NSL

bonage

JUST THE TIP

Posts: 34
Location: Australia
Joined: 15 November 2012

Hello friends,

Thought this would be a good time to discuss the current global NS2 depression that seems to be happening, and the future of the worldwide ns2 comp scene as we move forward in 2015.

I’m wondering what your current feelings are as a team and as a player. There is definitely growing sentiment that the game is dying, which seems to be amplified by the lack of scrims/games/casters etc across all levels of play globally.

On top of this, the CDT and UWE haven’t really thrown us any bones as to their plans for growth and support of the comp community and/or NS2 community in general as their focus seems to be on patch to patch updates and other games (subnautica, future perfect), meaning that there is no clear direction for NS2 moving forward.

I’m sure a lot of you have been discussing internally and privately about what is going to happen in 2015, whether other teams will continue to play, and whether it is best to leave NS2 and move onto other games like csgo, dirty bomb, overwatch etc. I thought this would be a good time to discuss this publicly, and as a community get a feel for what we think might happen this year and how to move forward.

Specifically, I think it’s worth discussing things like:

• Have you or your team decided to stop playing this year? If so why? (stale gameplay? boredom? Moving onto other games? Real life commitments etc ?)

• If you have quit, what would bring you back? (Another WC? Smaller tournaments with smaller prizes? New teams and players in the scene? Performance increases?)

In my mind, there are few scenarios left:

1. CDT commits to longevity and long term growth of NS2 in the hope of growing both the public playerbase and the competitive one. Comp teams stick it out for the long haul during this process. (no guarantee of success)

2. Comp scene agrees game is dying, and that there will be 1 last average season of play with teams half playing / half leaving.

3. Comp scene agrees game is dying, but tries to get one last good year/season out of NS2. CDT or UWE create DLC pack to fund smaller tournament(s) to give incentive for teams/players to return/play, allowing the competitive scene to finish on a high before dying out completely. NS2 goes out with a bang.

I’m interested to hear all your opinions (especially from the upper skill level teams; div 1 premier etc) as we move forward in 2015. Personally I think given the right circumstances there is still enough interest in the game for one more good season, but at the same time I also understand that for many there is little incentive other than pride/honor to keep going.

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AusNS2 Admin

wasabione

Posts: 6
Location: United States of America
Joined: 16 January 2012

thank you for the post bonage, let me start off by saying for me personally I'm not done. As co-lead of the CDT I can also say the group isnt done. There is hope to bolster numbers and retain players, but to do this some foundation items within the game need to fixed and ironed out before a major push for players. The CDT hasn't got to this as quickly as we would have liked mainly because we are still very dependent on certain pieces that UWE controls. That being said we are with maybe a months time of actually working out those final pieces. Once this is done we will be asking for a lot of input on how to better certain aspects of both the game and helping to make it even more approachable when we do the re-launch. We have also talked about sponsoring another larger event too, Funding is already being collected but needs more time to establish a good source of constant revenue to support it without asking the community to help. I know this doesnt answer much of the questions, but hopefully it gives you some insight into what the CDT is working towards.

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tudy

Posts: 169
Location: Germany
Joined: 30 June 2013

If there is one thing killing the community, it is talking about it dying. The more you spread the word about "this game is dying", the less new people are interested in joining it (who wants to go on a sinking ship?). So, yeah, saying "ns2 is dying" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and I really can't understand why people spent so much effort discussing this topic, instead of focusing on the one single countermeasure.

Every community needs members. That is the single only number which counts. It holds for your local bowling club, for an outlier village, your church, your gaming-community and for players of NS2.

So, if you want to find out, why players are stopping to play NS2. Here is the answer: Don't. It doesn't matter. Rather ask the question what can be done to bring new players to it. People leaving is inevitable - no matter how awesome your community is. You can't expect people to play a game 'till their grave.

It's like a pool filled with water. You can do your best to prevent the water from flowing out, but at some point you are bound to refill some of the water. Especially if you splash and toll around in it.

This concept is more detailed explained here, in the "Law of Diminishing Players", it's long, but it's worth a read for sure:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

bonage says

I’m interested to hear all your opinions (especially from the upper skill level teams; div 1 premier etc) as we move forward in 2015.

And why is that? I mean, the line about the div1/premier. What are they suppossed to do? Sure, they do have tons of experience on this game, more like anyone else, probably. But guess what: this is because they are probably the last persons on this planet, who need to be convinced to play/stay in this game.

Furthermore they make a tiny portion of the NS2-communtiy. Also their status of div1/premier is a complete relative. Imagine swapping out the top 12 teams with 12 completely new teams. Would we "lock down" div1/premier and continue playing in div4-2 until players show up, which are "good enough" to play in the higher divisions? That would be kind of ridiculous.

I'm not saying their input might not be valueable, but there is not a single reason to believe, that their input is more valueable then that of others. Being good at NS2 does not qualify the slightest to bring in more players.

Here is a very important point about, why recruiting is so damn important. Noone is save from leaving the community, there might be good reasons, there might be bad reasons. But once people are gone, chances are tiny, that they ever come back. And this is true for every single member, it holds for your players, your admins, your referees, your casters,...

