It's not looking good, I feel bad for FLG I don't think this weak a launch is something that can be explained by any issues with the game itself, it's just a lack of buzz. Really this game was always going to live or die by the reception it got amongst the NS2 community, who would act as its main word of mouth proponents to the outside world. But most of that demographic has already played the mod, or the game mode in NS1. Even putting aside the critics who think it should be free, there just aren't that many people who are still pumped about playing Combat in general.
Anecdotally I've noticed the biggest weakness of the game in the eyes of NS2 regulars is that it can't be played on NS2 servers, i.e. as a means of filling the server or an occasional change of pace. That's the role it filled for a lot of of people in NS1. The mod always had the same problem, and the standalone game only magnifies that issue.
I sorta feel like the ns2 update and the pre-pre-alpha of subnautica hurt combat a lot. I was worried about it but I was told uwe and flg were communicating and such. Combat got the short straw.
I also wouldn't look at the peak player stats yet. Being Halloween in the USA, most people were out partying and having unprotected sex. It may continue tonight. So I'd wait until like.. halfway through this next week to jump on the numbers (not saying numbers will increase or decrease, it's just a 'holiday' here and the numbers will be skewed because of it).
What I like about NS2: Combat is the hitching, the whip and hydra farms, and the random red plugs.. The fact that when the game ends if one person is in the ready room and does the vote.. you only need 1 vote to pass. The fact that 3pt capture needs some work to make it more balanced. The knife needs to come out faster, i don't know anyone who'd flip their knife when an alien is coming after them. Not sure if it's hit registration or server issues, but it feels as though bites and shots are laggy. Pistol comes out just slightly too fast as well. I've been streaming the game a bit if you feel like watching some of my previous games.
For me combat was smoother experience than normal NS2 269 build. I don't follow too much that FPS counter (g-sync), in reality that doesn't count if there is too much frame time or lagg. NS2 24slot pub server (thirsty onos) was just horror movie to play compared to 24 combat (thirsty onos). Biggest difference was combat engagements, while in ns2 its was like lag show or mouse feel just screws... While in combat fps just drops but mouse feel/movement is about the same.. Hitching/fps drops was quite normal when you had to spawn with that nano/umbra shield.. Later I tried NS2 270 build and it seems to help NS2 game fluidity, like welder fps drops with high particles are fixed (thanks IronHorse) and I think that luajit update was good...
Have to agree with syknik where is the old school knife kills like couple shots and knife Hit reg is weird and that vote system... Well now it have players so it can be improved
i like some aspects of combat, but the main thing i like about ns2 is the commander and strategy aspect of the game which ns2-c is obviously missing and im not saying its void of strategy just that its more fps focused and ns2 doesnt make a good fps.
the new cannon weapon is fun and suits ns2-c but i dont think it would translate to ns2 at all.
I'm pretty disgusted with the way the UWE and the NS2 community have treated Faultline Games and NS2 Combat. From what I've seen FG have been working incredibly hard to produce a standalone game with the supposed support of UWE.
As a result some NS2 players have actively discouraged and berated their efforts, claiming that they deserve it for free because it used to be a mod (what like NS2?). I'm sorry but $13 bucks is not a major amount to purchase anything where so much time and effort has gone into its development, and in my experience this has been a fun game to play, particularly in populated servers. I've also seen people actively discouraging it because "it doesn't have many players". Of course it won't with the unwarranted negative criticism panned its way.
As for UWE I don't even know what their contribution has been. Hell, Hugh can't even be bothered to whip together a 30 second plug for them on youtube, or to at least announce its release on one the UWE sites (announcing a release date is not the same thing). The only people I have seen supporting them have been Wasabione and ItsSuperEffective.
As far as I can see they have been dropped and abandoned to swim on their own. This does not sound like the UWE or NS2 community I used to know. FG is an indie developer trying to get a start out there by creating a mod, sound familiar? Where is the supposed suggestion that combat won't be impacted by what is coming out in NS2 and Subnautica? Absolute rubbish.
NS2 is not going to increase its player base... period... and Combat may have been a means of getting some people interested in it again. The player skill base may have increased to a point through Combat where they can actually participate in NS2. All I see on the forums these days are cynical, sarcastic asshats. I mean, look at the Reaper Skin thread, bitching and moaning, some of you should really take a good look at yourselves.
