Pokerface

Please vote for your general preference.
(General props to Ferris for instigating the poll.)

Feel free to add any commentary, as well.

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NS Game Officer. TF2 Admin. BF2 Admin / Scripter. PM with issues.
Tempus: Pokerface is nailing it right on the head. Everyone who is arguing against him is simply arguing against reality.
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<LazyEye> yeah when I play on TG the server digs though my trash
Arm yourself with knowledge: TG NS TF2 BF2

Kerostasis

I tend to prefer small NS games to small CO games...however, it is my experience that I am distinctly in the minority on this, with most small NS games conforming to one of two patterns:
--Browsers notice the NS game running with open slots, and the server fills up to a reasonable level within a few minutes, or failing that...
--The other players get bored with small-game NS and either leave or votemap back to a CO map

Further, it is my experience that 4 people is the absolute minimum needed to play a decent CO game. If you have less than that, its better just to add 10 bots and all play on the same team. In this scenario, the only tricky part is making sure the bots have enough levels to present a challenge (which incidentally was the one thing COCOMM did really well.)

So given my difficulty in getting players to stay for small-NS, I've voted "either".

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Donat

I voted combat, the reason being that small NS games do not work well and can have people end up ragequitting. Thus, CO games are good till you get enough people to play, and their just time drainers, pratice rounds, warmup, so on.

In a small NS game many things can happen, for one you don't have enough man power to watch your base 24/7 and one fade can make people angry by spawn camping, killing base, or even just a skulk killing base. Also with the aliens 'lame' as it as called, can also present problems as with so few people and the aliens get so much res flow (due to low player count) they can drop lots of OCs and hives and go lifeforms relitivly quickly.)

While I VASTLY enjoy NS more then CO, i still vote for CO for small games, bots and just to get people to join so they don't join into some where that people are ragequiting from the annoing fades and 'lame' of small NS games

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aeroripper

I prefer a small NS game, but maybe we could spawn bots like in combat? :P

Donat

Aeroripper your avatar is crazy, boxes.....

Erm, .... ah... Right, Ok most of any bots I've seen for NS are dumb as hell. They can't make vertical climbs on most maps, and i don't know if any of them will ever heal a hive (though I've seen them drop nodes n' possible hive) They could have changed from when i lasted played with them, but still.

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Yoshi MCF

NS is balanced for between 6v6 and 8v8. We wouldn't play 10v10, so why would we play 4v4?

CO is far more forgiving for different numbers of players. I don't believe there is a difference between which mode attracts players faster. So, my vote is for CO games with less than 9 players, and bots for less than 4.

usererror

CO. Bots are a good way to fill up the server. Small NS games end up losing players in my experience, due to rage quitting with the inability to end the game quickly. It can be fun with some people who just want to mess around and test things out, or practice comming, but aside from that, definitely CO.

Beehan

Played a 2v3 game last night as aliens (2 aliens, 3 'rines) and loved it... after capping some nodes, I went straight to Onos while my teammate stayed a supporting Gorge... he kept dropping stuff and healing, and whenever I died I usually had enough res to go straight back to Onos. I greatly enjoyed devouring a 'rine and effectively cutting their field force in half while he digested... good times...

EDIT: Obviously this was an NS game. And sadly, the fun ended with an unexpected blue screen of death. Go figure.

Curlydave

Combat. Unbalanced NS is not fun.

blu.knight

I chose the last option. I tend to avoid the server if there is less than 10 people on.

CO is good for small numbers of players but it gets boring fast. So it's only good if playing it makes the server fill fast.
Small NS sucks normally because people do not seem to have very much honor, and tend to rush fade despite only it being 2 on 2....

I don't think either option is good, can't we just have people on the server all the time? :P

(At college I also don't have time to sit around waiting for the server to fill up so I generally wait for it to fill and then just slot-kick one of you poor unfortunate souls) :P

Ferris Bueller

You guys already know my take. Combat needs to go.

The argument was made that the vast majority of ?'s join when combat is used to fill up the server. Well, this may be true in the early afternoon or late late at night, but extremely rarely true during prime server hours. Once the server fills up with ?'s or regulars or whomever in the late afternoon, SM's and regs are going to start making up the majority of the population and its going to stay that way until somewhere between 1 and 3 in the morning (later than that on rare occasion). Then the playerbase drops to 4-6 and we switch to combat.

From what i've personally seen at this point, its a 50-50 chance that the server will actually fill up or even come close. If it does, the next map is NS, at which point, a handful or more of the ?'s leave because they dont play classic NS, meaning once again, there arent enough people to play classic, so the rest of the SM's or regs on the server leave at that point and the ?'s follow suit. If not enough people populate the server because of CO to merit a change to an NS map, generally everyone just goes to bed/leaves.

So yeah, I realize that maybe one out of every 60 maps is a combat map, and bots sometimes help fill up the server, but we can use bots on NS maps too. Masked Carrot (who builds/programs the bots anyway) runs two servers that run all of the standard NS maps and the bots work like a charm on most of them.

People will argue that small games make for unbalanced NS. This is true to a point, but if we have working bots for classic (which we can get very easily), it does the same job as combat in an environment we all seem to like a whole lot more.

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

Slayer of Hippies

In other words, we're poor now, so let's invest $5 million in mcDonalds so we can make money off the interest.

Kerostasis

Say what?

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Agamemnon

I vastly prefer small NS. It requires very different tactics than a larger game, but if the marines know how to deal with a small game it doesn't wind up being as unbalanced as people tend to think, especially given the 3.2 changes. I've had some great small games of NS, whereas I've never experienced anything I would call a great game of CO. Finally, small NS to me is the ideal time to be teaching someone how things work, without the pressure of 7 other people on the team being hurt by their mistakes. When it's just one or two experienced players and one new player on a team, the new player can get much more in the way of explanation without people yelling 'mic spam'. For the same reasons, having more small NS on the server would encourage more people to spend some time in the chair, and eventually become comfortable enough to try it out in a larger game.

aeroripper

I like the idea of giving people an option to spawn bots in NS games, then all the humans hop on marines (essentially the same thing is done in combat, just for NS). Although I think the essential part to getting this to work is a time limit, say, 20 minutes max.