Ns2 free weekend, sales rate?
oldassgamers
Join Date: 2011-02-02 Member: 80033Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2011-02-02 Member: 80033Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Comments
i don't think the sales will be high while the game is still effectively free.
Get them hooked, cut them off, let them stew for a bit, make them an offer, and give them some time pressure to take the deal.
Candy from a baby.
Except while taking those sweets from the baby (odd phrase, babies need sugar like they need a hole in the head), you're also giving them their favourite monkey toy to play with. It's win/win.
I feel like celebrating.
Apolodosh?
Midway down the page, there's a tab that says "Top Sellers".
Down to 4th now, we can't have that. Steal your friend's wallets people :P
Not too bad
UWE, I think you need to pay particular attention to this post! I totally agree with this statement. The veterans tried our best to make the games fun but its so hard with such total noobs! I think next time you do a free weekend, if you really want to capture these people and get them to buy it you need to find a way to give them a glimpse of what the game is REALLY meant to be like. I think very few noobs got to see this side of the game, and the awesomeness that lies within a properly matched game. I think if everyone got to see that, a lot more people would have bought the game.
In the future, I'm not sure what could be done, but an idea I had would be something like making it so noobs were stuck in "rookie" mode for at least 1 hour of gameplay. And while in rookie mode, they are forced to auto-connect to very specific servers where the game environment is a little more scripted. Possibly make it so if the commander is doing absolutely nothing, the game will step in and help him out a little - like drop a few res nodes and auto-instruct other players to go build them, auto-drop important structures but have a voiceover explain why it did that and why it is important. Sort of like a live tutorial.
And for the standard marines / skulks, it should be more interactive with helping them understand what is happening around them. If the commander drops something, it should pop up a little clip explaining what to do, and if they don't do it, temporarily take control of their character to show them how to do it once.
Also we need to make sure the rookies arent getting steamrolled by veteran players! I'm not sure you guys understand how crippling and demoralizing to a new player. I personally saw dozens of noobs get stomped again and again by a few veterans until they just rage quit. About 25% of them even typed in or spoke on their mic something to the extent of "this game is terrible, I just die instantly" and they rage quit with a record of 0 & 25 and probably never came back. I think it would be critical to force players to stay in these rookie servers for an hour or 2 so that they can learn to play with other rookies and not get steam rolled so badly. Maybe even throw in a couple bots on each team that would roam the map and do constructive things like build structures and gorge up areas but not really be that effective at killing anybody - but they would at least allow the game to progress somewhat normally in the absence of any veterans.
This would be a good idea, Rookie ONLY servers that have AI to help people out. I disagree that the minimum time for rookie mode should be 1 hour though, more like a week.
Being forced into rookie only servers should only last a day though, after that let them join whatever they want, but keep that rookie mode on!
I understand completely that UE wants to cater to the professional leagues, but at the same time they need to find a balance with the casual player as well.
At this stage where so many people with zero experience play the game simultaniously it's NOT about balance but all about experience. There's nothing UWE can do to balance out a rookie that has just started and doesn't know the maps nor benefits of weapons/upgrades/evolutions against a vet with all that knowledge and then some. Please let us not turn this into yet another balance thread.
The game is hard to learn.
The game is hard to play.
The game is hard to run.
These factors make the player base fewer but that of a more seasoned mature variety.