How many people play Nexiuz?

[esteel]

You know i'm getting old so i have problems with my memory Tthe news is dated 31th, my download i have on disc is dated 31th and the sf.net entry is dated 31th.. So i guess its 31th afterall..

[charlesk]

You better restrict that to people only play on 'well-known' server because there servers with a total capacity of over 900 player slots

Which nobody uses.

The other two points might be valid butare not the problem of the game.. and i'd even say its not the fault of 'those two top players' .. most of the time teams get unbalanced because people leave in MID-GAME without even saying a word. When you are busy playing it can be hard to notice the scores.

No offense, but after playing many dozens of games, IMO this is not the real cause of the problem. It is not that common that people leave in the middle of a game.

It is just pure selfishness on the part of the better players. While a few care about game balance issues, most seem only interested in running up their personal score, and if they rub the other team's nose in it, they don't care.

I just joined a game on the RBI CTF server. After being here for 5 minutes, the score is 262 to 54. There are 3 players on the leading team with over 60 points, and the highest scorer on the other team has 20.

This is not a rarity, it is routine. Over 75% of the games now are completely lop-sided.

AND NO PEOPLE HATE IT WHEN THE GAME DOES REBALANCE TEAMS AUTOMATICALLY. it was done before, people just do not like it.

I'm sure some people don't. But how many people like being in a team game where their team has no chance of winning? Or even on a team where they know they will never lose?

Not very much fun, IMO.

Most of the time it can be fixed by just ASKING people to switch.

No, it cannot. People like yourself are considerate and will do so. Most others, though, simply do not care.

I've even considered, in these unbalanced games, switching to the winning team and fragging my own teammates to even things up a bit. --c

[esteel]

You better restrict that to people only play on 'well-known' server because there servers with a total capacity of over 900 player slots
Which nobody uses.

Well sorry but this shows that there are enough server people just do not use them.. Do you really think even more (empty) servers will fix the problem that people do you want to join a empty server and wait 3 minutes for others to join? Or maybe suggest to have bots all the time on all servers.. this will not help in my optinion as only few people want to play against bots online.. Only adverticing (and a new great release) will help

No offense, but after playing many dozens of games, IMO this is not the real cause of the problem. It is not that common that people leave in the middle of a game.
I just joined a game on the RBI CTF server. After being here for 5 minutes, the score is 262 to 54. There are 3 players on the leading team with over 60 points, and the highest scorer on the other team has 20. This is not a rarity, it is routine. Over 75% of the games now are completely lop-sided.

Well on its hard to balance at some times.. and YES people do leave in midgame.. just yesterday i was playing some short matches, In one i switched teams because twice there were some idiots joining the bigger team which also had the lead (WTF??) and shortly after i switched the people i kindly asked to switch instead left.. It happens all the time

Most of the time it can be fixed by just ASKING people to switch.
No, it cannot. People like yourself are considerate and will do so. Most others, though, simply do not care.
I've even considered, in these unbalanced games, switching to the winning team and fragging my own teammates to even things up a bit. --c

Well that will for sure NOT help I see the problem but i have no other idea on how to fix it then to rely on people using their brain.. maybe thats in vain ..

[tZork]

A while a go i tried to balance games by switchig sides all the time, and the resuly was usualy on of two undesirable things. 1 - dident make a lick of a diffrance. or 2 - the side i joined overtook and slaugtherd the other team. At the start of a game i somtimes try to pick the side thats seems to make things more balanced, but usualy i realy on the server balancing system. Not that its perfect in any way but if its to have any chance of ever getting better ppl will have to use it AND it often turns out worse when i try to predict what team i "belong" in. Oh and its kinda sux bad to switch sides all teh time. it, imo, ruines the game for the one switching. at the end of the day its a competetive game and somone has to loose for someone else to win.

[esteel]

Yes that exactly why switching is disliked.. You fight half the match for 'your' team and then the loosing team expects you to switch. Either it dies not make a difference or it turns the tide. The loosing team should maybe also see this as a pointer that the team is just bad and that people need to improve. And FOR HELL i did not write that CTF guide just for the fun of it but to help people improve.
Yeah i curse the guy that came up with the name 'capture the flag'.. iirc it was initially in rise of the triats .. 'defend the flag' would have been more like what newbies understand and which is also the more important aspect imo..

*personal rant*

[charlesk]

Well sorry but this shows that there are enough server people just do not use them.. Do you really think even more (empty) servers will fix the problem that people do you want to join a empty server and wait 3 minutes for others to join?

Not at all. Perhaps I should have been more clear, I am not saying we need more servers, we need more *active* servers.

There needs to be some way to get people to spread out a bit more instead of concentrating on just a few. And no, bots won't help because bots are especially useless in CTF.

