IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited October 2013
I really dont think matchmaking would have been the linchpin you think it would have been.. I mean yea it would help, but even the best matched teams are still going to have one or two players soaring into that high skill ceiling and influencing the direction of the match.
Basically, attempting to design a game for niche hardcore fps players AND the casual crowd is a pretty lofty goal... someone is not going to be happy.
I think penny arcade just did a video on competitive gaming and mentions this.
A great example is how well counter strike did (and how long it lasted) using the same server browsing mechanic that ns2 uses..
Just so you guys know, the only real differences between CS:Source and CS:GO were minor graphical improvements and matchmaking. Yet the former game was considered a failure, and the latter game has been extremely successful.
Take that into account when you decide whether MM is important.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I'm looking at the only true counter strike. The original..
Arguably the most played fps of all time and the one that survived over a decade with a healthy player base using no match making whatsoever.
I'm looking at the only true counter strike. The original..
Arguably the most played fps of all time and the one that survived over a decade with a healthy player base using no match making whatsoever.
A relic of a bygone era when "being good" was reward enough. Now players demand carrots in their games by way of unlocks, gated content, and titles; to better lord over n00bs. All this in place of actually "being good" at the game. Most of the unlocks are also easily attained through time in game, usually doing something unproductive and counter to the in game goal. Time that could be better spent actually "getting good".
I'm looking at the only true counter strike. The original..
Arguably the most played fps of all time and the one that survived over a decade with a healthy player base using no match making whatsoever.
Because NO games had matchmaking back then. Unbalanced and team-stacked games were the norm. A gamer had no other choice!
Now that matchmaking has become the norm, good gameplay is simply not good enough when it's astride horribly unbalanced teams. This isn't 1995. Please think your comments through.
Your comment is equivalent to saying that horse-drawn carriages were successful in the 1600s, and therefore there's no need to switch to cars.
Its not a mistake. I would hate it if they put matchmaking unless it was strictly optional.
Matchmaking isn't needed for every game. Look at gmod, it is the best sandbox/modding game in the world and there is no matchmaking.
Gmod is not a competitive FPS, it is not in the same category of what we're talking about in this thread. Many of the Gmods are co-op oriented, which means matchmaking is not necessary, because your opponents are not human beings, and you can manually set the difficulty to fit your group's skill.
In addition, Gmod has not nearly the playerbase of the MM games I've been referring to in this thread (CS:GO, CoD, BF3, Halo, etc.).
Finally, can you name a single FPS game in which Matchmaking is forced upon the player?
I got to agree with Wingflier. I don't have time to get good at this game, I've got work, family, housework and other games to spend time on. I want to be able to join a game of NS2 and get a decent ~20 minute round in where both teams put up a good fight. Sometimes I get that, and by god it's amazing and my favorite online experience, it's what keeps me coming back to NS2. But normally I get 10 minute rounds of one team, completely stomping the other team. Sometimes it's just one guy doing the stomping, sometimes a few, doesn't matter the end result is the same. It doesn't even matter if I can beat the stompers, if the rest of my team is seriously unbalanced it's still going to be fast painful loss. A few rounds like that is enough to put me off playing NS2, until the thought of a good game draws me back.
@wingflier didn't read your whole post, but performance was 'never' fixed to the point where it'd be acceptable for so many players, including ex-competitive players (and regular players)
Did it improve? YES
Did it improve to where many people on varying medium-rigs now have what they consider acceptable frames? no
People literally came in expecting 300 frames per second never dropping below that number, instead they got smacked with '50' frames per second on lowest visual settings; people uninstall just for that
The game is great, I personally don't have many issues running it, and it has improved greatly over time but nothing so significant that these people would come back, plus it still drops heavily late game to where it goes below my monitor refresh rate and this causes several issues like input lag and tearing
lol, you're crazy if you thought this games performance was even remotely acceptable on launch. the game doesn't even look that great and it was by far the worst performing game I have spent my money on. Even Rise of the Triad played better on launch, ahahaha.
not saying that it's great now, but it's definitely better.
ROTT, honestly the dev answered my questions before launch and I actually had expectations of maybe a decent arena shooter, if not maybe decent as serious sam TSE original online
nope, nope, and nope........ uninstalled it and that's something really hard for me to do........ no offense to that company but if I was them I wouldn't have even released that product (or released it using unreal3 the console version of udk with framerate caps and poor input)
edit: I also feel bad because I made one friend buy it who is also looking for another comp shooter.. he won't take my advice anymore haha
Just so you guys know, the only real differences between CS:Source and CS:GO were minor graphical improvements and matchmaking. Yet the former game was considered a failure, and the latter game has been extremely successful.
Take that into account when you decide whether MM is important.
reading your first sentence lets me know you've never played counter-strike past a public server, csgo is hated especially by the competitive scene; the reason for the 'playerbase' is because leagues actually have prize pots and valve is further help funding it, if these guys were ex-pros on 1.6/source and leagues dropped support for their game and added support for the next game with real prize pots of course they're going to play
Try talking to them in private, they hate the game
not even going to list the massive amount of problems/issues it has, do I play it from time to time? Sure, I play all of them from time to time; but you can clearly see which is better
Also GO has never even reached the playercounts of source (and source lost 40,000 players~ in a week back in june 2010 because of a bad update/engine swap, never regained those players) and never came close to 1.6 numbers.. hardly any fps has come to 1.6 numbers. GO sits at 20-40k players, 1.6/source sat daily at 80k-100,000 players for years
-also GO's matchmaking system is atrocious and they 'label' it competitive when the servers are subpar and the maps aren't even the competitive versions, not to mention it has no moderation and the people at the highest rank are generally wall-hacking like mad, 3rd party websites host private matchmaking on high quality servers and people pay monthly just to use them.. that's how much valve is failing in that aspect, also the way their main menu setup made dedicated servers pretty dead' you actually have to struggle to find the dedicated server browser, compared to "find a game"
The biggest mistake you made, as a company, was not adding matchmaking from day 1 of release. This is such a wonderful game, and I'm sure that if everybody who bought it gave it a fair chance, it would have a playerbase 20 times larger than it does now. So why doesn't it?
