Enough! It has been stated on several different occasions, the necessary infrastructure is not currently in place.
It is analogous to asking your commander to research Stomp for your Onos when you're still on one Hive... CDT have to expand and build that 2nd Hive first and get their biomass up and all of that shjit - THEN we can talk about F2P.
schkorpioI can mspaintJoin Date: 2003-05-23Member: 16635Members
edited June 2015
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
Because the current game is too much competitive? -_-
could you make a weird promotion like F2P for people who own certain games on steam? like people who own CS:GO can play ns2 for free.
This would negate 2 undesirable phenomenon:
the banned cheaters would have to spend money to come back
the F2P would be exclusive to a crowd of gamers who are more likely to enjoy the game (I'm assuming that a CS_GO enthusiast is more likely to enjoy NS2 than a random gamer)
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
competitiveness is what allows to build a long lasting relationship with the user.
Look at all the successful and growing multiplayer games around you, they're all quite competitive (CS LOL DOTA). Players are incentivized to play to win so that it is ensured that your opposition will be challenging and victory valuable and rewarding. In NS2, you don't play to win, you play to have YOUR fun, which can mean playing a negative sum game at times, which means that you will cause a loss of enjoyment in other players that outweighs your increase in enjoyment:
Maybe you're a KDR whore and you wont do the necessary sacrifices which may lead to an underwhelming performance from your team.
Maybe you don't want to sacrifice your fun to take on a strategically relevant position,
Straight up trolling
etc
And then there's the simple fact that NS2 is an incredible competitive game on paper, but suffers from too many structural issues for its competitive potential to blossom, which leads people to think that 24+ men servers is what people want. The reality is that running a huge server fix a lot of the structural problems of NS2 which improves the overall experience but deteriorates the gameplay experience. Big servers are popular because:
a game can only start when both sides have 1 or more people willing to command on their team, which has a very high probability of happening on a big server and very small on a small server
when a game is over, a server will often lose 20-50% of its population, and if that means that the player count goes under 10, the server will usually die as everyone on the server starts thinking that the next game is never gonna start or take too much effort. This will of course happen very often on smaller server and nearly never on bigger servers, ensuring that the flow of games continues only on big servers
Bigger server are less intimidating for newer players, because newer players have no way to play among themselves otherwise. They want a non-judgmental environment, where they can learn by trial and error and a big server is the closest thing they can get to that
tl;dr: competitive games are successful and ns2 could be one but it has structural issues.
And then there's the simple fact that NS2 is an incredible competitive game on paper, but suffers from too many structural issues for its competitive potential to blossom, which leads people to think that 24+ men servers is what people want. The reality is that running a huge server fix a lot of the structural problems of NS2 which improves the overall experience but deteriorates the gameplay experience. Big servers are popular because:
a game can only start when both sides have 1 or more people willing to command on their team, which has a very high probability of happening on a big server and very small on a small server
when a game is over, a server will often lose 20-50% of its population, and if that means that the player count goes under 10, the server will usually die as everyone on the server starts thinking that the next game is never gonna start or take too much effort. This will of course happen very often on smaller server and nearly never on bigger servers, ensuring that the flow of games continues only on big servers
Bigger server are less intimidating for newer players, because newer players have no way to play among themselves otherwise. They want a non-judgmental environment, where they can learn by trial and error and a big server is the closest thing they can get to that
tl;dr: competitive games are successful and ns2 could be one but it has structural issues.
Not bad but you lack insight:
Big servers do have more potential commanders but commanding is a proportionally higher challenge. It evens out to the point that the wait time is on average equal to normal servers.
Large servers simply scale, they fill and die at the same speed as normal servers. a) Filling them requires more players to join in x minutes than normal servers. It happens at the same speed overall. b) They will die often when tumbling to 50% capacity because players 'expect' more other individuals than on a normal server and call it dead. However, one very important point is that normal servers have a hard time getting a game going when at 20-50% capacity. This is actually different on large servers. And pregameplus doesn't cut it as that's "not a real game". This is indeed a structural problem that a large server coincidentally avoids. NS2 needs to be not boring at 3vs3.
Contrary to popular belief, large servers are no particular rookie magnets. Rookies actually favor servers that are at around 15% capacity, disregarding slotcount! What is really bad for rookies is the fact they too often end up in the actually weaker team. Servers that kick them by default or players that treat them badly are doing the rest.
Independantly from that, and considering various elements, it is true that rookies have a better chance of learning the game without pressure on big servers. They are however, not touched by the exciting and intense gameplay a competetive level of play can offer. That is why a button on the main menu needs to open that world to them with a single click.
A kind of ranking system and instant/automatic access to public servers 8v8 max would be super helpful for rookies and not-rookies-anymore-but-still-noobs. Wouldn't work with high skill pubbers and comp players/veterans. Some pubbers have higher Hive skill than experienced comp players.