Well on its hard to balance at some times.. and YES people do leave in midgame.. just yesterday i was playing some short matches, In one i switched teams because twice there were some idiots joining the bigger team which also had the lead (WTF??) and shortly after i switched the people i kindly asked to switch instead left.. It happens all the time

I did have some better experience with this later on today. I asked a couple of times and twice, someone switched. We still lost, but I don't care, I just don't like the 300-60 games.

Well that will for sure NOT help

Well, it does get the point across, doesn't it?

Yeah i curse the guy that came up with the name 'capture the flag'.. iirc it was initially in rise of the triats .. 'defend the flag' would have been more like what newbies understand and which is also the more important aspect imo..

I personally am a defensive specialist.. that's what I like doing. When I do it though, I sometimes get called a "camper". Apparently some people think CTF is supposed to be just DM with aggregated scores.

[Dokujisan]

I agree with many of Charlesk's points.

I noticed a problem with team balancing very early in my Nexuiz playing. I created topics about it. There was a discussion about a new type of rebalancing technique that would be skill-based, using the previous game's statistics. That branched out into other ideas like using registered player names using a centralized user database to keep track of player stats. Then the server would recognize the player when they logged on and it would assign them to the appropriate team based on their known ability from previous stats.

But that idea is about 100X more complicated than the current balancing mechanism. So it's probably outside of the realm of possibility for Nexuiz. It's a shame, because it would open up a lot of possibilities.

esteel is right that many players leave in the middle of the games, but these players tend to be the beginner to intermediate players who have a low score and leave in frustration. I don't see them affecting the gameplay very often.

This is a scenario that I've seen happen a lot

1. Game starts
2. Teams are unbalanced. Top 3 guys are on red team. Blue team has one good player
3. within 5 minutes, scores quickly ramp up to 100 - 12
4. A couple players leave from the blue team, leaving the teams lopsided at 7 v 5
5. Someone says "hey guys... the teams are unbalanced"
6. The good players on the red team go "That's because people left in the middle of the game"
7. 5 minutes later, the game ends at 300 - 36

Players tend not to leave when the game is a close match. The game becomes un-fun when one team is getting their asses spanked by a bunch of advanced players on the other team.

A big key to getting Nexuiz to have more players is to focus on working with beginner to intermediate players. You have to put yourself in their shoes, and I don't think a lot of the advanced players do that, or even care about that.

That is why I suggested to place focus on video instructionals to get beginner players up-to-speed on how to use Nexuiz. JUST WITHIN THE PAST TWO DAYS, I had to explain to three new users that you can right click rockets, shoot plasma balls to make them explode, and then about laser jumping. This keeps re-proving to me that the basics of Nexuiz are not as obvious as many would like to believe.

divVerent's keyhunt tutorial video is a good start. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but hope that trend continues.

[tZork]

Clearly its always desirable to make the game more attractive for new players. But if thats done at the cost of experianced players having a bad time preddy soon there will be no experianced players at all.

...
A big key to getting Nexuiz to have more players is to focus on working with beginner to intermediate players. You have to put yourself in their shoes, and I don't think a lot of the advanced players do that, or even care about that.

I would disagree there. The Nexuiz players is among the most helpfull crowd i seen in any game. Good luck getting someone to explain the current gamemode / weapon etc in the middle of a fight in [random game here].

That is why I suggested to place focus on video instructionals to get beginner players up-to-speed on how to use Nexuiz. JUST WITHIN THE PAST TWO DAYS, I had to explain to three new users that you can right click rockets, shoot plasma balls to make them explode, and then about laser jumping. This keeps re-proving to me that the basics of Nexuiz are not as obvious as many would like to believe.
XENO's keyhunt tutorial video is a good start. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but hope that trend continues.

Yeh indeed 'documentation' (in lack of a better word is lacky at beast. Some clever edutainment in how nexuiz works would help alot, videos or ingame-renderd sequenses would be a good start.

[Dokujisan]

Clearly its always desirable to make the game more attractive for new players. But if thats done at the cost of experianced players having a bad time preddy soon there will be no experianced players at all.

Well, if you don't focus on the beginners, then you'll only have a small handful of advanced players, which is pretty much what Nexuiz has right now. I almost quit a few times in the past, and I'm just getting to a solid intermediate level recently. I still have a way to go before I consider myself advanced.

The video that was recently submitted by divVerent is really a great step in the right direction for Nexuiz. I'm very excited to see it. This is EXACTLY the type of thing that Nexuiz needs to bring newer players up to speed quickly. A good side-effect will also be to showcase Nexuiz on sites like Youtube, and that should bring in more players.

[divVerent]

XENO's keyhunt tutorial video is a good start. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but hope that trend continues.

Cool, he now made one too? I actually didn't make a real tutorial, I made it for players who already know other teamplay game modes and want to see some action... a real tutorial video would be cool.

In my video, BTW, Xeno starred in some scenes - both as good and as bad example, just like me but all scenes were real and recorded in actual games, there was no preparation. Most of the "actors" didn't even know that they would appear in the video... to find out who was in it, look at the scores screens, I didn't manipulate them