Let's say in 1 of 100 NS2 lies a potential caster. If you want to find a new caster, you need to bring 100 players to the community(on average). If the chances of finding a new admin are 1 in 1 000 you need to bring 1 000 players to the game. If there is 1 developer in 100 000 players..., well you know, where this is going.

That's the trick. And you need to do that. Because the one day or the other your caster or your admin or your developer is leaving.

And all this talk about next season being the last or not...

As long as there are players, there will be games.
Every player is leaving sooner or later inevitably.

This only leaves one conclusion: Bring in more players. Pump in new blood. Scout the guys, who can contribute.

That is the most important task a communtiy like this has.

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Evisuuup

Posts: 23
Location: Spain
Joined: 19 March 2014

tudy says

If there is one thing killing the community, it is talking about it dying. The more you spread the word about "this game is dying", the less new people are interested in joining it (who wants to go on a sinking ship?). So, yeah, saying "ns2 is dying" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and I really can't understand why people spent so much effort discussing this topic, instead of focusing on the one single countermeasure..

Spot on!!! Kinda sad really..
I've joined the newcomer tournament, but this "NS2 is dead" attitude going around, made me wonder, at that time, if I could even be bothered... :)

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Ben

SUPERDUPONT

Posts: 18
Location: France
Joined: 22 March 2013

I think we have to talk about it.

Because if CDT or UWE can’t find a way to keep ns2 alive, community has to do it. Indeed this is maybe not the best solution to say “NS2 is dying”, but if we keep “skipping” it, this is not the solution too. We lost 10 players on the comp scene, and we get one guy. Can’t work like this. And comp players are pissed by FFA. Then you can’t bring new players on the comp scene…

At the beginning “we” have to find some solutions to bring new players on NS2, and bring them in the comp scene. How ? I don’t know. Free to play like people said before ? More tournaments ? More publicity ?

How many seasons ns2 will stay alive if it stays like this ? 2 ? or 3 with 10 teams ? Ok thanks you and goodbye !

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bonage

JUST THE TIP

Posts: 34
Location: Australia
Joined: 15 November 2012

wasabione says

when we do the re-launch

Thank you for your post wasabi. It helps to have a bit of insight into what the CDT is hopefully planning. I’m interested in this re-launch you spoke about. Are you able to elaborate a bit more on this at this time?

tudy says

If there is one thing killing the community, it is talking about it dying. The more you spread the word about "this game is dying", the less new people are interested in joining it (who wants to go on a sinking ship?). So, yeah, saying "ns2 is dying" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and I really can't understand why people spent so much effort discussing this topic, instead of focusing on the one single countermeasure.

You need only look at the number of teams scrimming/playing daily, the daily average player count for the game itself to know that the game’s health is in a precarious position. I absolutely don’t understand why it’s not ok to talk about it either. People are going to talk about it regardless, so what difference does it make if I ask them here or on steam? If people want to play, they will continue to play regardless. If people think that any talk about leaving / the game dying is going to affect their decision to stick around, well then that says it all really. This is a pretty tight knit community – I don’t see why we can’t talk about the future of the game.

tudy says

Rather ask the question what can be done to bring new players to it. People leaving is inevitable - no matter how awesome your community is. You can't expect people to play a game 'till their grave.

I think you’re missing my point. From my perspective, I’ve helped build and run a very successful community at AusNS2 for over 2 years now – I know the kind of action required to build and sustain a comp scene. But I know that our community, like the NSL, is at the peak of its growth barring some marketing miracle by the CDT or UWE which would result in a massive increase in the daily average players to inject new blood. You can run successful drafts and tournaments to get public players into the comp scene, but we’ve reached the point where there is no more growth. The game is over 2 years old. You may get new players into the game at this point, but all it is doing is replacing the people leaving.

Also should mention that your newcomer tournament is great. It’s a direct means of getting new people to play comp. But you’re going to find that at a certain point, the numbers you get from newcomers isn’t going to exceed those leaving, and there will be a deficit.

This is a small community, and unfortunately when some people leave, especially those who have been around a long time, it has a big impact on the overall health of the game. We don’t have the luxury of tonnes of people at all skill levels to prevent fatigue. It’s better to talk about the issue directly and tackle it head on if people want to do anything about it.

tudy says

And why is that? I mean, the line about the div1/premier. What are they suppossed to do? Sure, they do have tons of experience on this game, more like anyone else, probably. But guess what: this is because they are probably the last persons on this planet, who need to be convinced to play/stay in this game.

I said I was interested in everyone’s opinion, not just theirs. The only reason I specifically want to know their opinions is
1. They are the ones who are likely to be leaving as many of them have been around the longest and
2. I also play at that level, hence why I’m interested in knowing their thoughts (as they are relevant to me).

I don’t disagree with a lot of what you say Tudy, but at the same time I don't think getting a finger on the pulse of the community will hurt it.

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AusNS2 Admin

herakles

Posts: 126
Location: Versailles, France
Joined: 17 February 2011

I'm just gonna talk about prem.

In prem div I think it comes more to the fact prem lvl players didn't want to invest the time to create teams.
By looking at s5 line-ups i could create maybe 2-3 prem lvl teams by stealing players from div1 to div4.