Because most players have quit: Not because of performance reasons. Not because they disliked the gameplay. Not because the graphics weren't good enough. They quit because most games are a one-sided stomp, where new players, who have no idea what they're doing, die over and over again until they get sick of the game and quit.
And also because sometimes it takes far too long for one team to find a commander at the start of the round and people get bored and just quit.
UWE: Implement an AI commander if no one on the team wants to command. At least do this for NS3
The free weekends to me were the most sad. In Australia/NZ it went from 2-3 Monash servers with players on most days, to over 8 servers full of players everynight during the free weekend. There were so many players and it was great seeing new faces. However a week or so after the free weekend we were back to 2-3 servers again. It seemed like almost no one stayed, it sucks and I can't help but think that having a free weekend when the game is effectively in an unplayable state is the most critical mistake they could have made. They lost _alot_ of potential players of players because of that.
I'm looking at the only true counter strike. The original..
Arguably the most played fps of all time and the one that survived over a decade with a healthy player base using no match making whatsoever.
Because NO games had matchmaking back then. Unbalanced and team-stacked games were the norm. A gamer had no other choice!
Now that matchmaking has become the norm, good gameplay is simply not good enough when it's astride horribly unbalanced teams. This isn't 1995. Please think your comments through.
Your comment is equivalent to saying that horse-drawn carriages were successful in the 1600s, and therefore there's no need to switch to cars.
Eh, sorry, but your analogy and argument fall painfully short.
Today alone - 13 years later (from when it went retail/largest playercounts), counter strike still has 34,586 players at peak and is still sitting at the #10 most played on steam today.
That's up against every game that uses matchmaking... today. "Well those are dedicated fans who stayed with the product they loved, that's why they don't mind their horse drawn carriage!"
Well about TF2?? It was a rampant success with just a server browser! Even though big names like Halo 2 and Quake 3 live were using match making. It still sits high and mighty at the #3 spot!! TF2 was also maintained and updated regularly for years, even after Left 4 Dead introduced valve's MM, and they still kept their player counts. (conversely, where the hell did L4D player counts go with their fancy MM?)
My point is that you are blaming the symptoms (unbalanced teams and lack of matchmaking) and not the cause (design model attempting to accommodate low skill floor for casuals, and insanely high skill ceiling for hardcore players)
For example : If this game was neutered for only casual players, (not suggesting this!) keeping the skill ceiling very close to the skill floor:
A) you'd lose most if not all of your hardcore /comp crowd you would no longer need match making.
TLDR: Its the grand canyon of a difference in skill allowed, and more specifically the ability to exercise said varying degrees of individual skill in the game, which makes the majority of games you play in NS2 imbalanced. No amount of match making will matter if you do not hold COD or DOTA player counts.. you will still end up with 1 or 2 highly skilled players in a round.. and thats all that's needed to influence that round.
Just so you guys know, the only real differences between CS:Source and CS:GO were minor graphical improvements and matchmaking. Yet the former game was considered a failure, and the latter game has been extremely successful.
Take that into account when you decide whether MM is important.
Your right but like other games each game have they own flaw and issue's.
Today alone - 13 years later (from when it went retail/largest playercounts), counter strike still has 34,586 players at peak and is still sitting at the #10 most played on steam today.
That's up against every game that uses matchmaking... today.
And yes, CS:GO is still beating it, even though old school CS is practically free, and most Steam owners already have it if they've ever purchased an Orange Box or Half-Life deal. This not mentioning the fact that part of the reason CS remains popular is that it's played in Russia and countries without the computer hardware to play the newer FPS games such as GO.
"Well those are dedicated fans who stayed with the product they loved, that's why they don't mind their horse drawn carriage!"
Well about TF2?? It was a rampant success with just a server browser!
Nope. TF2 had a built-in player balancing system from the very beginning, and it still does. By the way, TF2 was on the verge of dying until Valve made it free to play and added the microtransaction system which many people have agreed ruined the game and made it a breeding ground for immature players. It was also a slap in the face to people who had actually purchased the game with money.
As I've said before in this thread: A MM system would be preferable, but a built-in community server team balancing algorithm would be better than nothing, and should have been included from the start.
Even though big names like Halo 2 and Quake 3 live were using match making. It still sits high and mighty at the #3 spot!! TF2 was also maintained and updated regularly for years, even after Left 4 Dead introduced valve's MM, and they still kept their player counts. (conversely, where the hell did L4D player counts go with their fancy MM?)
L4D didn't need MM, it's a co-op game. Co-op games can be tailored to the group's skill level. You're just changing the subject the same way the guy bringing up Gmod did. Obviously games that don't require matchmaking to have even matches are going to do better than those which do need it, and don't have it.
