madsauceSan FranciscoJoin Date: 2013-06-02Member: 185442Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica PT Lead
Supporting a game I regularly play ☑
Supporting any model besides the Free To Play and in-your-face Micro Transactions ☑
No idea if they'll cover their costs with this fund raiser, but I think it is more important to have the goal be a meaningful number than it is an attainable number. It will motivate people more betters
i also think that 550000 is a too big goal. we still need 500000 to complete. so if everyone would buy shadow we still need around 6666 buyer!! and only if everyone purchases 75 dollar.
(okay i am from germany. 75 dollars are 56 euro. so in that case i only payed 56 instead of 75 ) ). but i dont think that the playerbase is that big that we can reach that goal. maybe we have 6700 players, but i dont think everyone would spent more money
I'll be the first one to say "I told you so" to all the people who disagreed with my post when , after some time passes, they still haven't reached $550k.
So many of your posts make more sense to me after reading
In the 9-10 years I've had steam, there's only 1 game that I've actually bought.... All the rest of my games have been either gifts or I traded for them or I won them in a contest
Hi our DLCs have been entirely free unlike any other game out there for past years. You pay 0 for new content (2 maps and gamebreaking changes to the core mechanics of NS2)
To give you 2 free dlcs it costs 550.000$ - since we paint up the picture of being the good guys here, may we please have that amount of money for the free dlc you got now?
haha well to be honest now. Unlike other games we get 1 map, i would love more official maps, im already blown away of the artistic direction and theme and cannot wait to see more.
i could think just 10$ for 1 map is quite fair thinking price for around 6 maps in tripple-A titles goes for around 15$ now to be nice i think i could easily buy 10 maps during lifetime of NS2.
But with the amount of official mappers you have that would take 5 years to make (calculation based on the 2 maps in 1 year 2013) and with the 1000 current hardcore fans and legit players you have now 1000 x 15 not including the rookie weekend sales would give you 15.000$ in one day, 2 map packs 30.000$ - so where does this crazy 550.000$ fall into place? the sales you never got? Even if you are 10 guys that 550.000$ would be 150$ to spend EVERY single day of an entire year!!!
If you use 50$ per day for Coffee/Food (or five star resturants) then the other 100$ (x10) for the electrical bills per day would that just about cover what you are making up? that is 365.000 for electricity internet and rent in a year or 30.416$/month which still sounds like a made up number to me. Even if you went out there like EVERY SINGLE GAME and said hey new content out 15$ a pop that would not sum up for the crazy bills you are making up. So why try sound like the good guys here is it for the sake of big donations?
Instead of all this balance crap can you stop changing the game every 2 weeks and hire a crew of mappers to release enough variety with a regular price tag on every map to keep the fans playing it instead of trying to sound all good guy and milk us for all we got. Most games have more than like 5 maps and less than like 254 packs of changes done to it. sometimes 60 at a time.
I know becouse it is one persons opinion it is as always going to get flagged as spam or abuse from those who disagrees instead of pressing disagree button above the post. That is maby the price some have to pay for typing some text in a box. free dlc sounds good in theory but to be reasonable not even 100$ per map will be making up for the crazy numbers UWE is making up.
I would probably take the game free to play. Make many more cosmetic skins, not only for player characters, but weapons and all alien lifeforms. Sell them for $5-10.
Sorry but I refuse to sit here and let you make a mockery of what you'd like NS2 to be. F2Pay has ruined gaming, that's what makes NS2 so great. Shove your hats and your silly ideas.
If they need to raise $550,000 then we'll as a community give them $550,000 one way or another. I preordered the game as soon as it was preorderable, well before it was in a working state. I am one of the early NS1 players, and have stuck by this game despite it being practically dead many times due to difficulties.
Assuming they charge for only visual things, they'd be better off letting you pick your own price.
I would probably take the game free to play. Make many more cosmetic skins, not only for player characters, but weapons and all alien lifeforms. Sell them for $5-10.
Sorry but I refuse to sit here and let you make a mockery of what you'd like NS2 to be. F2Pay has ruined gaming, that's what makes NS2 so great. Shove your hats and your silly ideas.
.
