Thread's first post is click baity and contradicts itself. It's like watching somebody say "I'm not racist but ... *proceeds to say some really racist stuff*". You can't do something like that and expect people to not call you out on your bullshaz.
That said, I am sympathetic to the idea. I would absolutely purchase and try out an NS3 two, three, or even seven years from now. I am very very unlikely to reinstall NS2 based off of what I've seen on Trello.
Atmospheric Territories (which by the way I absolutely love and would love to see back in the game, but was essentially killed by rancorous comments from certain subsets of the community).
@IronHorse good to see that you awesomed this guy. Great forum culture you're encouraging.
You are being sarcastic, but I fully agree with him and the culture of posting clearly and succinctly : The tone of your post contradicted itself so many times I had to read your long post twice to fully get your point.
It's like you were attempting to remain politically correct and cover all angles (good on ya), but in doing so there wasn't a clear narrative.
The things he quoted in his post illustrate this perfectly, imo.
Has it "failed" or is "the best yet to come"? Is it "Terminal" and it "must die" from "reaching a point of no return" .. or is it "time to grow" ?
This is why I agreed with Wyz's post, because I shared his sentiments of confusion.
Lastly, the issue with not aiming for a new NS product that is equal in popularity to Overwatch etc is that it makes the risk of development even greater, and therefore less likely to occur.
I do appreciate the time and effort you put into expressing yourself and the issue, however, as well as the civil approach when bringing up a potentially sensitive subject.
Atmospheric Territories (which by the way I absolutely love and would love to see back in the game, but was essentially killed by rancorous comments from certain subsets of the community).
ah yes, "us vs them".
Can you enlighten me as to who the 'us' and 'them' is in this post?
bonageJoin Date: 2012-10-13Member: 162230Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
edited April 2016
@Wake actually the post was originally intended as an article outside of these forums but i decided to make it a post at the last minute, so yes there is a degree of filler content, a bit of waffle for context and a bit of dramatic flair involved - take that as you will. It's still a subjective piece so obviously some will disagree with bits of it.
Appreciate your feedback and perhaps next time I'll make the language more sussinct/appropriate for forum use.
I enjoyed reading your post and your proposal, @bonage. As many horrific missteps as I took in the early days of the development restart, I think there are actually many similarities between my vision and yours. Your reference to NS2 as a 'giant experiment' is apt.
This might sound totally wierd. But in my mind, NS2 is sort of "dead" already - Right now, everyone is already playing the NS3 "pre-alpha." Everyone that owns NS2 got a free invite. And the mission of the development team is to experiment with ideas like yours.
I enjoyed reading your post and your proposal, @bonage. As many horrific missteps as I took in the early days of the development restart, I think there are actually many similarities between my vision and yours. Your reference to NS2 as a 'giant experiment' is apt.
This might sound totally wierd. But in my mind, NS2 is sort of "dead" already - Right now, everyone is already playing the NS3 "pre-alpha." Everyone that owns NS2 got a free invite. And the mission of the development team is to experiment with ideas like yours.
Your reference to NS2 as a 'giant experiment' is apt.
This is a perfect description. Games don't do what NS2 does, and that's why people are still here.
And no, I don't think you are wrong, @bonage. Not in the slightest. A relaunch would be a great end goal (and compromise with the document), but there's so many things other games have that would help tremendously with retention that it would take (quite) a bit of both money and time to get them all in and sufficiently tested. Money being the most important problem to solve.
As for your comments about reworking the older map stuff, that was something on my infinitely long todo list. First and foremost, giving Mineshaft some love, since the map is seriously showing its age in terms of detail. Whoever thought limestone and feldspathic dirt did not require some sort of seam gradient?
...Plus we have some new map stuff coming to you as we speak. Lots of odd projects that are sitting in various states of completion. Some very close, and others just beginning!
I do think that there is a stigma to change here, both on the Dev team and within the community, but I feel that change is necessary. Reading the Steam reviews is a great example of what immediately drives people away. The most common things in order are:
long load times (fixed!)
a community which is perceived as toxic and vile towards new players (kicking noobs, general rudeness to new blood, calling them stupid for not knowing every in-and-out)
extremely low player numbers (difficulty finding open servers, seeding being boring, difficulty finding country-based communities, etc)
general performance (linux, hitreg)
How do we help these? This is the question we'd debated for hours even before the CDT started. We're all guilty of some of these things. We've all done bad stuff. Now let's fix it.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
The biggest issues for NS2 are (radical heretic stuff coming!)
