Next free weekend should be on the most stable and balanced build
MisterYoon
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
On the both two free weekends which NS2 have had, the game got each really big patches.
And i would rather say, both free weekends brought more disappointment than expected success.
We all know, according to success of for example Chivalry, that free weekend is always really important for a game, because that is the best way to introduce a game to bunch of gamers.
However, the most of those public gamers who just tried to play NS2 on the free weekends were disappointed because of lots of either serious performance and balance issues caused by those big patches.
And the last free weekend was really really crucial, because performance became suddenly even worse than previous builds so that new players who do not know how stable the game was before just left even having an interest on this game.
Of course both free weekends were not devastating failure at all, we know. But at least this last one could have brought far bigger success if performance was at least as stable as pre-reinforcement patch.
So i hope UWE organizes next free weekend even when the game is on its best at both performance amd balance. And WITHOUT new big patches and changes right before F2P.
NS2 deserves more players. Gameplay became awesome through recent patches.
And i would rather say, both free weekends brought more disappointment than expected success.
We all know, according to success of for example Chivalry, that free weekend is always really important for a game, because that is the best way to introduce a game to bunch of gamers.
However, the most of those public gamers who just tried to play NS2 on the free weekends were disappointed because of lots of either serious performance and balance issues caused by those big patches.
And the last free weekend was really really crucial, because performance became suddenly even worse than previous builds so that new players who do not know how stable the game was before just left even having an interest on this game.
Of course both free weekends were not devastating failure at all, we know. But at least this last one could have brought far bigger success if performance was at least as stable as pre-reinforcement patch.
So i hope UWE organizes next free weekend even when the game is on its best at both performance amd balance. And WITHOUT new big patches and changes right before F2P.
NS2 deserves more players. Gameplay became awesome through recent patches.
Comments
IMO it makes far more sense to have free weekends on weekends where the game is actually stable enough to run for most people.
I'm seeing alot of new players out there on the servers.. Just saying..
Anyone have any sales-info for NS2 free weekend?
Even if all those issues are largely perception. Thing is perception has a great influence on attitudes, and that might not be the best opportunity to introduce new players into the community.
It would appear that they wanted to ride off the wake of Reinforcement. Not a bad idea in theory, but I have to ask if NS2 is big enough of a game that anyone not playing it would be excited about the patch/expansion?
I think the best strategy would be introducing new players to a stable, build, where the community has adjusted to the changes, and are in a position to be more helpful new players.
I think overall they pulled it off pretty well.
What they did was they bit off more than they could chew. They chose a release date that didn't give them the time they would need, and they were then forced to scramble and have the community test a broken beta patch in order to make things ok by the time the free weekend hit. Yes, there was lots of stuff going on with the EO final and PAX and all that, but they knew those things were coming. They should have been able to look at those things and say, "With all that stuff going on, we probably won't have this build ready in time... Let's push our release date back by a week."
UWE is notorious for this... I believe NS2 was originally supposed to release in like 2009 or something? And even look at smaller things, like how they recently had to push back the patch for Reinforced content.
All in all they are dedicated and they do good work for a company of their size... I just think they should be a bit more realistic with their development schedules and refrain from choosing release dates that are unrealistic.
Yeah, I know that it's never intentional when this kind of thing happens... but you'd think these guys would have learned by now xD
To any unknown worlds employee that may read this... people don't mind waiting as long as what they're waiting for is worth it
Just so the poor buggers can download the damn thing.
horrible netcode? disagree on that portion, only thing is the ticrate is low; but the hit registration is pretty damn good
not during the free weekend it wasn't.
that wasnt the netcode, that was servers dying on there tickrate. There is a difference.
i'm not entirely sure how you could tell. with the unresponsive look-aim and the microstutter and the macrostutter and the, and the, and the.
Play the game with a server that can handle the playercount on a stable network and the hitreg is perfecto
I really don't care about balance anymore. It's like trying to straighten the rear view mirror in a car when the back right wheel has spun off.
simple.. net_stats 1.
servers with ok ticrate I had no problems on.
servers with a tickrate of 5 folk complained about netcode.
wow, way to rewrite history son. we weren't suddenly switching to crappy servers who took on too many players. we were getting stuttering on official servers and servers that handled prepatch fine. so yeah, bad server operators that couldn't anticipate that the new patch would kill their fully functional servers... including uwe itself.
It's quite easy to find out. Just type net_stats in the console. If the server is running below 30 ticks per second than it's going to create problems. Even then the game is at least reasonably playable until about 15-20 ticks at which point the rubber banding is going to start driving you crazy.
There was an issue with Hive (the new stats tracking system) that was causing some severe performance issues on servers late this week, but that was after 255 was released and not during the free weekend. There is currently a workaround in place on Hive itself to prevent servers from dying, and we should have a real fix for the issue when the next build comes out (likely sometime next week but possibly later).
There was a rubber banding issue related to the renderer and not the server performance in D3D9 during the weekend for some users, but that has been fixed in 255. Obviously the fact that this issue wasn't corrected before the free weekend sucked.
Server performance is something we're always hoping to improve upon but in many cases servers run under optimal levels because their operators are running too many player slots on inadequate hardware.
oh, my complaints aren't current, I play fineish now. I was responding to the guy that said that the old problems weren't because of the patch, but because of improper management by the server hosts. the patch caused a lot of problems for people, and it was not because they had more people than they should have.
yes... then they are hooked like a crack whore and UWE is their pimp daddy!
People really don't have much patience for these sort of issues these days -- afterall there are dozens of other free games they could try at any point, in addition to the dozens or hundreds of games on their Steam account they haven't even touched yet. Even installing a mod like NS1 by hand would probably be too much effort for most people these days. So making sure the first experience for new players goes as smoothly as possible is crucial.
I don't, but here's some player stats:
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=4920q219640&from=1349038800000&to=1378587600000
I don't know how accurate that is. I guess it's supposed to be daily averages (not peaks). And I'm sure NS2 didn't actually drop to 0 at any point.