Official Comp Mod?
The_Welsh_Wizard
Join Date: 2013-09-10 Member: 188101Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2013-09-10 Member: 188101Members, Reinforced - Supporter
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pm sent - Wyzcrak
Not drunk
PM sent - Pel
The problem is that maintaining a mod when vanilla changes so frequently is a lot of work. Whether the community does it or UWE does it. Much easier from a dev point of view is the nsl branch of NS2. The NSL decided that solution required too much work from players and server admins. Unfortunately, somebody is going to have to shoulder the burden for comp NS2, and I don't think a forum poll is going to convince UWE to do it.
Imo it should be the reverse: Vanilla should be relatively static, and the experimentation and "shake-ups" should go in a balance mod à la Sewlek's. That way features from the mod can be implemented when they're cohesive and tested, and mods break less frequently. UWE has made it clear they will not do this, for whatever reason.
PLEASE DON'T REMOVE THIS!!!111111
Edit: Gonna add this in just so my sh it doesn't get deleted: I think an official comp mod could work if it were implemented right.
Damn though, this wyz guy is on a roll, I guess anything that doesn't support the PDT is considered a sh it post, nice moderating boys
Of course it is more work. But you would make sure that comp scene can still exist.
@migalski: Well it is clear that that will never happen.
Refrain from name calling and if you take issue with moderation done, contact an admin.
So no, I don't want an official comp mod. UWE already dedicated an ns2 branch to compmod, although it is unused for a good reason.
You can see from the way the PDT is currently implementing changes that they do not want to (nor do they have the resources to) support more than they have to. They want a unified experience. For example they don't want rookie-only to be too different from regular, and they don't want people thinking mods are vanilla. They are focusing all their efforts on changing vanilla NS2. They are even implementing some compmod features into vanilla. As I tried to say before, maintaining compmod is a lot of work when vanilla changes so frequently. I do not think they will sacrifice their time and design goals to maintain it. Clearly the PDT care more about quickly iterating through vanilla than making compmod easy to maintain. So what makes you think they would even maintain it? Maybe after the "next phase of development" or whatever, the PDT will have more time to care. But right now I don't think they do.
So I think the PDT are unlikely to implement this idea. Call me cynical, but I think a forum poll is unlikely to change anyone's mind. Since I would like competitive NS2 to not die, I think another solution is required. Since UWE will not shoulder the burden, it is up to the players. Whether that be a mod maintainer, or individuals and server ops using the nsl branch.
We have learned in the past that we cannot guarantee that mods will forever be maintained. Furthermore, I'm not sure if there is even anyone currently willing to maintain a compmod. Relying on more mods is, imo, not the best solution.
So what do we have left? The nsl branch. The NSL have decided that this is infeasible. Respectfully I disagree, and think it is the only real option available to them. Isn't it worth a little effort on the players' part to ensure that comp NS2 continues? But instead of trying it, they will wait for a few months and see if UWE cares then. (It could be that NSL are completely right and using the nsl branch is completely unrealistic. In which case gg comp, cu in Overwatch.)
And on the gameplay side of things, balance has now shifted so far in favor of Aliens that Aliens have actually won 15 of the last 22 games on my server (No Rookies Captains). Prior to the "shaking up" of gameplay and the resulting death of CompMod balance was near 50:50 (on my server) with aliens winning 9 out of 20 games (with CompMod v4 *Pub Friendly*). And this is in 8v8 and sometimes 9v9, where marines USED to have a distinct advantage. Now I'm seeing 8v8 and 9v9 games where Marines start with 3 IPs (using Shine's ExtraIPs) and STILL Marines get smashed.
So now we have an Alien Sided game with no modders willing to work on balance mods because of the constant updates and UWE is talking about MORE Alien buffs and implementing a NERFED HMG. Who are these updates for? The comp scene sure as hell doesn't want them. I'm pretty sure the pub scene doesn't want them. My server definitely does not want. Seems to me UWE/PDT is just changing aspects in the game just to see what happens, or for personal enjoyment alone. New players retention? Are you serious? Ever heard the phrase "too little, too late"? This is a 4 year old game, what new players exactly are you trying to retain? If you want to implement crazy new changes, I recommend you get busy on NS3 and maybe this time code a proper engine and PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, DO NOT RELEASE BUGGY UNOPTIMIZED GAME. Otherwise: leave this community alone, let us play the game we loved.