Mods are not visible at all and with the low concurrent player count, it's hard (impossible) to get mods populated or marketed
NS2, being changed and modded vs community hate. -> Develop a new game mode if you want drastic changes or are afraid of the NS2 drama... Although this would also be an additional issue with the one mentioned before this...
Alien lifeforms are expensive and VERY easy to flash
Marines lose weapons and other marines steal weapons
-> Keep and upgrade your lifeforms/marine, respawn with them. This would requires a total resflow overhaul.
It adds that MOBA feel to the game where you choose your "class" and keep playing as said class, instead of that 10second Onos you've saved for.
Maybe we'd need RFK back if this was implemented, get that MOBA stuff from Combat back in here and upgrade as you gain more map control, resflow and upgrades, remember this is a new game mode to remove frustration of losing your toys!
Biggest cause for this would be that aliens are unlike anything in other games and their deaths are kinda like feeding the enemy, very harsh death penalties
Hidden game mechanics, this is a more annoying and hard to fix issue. Because there are a lot and it's not clear to make em clear, so to speak
NS2 is a boring one trick pony, certain playstyles are insisted and if a commander even dares to deviate from that -> Concede spam, we need more ponies!
All of the above makes this "new" game mode inconsistent with the main game mode, Last Stand for instance has been modded and tweaked to be more like Classic NS2, but it also lost a bit of its essence or soul rather, that chaotic nature of what a Last Stand was supposed to be. And classic NS2 is too harsh on newbies, especially the alien team. Drastic changes cannot be done on a live game mode, hence we need a developer mode.
The sooner we realize these flaws (for newbies entering and getting murdered and losing their fun stuff and boring single minded gameplay), the sooner the "new" game might become bigger... Classic NS2 is and will always be a niche game, mind you I don't think it is dieing, however it is NOT going to be that imaginary 10.000 concurrent player game that was mentioned in that infamous newspost a while back, no matter how many values you tweak without any drastic changes in a devmode gamemode...
But I fear this might be too little, too late, too scary, too drastic... I don't see a "new NS3" game as an option as that would be a project that would be even bigger than NS2 itself. And we've all seen how long it look to get NS2 in it's current state. You take what you have and build on it, you don't recreate from scratch, I mena the damn assets and maps alone would take a rework on a new engine longer than ... what ... 3 years ... give or take...
That's a shame. What would change your mind? Not that I can put it into action by pushing people in the right direction, but it's always good to know.
I'm not a fan of the way the game handles servers and matchmaking. If I could be matched up against players of similar skill easily than I'd be dunking hundreds of hours into the game. But in its current state there are only a few servers active at very specific points in the week and even they don't have great ping. Saturday night is the only time I've seen a green ping server, and they are packed with veterans that just slaughter me. There are a ton of newbie servers with great connection speeds but alas, I can't join them anymore.
Basically I just want to hit 'Play Now' and get dumped into a reasonable match against players with -+100 hours played to me. Currently I have to chart out a complex labyrinth of schedules and custom server settings, and then suffer matches against players with over 1,000 hours played.
I could purchase another copy of the game to play on those green connection servers temporarily and also support UWE in the process but smurfing feels dirty.
While your post seems to have ruffled some feathers, it was about time someone got us all thinking seriously about the future of NS franchise.
Reading all the other responses in this thread I feel like a lot of people really missed the point of your post and immediately jumped into this "Defend NS2 until I die" mode which was disappointing. That's why I actually appreciate the honest responses by @Hugh and @Zavaro above.
I think the point of @bonage 's post was to get us all seriously thinking about the long-term plan for NS2 and the franchise. I love playing NS2, and I know I speak for many when I say it's the only game I play when I get time to do any gaming at all, but I know in the back of my mind it's dying. In fact it's not hard to see a steady stream of gamers have tried NS2 and then given up on it quite quickly and will probably never return to the game no matter how many updates and changes to the game you make, but purely because "NS2" was that game they purchased 3-4 years ago (or longer for the early-adopters). So why on earth would it be so much better to play again today?