Of course it won't with the unwarranted negative criticism panned its way.
If the game was fun and interesting, and actually had some new content other than devour and a new gun and actually had matchmaking like they said it would and actually performed as well as they said it would, maybe it wouldn't be getting so much criticism. Usually when the majority of people have an issue with a game, there is an issue that needs to be addressed. Criticism of a product is not unwarranted, EVER. It is the developers job to sell a finished polished product and convince the public they want to buy it, not the consumers job to buy whatever gets sent their way and shut up about it no matter the quality.
I have no problem with constructive criticism, when someone has actually used the product (I found the game fun and interesting btw). But criticism of something without sufficient involvement to form a reasoned point of view is not constructive, its destructive. I'm not saying you aren't allowed to present your view (even if I disagree), you bought the game. But actively discouraging others from something without actually trying it is what I have a problem with.
And NS2 was NOT a finished, polished product on release. Yet we still supported it. Combat seemed abandoned before it was even released. And my ire with community stems from the fact that we ARE part of a community which should be supporting others with a love of this game, its mods, dlc, and games born from it. Hell I thought that was what community was all about.
Two people already mentioned this, but I really wouldn't underestimate the current free weekend of Evolve when looking at player numbers. Many of the NS2 people on my Steam friend list have been playing it, who may have otherwise been playing Combat. I surely did - I also played Combat, but I put more hours into Evolve simply because it's only available for this weekend.
Also, there's Halloween (which is also celebrated in Europe, btw). While no True Gamer™ will sacrifice an evening of play time for a party, filthy casuals may choose differently :P
Stop blaming Halloween, Evolve or Santa Claus, what else did anybody with half a brain expect?!
NS2 is no Call of Duty or Counter Strike, there is no giant community with millions of players that you can just split up willy nilly between different game modes and DLC.
Putting combat behind a paywall will just split up the community, or what little is left of it, even more while adding exactly, nothing
Well at least another part of the game got monetized, that's a good thing, right? Totally..
UWE should have just adopted the combat team, make combat an official part of the game, one where new players can at least mess around a bit to learn the game.
Now they can't even do that anymore, because now combat is locked away behind an inflated price tag.
But who cares about sensible stuff like that? Let's all just keep on circlejerking how awesome everything is! Not like this game could bleed out anymore players, right?
Stop blaming Halloween, Evolve or Santa Claus, what else did anybody with half a brain expect?!
NS2 is no Call of Duty or Counter Strike, there is no giant community with millions of players that you can just split up willy nilly between different game modes and DLC.
Putting combat behind a paywall will just split up the community, or what little is left of it, even more while adding exactly, nothing
Well at least another part of the game got monetized, that's a good thing, right? Totally..
UWE should have just adopted the combat team, make combat an official part of the game, one where new players can at least mess around a bit to learn the game.
Now they can't even do that anymore, because now combat is locked away behind an inflated price tag.
But who cares about sensible stuff like that? Let's all just keep on circlejerking how awesome everything is! Not like this game could bleed out anymore players, right?
It depends on how you look at it.
A standalone combat forming a split "within" the existing community is a fairly pointless argument. If you have both NS2 and Combat, then it makes no difference weather you launch them from same client or not, either way you're playing either one or the other game.
How it will affect sales of either game can go either way, on one hand a built in combat could bring in more sales of NS2 from people who are only interested in the Combat mode, however this would require some heavy advertising to let people know that the game has expanded and I doubt that was going to happen. On the other hand, the split could benefit both games by pointing people in each others direction.
Stop blaming Halloween, Evolve or Santa Claus, what else did anybody with half a brain expect?!
NS2 is no Call of Duty or Counter Strike, there is no giant community with millions of players that you can just split up willy nilly between different game modes and DLC.
Putting combat behind a paywall will just split up the community, or what little is left of it, even more while adding exactly, nothing
Well at least another part of the game got monetized, that's a good thing, right? Totally..
UWE should have just adopted the combat team, make combat an official part of the game, one where new players can at least mess around a bit to learn the game.
