State of Play: Load-testing

(FireWorks) #41

Been a while since I could put so much time into this game and actively play on full servers. Good timing on my girlfriends trip to whocares. So I spent the last EU night on full servers where you could even decide which gamemode to play.

Many nice matches with them, where you can clearly tell they are new. When I asked, they said its their first day, one even said “my second! :D”. Its cool to see people learning and its really their first hours… so everything is new except for the crosshair. And it seemed they tried every merc, so never really got the chance to get a feeling for a certain gun. But there was one guy with skyhammer who was significantly better than all others.

It also showed that a revive/gib/selfrevive system is totally not understood by itself. Most games simply dont have that. I remember that less than 50% of Brink players ever accepted a revive: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/brink/achievements/ . Countless times I wrote that “hold X to get up”…

Also how should they know about this double tapping crouch jump?

Anyways they dropped fast and a lot, but I wasnt sure if it was my high ping, the new hitboxes or them being so bad. Was time to tone down a bit and so I played less suited mercs and more defensive. Tried to help, etc

Then somehow we ended up on Greenwich (need a left passage, felt like container city…) and got completely spawnraped by some of our “pros”. Frustration->Aggression mimimi the CC, call centre noobs -> rage quit and more blabla about paid to idle etc. The helpful learning match turned into a fully hostile environment in less than 15minutes. Anybody below godlike was not up to par and they had it know it. Great work on alienating your beloved future comp community there. It was disgusting. I wished some here would only have half the social skill, that the believe to have in gaming.

I switched to one of the TDM servers then and had some more fun with the new guys. About 10 of the cc guys were have a nice deathmatch and were on the look out for bugs. Nice and friendly chatting, even a bit VOIP. I guess they were happy til the server died out, since TDM is not pro enough :stuck_out_tongue:

If we ever manage to field enough players, we need a newbie protection and a coaching system. Its really rewarding to show new players how things work. Its fun, more than dominating them. At least for me.

(Mustang) #42

Haha, I had no idea, although I wonder what the percentage would be if you only looked at players with 10 hours or more gameplay.

I suspect it’s quite heavily skewed by people that have barely played the game.

This

(FireWorks) #43

[QUOTE=Mustang;492736]Haha, I had no idea, although I wonder what the percentage would be if you only looked at players with 10 hours or more gameplay.

I suspect it’s quite heavily skewed by people that have barely played the game.

[/QUOTE]

Maybe you can derive that from the rank achievements.
32.3% reached rank2
3.7% reached rank5

I think rank2 was shooting in a straigh line and breathe air. Yes, people dropped this game fast, though i cant say anything about that in comparison to other games.

Thing is, 10hours is a lot for a f2p. Most dont play games for that long to give it a chance. From that perspective it is a smart choice to have a 1way paddle revive. Its likely that you get revived in that time by an experienced player and grasp the concept. That was a weakness of the 2way syringes, at least for the new player friendliness.

(Kl3ppy) #44

[QUOTE=FireWorks;492720]
If we ever manage to field enough players, we need a newbie protection and a coaching system. Its really rewarding to show new players how things work. Its fun, more than dominating them. At least for me.[/QUOTE]

True. Too bad, there are too many asshats who enjoy owning newcomers and scaring the away …

(Ashog) #45

+1

I’d actually even go as far as making this statement a motto of the game tbh. If newcomers understand this, this most likely would guarantee that they would be able to hold their own in the game and thus make it more likely to stick to it.

(INF3RN0) #46

I try to be generally friendly and helpful, but it’s tough to avoid fragging those guys even when you crutch yourself to an extreme haha. I only encountered about one cc guy who was vocally upset even though I had been swapping teams each round, otherwise I was able to answer most questions they had about the game. I’d say most of the people to worry about are the ones who act generally dickish irregardless of who they are playing against anyway or are simply trying to ruin it for them. I’m simply happy to have people around to play with on NA servers so I’d like to keep them on there even if they aren’t great players.

(shaftz0r) #47

^just wanted to point this out^

they are exceptionally bad, its true, but they all seem pretty nice. even the ones that arent happy about getting destroyed around every corner. i only used my pistol yesterday for a map and died twice. i felt bad for them tbh, but at least they were asking good questions and a couple were being vocal with mics

(Zarlor) #48

[QUOTE=shaftz0r;492820]^just wanted to point this out^

they are exceptionally bad, its true, but they all seem pretty nice. even the ones that arent happy about getting destroyed around every corner. i only used my pistol yesterday for a map and died twice. i felt bad for them tbh, but at least they were asking good questions and a couple were being vocal with mics[/QUOTE]

It’s because they are getting PAID and being TOLD to play the game. We are playing it for different reasons. I can almost guarantee you most of those guys would never come back after the beatings they got the first times playing the game. I was ready to ragequit myself the other day as I was getting spawncamped. There has to be a newbie server system for new players to protect them as they learn for a bit instead of throwing them in the fire.

I remember first playing ETQW and having the enemy team blow through the objectives and seeing the YOUR TEAM LOST message. I felt ill and it felt worse than just a bad k/d ratio. I was going to quit playing that game in the beginning except my clan wanted me to be our server admin, so I felt obliged to stick around. I’m glad I did, but I almost didn’t make it past the first week!

(RasteRayzeR) #49

I’ve been trying to be nice with them (except the first time, didn’t realized .cc was actually saying these were testing guys … felt like bots to me), but at some point where they come at you and take 30 seconds to attempt to kill you, you have to take them down eventually …

It shows as previously said the need for good tutorials but also for match making with ranks, because I cannot start to imagine how they felt being beaten down 10 times in a row. Almost like when I started playing CPMA :smiley:

Also a few are just sitting ducks, they sometime happen to die from an innocently placed grenade :wink:

(Violator) #50

I’ve been known to RQ on occasion :D. It can get frustrating to get pwned but a few of the CC players will just stand there, I sometimes leave them as I’m not sure if they are AFK or not. Standing still is the worst thing you can do in this game.

(Humate) #51

I used to teach players in ETQW all the time, waiting for the server to fill up.
Some of them became decent players, others only improved slightly.
But if I had to teach them FPS skills? I dont think it would have made a difference.

(onYn) #52

I was chatting to them, and after killing the same guy 3 times in a row, tended to give him a kill here and there.
But it´s really scarry, to see how much of a differnece there is, between a beta or even alphaplayer and some newcomers, even if they have played FPS before. I hope SD finds a good way to introduce new people into this game as smooth as possible.

(DB Genome editor) #53

All this goes to show how much a proper ranked matchmaking can make a difference to everyone’s enjoyment of the game. I’ve been in their situation (still am sometimes when I join the wrong server at the wrong time :wink:), and it’s no fun.

On the positive side, last night while all the servers were packed with “_CC”, I got to lay back and have a bit of fun running the mercs I’m weakest with (hopefully without coming out as a jerk…). It’s a refreshing change of pace to pick a merc because you feel like playing it rather than because it’s the one that you must play to have any hope of being useful to your team.