Can you imagine trying to get gaming media sites to review "Natural Selection 2" as a new release? It would just be embarrassing. The first line will probably be "They fixed all the bugs and annoyances from 3 years ago... but... it's still called NS2 from when they launched it 3 and a half years ago, and it's still the same shit. Nothing major is new".
To turn this trend around dramatically I can't see any other way but to continue developing the game under a new product name. Throw away the stigma and age associated with the NS2 brand. The conundrum always comes down to generating the $$$ to make things happen. Time to maybe put the feelers out there on how much the existing community would be willing to crowd fund a brand new NS title?
We are gamers with money to spend on games and we know UWE can make very good ones!
@Wyzcrak and @IronHorse I think you guys partly missed the point of his original post. Although there are contradictions in the wording, I believe it's there to get us all constructively thinking from both sides of the fence about the longevity of the franchise. Having the view of "as long as my server is full of players every night, there's nothing to discuss" is terribly short-sighted.
Considering the time I saw them throw Biodome together in map testing.. it doesn't take three years to make a map @Kouji_San
Yeah, for 1 map, but he was talking remaking the current map pool, on an entirely different engine.
Making a map/converting it inst very difficult and doesn't take much time, especially if the layout was given and so on.
Its usually the balance of the map that takes much more time, if there weren't major game play changes remaking the maps would be as bad as making them from scratch
That's a shame. What would change your mind? Not that I can put it into action by pushing people in the right direction, but it's always good to know.
I'm not a fan of the way the game handles servers and matchmaking. If I could be matched up against players of similar skill easily than I'd be dunking hundreds of hours into the game. But in its current state there are only a few servers active at very specific points in the week and even they don't have great ping. Saturday night is the only time I've seen a green ping server, and they are packed with veterans that just slaughter me. There are a ton of newbie servers with great connection speeds but alas, I can't join them anymore.
Basically I just want to hit 'Play Now' and get dumped into a reasonable match against players with -+100 hours played to me. Currently I have to chart out a complex labyrinth of schedules and custom server settings, and then suffer matches against players with over 1,000 hours played.
You do realize that a "play now" button would connect you with people you should never be connected with (on the other side of the planet) and that it would essentially be turning every "server" you were placed in a "red" one.
There is no such thing as a "green server" under a matchmaking system. You would be trading in any hope of a decent connection and getting nothing in return.
Believe me i get not wanting to play against people so far above everyone in the server that there's no point in even bothering to play.. And on paper matchmaking seems like a good idea. However in reality matching people by their skill completely and totally throws any hope of a good connection right out the window. (not to mention that skill matchmaking is often way off.. So you'll still end up with pros vs rookies)
Then of course there's the extremely long wait times as it find players (I've never had to wait even half as long for a server to open up) and the removal of admins (and with them customization as well as removal of trolls/hackers) a matchmaking based ns2 (or ns3) wouldn't even be worth the headache of trying to play.
Honestly.. If you're ok with Matchmaking then you should have no problem at all playing on yellow and red ping servers.
While your post seems to have ruffled some feathers, it was about time someone got us all thinking seriously about the future of NS franchise.
Reading all the other responses in this thread I feel like a lot of people really missed the point of your post and immediately jumped into this "Defend NS2 until I die" mode which was disappointing. That's why I actually appreciate the honest responses by @Hugh and @Zavaro above.
I think the point of @bonage 's post was to get us all seriously thinking about the long-term plan for NS2 and the franchise. I love playing NS2, and I know I speak for many when I say it's the only game I play when I get time to do any gaming at all, but I know in the back of my mind it's dying. In fact it's not hard to see a steady stream of gamers have tried NS2 and then given up on it quite quickly and will probably never return to the game no matter how many updates and changes to the game you make, but purely because "NS2" was that game they purchased 3-4 years ago (or longer for the early-adopters). So why on earth would it be so much better to play again today?
Can you imagine trying to get gaming media sites to review "Natural Selection 2" as a new release? It would just be embarrassing. The first line will probably be "They fixed all the bugs and annoyances from 3 years ago... but... it's still called NS2 from when they launched it 3 and a half years ago, and it's still the same ****. Nothing major is new".