My point is that you are blaming the symptoms (unbalanced teams and lack of matchmaking) and not the cause (design model attempting to accommodate low skill floor for casuals, and insanely high skill ceiling for hardcore players)
For example : If this game was neutered for only casual players, (not suggesting this!) keeping the skill ceiling very close to the skill floor:
A) you'd lose most if not all of your hardcore /comp crowd you would no longer need match making.
TLDR: Its the grand canyon of a difference in skill allowed, and more specifically the ability to exercise said varying degrees of individual skill in the game, which makes the majority of games you play in NS2 imbalanced. No amount of match making will matter if you do not hold COD or DOTA player counts.. you will still end up with 1 or 2 highly skilled players in a round.. and thats all that's needed to influence that round.
There is nothing wrong with the way the game is balanced. In DotA, as you so aptly mentioned, there is a huge skill differential between a new player and somebody who has played thousands of hours. Yet (when the MM isn't broken), the game takes this into account and makes it playable for everybody. Yes, I understand that MM wouldn't work so great for NS2 *NOW*. I already said it's too late in my first post. That's because the entire playerbase left before it (or the equivalent) was added.
Interactive tutorial would be a given, there's the bot training system but it hardly works/runs. A played tutorial rather than a bot training system would be nice, showing things such at marine upgrades, how to built, common strategies, what to attack, what to prioritize, how to weld teamates/exos, and so on. It would take a bit to design but wouldn't require the CPU load and bot processing overhead to teach players how to play. Training mode is not teaching anyone how to play anytime soon. The video tutorials are nice, but those can be displayed while also interacting in the game with the objects presented in the tutorials.
Also, my experiences with the bots AI, they hardly function at all, constantly getting stuck on things.
Nope. TF2 had a built-in player balancing system from the very beginning, and it still does.
Wasn't it just a quick "Find Game" button with no regard to player skills or matchmaking whatsoever? It simply selected a server for those too lazy to use the server browser.
Any kind of ranking system I've noticed were server plugins, and those weren't even used for anything besides bragging rights or selecting an opponent in one of those duel mods.
And yes, CS:GO is still beating it, even though old school CS is practically free,
You completely ignore it's popularity not being influenced by MM. By your own logic and basis for your argument, players would have moved on from CS 1.6 because MM is just that good.
Nope. TF2 had a built-in player balancing system from the very beginning, and it still does.
That was in no way match making.. if you consider that matchmaking then i recommend you check out the often used server side mod that has a "Sort players Randomly by skill" feature.
Also if that were the case, i could name a crap ton of games that poke a hole in your "NO games had matchmaking back then" claim...
Starting with Doom and Quake.
L4D didn't need MM, it's a co-op game. Co-op games can be tailored to the group's skill level. You're just changing the subject the same way the guy bringing up Gmod did. Obviously games that don't require matchmaking to have even matches are going to do better than those which do need it, and don't have it.
I am not changing the subject. It served my point that the same game developer had the same tech and means to implement it, but did not until very recently (the "Quickplay Beta") and yet still it has been very popular. Being free to play factors in on that ofc, but i could also point you to dozens of F2P games that have failed and have zero players, so don't let that factor weigh too heavily.
Yes, I understand that MM wouldn't work so great for NS2 *NOW*. I already said it's too late in my first post. That's because the entire playerbase left before it (or the equivalent) was added.
It wouldn't have ever been able to remotely make the impact you are imagining. This will show you that launch week's largest concurrent player count was 7,135.
This has since been beat, but i wanted to point out the "entire playerbase left" shortsightedness in assuming there was a playerbase large enough to greatly benefit from MM.
Compare to that figure to Dota's 550,000 players, for instance.
Lastly, i'm not saying matchmaking wouldn't be great. I'd sooner want to see a comprehensive PCW system that takes skill into account, however.
What i am saying, is that it definitely was not the #1 mistake you claim it to be in your OP. That is grossly exaggerated and presumptious, IMO.
Just so you guys know, the only real differences between CS:Source and CS:GO were minor graphical improvements and matchmaking. Yet the former game was considered a failure, and the latter game has been extremely successful.
Take that into account when you decide whether MM is important.
CS:GO is hated by many (including me) because:
1) match making servers are limited to 64 ticks, which is horrible for competitive FPS games. You can easily see a lack of consistency from game to game, sometimes your hits register well, other times you can't hit anything. Whereas if you play on custom servers that have 128 ticks, you'll see that your hits will always register well.
2) the implemented vote kick system can be easily abused, resulting in a ban for the kicked player...
If they fix those two issues, the game would be amazing.
Now for NS2, I stopped playing for many reasons, the main one is not performance nor lack of MM, I stopped playing because the game is simply not as fun as NS1 was. They've done too many changes that took away from the overall "fun" experiences that NS1 had. I would have been contempt if they had simply remade NS1 but with a newer engine and hence better graphics. But this is an opinion of a person that played NS1 and "knew" what he was getting into.
The main problem for new players? all my friends complained about not understanding the game (so lack of proper tutorial) and the terrible performance.
I certainly wouldn't have put so many hours into NS2 if it had a matchmaking system instead of the server browser system. It is the same reason I could never get into LoL, as soon as I stopped playing it with my friends, I realized how much I absolutely hated matchmaking systems, and completely stopped playing it. I prefer to have a browser because it leads to a more rewarding experience when you invest a lot of time into it. When you invest a lot of time, you will start to find favorite servers, and meet up with regulars. If you find good people to play with, it doesn't matter how much the teams are stacked, because you will start to have unique and fun experiences.