The real poll here should be:
REVERT CHANGES BACK TO BUILD 296, FIX COMPMOD ONCE & FOR ALL AND STOP MESSING WITH NS2:
-YES (SAVE NS2)
-NO (KILL NS2)
Developers - "yeah, lets do that, we'll add some stuff that should shake things up and make the game play differently"
Community - "HOW VERY DARE YOU TOUCH OUR PRECIOUS GAME, BEGONE BACK FROM WHENCE YE CAME!!!"
Comp community - "devs killed game"
Me - "nope, you're just close minded and believe that for some reason a game HAS to be played the EXACT way YOU want it to be played otherwise the players are having fun in the wrong way."
Comp community - "no, devs killed game"
Me - "No, the comp communities reliance on a single mod made by a single person killed comp, the mod maker made a huge fuss a few months ago about the reliance the comp community has on mod makers and how that should change, also, the devs gave the comp community its own beta branch so that they wouldn't be affected by the patches and could continue playing comp in a safe, patch free environment"
Comp players - "I don't want to spend 20 seconds swapping branches, devs killed game"
Me - "they have tried to meet you all half way, do you not understand that?"
Comp Players - "no, devs killed game"
Me - "I'm done with talking to you people, i'll play comp still, but F*** talking to any of you."
I'm just letting you know the facts, the balance is screwed now, they're about to screw it worse, the comp. community is rapidly shrinking and this game's already tiny competitive community can't sustain the strain they're putting on it.
And that it's too late for "player retention" development strategies. That's nice and all, that they finally thought to add that stuff, but the crap that came with that kinda made it not worth, don't you think?
Ideas that might ACTUALLY BE WORTH, even if you are occasionally forced to pause the comp. scene for NO MORE THAN A DAY:
-Make this game watchable, as in, make spectating powerful for for shoutcasters
-Actually supporting a league for your game
-Fixing game breaking bugs (cyst bugs), lifeforms getting stuck on random map geometry (unstuck shouldnt have to be a thing)
-Creating BALANCED 6v6 maps
-BALANCE THE GAME FOR ALL PLAYER COUNTS
Holding the only correct opinion must be a terrible strain on you.
Well so far, if you look at the steamcharts there is still more player average than the same months of last year, this tells us something quite clear about player retention.
About balance being worst, yes that's true but you can't expect big gameplay changes to be balanced out of the box, balance takes time and testing.
The new hmg will be different, still have to see if that means straight out nerfed, probably not.
If you care about the comp scene, why don't you find help maintain compmod I wonder.
Who says I care about the comp scene? I'm switching to Overwatch in 6 days.
You seem to follow the logic that ns2 should be balanced for 50/50 win rates. You have clearly stated that you think ns2's balance is far from 50/50. You based the data from your that was 9/20 alien before, and 15/22 alien wins after. You think NS2 needs to be reverted back to B296 so that there is "balance."
Your assessment of balance is actually wrong because you do not have enough data.
In b296 I have the data of 1978 games across all servers. These games were vanilla ns2. Aliens won 1008/1978 (51%) games, and marines won 970/1978 (49%) games.
In b297 I have the data of 1658 games played across all servers. These games were vanilla ns2. Aliens won 837/1658 (50.5%) games and marines won 821/1658 (49.5%) games.
A graph of the above data is in the spoiler for those who don't want to read.
As it turns out, games are still near 50/50. In fact, it got closer to 50/50 win rates in b297. You might think that would be a success, but it is not. That ~0.5% decrease was statistically insignificant according to a two tailed fisher's exact test.
I can take this a step further and compare my data to yours. Even though your server had 15/22 (68%) alien wins, it is not statistically significant from my data from B297 with 837/1658 (50.5%) alien wins. Here, look at this link to check yourself.
If you don't understand statistical significance, read this webpage.
Before you ask, I don't have data on B298 yet.
I like some of the changes the developers have done, and I don't like others. I wrote this post to show that the sky isn't falling. The point is, whether or not you disagree or dislike the changes, game balance is still near 50/50 which is where you want it to be. B297 did not dramatically effect balance like you think it did.
Rookies are a large part of ns2. Between B279 and B297 59% of games were played in rookie only servers. That means 59% of games are played by players that have less than 20 hours recorded in hive. There are a lot of new players trying out ns2. They out number the veterans.
What i don't think you realize is that comp players look at UWE now as a literal joke, why should they waste their time playing a game who's developer constantly ignore them and now because of their actions break the balance mod created to fix their mistakes.
It would be like csgo breaking esea, faceit and others so that players could only play matchmaking; which has been riddled with hackers, except they don't even get rid of the hackers. How fast would csgo die?
In the end comp players just want to play, but because of uwe's choices the only way to play is via a very broken vanilla, at that point other games look much more appealing.
