I'll just put my two cents in here. There have been many suggestions for matchmaking, with or without free to play. I don't think matchmaking would ever fit in with this game, period. Besides the small player count, the skill differences of NS2 (which get abominably high in this game) would make what is often a poor system absolute rubbish. I also don't blame the top skilled players for "stomping" other players. There aren't enough players for them to go up against whenever they want. There's generally only one or two servers with acceptable ping to join, and seeding a server is always a gamble. There are some times where people try to stack, but this should be addressed by the policies of community servers and awareness of the player base.
I think NS2 could eventually go F2P, but not any time soon. First and foremost, the amount of money spent on the game should NEVER influence direct gameplay. No bullshit about spending money to get a better jetpack or more grenades. Just no. That would kill the game for good. If NS2 was F2P, it would have to gain revenue based on a patronage system: Skins and stuff. Not everyone will like the game. It isn't casual. Then again, an unexpected swarm of players loved Dark Souls, and that wasn't a walk in the park, either. I just hope that if F2P happens, it is marketed as a harder game. Not for the preteen minecraft crowd. Rated N for Nanogrid.
Secondly, we need more interactive tutorials. The two we have right now are a small introduction, but they still leave rookies as rookies. Like I've said before, I don't care if skulks bite the ground and marines shoot the ceiling: I just want players to know the game first, and then learn how to excel at the mechanics of combat. We need separate tutorials to train both commanders: Not for most of commanding, but covering all aspects of commanding, right down to the last button and ability available. It would also be useful if there was some kind of training on awareness. People who aren't used to fast paced RTS games sometimes just think they can derp around on the field like this is Call of Duty. Meanwhile, the rest of the team has mics and is screaming at them to listen and cooperate. New players (and unaware existing ones) need a tutorial on team play and communication. Things like "Open your map constantly", "Buy a goddamn mic already", "Don't sit there like an idiot and type while I get killed next to you", "Command your team, and listen to their feedback", etc. I'm fine with people jumping in the chair who don't know about all of the gameplay mechanics, but they need to at the very least be able to communicate with their team. I think Tactical Freedom actually sometimes forces the whole team to respond to a communication test - you have to at least type back that you can hear a mic in the pregame. Of course, more detailed lifeform tutorials would also be welcome - for rookies, jumping into any of the higher forms usually spells certian doom. I certainly remember my first Onos. Went into nanogrid against two rifle marines who danced around me to death, while I got two or three hits in. If I didn't know any better, I would have dropped the game like plenty of people do.
Third, I wouldn't be too afraid of an influx of hackers. There might be a few "too good to be true" marines with fresh accounts running around, but I doubt their numbers would ever be very noticeable, and countermeasures are always evolving. Makes me wonder how good Battleye is for Arma 3, and how it will impact Planetisde 2. I've played both, and have seen a few showboating hackers mess around in each. Anyway, I would also like to see some sort of instruction for new players to respond to votes more often. It's kind of annoying that usually only a small proportion of the server ever votes one way or the other, which makes a lot of map changes, kicks, and surrenders fail. The last part is actually kind of sad. We should give new players a tutorial on how to surrender in an impossible game. Give them a 1v10 with just the player controlling a single locked down tech point.
TL;DR Tutorials and eventually a careful F2P release.
You know what works with a low player base ? Captain mod. And for that you need a decent way to show skill, with the loss of ns2stats we only went backwards.
But all these solution won't fix the biggest flaw of ns2, its game engine. F2P, perfect matchmaking or thousands of tutorial can't do anything about that. It's like the same debate other and other every years, but with different people...
"natural selection ? Oh yeah this game looked cool but i coulnd't run it with my computer."
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
The "Play Now" button is designed to do "soft matchmaking." That is, if there are enough servers with decent ping and an active game, it will try to put you on a server whose average skill matches yours.
Practically speaking, this means that if we enough players that any given person had many choices of servers to play on, using "Play Now" would be basically equivalent to matchmaking, but you wouldn't have to wait in a lobby. Instead you just seamlessly join the best game available.