I have heard so many reasons for why the game failed to take off: performance, balance, lack of matchmaking, or any number of other things. I have rarely heard the reason I think, and that is a change in the community. My best memories of the game were in the late beta days when I first joined. People were friendly, talkative, and best of all: didn't associate fun with winning. Pretty much all of this has changed since then. It is to be expected that as a community grows, it would become more diverse, and thus the community would appear less friendly as a whole, but as of late I have seen people not just unwilling to help new players, but harassing them for their inexperience, and essentially sabotaging the longevity of this game. It is also to be expected that not everyone would have mics, and thus would have a bit of a communication barrier, but there are an increasing number of people who refuse any form of communication, neither listening to others nor giving any comments of their own. I expect that this has to do with the apparent lack of friendliness to an extent, because in a communication-centric game, a complete lack of communication would be frustrating at best. I mean I have seen better communication in LoL, which features no voice chat, and the community more regularly than not seem to terrible people. And when I do see communication used in NS2 it seems to be shifting blame around on who is responsible for the loss. Which brings me to my final point, that the community mindset has become all about winning and losing. People will now vote-concede the instant victory appears to be out of grasp. Somewhere along the line there was a change in the mindset that the game was no longer fun if you had no chance of winning. This is something I have always completely disagreed with. Many of my favorite situations came from situations of certain defeat. We by no means won these situations (with extremely rare exception), but we went out with style. We backdoored a phasegate and took down one of their hives as our own base came crumbling down and held our heads high when we went into the ready room, because we went out with honor. Sometimes we tried weird strategies we knew wouldn't work, just because they would be a lot of fun, and maybe it would confuse the enemy enough to create a real advantage. Or maybe we just hid up with our last high tier equipment or lifeforms as the comm used up the last of the res to create a desperate defense, and we decided we weren't going out without a fight. Maybe it was repelled and we got a moment's breather before they were bearing down on us again, or maybe they finished it, either way it was one hell of a fight. And let me tell you that nothing is quite as terrifying as crawling through a pitch black room only to come around the corner and see two orange eyes glow, nothing else. Then you quickly backpedal as you realize you just looked straight at an onos. Whether it was a desperate fight for survival, or an attempt to take advantage of the enemies presumed position of dominance with a well timed ambush, it just took a little bit of ingenuity and cooperation, and that was fun. Losing was fun, and that was something that has been lost from this game due to a shift in the community.
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to play some NS2. It may not be what it used to be, but it is still a hell of a lot of fun, and I will be there until the end, trying to uphold these three principles that I believe make the game great. Talk a lot, be friendly, and just have fun.
Going to keep this simple as people are getting a bit long winded. I did write a post on grouping servers into skill levels (Here) Thats been added to an extent.
The next logical step would be to add player skill rating and matchmaking they aren't going to remove server browsing. personally I would like to set my own skill rating but people might abuse this.
Why argue against something that improves the games for some people you don't have to use it. Anything that helps bring more players of a similar level together is good. It might not always work but hey better than playing 3 matches that end totally lopsided. I don't play much because of this I don't even enjoy being on the team that's winning easily. no challenge here etc...
You don't master everything in one week. You have to listen, read and train. It needs patience. Those things like reading and listening aren't the cup of tea of natural born gamer. In fact the Internet generation (and also the TV generation) aren't those who read the most and are usually the ones that fails at school (many scientific study on that topic).
NS2 can't be properly managed. ENSL does. You are more criticizing the player behavior than the game itself. Granted; the game could be a little better with a in-game interface for many things (More tutorial on specific matter or session (ex: shooting ducks)). But that is not a prerequisite for it.
It is tremendously amazing to see how these generations pretend to live in technology world and don't use it. There are many ways to do it. ENSL is one. How do you think they did 50 years ago for organizing competitions ??? ... Yes paper, pen, charts, ladder and a little bit of patience.
LOL, yes let's use pen and paper to organize our matches. Let's use ENSL which I waited on yesterday for 4 hours for a match to start (it never did by the way). The rest of your argument is simply filled with banter and logical fallacies. Pen and paper matchmaking LOL.
Sorry it was : NS2 can be properly managed without MM.
Pen and paper: A league isn't that difficult. It's just data about which team against which winning team on the other branch. The medium isn't important. 8 teams can have fun for a night if matches are limited on time with 2 or 3 servers. You can imagine anything, any rules.
Any Automated MM system should take care of respecting teams already under a Tag. So a public mode (distribution) and a real competitive side (many teams in a league style competition).
ENSL has it's problem. Most of them are player related. "Everybody's here???", "ready???", Mercs...
Because NO games had matchmaking back then. Unbalanced and team-stacked games were the norm. A gamer had no other choice!
Now that matchmaking has become the norm, good gameplay is simply not good enough when it's astride horribly unbalanced teams. This isn't 1995. Please think your comments through.
Your comment is equivalent to saying that horse-drawn carriages were successful in the 1600s, and therefore there's no need to switch to cars.
There was no in game MM because simply the budgets weren't focused on that. Still; Clanbase did the job perfectly. Today it may be the norm though i don't think it will make a huge difference. UWE probably didn't have the resources/time to focus on that. Focus was on a working game.
You would say it is simple to do. Nope when you don't have a finished game and stats that come with it.