He is right though. lol
The problem with this is that across all servers tends to include countless games with lower elo players. NRP tends to never drop below 2200 elo per team, there's very few if any other servers that have this occur, especially with the amount of comp players playing on it. Sure it might be "balanced" for the majority but in high skill games the holes begin to appear;
why does this cyst take almost an entire mag of a rifle to kill? Oh i lost my carry fade/lerk, just drop me a new one. No skulks parasiting? Lets just rupture them to get wall hacks all the time.
Sure the small things don't matter on most servers simply due to lack of knowledge but when games are really close and players know what's broken, they will abuse it.
I can also tell you that from B279 to B297 that there were 2807 games that had tournament mode turned on. These were competitive matches. In those games, the average hive skill was 2364. Aliens won 52.1% of games, and marines won 47.9% of games. I would do a similar B296 to B297 for tournament mode but the sample sizes are in single digits. There is just not enough data to compare.
It is difficult to get data on games of really high skill. The top 10% of skill starts at about 2100 hive skill. These players don't always play together, and often mix with lower skilled players. I agree that the top top end of skill is not well represented in the data, because there just aren't enough of them. That does not change my point. I am not saying that the decisions the developers made are perfectly balanced, I am saying that the sky isn't falling. The game balance is still near 50/50. Zr0fx's sample size of 20 is not nearly enough.
Sounds like you need to start having less conversations with yourself, unless you want to keep looking like an idiot. You clearly have no clue what people are frustrated about, so maybe stop talking until you actually have a clue of what the situation is.
The potential that was pissed away with this title is almost cringe worthy. The amount of work that went into the development of ns in order to give us a truly unique and challenging gaming experience is now all going down the drain fast. Nothing I have played comes remotely close to the immersion that ns1 ns2 gave me. Even after these years and almost 3k hrs, the gameplay still feels fresh, which is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to it. The main reason however, is solely because of the competitive play. Imo the true potential in this game can only be unlocked through the competitive scene, and ns is the perfect game for it. Once you experience it and/or are properly exposed to it, it can become extremely addictive. Look at some of these games that top charts year after year. What do they all have in common…….... A highly active competitive scene that draws attention. It’s competition that keeps these games alive. Not only does it retain players but it challenges the player to pursue a higher level of skill. There needs to be a platform for higher skill. Like zr0fx said, “where would the new players go if the comp scene is dead?”…and sadly the last of the ns comp players are dying off as we speak. Old comp players are fed-up with changes they did not ask for and new comp players are introduced to a broken system. A functioning comp scene to a game like this is crucial for its survival. Why isn’t counter-strike implementing fun little health-bars or constantly messing with movement mechanics; big game changes in general…. I’m not saying that updates are bad, balancing, nerfs/buffs, and bug fixes is a fairly common thing, a thing that this game actually needs, but changing major game mechanics in an established title is not what it needs, nor is it ever a good idea. Especially if that title has an established and active comp scene, which breaks with every update btw. Why not invest these ideas into a whole new version of the game where people would expect change. And then you can test these changes in say… a beta. Right now you are just killing off what’s left of the comp community and driving away any potential long-term players. The competitive aspect can literally save the game and yet you choose to ignore it. I do not understand why you fail to see this time after time. It baffles me that comp mod has not been incorporated yet. A competitive scene within an fps is a proven multiplayer model, and it fits this game’s profile. Why not include it. Otherwise most people would eventually lose interest once they reach a certain level. And with no hope for the future, with nothing to look forward to, no promises… things begin to look very grim for a game this old. Once you start stomping pubs there really isn’t much else left to do.
You want player retention, then make competitive your priority because that will be the driving force of ns.
Uwe wants to go off and make an underwater sandbox..fine. But don’t throw away this opportunity. Done right, ns3 has the potential to be bigger than ever. NS was once your love child was it not, Uwe?
In the meantime give us something to look forward to, something to be excited about (hint – ns2.5 ns3 hypothetically). Otherwise don’t bother because it’s making your most loyal player base resent the game they love and worse, resent the hard work you’re putting into it.
***Hey guess what overwatch did…they’ve included a competitive mode within the game, could you believe it!
ps. seeing all that moderation needed from ppl just makes me glad i'm not wasting my time with you lot anymore, hardehar.
I think NS2 has not the potential to get thousands of players like battlefield or cod. its because of the straight learning curve. NS2 is a comp game and the devs should try to strengthen the good sides of the game.
However, that isn't possible if the competitive scene isn't willing to balance test vanilla and able to provide constructive feedback in a civil manner.
There shouldn't be a comp mod. If anything, there should be pub balance mod.
We gave feedback for years. It was ignored for years. We made Compmod.