@2cough start counter-stacking or look for new servers.
I'll play wherever a slot is available, = and ^ are a rarity on my browser, I'm sure yours and most others on here are like that as well. Part of what makes it so tough is that there's maybe only a few rounds a week where I know for sure each team is pretty well balanced, otherwise.. the browser is double red Vs all day.
Meh, I guess it really doesnt matter very much in the end, I just kind of feel like w/l ratio cant be the only thing that decides whether your scores moves up or down.
@2cough start counter-stacking or look for new servers.
You can't. If you are one of those who has a pretty good "skill weight", you are in deep trouble my friend.
If you are on a server mixed with many skill level this is what's gonna happen :
1 You join first, everybody start to stack
2 You join last everybody say you stack
3 Even team will just make it worse (especially if the big heads start to gorge instead of being the uber aggressive ones)
4 The server gets empty
5 Next server, (loop to 1)
The worst is that no one wants to loose points. This IS the most ridiculous of it all. Giving the numbers to the players has just made them farming on it. for what ? No even 500 hundred players that we call regulars ? If you want fame ? NS2 isn't just the choice for you right now.
It also brought the other habits :
-Disconnecting from server if things start to smell bad to avoid loosing. But it's always accidental, right ?
-Early surrender or F4-ing for the lesser evil
-Claners from competitive bashing on a server because they couldn't find a decent match. Bragging about their big sized pole while we would (and SHOULD) have expected far better than this kind of behavior.
In this game a lot of people with experience do not play for "fun" anymore (but farming). While this game desperately needs new people, the only things that comes to be seen are the "forgettable and disposable legends" emptying server. And THAT is the most derelict thing that could happen. for what i see it's just going to oblivion.
What good is it to solve the "balance", "even team" stuff when no new player come to play (replenish the ranks) ? It is surely going evenly nowhere and to oblivion
Instead of having such a cranky "Even thing" (sorry for the authors) and debate pages about it (going nowhere), this game needs :
-Commanders (training)
-New people to stick around and stay (meaning not getting obliterated all the time)
-True supporters that do what they say. Balancing game, playing custom maps etc.
I think this game has the biggest potential EVER, but the competitive side of it just ruined everything. Like everything it touched so far on every franchise.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
"I think this game has the biggest potential EVER".
Thats true. It had a huge potential to become a succesfull e-sport title. The sad thing is, it failed in that way.
If you want to balance a game it doesnt make sense to balance it around people who start a game.
You balance it around the best players who knew every aspect of the game.
Shame on all the competitive players who helping to shape up the balance and giving feedback about in the forum.
Btw. the typical pup player isnt present here in the forum.
@UncleCrunch
If you buy a 2 year old multiplayer game, what would you expect after joining the 1st round?
Well, i would expect that all the vets in that game would kick my ass, i would be surpised if this isnt the case.
But if the game itself is interesting i would try to learn more and become better in that game.
If you want to balance a game it doesnt make sense to balance it around people who start a game.
You balance it around the best players who knew every aspect of the game.
Remember the patch that integrated a good part of the comp mod into vanilla? all hell broke loose.
@DePara
So, how do you want to separate the player who know the game mechanics to the beginers? And how do you separate the competive players from the casual games who know the game mechanics?
My guess: By time. Players with 100 hrs playtime should know more or less how the game works, right?
After that, i think you can purely balance by 'skill' - if you want to do that. Even if you know the mechanics does not mean everyone if capable to use them to their advantage.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
"Even if you know the mechanics does not mean everyone if capable to use them to their advantage."
This is not the fault of the "evil" comp player.
Comp players stomping rookies nonstop is a problem for sure. There people on NS2stats with an KDR around 10. Im sure they play only on rookie servers against real rookies.
There is is thread on ensl.org about that, so there are many comp players who dislike this behaviour.
Comp players on "white" servers filled with average pub skill should not be that problem.
This missing (rookie friendly) should be warning enough to all the new players. If they cant perform the simple task of reading, well, its not the comp players fault.
If i would buy a new game with two sorts of servers and i would join the "un" friendly server then i would expect the things i wrote above:
On these servers are the vets and i should be ready to get slaughtered.
The playerbase is too small now btw to split the rookies from the vets.
