Why are there 100,000 people playing Counterstrike _right now_

Natural said:
You left out one thing : time balancing. Not only does CS try to balance players based on score (which is directly attributed to skill in the game) but its rounds occur so rapidly and temporarily that anyone can sit down, play for 5 mins, and walk away. There is no time investment to complete a map, or series of maps.

At the same time, the round system hooks players in. The "fresh start" of every new round gives players more energy to go fight--especially if they've managed to pick up or purchase a good weapon.

I believe it is primarily the short attention span required that keeps Counterstrike a long-living mod.
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I think the sit down and walk away strategy works for any game that isn't a long winded (between saves) single player game, or an MMORPG.

Your fresh start idea holds some merit. My problems with it are I have been on plenty of servers where my team was just getting slaughtered, and the new round just meant the other team got more bullets and better guns. I dont think an FPS like tribes really has to worry in this department. The rounds aren't long enough to really need that fresh start. If it is a slaughter, the map changes in 8 quick caps.
 
One thing I hate about Tribes, is I can't disconnect from the server until the map finishes.

I have way too much fun to leave after 5 minutes, and I often find myself playing for hours without the urge to go and do something else.
 
R@ND0M said:
One thing I hate about Tribes, is I can't disconnect from the server until the map finishes.

I have way too much fun to leave after 5 minutes, and I often find myself playing for hours without the urge to go and do something else.
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thats a good thing, they just have to ty and get everyone who buys the game to do it.
 
Thrax Panda said:
100% Real (with the exception of the watermark).
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Probably an overdramatized camera angle with a lot of action going on --


why don't you post a REAL screenshot? Like a naked light walking towards the flag REALLY fast. Or some dude lost in a GIANT base. ;o
 
two words: instant gratification.

Tribes isn't about who kills the most people, or who gets the most caps. Tribes is about teamwork to make the TEAM win. While CS may boast that its team based the focus is on individual skill not on teamwork. That gives you a huge ego bonus, and makes it easy to pub.
 
Plasma said:
Excellent news Thrax, thankyou.

Tell me, will we like the screenshot? :)
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Yes, I'm not worried about Tribes fans liking it, I am a bit worried that other FPS people we're trying to draw into the game may think it's a bit less action packed than they would like. It's very difficult to convey the frantic action of tribes in a screenshot, particularly at this early date when the action isn't really there yet. Even a great "Tribes" screen from SH with a capper just grabbing the flag and a 5 defenders reacting to it either cuts out most of the defenders (if you're close in on the capper, or has everybody so small as to be unimpressive. And the speed with which the capper is traveling is totally lost.

I think its important that when we get to the beta that we have the tools needed to make tribes movies available so the the community can start doing their thing. I can't buy the rights to the next Linkin Park song (for less than $50K) to put it into a video, but the community doesn't seem to have an issue with "borrowing" their favorite music, and that kind of press/marketing is fantastic if we can get links out to other sites.
 
Thrax Panda said:
I think its important that when we get to the beta that we have the tools needed to make tribes movies available so the the community can start doing their thing. I can't buy the rights to the next Linkin Park song (for less than $50K) to put it into a video, but the community doesn't seem to have an issue with "borrowing" their favorite music, and that kind of press/marketing is fantastic if we can get links out to other sites.
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That is great news. I couldn't believe how stoopid QIX and Co. were in this regard (not providing demos for forever).

The best way to advertise T3 is to:

1) Have official releases of big and small avi's of good players doing really cool stuff (say for CTF - capping and elite ld, TR and maybe a BIG Hunters yardsale).

2) Let the community release amazing videos - post them on the official site, on gaming sites, wherever - just get them out there.

The most important thing these movies should convey is that an individual gamer can positively OWN in T3 (frenetic/high energy environment). The fact that they can also be the bomb in a team context is secondary and will become obvious as soon as they play the game. The "team context" thing is a selling point, but a secondary one.

QIX's fatal mistake was his belief that the world was screaming for a massive team-oriented game. Given this belief, cowboying becomes bad. The result was that tons and tons of players gave up on the game when they realized they couldn't really affect the outcome of a game (pub and competitive players alike). The only reason I played it as long as I did was 1) my team, 2) no other games appealed, 3) love T1 but am too tired of it.

I'm confident Sierra won't make this mistake twice. Let the individual excel and the masses will follow.

Note: Pls don't waste any $$$ on a big name music group - get some no-name trance person - there are actually Tribers who do that shizzat. My guess is they would LOVE to donate their stuff for free/cheap (TW guy named Zincaito - I'm sure there are others - I dld some of his stuff and it was good. He'll need to make it "harder" tho.).