To turn this trend around dramatically I can't see any other way but to continue developing the game under a new product name. Throw away the stigma and age associated with the NS2 brand. The conundrum always comes down to generating the $$$ to make things happen. Time to maybe put the feelers out there on how much the existing community would be willing to crowd fund a brand new NS title?
We are gamers with money to spend on games and we know UWE can make very good ones!
@Wyzcrak and @IronHorse I think you guys partly missed the point of his original post. Although there are contradictions in the wording, I believe it's there to get us all constructively thinking from both sides of the fence about the longevity of the franchise. Having the view of "as long as my server is full of players every night, there's nothing to discuss" is terribly short-sighted.
Nail on the head, it would nice to have a breath of fresh air onto a new project that we could realistically get behind, I would be more than happy to contribute towards a kickstarter purely for my love of NS!
People need to admit to themselves that NS2 will never become greater than what we all envision it could've been, that time has already been and gone, the chance came and went, its been too long, UWE realised this a long time ago as it was no longer financially viable and it was again a breath of fresh air to concentrate on a new project. (The PDT initiative is still a conundrum to me).
Not having a polished tutorial to begin with coupled with the high skill ceiling NS2 offers was crippling to its growth.
NS2 is its own worst enemy in this regard, which is why we saw waves and waves of people playing and then all but the most diehard leaving, all these band aids and fixes are great and all but too much time IMHO has gone, alot of these features we are seeing now should of came years ago but UWE either didn't realise this or had other priorities at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I love the NS series to death, been playing for over 12 years now and that amount of time and experience is telling me that we should concentrate our positivity towards a new project, NS2's successor but let's do it right this time and not let history repeat itself.
Right now, everyone is already playing the NS3 "pre-alpha."
Wouldn't it be better to just build NS3 from the ground up? With Spark 2 or some other engine? There still needs to be a lot of time before proper NS3 development should start in order to build hype.
@Wake actually the post was originally intended as an article outside of these forums but i decided to make it a post at the last minute, so yes there is a degree of filler content, a bit of waffle for context and a bit of dramatic flair involved - take that as you will. It's still a subjective piece so obviously some will disagree with bits of it.
Appreciate your feedback and perhaps next time I'll make the language more sussinct/appropriate for forum use.
Ahh ok, I do understand the form then as it was designed to drag attention and audience.
When you address it on NS2 forum, you are adressing a niche in the niche of a bunch of alumnis, passionates and dedicated people, hence the reactions.
Sure, provocation is something you have to rely upon in order to wake up people.
Publish here or there ? It's your final call, I wish you good luck in writing papers ;-)
There are definatly interesting people around here.
Ps: I disagree on saying that @Wyzcrak and @IronHorse missed the point, I'd say the speech quite missed the audience.
[*]Alien lifeforms are expensive and VERY easy to flash
Marines lose weapons and other marines steal weapons
-> Keep and upgrade your lifeforms/marine, respawn with them. This would requires a total resflow overhaul.
It adds that MOBA feel to the game where you choose your "class" and keep playing as said class, instead of that 10second Onos you've saved for.
Maybe we'd need RFK back if this was implemented, get that MOBA stuff from Combat back in here and upgrade as you gain more map control, resflow and upgrades, remember this is a new game mode to remove frustration of losing your toys!
Biggest cause for this would be that aliens are unlike anything in other games and their deaths are kinda like feeding the enemy, very harsh death penalties
I can only speak for myself here, but I WANT changes in gameplay to keep the game and meta interesting, but THIS change would make me stop playing though. Res for kill is NOGO for me and being able to kill lifeforms is such an essential part of the RTS thing too that you should not change it.
[*]Alien lifeforms are expensive and VERY easy to flash
Marines lose weapons and other marines steal weapons
-> Keep and upgrade your lifeforms/marine, respawn with them. This would requires a total resflow overhaul.
It adds that MOBA feel to the game where you choose your "class" and keep playing as said class, instead of that 10second Onos you've saved for.
Maybe we'd need RFK back if this was implemented, get that MOBA stuff from Combat back in here and upgrade as you gain more map control, resflow and upgrades, remember this is a new game mode to remove frustration of losing your toys!