So you have mixed skill on every server now.
I think thats a point some people, in special on your server blackhawk, have to live with.
You are right: Most server are mixed now.
And i do not think that's a problem as long both side share the skill equally.
For the good players on one side there has to be a minimum of one that may counter him.
Sometime that's not possible, and i ask these special players to stand back, and check out another server with higher skilled players. But as we all know, some of them don't care. And then it's up to the server owner to decide what kind of game he prefers.
Personally i go with the mass. I'm a casual player, too.
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
Link to your hive page when you comment so I can debug what's going on.
Keep in mind that the skill system isn't designed to give you a feeling of progress, it's designed to predict how often your team will win games. If your skill is already correctly predicting how often you will win games, then it will bounce around but won't improve.
One thing I didn't realize until after this was in the wild is that the effective skill cap is higher for high player count servers than low player count servers. (There is no real skill cap, if you win all of your games your skill will keep going up forever, but the rate it will go up drops off exponentially.) This comes from how the skills in a team are combined. A player is assumed to have a smaller impact on a larger game than a smaller one, so if they maintain a high win to loss ratio in larger games they are assumed to have a bigger effect.
When you play in large player counts, your skill goes up more slowly initially, but effectively asymptotes at a higher value for a given win to loss ratio.
Keep in mind that the skill system isn't designed to give you a feeling of progress, it's designed to predict how often your team will win games. If your skill is already correctly predicting how often you will win games, then it will bounce around but won't improve.
That's good to know. I guess for most of us it's just frustrating to realise how painfully average we are.
So, how do you want to separate the player who know the game mechanics to the beginers? And how do you separate the competive players from the casual games who know the game mechanics?
My guess: By time. Players with 100 hrs playtime should know more or less how the game works, right?
After that, i think you can purely balance by 'skill' - if you want to do that. Even if you know the mechanics does not mean everyone if capable to use them to their advantage.
The CDT are currently working on a way to create "Rookie Only" servers without the need for excessive babysitting by the admins, which should, in theory, make the learning experience less punishing.
If we only had these servers at launch
As far as the casual gamers who know the mechanics (me), I don't really think these players need to be separated from the pro comp players. After all, if we know the mechanics, we know how godly one of these players can be with the right tools, and can work around that (i.e. swarm them, or avoid them. One player can carry a team, but cant win the game vs players who know the mechanics.
This comes from how the skills in a team are combined. A player is assumed to have a smaller impact on a larger game than a smaller one, so if they maintain a high win to loss ratio in larger games they are assumed to have a bigger effect.
A prem div player or another sharpshooter has a huge impact on every server size.
And he has more impact on large servers, cause the average skill is lower on them.
This comes from how the skills in a team are combined. A player is assumed to have a smaller impact on a larger game than a smaller one, so if they maintain a high win to loss ratio in larger games they are assumed to have a bigger effect.
A prem div player or another sharpshooter has a huge impact on every server size.
And he has more impact on large servers, cause the average skill is lower on them.
Definitely, and his or her skill will go up accordingly for winning in that context.
The comp contribution to balance a game can only achieve the balance in comp-mode. It sure helps to find cranky things. The thing is the vast majority isn't competitive players. They do not play anymore is it? That said, I'm afraid this is not gonna work as it is a coin with 2 sides. Every comp player started with a first step. Now it's you are a rookies or a "Pistolero de la muerte". So yes it is relevant to at least get comparison. Just to see if there is something left that is also cranky. Oh!! There i said it, sorry.
The first hours of (un)experience are completely ignored. The rookies are left alone with what the game offers and thats it. No skill system will ever alleviate this. There should be something to keep them interested, and something to keep on. But no hive skill numbers will ever do that. Nothing that make them come back and learn more are put together.
Ex : Simple thing like;
-A rookie should be able to set its own WP in order to be able to go around without looking a the map to much (if they have found the map already, yes). But that kind of things would have been of a great help.
-A tutorial that make sure they got the basics. Not an option.
Of course anybody who starts a game doesn't expect to win the first game. This is not about loosing anymore. More like raping, and closed doors (due to several factor like language, number of players willing to teach and game complexity).
