Competitive Players have much less impact on the game than they think have. Yes we do have alot of skilled players who know the game and when it comes to balancing the game then those players are probably the most valuable input. However the player numbers are quite small in competitive. If you remember the NSL strike because of compmod and ns2+ being offline then you might also remember that the amount of players who played the game didn't change noticably. So pls do realise that the end of NSL is not the end of ns2.
Just so you know, A comp season with 23 active teams with 6+ players on each team has come to a halt. These were loyal long-term players that helped the game evolve and in turn attracted new players to pursue a higher level of skill. This was a bigger season than the last. We had an influx of new players transition from pubs to compete. New teams were formed. We also had more casters than before.
Ensl did not choose to close down it was forced to. Bridging the gap between the modders and the devs should of been uwe's first priority, not game shake ups, catered to rookies that will mostly likely pick up the game for a short duration due to its age. Yet again you fail to see the importance and impact of the competitive scene, as well as the players within it. It's sad really the way uwe chose to turn their back on these players. I guess its not the first time. Now with a good chunk of players gone and those who stick around; with more time passing, it is inevitable that people will eventually lose interest completely. I just hope in the future, if there even is one, uwe(or another dev company perhaps) wont make the same mistakes.
Is there a way that UWE could have still released rapid patches that could have prevented this? I understand the desire not to have major shakeups in gameplay mid season, but that doesn't seem like a fatal issue on its own.
Rapid Iteration was a stupid idea in the first place, why the hell would you implement that kind of plan at such a late stage of the game, rapid iteration work best during beta / early access stages as the community has not yet "solidified". Metas, strategies and organisations especially need stability. This was a nightmare waiting to happen, now that I think about it, I prefered the old "monolithic" method. Atleast modders had enough time to pull up their pants before being bent over again.
Rapid iteration is what nearly every successful software team uses these days because it is so much more effective. In any domain, the amount you learn and the quality of what you produce is proportional to the number of things you try. Even Android, with all its crazy requirements, now ships a new build once a month.
Most games do not get active development late in their lifecycle, so I understand why you think this seems out of place. But if they were going to do this project at all, this is the only way it had any chance of success.
So a couple more things on why we rejected the Beta branch to maintain the NSL:
First of all, its a band-aid solution. Sure, we could have potentially run a few matches, but as @_mod pointed out it would have been a painful process with all the problems that we would run into. Even a Playtester told me that they still run into issues with switching between the beta branches (and these are people that SHOULD know how to do this better than anyone!), so imagine coordinating 150+ people with language barriers to run a league this way. On top of this, from what I was told, currently NS2+ doesn't even work on the beta branch, yet we're supposed to carry on without it?
The next huge problem with the beta branch is that it would have destroyed our ability to bring in new players and maintain the Gather system. New potential players would turn around the moment they saw that they need to switch to the beta branch in order to go from pubbing to playing a competitive round of NS2. Newcomers tournament? Forget it. Entry into competitive would have been stifled and eventually it would have withered and died. Then there are the people that sign up for Gathers and you're dealing with @_mod 's scenarios all over again with LESS patient players. People cry Bloody Mary waiting 10 minutes for a Gather to start, imagine having to wait 30 minutes because some Russian guy can barely understand English and doesn't know how to switch to the Beta branch.
"Oh well you could just have your community stay on the beta branch with your own pubs." Really? What happened when Combat got switched to its own independent game? RIP. And they actually had a really talented team of developers constantly at work adding new content. Beta branch would have splintered NS2 community and killed any growth for the NSL.
To the Bots that keep saying "LOL UWE gave them what they needed to continue playing comp" you really haven't taken the time to consider all the factors, so please mm2.
@F0rdPrefect Technical literacy is half the battle. Even if I figured out how I myself would do that. Explaining how to other people would also be another headache. Plus you still have all the other problems of people refusing, not listening, screwing up something else entirely, needing to sleep, "BRB Dinner 40 minutes ok?", etc.
As Ironhorse said... switching branches is 4 clicks. The rest is not related.
---
Also, I am against rapid iteration just like you guys, but I can't help but feel like you don't want to find a solution to this problem.
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
Reading through what people are saying, it seems like the main problem is that the people running NSL got burned out. (Rather than anything UWE did.) I can understand that, running this stuff is a really herculean undertaking, especially for volunteers with other important things in their life.
