NS learning curve." Given the size of the community NS was surprisingly easy to pick up and enjoy at both the casual and competitive levels. After playing the game for a few hours anything that could have been taught in a manual was naturally acquired.
When the mod started to dwindle in players (arguably due to rise in CO servers), more and more CLASSIC servers disappeared with CO servers staying around. And not the good kind of CO servers, like ones that had 100+ levels and a bunch of "NEO-TF" stuff.
This is my experience with North American/Canadian servers.
Only decent modded server during those times were by the man himself, Voogru, and heal armory servers.
That, or the game had already hit its peak and was on an outdated engine; an engine dominated by CS players who served to provide most of the new members after no new players were purchasing half-life; players who didn't want to play 4 man games of classic NS. Anyone that claims the size of the NS playerbase dwindled because of combat is a complete idiot.
Also..as for server mods. They are extremely important for maintaining a game like ns1. Not because they please the average player but because they please the people paying for the servers. Servers go a LONG way towards building and maintaining an FPS community. I guarantee that if only 1 gameplay mode exists, unmodded classic ns, almost all of the NS server would be shut down.
This is in regards to public servers and not locked servers. People started leaving because you couldn't make a full CLASSIC game.
For every 2 full CO servers, there was 1 barely full CLASSIC server. So then people started to leave, and the people who were left are the same people who think fy_iceworld is SRS BUSINESS.
There were a lot of Co servers because many people enjoyed playing Co.
People enjoyed playing Co, because most of the new players were migrants from CS (the game keeping the outdated half-life engine alive (and ns)). This does not mean they never played classic NS, most of them did.
I would go as far as to say, that in the long run, combat actually helped to maintain the number of players that played classic NS.
The claim that people quit because they "couldn't find a single classic server" is 100% bull######. During the entire lifetime of NS, and still today, there has always been classic only servers that maintained a constant player base ArmsLab, G4B2S, BAD, etc... Never has there been a point in the history of NS when a player could not find a single public classic server to play on.
Allowing server administrators to falsely populate their servers with bots and plugins is to blame for the frustration players may have seen trying to find a populated server, not combat.
It simply did not. You can argue that co was the more fun mode(which is personal preference), but Combat hurt Classic by being more convenient, not by being "more fun".
In Ye Olden Days, a classic server would get a few players who would mess around until the server could fill up. When combat came out people started switching their classic only servers to hyvrids with combat maps for less than X players. Once the map filled up it was supposed to switch to classic, but the problem is that some of those players came only for the combat, and weren't interested in Classic at all. When the server switched to a classic map, they would just leave and the server would be back to too few players to play classic. I still see this happen when I play today.
So no, combat didn't help maintain classic. This was its goal and it failed. You could argue it extended the lifetime of NS franchise, but that's not what you said, nor was that its goal.
No, thats exactly what I am saying. By extending the general lifetime of NS the number of people play classic NS is not ZERO. Many of those players that leave servers when the map changes to classic would otherwise not be playing NS at all. More likely, they needed to take a ######. You are massively exaggerating the numbers of players that play "only combat." It is far less significant than the benefit of maintaining a pub community and preventing servers from shutting down because they are never used.
Most importantly... NS2 needs to have a gameplay mode that is viable with less than 6 players. Without it, the game will collapse before its time.
Case #1: TF2. Nobody plays Arena mode. Game is not catered to pure deathmatch. Lets hope default NS2 will be that way. Assuming this game can get on STEAM and recieve plenty of PR either from the NS2 DEV Team or from Valve themselves, this game should retain plenty of players.
Besides, most FPS type games with "classes" are most fun with 8-12 players. Whereas DM type games like UT3 are most fun when it is 4 or less players.
If you want to play with less than 6 players, then I suggest some Map-makers create some maps that have no more than 5 rooms.
Hv = Hive
Cr = Central Resource
Ms = Marine Start
Rc = Resource Chamber
|| = Pathway
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@Hv-Hv-Hv@
@@@||@@@
@@@Cr@@@
@@@||@@@
@Rc-Ms-Rc@
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We will probably see a combat mode later down the road, community made if need be, so why lose sleep over it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />.
A good player can own combat just as much(if not more) as a classic server. I think you're giving CAL players way too much blame for killing NS. The attempted "newbie friendliness" of combat was 1.) you could try out the lifeforms and weapons and 2.) it was quicker so you didn't have to spend 15-20 mins to get there.
Competitive players can't kill the game when they get banned from most of the servers. I'm banned from lots of servers on five different accounts and you have people like Makavelli and Steve who are banned on even more accounts. It's the average players who lead to the death of classic unmodded NS.
In the original CO you could carry a team by yourself, which is why pretty much all the CO servers now have plugins which limit what an individual can achieve and make the game boring and anti-skill. Wall of OCs spam, spawn invul, weird upgrades like bloodlust and the cloaking in the middle of fights stuff, etc.
In classic the admins just ban you, fortunately no one made an xmenu conversion for normal mode.