But all these solution won't fix the biggest flaw of ns2, its game engine. F2P, perfect matchmaking or thousands of tutorial can't do anything about that. It's like the same debate other and other every years, but with different people...
"natural selection ? Oh yeah this game looked cool but i coulnd't run it with my computer."
Now that you mention it, accessibility is still probably a huge problem for the game. I know that when I bought NS2 it wasn't playable for me, either on a Vista desktop or my current laptop. I still can't play maps like Kodiak and Derelict without dipping to around 20fps. It's kind of ironic, considering that these maps were promoted for their detail and organic contrast, yet their performance is worse than traditional maps. There are also only so many servers in the whole list that have an acceptable latency, which I imagine shrinks further outside of North America. This would be less of a problem for simpler games, but NS2 is fast and competitive. A slow client or connection can ruin the experience, and neither problem is about to be fixed. Some communities are blessed with quality (low latency and high reliability, not just high bandwidth) internet connections, and the next generation of PCs will naturally be better - even lower end models not made for gaming. I suppose another fault of the game is that it wouldn't work very well on consoles, and their huge market. Even a masterful port would still have to warp NS2 into something else so any casual gamer with analog sticks can bite and shoot. I really like this game, so I often gloss over the fact that it barely runs for a lot of people, or not at all.
#Mofo1 yeah Modern Warfare 2 is most hacker ridden game but its not a free to play so bad example
i got 3000+ hours total of pretty much all cod games even consoles even, max prestige etc still playing cod waw since it got modtools and you can make maps
However that ALL THAT does still not change the fact: i have never encounterd a single cheater in warframe. period.
They can buy cool skins or guns but that does not affect others as much.
yes only cosmetics is GOOD for f2P but some dude having an extra nade slot is not gonna make marines win every game, they never did back before nades got overhauled anyways, its already been tested. That was just an example of what you could give thousands of people to spend CASH on rather then buying ns2 see it got 5 active servers then do first time optimization for 10 minutes and uninstall it and never play again.
Evolve has gone F2p to desperately milk DLC money out of compulsive buyers, it's completely irrespective of player retention.
There will come a day when this is the right thing for NS2. But it's probably not yet.
yes evolve was just an example how a game can go from 200 players to 20000 players, and i think UWE would benifit more financially from making it free2play even if it dont seem like it because the likelyhood the 200 players active on ns2 now wont spend as much as 20000 new players umpulsebuying some cosmetics
as an example if you are browsing trough steam and find 2 - one have 2 players - one have 2000 players what would rather you play?
if a game on steam have 200 players or 20000 players what would you rather play? as an ns2 player i would stick with ns2 with 200 players sure but only because im a hardcore fan of the game just like the other players still playing it. but for an avarage gamer knowing nothing about it they go to mainstream games with many players and if its free even more so...
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2016
From a player that prefer ns2large its clear: more player = more fun.
But like i mentioned multiple times: NS2 is not a game for the masses.
It never was, it never will be.
But its simple: f2p=annoying rounds, EVERY round.
And ignoring the fact that Evolve is in a huge dumb down process right now while the same people that want NS2 f2p dont want healthbars for example in it is just laughable.
I believe you dont know what you want:
More players? Yess
Dumb down? No
Matchmaking? Yess
No community servers as a result? No
The devs should do this:
Reduce the price to 5$, fix the the broken Hive skill system, introduce some more interactive tutorials and have a free weekend after this.
If someone dont want to pay 5$ for the game, im 100% sure he wont pay any $ for a useless skin.
Also this kind of gamer that dont want to invest any money for gaming are playing on 10 year old office laptops.
So they cant play it anyway.
1) They look ugly and give the game an ultra casual feel.. If I was new they would instantly give me a bad impression of the game. If I noticed them in a screenshot before buying it might've stopped me from ever trying the game at all...
2) You have no clue (unless you research it) what they set each bar to represent.. Is 4 bars under 50ms? 100ms? 150ms? Is 3 bars under 200ms or 300ms? All you get is "herp derp its yellow/green so it must be good enough."