Reading through what people are saying, it seems like the main problem is that the people running NSL got burned out. (Rather than anything UWE did.) I can understand that, running this stuff is a really herculean undertaking, especially for volunteers with other important things in their life.
Sure, if you want to overly simplify things out of proportions, you could say that. But it would be utterly stupid.
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
I often would have to use wireless internet with very expensive data due to the unavailability a fixed line connection. My level of interest in having to constantly change build and re-download data over and over again would be minimal.
I'm sure some technical person can correct me, but:
Wouldn't it have been possible for the compmod to make a "total conversion" of ns2? Meaning, the compmod would have the complete copy of the ns2 lua code, making it independant on any changes in vanilla ns2. From what i understand this is possible to do.
The only changes the compmod would have to do during a season would then be to adapt to any engine changes, but those are very rare and could certainly be advertised in advance. I actually wonder why that sort of approach was never taken, rapid development cycle or not, it always seemed like the best option to me.
Yes this is another alternative, a NS2-296 mod could be created that overwrites the entire game's code with all the code from the 296 patch, effectively freezing the game at version 296, then you wouldn't need to touch the legal minefield (lol) that is CompMod, and it should "just" work for users without having them switch branches etc. I even discussed it with PDT/CDT devs (lol I still dont really know whos who), but they recommended against it, can't remember why.
I'm sure some technical person can correct me, but:
Wouldn't it have been possible for the compmod to make a "total conversion" of ns2? Meaning, the compmod would have the complete copy of the ns2 lua code, making it independant on any changes in vanilla ns2. From what i understand this is possible to do.
The only changes the compmod would have to do during a season would then be to adapt to any engine changes, but those are very rare and could certainly be advertised in advance. I actually wonder why that sort of approach was never taken, rapid development cycle or not, it always seemed like the best option to me.
Yes this is another alternative, a NS2-296 mod could be created that overwrites the entire game's code with all the code from the 296 patch, effectively freezing the game at version 296, then you wouldn't need to touch the legal minefield (lol) that is CompMod, and it should "just" work for users without having them switch branches etc. I even discussed it with PDT/CDT devs (lol I still dont really know whos who), but they recommended against it, can't remember why.
I often would have to use wireless internet with very expensive data due to the unavailability a fixed line connection. My level of interest in having to constantly change build and re-download data over and over again would be minimal.
As I mentioned earlier you could download the branch once and then rename the folders in your steam directory according to which one you need right now. I'm not saying it's pretty, but it would work. And you could even write a .bat to do it for you.
In my mind, the comp scene has been on fire for a while now. Dragon tried to point that out but I'm not sure the community as a whole understood. I don't think that the branch band-aid is fundamentally different than the mod band-aid, and this is why I don't accept that its difficulty contributed to the end of comp. My main goal with my posts in this thread has been to say that the ensl branch was not the problem. The problem is that people finally realized the house was on fire, and instead of trying to put it out, they decided to leave.
To the Bots that keep saying "LOL UWE gave them what they needed to continue playing comp" you really haven't taken the time to consider all the factors, so please mm2.
The mod band-aid only directly affected the mod maintainers. While a huge time bomb which could (and would) explode at any time, your individual player never had to go through any motions other than to face the differences between the pub and comp versions while playing. Just like ns2large lovers crying havoc after their servers went behind a filter (1 click), a massive amount of problems would arise if every single individual competitive player was forced to go through this procedure. The most ridiculously small problems can accumulate into huge game breakers when players of different intellect, attention span and technical skill are all required to perform for any of them to be able to play.
So a couple more things on why we rejected the Beta branch to maintain the NSL:
First of all, its a band-aid solution. Sure, we could have potentially run a few matches, but as @_mod pointed out it would have been a painful process with all the problems that we would run into. Even a Playtester told me that they still run into issues with switching between the beta branches (and these are people that SHOULD know how to do this better than anyone!), so imagine coordinating 150+ people with language barriers to run a league this way. On top of this, from what I was told, currently NS2+ doesn't even work on the beta branch, yet we're supposed to carry on without it?
The next huge problem with the beta branch is that it would have destroyed our ability to bring in new players and maintain the Gather system. New potential players would turn around the moment they saw that they need to switch to the beta branch in order to go from pubbing to playing a competitive round of NS2. Newcomers tournament? Forget it. Entry into competitive would have been stifled and eventually it would have withered and died. Then there are the people that sign up for Gathers and you're dealing with @_mod 's scenarios all over again with LESS patient players. People cry Bloody Mary waiting 10 minutes for a Gather to start, imagine having to wait 30 minutes because some Russian guy can barely understand English and doesn't know how to switch to the Beta branch.