Now i understand players want to play with their friends and move up as a team, but the current ranking up system is a major fail.
No teams since the beginning has rly reached the top level without having in their roster some allready prem players.

This system does not reflect individual skills. "He is a div3 player!" doesn't mean shit.

Another problem is the massive lack of commanders since 1 year. This role to me is another big failure in this game, especially on the alien side. You are stuck with Early skulk rushing/RT biting/drop shit/go gorge build the hive/RT bite some more/drop 1 bone wall every 5 minutes.

The game is still a fps and most comms i knew (except maybe Jaivol) trained their field play, to then use it for 1 minute in a match.

What I mean is the alien comm still feels more forced than needed.

So for prem:
Teams unable to reach prem lvl + People not recruiting new talents from lower divs + no comms = div dying.

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Pelargir

We're grumpy

Posts: 452
Location: Lyon, France
Joined: 6 April 2013

I also agree with Bonage. Things must be said and you cannot ignore the problems any longer. Gathering opinions on this matter makes a lot of more sense than babbling about it on Steam, Teamspeak or whatever other softwares. This thread is public and open to everyone and that's why it is more relevant to move forward and trying to find solutions, or at least, ideas to help the game, and mainly the competitive side in this case, staying alive and sticking around for a bit more.

I do not think however than Division 1 and Premium Division have a better point of view. None of them does represent what you could have expected from the past seasons (apart of few teams). And by this, I mean you'd have to bring down the current divisions to one level below if you'd like to gather the said pro-players ideas.

Plenty of the players have been around for 2 years now, if not more, but they're part of all the Divisions. They're just not practicing as much as some others do, etc. But back to the original matter of this thread although debating about this is still interesting.

I've always believed that some things could have been done to interest public players to join the competitive players. Advertising is nice thing, but UWE or the CDT is already retweeting most of the important competitive informations that need to be relayed. You can have a look on the front page of the NS2 official website. Nevertheless, it could reach a higher step, meaning that their Steam group (NS2 UWE), provides around 20.000 members but competitive events are never mentioned, only the regular builds. Same on the front page of their website, except once lately which was fine.

Displaying names of the winners of seasons or some other prices, which can be free (or not too expensive) is one of the possibilities that have been denied. Public badges for all the winners of division per season was one of the nicest ideas (especially looking at the amount of upcoming seasons). It'd need more searches, more thoughts but there's plenty of features, things, or whatever that could be done to get interest to public players for the competitive NS2.

One of the concerns I've been thinking for months now but that will never see the light is emerging both NSL and AusNS2. If the competitive community has to die, let's extend its life by doing it together. But, this is up to both organizations, something that does not need to be achieved by the CDT.

EDIT: also agreed with Herakles.

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“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Vindaloo

Posts: 204
Location: Czechia
Joined: 10 December 2012

These thoughts might be random and not at all connected.

Let's start with onFire. As hera mentioned, the commander problem hit us mid S4 and we could never get out of it. The commanders we had were rookies and didn't really worked well with what players we had at the time. As soon as Blind left, we struggled. I don't want to put down Ixian, Jason or others who tried out, but true is none of them was the true com/leader we needed. It showed on player morale and mid s5 I had to give up on this. Being frustrated to put hours upon hours into organizing and then into training and making sure we can excel, while people were demoralized and don't bring 100% into PCWs or games, probably me included. We folded for the season, but there is no one to pick up the captain role for s6 or further, so this is probably final death of onFire. I am too burned out to be organizing again.

However as player I want to stick around and play in S6, be it try hard team, be it chill team, be it team I don't understand a word they are re saying, I just want to play and do my best.

As a caster I am not going anywhere either. People showing up to streams and thanking me for bringing games, explaining stuff and telling them of things happening (eg. TAW rookie tourney), makes me warm and it feels good. I only see a problem that I will never reach hundreds of viewers regularly to be partnered with twitch or hitbox to get the re-encodes so people with all kinds of connections can tune in the quality of their choosing. Then I could use subscriptions maybe to fund tourneys or provide prizes for div winners. Like RedDog was partnered because of some contact in Twitch who liked NS2, not sure if this is viable still. (Someone help? :)) NS2 is also what helped me expand my viewer base, it started back with first /r/NS2 tournament, it was wild ride, but it was worth it and I am glad I stayed. If only I could make nice videos for youtube to spread the word more. Anyway, not going anywhere, if you need anything casted jsut shoot me a message and I am down 98% of the time.

Both comp and pub player base is pretty small, because we cannot do much about pub community growth, we have to focus on getting the players we can get from pub to comp. TAW is doing great job at this right now. If Wasabi is right and we ride the s6 and then get some form of relaunch with good PR, f2p, cosmetics, whatever, the the pub base could grow and with similar efforts TAW is doing could bring more players to comp. Problem is we cannot look into the kitchen, so we don't know what's cooking and if we can rely on any kind of lunch. Until then, we need to focus on NOW, that means, get as many of those signed up teams for TAW tourney to sign up to s6. Be nice to them, support them, show them even if we are small community, that we are nice and it's worth to stay and hang around.

I would like to come back to com shortage. I think was is and could always be problem in comp. I am not sure how to do this. Maybe teams need to adopt second coms and train them out for others to use later. I am not com, I don't know what they need to stay and practice herding drifters around.