Biggest cause for this would be that aliens are unlike anything in other games and their deaths are kinda like feeding the enemy, very harsh death penalties
I can only speak for myself here, but I WANT changes in gameplay to keep the game and meta interesting, but THIS change would make me stop playing though. Res for kill is NOGO for me and being able to kill lifeforms is such an essential part of the RTS thing too that you should not change it.
I completely agree and know how important the meta is in classic NS2, but I'm not talking about the classic NS2 here. You can still have classic NS2, I'm actually advocating for fixing the game and polishing it, the very thing the devs are doing right now. But do NOT change it in it's core/meta elements.
What I'm talking about is an entirely new game mode based on the NS universe to actually appeal to the masses, I mean if you want that magical 10.000 concurrent player number. Classic NS2 is the wrong game to use, it is niche and will always be niche. It has MOBA elements, but only small parts. It has RTS but it's only a shell of what RTS could be. Why do you think ns2large is more popular, there the RTS plays a much bigger part and individual pressure (skill) has less influence. It is kinda up there with "drop in, drop out, no consequences" kinda games that are vastly more popular than Classic NS2 will ever be. But, because it's based on Classic NS2 it is kinda a chaotic mess as well, if you want that kinda game you need to drastically step away from Classic NS2, instead of tacking it on and be done with it
Players these days want to be the all powerful killing machine, they want to feel in control and that they contribute. NS2 has that vibe that anything you do has little influence and if you screw up you're hurting the team's chance to win AND you lose your precious lifeform/EXO/weapons etc... NS2 is purely teamplay based and there's nothing wrong with that, I apploud it for it's depth and skill ceiling. Not many newer games do that, mostly because of that tiny audience who prefer those kind of games. However teamplay based games that rely heavily on teamplay are simply not as popular as shootgun/rambo games
[*]Alien lifeforms are expensive and VERY easy to flash
Marines lose weapons and other marines steal weapons
-> Keep and upgrade your lifeforms/marine, respawn with them. This would requires a total resflow overhaul.
It adds that MOBA feel to the game where you choose your "class" and keep playing as said class, instead of that 10second Onos you've saved for.
Maybe we'd need RFK back if this was implemented, get that MOBA stuff from Combat back in here and upgrade as you gain more map control, resflow and upgrades, remember this is a new game mode to remove frustration of losing your toys!
Biggest cause for this would be that aliens are unlike anything in other games and their deaths are kinda like feeding the enemy, very harsh death penalties
I can only speak for myself here, but I WANT changes in gameplay to keep the game and meta interesting, but THIS change would make me stop playing though. Res for kill is NOGO for me and being able to kill lifeforms is such an essential part of the RTS thing too that you should not change it.
I completely agree and know how important the meta is in classic NS2, but I'm not talking about the classic NS2 here. You can still have classic NS2, I'm actually advocating for fixing the game and polishing it, the very thing the devs are doing right now. But do NOT change it in it's core/meta elements.
What I'm talking about is an entirely new game mode based on the NS universe to actually appeal to the masses, I mean if you want that magical 10.000 concurrent player number. Classic NS2 is the wrong game to use, it is niche and will always be niche. It has MOBA elements, but only small parts. It has RTS but it's only a shell of what RTS could be. Why do you think ns2large is more popular, there the RTS plays a much bigger part and individual pressure (skill) has less influence. It is kinda up there with "drop in, drop out, no consequences" kinda games that are vastly more popular than Classic NS2 will ever be. But, because it's based on Classic NS2 it is kinda a chaotic mess as well, if you want that kinda game you need to drastically step away from Classic NS2, instead of tacking it on as be done with it
Players these days want to be the all powerful killing machine, they want to feel in control and that they contribute. NS2 has that vibe that anything you do has little influence and if you screw up you're hurting the team's chance to win. NS2 is purely teamplay based and there's nothing wrong with that, I apploud it for it's depth and skill ceiling. Not many newer games do that, mostly because of that tiny audience who prefer those kind of games. However teamplay based games that rely heavily on teamplay are simply not as popular as shootgun/rambo games
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2016
Nah more like a more MOBA inspired NS2:Combat with proper newbie protection. Skill based games are of course what we are here for, but that very same thing scares the casual crowd away or into ns2large... And they do outnumber us like what... 100/1?