Oh please. Charging for cosmetic items has not ruined gaming. The only time F2P is bad is when there is no way to reach the 'top' so to speak without buying stuff. Otherwise, games such as TF2, Dota 2, Battleforge or Savage 2, F2P has only helped gaming.
I don't get why they need that much money anyway.
Let's say they work with 10 people for 12 months.
550 000 / 10 = 55 000
55 000 / 12 = 4583 a month per person!
This is without electricity, food, airline tickets etc. but still..
Anyway i'm happy to give. And i hope UWE still exists after a year so on the other hand it's not that much money
This just seems wrong, the implication of raising all the money via donation implies that sales arnt funding the game... Shouldn't some portion of past present and future sales contribute to the cost of the company?
People are buying the game as a work in progress as such while a bulk of my money is paying you for work you have done, some of it is for work you will be doing.
Every one who buys after today is buying "NS2 reinforced" so they are also paying for you past 6 months worth of work... Arnt they?
Side note I'm a black armor supporter with the intention of buying shadow, I have loved NS for 10+ years and have 3k+ hours between ns1/ns2. So I'm ok with the idea of giving them some money in gratitude. But this whole campaign seems more like an ultimatum... Don't like that.
We do not want to make it seem like an ultimatum, we are just trying to be honest with our community. It is true that sales alone are not funding development of the game, which is not unusual for a game that has been out almost a year, and the reason why so many companies either charge for DLC updates or stop work on their game and move onto another project. We would like to continue to update and improve NS2, but the costs to do so are real and substantial. We are trying the donation route out as an experiment, and you can view it as donating for the content that went into Reinforced, donating towards future updates, or just donating as a way to say thanks for NS1/NS2. Or you can choose to not donate at all, and continue to enjoy playing NS2, which is perfectly acceptable and understandable.
1. Not putting Reinforcement Program link in big noticeable letters on the main game screen so people don't have to dig through the front page to find it.
2. Having no level between Onos badge and Shadow badge. So basically I would have felt comfortable donating $200+, but when I came on the Onos badges were already sold out and the next level was..... $8000. LOL
1. This is something we are working on doing. Adding working links to the main menu is actually not a trivial task, as we don't currently have that set up in game, and with out recent patches we've been focused on trying to address the issues with the game that the latest update has caused. Hopefully this will be something we'll be adding into an upcoming patch soon.
2. This is something else we are discussing, and trying to figure out. We were caught off guard with how fast Onos sold out. This is our first attempt at this donation program, so it is a learning experience. However, it is also not a trivial thing to just add more tiers. Every tier has to have unique rewards, and those all take time and money to develop and fullfill.
I am surprised that no e-mail has been sent out in regard to this patch, discount and free weekend. Awareness is so important.
That is coming. Things were pretty crazy leading up to the Reinforced update, with the European tournament, getting set for PAX, making trailers and putting together the donation program, and a multitude of other tasks. In the upcoming week there will be a much greater focus on spreading the word through every means possible.
I for one think the donation model is the best possible route for further funding at this point in NS2s ongoing development. I really hope it hits the final target.
Its a shame sales of the game since reinforced launch aren't also visible. I'd certainly be interested in seeing how much a free weekend on steam can generate for a developer. Can the existing community generate more money than the noob scum fresh meat!?
I would be more inclined to spend more money on NS2 if I had a better idea of the developer's intentions with future patches. Honestly I don't want any new units or weapons added to the game at all. The only things I really want to see are small incremental balance changes, optimization and new maps. I think it makes the most sense to improve the engine if UWE's next project is going to use it as well, the investment could benefit two games. But again, it would be nice to know what they are hoping to accomplish.
I would be more inclined to spend more money on NS2 if I had a better idea of the developer's intentions with future patches. Honestly I don't want any new units or weapons added to the game at all. The only things I really want to see are small incremental balance changes, optimization and new maps. I think it makes the most sense to improve the engine if UWE's next project is going to use it as well, the investment could benefit two games. But again, it would be nice to know what they are hoping to accomplish.
Balance is going to be done in much smaller incremental changes from here on out. The game really needed some shakeup, but admittedly having a patch with huge changes like 250 followed shortly after by Reinforced was a bit painful, and certainly not something we plan on repeating. But we feel the game is in a much better place now, and its more a matter of tweaking and refining moving forward.