Let's focus on bringing and retaining players in NSL, because there is not much we can do about global player base. If anyone from CDT/UWE can tell us what's cooking in CDT/UWE, maybe we could start building hype, it could help us get trough s6, might get people on the edge tip into decision of sticking around.

In regards to this I want to also provide private servers for the new teams (or the old ones) for cheap, as I mentioned elsewhere here on the forums.

So I am gonna do my best, be it player, caster, streamer, ref, server provider to help bring and retain players in this community. These are my random thoughts, might add some later.

I also wanna add what one of the great community pillars said to me:
"I am doing it for selfish reasons. I wanna play this game for as long as possible." - SupaFred (owner of Thirsty Onos servers)
I am right there with him.

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rantology

The Boys

Contributors: Balance-Team
Posts: 124
Location: United States of America
Joined: 28 March 2012

It's very frustrating to try and play a game 'competitively' when there are generally very few to no teams around to practice against. At least this has plagued titus for a long time being the only NA premier team for some time and not being able to scrim on euro times during the week. It's at an all-time low in this season since so many of the euro teams have quit... to me this makes it just not worth the effort if you cannot even practice the game on a consistent basis.

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tudy

Posts: 169
Location: Germany
Joined: 30 June 2013

Pelargir says

Gathering opinions on this matter makes a lot of more sense than babbling about it on Steam, Teamspeak or whatever other softwares. This thread is public and open to everyone and that's why it is more relevant to move forward and trying to find solutions, or at least, ideas to help the game, and mainly the competitive side in this case, staying alive and sticking around for a bit more.

That's a sure thing. I am all up for discussing, how we can bring more people to NS2 and competitive NS2. What I do not like is the tone of the OP, which sounds a lot like: "When do we start packing?"

Saying stuff like this

If the competitive community has to die, let's extend its life by doing it together.

this

the game’s health is in a precarious position

or most of this

In my mind, there are few scenarios left:

1. CDT commits to longevity and long term growth of NS2 in the hope of growing both the public playerbase and the competitive one. Comp teams stick it out for the long haul during this process. (no guarantee of success)

2. Comp scene agrees game is dying, and that there will be 1 last average season of play with teams half playing / half leaving.

3. Comp scene agrees game is dying, but tries to get one last good year/season out of NS2. CDT or UWE create DLC pack to fund smaller tournament(s) to give incentive for teams/players to return/play, allowing the competitive scene to finish on a high before dying out completely. NS2 goes out with a bang.

is not helping.

There might be truth in it, but it is not helping anyways. I guess people think that spelling things out like that is some kind of wake-up-call. But it is more like blowing a lot of oxygen into a fire: Sure it burns brighter and warmer for a few seconds, if you do, but it will last less long.

If you look into the steam-forums for ns2, you see one never-ending topic: People being concerned of picking this game up, since it is a multiplayer-game and they wonder, if there are enough players around. So everything, which supports that doubts in a potential new player, is pure poison for our community.

Yes, I am all up for a good discussion and brainstorming on what can be done to bring more people to competitive or NS2 overall.

One of the first things you could do right away, is to change the OP into a more optimistic tone :P

That kind of stuff, btw, is the little things every member of this community can easily do: talk about NS2, promote it. React to everything, which states, that this game is dying, with an opposite opinion. Everytime you see a post somewhere asking: "Is this game still alive?" flood it with "Hell, yeah! And there is a competitive scene as well!" - Propaganda? Yeah, you might can call it like that. A mildly nicer word would be "marketing".

When the WC had been performed (not so long ago) we had a huge spike in teams for the season thereafter. When I started in TAW a real effort to promote and bring people into our NS2-Battalion, we doubled our size from 25 to 50+ players - while veterans were leaving. We just had 100+ people signing up for the Newcomer-Tournament within 3.5 weeks of promotion!

As long as people react to events/promotions like that there is enough potential to not only fight off any "loses", but to even growth the community (NS2 or comp.).

So I am gonna do my best, be it player, caster, streamer, ref, server provider to help bring and retain players in this community.

That's the spirit!

Bring in the ideas...

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Pelargir

We're grumpy

Posts: 452
Location: Lyon, France
Joined: 6 April 2013

"You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already."

It's the truth and ignoring it isn't helping either. You cannot determine and look for more ideas, opinions or points of view, whatever if you do not clarify your thoughts. Stating that the game is dying is pure truth but "is dying" does not mean "is dead already". Hence this thread.

You preach to the choir by saying it does not help. We're all aware of it. People wouldn't even be here and talk about it if that wasn't true. But focusing attention from people by admitting explicitly the truth is one of the reasons that makes me come here. There's plenty of pointless threads on various forums, such as UWE to only quote those. Bonage wrote down a better one, that makes me contribute by putting down my own opinion because it's not too often I can watch people going straight to the purpose. What Bonage does through this post.

Saying the game isn't dying, which is delusional, does not help at finding solutions and won't, in any way putting the issues aside. I'm globally an avid follower of the optimism. But sometimes, you have to deal with the truth, as bad it is. I will not give up though, and will also do what I can to make this game survive a little more. And as said previously, it is not dead already.