It starts to look like NS1 with the comp scene of the same vets playing the same maps, farming the same way (instead of trying to teach), complaining about new maps and at the same time refusing to play any custom maps. And so on. The steam numbers tell enough.
Comp players stomping rookies nonstop is a problem for sure. There people on NS2stats with an KDR around 10. Im sure they play only on rookie servers against real rookies.
There is is thread on ensl.org about that, so there are many comp players who dislike this behavior
Dislike but do not ban. Why ? Because they come precisely from the same league (the NS2 world is small). I mean what good does a NSL forum thread like this ? Stopping them ? It looks more like a miss election speech with ponies on the side: "i want peace in the world... and it's bad to farm on rookies".
Whatever the skill system is, it'll will work better with more people. People that are making progress. So far i wish i see one rookie going above to the 100hrs (200 maybe) line since Hive skill system is on.
Comp players on "white" servers filled with average pub skill should not be that problem. This missing (rookie friendly) should be warning enough to all the new players. If they cant perform the simple task of reading, well, its not the comp players fault.
It has been stated many times that if there is no block (like select 1, 2 or 3) gamers do not read much, not only rookies.
I'm still positive about NS2, but as i stated before in other discussions we don't have the proper tools around it. Match making, Even team vote (that actually made me laugh several times - rookies stacked etc...) are not really helping so far. We don't really need that, we need "baby sitting" (as mentioned) tools to keep the new recruits interested in the game and progress. So far i have yet to see that happen.
This comes from how the skills in a team are combined. A player is assumed to have a smaller impact on a larger game than a smaller one, so if they maintain a high win to loss ratio in larger games they are assumed to have a bigger effect.
A prem div player or another sharpshooter has a huge impact on every server size.
And he has more impact on large servers, cause the average skill is lower on them.
Definitely, and his or her skill will go up accordingly for winning in that context.
If only it could give a boost to the moral of this flatten rookie after being kissing the bulldozer and the road at the same time.
@moultano
If calculation are executed at the end of the game.
What about considering the time played as a specific unit? Like aggresive jobs and builder jobs.
A guy with 2000 but is only playing gorge on that game will surely diminish the killing other players potential.
If they win with a lesser potential, they should be rewarded.
Experinced players could provide solid grounds for better games and the new guys to be able to dicover and train lerk, fade etc... same on marine side. The building time can be taken under consideration.
So, how do you want to separate the player who know the game mechanics to the beginers? And how do you separate the competive players from the casual games who know the game mechanics?
My guess: By time. Players with 100 hrs playtime should know more or less how the game works, right?
After that, i think you can purely balance by 'skill' - if you want to do that. Even if you know the mechanics does not mean everyone if capable to use them to their advantage.
The CDT are currently working on a way to create "Rookie Only" servers without the need for excessive babysitting by the admins, which should, in theory, make the learning experience less punishing.
Sounds like a good first step.
If you want to keep more new players around, make two more steps:
1. Hide the hive's statistics. Including: no "top 10" or "top 100" nonsense. This is a teamplay - there's NSL for ranking teams.
2. Didive the whole hive ranking (it doesn't matter how good or bad it is) into three dynamic parts: worst players, average, best. The worst can NEVER play public with best (excluding commander position). Make obligatory tag-system for public servers: it must be clear if it is a place to have fun for low-mid or mid-high skilled players.
In other words: forget (just for a while) about high-skilled players, that are probably the majority on this forum. Because after all: you can't have fun without killing and winning. And in game like NS2 1 high-skilled vet can (and will) ruin fun for 10 of low-skilled. And by low-skilled i mean not only rookies but also players with worse natural predispositions or worse computer hardware.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
To all High skill players:
Next time before a round start ask everyone in the opposite team what hardware they are using.
If you noticed that 3/4 of the players cant have solid FPS disconnect asap to not ruin the fun for these players.
Really, WTF.
Im running NS2 on an 3 year old PC with a two upgrades (SSD, gtx670) during that time.
A good 5 year old PC should handle NS2 on an accetable level.
Why should i care about people trying to run the game on older Hardware?
To all High skill players:
Next time before a round start ask everyone in the opposite team what hardware they are using.
If you noticed that 3/4 of the players cant have solid FPS disconnect asap to not ruin the fun for these players.
Really, WTF.