As far as future new content, the biggest thing would be new maps. Certainly there is going to continue to be a lot of work done on the optimization side, especially on DX11. It is more efficient then DX9 so we should be able to get better performance out of it, and it doesn't seem to suffer the same lag/stutter issues. We also want to improve loading times. Additionally we are going to be working on the mac port, and while that might not directly impact a lot of people here, more potential NS2 players is always a good thing for the game.
There are still plenty of other bugs we want to squash, annoying usability things we want to improve, and generally just try and refine what we currently have.
All of that said, however, to get the most out of a content patch from a PR standpoint, and to bring back players who maybe have moved onto other things, we do tend to need some additional high profile features. Those sorts of things do tend to be new weapons, units, and abilities. So, I imagine there will still be some of that as well, but it certainly is getting harder and harder to add things which the game actually needs and benefits from, so we will have to put a lot of thought into it.
Can the existing community generate more money than the noob scum fresh meat!?
At the moment the answer is no But I'm sure once the free weekend and sale are over and the steam sales slow down again, you guys can show them up with the donations :P
I would probably take the game free to play. Make many more cosmetic skins, not only for player characters, but weapons and all alien lifeforms. Sell them for $5-10.
Sorry but I refuse to sit here and let you make a mockery of what you'd like NS2 to be. F2Pay has ruined gaming, that's what makes NS2 so great. Shove your hats and your silly ideas.
If they need to raise $550,000 then we'll as a community give them $550,000 one way or another. I preordered the game as soon as it was preorderable, well before it was in a working state. I am one of the early NS1 players, and have stuck by this game despite it being practically dead many times due to difficulties.
Assuming they charge for only visual things, they'd be better off letting you pick your own price.
You clearly have a stigma about free to play games, which I don't share. Like any kind of business model, there are good implementations and poor implementations. Games which only sell cosmetic items, like DOTA 2, are great in a free to play environment. Team Fortress 2 went free to play after years of being a $20 game. The player base exploded in size.
I think the days of one-time purchase multiplayer games are dwindling, at least on PC. If you want your game to reach a wide audience, free to play is the way to go. It's the reality of modern game development.
I'm not saying UWE needs to make the switch tomorrow, but I think it's something they should prepare to do in a year or two years. Eventually sales are going to decline and the existing player base will grow tired of the game. How do you get fresh blood in then?
I'm not saying UWE needs to make the switch tomorrow, but I think it's something they should prepare to do in a year or two years. Eventually sales are going to decline and the existing player base will grow tired of the game. How do you get fresh blood in then?
Bikini Female Marine + Jiggle Physics.
Also, Gorge Plushie with attachable Babbler add-ons.
Seriously, though, F2P with a payable cosmetics market is hard for UWE simply because the infrastructure wasn't made for that in mind (when they first started writing the code probably a good 3-4 years ago). It's why you don't have to register for accounts and can play the game instantly. Maybe in 1-2 years they'll be ready, but it'd be a huge switch and patch.
I know a decent amount about crowdfunding, and yeah the Onos thing was a big mess up. Here's why. You generally want a minimum of three tiers of pledge levels. You have the $20-$30 "normal reward" pledge level that usually gets the most hits. You have a $40-$65 "premium" level for people who essentially want to get the "special edition" of your product. Then you have the $200-$300 "get everything" pledge levels for the crowdfunders that are really into the game and have the money to spend and just want all the cool stuff that exists for it.
Those are the "main" levels. Of course you want the cheap $5-$10 tiers for people who can't afford to throw down $25, and you want the $1 pledges for the emotional support, and you want the $500 and $1000+ pledge levels "just in case." But the three in the first paragraph are the main ones.
SO. By limiting your $200-$300 pledge level to 25 people, you're basically cutting out one of the main three required pledge tiers almost completely. Crowdfunding definitely IS a learning experience and far worse mistakes than this have been made.
And while I'm at it, UWE please add some way to prevent stacked teams, this isn't 2003 where I'm content to play a game for hours on end hoping for "a couple balanced matches". Lol.
I don't get why they need that much money anyway.
