I don't want to play this game with teenage morons, hihihi, rofl, lol.
It's bad as it is, with steadily declining quality of the player base. When I started playing last December, I remember people talking and planning in always every game, planning, working as a team, doing meaningful things. Now, after a few free weekends, most games have people that don't have microphones, apparently have no clue how to play the game, can't hit #$@% and ignore the commander (if he commands at all).
I dread to imagine how it would end if the game is free.
I don't want to play this game with teenage morons, hihihi, rofl, lol.
It's bad as it is, with steadily declining quality of the player base. When I started playing last December, I remember people talking and planning in always every game, planning, working as a team, doing meaningful things. Now, after a few free weekends, most games have people that don't have microphones, apparently have no clue how to play the game, can't hit #$@% and ignore the commander (if he commands at all).
I dread to imagine how it would end if the game is free.
I think right now, there is no point in NS2 going F2P. It's able to keep the lights on at UWE towers and for now, it's playerbase is while small, is really dedicated.
However, if any of those were to change, I could see a case being made for NS2 going F2P. So if NS2 stopped selling copies, or the playerbase declined so much that it proved difficult to find a game, I would say there would be a real business case for NS2 to go F2P.....but not 1 min before that time.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
TF2 has a low learning curve and has random crits so even lower skilled players can take out skilled players with some chance. F2P works in such a game even though the quality has declined a lot for TF2...
^
--- Totally different games...
v
NS2 has a high learning curve and requires teamplay, it's not a run and gun kind of game. F2P players tend to not be willing to invest the time it takes to learn a game like this. So I'm quite sure F2P wouldn't be as successful for a game like this as you want it to be...
TF2 has a low learning curve and has random crits so even lower skilled players can take out skilled players with some chance. F2P works in such a game even though the quality has declined a lot for TF2...
^
--- Totally different games...
v
NS2 has a high learning curve and requires teamplay, it's not a run and gun kind of game. F2P players tend to not be willing to invest the time it takes to learn a game like this. So I'm quite sure F2P wouldn't be as successful for a game like this as you want it to be...
F2P only works in a game with a low learning curve and even then it decreases the quality of the game (vanilla TF2 was excellent, current TF2 is not as good). NS2 already gets messed up enough by free weekends, if that were made permanent the game would become practically unplayable due to the lack of teamwork
I'm going to repost this every time I see an F2P thread:
I am vehemently opposed to making NS2 F2P.
Those communities are the absolute worst, their pay structures are a plague on modern gaming, and the inevitable 50,000 skins and collectible items make games an eyesore, and they completely destroy team centric games. I would rather donate a few hundred every few months than deal with that complete garbage. And YES, I'm still upset about TF2: I actually spent money on the orange box, they then turned around making TF2 a F2P cash cow, and tried to placate me by giving me a "premium account"(which anyone can acquire for a few dollars).
I effectively provided them with the capital to wh*re out the game, and received no compensation or share in their ongoing profits. What a scam. If that happens with NS2 I will demand every single dollar back. That means the original game cost, the amount spent buying copies for friends (8 copies and counting), and the amount donated to the reinforced program. It's one thing if you set out building a game that is F2P at the beginning, it's a whole other shit pit if you start out paid by fans (dedicated ones at that) and then turn it into an F2P title.
I'm all for more people playing the game but not via a late F2P switcharoo.
Absolutely not. Every team based game that I have played that has been F2P has been filled with useless players that have no concept of team work. They just like running around randomly attacking the first thing they see. That is fine for a dumbed down game with little depth, but for Natural Selection 2 it would be a disaster, because it would ruin the teamwork element of the game.
TF2 used to be a great deal of fun, because most of the players knew how to play as teams, working together to win the matches. As soon as the game went F2P it became increasingly difficult to find matches that weren't filled with useless players throwing aimbot accusations around and paying no attention at all to the objectives.
I would love to see NS2 become more popular, but ONLY with players that have the mental capacity to play it the way it is supposed to be played.
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
So, for the 800 active players we have, i guess, at most, around 100 has a real understanding of the game... another 100 think they do, and the others fills up the servers....
