Popularity issue persisting after 0.5 release

I see idling on servers was suggested a lot, and that would be a helpful method. But on the other hand, who has the patience to sit alone on a server and just walk around, if no one joins for an hour? Bots that auto-(un)join as players (dis)connect help a bit, but not entirely.

I think what might be helpful here is some external tool, that allows you to stay connected to a server (but switch back to Windows) then notifies you when someone has joined. Since if you just minimize Xonotic, you don't see anything. Can't think of a perfect idea for this, but something of this kind might help.

Also: Can someone put the server list on a web page, if this hasn't been done already? That might help in this sense, since there are probably few players who open Xonotic just to check which servers are populated. But a web page that self-refreshes and you can leave open in a browser tab could change a lot. If there already is one, it should probably be made more obvious, since I'm not even aware of such.

Also, I didn't know Nexuiz still has players. We should really get the word out to all of them, in case some haven't heard of Xonotic yet (though that would be weird). I don't think Xonotic and Nexuiz are that different (apart from Xon having greater quality), so maybe Nexuiz players don't have the right idea either.

Let us work on bringing over players from Nexuiz to Xonotic. That is perhaps the biggest thing right now...

ok with that.
Go on a DCC server for example. Ask who heard about Xonotic. You'll see that there is still a big advertising effort to be done.

Several months ago, one could basically read on this very forum: "if nexuiz players play Xonotic, that's fine. If not, we will be fine without them".
This statement was probably a bit optimistic.

Actually, that statement still is true -- See what kojn said, AGAIN our community is small due to how early the project itself is.

It's very clear, our project is extremely promising and will work out well even without the Nexuiz players... however, WHO BETTER to try and win over than the Nexuiz players who we already know love the exact same type of gameplay. That is my point.

Also: Can someone put the server list on a web page, if this hasn't been done already? That might help in this sense, since there are probably few players who open Xonotic just to check which servers are populated. But a web page that self-refreshes and you can leave open in a browser tab could change a lot. If there already is one, it should probably be made more obvious, since I'm not even aware of such.

This is not too bad: http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=xonotic

Xonotic gameplay is suited to "elite" players, and from what I can tell, that type of player is a minority in online gaming nowadays. Right there is the first challenge to drawing a crowd. Even people who practice constantly may not have the head or motor skills to compete with a lot of the people who have been around since Nex.

CTS requires mastery of movement for the most part, and once again, even with a lot of practice, it may still prove impossible for a lot of people to even reach the end of a map (myself included)

Many times I've joined the only Xonotic server that had any people on it at all, just to find it was locked at 1v1 and I was only allowed to spectate. I didn't bother sitting there while the 2 players ignored me. I left. For weeks. I would avoid excluding even one potential player while the population is so low. That includes those exclusive "pickup" games where there could be many players, but they're invisible to the new player who just tried to hop online. Wait until the number of regular players dramatically increases before precluding anyone from joining in.

Xonotic is a very hard game to get into, I think. Without a lot of tutoring, compassion, compromise and patience, it's unlikely your average gamer is going to stick around. That's my 2 cents. On the other hand, Xonotic is a masterpiece and I'm sure people who do get the support they need to stick with it are going to be rewarded.

CTS requires mastery of movement for the most part, and once again, even with a lot of practice, it may still prove impossible for a lot of people to even reach the end of a map (myself included)

The physics are based on q3s CPM mod and yes its hard to master them.

Many times I've joined the only Xonotic server that had any people on it at all, just to find it was locked at 1v1 and I was only allowed to spectate. I didn't bother sitting there while the 2 players ignored me. I left. For weeks.

While playing a 1on1 the players cant see what the person who is spectating writes, so please dont get this wrong.

I would avoid excluding even one potential player while the population is so low. That includes those exclusive "pickup" games where there could be many players, but they're invisible to the new player who just tried to hop online.

pickup games are mostly played by skilled players. the advantage of it is that you have someone on your skilllevel and not the problem as on public servers, that beginners leave during the game because they go frustrated.

Xonotic is a very hard game to get into, I think. Without a lot of tutoring, compassion, compromise and patience, it's unlikely your average gamer is going to stick around.

