Q&A About UWE Coming Back to NS2 - Natural Selection 2
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Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Q&A About UWE Coming Back to NS2 - Natural Selection 2
Ed. Note: The context for this article can be found in the post “Let’s try something new.” These questions were collected and prepared by Chris ‘Ironhorse’ Gates. Chris’ questions are in...
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I think what really turned me off on NS2 was the skill gap in the Player base.
I'd like to think of myself as a rather good Player, but what often killed matches for me were Players (especially in Marines) that singlehandedly annihilated the alien Team in their base. I remember a couple of matches where a Marine would go into a hive, armed with a pistol and kill everything. We as skulks tried really damn hard to take him down, but it were only after around 8 skulks had died that we finally got him.
Now, i know that is a very specific example, but it happened rather often, that 1 or 2 Players decided the fate of an entire Match on a server of 18 Players.
The Skill system kinda warned one about which server to join and which not, but if you join a server where you are facing players of equal skill, sometimes a Pro would join and turn the match upside down again.
You are correct for the first half of your question. As for the second half, I doubt any of the members on the new dev team will be able to answer anything concrete just because nothing has been decided yet for certain. From what I understand, it basically means that these devs now have the financial backing from UWE to try and make a last effort in increasing player numbers, creating new content and 'reviving' the game per se.
Think of it like this, NS2 is a car. UWE owns the car, and rents it to the CDT. After today, UWE is handing over the keys to these 8 new devs and paying for the fuel...
Personally, I'm skeptical but also happy for the devs and for the potential this team has.
edit:Do you think you could list for us who from the core NS/NS2 development team will be working again? I'm actually pretty excited to see what they have gained from being away for so long.
A question below for Flayra and mixed in feelings about how it does and did happen.
Do any of the core UWE development team members play NS2(Max especially) anymore on there main accounts on servers that actually have a decent playerbase which doesn't consist of greens? or even under different accounts to scale or get ideas from how they want to change the game, and there are any meaningful features that they have found out from being on those servers?
seemingly you guys aren't really involved at all in game and on the ground and i find that to be more annoying then anything because back in NS1 I or any multitude of people could pop onto a server once in a while and you all had good sense of what was going on from being in and around us without judging us or your position as a developer, we all treated you as one of us and you could see how the game was being played out. These days you leave this task to coordinators, marketers and playtesters whom don't exactly provide the best of feedback as we can see from what happened since release it doesn't really translate to good retention or the features being worked on and implemented don't leave people happy, most of the time people leave this game because of the disillusion surrounding these things.
I want to blame Flayra with the good ol "fuck xyzxyz" but i can't seemingly because of the amount of stress it must have been for him to develop early NS2 balance from being around a whole bunch of people pretending like they're got a good footing on how the whole community feels about things, especially when most of the people commenting at that time were duplicate accounts of people who casually played NS and or tried it once but got destroyed by superclans on public servers, i still find people on other games who ask how things are going and i try and convince them to come back and they usually end the conversation with "Fuck xyzxyz". Maybe with one of the testing grounds we could attempt to bring NS back to its glory days of 3rd on the steam charts(or atleast attempt to!)
just BRING it decoy
There are several disagree on this post but if you put yourself in the position of a new player he faces a really complicated FPS that you know nothing about, where the small hundred of players that still play it, are on this game most of their time, so the skill gap can only be huge.
And not all the time but several times when I tried again to play NS2 there was a player really above the rest with like 10 kill death ratio.
Srsly whut
And his idea of a perfect family is thousands and thousands of retarded people.
But seriously @Hugh : In all posts regarding this move the question of 'Why' isn't really answered.
Could you comment on why UWE sees a commercial future for NS2 again? What has changed?
There must be something rather concrete instead of (some random notion of) 'usefull experimentation'. You guys are professional-game -makers right?
What's the plan here?
Why is UWE doing this now?
“Thousands of concurrent players, tens of thousands of people engaging with NS2 every week, and millions of dollars of yearly revenue.”
That is a vague but ambitious goal, especially the millions of dollars in yearly revenue part. I think that is a key statement even if it is just a vague goal.
Why does UWE think that now is the time in which they can turn ns2 into a million dollar a year franchise? What has changed internally to pursue this?