I got to agree with Wingflier. I don't have time to get good at this game, I've got work, family, housework and other games to spend time on. I want to be able to join a game of NS2 and get a decent ~20 minute round in where both teams put up a good fight. Sometimes I get that, and by god it's amazing and my favorite online experience, it's what keeps me coming back to NS2. But normally I get 10 minute rounds of one team, completely stomping the other team. Sometimes it's just one guy doing the stomping, sometimes a few, doesn't matter the end result is the same. It doesn't even matter if I can beat the stompers, if the rest of my team is seriously unbalanced it's still going to be fast painful loss. A few rounds like that is enough to put me off playing NS2, until the thought of a good game draws me back.
Sorry it's not only fight. It's strategy, and tactics. You can have really balanced teams in a game but one make the wrong strategy choice (or ppl just don't listen) and it's stomp land. Public game aren't good enough because people just don't listen to commander. Or come here to warm up and train. So once you have a better teamwork, it won't happen anymore. Competitive teams when they have an equal "skill", do fight like you like.
L4D didn't need MM, it's a co-op game. Co-op games can be tailored to the group's skill level. You're just changing the subject the same way the guy bringing up Gmod did. Obviously games that don't require matchmaking to have even matches are going to do better than those which do need it, and don't have it.
There IS a Versus mode in L4D(x). It could use a MM option as any other.
I got to agree with Wingflier. I don't have time to get good at this game, I've got work, family, housework and other games to spend time on. I want to be able to join a game of NS2 and get a decent ~20 minute round in where both teams put up a good fight. Sometimes I get that, and by god it's amazing and my favorite online experience, it's what keeps me coming back to NS2. But normally I get 10 minute rounds of one team, completely stomping the other team. Sometimes it's just one guy doing the stomping, sometimes a few, doesn't matter the end result is the same. It doesn't even matter if I can beat the stompers, if the rest of my team is seriously unbalanced it's still going to be fast painful loss. A few rounds like that is enough to put me off playing NS2, until the thought of a good game draws me back.
Sorry it's not only fight. It's strategy, and tactics. You can have really balanced teams in a game but one make the wrong strategy choice (or ppl just don't listen) and it's stomp land. Public game aren't good enough because people just don't listen to commander. Or come here to warm up and train. So once you have a better teamwork, it won't happen anymore. Competitive teams when they have an equal "skill", do fight like you like.
Yes I realize there's an element of people just being clueless or not wanting to play as a team, but I've seen teams really try and just be torn apart, no amount of tactics will help if 2 guys on the other team can take down your whole team. Like I said I don't really have time to play organized games. I used to, and they were great, consistently good games. I'd like to be able to at least have something close to those games for the hour or so I get to play every now and then.
I also want to point out that there's obviously a higher ratio of people in the forums who don't care about matchmaking or even games, because statistically speaking, most of the ones who did care already left.
I realize this isn't an important issue to everybody, but it is important to people who don't have hundreds of hours to spend 1) Playing mostly uneven games 2) Finding a favorite server and getting to know people 3) Getting good enough to carry your own team. Even though NS2 is a wonderful game, I have no idea why I would do that when I can go play a dozen other games which take care of that problem for me.
If you wanted an accurate assessment of how important MM is, you'd have to go find all those people who left because the games were such uneven stomps and it wasn't fun at all. This includes all my friends btw, who never had any performance problems with the game.
Doesn't really help that the free weekends/sales are almost always accompanied by terrible performance and massive bugs all the while making the gameplay confusing for new players. It's getting better but it's still not there. Until performance is back to 249 or greater and most critical bugs are ironed out, it's a really bad idea to have one of these events.
Reinforced should have been delayed a couple of weeks after testing 252 patch.
The rookie system is also extremely conflicting. Rookie friendly servers have no meaning or value since they are the majority. Rookie status is too low and there's too much of a divide between rookie-frequent pubber. It's a trap for new players. Blacklight has 1-10 level servers for new players, why not rookie only servers and extend the rookie mode up to 15 or 20 hours? Players who've played longer than that based on steam should not be able to switch back to rookie.
On the topic of balancing teams, I am not entirely sure MM could fix it. I tend to play on servers where most of the players are at least somewhat communicative, and are willing to randomize or try various things to self balance, and most of us seem to be at a similar skill level. The problem though is occasionally the server gets a lot of people who are significantly better at one side than the other. It won't matter how we try to self balance, marines will always lose because everyone on the server has terrible aim, but can skulk fairly well, or vice versa. These are problems a MM system couldn't address. I wonder if the Hive system UWE has been working on in preparation for Sabot is capable of keeping track of marine and alien skill levels separately. That way when an official gather MM-esque system is implemented, it could balance based on relative skill levels for each side.