Thank you for your respone Depara. The point of my proposition is just to separate the people who "don't care" (about people being stomped, being worse or whatever the f...) from people who just want to have fun and can't because of many reasons (hardware is only one of them).
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
We had mentor programs , rookie only servers and high skill only servers in the past.
There tons of guides and tutorial videos.
But in the end this didnt help to raise the playercount.
Maybe there is one simple problem no system in the world can solve:
NS2 is not an mainstream game so its not made for the mainstream gamer.
You need to invest some time to learn the different aspects of the game and im sure 80% of the past playerbase didnt want to invest this in times of dumbed down games.
These are the people who quit the game relative fast. And instead of investing some time, they buy a new game on steam for 5$ and end up with 370 games each played for 30 min.
So with every sale UWE is trying to bring more of this kind of players to the game.
I think thats the main reason why every NS2 sale is failing in the long run.
I would imagine that a very large number of players that didnt stick with the game left because of performance issues.
With my computer that i've thrown £100s of pounds at just for ns2, it's easy to forget that performance on lower end machines is terrible. Until recently, it was still really bad on my just-about-good-enough PC.
I think i'm gonna have to re-install ns2 on my laptop (the one that was so scarcely playable that i was compelled to buy a new PC) and see how ns2 is handled these days
With recent performance fixes, and more improvements on the horizon, I think its not unreasonable to imagine we might be able to get some players to return if we publicised the big, big performance improvements.
"Come back, we've changed!"
I just really hope we dont jump the gun and do any kind of "improved performance re-release" of ns2 before it is well and truly ready to be experienced at an acceptable fps in the late game by a large portion of older hardware configs.
Maybe at the end of a round it tells you what you gained or lost. New players may like this. Also, the arrows for skill level may be confusing. Idk, just ideas. Personally, IDC about the points.
For some examples of odd point changes, you can check my profile http://hive.naturalselection2.com/profile/760779
Obviously I'm an average player, so I would expect to have about a 1:1 win/loss and not much change in score, seems like that works most of the time but there are exceptions.
The most visible one is the 48 point change for a five minute loss. When most games are only changing up/down ~10 strange to see something like this and on average it seems like losses for an individual game are more than gains for a individual win. In the past several days have seen multiple 40+ points lost on losing a round, but most gains for wins are less than 20 and only one higher than 30 points.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
@Kendall The skills system makes an estimate of your chance of winning based on the team skills, some times it skewered to one end (some good players have a low score because they aren't playing on white listed servers), so what can happen is you get a really good team but have a low average team skill, then you steam roll the opposite with a higher skill score, but are actually not as good, and this will give you extra score as you are not expected to win that game, but did. This is my interpretation of how the skill system works. Others may be able to give a more definite answer.
Im sure the Wooza player is far away from the PCW player skillwise.
You're confusing skill with K:D ratio.
It's a different game with focus on teamwork and strategy, fitting the hive skill algorithm more closely.
Only problem with the hive skill is that it punishes counter stackers harshly (saw up to -300 for losing a single round) and rewards relentless stackers.
Also, what happened to scapegoating Wooza's for the NS2 playercount? Did that somehow not grip entirely? Has it served it's purpose of distracting from actual work that needs to be done on NS2?
And your performance cryout? You have suddenly gone silent about that.
If not you, who else will keep the hate-train going? I'm disappointed. :-q
If you focus on individual points lost/gained after a round, you are not understanding how the skill system works.
Phew! Good thing I did not focus on that, then.
If you actually read my post before and after that it says "punishes counter stackers harshly" & "rewards relentless stackers" which, of course, is the natural focus. The former was an individual example, as it was observed.
I doubt any new players actually care about the Hive system, not to mention that it just feels very very broken.
Broken because the search never seems to work, broken because you have to link accounts trough an interface that's horribly unintuitive, broken because the game gives no notice as to what servers are actually tracked by the Hive system.
At 600 hours played i still had been a "level 1", the level never increased so i didn't even bother with the whole thing in the first place. The only reason i ever bothered to interact with the Hive system had been because i wanted the commander badge. And for that i basically had to look up a server white list on the forums to find out on what servers to play on, put all of them as "favorites" so i could see at a quick glance "Okay playing there will contribute to my hive score", it can't get any more convoluted than that!
