It'a already almost free. Cheater barrier.

Pov: you're a cheat creator and your goal is to earn money. Creates cheat for a dead game with such a low playerbase it's not even showing up on the community hub. Congratulations, you've made a cheat nobody is going to buy. Seriously though, NS2 has a good votekick system. Even if there would be a cheater, which by the way, I think I saw only one in 10 years and he got banned immediately, you would just kick and ban them.

And yes, I've been also advocating for making this game f2p. But the devs closed the item market down so I doubt it will ever happen, since there would be no profit from the market and thus making in it f2p. Also the devs officially stopped development, so there won't be anything done with this game anyways, R.I.P.

Originally posted by CЯaZyCAT:

It'a already almost free. Cheater barrier.

All we need is a Matched Play server that gives Matched Play hours & wins at an increased rate and we're good.

Originally posted by Kafson:

Pov: you're a cheat creator and your goal is to earn money.

It's not always about money. Sometime it's about the game that have 0% protection and ceased support.

Why wouldn't they make it F2P and re-Open their shop with adjusted prices or even some kind of minimal cost pass? It seems that is the way to go now days and they could make some money, even if it were only a small amount. Compare it to the cost of the game now and the consumer who reads the sea of bad reviews that don't buy it or try it. Its not up to me but if it were I would much rather someone be able to try my finished older product and give them an opportunity to spend $3 here or $5 there after experiencing it.

Maybe I know nothing and the cost to run and manage the shop outweighs their projected income. Maybe they didn't even care to brainstorm the idea and would rather we all go away?

Originally posted by Computron:

Why wouldn't they make it F2P and re-Open their shop with adjusted prices or even some kind of minimal cost pass? It seems that is the way to go now days and they could make some money, even if it were only a small amount. Compare it to the cost of the game now and the consumer who reads the sea of bad reviews that don't buy it or try it. Its not up to me but if it were I would much rather someone be able to try my finished older product and give them an opportunity to spend $3 here or $5 there after experiencing it.

Maybe I know nothing and the cost to run and manage the shop outweighs their projected income. Maybe they didn't even care to brainstorm the idea and would rather we all go away?

NS2 was never a popular game, it has a small hardcore following.

Making it free to play would cause a lot of havoc in the short term and would require new patches to balance out as free accounts would be used for ghosting, smurfing, or trolling matches. It only takes one player to jump in a comm chair and recycle IPs. New patches/mods would be needed to combat this.

The item shop will never be significant source of money, the game is too small. Only F2P games that were major hits had a successful item shop.

Subnautica did vastly better in sales than NS2, so why put in time and effort into a old sub-par performing game?

What about a new genre? Natural Subnautica 3? I wish I could play the architects.

Originally posted by Shroomy:

What about a new genre? Natural Subnautica 3? I wish I could play the architects.

A properly thought out "ranked mode" with reasonable "rewards" next time would be a good start.

Sure, we could have a perfect NS2 (NS2.5 why not). But, in the same logic this game managed to thrive on the Alien versus predator and starcraft wave in the early 2000 (NS1 was a HL1 mod), I wish they made a NS3 with 3 species to play : Terran, Zerg, Protoss, meaning Marines, Aliens and Architects.
The gameplay would then look like this : some servers Alien vs Marine, or Alien vs Architects, Marines vs Achitects, why not marines vs marines (boring), aliens vs aliens (weird), architect vs architects too.

Much more replayability and more fun.

To push the idea further: why not being able to have a server with the 3 races: a 1 vs 1 vs 1 map with the center to be rush for x5 RT for example. Would be fun to see some brief alliances 2 vs 1, some sneaky aliens tunnels behind the CC while a battle between marines and architects, etc.

To sum up, a new kind of STR play with, for each races, 2 ennemies to fight (until one is killed ofc).

Food for thoughts...

Originally posted by Kafson:

Pov: you're a cheat creator and your goal is to earn money. Creates cheat for a dead game with such a low playerbase it's not even showing up on the community hub. Congratulations, you've made a cheat nobody is going to buy. Seriously though, NS2 has a good votekick system. Even if there would be a cheater, which by the way, I think I saw only one in 10 years and he got banned immediately, you would just kick and ban them.

And yes, I've been also advocating for making this game f2p. But the devs closed the item market down so I doubt it will ever happen, since there would be no profit from the market and thus making in it f2p. Also the devs officially stopped development, so there won't be anything done with this game anyways, R.I.P.

I agree to put it F2P, if anyone cheats, votekick server on console and bye bye, people playing since Natural Selection 1 knows who cheats or not..

Cheats would be annoying to deal with. Many cheat cases were hard to review even with poverty video record available; "casual" cheaters can easily blend in. But, that's not the main issue.

Main issue would be smurfs. You don't need to cheat to dominate t2-t3 players, you merely need ~t5 skill and not be shuffled into a team of t0s by the game trying to make teams equal. Make a new account and voila, you look like t0, shoot like t5 and tell everyone you played 6k hours of CS. Banned on all servers (unlikely, as moderation is weak on some) or your elo naturally but rapidly grew to t5 that you are? No problem, make yet another account, game is free!

And don't forget that objective of going F2P is getting influx of new players – but 1) few will come without advertisement (that isn't free), 2) fewer will like it enough to try improving, as game is not easy to get at least decent at, 3) smurfs and toxic noobs will drive away majority of those who would stay. There's simply not enough profit to justify going F2P, and that will hardly change anytime soon.

Of course, we still get "lets go f2p" suggestions about once every 1-2 months. So don't worry about your mistake, it happens.