3) If numbers were inaccurate then how does changing the icon from numbers to bars make it less inaccurate in any way? It's just lazily trying to cover up the problem. Fix the problem so the numbers are accurate instead of using an ultra vague bar to hide it.
1) Right. The game turned from niche hardcore FPS/RTS hybrid into an ultra casual game by the addition of heatlh bars.
2) Apart from what depara said, you only really need to know that you should avoid yellow and red and try to stay with green and blue. If you're picky about pings, only join the servers with the most bars. (Ha... like you can be that picky in this game.) If you really absolutely need to know, you have the tools to find out what they mean exactly. Like depara said.
3) Numbers were inaccurate but suggested that they were accurate. Why, after all, would you display a number if it is wrong. The bars aren't necessarily "less inaccurate", but they are not outright lying to you.
@MoFo1
Just a sidenote to the "pingbar problem".
Click on the server and check the ping on the window that pops up. Voila.
Also you are playing on the same servers anyway each time. And im sure you know the pings of your favorite 3 servers anyway. So its not a big deal.
I suppose you're right and it isn't THAT big of a deal, but it's the appearance of the things and the principle... They are ugly, give the browser a casual CoD look, and you shouldn't have to click each server to see the ping..
And I know it doesn't change the game, but it changes the appearance of the game.. Ping bars and matchmaking are two things that will actually prevent me from buying and trying new games...
So you telling the ns2large players that they can find there server very easy but you cant find the pings?
Cmon.
No I can find the pings, but you shouldn't have to look that's the point...
Also me saying the bars are uninformative and ugly is a huge difference to the large players claiming that a single click "hid" their server so badly it became dead and unplayable...
If I was saying the ping bars change killed NS2 and made it unplayable then you'd have a point...
more players as people to play with is not same as ns2large, i make this topic to see what could be done to the 280 active players left in the community playing today, at the end of the year maybe its only 80? spread them out over a bunch of 6v6 servers how many will that be 6 full servers in the entire game?
dont drag things like healthbars and large servers in here there is seperate topics for that #dePARA im simply curious of what other sulutions there are out there.
it dont matter if this game cost 50 dollars or 5 cents, nobody will buy it because of how low numbers of people play it and how few full servers there are.
oh wait even if a server is full but nobody wants to command you run around for 20 minutes doing nothing and people tend to leave.
anyone can have an opinion, it don't matter if you play 5 hours 500 hours or 5000 hours @halfofaheaven but if you have a better solution to lack of declining amount of players the past 6 months then i want to hear it, or maybe your just part of the problem and if not out of hundred servers the one arcade (different tab alltogether) server called woozas closed and hundred people left along with that will you play 6vs6 vs bots? will that grow the community or playerbase?
Isn't it a funny coincidence that everyone affiliated with Wooza's
Funny enough, even with all the drama he's stirred up, Wooza has probably done more for ns2 than you ever have (don't know you but I assume it's the case), so maybe you should stop posting so you don't make a further fool of yourself.
Like I said before, I don't know you, but from what I can tell you seem to have the IQ of a lamp post
You nasty stealthy joker ! I'll have to mouse over every letter of your posts from now on !
Oh, and I'm fed up with segregation, so I'm signing up right now at the League for the Lamp posts Civil Rights.
Our first protest will be a global strike from sunset to dawn. Ha ha misters and misses big IQ, can you see in the dark ?
You nasty stealthy joker ! I'll have to mouse over every letter of your posts from now on !
Oh, and I'm fed up with segregation, so I'm signing up right now at the League for the Lamp posts Civil Rights.
Our first protest will be a global strike from sunset to dawn. Ha ha misters and misses big IQ, can you see in the dark ?
You nasty stealthy joker ! I'll have to mouse over every letter of your posts from now on !
Oh, and I'm fed up with segregation, so I'm signing up right now at the League for the Lamp posts Civil Rights.
Our first protest will be a global strike from sunset to dawn. Ha ha misters and misses big IQ, can you see in the dark ?
The real benefit of going F2P is the free advertising it will bring. It is not so much about getting new people to play, but getting people to come play.
When caged was released, it was posted in /r/gaming. It ended up getting to the top of the page, and the top comment was "People still play this game? I am going to have to reinstall."