Comments
I'll play wherever a slot is available, = and ^ are a rarity on my browser, I'm sure yours and most others on here are like that as well. Part of what makes it so tough is that there's maybe only a few rounds a week where I know for sure each team is pretty well balanced, otherwise.. the browser is double red Vs all day.
Meh, I guess it really doesnt matter very much in the end, I just kind of feel like w/l ratio cant be the only thing that decides whether your scores moves up or down.
You can't. If you are one of those who has a pretty good "skill weight", you are in deep trouble my friend.
If you are on a server mixed with many skill level this is what's gonna happen :
1 You join first, everybody start to stack
2 You join last everybody say you stack
3 Even team will just make it worse (especially if the big heads start to gorge instead of being the uber aggressive ones)
4 The server gets empty
5 Next server, (loop to 1)
The worst is that no one wants to loose points. This IS the most ridiculous of it all. Giving the numbers to the players has just made them farming on it. for what ? No even 500 hundred players that we call regulars ? If you want fame ? NS2 isn't just the choice for you right now.
It also brought the other habits :
-Disconnecting from server if things start to smell bad to avoid loosing. But it's always accidental, right ?
-Early surrender or F4-ing for the lesser evil
-Claners from competitive bashing on a server because they couldn't find a decent match. Bragging about their big sized pole while we would (and SHOULD) have expected far better than this kind of behavior.
In this game a lot of people with experience do not play for "fun" anymore (but farming). While this game desperately needs new people, the only things that comes to be seen are the "forgettable and disposable legends" emptying server. And THAT is the most derelict thing that could happen. for what i see it's just going to oblivion.
What good is it to solve the "balance", "even team" stuff when no new player come to play (replenish the ranks) ? It is surely going evenly nowhere and to oblivion
Instead of having such a cranky "Even thing" (sorry for the authors) and debate pages about it (going nowhere), this game needs :
-Commanders (training)
-New people to stick around and stay (meaning not getting obliterated all the time)
-True supporters that do what they say. Balancing game, playing custom maps etc.
I think this game has the biggest potential EVER, but the competitive side of it just ruined everything. Like everything it touched so far on every franchise.
Thats true. It had a huge potential to become a succesfull e-sport title. The sad thing is, it failed in that way.
If you want to balance a game it doesnt make sense to balance it around people who start a game.
You balance it around the best players who knew every aspect of the game.
Shame on all the competitive players who helping to shape up the balance and giving feedback about in the forum.
Btw. the typical pup player isnt present here in the forum.
@UncleCrunch
If you buy a 2 year old multiplayer game, what would you expect after joining the 1st round?
Well, i would expect that all the vets in that game would kick my ass, i would be surpised if this isnt the case.
But if the game itself is interesting i would try to learn more and become better in that game.
Remember the patch that integrated a good part of the comp mod into vanilla? all hell broke loose.
So, how do you want to separate the player who know the game mechanics to the beginers? And how do you separate the competive players from the casual games who know the game mechanics?
My guess: By time. Players with 100 hrs playtime should know more or less how the game works, right?
After that, i think you can purely balance by 'skill' - if you want to do that. Even if you know the mechanics does not mean everyone if capable to use them to their advantage.
This is not the fault of the "evil" comp player.
Comp players stomping rookies nonstop is a problem for sure. There people on NS2stats with an KDR around 10. Im sure they play only on rookie servers against real rookies.
There is is thread on ensl.org about that, so there are many comp players who dislike this behaviour.
Comp players on "white" servers filled with average pub skill should not be that problem.
This missing (rookie friendly) should be warning enough to all the new players. If they cant perform the simple task of reading, well, its not the comp players fault.
If i would buy a new game with two sorts of servers and i would join the "un" friendly server then i would expect the things i wrote above:
On these servers are the vets and i should be ready to get slaughtered.
The playerbase is too small now btw to split the rookies from the vets.
So you have mixed skill on every server now.
I think thats a point some people, in special on your server blackhawk, have to live with.
And i do not think that's a problem as long both side share the skill equally.
For the good players on one side there has to be a minimum of one that may counter him.