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“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

CRaZyCAT

Horror Show

Admins: Ref Admin
Posts: 105
Location: Omsk (Siberia), Russian Federation
Joined: 3 December 2012

About me and my team. The only real thing that I afraid can force me or my teammates stop playing is CDT's game breakings :D
I afraid that sometime a new bild will bring a weird bug/lag for me or some of my teammates and it will not fixed for month or more.

About the whole ns2. Well, the thing is that the most of world community of the gamers really doesn't know what ns2 is. And every nine out of ten don't like it when they try to play it - but here we can't do anything because larger half of things that they don't like is the things that make ns2 so unique game (excluding bad optimization and some other). That's my opinion. So the only real way to keep ns2 alive atm is to spread the word and make cool content as movies, guides, tutorials, T-shirts, arts etc.

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skyice

Div2orDisband

Posts: 124
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Joined: 29 November 2012

We need to have a public discussion about what can be done and what cant and why and can anyone help?

You may have read my post which zefram locked in which he explained that he had no access to web code and had no one to fix a blinking google widget. Like, serial zef? how many web coders play ns2?

I feel the similar feeling across ns2, sadly we need to have discussions publicly and bluntly so we can actually get some information. Just look at wasabi's reply! This is the most positive statement ive heard from the CDT in months and it took this thread to hear it...

So many dedicated and talented members in this community who could do great things but i feel they don't want to reach out and try to apply for a role in the community which just ins't there.

idk know the solutions are other than some form of re-shuffle.
Like i said we need fresh blood in the ensl willing to recruit people to help work on comp mods (no alien commander mod possible?) constant community updates and liaising with the cdt on any and all news.

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Pelargir

We're grumpy

Posts: 452
Location: Lyon, France
Joined: 6 April 2013

I definitely agree with you skyice. But willing people do not run the streets...

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“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Hyste

Posts: 104
Location: France
Joined: 9 March 2014

I totaly agree with the CrazyCat point of view. Why not making a lot of buyable skin like in cs go. I would have really liked to have a cool lmg/shotgun skin or a really great looking armor.

I think that what we need for keeping the ns2 competitiv communitie is more players obviously, there is a lot of pubs players and they just do not know that there is a competitiv scene ins ns2. We should motivate them to join the ENSL or ts. I think that the game should be merge with the ensl for easier access to the ns2 competitiv scene like in cs go.

-Joining gathers through the game -> easy access to 6vs6 for pubers -> it interests them -> they join/create a team.

-Making new contents like skins/arts -> new interest in ns2 -> more players

Valve style.

And btw sorry for the bad english, Pelargir is my teacher.

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Mephilles

Ctrl+Alt+Defeat

Modder: ns2_docking2
Posts: 331
Location: Germany
Joined: 29 September 2013

Well when it comes to retaining players I think TAW does it completely right. As tudy said we increased the number of members by an enormous amount actually by actively advertising and recruiting on pubs. People try it out. Some say yes some say no, it's totally fine and this will always happen. But most of the people who decided to join TAW stay for a long time. I mean I have been in TAW for almost 1 and a half year now and the number of people I've seen who rly left TAW is below 10. And most of those guys left TAW because they wanted to play in another competitive team. On wednesday was someone who anounced that he will leave TAW and NS2 (due to real life) to 30-40 people in TS. Everyone was kinda sad, everyone said goodbye and everyone wished him good luck.

Anyway alot of people who played and play ns2 competitive used TAW as a kickstart (example most of gorge busters back then) and with the newcomer tournament we have 3 teams who play competitively...

Dammit this reads like an awesome advertisment for TAW... but I actually wanted to say maybe we can make this happen in NS2 by a similar way

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Mendasp

I'm disappointing

Posts: 81
Location: Valencia, Spain
Joined: 12 May 2012

skyice says

We need to have a public discussion about what can be done and what cant and why and can anyone help?

You may have read my post which zefram locked in which he explained that he had no access to web code and had no one to fix a blinking google widget. Like, serial zef? how many web coders play ns2?

I feel the similar feeling across ns2, sadly we need to have discussions publicly and bluntly so we can actually get some information. Just look at wasabi's reply! This is the most positive statement ive heard from the CDT in months and it took this thread to hear it...

So many dedicated and talented members in this community who could do great things but i feel they don't want to reach out and try to apply for a role in the community which just ins't there.

idk know the solutions are other than some form of re-shuffle.
Like i said we need fresh blood in the ensl willing to recruit people to help work on comp mods (no alien commander mod possible?) constant community updates and liaising with the cdt on any and all news.

If you think it has taken this long to hear positive stuff about what the CDT is planning it means you're not looking anywhere. Read the 273 patch notes.

http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/build-273-live-steam/

The blog post does mention we have big stuff on the horizon (has always been the plan), but we need to get more stuff under our domain rather than depend on UWE so we can actually do some of this stuff, and that takes time.