Let's say they work with 10 people for 12 months.
550 000 / 10 = 55 000
55 000 / 12 = 4583 a month per person!
This is without electricity, food, airline tickets etc. but still..
San Francisco development costs are more expensive than you realize
550K doesn't get you anywhere close to that much
It's very likely that they shipped the game and ran this live beta that we're still in because they couldn't keep covering dev costs...
The only way out of the hole is to just fix the engine, and then justify the expense by shipping a different multiplayer FPS on it
don't think they're capable of fixing the engine or they would have done it by now
I'm not saying UWE needs to make the switch tomorrow, but I think it's something they should prepare to do in a year or two years. Eventually sales are going to decline and the existing player base will grow tired of the game. How do you get fresh blood in then?
Bikini Female Marine + Jiggle Physics.
Also, Gorge Plushie with attachable Babbler add-ons.
Seriously, though, F2P with a payable cosmetics market is hard for UWE simply because the infrastructure wasn't made for that in mind (when they first started writing the code probably a good 3-4 years ago). It's why you don't have to register for accounts and can play the game instantly. Maybe in 1-2 years they'll be ready, but it'd be a huge switch and patch.
You have to have a Steam account to play. So all they have to do is make it so anyone can download it on Steam without paying.
The technical aspect of it is the easiest part.
They would probably want to create a more in-depth menu space for customizing your player character, so you could see how the different armors look and such.
I would be more inclined to spend more money on NS2 if I had a better idea of the developer's intentions with future patches. Honestly I don't want any new units or weapons added to the game at all. The only things I really want to see are small incremental balance changes, optimization and new maps. I think it makes the most sense to improve the engine if UWE's next project is going to use it as well, the investment could benefit two games. But again, it would be nice to know what they are hoping to accomplish.
Balance is going to be done in much smaller incremental changes from here on out. The game really needed some shakeup, but admittedly having a patch with huge changes like 250 followed shortly after by Reinforced was a bit painful, and certainly not something we plan on repeating. But we feel the game is in a much better place now, and its more a matter of tweaking and refining moving forward.
As far as future new content, the biggest thing would be new maps. Certainly there is going to continue to be a lot of work done on the optimization side, especially on DX11. It is more efficient then DX9 so we should be able to get better performance out of it, and it doesn't seem to suffer the same lag/stutter issues. We also want to improve loading times. Additionally we are going to be working on the mac port, and while that might not directly impact a lot of people here, more potential NS2 players is always a good thing for the game.
There are still plenty of other bugs we want to squash, annoying usability things we want to improve, and generally just try and refine what we currently have.
All of that said, however, to get the most out of a content patch from a PR standpoint, and to bring back players who maybe have moved onto other things, we do tend to need some additional high profile features. Those sorts of things do tend to be new weapons, units, and abilities. So, I imagine there will still be some of that as well, but it certainly is getting harder and harder to add things which the game actually needs and benefits from, so we will have to put a lot of thought into it.
Can the existing community generate more money than the noob scum fresh meat!?
At the moment the answer is no But I'm sure once the free weekend and sale are over and the steam sales slow down again, you guys can show them up with the donations :P
I'm glad to hear you guys are going to concentrate on performance improvements from now on. The only way you are going to get the old players back is by word of mouth, their friends telling them that NS2 has sorted out its performance problems!
Other things you guys need to stop doing is over powering the Aliens. Right now an experienced player playing as an Onus can survive for ages and dominate the entire marine team with its instant kill gorge attack.
Bone Wall wasn't necessary in my opinion as the Onus was already pretty powerful as it was. On a plus side, the Fade doesn't appear to be the most over powered Alien now.
Other recent changes have left me baffled, you've taken away the Marine commanders ability to drop exo's but you've left the Alien commander the ability to drop Onus eggs. How is this fair balanced game play exactly?
It was already unfair in the previous patches because Marine commander could only drop a single mini gun exo yet the Aliens could drop a fully functioning Onus but now it's even worse.
The over heat on the mini guns is extreme now and you've reduced the armour to the point where a skilled Skulk can take down an exo with only 6 bites.
Please restore the ability for Marine commanders to drop exo's again, it's only fair.
