Organised Play Systems - Natural Selection 2

SystemSystem Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
edited March 2013 in NS2 General Discussion

imageOrganised Play Systems - Natural Selection 2

Natural Selection 2 is best played in an organised manner. Here at Unknown Worlds, we are working on a system to make finding that play much easier.

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  • HughHugh Cameraman San Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    Bump to start comment thread
  • SquishpokePOOPFACESquishpokePOOPFACE -21,248 posts (ignore below) Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165262Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Sounds like it could be an integration of ENSL right into the game, like the twitter updates, correct?
  • RobbyRobby Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
    edited March 2013
    This looks like it could also provide an in-game clan system like in SC2. Either way, the work you're doing could really take NS2 to the next level in immersion, fun, competition and even sales. NS2 is a team game, but this actually takes a long time for many players to realize and/or accept. Enthusing rookies to participate in a team because it makes it so much more enjoyable, rather than because they have to in order to have a chance of winning, would make the whole player-base better much faster, thus more enjoyable for everyone to face.
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    It's great (GREAT!) that you're thinking about the problem in a structured way and are looking at it from a "what kind of tools can we provide" perspective.

    But if you don't also provide at least ONE solid working instance of an actual structured play scheme which a) everyone can instantly understand and b) appeals to and satisfies the needs of the majority of players, I am afraid all the tool-building will be for naught.

    People want matchmaking. Or league play. Or tournaments. Or ladders. Or SOMETHING. They don't want tools that let them build their own whatever-it-is-es. I mean, sure, some of us want those tools very badly and will be quite excited when you provide them. But most of the players just want to play, not design structured play structures.
  • Rich_Rich_ Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167152Members
  • bizbiz Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167386Members
    looking forward to it.

    imo, the focus of this should be on making more of the games fun. I think anyone who has played the game long enough knows that NS2 has the potential to deliver amazing experiences - the problem is that they occur too infrequently

    what NS2 lacks is a quick way to just play a game that has a high chance of being fun. I think just playing a game from start to finish with somewhat fair teams would meet most players' definition of fun.

    making fair teams isn't an easy task, but as long as they are close and everyone wins around half the time it should be a huge improvement over status quo. Also, you'll need 1 dedicated commander role for each game, especially at lower skill levels where not having an experienced commander = autoloss.
  • VirsoulVirsoul Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151977Members, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Onos
    This is amazing. Really excited to see that something like this is in the works!
  • ResRes Join Date: 2003-08-27 Member: 20245Members
    edited March 2013
    I read this and all I can think of is this is just development time wasted to cater to the small competitive playerbase this game has and doesn't provide any benefit for the much larger base of casual players.



    If this system is meant to try and turn some of the casual players to more competitive ones, then you are in for a big surprise when it doesn't happen.
  • OnosFactoryOnosFactory New Zealand Join Date: 2008-07-16 Member: 64637Members
    Loved the cosplay all round, NS2 is getting big, a 90,000 person show! Even the Indie 500s only max 200,000.

    Sabot? A device intended to guide a round of certain caliber through a barrel of larger caliber?
  • SteamyTacoSteamyTaco Join Date: 2012-03-06 Member: 148274Members
    Just a question, how will the API look like?
    Is it gonna host all the data on your servers?
  • NordicNordic Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    I don't really like playing competitively. Pub play can be a lot of fun but are often pretty pretty lackluster. To put lack luster in context, it sometimes takes me an hour or so with a few matches to find a server a server where I just have fun. I honestly can not say why certain rounds I have fun and others I do not but I think it has a lot to do with organization. A little goes a long way. This sounds like a system to meet half way between pub and competitive.
  • GoE_NiGoE_Ni Join Date: 2013-01-31 Member: 182674Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    For me it all depends on the people you play with. Over time I added several friends from the olden days (NS1) and people I met in game to my Steam friendlist. We like to invite each other to servers we like. Since we generally like good team play we, end up on the same servers. I mostly play on the same 4-5 servers. Over time you are part of the community of this server. A system to make it easier to find like minded players, would be a good thing for sure.