But such a system, if implemented for a relaunch could match equal skill players together and avoid frustration while learning in a healthy environment. Not sure if such a thing is in the works or could be acheived for said relaunch (I highly doubt it sadly)
edit : Russian servers are the dumbest shit around NS2 as well. People eject you as khamm when they have all the biomass, all the tech, all possible RTs available but aren't able to go 6 onos into the enemy base. What a bunch of dumbasses. And there is no effort to communicate in english from their part. Being the only populated server at this hour this is quite sad. three onos : "DROP 4TH HIVE HERE COMM" then they run away from two exos and the hive gets killed, and they vote to eject me hahahah xD No offense to some russian comp players, but jeez these Russia #number servers are dumb as hell. The worst thing is, I joined the server with only 10 players, most of them rookies, and told myself : "well no pub-stomp, i'm gonna go comm to help them out". I'm not a great comm, but I can comm pubs, it's not the hardest thing in the world
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
Because the current game is too much competitive? -_-
Compared to the first game, well yes . NS2 is definitely geared towards match based gameplay where it's starting to lean on the sports side of things instead of just being a fun ol' game. The first NS had elevators, doors, weldables, you could build the command chair anywhere, the aliens also weren't tied to the cysts or a commander even so it was much more of a sandbox game. Sure the later editions "streamed lined" a lot of that out as well. But for me, the first NS was about riding the big elevator on bast even if it was to my demise, NS was about relocating a base just to survive for another 5 minutes. It was about the onos using the phase gate because the commander built too far ahead and didn't secure the base etc. NS1 for me was a string of fun moments that I've never seen before in games, where you could be very creative, as well as really big and intense battles. People weren't playing to win they were playing for those experiences.
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
competitiveness is what allows to build a long lasting relationship with the user.
tl;dr: competitive games are successful and ns2 could be one but it has structural issues.
Big servers do have more potential commanders but commanding is a proportionally higher challenge. It evens out to the point that the wait time is on average equal to normal servers.
Large servers simply scale, they fill and die at the same speed as normal servers. a) Filling them requires more players to join in x minutes than normal servers. It happens at the same speed overall. b) They will die often when tumbling to 50% capacity because players 'expect' more other individuals than on a normal server and call it dead. However, one very important point is that normal servers have a hard time getting a game going when at 20-50% capacity. This is actually different on large servers. And pregameplus doesn't cut it as that's "not a real game". This is indeed a structural problem that a large server coincidentally avoids. NS2 needs to be not boring at 3vs3.
Contrary to popular belief, large servers are no particular rookie magnets. Rookies actually favor servers that are at around 15% capacity, disregarding slotcount! What is really bad for rookies is the fact they too often end up in the actually weaker team. Servers that kick them by default or players that treat them badly are doing the rest.
Independantly from that, and considering various elements, it is true that rookies have a better chance of learning the game without pressure on big servers. They are however, not touched by the exciting and intense gameplay a competetive level of play can offer. That is why a button on the main menu needs to open that world to them with a single click.
In my experience it takes longer to find comm in smaller servers, you even get people fighting over the chair sometimes, but if you think it scales so much as to compensate for the amount of players, Its gonna be hard to prove each other right or wrong.
a)larger servers attracts more players per minutes since the people have learned that they are more reliable at starting games with more than 10 players. b)If people expect more players than on a normal server then those players are stuck between playing on the few big servers, so their choice usually becomes, quit the game or wait rather than switch server, quit or wait. On top of that, a person who is willing to play with smaller amounts of player wont mide the depopulation of the server towards normal numbers
Where do you have that information from? Anecdotal evidence from the forums seems to indicate that rookies are intimidated by the smaller population servers, they like to know that they are having very little impact in the bigger server so they can make mistakes.
team based games seems to really benefit (building long term relation with the player) from structuring the game experience around their competitive settings. Eventually people don't just want to experience the gameplay, they want their wins and losses to mean something and right now a NS2 win or loss has little validity, since anyone can leave and join a team at will with little consequences and swing the tide (this could be added to the structural issues of smaller servers since 1 leaver during a game can swing the battle and invalidate the value of the game).
I don't think NS2 should ever go F2P(because of what F2P does to games), BUT I think that it would very good advertising for UWE and Subnautica if it was simply FREE for all Steam account holders. In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
Because the current game is too much competitive? -_-
Compared to the first game, well yes . NS2 is definitely geared towards match based gameplay where it's starting to lean on the sports side of things instead of just being a fun ol' game. The first NS had elevators, doors, weldables, you could build the command chair anywhere, the aliens also weren't tied to the cysts or a commander even so it was much more of a sandbox game. Sure the later editions "streamed lined" a lot of that out as well. But for me, the first NS was about riding the big elevator on bast even if it was to my demise, NS was about relocating a base just to survive for another 5 minutes. It was about the onos using the phase gate because the commander built too far ahead and didn't secure the base etc. NS1 for me was a string of fun moments that I've never seen before in games, where you could be very creative, as well as really big and intense battles. People weren't playing to win they were playing for those experiences.
Comments
But devs can make Workshop woking again for modder can creat their " skin + guns camo" like CSGO ?
More active modding comunity = More players stay !