Well, i guess its the same as in every small game there are always people around with a higher skill, who keep potential beginners away

Xonotic gameplay is suited to "elite" players, and from what I can tell, that type of player is a minority in online gaming nowadays. Right there is the first challenge to drawing a crowd. Even people who practice constantly may not have the head or motor skills to compete with a lot of the people who have been around since Nex.

It appeals mostly to elite players (since most elite players have been around since Quake hit the streets), though you sure don't need to be elite to get into this game. If that were the case Quake III: Arena and Unreal Tournament wouldn't have been so popular ten years ago and neither would Quake Live right now. Also, Nexuiz is drastically different from Xonotic now thanks to the physics, Nexuiz physics are extremely hard to learn while I had almost no trouble picking Xonotic's up, hell I can play UT99 for weeks and come back to Xonotic without much issue whereas I'd have to practice like 4 or 5 hours if I wanted to get back into Nexuiz.

This is not too bad: http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=xonotic

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. Could be a bit clearer and stuff, but I like. Would help if it was somewhere on the main website, and more people could keep it on a tab or bookmark to check it and join more easily.

CTS should be public like warsow. It is quite popular in warsow. If we keep it private, no new player would join the fun. It would be best if a good in-game tutorial can be provided.

Yes, but many players simply don't like that game mode, as it isn't real playing. It's playing alone - and that is what people do NOT want who click to the server list.

PS: I put a link to the server list in my signature, in case it helps anybody. It helped me find a populated last night server, and I had fun for two hours! Really think it should be linked on xonotic.org too. Also that the admins could increase character count in signatures by juuuuust a little

C. Brutail invited me to a DM server last night and we played for a bit. After a while there were 6 or 7 players for game after game after game. It helps to do that my friends, so stop reading this post, go and do it :-)

ALSO: are you looking for a game on ANY server, shoot me down on the CTS one if I am there and I will play with you. We'll watch other players raining in, within one or two games :-) I Promise! Every time between 19:00 and 22:00 CET that I can not keep that promise you will give me a negative feedback here. We'll call this new game mode "But Pink Promised"....

Just being online helps. I was REALLY active today and yesterday (ill @ home). And I have played with quite some people.

Even racing becomes funny if you're just with 8 people on the server, and a few more on irc.

I was online today too, and can confirm it was active (the server had 6-7 players). This day, I was on a CTS server however. And I must say, it is more frustrating than DM, and I can tell it encourages new players to leave. I mean it's nice and all... but it takes much more concentration and energy, you spend half of the time changing maps because most are impossible for the average player, and I can imagine no new player will consider this a nice welcoming.

I might be late with my opinion in this case but Ill tell you anyway about this. (Even if Im quite seldom online and seldom write here in forums)
Sometimes, when I spend some of my little free time on playing some other games just like quake live or warsow, I meet with people who ask about other FPS or just talk about their experiences. Anyway, when I asked about xonotic, some of them just didnt know what I was talking about. On the other hand there were a few people who know about xonotic. But often I just heard something like "This game is boring, it isnt challenging" or "it doesnt offer the competitivness and the possibilities other games offer". (To conclude what they said, I cant remember the exact expressions)
I didnt think about any solutions concerning this problem yet, I couldnt even give those players a reason why to play xonotic, unfortunately.

Another thing which came to my mind was to put xonotic on some web e-sport pages. I dont talk only about magazines, I especially mean things like x-fire (I guess there was already someone who created a xonotic page there), steam (neither I use it nor I have an idea how to spread xonotic there), but in fact I mean the esl page.
When I look the games up(the FPS) which are supported there, I see Warsow, Sauerbraten etc (FOSS) but no xonotic. I mean that someone of the xonotic team/PR management could maybe arrange that xonotic is at least listed there so that interested gamers probably inform themselves!

Unfortunately I dont have time atm to express everything I would like to say about popularity of xonotic and its changes (feedback on 0.5). :/ Anyway I'll try to get my feedback and statements in here soon.

Cheers

I might be late with my opinion in this case but Ill tell you anyway about this. (Even if Im quite seldom online and seldom write here in forums)
Sometimes, when I spend some of my little free time on playing some other games just like quake live or warsow, I meet with people who ask about other FPS or just talk about their experiences. Anyway, when I asked about xonotic, some of them just didnt know what I was talking about. On the other hand there were a few people who know about xonotic. But often I just heard something like "This game is boring, it isnt challenging" or "it doesnt offer the competitivness and the possibilities other games offer". (To conclude what they said, I cant remember the exact expressions)
I didnt think about any solutions concerning this problem yet, I couldnt even give those players a reason why to play xonotic, unfortunately.