Now they can't even do that anymore, because now combat is locked away behind an inflated price tag.
But who cares about sensible stuff like that? Let's all just keep on circlejerking how awesome everything is! Not like this game could bleed out anymore players, right?
I have to agree with this, which is sad because my experience with Combat has been mostly positive so far and I know it's important for FLG to make some money back from their work. That being said, in terms of player numbers it would have made more sense for UWE to adopt FLG and make Combat into an official alternate game mode... That way its release might have brought back people who had bought NS2 but stopped playing a while ago. I somehow doubt that all of those people will agree to pay 15 dollars for a new game, especially one that on the surface looks remarkably similar to NS2.
The sad truth is that NS2 has never been a super popular game, and it's been out for two years now. People aren't going to be rushing to check out a new NS2 game, especially when you consider that they're being asked to pay for it.
Not that I dislike the game or FLG's work, I actually think it's pretty excellent, but this had to be somewhat expected.
Personally I don't enjoy combat because they keep trying to push it as its own standalone game mode with tactics and stuff. When I play combat, I just want to warmup. I don't want to be in some huge zerg ball of marines that can't penetrate the aliens swarm of hydras. I just want to go off by myself and kill things solo. I guess i have been spoiled from the CS/TF2 deathmatches.
By split I think he means you can't play both at the same time.
Sorry to pick on this post, but who the f@#k plays two games at the same time? Of course you can't play both at the same time, as is already pointed out, you can only play one game at a time. So the concept of whether it is in-game as DLC or sold separately is irrelevant, you can still only play combat while playing combat, and still only play NS2 while playing NS2.
I can't believe people are getting so worked up. If anybody out there feels combat should have been DLC, think like it is. Imagine it is DLC with it's own store page, and you don't need NS2 to run it.... SUPER-DLC
It would be nice to be able to play combat (within ns2, not standalone) while in queue for another server. That would be my use case as wait times generally run 20ish mins for the servers I prefer. YMMV.
all i see in that video is everyone playing gorge to spam structures and healing, and marines shooting grenades down hallways. which corresponds with the complaints i've heard both from friends and random people.
that sounds about accurate to the mod version as well - is every round like this? was any thought put into to discourage such gameplay? how have you nerfed the grenade launcher so it isn't as aggravating to fight against? ect
edit: and when it comes to gorges, don't give hydras and whips by default. make them something that needs to be unlocked by one or two upgrade points. that will nerf the gorge by forcing them to either learn how to hit spits, or to delay getting adrenaline/carapace in favor of structures.
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
all i see in that video is everyone playing gorge to spam structures and healing, and marines shooting grenades down hallways. which corresponds with the complaints i've heard both from friends and random people.
that sounds about accurate to the mod version as well - is every round like this? was any thought put into to discourage such gameplay? how have you nerfed the grenade launcher so it isn't as aggravating to fight against? ect
edit: and when it comes to gorges, don't give hydras and whips by default. make them something that needs to be unlocked by one or two upgrade points. that will nerf the gorge by forcing them to either learn how to hit spits, or to delay getting adrenaline/carapace in favor of structures.
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
I agree that is a huge problem and the fact that he did not sound very entertained does not convince people to buy it. I am really for making skulk a lot easier to play with in the vanilla state of combat. You can make them incredibly harder with a comp mod if people desire so but if the goal is to sell more copies and make this an easy game to jump into then measures have to be taken to make this possible. The current state of alien frankly is hard to learn and hard to master and to put it frankly this is a turn off for beginners who might just buy the game for the aliens. No matter how much content is or will be planed in the future if the orignal product is not fun for a big audience you will have a small customer base to sell them to.
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
I know someone who had never played ns2, who watched all the tutorial videos before playing and still found it incredibly difficult. He said he did not even enjoy himself for his first 4 hours of gameplay. After that he started getting the hang of it, and found it rewarding and fun.
4 hours is a long time for the average gamer, even more so for the casual gamer.
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
I know someone who had never played ns2, who watched all the tutorial videos before playing and still found it incredibly difficult. He said he did not even enjoy himself for his first 4 hours of gameplay. After that he started getting the hang of it, and found it rewarding and fun.
4 hours is a long time for the average gamer, even more so for the casual gamer.