________________


I think a number of people crushed the CS question already. Key points (I think in order):

1. Cheap/Free
2. Runs very well on low end computers
3. Simple game with manageable learning curve
4. Good players (think cowboys) get noticed
5. No need for broadband
6. Easy to hack/cheat
7. Time-balancing - Tribes should appeal to those who want to play for 5 minutes and those who want to play for 5 hours. Mods can be an effective way to differentiate groups.
8. Relevant to today
 
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Thrax Panda said:
Yes, I'm not worried about Tribes fans liking it, I am a bit worried that other FPS people we're trying to draw into the game may think it's a bit less action packed than they would like. It's very difficult to convey the frantic action of tribes in a screenshot, particularly at this early date when the action isn't really there yet. Even a great "Tribes" screen from SH with a capper just grabbing the flag and a 5 defenders reacting to it either cuts out most of the defenders (if you're close in on the capper, or has everybody so small as to be unimpressive. And the speed with which the capper is traveling is totally lost.

I think its important that when we get to the beta that we have the tools needed to make tribes movies available so the the community can start doing their thing. I can't buy the rights to the next Linkin Park song (for less than $50K) to put it into a video, but the community doesn't seem to have an issue with "borrowing" their favorite music, and that kind of press/marketing is fantastic if we can get links out to other sites.
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Holy shit -- I am really liking the direction tribes3 seems to be taking right now :)
 
Tosing my two cents in on CS, re-iterating stuff others have said:

1. Free download. CS is free for anyone who already has Half-Life, plus it's a total conversion. When you load it up, you're not playing another flavor of HL, you're essentially playing an entirely new game. That, I think, gives it more appeal that if it was just a modified version of HL DM, for example.

2. Huge installed base. HL sold millions of copies. That makes the potential market for online mods also very big. Indeed, TFC, Day of Defeat and Natural Selection often have as many players as some of the other games in Gamespy's top ten stats.

3. The hook of a strong single player game. I have no way of knowing, but I bet (especially in the early days, when CS was picking up steam) that a lot of people who loved HL's single player checked out the mods when they were done, including CS, whereas a mediocre single player game would have just been uninstalled and forgotten.
 
Thanks Thrax, sound awsome :slurp:

As someone who has tried (and made a few short avi's), one of the most painful things is waiting for the screenshots to be outputted from the demo. Im not sure if there is a simpler way/faster process to take these screenshots (save as jpg?), but something like that would be good if you have the time.

Demos are an important thing in Tribes, as you can see from the avis, im sure at T3's release and if/when you do a demo, people would gladly like their avis on a demo disc/PC Powerplay etc to help promote it :)

In reference to the development team of TNTG, will ongoing support for patches etc still be done if there is a need (and wont be laid off like Dynamix was, that really annoyed me, they had a lot planned for updates (graphics wise etc) :( )?
 
There are several factors which contributed to the rise of CS, half of them are good design, the other half are coincidence.

-Half-Life was practically standard issue on every single machine as the best selling FPS of all time so you had several hundred thousand with it on their machines.

-With that in mind, it was totally devoid of multiplayer content, as such you had a bunch of young folks or casual players who may not have other FPSes to play trying to continue to play the multiplayer. If you ever got a chance to play HLs MP prior to TFC and CS, jesus, it was a hail-back to the early days of the first quake, terrible terrible multiplayer.

-Building off of that: realize that CS wasn't competing against Q3A or Tribes it was competing against other HL mods exactly the same way TR2 wasn't competing against UT2k3 it was competing against Classic CTF. Thus, CS was lightyears beyond anything else on the limited CS market on both a visual level and gameplay design. The visual element is important too, as that isn't what keeps people playing your game, but it will certainly get them to try it, and CS was very pretty in comparison with every other HL product out there, even Valve's products. The screenshots and prettiness of CS are important details as that's what coaxes a dial-up user to download 90 megs over a dozen hours.

-The above essentially guaranteed CS' success, but it was driven home by some design elements too.

-Simple and Complex: CS is one of the best examples of "easy to learn hard to master." The basic premise of the game is probably one of the most intuitive of any FPS that had come across at that point. There were no lighting guns, rail accelerators or anything along the lines, it was the AK47 and colt carbine, everyone knows what these weapons are like. But with all that simplicity it had room for growth, not near as much as the Tribes franchise, but it can keep a new FPS player busy a good while.

-No Game is the same: This is an important issue, with the exception of perhaps Dust (Which is ironically one of the most played maps) CS very rarely plays the same, which was an important detail in that era of the FPS where you had three paths through a level: comparably the average map of Italy has several dozen.

-As Nat pointed out you have an instant resolution in five minutes, very few other games can claim this, as such you can join and be done in 15 minutes if that suits your fancy. Which not only means you can play casually, but as a result you have more casual players, which in turn breeds more hardcore players.

In my opinion CS's success is largely coincidence, but dismissing it as coincidence entirely is a mistake. At this point however, CS is now rote: DoD and Natural Selection are both much stronger games than CS but garner a comparably niche market of HL players. The same is even more true of commercially released titles. SOF2 offered almost identical gameplay to CS on an updated engine with a wide variety of weapons and some new concepts as well, but: several months later and it's lucky if it's holding 1% of CS's current player base. You won't be able to replicate CS's success, Gooseman won't even be able to replicate CS.