Why do you think the engine is NS2's biggest flaw?
Well, the engine has gotten better since launch undoubtedly, but it still struggles considerably with speed compared to a lot of other engines. A lot of this is due to Lua, and how everything is tied to it. It's slow. Incredibly slow. The crawling performance in the early years was the first strike against it. Even now, servers still struggle to play the game, clients still struggle in the late game. There are some good things about Lua, as it makes mods a lot easier to actually make and test, but it also makes it hardet in many ways. Mods must be updated to account for differences in code. Performance and things can be adversely effected by even making small changes, meaning that debugging can sometimes be difficult.
Lights also eat performance significantly. It's bad. First map loads still take a long time. There's tons of reasons as to what is problematic with the engine. There's tons of things that I'm sure UWE would go back and redo if they had the experience they do now. You can't really take it back, now. I'm just hoping that an NS3 would be made on tech with more documentation and tools. UE4, I'm looking at you. For NS2, it'd probably take a year and a half to push it over to a new engine.
I do not agree with many of recent changes, but i can live with them. Always nice to have game evolving. Hope they scramble more these upgrades and listen players feedback. I think ultimate goal should be bring ns2 to F2P. Whatever players it brings. You could even add somekind of feedback box in main menu so you dont have to come forums or discord. Something like dirty bomb have, you exit game and it sometimes ask you about game.
About healthbars. I dont like how you can track targets as rine. But as a alien, im adapting.
I wondered what the hell is this. Gorge hunt in every game. Then i realized that there´s healthbars. Now you can lure rines like old days, you just have to remember you have health bar. It´s even easier than before. Feels like Gorge hunt. Pro players kill me just like before, but below that it feels like im somekind of rinemagnet. And that´s good. Rines kill me faster(better tracking) but they can be also lured faster(they are fascinated about health bar).
I do have had to change my battlegorge build, regen to cara because better tracking.
Dunno about other lifeforms, i play only gorge, skulk and sometimes onos.
if NS3 indeed is a thing @Zavaro then most issues with this engine can definatly be solved as of lua my scripter friend tried to explain why it was slower and how to enhance the speed of it in ns2, he is software developer but i could not keep track of anything so ultimatly just agreed that it was faster loading times in ANY other game with pricetag or without. for an indie game i completely understand how its not optimized but over so many years i almost hoped it would somehow improve and it have but not noticibly. Other game load maps in 5 or 10 seconds as in ns2 even with i7 cpu it can take full minute depending on Harddrive or even longer if its the first map of the day your connecting to.
I was strongly against F2P in the past. However I think that this is a risk we should take.
Waiting to see what happens to Evolve's F2P player base might seem reasonable, but remember that Evolve is not NS2. You would be comparing apples to oranges.
Free the game! It would be nice to see more players and more servers up and running.
Apples to oranges sure... but they are still of the Asymmetric shooter fruit.
Comments
I think NS2 could eventually go F2P, but not any time soon. First and foremost, the amount of money spent on the game should NEVER influence direct gameplay. No bullshit about spending money to get a better jetpack or more grenades. Just no. That would kill the game for good. If NS2 was F2P, it would have to gain revenue based on a patronage system: Skins and stuff. Not everyone will like the game. It isn't casual. Then again, an unexpected swarm of players loved Dark Souls, and that wasn't a walk in the park, either. I just hope that if F2P happens, it is marketed as a harder game. Not for the preteen minecraft crowd. Rated N for Nanogrid.