I agree and as far as I understood Ns2:C wants to appeal to a wider audience of players than the current Ns2 community. [Correct me if I am wrong]
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
I know someone who had never played ns2, who watched all the tutorial videos before playing and still found it incredibly difficult. He said he did not even enjoy himself for his first 4 hours of gameplay. After that he started getting the hang of it, and found it rewarding and fun.
4 hours is a long time for the average gamer, even more so for the casual gamer.
I agree and as far as I understood Ns2:C wants to appeal to a wider audience of players than the current Ns2 community. [Correct me if I am wrong]
It is inherent with NS though, not combat. It really comes down to the each alien class being hard to learn.
Comments
Anecdotally I've noticed the biggest weakness of the game in the eyes of NS2 regulars is that it can't be played on NS2 servers, i.e. as a means of filling the server or an occasional change of pace. That's the role it filled for a lot of of people in NS1. The mod always had the same problem, and the standalone game only magnifies that issue.
I also wouldn't look at the peak player stats yet. Being Halloween in the USA, most people were out partying and having unprotected sex. It may continue tonight. So I'd wait until like.. halfway through this next week to jump on the numbers (not saying numbers will increase or decrease, it's just a 'holiday' here and the numbers will be skewed because of it).
Too many bundies mate ? lmao
For me combat was smoother experience than normal NS2 269 build. I don't follow too much that FPS counter (g-sync), in reality that doesn't count if there is too much frame time or lagg. NS2 24slot pub server (thirsty onos) was just horror movie to play compared to 24 combat (thirsty onos). Biggest difference was combat engagements, while in ns2 its was like lag show or mouse feel just screws... While in combat fps just drops but mouse feel/movement is about the same.. Hitching/fps drops was quite normal when you had to spawn with that nano/umbra shield.. Later I tried NS2 270 build and it seems to help NS2 game fluidity, like welder fps drops with high particles are fixed (thanks IronHorse) and I think that luajit update was good...
Have to agree with syknik where is the old school knife kills like couple shots and knife
the new cannon weapon is fun and suits ns2-c but i dont think it would translate to ns2 at all.
As a result some NS2 players have actively discouraged and berated their efforts, claiming that they deserve it for free because it used to be a mod (what like NS2?). I'm sorry but $13 bucks is not a major amount to purchase anything where so much time and effort has gone into its development, and in my experience this has been a fun game to play, particularly in populated servers. I've also seen people actively discouraging it because "it doesn't have many players". Of course it won't with the unwarranted negative criticism panned its way.
As for UWE I don't even know what their contribution has been. Hell, Hugh can't even be bothered to whip together a 30 second plug for them on youtube, or to at least announce its release on one the UWE sites (announcing a release date is not the same thing). The only people I have seen supporting them have been Wasabione and ItsSuperEffective.
As far as I can see they have been dropped and abandoned to swim on their own. This does not sound like the UWE or NS2 community I used to know. FG is an indie developer trying to get a start out there by creating a mod, sound familiar? Where is the supposed suggestion that combat won't be impacted by what is coming out in NS2 and Subnautica? Absolute rubbish.
NS2 is not going to increase its player base... period... and Combat may have been a means of getting some people interested in it again. The player skill base may have increased to a point through Combat where they can actually participate in NS2. All I see on the forums these days are cynical, sarcastic asshats. I mean, look at the Reaper Skin thread, bitching and moaning, some of you should really take a good look at yourselves.
And NS2 was NOT a finished, polished product on release. Yet we still supported it. Combat seemed abandoned before it was even released. And my ire with community stems from the fact that we ARE part of a community which should be supporting others with a love of this game, its mods, dlc, and games born from it. Hell I thought that was what community was all about.
No.
And in any case I have spent A LOT more than that on dlc and donations in ns2. More than an order of magnitude more than combat sells for.
It does need some improvement, and that's totally normal for any game at launch, but it is absolutely worth the money.
Also, there's Halloween (which is also celebrated in Europe, btw). While no True Gamer™ will sacrifice an evening of play time for a party, filthy casuals may choose differently :P
NS2 is no Call of Duty or Counter Strike, there is no giant community with millions of players that you can just split up willy nilly between different game modes and DLC.