"Oh well you could just have your community stay on the beta branch with your own pubs." Really? What happened when Combat got switched to its own independent game? RIP. And they actually had a really talented team of developers constantly at work adding new content. Beta branch would have splintered NS2 community and killed any growth for the NSL.
To the Bots that keep saying "LOL UWE gave them what they needed to continue playing comp" you really haven't taken the time to consider all the factors, so please mm2.
You missunderstand the idea behind the steam 'beta' branch. It was meant as a temporary solution to a temporary problem (the gameplay shake up).
Just so NSL teams could finish the season 9 without change in balance.
After a while, the balance in Vanilla NS2 would have stabilized again, after summer no big deal right.
Also it seems paddy was willing to update compod what happened?
Let's be honest the argument that NS2+ wasn't working is weird since Mendasp is playing competitively too right? Why couldn't he just upload a previous version of the mod compatible with the build of the beta branch?
And the argument about language barrier is even more ridiculous since, correct me if I'm wrong, mics and communications are mandatory to join gathers.
It's all just a sudden sheep movement jumping off the cliff if you ask me.
Also for those who really struggle to understand the reason behind rapid interations, pretty sure it's to have more player during the weekends. obviously.
It's all just a sudden sheep movement jumping off the cliff if you ask me.
No one asked you, thx.
Nice rethoric, too bad you don't have arguments.
Your post wasn't really worth arguing with.
But I'll just let you refer to my points above on the fact that you clearly don't know enough about the situation to understand why it had to be done.
This thread is really about saying goodbye, yet you guys come in here with this attitude that you think you know better than us when a competitive scene is truly done. It's laughable really.
This recent stuff was just the tip of the iceberg.
That was the sense I was getting, but I don't have a clear picture of what the rest of the iceberg actually consists of. Are those things fixable?
Some of the problems that brought the NSL to such a fragile point were rooted in things that can't be "patched" or "fixed" .. it came down to things that actually contributed to levels of motivation and competitive spirit. This all snowballs from the state of NS2 as a whole and roots in a player base problem. In the end, the NSL got so small due to other problems that something like this completely shattered it. Enough people said forget it that you can't even form full squads in the highest division to play a PCW or match. They are moving on for one reason or another. Morale is a powerful thing and when one player calls it quits, it can lead to an entire team folding when there isn't much motivation to play. Playing competitive is also very time consuming and when you aren't feeling "rewarded" by either really great competition (close matches and many players playing) or $$$ then you start to lose interest.
The NS2WC was something that addressed the "competitive spirit" issue, but then things quickly died off as competitive events were no longer being held and that's understandable. UWE was forking most of the bill so it was their call. Unfortunately the community couldn't support it's own events like ESEA does for example. So it carried on in the ways that it could through normal seasons and cups. The NSL ran on donations after all.
Teams folded and the NSL continued to shrink. Seasons got messier and players became less motivated. This lead to smaller and smaller divisions and less and less enjoyable seasons. Less scrimmages and PCWs being played and less people caring about the result of the season. This all snowballs because if the players of the league aren't motivated to play then the ones supporting it are feeling as though they are administrating for basically nothing. Everyone cares less and less until it gets to the point that something like this completely breaks the league for good.
Seeing the top players do amazing things at events, seeing sick frag videos of the high skilled players taking on incredible engagements and watching a top streamer play a game at a high level get you motivated and interested in playing a game competitively. That's what attracts people to competition. Unfortunately NS2 has very little of that due to decisions made by the developers which made it incredibly hard to do those things. Some tried and found minor success. ( Gold_n's stream for a long time kept people interested in gathers ) ( I finally found a way to release a NSL team frag video without hurting FPS performance [thanks nvidia] ) ( and the NS2WC was the last great event [thanks Wasabi & co.] )
You could say Overwatch killed the NSL, you could say UWE killed the NSL, or you could even say the players themselves killed the NSL.. but any of those things alone would be a false statement. There were many many reasons for why the NSL only got smaller and did not grow. (mirror'ing ns2 as a whole)
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I shall not comment on how hard it is to maintain mods for comp. I shall let folk like dragon do that.