I'd say the best thing you could learn from CS would be to ship T3 with a duel and arena mod, so that casual players could have a form of instant gratification which might one day blossom into them spending time picking up things like CTF. I'd possibly consider revising siege as well, so that it plays faster and on a limited time scale; to offer that same quick justification for the attention span impaired.
 
Because more independence and grittiness

Tribes is :
1. non-bloody
2. lofty and optimistic in its skiing
3. slower paced with weaponry
3b. very easy for one to kill many (mortar, satchel from what i hear of t2, disc, gren launcher)
4. works the imagination in terms of suspension of disbelief


Counterstrike :
1. bloody
2. hardline, ground to ground combat
3. a variety of multitude weapons that are all immediate-impact based.
3b. emphasis on direct person to person.
4. relates to current events even more so right now, and on some
level could possibly even be a potential career for ppl (ie military or police etc)

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and now for pachas incredible game ideas that resolve some of this.
(ignore the gay working title names)

Tribeserstrike :
Futuristic urban and similar based body armor round situations with machine guns and pistols and shields, inside and outside of buildings, dark environments, or bright sunny hostage situations, instinctive hardline warfare where brain wins in the end. no cute dave-g character types here, this is robocop meets robotech with a tom clancy twist. the reason its called tribeserstirke is because the standard character is a mobile body armor basically humanoid in size, 8-12 feet, with heavier armors doing the dirty work (blasting through walls etc) Ideally the Jets are 360.


MechaFlag! :
huge huge huge huge open air huge environments working anywhere from archipelagos, to long drawn out remote star asteroid belts to fantastic earthlike canyons Flag capture on a mecha level, however, when in plane mode, you have different weapons than in mecha mode. (yeah they transform)
1. again, no lofty shit, readouts and huds are "real" at the same time non-boring (no cheesy "cockpit" look).. weapons and missle projects identify iwth reality as much as possible, and multiple types of ships can be used per round, each with different powers. at top speed with plane mode you should barely be able to turn without lsoing control of your crash and risk ramming through nearby ground or asteroids. however an array of "use" weapons are at yoru disposal in such a situation such as, autoshield which surrenders your vehicle control but surrounds you in a protective invisible/visible on contact shield bubble until energy runs out. AH so many ideas. next one.

Fist :
*The* martial art game we've all been waiting for. and when I say the, I mean the. alternating fps 3ps old-kung-fu style action. When SERIOUS asian culture and antiquity from the music with a matrix style twist of epic proportions (for this year and last) when doing amazing stunts and crap and you are only watching, the camera switches to 3rd person to enjoy some of the view, unless the move is short enough that it would be annoying to see from that angle. The graphics emphasis light and dark, rather than huge asian type caricatures like those cheesy console games, (cough soulblade) and moves can take on a variety of angles, power kicks and punches, flying maneuvers and midair combat. imagine something like the second matrix anime without graphics being so asian.. pain is felt and acknowledged , blood is exposed, the characters look torn, and their bodies when they die, unless in a dramatic explosion, crumple and react like a real human would...
Important distinction to DBZ, these people live by gravity and dont say cheesy shit like "SUPERSAIYAN" etc. these are real names Jubei so and so (only because every martial art game needs a jubei hero)
The character range is all samurai and sword oriented combat. (you could tailor people to be more western vs, not and give them all personality.) fighting environments range from cliffs to deserts to lush bamboo forrests (you know hardcore anime shit; except this is drawn rendered to look real thus actually recreating the actual zen/beauty of those places that asian culture constantly references)

There is also a suicide maneuver in case the contestant wishes to tastefully lose his round (thus frustrating the fuck out of the opponent).

Copyright Pacha's Pimpin Pwnage.

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done. ahh those had been saved for so long. feel free to make a game out of them, make sure i get a 5% of the gross earnings.
 
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|Rx|Hubris said:
You won't be able to replicate CS's success, Gooseman won't even be able to replicate CS.
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Very well thought out. Nice post. I completely agree with the above, and I think that over time that 100,000 will slowly move off into other games, so that if we currently have 125K people playing FPS games at any one moment, with 100K in CS, in two years we'll have 125K (plus new players) online spread across 3 or 4 top games (10K to 40K each) with nobody in total control.
 
I think the top reason for the success of CS was the success of HL. That is due to the amazing single player mode of the game.

If you make [T3] have an extensive single player game it will take care of the two top problems with Tribes. For one, it will add a componet that people without a good internet connection or a serious LAN can find a challenge fighting the ai in single player missions. Some single player missions should be things like infiltration, assasination, assult w/ a group (to teach the CC), take an objective, fight your way through a massive enemy base..

The other thing this will help is make the learning curve for the game much more easily obtained. By making the first few missions easy then gradually bring them up to a near impossible level would allow players to tackle most of the learning that is nessisary to be effective in the multiplayer game.

I am also not talking about playing multi- missions by yourself with bots. I mean a full single player package with a good plotline.

Also, I second the motion to bring both duel and arena mods into the game before release. Maybe you can contact the people who made the mods and allow them to create the gametypes while the game is in beta?
 
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