That is surprising to hear. I don't see how Xonotic wouldn't be challenging enough. If you play against good players, it can be very hard (even against bots sometimes). Perhaps Xonotic doesn't have the feeling of a "challenging unique idea" or something. As for people not having heard about it, that's sad and unfortunately common. This really needs be changed...

Actually from a competitive players point of view, I can understand the lack of challenge in some respects.

Comparatively to other games like Quake, our game is actually much easier. The movement requires much less of a learning curve to move around quickly, the map control is less restricting, and even the weapons to some extent are easier.... although they're more dynamic and unique, they are designed to not be totally restricting (e.g. with refire times and such) unlike in Quake where for example weapon combos are penalized by the refire time.

Yes, most casual players miss the deep aspects of the gameplay.. but competitive players from other games some times find that those deep aspects aren't deep enough for their taste. I think the default balance I designed currently tries to please the casual gamers AND slightly/moderately competitive players, and it pulls this off perfectly... The REALLY highly competitive players though? ... those players want more of a challenge.

But the challenge IS there. Because many things in Xonotic are easy, it also is easy to improve on them and get an edge over another player!

But I have to agree the focus is more on aim and reaction and less on "learning the controls". Which IMHO is a good thing, though. See the review of Crysis 2 in some other thread here, where the main complaint was that many game features are intentionally crippled so much it annoys the reviewer.

You could also host a few servers with balance and physics LeeStricklin. The you need more skills for turning arount corners, and you will need the laser more. So that is more challenging.

But that isn't official. Which saddens me a bit, because tbh I really enjoy default physics and weapon balance.

This is btw. a recurring phenomenon of so called "old school pro" (=arrogant) gamers which I don't really understand: whenever a new game comes out, they bitch about it how it's not even remotely the same as UT99, Quake3, etc. in any aspects, so it definately MUST suck.
However, if you please the crowd of the arrogant pro fragmachines, they'll bitch about how your game is a total ripoff of Quake3, or UT99, just sucks even more.
Also, they're fed up with Ut99 and Quake3, because it's old, ugly, and the same shit all over again since 10 years or so.


This sums pretty much up the issue about pleasing gamers.

The other problem I see is really our community. Which works very well on the forum, no doubt: everybody is friendly here, giving cool advices, ideas, whatnot.
But where are you while playing online, really? oO
I mean, I barely meet with regular forum members on any servers when I'm online and looking for a match (and this is not because of timezone mismatches).
Back in the very old Nexuiz 1.x days, whenever I joined the servers, I've mostly met with forum regulars. I almost knew everybody already, there were rarely anonymous players. However, this is not the situation with Xonotic.

It can't be that everybody is playing on private, hidden servers, because I rarely see games come together on pickup.
Or there's still the possibility I'm not searching at the right places (or I'm just not invited ). But I'm an insider, and if I can't find players, how'd Average Joe find any, when he first installs the game?

As Pinkrobot stated above: we really had a few, fun games, without any pickup magic. You just need to show yourself on the forums, so new players actually SEE there are players, and the game is living, vibrating, and full of fun.

I'm not against pickup, because sometimes I need some higher competition too. I like pickup, I like the more "serious" atmosphere it has. However, I think it was a bad idea to introduce pickup seriously right after 0.1 - simply because the regular playerbase is not high enough for a sorting mechanism that pickup serves.
A few days ago I've seen 6/8 waiting for a CTF match. For hours, without anything to happen. Major wtf situation, if you ask me. Hell, even 4 players could be enough to start a game somewhere on public. The others will join eventually.

Long story short, I can only say others have concluded already: SHOW YOURSELF on public servers! Else we won't get new players, because they'll think this game is dead, because nobody plays it.

Actually from a competitive players point of view, I can understand the lack of challenge in some respects.