My point is, the scenario you are talking about already exist.... if we have a 100 active player population... we probably going to have 10 good players, another 10 not so good and 80 filling up.... thats how it works..... if we have 5000 player... we are probably going to have 4k dumb filling up players, but we are also going to have around 800 players to actually play with..... more gathers... n stuff....
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
NS2 is all about dat K/D bro
NS2 is 95% about stacking, K/D, RT building, and RT biting. The rest is all about well coordinated teamwork.
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
So, for the 800 active players we have, i guess, at most, around 100 has a real understanding of the game... another 100 think they do, and the others fills up the servers....
If that is true, then why do you feel that letting in thousands of teenagers that haven't got the first idea of teamwork into the game would make your experience better?
Any game with depth that requires team work and intelligence is going to have a smaller population than a game that is heavily dumbed down to appeal to bad players. I would love to see more people playing NS2 and I would love to see UWE making more games that appeal to gamers that want something deeper, but going F2P would only result in the quality of matches decreasing.
Also, the only stomps I see are on Rookie servers, on most other servers the games tend to be pretty balanced, and last a long time (too long in many cases, due to a lack of coordination/leadership).
And another thing, can we stop putting NS2 on sale? It was kinda weird for them to say "hey, we spent $550 000 on ns2 since release, we need money to eat... OH BY THE WAY NS2 is 66% OFF to $6!"... what the heck? Okay, I'm sure putting it on sale was better financially than not putting it on sale (actually I'm not sure), but it's still incredibly annoying. People will stop buying the game at full price and start waiting for the sales if they do that so often.
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
NS2 is all about dat K/D bro
NS2 is 95% about stacking, K/D, RT building, and RT biting. The rest is all about well coordinated teamwork.
PPL who play F2P games have total different mentality than ppl who bought a game.
Before you buy a game you inform yourself if you like the gameplay etc. . As NS2 has a high learning curve we need ppl ready to spent some time with the game, not ppl who just want to test it.
We need ppl who are aware what ns2 is.
In fact making NS2 F2P wouldn't help the community in any way it just would destroy it. Even the free wekends were a pain for many of us, having ppl on servers who had no interest in actuall learning the game.
And everyone who is ready to play NS2 after informing himself is also ready to pay 5$.
A game which is hard to access has no chance as F2P and so NS2 is no game meant to be F2P. Why do you think it would be a good idea to make it F2P ?
the free weekends we had were kinda fail... at both the game perfomance were really really bad, many ppl just didn't buy the game becouse of that....
problem is, how do we get these ppl back to try the game???
You don't, this industry doesn't give 2nd chances... that's why you have to make sure to get it right from the first time around.
I bet that the pub games wouldnt even change if this game was f2p...
btw: please stop these "We are an elite community and everyone else is scum" thing, I have played TF2 302 hours and I can tell, you are not any better/they are not any worser than you.
Where do you guys play the game?? Aside from password protected pubs and gathers, all NS2 pubs i play are garbage, no team play, and i im always getting crazzy K/D ratios even though im not such a good player.... AND i play lagged =/
So, for the 800 active players we have, i guess, at most, around 100 has a real understanding of the game... another 100 think they do, and the others fills up the servers....
There are currently over 50 teams registered for the current ENSL season. Let's be conservative and say that on average there are 8 active comp players per team (the number is likely significantly higher than this), then that's currently in the region of 400 active comp players who 'know what they're doing'
Given what I've seen in pubs recently, I'd say the number of active players that don't know what they're doing far exceeds a further 400, not to mention a fairly large playerbase that doesn't play competitively but does have a decent understanding of the game.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
I'd support f2p NS2 mostly because I think it would be a boon to the NS2 modding community. Having seen what cool game mods (combat, last stand, xenoswarm, gorge race, marine v marine, faded, ns2c, etc) that have already been created makes me optimistic that with enough playercount, NS2 could be host to an amazing collection of mods.