Sometime that's not possible, and i ask these special players to stand back, and check out another server with higher skilled players. But as we all know, some of them don't care. And then it's up to the server owner to decide what kind of game he prefers.
Personally i go with the mass. I'm a casual player, too.
Keep in mind that the skill system isn't designed to give you a feeling of progress, it's designed to predict how often your team will win games. If your skill is already correctly predicting how often you will win games, then it will bounce around but won't improve.
One thing I didn't realize until after this was in the wild is that the effective skill cap is higher for high player count servers than low player count servers. (There is no real skill cap, if you win all of your games your skill will keep going up forever, but the rate it will go up drops off exponentially.) This comes from how the skills in a team are combined. A player is assumed to have a smaller impact on a larger game than a smaller one, so if they maintain a high win to loss ratio in larger games they are assumed to have a bigger effect.
When you play in large player counts, your skill goes up more slowly initially, but effectively asymptotes at a higher value for a given win to loss ratio.
The CDT are currently working on a way to create "Rookie Only" servers without the need for excessive babysitting by the admins, which should, in theory, make the learning experience less punishing.
If we only had these servers at launch
As far as the casual gamers who know the mechanics (me), I don't really think these players need to be separated from the pro comp players. After all, if we know the mechanics, we know how godly one of these players can be with the right tools, and can work around that (i.e. swarm them, or avoid them. One player can carry a team, but cant win the game vs players who know the mechanics.
A prem div player or another sharpshooter has a huge impact on every server size.
And he has more impact on large servers, cause the average skill is lower on them.
Definitely, and his or her skill will go up accordingly for winning in that context.
The comp contribution to balance a game can only achieve the balance in comp-mode. It sure helps to find cranky things. The thing is the vast majority isn't competitive players. They do not play anymore is it? That said, I'm afraid this is not gonna work as it is a coin with 2 sides. Every comp player started with a first step. Now it's you are a rookies or a "Pistolero de la muerte". So yes it is relevant to at least get comparison. Just to see if there is something left that is also cranky. Oh!! There i said it, sorry.
The first hours of (un)experience are completely ignored. The rookies are left alone with what the game offers and thats it. No skill system will ever alleviate this. There should be something to keep them interested, and something to keep on. But no hive skill numbers will ever do that. Nothing that make them come back and learn more are put together.
Ex : Simple thing like;
-A rookie should be able to set its own WP in order to be able to go around without looking a the map to much (if they have found the map already, yes). But that kind of things would have been of a great help.
-A tutorial that make sure they got the basics. Not an option.
Of course anybody who starts a game doesn't expect to win the first game. This is not about loosing anymore. More like raping, and closed doors (due to several factor like language, number of players willing to teach and game complexity).
It starts to look like NS1 with the comp scene of the same vets playing the same maps, farming the same way (instead of trying to teach), complaining about new maps and at the same time refusing to play any custom maps. And so on. The steam numbers tell enough.
Dislike but do not ban. Why ? Because they come precisely from the same league (the NS2 world is small). I mean what good does a NSL forum thread like this ? Stopping them ? It looks more like a miss election speech with ponies on the side: "i want peace in the world... and it's bad to farm on rookies".
Whatever the skill system is, it'll will work better with more people. People that are making progress. So far i wish i see one rookie going above to the 100hrs (200 maybe) line since Hive skill system is on.
It has been stated many times that if there is no block (like select 1, 2 or 3) gamers do not read much, not only rookies.
I'm still positive about NS2, but as i stated before in other discussions we don't have the proper tools around it. Match making, Even team vote (that actually made me laugh several times - rookies stacked etc...) are not really helping so far. We don't really need that, we need "baby sitting" (as mentioned) tools to keep the new recruits interested in the game and progress. So far i have yet to see that happen.
If only it could give a boost to the moral of this flatten rookie after being kissing the bulldozer and the road at the same time.
visible or not, i think something still needs to be changed for accuracy's sake.
@moultano
If calculation are executed at the end of the game.
What about considering the time played as a specific unit? Like aggresive jobs and builder jobs.
A guy with 2000 but is only playing gorge on that game will surely diminish the killing other players potential.
If they win with a lesser potential, they should be rewarded.
Experinced players could provide solid grounds for better games and the new guys to be able to dicover and train lerk, fade etc... same on marine side. The building time can be taken under consideration.