Also to clarify on my last post, I personally don't like MM systems, but I don't think they would be a bad thing added in addition to a server browser system. As that is what Sabot is looking to be, and if properly designed, could give a lot of life to the gather scene, which was always a pretty cool idea that never quite worked out. It would also be nice to see an official or mod addition of a draft pick mode. In this mode the commanders for each team would be selected perhaps through popular vote, or a self nomination and then vote. Then the commanders would switch back and forth choosing a player to join their team. I have seen this tried a few times, and it usually doesn't work without an admin on, because otherwise one or two people will just not listen and join a team regardless of what the rest of the players choose. Making this an actual game mode where being selected is the only way you could join if the mode was turned on could help it see more use. The downsides of this are that there is a much longer period between games, it doesn't lend itself well to people joining mid game, and doesn't work if you don't have a good idea of player's skill and other factors. However I believe that this would lead to better balanced games, the greater investment required to start a game could lead to greater communication, and the Hive stats combined with a little bit of communication or a few games of observation could nullify the problem of not knowing the skill of a player. This would allow for greater balance among the complexities of NS2 than a MM system could add, or perhaps as part of the MM system. Use MM to get people of similar skill, then have those people balance it themselves as best as possible. Another advantage of that system is that it would probably reduce the problem of my first point by causing players to play both sides more often, and in the long run would create fewer players with skewed skill levels between sides.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
One issue I don't really see addressed here is that NS2 has a larger proportion of 'not-playing, but in-game' time than other games. In particularly, I find I spend way more time than I'd like doing things such as finding a populated server with free space, joining/loading the map, waiting for enough people to join sides for a proper match, waiting for both sides to get a comm, etc. There really isn't a quick way to just get into and stay playing actual NS2.
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Basically, attempting to design a game for niche hardcore fps players AND the casual crowd is a pretty lofty goal... someone is not going to be happy.
I think penny arcade just did a video on competitive gaming and mentions this.
A great example is how well counter strike did (and how long it lasted) using the same server browsing mechanic that ns2 uses..
Take that into account when you decide whether MM is important.
Arguably the most played fps of all time and the one that survived over a decade with a healthy player base using no match making whatsoever.
A relic of a bygone era when "being good" was reward enough. Now players demand carrots in their games by way of unlocks, gated content, and titles; to better lord over n00bs. All this in place of actually "being good" at the game. Most of the unlocks are also easily attained through time in game, usually doing something unproductive and counter to the in game goal. Time that could be better spent actually "getting good".
Now that matchmaking has become the norm, good gameplay is simply not good enough when it's astride horribly unbalanced teams. This isn't 1995. Please think your comments through.
Your comment is equivalent to saying that horse-drawn carriages were successful in the 1600s, and therefore there's no need to switch to cars.
Matchmaking isn't needed for every game. Look at gmod, it is the best sandbox/modding game in the world and there is no matchmaking.
In addition, Gmod has not nearly the playerbase of the MM games I've been referring to in this thread (CS:GO, CoD, BF3, Halo, etc.).
Finally, can you name a single FPS game in which Matchmaking is forced upon the player?
Did it improve? YES
Did it improve to where many people on varying medium-rigs now have what they consider acceptable frames? no
People literally came in expecting 300 frames per second never dropping below that number, instead they got smacked with '50' frames per second on lowest visual settings; people uninstall just for that
The game is great, I personally don't have many issues running it, and it has improved greatly over time but nothing so significant that these people would come back, plus it still drops heavily late game to where it goes below my monitor refresh rate and this causes several issues like input lag and tearing
ROTT, honestly the dev answered my questions before launch and I actually had expectations of maybe a decent arena shooter, if not maybe decent as serious sam TSE original online
nope, nope, and nope........ uninstalled it and that's something really hard for me to do........ no offense to that company but if I was them I wouldn't have even released that product (or released it using unreal3 the console version of udk with framerate caps and poor input)
edit: I also feel bad because I made one friend buy it who is also looking for another comp shooter.. he won't take my advice anymore haha
reading your first sentence lets me know you've never played counter-strike past a public server, csgo is hated especially by the competitive scene; the reason for the 'playerbase' is because leagues actually have prize pots and valve is further help funding it, if these guys were ex-pros on 1.6/source and leagues dropped support for their game and added support for the next game with real prize pots of course they're going to play
Try talking to them in private, they hate the game
not even going to list the massive amount of problems/issues it has, do I play it from time to time? Sure, I play all of them from time to time; but you can clearly see which is better
Also GO has never even reached the playercounts of source (and source lost 40,000 players~ in a week back in june 2010 because of a bad update/engine swap, never regained those players) and never came close to 1.6 numbers.. hardly any fps has come to 1.6 numbers. GO sits at 20-40k players, 1.6/source sat daily at 80k-100,000 players for years
-also GO's matchmaking system is atrocious and they 'label' it competitive when the servers are subpar and the maps aren't even the competitive versions, not to mention it has no moderation and the people at the highest rank are generally wall-hacking like mad, 3rd party websites host private matchmaking on high quality servers and people pay monthly just to use them.. that's how much valve is failing in that aspect, also the way their main menu setup made dedicated servers pretty dead' you actually have to struggle to find the dedicated server browser, compared to "find a game"
And also because sometimes it takes far too long for one team to find a commander at the start of the round and people get bored and just quit.
UWE: Implement an AI commander if no one on the team wants to command. At least do this for NS3
Also, make games not engines.
Today alone - 13 years later (from when it went retail/largest playercounts), counter strike still has 34,586 players at peak and is still sitting at the #10 most played on steam today.
That's up against every game that uses matchmaking... today.
"Well those are dedicated fans who stayed with the product they loved, that's why they don't mind their horse drawn carriage!"
Well about TF2?? It was a rampant success with just a server browser! Even though big names like Halo 2 and Quake 3 live were using match making. It still sits high and mighty at the #3 spot!! TF2 was also maintained and updated regularly for years, even after Left 4 Dead introduced valve's MM, and they still kept their player counts. (conversely, where the hell did L4D player counts go with their fancy MM?)