All these blog posts have mostly been directed at answering the how. It has been said that the what is not known. Hugh made a proposal to UWE, probably Flayra, to pursue this project. Hugh is a smart guy. I am sure he had some very sound reasoning in this proposal. Flayra is a smart guy running a business. He would not have approved this project if it did not have sound reasoning. There must be a "what" that was clearly defined somewhere along the way.
What are the details of Hughs proposal? What opportunity does UWE see that we don't know about?
What's the quickest way to generate revenue using the least amount of resources at UW? The answer is to take something that already exists, with name recognition and that's been exposed to thousands of people, and update it. You can't create a new game, even a casual one, in 3 months time and expect it to have as big an effect. Anyone with steam can get a news update about NS2 - free advertising. So, I conclude this is "why".
Blizzard does a good job of this: take Diablo 3 as one of many examples. This game has constant development, new content, and excuses to bring old players back to the game. When something is broken, they've no problem changing the game mechanics to make something better: even when it's vastly different. They've even created a meta-game, where players participate in a season using a new character.
People buying a Blizzard game aren't buying a dead-end. This is why they can charge full price for a game that's years old and keep an audience coming back to play.
Also the most important question that's obviously on everyone's mind and I can understand this very well of course... is "Where is Kouji's purple/orange pants for his Fade"
Sure, but WHY NOW ?
I assume / guess there's some idea pitched (achievable, profitable) in the stage between A: UWE going and B: UWE coming back.
This idea now seems like nothing more then an experiment on 'how' (organisation of development, 'the factory' Hugh talks about).
I wonder if that is the gist of it. I hope not.
Sure we've improved the game and done amazing things, but we just haven't hit that quoted goal.
The suspicion of why that is, comes down to volunteer efforts versus a paid staff and development scheduling.
NS2 needs a fire under its ass before we allow it to just wither away.
And waffle like this
I hope some real information follows thick and fast. I'm impressed so many voluminous blog posts could explain so little.
They not only replaced the staff quickly, but have since grown larger than then.
This has only to do with the current player numbers and wanting to try something at full throttle for 3 months to determine if it makes a difference.
That's great from a gamers perspective, and i applaud it, but i hardly believe that's a good reason for UWE coming back (they already concluded NS2 had little commercial future, right?). So in another post (thread) i see you saying 'development goal = more rookie friendly'.
Now if there's an new more or less concrete idea for that: excellent, my question is answered.
I can imagine you guys dont feel like putting such an idea on the forums but transparancy requires balls.
I can say that we ARE working on a comprehensive tutorial, at least. The background work for it is coming along nicely, and the design document /script is nearing completion.
Other than that, there is only ideas that are being tossed around and discussed thus far. Zero decisions have been made as this whole thing is just now forming. (most of the new team aren't even signed yet afaik they just got signed)
As soon as we have something concrete, gameplay wise, you can bet it will be on our trello.
I do hope the 'experiments' that have been alluded to arent the kind of experiments that are going to piss off a bunch of people and bury the coffin, so to speak.
I'll dust off the old noobtube and start hunting me some Wob and Wob-likes crying 'FINALLLY FINALLLYYY ! DIE DIE DIE'
The big skill gaps are a good thing. When you put time and effort into playing this game you should become a better player, so you should be able to stomp if the difference is too high. This is a reward for playing. Otherwise there is still CoD or Battlefield for those who want the reward to be cool DLC equipment unlocks instead of skill improvement.
here's to hoping
I also find it very hard to tell what's happening in NS2 compared NS1.
Good luck to UWE I hope you guys can pull this off
P.S Bring back elevators, doors and interactable environments!
Can't promise anything of course, but in the name of transparency :
The last known hit registration bug just got fixed (yet to be tested) and talks are occurring regarding increasing the default server rates to create a more responsive game.
@Ironhorse - I am fairly sure @meatmachine is referring to the exodus that required the abandonment of development on Future Perfect around May/June of this year.
If that situation has been rectified, and the Subnautica team grown and expanded, why has development on FP not resumed?
Development on FP was put on hold its developers moved over to assist with SN full time, with the exception of Brian Cronin who left for greener pastures.
For example, notice the new water and lighting effects in SN's experimental branch? That's Max's doing.
I believe UWE wants to complete or get close to completing SN before focusing on FP again.
Sure it's more "nice to have" than anything else, but the alien art never really lived up to it's potential without it.