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bm

LA MERDE PANTALON

Posts: 38
Location: Netherlands
Joined: 6 September 2013

I think the main reason this game never really caught on competitivly is the abysmal performance.
I went from a medium rig to a high rig and everything in my steam list loads and runs fast and smooth with great, stable fps.
But not ns2, ns2 still runs like shit, slow and sluggish, seems like it doesn't matter how good my rig is with this game.
Apart from that, it doesn't seem like UWE understood what made ns1 the great game that it was.
There's an abundance of pve and eye candy, no res for kill or a reward system for individual skill, an infestation/power grid system that add's nothing to the fun of the gameplay but in fact takes away from it (imo).
The most viable tactic for aliens is baserushing which makes the tactic part really boring, feels to me like you can't do anything in the field without getting baserushed, it's not like ns1 where the outcome of the game was decided in the field, no almost every game i played/watched/reffed was decided in a baserush which is just very boring to me.
I know ns1 days are over and I never expected ns2 to be the same but this is just too far away from the original succes formula.
Instead of a vibrant, dynamic game like ns1, ns2 is slow and sluggish with a low individual skill ceiling.
The upside to this is that teamplay and packplay are far more important than they were in ns1 in order to win but in combination with everything else it's not enough to make this game worthwhile atm.
I personally played ns2 only for the company I kept and right now we are having much more fun with other games than with ns2.
Unforunatly because I wanted ns2 to be good, I really did, I dedicated money and time to this game and I have no regrets whatsoever.
I blame UWE for the result of ns2 and I think they sold us out heavily by apointing volunteers to be responsible for a commercial product (CDT).
I wish the CDT and the ENSL staff the best of luck with this mess.

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Cr4zy

SpookerZ

Posts: 195
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Joined: 29 January 2014

bm says

I think the main reason this game never really caught on competitivly is the abysmal performance.
I went from a medium rig to a high rig and everything in my steam list loads and runs fast and smooth with great, stable fps.
But not ns2, ns2 still runs like shit, slow and sluggish, seems like it doesn't matter how good my rig is with this game.

QFT. I went from a high rig to a ridiculous rig and got worse performance.

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tudy

Posts: 169
Location: Germany
Joined: 30 June 2013

Ok, here is an idea for you to chew on. This is right from my head, as it appeared after a shower I took, so the details are obviously not planned out.

I strongly believe, that there is potential to regrow player numbers. I'm not talking of putting the decreasing numbers to a halt, but of actually increasing it. I don't bother with a distinction between "normal" ns2-players and competitive ns2 players. More of the first kind will increase the second as well, and the converse holds as well.

If I look back on what exactly I did to increase our numbers in TAW or what I did to promote the Newcomer-Tournament, it is relatively easy to set this into a larger context and apply it to NS2 in general.

For TAW I did a couple of posts in Forums, Steam, reddit, etc. stating who we are and why it is awesome to play in our community. The people I aimed at were NS2-Players, who want to play more organized then pubs, but don't want the obligations coming with a competitive team. Also we aimed for the people, who were seeking a friendly and well-organised environment, in which they - for example - also play with their kids watching (something which happens surprisingly often).

For the Newcomer-Tournament we posted again in Forums, Steam, reddit, etc. also the Server-Admins, Streamers and active competitive players had a more than good share in spreading the word. The audience had been again NS2-players. This time the sort of players, who might have interest in competitive play, but had no clue, how to actually start this or needed just a good opportunity to play within a group of equals - since, as we all know, entering competitive is hard.

As far as I know NS2 is a very unique game. There is nothing similar around. It sits in a niche of FPS-games, it is asymetric and contains RTS elements. These are very strong selling points - strong enough to raise interest in the most FPS-players imo.

How would a similar campaign look like and what would the audience be for bringing people to NS2 in general? It is kind of obvious, that posting in NS2-forums and steam-groups will not yield any results. Instead of that, we need to go more abstract and go into the FPS-communities. Unfortunately I don't have a clear picture about FPS-games, since I don't play any - except NS2, funny, right?

But I bet, there are respective forums for all the big FPS-titles out there. Furthermore there are clans, communities and whatever, focusing on FPS-games. Making some active advertisement in there could boost interest in this game quickly.

Here is a crazy idea, which potentially could draw a lot of attention to NS2 in the FPS-world:

Find the powerhouses in the different FPS-titles - be it the top-competitive teams in there, the best casters, whoever focuses a large amount of attention of his community onto him-/herself. Let them battle in an NS2-tournament of a complete new kind: So, here you have the CS-Team, there the BF-Team, and so on... who of them will adapt best to the unique environment NS2 offers?

The intention is not to "recruit" these top-players of the other FPS-games into NS2 (if they want to come over, however, they are welcome of course ^^), but to drag attention on this game. There need to be casters everywhere. How often have you seen, that an NS2-player streams about another game and you at least showed some interest into that game? Why should it not work the other way around as well?

Another idea would be to find 12 youtubbers/streamers, with a large fan-base. Don't need to be the world-top-12, since it is probably hard to get them. But someone with a descent amount of followers, who has no or only little experience with NS2. Pit them against each other in a big showmatch of NS2. We could also go for 10 casters only and bring in 2 experienced commanders, so it doesn't end in complete chaos. It doesn't matter, of what quality the actual game is. What matters is, that a lot of people see the cool sides of this game, who havn't seen it yet - a rather big number imo.