As with TF2 they'd get a lot more players and supporters. Most likely boost the crowd-funding too but the quality on the community would go directly down the drain as with other F2P games. I mean, the game isn't a fully priced AAA-game, there are F2P-weekends and it's on sale from time to time. Really damn cheap on GMG right now. Instead of going F2P and even having the F2P-weekends why not just give out a few coupons, maybe three to four, so some random players who doesn't have the game, so new players can get into a serious game instead of just trying to figure out what to do. At those times I enter the comm chair and that's not the best of ideas.
As with TF2 they'd get a lot more players and supporters. Most likely boost the crowd-funding too but the quality on the community would go directly down the drain as with other F2P games. I mean, the game isn't a fully priced AAA-game, there are F2P-weekends and it's on sale from time to time. Really damn cheap on GMG right now. Instead of going F2P and even having the F2P-weekends why not just give out a few coupons, maybe three to four, so some random players who doesn't have the game, so new players can get into a serious game instead of just trying to figure out what to do. At those times I enter the comm chair and that's not the best of ideas.
thats looks like something.....
How about giving reinforce suppoters game invites?
I bet that the pub games wouldnt even change if this game was f2p...
To a pretty fair extent I agree with this. Given the quality of recent matches (10:1 a side gets stomped >10-7m) now that the Reinforced hype has <already> died down, I believe that the only difference I'd see in a F2P NS2 would be an increase in the number of matches to select from. In the end I think it would still whittle down to what it seems to me currently: several experienced veterans picking up copious amounts of slack for the rest of their team.
As for the folks who've played enough NS2- let's just say more often than not they know how to pick the winning team. -Guilty Party
I'd advocate NS2 to be f2p in a very limited fashion: basically 2 siege maps only, with no armories or hives. No advanced lifeforms/tech, just an increasing stream of opponents till ticket counter runs out. Tickets are generated based on harvesters built. Noobs can just jump in and learn some basic mechanics of marine/alien attacks.
Advanced lifeforms/exos are dropped randomly - say 1 in 5 matches so they can get a taste. At the end of each match, there's a quick slideshow on the other cool things they can do in the full version of NS2.
TF2 has a low learning curve and has random crits so even lower skilled players can take out skilled players with some chance. F2P works in such a game even though the quality has declined a lot for TF2...
^
--- Totally different games...
v
NS2 has a high learning curve and requires teamplay, it's not a run and gun kind of game. F2P players tend to not be willing to invest the time it takes to learn a game like this. So I'm quite sure F2P wouldn't be as successful for a game like this as you want it to be...
There is this "new" thing in town, i don't know if you ever heard about it, it's called League of Legends. Maybe you should look that up and review your reasoning again?
The reasons why NS2 won't work as F2P are far simpler and have nothing at all to do with the mindset of "F2P players" or the balance of any game.
F2P games finance themselves trough microtransactions, applying that same model to NS2 would mean: Adding lots of visual customization fluff at cheap prizes.
Besides the usual elitism problems around here (waah waah i don't want more content, diversity or new players in my game!!1) UWE already signaled that they don't want to invest the effort into building the required groundwork (payment system, account system) for such an approach. Instead they opted to go for "macrotransactions" aka the reinforcement program aka the really shitty approach that has no value for long term financing.
At this point the game has way more problems that prevent it from being popular, it not being F2P is one of the lesser ones of those. Nobody is gonna play a game that's difficult to get into or feels unbalanced (because it's difficult to get into) even if it's free.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Except LoL is nothing like NS2, where newbies vs newbies are concerned... Symmetrical vs Asymmetrical and 4v4 vs 9v9 mostly and NS2 tends to be a lot more chaotic compared to LoL at a first glance for new players. LoL has the top down view for all players, which gives easy to understand feedback even to new players about what is happening, whereas NS2 has lots of stuff hidden behind a minimap key, class movement, weapon usage and so on. And it also has much more complex maps to learn for new players, they tend to get lost a lot...