    What would be awesome is an easy way to add a server you're currently playing on to your favorites. Haven't found a way to do this.
  • driestdriest Germany Join Date: 2013-02-21 Member: 183251Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    edited March 2013
    I think the system is a great idea and has the chance to provide tools to remove two core problems in public play:

    1. Disorganized Play
    2. Unfair Teams

    Problem 1 should go away pretty simple by having an organized match, just make sure the system has something like gathers, were people can join an organized match easily.

    Problem 2 requires something like k/d ratio or point tracking, so players can see how strong the teams are before the game starts. For commanders this could be won/lost games.

    So if you were to include a gather style system the creator of a gather match could then set requirements, like a minimum ratio of win/lost for commanders or that teams should not have a balance difference greater than x.

    This would allow players that spontaneously want to play a game with other people on their skill levels to have a few rounds of instant fun. It will still allow others to play public, it will even improve the game for them because the stronger players will probably not be there anymore and thus not stack teams ;)
  • RippsyRippsy Join Date: 2013-01-16 Member: 179921Members
    <off topic> I think the only reason you called it this is because it dismantles any thread started with "OP" in it ;)
    <on topic> Looks very interesting, looking forward to seeing this implemented and in action!
  • wirywiry Join Date: 2009-05-25 Member: 67479Members
    inb4 facebook integration

    Kidding, fingers crossed it turns out as awesome as it sounds.
  • NeokenNeoken Bruges, Belgium Join Date: 2004-03-20 Member: 27447Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester
    Sabot, a system so awesome it'll pierce right through any criticism and blow our minds.
  • YoungTrotskyYoungTrotsky Join Date: 2007-03-09 Member: 60307Members
    edited March 2013
    Res wrote: »
    I read this and all I can think of is this is just development time wasted to cater to the small competitive playerbase this game has and doesn't provide any benefit for the much larger base of casual players. If this system is meant to try and turn some of the casual players to more competitive ones, then you are in for a big surprise when it doesn't happen.
    I think you really underestimate the size of the competitive scene in NS2. Before the free weekend the number of concurrent NS2 players hadn't hit 2000 for over 2 weeks. Competitive players are in general, very active, I don't think it is unrealistic to say that over 50% of them play every day. The ENSL has around 75 teams currently signed up, each team with around 8 players = 600 people. Considering the total player count never hit 2000 for 2 weeks before the free weekend (which is sad because NS2 is awesome), I hope you would agree that the competitive scene is not that small, I would guess that around 10% of players either play, cast or follow the comp scene, and many more are interested in getting involved or at least seeing it do well.

    I also don't see what is so wrong about rewarding the game's most dedicated followers, which I think competitive play has a much higher proportion of than the public-only playerbase, especially when the devs have made it perfectly clear they do not intend to ever balance the game towards comp play at the expense of public play.

    The game is already in good shape in terms of performance and I'm sure the devs know what they are doing in terms of maximising gains in that direction while also improving other aspects of the game, like this. If done well, this could really improve the NS2 experience and that will mean more players, more money for UWE, and more improvement.
  • RoobubbaRoobubba Who you gonna call? Join Date: 2003-01-06 Member: 11930Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    Trotsky's hit the nail on the head there. I'm not a comp player myself, but I do try to play ENSL gathers where I can. Even there, it's been a while for personal reasons (like not being able to commit to a game in case I need to settle my baby when the Mrs is out, for example) - ie I'm mostly a pub gamer. That, and many of my friends aren't confident enough to try ENSL gathers yet, so when they're on I'm exclusively playing on pubs. I still fall into that ~10%+ that 'play, cast or follow the comp scene' though. I think that real number could be a good degree higher than 10% in fact. That's pretty remarkable if you look at other competitive FPS games...

    I strongly welcome this move by UWE - and I think the timing is absolutely spot on.
  • TheckTheck Join Date: 2010-02-17 Member: 70611Members
    edited March 2013
    As someone stated, I think it's better to focus in the team balance issue before developing any match tool. The ladder system or something that will allow to balance teams in pub servers.

    Another feature could be a filter in the server list to join a match that needs a "commander", or a "support role" (gorge / welder marine), maybe some sort of lobbies instead the ready room to filter those games that have not been started yet.