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Neoken

Div2orDisband

Posts: 46
Location: Bruges, Belgium
Joined: 6 April 2013

Remember all the positive vibes here after the WC. Seemed like everyone was looking at the comp scene in the most optimistic way. It's not like the playerbase at the time was any bigger, or that NS2 had any less issues in terms of performance or whatever. People were just focusing on the good stuff. This is what we're lacking very much so. Lately the overall vibe has been quite cynical and that's not helping anything.

If you want people to join the comp scene. Make it appealing to do so. That means regular updates on the front page, and no more discussions about the end of NS2. Pretty much 99% of competitive scenes die out sooner or later, no point in going on about it.

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wasabione

Posts: 6
Location: United States of America
Joined: 16 January 2012

Bonage, I will be able to elaborate more after today's meeting. We are ironing out our timeline for all the work we are doing and planning. Just know that we are doing as much as we can as a volunteer team to help and support growth. Also some great thoughts and posts throughout this thread, very much enjoyed hearing the feedback.

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Benjibb

LA MERDE PANTALON

Posts: 20
Location: downtown desert, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Joined: 17 November 2013

tudy says

Here is a crazy idea, which potentially could draw a lot of attention to NS2 in the FPS-world:

Find the powerhouses in the different FPS-titles - be it the top-competitive teams in there, the best casters, whoever focuses a large amount of attention of his community onto him-/herself. Let them battle in an NS2-tournament of a complete new kind: So, here you have the CS-Team, there the BF-Team, and so on... who of them will adapt best to the unique environment NS2 offers?

The intention is not to "recruit" these top-players of the other FPS-games into NS2 (if they want to come over, however, they are welcome of course ^^), but to drag attention on this game. There need to be casters everywhere. How often have you seen, that an NS2-player streams about another game and you at least showed some interest into that game? Why should it not work the other way around as well?

I commend your enthusiasm Tudy and your wide eyed bushy tailed approach, however you're suggestion is based on a simple premise that is simply not true.

Namely that NS2 is a "good" FPS game that other competitive fps players would want to play. That is simply false, its not balanced, its buggy as fuck, performance sucks, the net code is utterly appalling and more importantly hackers are able to seamlessly mix amongst higher divisions of teams involved in competitive play without an admin being able to record a simple demo without causing a catastrophic fps meltdown on the targeted player... These are not qualities of a good FPS game and that is the reason why the scene is dying if not already dead. As b said the developers are solely to blame for the way this shambles has evolved and now we're at a point where no matter how much enthusiasm is left with the active diminishing player base, the game's own mechanics will slowly kill it - CDT might be doing a good job and putting plenty of work in but its too little too late unfortunately.

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Tane

HasBeens & NeverWas

Posts: 57
Location: JyvÃƒÂ¤skylÃƒÂ¤, Finland
Joined: 7 May 2005

Well, I can speak for myself and for Saunamen. Most of our players would want to continue playing the game but problem is that almost anyone in our team don't want to play more than few matches per week. This has been always Saunamen's flaw, the balance between competing at highest level and balancing it with rest of the life. It has been problematic situation for long time because most of our players are used to winning stuff from NS1 so just playing for fun isn't that easy for us. We know same time that what we should do to get better but we just don't have enough time to do that and that is really frustrating. Another problem is that no one in our team wants to organize stuff outside of playing and some of our players are really annoying in their passivity when it comes putting name on topic.

Of course our biggest flaw has always been commander. When other premier level teams have had active competitive commander we have never had that. We had really inactive legendary commander who never learned NS2 completely because of his inactivity and then we had legendary field player as a commander who didn't have much talent for actual commanding. Both commanders did their best but it was never ideal match and in last two seasons it has been even worse. We have played majority of our games with merc commanders and it goes beyond me how we are even able to compete at highest level. It has been fun even if we never reached our full potential.

That being said I'm kind of tired playing with Saunamen because I know that without a new commander and change in attitude we will not play in way I would like to. Though, playing NS still gives me great enjoyment and live tournament would definitely make me interested playing more.

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Syknik

Skill Issue

Posts: 57
Location: Canada
Joined: 27 December 2009

I find for me and as rantology said, for Titus it is very difficult because there is only 1 prem NA team, the rest being EU and our times don't match up so we are unable to get good practice. I know most of us on Titus would love to play during weekdays if we had teams to play against. But there just isn't, and if one weekend we end up not getting any games in, then that's a week without practice. Though some try to get some small practice in (drills, pugs, pubs) it isn't the same, and most of the prem level players are a bit older in age. We have more responsibilities and it makes it more difficult to focus on putting a lot of time into a game, especially if there is no reason too. The game is fun and it's great to play in a league, but it really does take something like the WC to really motivate us to want to play more, incentives are nice.

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swalk

Xeon

Posts: 908
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Joined: 9 May 2010

@tudy's first post is pretty much spot-on.

The game isn't dying, that is just an excuse some people make up so they can feel better leaving.
People come and go and no one will ever come if they never know about it.
Decline in players is natural over the lifetime of any game, it's been steady so far and seems to continue to be steady. So no dangerzone in the next couple of years at least, judging from the stats.

For me personally, I want to continue playing. I'm currently looking for an active and engaged team to play with.