Putting combat behind a paywall will just split up the community, or what little is left of it, even more while adding exactly, nothing
Well at least another part of the game got monetized, that's a good thing, right? Totally..
UWE should have just adopted the combat team, make combat an official part of the game, one where new players can at least mess around a bit to learn the game.
Now they can't even do that anymore, because now combat is locked away behind an inflated price tag.
But who cares about sensible stuff like that? Let's all just keep on circlejerking how awesome everything is! Not like this game could bleed out anymore players, right?
It depends on how you look at it.
A standalone combat forming a split "within" the existing community is a fairly pointless argument. If you have both NS2 and Combat, then it makes no difference weather you launch them from same client or not, either way you're playing either one or the other game.
How it will affect sales of either game can go either way, on one hand a built in combat could bring in more sales of NS2 from people who are only interested in the Combat mode, however this would require some heavy advertising to let people know that the game has expanded and I doubt that was going to happen. On the other hand, the split could benefit both games by pointing people in each others direction.
I have to agree with this, which is sad because my experience with Combat has been mostly positive so far and I know it's important for FLG to make some money back from their work. That being said, in terms of player numbers it would have made more sense for UWE to adopt FLG and make Combat into an official alternate game mode... That way its release might have brought back people who had bought NS2 but stopped playing a while ago. I somehow doubt that all of those people will agree to pay 15 dollars for a new game, especially one that on the surface looks remarkably similar to NS2.
The sad truth is that NS2 has never been a super popular game, and it's been out for two years now. People aren't going to be rushing to check out a new NS2 game, especially when you consider that they're being asked to pay for it.
Not that I dislike the game or FLG's work, I actually think it's pretty excellent, but this had to be somewhat expected.
Why?
Every round feels the same and end in mass onos.
I remember a round where a marine says "Dont push and feed them". Well, he was right about the feeding, but it doesnt matter in the end.
Sorry to pick on this post, but who the f@#k plays two games at the same time? Of course you can't play both at the same time, as is already pointed out, you can only play one game at a time. So the concept of whether it is in-game as DLC or sold separately is irrelevant, you can still only play combat while playing combat, and still only play NS2 while playing NS2.
I can't believe people are getting so worked up. If anybody out there feels combat should have been DLC, think like it is. Imagine it is DLC with it's own store page, and you don't need NS2 to run it.... SUPER-DLC
TB´s opinion of the current state of the game.
that sounds about accurate to the mod version as well - is every round like this? was any thought put into to discourage such gameplay? how have you nerfed the grenade launcher so it isn't as aggravating to fight against? ect
edit: and when it comes to gorges, don't give hydras and whips by default. make them something that needs to be unlocked by one or two upgrade points. that will nerf the gorge by forcing them to either learn how to hit spits, or to delay getting adrenaline/carapace in favor of structures.
it's also interesting to see the perspective of a new player trying to play alien and how frustrating it is. perhaps if he had a tutorial that told him not to attack marines head on and explained the concept of wall jumping (because it's not intuitive at all), he wouldn't drop the game in only a few hours? i can't imagine how much of a joke the game must look to the thousands of people watching him being one shot by shotguns and grenades as he spawns or trys to do anything for that matter.
I agree that is a huge problem and the fact that he did not sound very entertained does not convince people to buy it. I am really for making skulk a lot easier to play with in the vanilla state of combat. You can make them incredibly harder with a comp mod if people desire so but if the goal is to sell more copies and make this an easy game to jump into then measures have to be taken to make this possible. The current state of alien frankly is hard to learn and hard to master and to put it frankly this is a turn off for beginners who might just buy the game for the aliens. No matter how much content is or will be planed in the future if the orignal product is not fun for a big audience you will have a small customer base to sell them to.
I know someone who had never played ns2, who watched all the tutorial videos before playing and still found it incredibly difficult. He said he did not even enjoy himself for his first 4 hours of gameplay. After that he started getting the hang of it, and found it rewarding and fun.
4 hours is a long time for the average gamer, even more so for the casual gamer.
I agree and as far as I understood Ns2:C wants to appeal to a wider audience of players than the current Ns2 community. [Correct me if I am wrong]