Will this ever be available on Steam?

[PotoMigato]

Will this ever be available on Steam? If its posted on Steam it might get more exposure and more players. Even if its Free to play. I've seen other games like "Face of Mankind" there and I'd bet they've gotten some more players from it being there.

[tusinuno]

As a MMO player and Steam user Ive followed the Face of Mankind deployment at the Steam network, from the initial player exponential sign ups to the current players online.

Please, check the image below where you can see 538 peak players to today with a 17 average players.

faceofmankind-steam.PNG
Source: http://steamcharts.com/app/299700

Why ?... this is the "why" in my honest oppinion.

Steam (for us) is a one shot chance that "only" works propperly when appears at the splash screen or promoted. Neocron is not DOTA, GTA 5 or CS, we are on a scifi/cyberpunk niche content that will retatin players if everything works fine.

A steam launch would be done without bugs, with more content, more tutorials and with a server capacity to load all incoming new players. If those new players arrive at the city and see a problem, any little cloud at the sky, they will leave Neocron as happened to Face of Mankind.

On the other side, Greenlight launchs must follow a procedure and sometimes to fit the game system to Steam, nowadays, that time would be dedicated to the game core.

I think that NST would use Steam shot when NC runs smooth and even have a higher player base... let me see... like using Steam as they do not need it, to improve player base, not to survive.

[Chuck Norris]

As a MMO player and Steam user Ive followed the Face of Mankind deployment at the Steam network, from the initial player exponential sign ups to the current players online.

Please, check the image below where you can see 538 peak players to today with a 17 average players.

faceofmankind-steam.PNG
Source: http://steamcharts.com/app/299700

Why ?... this is the "why" in my honest oppinion.

Steam (for us) is a one shot chance that "only" works propperly when appears at the splash screen or promoted. Neocron is not DOTA, GTA 5 or CS, we are on a scifi/cyberpunk niche content that will retatin players if everything works fine.

A steam launch would be done without bugs, with more content, more tutorials and with a server capacity to load all incoming new players. If those new players arrive at the city and see a problem, any little cloud at the sky, they will leave Neocron as happened to Face of Mankind.

On the other side, Greenlight launchs must follow a procedure and sometimes to fit the game system to Steam, nowadays, that time would be dedicated to the game core.

I think that NST would use Steam shot when NC runs smooth and even have a higher player base... let me see... like using Steam as they do not need it, to improve player base, not to survive.

yOU COMPARE NC TO fOmk!?!?! madness

[tusinuno]

yOU COMPARE NC TO fOmk!?!?! madness

NO... of course not.

I compare any Steam based tactic to survive to the failure of FoM deployment.
Wouldnt like to see NC exploding a couple of months to finally be desert after the third month.

[CallDrDaley]

As a new player, I can safely say that this game is a hot mess for newbies. Steam would be great but it'd be a short-lived success as your guys are saying. I played back in beta and for a long time through neocron 1 and it is SUCH a great game past the beginning parts. Maybe I'm just spoiled on games holding my hand through the beginner phase but I guarantee I'm not the only one.

[yavimaya]

Its sad that people want thier hands held TBH.
the atmosphere of NC was ruined the day newbie MC5 and the tutorials went in.

I remember logging into beta 4 all those years ago, taking the elevator down to the street, walking out into P2 and hearing the booming "NCPD has an eye on you!" and the rest, 100% atmosphere straight away.

i think if the tutorials had have been in and i didnt get that hit of cyberpunk, the game would not have made anywhere near the impression that it did.

The other thing which was great back then which has been watered down so, so much is that it was hardcore, strippers used to be naked, when you died you dropped your pack, basically what was an M rated game was actually an M rated game, unlike now where an M rated game is basically a G rated game with guns.

[Animosity]

yOU COMPARE NC TO fOmk!?!?! madness

And here I was hoping I found FoM 2.0... hopefully the 2005/2006 version

[LiL T]

in its current state it would not make a big enough impact imo, I am not trying to put the game or its devs down, actually this game just needs modernising, there is so much stuff which is not needed or enjoyable, like why do we need tech combat to fire a freaking gun??? who writes this stuff...

[LiL T]

of course the armour and resist system they have now is totally broken, overly complex and leads to even more unimaginatively cookie cutter shitty setups, not having each part of armour add to total resist across the board means that we are serverly limited in what is actually viable for pvp or pve.

Neocron isn't the sandbox i use to know...

[Omnituens]

With regards to making the game "noob friendly", sadly you have to these days. I company I work closely with recently launched on Steam. Fairly solid game, great potential. However, massive drop out even before completing the tutorial due to a slightly confusing message order. If a player gets stuck or confused as to why they are doing something, they'll just drop out and move on. You get one shot at making a good impression these days. You fuck it up, that's a lost customer. That was fixed, but the damage was done.

Gone are the good old days you are dropped into a game to work stuff out. If you have not hooked the player in after a short time, forget about it. Sadly

[AdMoNiSHeR]

I've been playing Neocron since the Beta sometime in 2002 I think. And the one thing I loved most about Neocron is also what annoys me the most -> the complexity.

I would not want the game to be dumbed-down or streamlined. I enjoy that - in order to be more effective - you have to bring your weapons to another player who resses them, then another player to build them, etc.

But as interesting as this is, it is also annoying to have to ask the help channel every 5 minutes about something in the game, because there is no guide about how to do things. You wake up in the game, you talk to someone, and noone really tells you, what you have to do, what you can do. In my opinion, either the game tries too much to be complex and give the player the feeling on being lost - or the old developers were just crappy at doing what they should do. (Maybe it's both, when looking at how many bugs left untouched in the game for years)

A game does not have to be simple to give a player a proper introduction into it. Although we will not see Neocron 2.2 going into that direction, a successor of the game might. You can add more guides, you can make the first weapons you buy being sold with better stats/condition, but still make the game more and more complex the longer you play. But in moderation. Maybe make the path one should or could go a little more clear (open world is great, but without knowing what to do, ... well..).
Also, the distribution of the items onto 12 different FSM is also kind of annoying. I don't think that the whole archetype smuggler should be in the game, I'd rather have the good items being crafted only, instead of factionXY-only.

I also find the term "noob friendly" rather badly chosen. When you play a game for the first time, you are a noob in that particular game. And being a friendly game to people just starting with it, is nothing that should be seen as something bad - it should be the other way around. Being friendly to new players also does not mean, that a new player only has to click one button all the time. It means, that he should be able to find the information he is looking for, without asking TH.org or the help channel all the time.


To the point of Neocron being in steam: Nope. Just don't. Not in this state. Not with Quake2 engine. Not with the system it has right now. I don't think that Neocron 2.2 will ever be a great game again. The longer it takes for the bugs to be killed, the older the game and its engine becomes. And since NST does not earn money, they are not working 24/7 on neocron.

Just take what went wrong in consideration when programming Neocron 3, and put that on steam.

[Tino]

Neocron is dead...time to move on =(