Now obviously I'm not saying NS2 is more complex, it's just more chaotic and has feedback problems for new players, which indirectly translates into newbie fun factor
Also it has the alien movement system, which is something completely different from other mainstream FPS's. The gungame for marines is different (oldschool), with tracking/twitch aiming against fast moving aliens, compared to the slower one-shot-kill symmetrical FPS's. So their learned skills from other "similar looking games" are kinda useless here. Teamplay emphasis in a FPS-like is unheard of in this day and age, but it's also one of the main pillars of NS2. Newbies tend to go rambo mode on both aliens and marines, which tends to end up in rage quiting for the wrong reasons, but obvious to us more experience players about what they're doing wrong...
The thing is, it is much easier to get into LoL for new players then it is to get into NS2, so in a sense the initial threshold for new players is much higher in NS2. Add in a few good (evil) players stomping you from time to time, while you're still learning NS2, and this willingness to invest more time into learning this game you haven't invested any money into goes right out of the window
Given the state of development, and player base, I actually support this idea.
Give everyone who bought the game some vet decal, make the game free to play, and make the best out of a bad situation! (Keep reinforcement program purchase options, hope)
Comments
I don't want to play this game with teenage morons, hihihi, rofl, lol.
It's bad as it is, with steadily declining quality of the player base. When I started playing last December, I remember people talking and planning in always every game, planning, working as a team, doing meaningful things. Now, after a few free weekends, most games have people that don't have microphones, apparently have no clue how to play the game, can't hit #$@% and ignore the commander (if he commands at all).
I dread to imagine how it would end if the game is free.
Just no.
Damn kids get off my lawn!
However, if any of those were to change, I could see a case being made for NS2 going F2P. So if NS2 stopped selling copies, or the playerbase declined so much that it proved difficult to find a game, I would say there would be a real business case for NS2 to go F2P.....but not 1 min before that time.
^
--- Totally different games...
v
NS2 has a high learning curve and requires teamplay, it's not a run and gun kind of game. F2P players tend to not be willing to invest the time it takes to learn a game like this. So I'm quite sure F2P wouldn't be as successful for a game like this as you want it to be...
F2P only works in a game with a low learning curve and even then it decreases the quality of the game (vanilla TF2 was excellent, current TF2 is not as good). NS2 already gets messed up enough by free weekends, if that were made permanent the game would become practically unplayable due to the lack of teamwork
$5 is a tiny price to pay for a game like this, in addition to being a pretty effective "crap filter."
I am vehemently opposed to making NS2 F2P.
Those communities are the absolute worst, their pay structures are a plague on modern gaming, and the inevitable 50,000 skins and collectible items make games an eyesore, and they completely destroy team centric games. I would rather donate a few hundred every few months than deal with that complete garbage. And YES, I'm still upset about TF2: I actually spent money on the orange box, they then turned around making TF2 a F2P cash cow, and tried to placate me by giving me a "premium account"(which anyone can acquire for a few dollars).
I effectively provided them with the capital to wh*re out the game, and received no compensation or share in their ongoing profits. What a scam. If that happens with NS2 I will demand every single dollar back. That means the original game cost, the amount spent buying copies for friends (8 copies and counting), and the amount donated to the reinforced program. It's one thing if you set out building a game that is F2P at the beginning, it's a whole other shit pit if you start out paid by fans (dedicated ones at that) and then turn it into an F2P title.
I'm all for more people playing the game but not via a late F2P switcharoo.
TF2 used to be a great deal of fun, because most of the players knew how to play as teams, working together to win the matches. As soon as the game went F2P it became increasingly difficult to find matches that weren't filled with useless players throwing aimbot accusations around and paying no attention at all to the objectives.
I would love to see NS2 become more popular, but ONLY with players that have the mental capacity to play it the way it is supposed to be played.
Fix basic:
Aim vectors
Bone aim
Sure. Bring the cannon fodder in.
So, for the 800 active players we have, i guess, at most, around 100 has a real understanding of the game... another 100 think they do, and the others fills up the servers....
NS2 is all about dat K/D bro
NS2 is 95% about stacking, K/D, RT building, and RT biting. The rest is all about well coordinated teamwork.