Sounds like a good first step.
If you want to keep more new players around, make two more steps:
1. Hide the hive's statistics. Including: no "top 10" or "top 100" nonsense. This is a teamplay - there's NSL for ranking teams.
2. Didive the whole hive ranking (it doesn't matter how good or bad it is) into three dynamic parts: worst players, average, best. The worst can NEVER play public with best (excluding commander position). Make obligatory tag-system for public servers: it must be clear if it is a place to have fun for low-mid or mid-high skilled players.
In other words: forget (just for a while) about high-skilled players, that are probably the majority on this forum. Because after all: you can't have fun without killing and winning. And in game like NS2 1 high-skilled vet can (and will) ruin fun for 10 of low-skilled. And by low-skilled i mean not only rookies but also players with worse natural predispositions or worse computer hardware.
Next time before a round start ask everyone in the opposite team what hardware they are using.
If you noticed that 3/4 of the players cant have solid FPS disconnect asap to not ruin the fun for these players.
Really, WTF.
Im running NS2 on an 3 year old PC with a two upgrades (SSD, gtx670) during that time.
A good 5 year old PC should handle NS2 on an accetable level.
Why should i care about people trying to run the game on older Hardware?
There tons of guides and tutorial videos.
But in the end this didnt help to raise the playercount.
Maybe there is one simple problem no system in the world can solve:
NS2 is not an mainstream game so its not made for the mainstream gamer.
You need to invest some time to learn the different aspects of the game and im sure 80% of the past playerbase didnt want to invest this in times of dumbed down games.
These are the people who quit the game relative fast. And instead of investing some time, they buy a new game on steam for 5$ and end up with 370 games each played for 30 min.
So with every sale UWE is trying to bring more of this kind of players to the game.
I think thats the main reason why every NS2 sale is failing in the long run.
With my computer that i've thrown £100s of pounds at just for ns2, it's easy to forget that performance on lower end machines is terrible. Until recently, it was still really bad on my just-about-good-enough PC.
I think i'm gonna have to re-install ns2 on my laptop (the one that was so scarcely playable that i was compelled to buy a new PC) and see how ns2 is handled these days
With recent performance fixes, and more improvements on the horizon, I think its not unreasonable to imagine we might be able to get some players to return if we publicised the big, big performance improvements.
"Come back, we've changed!"
I just really hope we dont jump the gun and do any kind of "improved performance re-release" of ns2 before it is well and truly ready to be experienced at an acceptable fps in the late game by a large portion of older hardware configs.
Obviously I'm an average player, so I would expect to have about a 1:1 win/loss and not much change in score, seems like that works most of the time but there are exceptions.
The most visible one is the 48 point change for a five minute loss. When most games are only changing up/down ~10 strange to see something like this and on average it seems like losses for an individual game are more than gains for a individual win. In the past several days have seen multiple 40+ points lost on losing a round, but most gains for wins are less than 20 and only one higher than 30 points.
It's a different game with focus on teamwork and strategy, fitting the hive skill algorithm more closely.
Only problem with the hive skill is that it punishes counter stackers harshly (saw up to -300 for losing a single round) and rewards relentless stackers.
Also, what happened to scapegoating Wooza's for the NS2 playercount? Did that somehow not grip entirely? Has it served it's purpose of distracting from actual work that needs to be done on NS2?
And your performance cryout? You have suddenly gone silent about that.
If not you, who else will keep the hate-train going? I'm disappointed. :-q
If you actually read my post before and after that it says "punishes counter stackers harshly" & "rewards relentless stackers" which, of course, is the natural focus. The former was an individual example, as it was observed.
Broken because the search never seems to work, broken because you have to link accounts trough an interface that's horribly unintuitive, broken because the game gives no notice as to what servers are actually tracked by the Hive system.
At 600 hours played i still had been a "level 1", the level never increased so i didn't even bother with the whole thing in the first place. The only reason i ever bothered to interact with the Hive system had been because i wanted the commander badge. And for that i basically had to look up a server white list on the forums to find out on what servers to play on, put all of them as "favorites" so i could see at a quick glance "Okay playing there will contribute to my hive score", it can't get any more convoluted than that!