My point is that you are blaming the symptoms (unbalanced teams and lack of matchmaking) and not the cause (design model attempting to accommodate low skill floor for casuals, and insanely high skill ceiling for hardcore players)
For example : If this game was neutered for only casual players, (not suggesting this!) keeping the skill ceiling very close to the skill floor:
A) you'd lose most if not all of your hardcore /comp crowd
TLDR: Its the grand canyon of a difference in skill allowed, and more specifically the ability to exercise said varying degrees of individual skill in the game, which makes the majority of games you play in NS2 imbalanced. No amount of match making will matter if you do not hold COD or DOTA player counts.. you will still end up with 1 or 2 highly skilled players in a round.. and thats all that's needed to influence that round.
Your right but like other games each game have they own flaw and issue's.
Nope. TF2 had a built-in player balancing system from the very beginning, and it still does. By the way, TF2 was on the verge of dying until Valve made it free to play and added the microtransaction system which many people have agreed ruined the game and made it a breeding ground for immature players. It was also a slap in the face to people who had actually purchased the game with money.
As I've said before in this thread: A MM system would be preferable, but a built-in community server team balancing algorithm would be better than nothing, and should have been included from the start.
L4D didn't need MM, it's a co-op game. Co-op games can be tailored to the group's skill level. You're just changing the subject the same way the guy bringing up Gmod did. Obviously games that don't require matchmaking to have even matches are going to do better than those which do need it, and don't have it.
There is nothing wrong with the way the game is balanced. In DotA, as you so aptly mentioned, there is a huge skill differential between a new player and somebody who has played thousands of hours. Yet (when the MM isn't broken), the game takes this into account and makes it playable for everybody. Yes, I understand that MM wouldn't work so great for NS2 *NOW*. I already said it's too late in my first post. That's because the entire playerbase left before it (or the equivalent) was added.
Also, my experiences with the bots AI, they hardly function at all, constantly getting stuck on things.
Wasn't it just a quick "Find Game" button with no regard to player skills or matchmaking whatsoever? It simply selected a server for those too lazy to use the server browser.
Any kind of ranking system I've noticed were server plugins, and those weren't even used for anything besides bragging rights or selecting an opponent in one of those duel mods.
That was in no way match making.. if you consider that matchmaking then i recommend you check out the often used server side mod that has a "Sort players Randomly by skill" feature.
Also if that were the case, i could name a crap ton of games that poke a hole in your "NO games had matchmaking back then" claim...
Starting with Doom and Quake.
This will show you that launch week's largest concurrent player count was 7,135.
This has since been beat, but i wanted to point out the "entire playerbase left" shortsightedness in assuming there was a playerbase large enough to greatly benefit from MM.
Compare to that figure to Dota's 550,000 players, for instance.
Lastly, i'm not saying matchmaking wouldn't be great. I'd sooner want to see a comprehensive PCW system that takes skill into account, however.
What i am saying, is that it definitely was not the #1 mistake you claim it to be in your OP. That is grossly exaggerated and presumptious, IMO.
CS:GO is hated by many (including me) because:
1) match making servers are limited to 64 ticks, which is horrible for competitive FPS games. You can easily see a lack of consistency from game to game, sometimes your hits register well, other times you can't hit anything. Whereas if you play on custom servers that have 128 ticks, you'll see that your hits will always register well.
2) the implemented vote kick system can be easily abused, resulting in a ban for the kicked player...
If they fix those two issues, the game would be amazing.
Now for NS2, I stopped playing for many reasons, the main one is not performance nor lack of MM, I stopped playing because the game is simply not as fun as NS1 was. They've done too many changes that took away from the overall "fun" experiences that NS1 had. I would have been contempt if they had simply remade NS1 but with a newer engine and hence better graphics. But this is an opinion of a person that played NS1 and "knew" what he was getting into.
The main problem for new players? all my friends complained about not understanding the game (so lack of proper tutorial) and the terrible performance.
I have heard so many reasons for why the game failed to take off: performance, balance, lack of matchmaking, or any number of other things. I have rarely heard the reason I think, and that is a change in the community. My best memories of the game were in the late beta days when I first joined. People were friendly, talkative, and best of all: didn't associate fun with winning. Pretty much all of this has changed since then. It is to be expected that as a community grows, it would become more diverse, and thus the community would appear less friendly as a whole, but as of late I have seen people not just unwilling to help new players, but harassing them for their inexperience, and essentially sabotaging the longevity of this game. It is also to be expected that not everyone would have mics, and thus would have a bit of a communication barrier, but there are an increasing number of people who refuse any form of communication, neither listening to others nor giving any comments of their own. I expect that this has to do with the apparent lack of friendliness to an extent, because in a communication-centric game, a complete lack of communication would be frustrating at best. I mean I have seen better communication in LoL, which features no voice chat, and the community more regularly than not seem to terrible people. And when I do see communication used in NS2 it seems to be shifting blame around on who is responsible for the loss. Which brings me to my final point, that the community mindset has become all about winning and losing. People will now vote-concede the instant victory appears to be out of grasp. Somewhere along the line there was a change in the mindset that the game was no longer fun if you had no chance of winning. This is something I have always completely disagreed with. Many of my favorite situations came from situations of certain defeat. We by no means won these situations (with extremely rare exception), but we went out with style. We backdoored a phasegate and took down one of their hives as our own base came crumbling down and held our heads high when we went into the ready room, because we went out with honor. Sometimes we tried weird strategies we knew wouldn't work, just because they would be a lot of fun, and maybe it would confuse the enemy enough to create a real advantage. Or maybe we just hid up with our last high tier equipment or lifeforms as the comm used up the last of the res to create a desperate defense, and we decided we weren't going out without a fight. Maybe it was repelled and we got a moment's breather before they were bearing down on us again, or maybe they finished it, either way it was one hell of a fight. And let me tell you that nothing is quite as terrifying as crawling through a pitch black room only to come around the corner and see two orange eyes glow, nothing else. Then you quickly backpedal as you realize you just looked straight at an onos. Whether it was a desperate fight for survival, or an attempt to take advantage of the enemies presumed position of dominance with a well timed ambush, it just took a little bit of ingenuity and cooperation, and that was fun. Losing was fun, and that was something that has been lost from this game due to a shift in the community.