Bringing the Onus stomp shock wave radius back was a big step backwards as well.
Overall, i'm getting sick of updates favouring the Aliens every time, it should be balanced.
I'm not saying UWE needs to make the switch tomorrow, but I think it's something they should prepare to do in a year or two years. Eventually sales are going to decline and the existing player base will grow tired of the game. How do you get fresh blood in then?
Bikini Female Marine + Jiggle Physics.
Also, Gorge Plushie with attachable Babbler add-ons.
Seriously, though, F2P with a payable cosmetics market is hard for UWE simply because the infrastructure wasn't made for that in mind (when they first started writing the code probably a good 3-4 years ago). It's why you don't have to register for accounts and can play the game instantly. Maybe in 1-2 years they'll be ready, but it'd be a huge switch and patch.
You have to have a Steam account to play. So all they have to do is make it so anyone can download it on Steam without paying.
The technical aspect of it is the easiest part.
They would probably want to create a more in-depth menu space for customizing your player character, so you could see how the different armors look and such.
lol what are you talking about, this patch was great for marines.
-can get out of exos (meaning self-repair, able to build things, etc)
-dual railguns which are OP as shit
-increased strafe jump speed completely negates backpedal speed penalty
-amazing jetpacks that fly forever
-grenades
-cat packs
-phase gate prediction (aka no more half second of being frozen coming out of a phase)
-no fade egg drops til bio 9
lol what are you talking about, this patch was great for marines.
-can get out of exos (meaning self-repair, able to build things, etc)
-dual railguns which are OP as shit
-increased strafe jump speed completely negates backpedal speed penalty
-amazing jetpacks that fly forever
-grenades
-cat packs
-phase gate prediction (aka no more half second of being frozen coming out of a phase)
-no fade egg drops til bio 9
Dual rails and grenades are shit, jetpacks are now what they should be.
Everything else you mentioned doesn't help win any games.
I've played for 12 hours straight on both teams and Aliens clearly dominate in every match, the only saving grace from this latest patch is that fades ain't op anymore.
Onus is the new op unit.
I find it funny that they balance out the exo's but give more to Onus.
Comments
Supporting any model besides the Free To Play and in-your-face Micro Transactions ☑
No idea if they'll cover their costs with this fund raiser, but I think it is more important to have the goal be a meaningful number than it is an attainable number. It will motivate people more betters
Unless you want to be stuck in morass of shallow AAA titles, send more money. (Fuck you buddy)
May it never EVER happen 'cause THAT would really make me sad, truly! ='(
(okay i am from germany. 75 dollars are 56 euro. so in that case i only payed 56 instead of 75
So many of your posts make more sense to me after reading
Neither of those posts have any relation whatsoever to each other.
To give you 2 free dlcs it costs 550.000$ - since we paint up the picture of being the good guys here, may we please have that amount of money for the free dlc you got now?
haha well to be honest now. Unlike other games we get 1 map, i would love more official maps, im already blown away of the artistic direction and theme and cannot wait to see more.
i could think just 10$ for 1 map is quite fair thinking price for around 6 maps in tripple-A titles goes for around 15$ now to be nice i think i could easily buy 10 maps during lifetime of NS2.
But with the amount of official mappers you have that would take 5 years to make (calculation based on the 2 maps in 1 year 2013) and with the 1000 current hardcore fans and legit players you have now 1000 x 15 not including the rookie weekend sales would give you 15.000$ in one day, 2 map packs 30.000$ - so where does this crazy 550.000$ fall into place? the sales you never got? Even if you are 10 guys that 550.000$ would be 150$ to spend EVERY single day of an entire year!!!
If you use 50$ per day for Coffee/Food (or five star resturants) then the other 100$ (x10) for the electrical bills per day would that just about cover what you are making up? that is 365.000 for electricity internet and rent in a year or 30.416$/month which still sounds like a made up number to me. Even if you went out there like EVERY SINGLE GAME and said hey new content out 15$ a pop that would not sum up for the crazy bills you are making up. So why try sound like the good guys here is it for the sake of big donations?