I shall even ignore how easy or hard it is to switch to this comp branch for certain players.
But the comments about how hard it is to get a server running on a different branch or to get server ops to run it just untrue. And it saddens me to see NSL leads utter it.
Swapping the server is almost a copy paste. Most who run multiple branches just keep scripted copies and they are done.
The list of active nsl servers & server admins is NOT huge either. It doesnt take that long to inform them all.
Please dont repeat that nonsense again. It makes the nsl look less informed then it should be.
I shall not comment on how hard it is to maintain mods for comp. I shall let folk like dragon do that.
I shall even ignore how easy or hard it is to switch to this comp branch for certain players.
But the comments about how hard it is to get a server running on a different branch or to get server ops to run it just untrue. And it saddens me to see NSL leads utter it.
Swapping the server is almost a copy paste. Most who run multiple branches just keep scripted copies and they are done.
The list of active nsl servers & server admins is NOT huge either. It doesnt take that long to inform them all.
Please dont repeat that nonsense again. It makes the nsl look less informed then it should be.
And yet sometimes server admins were so out of the loop they would reset the server in the middle of an official match!
Jokes aside, I mostly agree with this. It was more of an issue of what I stated above. Compounded by recent events.
Pretty sure the Server Ops thing was on the bottom of the list of the issues, but it's one of many hurdles nonetheless. It's kind of pointless to boil the decision down to any one thing when it was several things large and small. Notice I've never even brought the server stuff up as one of the main problems.
I think there's a lot of drama coming from ppl outside of comp community that is being percieved out of ignorance. I don't mean that in an offensive way, and I can understand, I was a dedicated pubber (kind of) for a long time before my new job freed up the time I need to commit to competitive. As someone who is putting ns2 back on the shelf to sit, I can tell you it's not nearly as a dramatic decision these as ppl are inferring.
Ns2 is nearly 4 years old, officially. I've been playing since release. I'm 28 now. I've got less and less desire to spend hours each night at my desk after 8 hours of sitting at my desk at work. I had gotten out of shape, I had neglected my other hobbies, myself, my dogs, and family. The game has aged and so have I. Just time for me to move on from my dependence on gaming in general. Don't regret the time I've spent, made lots of friends along the way, but I'm no longer captivated.
The nsl provided relief in a sea of very bad pub games, ridiculous admin abuse, and frustrating deficits in teamwork. Recent changes to vanilla which are catered heavily towards new players have destroyed some of the fun and challenging aspects of the game that I enjoyed. these same new players are stepping into a 3.5 yr old game with a dwindling player base. They are not going to stick around. Instead these changes are turning away the most dedicated players. One's who have spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on ns2. There is no competitive scene now, and casual pubbing has had the life blood drained from it. The only fun alternative for me at this point would be smurfing with friends, which to me is not an appropriate thing to do. If I can't have fun and there's no higher goal for me (improving myself through competitive play), then there is really no point in playing anymore. I'm not violently installing, but I wont pretend I'm not disappointed. Topics are discussed, concerns ignored, "features" implemented anyways. If you deny this, just do some looking through older threads.
To those saying it'd have been so easy to use the beta branch, clearly we would have if it was. It was not realistic. If you had been on a team this season out even just tried to gather, you would absolutely agree.
To those holding the sentiment that the comp community is whiny and entitled, the same could be said about the pt team. Both thoughts are inaccurate. There are overly vocal minorities in every community.
Anyways that got a bit longer than I anticipated and since I'm on my phone I know I didn't say what I really wanted. But tl;dr. If you weren't playing competitive, you don't have a right to say how we should be feeling or reacting. Personally, I've needed a good enough reason to step away from spending so much time gaming, and all this crap going on with "balance," catering to a generation of unintelligent gamers who need their egos stroked and their hands held, losing the nsl, and forum power tripping (you know who you are, server king) is good enough reason.
I feel pretty content with the whole thing at this point.
Comments
Toggles and tuning cursors so you can set your server on this (comp) or that (pub) profile is the only way to go.
But that wouldn't cover deep game mechanics changes.
Rapid iteration is what nearly every successful software team uses these days because it is so much more effective. In any domain, the amount you learn and the quality of what you produce is proportional to the number of things you try. Even Android, with all its crazy requirements, now ships a new build once a month.
Most games do not get active development late in their lifecycle, so I understand why you think this seems out of place. But if they were going to do this project at all, this is the only way it had any chance of success.