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to play some NS2. It may not be what it used to be, but it is still a hell of a lot of fun, and I will be there until the end, trying to uphold these three principles that I believe make the game great. Talk a lot, be friendly, and just have fun.
The next logical step would be to add player skill rating and matchmaking they aren't going to remove server browsing. personally I would like to set my own skill rating but people might abuse this.
Why argue against something that improves the games for some people you don't have to use it. Anything that helps bring more players of a similar level together is good. It might not always work but hey better than playing 3 matches that end totally lopsided. I don't play much because of this I don't even enjoy being on the team that's winning easily. no challenge here etc...
+1,000,000 for matchmaking
Sorry it was : NS2 can be properly managed without MM.
Pen and paper: A league isn't that difficult. It's just data about which team against which winning team on the other branch. The medium isn't important. 8 teams can have fun for a night if matches are limited on time with 2 or 3 servers. You can imagine anything, any rules.
Any Automated MM system should take care of respecting teams already under a Tag. So a public mode (distribution) and a real competitive side (many teams in a league style competition).
ENSL has it's problem. Most of them are player related. "Everybody's here???", "ready???", Mercs...
There was no in game MM because simply the budgets weren't focused on that. Still; Clanbase did the job perfectly. Today it may be the norm though i don't think it will make a huge difference. UWE probably didn't have the resources/time to focus on that. Focus was on a working game.
You would say it is simple to do. Nope when you don't have a finished game and stats that come with it.
Sorry it's not only fight. It's strategy, and tactics. You can have really balanced teams in a game but one make the wrong strategy choice (or ppl just don't listen) and it's stomp land. Public game aren't good enough because people just don't listen to commander. Or come here to warm up and train. So once you have a better teamwork, it won't happen anymore. Competitive teams when they have an equal "skill", do fight like you like.
There IS a Versus mode in L4D(x). It could use a MM option as any other.
Yes I realize there's an element of people just being clueless or not wanting to play as a team, but I've seen teams really try and just be torn apart, no amount of tactics will help if 2 guys on the other team can take down your whole team. Like I said I don't really have time to play organized games. I used to, and they were great, consistently good games. I'd like to be able to at least have something close to those games for the hour or so I get to play every now and then.
I realize this isn't an important issue to everybody, but it is important to people who don't have hundreds of hours to spend 1) Playing mostly uneven games 2) Finding a favorite server and getting to know people 3) Getting good enough to carry your own team. Even though NS2 is a wonderful game, I have no idea why I would do that when I can go play a dozen other games which take care of that problem for me.
If you wanted an accurate assessment of how important MM is, you'd have to go find all those people who left because the games were such uneven stomps and it wasn't fun at all. This includes all my friends btw, who never had any performance problems with the game.
Reinforced should have been delayed a couple of weeks after testing 252 patch.
The rookie system is also extremely conflicting. Rookie friendly servers have no meaning or value since they are the majority. Rookie status is too low and there's too much of a divide between rookie-frequent pubber. It's a trap for new players. Blacklight has 1-10 level servers for new players, why not rookie only servers and extend the rookie mode up to 15 or 20 hours? Players who've played longer than that based on steam should not be able to switch back to rookie.
Also to clarify on my last post, I personally don't like MM systems, but I don't think they would be a bad thing added in addition to a server browser system. As that is what Sabot is looking to be, and if properly designed, could give a lot of life to the gather scene, which was always a pretty cool idea that never quite worked out. It would also be nice to see an official or mod addition of a draft pick mode. In this mode the commanders for each team would be selected perhaps through popular vote, or a self nomination and then vote. Then the commanders would switch back and forth choosing a player to join their team. I have seen this tried a few times, and it usually doesn't work without an admin on, because otherwise one or two people will just not listen and join a team regardless of what the rest of the players choose. Making this an actual game mode where being selected is the only way you could join if the mode was turned on could help it see more use. The downsides of this are that there is a much longer period between games, it doesn't lend itself well to people joining mid game, and doesn't work if you don't have a good idea of player's skill and other factors. However I believe that this would lead to better balanced games, the greater investment required to start a game could lead to greater communication, and the Hive stats combined with a little bit of communication or a few games of observation could nullify the problem of not knowing the skill of a player. This would allow for greater balance among the complexities of NS2 than a MM system could add, or perhaps as part of the MM system. Use MM to get people of similar skill, then have those people balance it themselves as best as possible. Another advantage of that system is that it would probably reduce the problem of my first point by causing players to play both sides more often, and in the long run would create fewer players with skewed skill levels between sides.