Instead of all this balance crap can you stop changing the game every 2 weeks and hire a crew of mappers to release enough variety with a regular price tag on every map to keep the fans playing it instead of trying to sound all good guy and milk us for all we got. Most games have more than like 5 maps and less than like 254 packs of changes done to it. sometimes 60 at a time.
I know becouse it is one persons opinion it is as always going to get flagged as spam or abuse from those who disagrees instead of pressing disagree button above the post. That is maby the price some have to pay for typing some text in a box. free dlc sounds good in theory but to be reasonable not even 100$ per map will be making up for the crazy numbers UWE is making up.
Btw, as of this time they are almost 10% there..
Not bad!
Sorry but I refuse to sit here and let you make a mockery of what you'd like NS2 to be. F2Pay has ruined gaming, that's what makes NS2 so great. Shove your hats and your silly ideas.
If they need to raise $550,000 then we'll as a community give them $550,000 one way or another. I preordered the game as soon as it was preorderable, well before it was in a working state. I am one of the early NS1 players, and have stuck by this game despite it being practically dead many times due to difficulties.
Assuming they charge for only visual things, they'd be better off letting you pick your own price.
Oh please. Charging for cosmetic items has not ruined gaming. The only time F2P is bad is when there is no way to reach the 'top' so to speak without buying stuff. Otherwise, games such as TF2, Dota 2, Battleforge or Savage 2, F2P has only helped gaming.
Let's say they work with 10 people for 12 months.
550 000 / 10 = 55 000
55 000 / 12 = 4583 a month per person!
This is without electricity, food, airline tickets etc. but still..
Anyway i'm happy to give. And i hope UWE still exists after a year so on the other hand it's not that much money
A underwater natural selection would be nice
but could be nice to just tell us about future ideas
We do not want to make it seem like an ultimatum, we are just trying to be honest with our community. It is true that sales alone are not funding development of the game, which is not unusual for a game that has been out almost a year, and the reason why so many companies either charge for DLC updates or stop work on their game and move onto another project. We would like to continue to update and improve NS2, but the costs to do so are real and substantial. We are trying the donation route out as an experiment, and you can view it as donating for the content that went into Reinforced, donating towards future updates, or just donating as a way to say thanks for NS1/NS2. Or you can choose to not donate at all, and continue to enjoy playing NS2, which is perfectly acceptable and understandable. 1. This is something we are working on doing. Adding working links to the main menu is actually not a trivial task, as we don't currently have that set up in game, and with out recent patches we've been focused on trying to address the issues with the game that the latest update has caused. Hopefully this will be something we'll be adding into an upcoming patch soon.
2. This is something else we are discussing, and trying to figure out. We were caught off guard with how fast Onos sold out. This is our first attempt at this donation program, so it is a learning experience. However, it is also not a trivial thing to just add more tiers. Every tier has to have unique rewards, and those all take time and money to develop and fullfill. That is coming. Things were pretty crazy leading up to the Reinforced update, with the European tournament, getting set for PAX, making trailers and putting together the donation program, and a multitude of other tasks. In the upcoming week there will be a much greater focus on spreading the word through every means possible.
Its a shame sales of the game since reinforced launch aren't also visible. I'd certainly be interested in seeing how much a free weekend on steam can generate for a developer. Can the existing community generate more money than the noob scum fresh meat!?
As far as future new content, the biggest thing would be new maps. Certainly there is going to continue to be a lot of work done on the optimization side, especially on DX11. It is more efficient then DX9 so we should be able to get better performance out of it, and it doesn't seem to suffer the same lag/stutter issues. We also want to improve loading times. Additionally we are going to be working on the mac port, and while that might not directly impact a lot of people here, more potential NS2 players is always a good thing for the game.
There are still plenty of other bugs we want to squash, annoying usability things we want to improve, and generally just try and refine what we currently have.
All of that said, however, to get the most out of a content patch from a PR standpoint, and to bring back players who maybe have moved onto other things, we do tend to need some additional high profile features. Those sorts of things do tend to be new weapons, units, and abilities. So, I imagine there will still be some of that as well, but it certainly is getting harder and harder to add things which the game actually needs and benefits from, so we will have to put a lot of thought into it. At the moment the answer is no
You clearly have a stigma about free to play games, which I don't share. Like any kind of business model, there are good implementations and poor implementations. Games which only sell cosmetic items, like DOTA 2, are great in a free to play environment. Team Fortress 2 went free to play after years of being a $20 game. The player base exploded in size.