First of all, its a band-aid solution. Sure, we could have potentially run a few matches, but as @_mod pointed out it would have been a painful process with all the problems that we would run into. Even a Playtester told me that they still run into issues with switching between the beta branches (and these are people that SHOULD know how to do this better than anyone!), so imagine coordinating 150+ people with language barriers to run a league this way. On top of this, from what I was told, currently NS2+ doesn't even work on the beta branch, yet we're supposed to carry on without it?
The next huge problem with the beta branch is that it would have destroyed our ability to bring in new players and maintain the Gather system. New potential players would turn around the moment they saw that they need to switch to the beta branch in order to go from pubbing to playing a competitive round of NS2. Newcomers tournament? Forget it. Entry into competitive would have been stifled and eventually it would have withered and died. Then there are the people that sign up for Gathers and you're dealing with @_mod 's scenarios all over again with LESS patient players. People cry Bloody Mary waiting 10 minutes for a Gather to start, imagine having to wait 30 minutes because some Russian guy can barely understand English and doesn't know how to switch to the Beta branch.
"Oh well you could just have your community stay on the beta branch with your own pubs." Really? What happened when Combat got switched to its own independent game? RIP. And they actually had a really talented team of developers constantly at work adding new content. Beta branch would have splintered NS2 community and killed any growth for the NSL.
To the Bots that keep saying "LOL UWE gave them what they needed to continue playing comp" you really haven't taken the time to consider all the factors, so please mm2.
As Ironhorse said... switching branches is 4 clicks. The rest is not related.
---
Also, I am against rapid iteration just like you guys, but I can't help but feel like you don't want to find a solution to this problem.
Yes this is another alternative, a NS2-296 mod could be created that overwrites the entire game's code with all the code from the 296 patch, effectively freezing the game at version 296, then you wouldn't need to touch the legal minefield (lol) that is CompMod, and it should "just" work for users without having them switch branches etc. I even discussed it with PDT/CDT devs (lol I still dont really know whos who), but they recommended against it, can't remember why.
*Patch 250 flashbacks.*
As I mentioned earlier you could download the branch once and then rename the folders in your steam directory according to which one you need right now. I'm not saying it's pretty, but it would work. And you could even write a .bat to do it for you.
+1
You missunderstand the idea behind the steam 'beta' branch. It was meant as a temporary solution to a temporary problem (the gameplay shake up).
Just so NSL teams could finish the season 9 without change in balance.
After a while, the balance in Vanilla NS2 would have stabilized again, after summer no big deal right.
Also it seems paddy was willing to update compod what happened?
Let's be honest the argument that NS2+ wasn't working is weird since Mendasp is playing competitively too right? Why couldn't he just upload a previous version of the mod compatible with the build of the beta branch?
And the argument about language barrier is even more ridiculous since, correct me if I'm wrong, mics and communications are mandatory to join gathers.
It's all just a sudden sheep movement jumping off the cliff if you ask me.
No one asked you, thx.
Don't go SupaDupaNoodle on us, you weren't a part of it and you don't understand how fragile things were in the NSL for the past year.
This recent stuff was just the tip of the iceberg.
Nice rethoric, too bad you don't have arguments.
Your post wasn't really worth arguing with.
But I'll just let you refer to my points above on the fact that you clearly don't know enough about the situation to understand why it had to be done.
This thread is really about saying goodbye, yet you guys come in here with this attitude that you think you know better than us when a competitive scene is truly done. It's laughable really.
That was the sense I was getting, but I don't have a clear picture of what the rest of the iceberg actually consists of. Are those things fixable?
Some of the problems that brought the NSL to such a fragile point were rooted in things that can't be "patched" or "fixed" .. it came down to things that actually contributed to levels of motivation and competitive spirit. This all snowballs from the state of NS2 as a whole and roots in a player base problem. In the end, the NSL got so small due to other problems that something like this completely shattered it. Enough people said forget it that you can't even form full squads in the highest division to play a PCW or match. They are moving on for one reason or another. Morale is a powerful thing and when one player calls it quits, it can lead to an entire team folding when there isn't much motivation to play. Playing competitive is also very time consuming and when you aren't feeling "rewarded" by either really great competition (close matches and many players playing) or $$$ then you start to lose interest.