This dream or rather fantasy, a game based on Classic NS2 or even NS will get those casuals in here and get them to stay for more than a few weeks is silly to say the least... NS2 is scary and frustrating for them on the "official gameplay/playercount servers"
WyzcrakPot Pie AficionadoJoin Date: 2002-12-04Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
My reaction was largely to a thread title which has been appropriately removed. Here's to our Fall 2016 iteration of this conversation starting without such distraction, and good on everyone, including OP, for trying to improve what's happening.
Comments
You're fired, it's resnodes, not dollars!
That said, I am sympathetic to the idea. I would absolutely purchase and try out an NS3 two, three, or even seven years from now. I am very very unlikely to reinstall NS2 based off of what I've seen on Trello.
ah yes, "us vs them".
It's like you were attempting to remain politically correct and cover all angles (good on ya), but in doing so there wasn't a clear narrative.
The things he quoted in his post illustrate this perfectly, imo.
Has it "failed" or is "the best yet to come"? Is it "Terminal" and it "must die" from "reaching a point of no return" .. or is it "time to grow" ?
This is why I agreed with Wyz's post, because I shared his sentiments of confusion.
Lastly, the issue with not aiming for a new NS product that is equal in popularity to Overwatch etc is that it makes the risk of development even greater, and therefore less likely to occur.
I do appreciate the time and effort you put into expressing yourself and the issue, however, as well as the civil approach when bringing up a potentially sensitive subject.
Chess
De_dust2
1v1
Your tabloïd like title plus the above introduction, wich looks like a damned preterition to me, didn't leave me with a good feelling about the rest.
Your introdcution is indeed full of negative terms, and at the third paragraph, you deny other points of view: 'nuff said.
You didn't need all these rethoric figures to promote new horizons of directions, do you ?
Or it is because your project lack consistency and you needed to lower the floor in order to make your ceiling looks higher ?
Can you enlighten me as to who the 'us' and 'them' is in this post?
Appreciate your feedback and perhaps next time I'll make the language more sussinct/appropriate for forum use.
This might sound totally wierd. But in my mind, NS2 is sort of "dead" already - Right now, everyone is already playing the NS3 "pre-alpha." Everyone that owns NS2 got a free invite. And the mission of the development team is to experiment with ideas like yours.
NS3 confirmed?
That's a shame. What would change your mind? Not that I can put it into action by pushing people in the right direction, but it's always good to know.
This is a perfect description. Games don't do what NS2 does, and that's why people are still here.
And no, I don't think you are wrong, @bonage. Not in the slightest. A relaunch would be a great end goal (and compromise with the document), but there's so many things other games have that would help tremendously with retention that it would take (quite) a bit of both money and time to get them all in and sufficiently tested. Money being the most important problem to solve.
As for your comments about reworking the older map stuff, that was something on my infinitely long todo list. First and foremost, giving Mineshaft some love, since the map is seriously showing its age in terms of detail. Whoever thought limestone and feldspathic dirt did not require some sort of seam gradient?
...Plus we have some new map stuff coming to you as we speak. Lots of odd projects that are sitting in various states of completion. Some very close, and others just beginning!
I do think that there is a stigma to change here, both on the Dev team and within the community, but I feel that change is necessary. Reading the Steam reviews is a great example of what immediately drives people away. The most common things in order are:
How do we help these? This is the question we'd debated for hours even before the CDT started. We're all guilty of some of these things. We've all done bad stuff. Now let's fix it.
Marines lose weapons and other marines steal weapons
-> Keep and upgrade your lifeforms/marine, respawn with them. This would requires a total resflow overhaul.
It adds that MOBA feel to the game where you choose your "class" and keep playing as said class, instead of that 10second Onos you've saved for.
Maybe we'd need RFK back if this was implemented, get that MOBA stuff from Combat back in here and upgrade as you gain more map control, resflow and upgrades, remember this is a new game mode to remove frustration of losing your toys!
All of the above makes this "new" game mode inconsistent with the main game mode, Last Stand for instance has been modded and tweaked to be more like Classic NS2, but it also lost a bit of its essence or soul rather, that chaotic nature of what a Last Stand was supposed to be. And classic NS2 is too harsh on newbies, especially the alien team. Drastic changes cannot be done on a live game mode, hence we need a developer mode.