Comparatively to other games like Quake, our game is actually much easier. The movement requires much less of a learning curve to move around quickly, the map control is less restricting, and even the weapons to some extent are easier.... although they're more dynamic and unique, they are designed to not be totally restricting (e.g. with refire times and such) unlike in Quake where for example weapon combos are penalized by the refire time.

Yes, most casual players miss the deep aspects of the gameplay.. but competitive players from other games some times find that those deep aspects aren't deep enough for their taste. I think the default balance I designed currently tries to please the casual gamers AND slightly/moderately competitive players, and it pulls this off perfectly... The REALLY highly competitive players though? ... those players want more of a challenge.

This might be another reason why I'd go for slower and harder to control physics by default, and would make some weapons (like the rocket launcher) have slower projectile speed and other factors. I could say that from this point, Xonotic feels rather "quick and easy". You often fly all over the map, shoot people if you have enough skill at quick aiming, and done. I haven't worked on my own balance and physics recently, but might do so again in the future... as they plan to be more like this.

Do not say I do not show myself on public servers, I am REALLY ACTIVE. Others from the forum who I play a lot with on PUBLIC servers are:

lda17h
Nimbus
PinkRobot
It's me
Rolley

That are the most active guys as for as I know. (Other people play sometimes too, but not as active as this guys.)

The only thing that keeps me from really getting into xonotic are the weapons. Sorry but for someone who hasn't played nexuiz the weapon system looks like a huge mess. Too many redundant and spammy weapons, not enough structure. I know that wont change because that would be a very radical step but that's my opinion.

laser
sg
mg
rocketlauncher
mortar
nexgun
electro

Don't need more than those imo, especially as there are secondary fire modes too.

Changing the game to fit to new players' expectations and skill is NOT what we should do. This is what the majority of commercial games do, so that the player will like it right away when he opens it... unfortunately a side effect of this is that the skill ceiling is lowered, and after a certain point you just can't get that much better. People will like it, play it, then leave. I would rather see a more developed game with fewer but more experienced players than a super-easy game with lots of players that don't stay around. As for making the game more advanced to attract Nexuiz players, I'm not sure how far we should go. Assuming most of the player know about Xonotic, then there are pretty much three options: (1): They don't come because the don't like the game, (2): They don't come because they think there are no players, or (3): They don't come because the don't know or don't want to believe that Nexuiz is no longer being developed and will die sooner or later.

The only thing that keeps me from really getting into xonotic are the weapons. Sorry but for someone who hasn't played nexuiz the weapon system looks like a huge mess. Too many redundant and spammy weapons, not enough structure. I know that wont change because that would be a very radical step but that's my opinion.

laser
sg
mg
rocketlauncher
mortar
nexgun
electro

Don't need more than those imo, especially as there are secondary fire modes too.

Those weapons you listed are the primal basics, however removing the other weapons would wreak havoc on the weapon balance AND make mappers redo their item placement. Also, I think a lot of players would die before they let anyone pry the crylink from their cold, dead fingers.

Also, whenever I am added up on pickup I usually do idle on a public. This won't solve all our problems though, because usually the people that come on are way below my skill level (which is really sad, considering I'm not that great).

Holy Shnikies, I just realised this turned into a balance thread :O

I like all the weapons as they are now, although I believe they can be expended upon. Only gun I might like removed (or believe should be heavily modified) is the Seeker. Also, the HLAC is too similar to the Hagar, and at this point I agree it could perhaps be removed. Other than that, I'd just like to see each weapon expanded, and made more interesting / unique, but not modified too heavily.

In my opinion a good game is easy to get into, yet hard to master. Take chess for example: every halfway intelligent person can learn the rules within a few hours but becoming a grandmaster can take decades. As for video games, quake 3 for example is easier to get into because the weaponselection just makes sense. In every situation one weapon is dominant, and you want to make sure to got that weapon when you enter that situation. Close range: shotgun or rocketlauncher, midrange: lightning gun, longrange: railgun, spamming doorways: granade launcher or plasma or rl. That's easy to understand for everyone who has ever played a fps before. Still, experienced players dominate there too. What makes the game skillful is situational awareness, tactics, movement and raw aiming skills and not some obscure weapon system. No matter what you do or how you justify it, Joe Average who switches weapons using the mousewheel will always be overwhelmed and in some way frustrated by those countless options he has in xonotic.