I think the days of one-time purchase multiplayer games are dwindling, at least on PC. If you want your game to reach a wide audience, free to play is the way to go. It's the reality of modern game development.
I'm not saying UWE needs to make the switch tomorrow, but I think it's something they should prepare to do in a year or two years. Eventually sales are going to decline and the existing player base will grow tired of the game. How do you get fresh blood in then?
Bikini Female Marine + Jiggle Physics.
Also, Gorge Plushie with attachable Babbler add-ons.
Seriously, though, F2P with a payable cosmetics market is hard for UWE simply because the infrastructure wasn't made for that in mind (when they first started writing the code probably a good 3-4 years ago). It's why you don't have to register for accounts and can play the game instantly. Maybe in 1-2 years they'll be ready, but it'd be a huge switch and patch.
Those are the "main" levels. Of course you want the cheap $5-$10 tiers for people who can't afford to throw down $25, and you want the $1 pledges for the emotional support, and you want the $500 and $1000+ pledge levels "just in case." But the three in the first paragraph are the main ones.
SO. By limiting your $200-$300 pledge level to 25 people, you're basically cutting out one of the main three required pledge tiers almost completely. Crowdfunding definitely IS a learning experience and far worse mistakes than this have been made.
And while I'm at it, UWE please add some way to prevent stacked teams, this isn't 2003 where I'm content to play a game for hours on end hoping for "a couple balanced matches". Lol.
San Francisco development costs are more expensive than you realize
550K doesn't get you anywhere close to that much
It's very likely that they shipped the game and ran this live beta that we're still in because they couldn't keep covering dev costs...
The only way out of the hole is to just fix the engine, and then justify the expense by shipping a different multiplayer FPS on it
don't think they're capable of fixing the engine or they would have done it by now
You have to have a Steam account to play. So all they have to do is make it so anyone can download it on Steam without paying.
The technical aspect of it is the easiest part.
They would probably want to create a more in-depth menu space for customizing your player character, so you could see how the different armors look and such.
I'm glad to hear you guys are going to concentrate on performance improvements from now on. The only way you are going to get the old players back is by word of mouth, their friends telling them that NS2 has sorted out its performance problems!
Other things you guys need to stop doing is over powering the Aliens. Right now an experienced player playing as an Onus can survive for ages and dominate the entire marine team with its instant kill gorge attack.
Bone Wall wasn't necessary in my opinion as the Onus was already pretty powerful as it was. On a plus side, the Fade doesn't appear to be the most over powered Alien now.
Other recent changes have left me baffled, you've taken away the Marine commanders ability to drop exo's but you've left the Alien commander the ability to drop Onus eggs. How is this fair balanced game play exactly?
It was already unfair in the previous patches because Marine commander could only drop a single mini gun exo yet the Aliens could drop a fully functioning Onus but now it's even worse.
The over heat on the mini guns is extreme now and you've reduced the armour to the point where a skilled Skulk can take down an exo with only 6 bites.
Please restore the ability for Marine commanders to drop exo's again, it's only fair.
Bringing the Onus stomp shock wave radius back was a big step backwards as well.
Overall, i'm getting sick of updates favouring the Aliens every time, it should be balanced.
Well, that was their reason for not going F2P:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WFPkJZL3i54
-can get out of exos (meaning self-repair, able to build things, etc)
-dual railguns which are OP as shit
-increased strafe jump speed completely negates backpedal speed penalty
-amazing jetpacks that fly forever
-grenades
-cat packs
-phase gate prediction (aka no more half second of being frozen coming out of a phase)
-no fade egg drops til bio 9
While you have a point, I can barely take this free weekend as it is. An influx of f2p players would be... painful.
Dual rails and grenades are shit, jetpacks are now what they should be.
Everything else you mentioned doesn't help win any games.
I've played for 12 hours straight on both teams and Aliens clearly dominate in every match, the only saving grace from this latest patch is that fades ain't op anymore.
Onus is the new op unit.
I find it funny that they balance out the exo's but give more to Onus.