The sooner we realize these flaws (for newbies entering and getting murdered and losing their fun stuff and boring single minded gameplay), the sooner the "new" game might become bigger... Classic NS2 is and will always be a niche game, mind you I don't think it is dieing, however it is NOT going to be that imaginary 10.000 concurrent player game that was mentioned in that infamous newspost a while back, no matter how many values you tweak without any drastic changes in a devmode gamemode...
But I fear this might be too little, too late, too scary, too drastic... I don't see a "new NS3" game as an option as that would be a project that would be even bigger than NS2 itself. And we've all seen how long it look to get NS2 in it's current state. You take what you have and build on it, you don't recreate from scratch, I mena the damn assets and maps alone would take a rework on a new engine longer than ... what ... 3 years ... give or take...
Also, FXAA -> MSAA!
Rant mode off o/
I'm not a fan of the way the game handles servers and matchmaking. If I could be matched up against players of similar skill easily than I'd be dunking hundreds of hours into the game. But in its current state there are only a few servers active at very specific points in the week and even they don't have great ping. Saturday night is the only time I've seen a green ping server, and they are packed with veterans that just slaughter me. There are a ton of newbie servers with great connection speeds but alas, I can't join them anymore.
Basically I just want to hit 'Play Now' and get dumped into a reasonable match against players with -+100 hours played to me. Currently I have to chart out a complex labyrinth of schedules and custom server settings, and then suffer matches against players with over 1,000 hours played.
I could purchase another copy of the game to play on those green connection servers temporarily and also support UWE in the process but smurfing feels dirty.
While your post seems to have ruffled some feathers, it was about time someone got us all thinking seriously about the future of NS franchise.
Reading all the other responses in this thread I feel like a lot of people really missed the point of your post and immediately jumped into this "Defend NS2 until I die" mode which was disappointing. That's why I actually appreciate the honest responses by @Hugh and @Zavaro above.
I think the point of @bonage 's post was to get us all seriously thinking about the long-term plan for NS2 and the franchise. I love playing NS2, and I know I speak for many when I say it's the only game I play when I get time to do any gaming at all, but I know in the back of my mind it's dying. In fact it's not hard to see a steady stream of gamers have tried NS2 and then given up on it quite quickly and will probably never return to the game no matter how many updates and changes to the game you make, but purely because "NS2" was that game they purchased 3-4 years ago (or longer for the early-adopters). So why on earth would it be so much better to play again today?
Can you imagine trying to get gaming media sites to review "Natural Selection 2" as a new release? It would just be embarrassing. The first line will probably be "They fixed all the bugs and annoyances from 3 years ago... but... it's still called NS2 from when they launched it 3 and a half years ago, and it's still the same shit. Nothing major is new".
To turn this trend around dramatically I can't see any other way but to continue developing the game under a new product name. Throw away the stigma and age associated with the NS2 brand. The conundrum always comes down to generating the $$$ to make things happen. Time to maybe put the feelers out there on how much the existing community would be willing to crowd fund a brand new NS title?
We are gamers with money to spend on games and we know UWE can make very good ones!
@Wyzcrak and @IronHorse I think you guys partly missed the point of his original post. Although there are contradictions in the wording, I believe it's there to get us all constructively thinking from both sides of the fence about the longevity of the franchise. Having the view of "as long as my server is full of players every night, there's nothing to discuss" is terribly short-sighted.
Yeah, for 1 map, but he was talking remaking the current map pool, on an entirely different engine.
Making a map/converting it inst very difficult and doesn't take much time, especially if the layout was given and so on.
Its usually the balance of the map that takes much more time, if there weren't major game play changes remaking the maps would be as bad as making them from scratch
You do realize that a "play now" button would connect you with people you should never be connected with (on the other side of the planet) and that it would essentially be turning every "server" you were placed in a "red" one.
There is no such thing as a "green server" under a matchmaking system. You would be trading in any hope of a decent connection and getting nothing in return.