Secondly, we need more interactive tutorials. The two we have right now are a small introduction, but they still leave rookies as rookies. Like I've said before, I don't care if skulks bite the ground and marines shoot the ceiling: I just want players to know the game first, and then learn how to excel at the mechanics of combat. We need separate tutorials to train both commanders: Not for most of commanding, but covering all aspects of commanding, right down to the last button and ability available. It would also be useful if there was some kind of training on awareness. People who aren't used to fast paced RTS games sometimes just think they can derp around on the field like this is Call of Duty. Meanwhile, the rest of the team has mics and is screaming at them to listen and cooperate. New players (and unaware existing ones) need a tutorial on team play and communication. Things like "Open your map constantly", "Buy a goddamn mic already", "Don't sit there like an idiot and type while I get killed next to you", "Command your team, and listen to their feedback", etc. I'm fine with people jumping in the chair who don't know about all of the gameplay mechanics, but they need to at the very least be able to communicate with their team. I think Tactical Freedom actually sometimes forces the whole team to respond to a communication test - you have to at least type back that you can hear a mic in the pregame. Of course, more detailed lifeform tutorials would also be welcome - for rookies, jumping into any of the higher forms usually spells certian doom. I certainly remember my first Onos. Went into nanogrid against two rifle marines who danced around me to death, while I got two or three hits in. If I didn't know any better, I would have dropped the game like plenty of people do.
Third, I wouldn't be too afraid of an influx of hackers. There might be a few "too good to be true" marines with fresh accounts running around, but I doubt their numbers would ever be very noticeable, and countermeasures are always evolving. Makes me wonder how good Battleye is for Arma 3, and how it will impact Planetisde 2. I've played both, and have seen a few showboating hackers mess around in each. Anyway, I would also like to see some sort of instruction for new players to respond to votes more often. It's kind of annoying that usually only a small proportion of the server ever votes one way or the other, which makes a lot of map changes, kicks, and surrenders fail. The last part is actually kind of sad. We should give new players a tutorial on how to surrender in an impossible game. Give them a 1v10 with just the player controlling a single locked down tech point.
TL;DR Tutorials and eventually a careful F2P release.
But all these solution won't fix the biggest flaw of ns2, its game engine. F2P, perfect matchmaking or thousands of tutorial can't do anything about that. It's like the same debate other and other every years, but with different people...
"natural selection ? Oh yeah this game looked cool but i coulnd't run it with my computer."
Practically speaking, this means that if we enough players that any given person had many choices of servers to play on, using "Play Now" would be basically equivalent to matchmaking, but you wouldn't have to wait in a lobby. Instead you just seamlessly join the best game available.
(more details here: https://moultano.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/ranking-servers-for-natural-selection-2/)
I am sad NS2stats went away also. If I remember correctly, it was from a lack of funding to keep the website going.
I am not saying anything good or bad about the engine with this question. Why do you think the engine is NS2's biggest flaw?
i got 3000+ hours total of pretty much all cod games even consoles even, max prestige etc still playing cod waw since it got modtools and you can make maps
However that ALL THAT does still not change the fact: i have never encounterd a single cheater in warframe. period.
They can buy cool skins or guns but that does not affect others as much.
yes only cosmetics is GOOD for f2P but some dude having an extra nade slot is not gonna make marines win every game, they never did back before nades got overhauled anyways, its already been tested. That was just an example of what you could give thousands of people to spend CASH on rather then buying ns2 see it got 5 active servers then do first time optimization for 10 minutes and uninstall it and never play again.
There will come a day when this is the right thing for NS2. But it's probably not yet.
as an example if you are browsing trough steam and find 2 - one have 2 players - one have 2000 players what would rather you play?
if a game on steam have 200 players or 20000 players what would you rather play? as an ns2 player i would stick with ns2 with 200 players sure but only because im a hardcore fan of the game just like the other players still playing it. but for an avarage gamer knowing nothing about it they go to mainstream games with many players and if its free even more so...
But like i mentioned multiple times: NS2 is not a game for the masses.
It never was, it never will be.
But its simple: f2p=annoying rounds, EVERY round.
And ignoring the fact that Evolve is in a huge dumb down process right now while the same people that want NS2 f2p dont want healthbars for example in it is just laughable.
I believe you dont know what you want:
More players? Yess
Dumb down? No
Matchmaking? Yess
No community servers as a result? No
The devs should do this:
Reduce the price to 5$, fix the the broken Hive skill system, introduce some more interactive tutorials and have a free weekend after this.
If someone dont want to pay 5$ for the game, im 100% sure he wont pay any $ for a useless skin.
Also this kind of gamer that dont want to invest any money for gaming are playing on 10 year old office laptops.