It is analogous to asking your commander to research Stomp for your Onos when you're still on one Hive... CDT have to expand and build that 2nd Hive first and get their biomass up and all of that shjit - THEN we can talk about F2P.
In Australia you are lucky to have one full server at peak times
Also if I had my way I'd make the free version of NS2 less competitive and ditch the e-sports style gameplay. Add atmosphere, add weldables back in and make it more of a sandbox like NS1.
This would negate 2 undesirable phenomenon:
(I'm assuming that a CS_GO enthusiast is more likely to enjoy NS2 than a random gamer)
competitiveness is what allows to build a long lasting relationship with the user.
Look at all the successful and growing multiplayer games around you, they're all quite competitive (CS LOL DOTA). Players are incentivized to play to win so that it is ensured that your opposition will be challenging and victory valuable and rewarding. In NS2, you don't play to win, you play to have YOUR fun, which can mean playing a negative sum game at times, which means that you will cause a loss of enjoyment in other players that outweighs your increase in enjoyment:
- Maybe you're a KDR whore and you wont do the necessary sacrifices which may lead to an underwhelming performance from your team.
- Maybe you don't want to sacrifice your fun to take on a strategically relevant position,
- Straight up trolling
- etc
And then there's the simple fact that NS2 is an incredible competitive game on paper, but suffers from too many structural issues for its competitive potential to blossom, which leads people to think that 24+ men servers is what people want. The reality is that running a huge server fix a lot of the structural problems of NS2 which improves the overall experience but deteriorates the gameplay experience. Big servers are popular because:- a game can only start when both sides have 1 or more people willing to command on their team, which has a very high probability of happening on a big server and very small on a small server
- when a game is over, a server will often lose 20-50% of its population, and if that means that the player count goes under 10, the server will usually die as everyone on the server starts thinking that the next game is never gonna start or take too much effort. This will of course happen very often on smaller server and nearly never on bigger servers, ensuring that the flow of games continues only on big servers
- Bigger server are less intimidating for newer players, because newer players have no way to play among themselves otherwise. They want a non-judgmental environment, where they can learn by trial and error and a big server is the closest thing they can get to that
tl;dr: competitive games are successful and ns2 could be one but it has structural issues.Big servers do have more potential commanders but commanding is a proportionally higher challenge. It evens out to the point that the wait time is on average equal to normal servers.
Large servers simply scale, they fill and die at the same speed as normal servers.
a) Filling them requires more players to join in x minutes than normal servers. It happens at the same speed overall.
b) They will die often when tumbling to 50% capacity because players 'expect' more other individuals than on a normal server and call it dead.
However, one very important point is that normal servers have a hard time getting a game going when at 20-50% capacity. This is actually different on large servers. And pregameplus doesn't cut it as that's "not a real game".
This is indeed a structural problem that a large server coincidentally avoids. NS2 needs to be not boring at 3vs3.
Contrary to popular belief, large servers are no particular rookie magnets. Rookies actually favor servers that are at around 15% capacity, disregarding slotcount!
What is really bad for rookies is the fact they too often end up in the actually weaker team.
Servers that kick them by default or players that treat them badly are doing the rest.
Independantly from that, and considering various elements, it is true that rookies have a better chance of learning the game without pressure on big servers. They are however, not touched by the exciting and intense gameplay a competetive level of play can offer.
That is why a button on the main menu needs to open that world to them with a single click.
edit : Russian servers are the dumbest shit around NS2 as well. People eject you as khamm when they have all the biomass, all the tech, all possible RTs available but aren't able to go 6 onos into the enemy base. What a bunch of dumbasses. And there is no effort to communicate in english from their part. Being the only populated server at this hour this is quite sad.
three onos : "DROP 4TH HIVE HERE COMM" then they run away from two exos and the hive gets killed, and they vote to eject me hahahah xD
No offense to some russian comp players, but jeez these Russia #number servers are dumb as hell.
The worst thing is, I joined the server with only 10 players, most of them rookies, and told myself : "well no pub-stomp, i'm gonna go comm to help them out". I'm not a great comm, but I can comm pubs, it's not the hardest thing in the world
What about Minecraft?
a)larger servers attracts more players per minutes since the people have learned that they are more reliable at starting games with more than 10 players.
b)If people expect more players than on a normal server then those players are stuck between playing on the few big servers, so their choice usually becomes, quit the game or wait rather than switch server, quit or wait. On top of that, a person who is willing to play with smaller amounts of player wont mide the depopulation of the server towards normal numbers
Where do you have that information from? Anecdotal evidence from the forums seems to indicate that rookies are intimidated by the smaller population servers, they like to know that they are having very little impact in the bigger server so they can make mistakes.
team based games seems to really benefit (building long term relation with the player) from structuring the game experience around their competitive settings. Eventually people don't just want to experience the gameplay, they want their wins and losses to mean something and right now a NS2 win or loss has little validity, since anyone can leave and join a team at will with little consequences and swing the tide (this could be added to the structural issues of smaller servers since 1 leaver during a game can swing the battle and invalidate the value of the game).
NS2 is about as uncasual as a game can get, you can go play gorgecraft if you want!