    Something I've seen a lot of times are servers that empty after a map change because there's no commander, the people tend to go for another server. Maybe a vote option like "Request a commander" that'll highlight this server to "commander players"*

    * - This will need profiles as you stated, where you can mark what kind of roles you play (commander, alien, marine, support, attack, etc.). But it'll be better if you compute it based on the player games (how often it plays as commander, buy welders, go gorge, etc.).

    Then you can have a higlighted part of the server list where you can see somthing like:
    Server Name - 14/16 players (6A | 8M ) - Need an alien commander
  • TharosTharos Join Date: 2012-12-18 Member: 175439Members
    It will be nice if we can host some of these competitive games on our servers
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    Whatever this turns out to be, I hope that it will make it faster and easier for pub players to play a game of their preferred playercount with willing and competent commanders and evenly skill-matched teams.

    If it doesn't do that, it should. If it can't do that, then something else needs to.
  • reichsreichs Join Date: 2005-01-31 Member: 39245Members, Constellation
    Scrajm wrote: »
    An inbuilt "gather" system could do both of these! First of all, just imagine if you could boot up the game, invite your freinds to create a squad or whatever they call it, and then we press like "start ranked game". We team up with some random ppl, choose com and then we go. Easy as that. Afterwards we go to ns2stats (which is fixed by then, and only shows ELO for ranked games) and talk about the games, comparing stats.

    This. If Sabot can do this it would be awesome. It would go a long way to make competitive games easier to get into for new players. Hopefully this can increase the overall number of NS2 players as well!
  • YoungTrotskyYoungTrotsky Join Date: 2007-03-09 Member: 60307Members
    Yeh, one of the best things about SC2 or DOTA2 is that you don't need a full team to play with your group of friends. If Sabot (see Hugh, we're using it) let you make a party with 1 or more friends and then search for 6v6, 8v8, whatever game, maybe with map vetoes like in SC2, then join you up with other parties or individuals to make a full team and use your hidden ELO rating to match you up against another team of similar level - ah, bliss. I think much more people would try organised play if it was this easy and then more people would meet each other and make teams to play in organised tournaments. Gives me shivers just thinking about it, or maybe that's just because it's freezing even though it's the end of bloody March!
  • reichsreichs Join Date: 2005-01-31 Member: 39245Members, Constellation
    edited March 2013
    Exactly, to play an ENSL gather you have to sign up on a 3rd party website and join the gather there. I see three "problems" with this:

    1) It's hard(er) to find the ENSL page.
    2) It feels like a bigger step than just pressing a "play ranked game" button ingame would.
    3) There is no good way to gauge skill or balance teams in the ENSL gathers (although it usually turns out pretty good anyways)
  • Racer1Racer1 Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9615Members
    You say "All of this from within inside the game". So, does that mean no out-of-game management of competitions?
  • Madd0gMadd0g Join Date: 2012-12-24 Member: 176116Members
    Omg UWE <3!
    About the system:
    I think you should only start with one format(6v6 for example)for quick scrims and on top of that maybe add a few more option like ladder play and sheduled matches.
    The problem with multiple formats for quick scrims would be that the players would be too splited and finding match would be too hard(it's exactly what happened when ESL VS tryed to introduce 8v8 and 3v3 formats in bf3).
  • Sgt_BonerSgt_Boner Join Date: 2013-03-27 Member: 184469Members
    ELO/ranking/big dick status should be individual for both aliens and marines and then added together, or given some weighted average like .6(greater score)+.4(lesser score) between the two. I just think there are plenty of people who are marginally to significantly better at one side or the other (myself definitely included) even just on any given day. Also please make the ranking view-able? at least privately if not view-able by everyone, I hate magic numbers in games.

    I also FULLY support this move, think this will be a fantastic addition to NS2 and really make this an even bigger and more competitive game. Hopefully also making it more accessible to a lot of new people as well. I know I got stomped a lot (especially as alien) when I first started this game and I think this will make it easier for players to learn when they first start.

    SABOT-Seriously About Building On Teamwork
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