Believe me i get not wanting to play against people so far above everyone in the server that there's no point in even bothering to play.. And on paper matchmaking seems like a good idea. However in reality matching people by their skill completely and totally throws any hope of a good connection right out the window. (not to mention that skill matchmaking is often way off.. So you'll still end up with pros vs rookies)
Then of course there's the extremely long wait times as it find players (I've never had to wait even half as long for a server to open up) and the removal of admins (and with them customization as well as removal of trolls/hackers) a matchmaking based ns2 (or ns3) wouldn't even be worth the headache of trying to play.
Honestly.. If you're ok with Matchmaking then you should have no problem at all playing on yellow and red ping servers.
Nail on the head, it would nice to have a breath of fresh air onto a new project that we could realistically get behind, I would be more than happy to contribute towards a kickstarter purely for my love of NS!
People need to admit to themselves that NS2 will never become greater than what we all envision it could've been, that time has already been and gone, the chance came and went, its been too long, UWE realised this a long time ago as it was no longer financially viable and it was again a breath of fresh air to concentrate on a new project. (The PDT initiative is still a conundrum to me).
Not having a polished tutorial to begin with coupled with the high skill ceiling NS2 offers was crippling to its growth.
NS2 is its own worst enemy in this regard, which is why we saw waves and waves of people playing and then all but the most diehard leaving, all these band aids and fixes are great and all but too much time IMHO has gone, alot of these features we are seeing now should of came years ago but UWE either didn't realise this or had other priorities at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I love the NS series to death, been playing for over 12 years now and that amount of time and experience is telling me that we should concentrate our positivity towards a new project, NS2's successor but let's do it right this time and not let history repeat itself.
Wouldn't it be better to just build NS3 from the ground up? With Spark 2 or some other engine? There still needs to be a lot of time before proper NS3 development should start in order to build hype.
Ahh ok, I do understand the form then as it was designed to drag attention and audience.
When you address it on NS2 forum, you are adressing a niche in the niche of a bunch of alumnis, passionates and dedicated people, hence the reactions.
Sure, provocation is something you have to rely upon in order to wake up people.
Publish here or there ? It's your final call, I wish you good luck in writing papers ;-)
There are definatly interesting people around here.
Ps: I disagree on saying that @Wyzcrak and @IronHorse missed the point, I'd say the speech quite missed the audience.
I can only speak for myself here, but I WANT changes in gameplay to keep the game and meta interesting, but THIS change would make me stop playing though. Res for kill is NOGO for me and being able to kill lifeforms is such an essential part of the RTS thing too that you should not change it.
I completely agree and know how important the meta is in classic NS2, but I'm not talking about the classic NS2 here. You can still have classic NS2, I'm actually advocating for fixing the game and polishing it, the very thing the devs are doing right now. But do NOT change it in it's core/meta elements.
What I'm talking about is an entirely new game mode based on the NS universe to actually appeal to the masses, I mean if you want that magical 10.000 concurrent player number. Classic NS2 is the wrong game to use, it is niche and will always be niche. It has MOBA elements, but only small parts. It has RTS but it's only a shell of what RTS could be. Why do you think ns2large is more popular, there the RTS plays a much bigger part and individual pressure (skill) has less influence. It is kinda up there with "drop in, drop out, no consequences" kinda games that are vastly more popular than Classic NS2 will ever be. But, because it's based on Classic NS2 it is kinda a chaotic mess as well, if you want that kinda game you need to drastically step away from Classic NS2, instead of tacking it on and be done with it
Players these days want to be the all powerful killing machine, they want to feel in control and that they contribute. NS2 has that vibe that anything you do has little influence and if you screw up you're hurting the team's chance to win AND you lose your precious lifeform/EXO/weapons etc... NS2 is purely teamplay based and there's nothing wrong with that, I apploud it for it's depth and skill ceiling. Not many newer games do that, mostly because of that tiny audience who prefer those kind of games. However teamplay based games that rely heavily on teamplay are simply not as popular as shootgun/rambo games
Ahhh, Planetside Selection 2
This dream or rather fantasy, a game based on Classic NS2 or even NS will get those casuals in here and get them to stay for more than a few weeks is silly to say the least... NS2 is scary and frustrating for them on the "official gameplay/playercount servers"
Not true. For 200 + builds.
Personally, they should continue developing team games, but they wont. Why? I don't know.