If that is true, then why do you feel that letting in thousands of teenagers that haven't got the first idea of teamwork into the game would make your experience better?
Any game with depth that requires team work and intelligence is going to have a smaller population than a game that is heavily dumbed down to appeal to bad players. I would love to see more people playing NS2 and I would love to see UWE making more games that appeal to gamers that want something deeper, but going F2P would only result in the quality of matches decreasing.
Also, the only stomps I see are on Rookie servers, on most other servers the games tend to be pretty balanced, and last a long time (too long in many cases, due to a lack of coordination/leadership).
Not sure if you caught my interweb sarcasm.
Still this thread has ran its course, go away pls
You don't, this industry doesn't give 2nd chances... that's why you have to make sure to get it right from the first time around.
btw: please stop these "We are an elite community and everyone else is scum" thing, I have played TF2 302 hours and I can tell, you are not any better/they are not any worser than you.
There are currently over 50 teams registered for the current ENSL season. Let's be conservative and say that on average there are 8 active comp players per team (the number is likely significantly higher than this), then that's currently in the region of 400 active comp players who 'know what they're doing'
Given what I've seen in pubs recently, I'd say the number of active players that don't know what they're doing far exceeds a further 400, not to mention a fairly large playerbase that doesn't play competitively but does have a decent understanding of the game.
Your analysis is overly pessimistic.
thats looks like something.....
How about giving reinforce suppoters game invites?
To a pretty fair extent I agree with this. Given the quality of recent matches (10:1 a side gets stomped >10-7m) now that the Reinforced hype has <already> died down, I believe that the only difference I'd see in a F2P NS2 would be an increase in the number of matches to select from. In the end I think it would still whittle down to what it seems to me currently: several experienced veterans picking up copious amounts of slack for the rest of their team.
As for the folks who've played enough NS2- let's just say more often than not they know how to pick the winning team. -Guilty Party
Advanced lifeforms/exos are dropped randomly - say 1 in 5 matches so they can get a taste. At the end of each match, there's a quick slideshow on the other cool things they can do in the full version of NS2.
There is this "new" thing in town, i don't know if you ever heard about it, it's called League of Legends. Maybe you should look that up and review your reasoning again?
The reasons why NS2 won't work as F2P are far simpler and have nothing at all to do with the mindset of "F2P players" or the balance of any game.
F2P games finance themselves trough microtransactions, applying that same model to NS2 would mean: Adding lots of visual customization fluff at cheap prizes.
Besides the usual elitism problems around here (waah waah i don't want more content, diversity or new players in my game!!1) UWE already signaled that they don't want to invest the effort into building the required groundwork (payment system, account system) for such an approach. Instead they opted to go for "macrotransactions" aka the reinforcement program aka the really shitty approach that has no value for long term financing.
At this point the game has way more problems that prevent it from being popular, it not being F2P is one of the lesser ones of those. Nobody is gonna play a game that's difficult to get into or feels unbalanced (because it's difficult to get into) even if it's free.
Now obviously I'm not saying NS2 is more complex, it's just more chaotic and has feedback problems for new players, which indirectly translates into newbie fun factor
Also it has the alien movement system, which is something completely different from other mainstream FPS's. The gungame for marines is different (oldschool), with tracking/twitch aiming against fast moving aliens, compared to the slower one-shot-kill symmetrical FPS's. So their learned skills from other "similar looking games" are kinda useless here. Teamplay emphasis in a FPS-like is unheard of in this day and age, but it's also one of the main pillars of NS2. Newbies tend to go rambo mode on both aliens and marines, which tends to end up in rage quiting for the wrong reasons, but obvious to us more experience players about what they're doing wrong...
The thing is, it is much easier to get into LoL for new players then it is to get into NS2, so in a sense the initial threshold for new players is much higher in NS2. Add in a few good (evil) players stomping you from time to time, while you're still learning NS2, and this willingness to invest more time into learning this game you haven't invested any money into goes right out of the window
Give everyone who bought the game some vet decal, make the game free to play, and make the best out of a bad situation! (Keep reinforcement program purchase options, hope)