So they cant play it anyway.
1) Right. The game turned from niche hardcore FPS/RTS hybrid into an ultra casual game by the addition of heatlh bars.
2) Apart from what depara said, you only really need to know that you should avoid yellow and red and try to stay with green and blue. If you're picky about pings, only join the servers with the most bars. (Ha... like you can be that picky in this game.) If you really absolutely need to know, you have the tools to find out what they mean exactly. Like depara said.
3) Numbers were inaccurate but suggested that they were accurate. Why, after all, would you display a number if it is wrong. The bars aren't necessarily "less inaccurate", but they are not outright lying to you.
I suppose you're right and it isn't THAT big of a deal, but it's the appearance of the things and the principle... They are ugly, give the browser a casual CoD look, and you shouldn't have to click each server to see the ping..
And I know it doesn't change the game, but it changes the appearance of the game.. Ping bars and matchmaking are two things that will actually prevent me from buying and trying new games...
No I can find the pings, but you shouldn't have to look that's the point...
Also me saying the bars are uninformative and ugly is a huge difference to the large players claiming that a single click "hid" their server so badly it became dead and unplayable...
If I was saying the ping bars change killed NS2 and made it unplayable then you'd have a point...
dont drag things like healthbars and large servers in here there is seperate topics for that #dePARA im simply curious of what other sulutions there are out there.
it dont matter if this game cost 50 dollars or 5 cents, nobody will buy it because of how low numbers of people play it and how few full servers there are.
oh wait even if a server is full but nobody wants to command you run around for 20 minutes doing nothing and people tend to leave.
And they say we are toxic hhmkeeey..
Funny enough, even with all the drama he's stirred up, Wooza has probably done more for ns2 than you ever have (don't know you but I assume it's the case), so maybe you should stop posting so you don't make a further fool of yourself.
Like I said before, I don't know you, but from what I can tell you seem to have the IQ of a lamp post
Oh, and I'm fed up with segregation, so I'm signing up right now at the League for the Lamp posts Civil Rights.
Our first protest will be a global strike from sunset to dawn. Ha ha misters and misses big IQ, can you see in the dark ?
Here's my card...
Let's not blow things out of proportion here
When caged was released, it was posted in /r/gaming. It ended up getting to the top of the page, and the top comment was "People still play this game? I am going to have to reinstall."
Worse yet if they were from before b250.
Well, the engine has gotten better since launch undoubtedly, but it still struggles considerably with speed compared to a lot of other engines. A lot of this is due to Lua, and how everything is tied to it. It's slow. Incredibly slow. The crawling performance in the early years was the first strike against it. Even now, servers still struggle to play the game, clients still struggle in the late game. There are some good things about Lua, as it makes mods a lot easier to actually make and test, but it also makes it hardet in many ways. Mods must be updated to account for differences in code. Performance and things can be adversely effected by even making small changes, meaning that debugging can sometimes be difficult.
Lights also eat performance significantly. It's bad. First map loads still take a long time. There's tons of reasons as to what is problematic with the engine. There's tons of things that I'm sure UWE would go back and redo if they had the experience they do now. You can't really take it back, now. I'm just hoping that an NS3 would be made on tech with more documentation and tools. UE4, I'm looking at you. For NS2, it'd probably take a year and a half to push it over to a new engine.
Do I think that's worthwhile? Probably, yeah.
About healthbars. I dont like how you can track targets as rine. But as a alien, im adapting.
I wondered what the hell is this. Gorge hunt in every game. Then i realized that there´s healthbars. Now you can lure rines like old days, you just have to remember you have health bar. It´s even easier than before. Feels like Gorge hunt. Pro players kill me just like before, but below that it feels like im somekind of rinemagnet. And that´s good. Rines kill me faster(better tracking) but they can be also lured faster(they are fascinated about health bar).
I do have had to change my battlegorge build, regen to cara because better tracking.
Dunno about other lifeforms, i play only gorge, skulk and sometimes onos.
So sad that Comp died.
Apples to oranges sure... but they are still of the Asymmetric shooter fruit.