The NS2WC was something that addressed the "competitive spirit" issue, but then things quickly died off as competitive events were no longer being held and that's understandable. UWE was forking most of the bill so it was their call. Unfortunately the community couldn't support it's own events like ESEA does for example. So it carried on in the ways that it could through normal seasons and cups. The NSL ran on donations after all.
Teams folded and the NSL continued to shrink. Seasons got messier and players became less motivated. This lead to smaller and smaller divisions and less and less enjoyable seasons. Less scrimmages and PCWs being played and less people caring about the result of the season. This all snowballs because if the players of the league aren't motivated to play then the ones supporting it are feeling as though they are administrating for basically nothing. Everyone cares less and less until it gets to the point that something like this completely breaks the league for good.
Seeing the top players do amazing things at events, seeing sick frag videos of the high skilled players taking on incredible engagements and watching a top streamer play a game at a high level get you motivated and interested in playing a game competitively. That's what attracts people to competition. Unfortunately NS2 has very little of that due to decisions made by the developers which made it incredibly hard to do those things. Some tried and found minor success. ( Gold_n's stream for a long time kept people interested in gathers ) ( I finally found a way to release a NSL team frag video without hurting FPS performance [thanks nvidia] ) ( and the NS2WC was the last great event [thanks Wasabi & co.] )
You could say Overwatch killed the NSL, you could say UWE killed the NSL, or you could even say the players themselves killed the NSL.. but any of those things alone would be a false statement. There were many many reasons for why the NSL only got smaller and did not grow. (mirror'ing ns2 as a whole)
I shall even ignore how easy or hard it is to switch to this comp branch for certain players.
But the comments about how hard it is to get a server running on a different branch or to get server ops to run it just untrue. And it saddens me to see NSL leads utter it.
Swapping the server is almost a copy paste. Most who run multiple branches just keep scripted copies and they are done.
The list of active nsl servers & server admins is NOT huge either. It doesnt take that long to inform them all.
Please dont repeat that nonsense again. It makes the nsl look less informed then it should be.
And yet sometimes server admins were so out of the loop they would reset the server in the middle of an official match!
Jokes aside, I mostly agree with this. It was more of an issue of what I stated above. Compounded by recent events.
But yeh.. I think I even have most active nsl admins of the season on my friends list.
Golden never forgets
Happened literally seconds after we lost both fades and both lerks, so thanks for that
Ns2 is nearly 4 years old, officially. I've been playing since release. I'm 28 now. I've got less and less desire to spend hours each night at my desk after 8 hours of sitting at my desk at work. I had gotten out of shape, I had neglected my other hobbies, myself, my dogs, and family. The game has aged and so have I. Just time for me to move on from my dependence on gaming in general. Don't regret the time I've spent, made lots of friends along the way, but I'm no longer captivated.
The nsl provided relief in a sea of very bad pub games, ridiculous admin abuse, and frustrating deficits in teamwork. Recent changes to vanilla which are catered heavily towards new players have destroyed some of the fun and challenging aspects of the game that I enjoyed. these same new players are stepping into a 3.5 yr old game with a dwindling player base. They are not going to stick around. Instead these changes are turning away the most dedicated players. One's who have spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on ns2. There is no competitive scene now, and casual pubbing has had the life blood drained from it. The only fun alternative for me at this point would be smurfing with friends, which to me is not an appropriate thing to do. If I can't have fun and there's no higher goal for me (improving myself through competitive play), then there is really no point in playing anymore. I'm not violently installing, but I wont pretend I'm not disappointed. Topics are discussed, concerns ignored, "features" implemented anyways. If you deny this, just do some looking through older threads.
To those saying it'd have been so easy to use the beta branch, clearly we would have if it was. It was not realistic. If you had been on a team this season out even just tried to gather, you would absolutely agree.
To those holding the sentiment that the comp community is whiny and entitled, the same could be said about the pt team. Both thoughts are inaccurate. There are overly vocal minorities in every community.
Anyways that got a bit longer than I anticipated and since I'm on my phone I know I didn't say what I really wanted. But tl;dr. If you weren't playing competitive, you don't have a right to say how we should be feeling or reacting. Personally, I've needed a good enough reason to step away from spending so much time gaming, and all this crap going on with "balance," catering to a generation of unintelligent gamers who need their egos stroked and their hands held, losing the nsl, and forum power tripping (you know who you are, server king) is good enough reason.
I feel pretty content with the whole thing at this point.
You included full NS2+ and NSLarge support ???