Solution to this is:
- WEEKLY newsposts during seasons! If you are somewhat unable to make weekly newspost, get someone to do it for you, I'm sure Pelargir, tudy or someone else would love to help you out. With the pace of the newsposts in season 5(one every two or three weeks and one time over a month in between the posts), it looks very dead compared to the previous seasons with AT LEAST ONE NEWSPOST EVERY SINGLE WEEK. More posts draws more attention and interest.
- More newbie tournaments and more tournaments in general. More strict deadlines of the seasons, don't permit to let it drag on for months!! Season 5 should have ended in mid-late november(like season 3 did) and it has still not ended and were now saying February, this is just embarassing and don't blame such loose deadlines on the teams, in the end Zefram is the one allowing for it to happen by not being strict on deadlines. Just give a reasonable deadline, like 2-3 weeks to finish the playoffs, else forfeits. Then you will see teams play their games. This resulted in no tournament in december, which means that the teams that were beaten in the group play of season 5 have been without official games for several months where they otherwise could have been active and been playing official games. None was just ever set up, because of the extreme prolonging of the playoffs. As syknik says, incentive is good. Official matches and deadlines are incentive to most players.
- Do a newspost where you request assistance from the community with the website(specify coding language), with newsposts so we can have at least one every week and with tasks such as casting, refereeing, admining and predictions. Then I'm sure you will see some people step up and help you.
- And do some polls instead of deleting the ones that were already there. There were quite a few more polls after the first Nations Cup, but they have been deleted somehow(violation of how the website should be taken care of, deleting "history" is extremely prohibited as far as I recall)
- Stop sproutning ignorant nonsense, like "the game is dying".

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Obraxis

Posts: 14
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Joined: 1 April 2007

CDT have big plans for the future, but it depends on a lot of factors. We have currently, a working 6 month+ timeline which includes competitive.

The CDT has a small amount of income now, thanks to shavings off the Reaper DLC sales and also the Gorge Plushies. That money is never used to pay CDT members; we're putting it right back into NS2 and plan on using it for things like better Hive backend, sponsoring possible tournaments and we're currently building our own NS2 Build-Machine, which will make NS2 builds off-site from UWE. This will GREATLY increase our speed of development and also stability of future patches. We should start seeing this benefit around March.

Our 'big' plans we can't reveal, due to everything being up in the air right now and ultimately, UWE control their IP. But a 'relaunch' of NS2 is on the cards, with some BIG new changes that should entice new players and bring old ones back. Not to mention the large amount of maps we have being developed, for both Comp and Pub play. The rejuvenation of the Map Testing Group should help point you to this, that we are in this for the long run to help better the game and it's players.

Also, on average, Late-Game FPS has increased by around 60% since the CDT took over developing NS2 around April 2014. While people might think we've only been maintaining NS2, I can assure you if you read all our blog posts, they allude to bigger under-the-hood prep work for much large, more exciting things. FPS is not the only thing that would help retain a playerbase, we know this. Gameplay is king.

I can tell you, I've been 'working' on NS1 and NS2 for a very, very long time. I'm more excited for this summer than I've been since NS2's launch. It's terrifying and exciting to think how much we've done, and what lies ahead.

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Benjibb

LA MERDE PANTALON

Posts: 20
Location: downtown desert, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Joined: 17 November 2013

swalk says

The game isn't dying, that is just an excuse some people make up so they can feel better leaving.

How can you say the game isn't dying? 17 sign ups for season 6 and I'd be surprised if all those teams made it through a full season compared with over 30 that participated in season 5? Of course im sure you'll say competitive numbers don't represent overall player base, but they do, there is undoubtly a direct correlation between a strong competitive scene and a games ability to attract new players. Look at CO:GO for example, of course CS games always have a large following but its only after the embedding of a strong ranking and match making system that it really took off.

If you're still not convinced the game is dying, have a look at the player stats graph...

Its not an ignorant comment to state the game is dying, its based on fact - competitive sign ups are down 50% and player numbers a falling month by month. What is this if not a game that is dying- think theres going to be some crazy influx of new players over a few social media posts and some kind of quasi advertising campaign? Get real man, everyone that wants to play this kind of niche game has already tried it and for one reason or another stopped playing, what is left is a small decreasing community of players with a handful of public servers to choose from. All this talk of dying makes me want to play dying light, zombie bashing time! Maybe NS2 should incorporate Nazi Zombies...

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Seb

Posts: 95
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 23 April 2013

Benjibb says

swalk says
The game isn't dying, that is just an excuse some people make up so they can feel better leaving.

Look at CS:GO for example, of course CS games always have a large following but its only after the embedding of a strong ranking and match making system that it really took off.

Just to echo this, there is a direct correlation between the overall concurrent players and CSGO major competitive events.

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Comp NS2 in 2015

bonage

wasabione

tudy

Evisuuup

Ben

bonage

herakles

Pelargir

Vindaloo

rantology

tudy

Pelargir

CRaZyCAT

skyice

Pelargir

Hyste

Mephilles

Mendasp

bm

Cr4zy

tudy

Neoken

wasabione

Benjibb

Tane

Syknik

swalk

Obraxis

Benjibb

Seb

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