Was there an NationStates 2 game that failed?

[Glasgia]

The general legacy seems to be that Jolt screwed up and screwed Max (and the players) over. Most of the ancients decline to speak about it.



Meanwhile, Nationstates has continued to produce copious amounts of players. With an earlier forecast from the Ministry of Plenty set at fifty thousand this months, this has been exceeded by over a hundred percent and looks to grow rapidly in future.

All hail Max Barry!

When is hate week? I cannot wait to express my solidarity against the tyrannical counter-revolutionary forces of Jolt.

[European Socialist Republic]

All hail Max Barry!

When is hate week? I cannot wait to express my solidarity against the tyrannical counter-revolutionary forces of Jolt.

But comrade, every week is hate week!

[Langore]

Come on guys we can beat this!

[Australian rePublic]

Yes there was. Although that was way before my time, even before my first nation

[Untaroicht]

Come on guys we can beat this!

*speaks in hushed whisper* You do not know what you are toying with, child. There are dark, otherworldly secrets that the layman was never meant to know about, and can easily bring about self obliteration.

[Reploid Productions]

Oh boy, you have awoken the sleeping giant.

Bringing up the despair event horizon that was NS2 on this website is a good way to get the wrath of an old veteran of the forums (or a max barry fan).

THE NSG MODS ARE COMING!!!

Rawr! Fear me and despair, for I have awoken etc etc blah blah rawr.

I remember there was an NS2 but it became a flop. Anyone knows about it please tell me.

The short version: Jolt/OMAC sucks syphilis penis. (And no, I don't know why I latched on to that particular phrasing for voicing my disdain for said companies. I blame a textbook from a 'psychology of human sexuality' class at the time that if randomly opened almost always randomly opened to the section with photos of various STDs, specifically the penis belonging to someone with an advanced case of syphilis.)

The longer version:
Jolt (later bought by OMAC) was signed on to develop NS2. They were dragging their feet on it, and OMAC took over the project when they acquired Jolt. Unfortunately, the game that they delivered was plagued with issues, including but not limited to:

• They took the game to closed and later open beta despite the alpha testers saying it was far from ready for that, and without Max's consent. (It wasn't supposed to go live until he signed off on it.)
• It hardly had anything from the original NS2 design documents. What little it did have from those was butchered almost beyond recognition and just flat out poorly implemented.
• Good luck trying to micromanage your nation's stats when your issues are still totally randomized. The world was liable to mass starvation because you never got the damned food issues.
• The trade/war tools once implemented were basically non-functional. The only way to get ahead with them was not to use either.
• The game was divided into "Worlds" of a few hundred nations, so good luck playing with your friends. You were also dropped onto a random continent with people instead of into regions, and you could not change continents. (Supposedly changed later, but I'd quit by then.)
• Needless to say, without regions, the notion of the entire R/D gameplay aspect of NS was non-existent.
• Regions replaced with 'alliances', which had poorly-documented and largely nonsensical tools.
• $5 a month to have a custom flag. Plus lots of worthless little things to try and sucker people into spending IRL cash. Such as "spies", whatever the fuck they were supposed to actually do.
• Similarly, they kept trying to pressure Max and [violet] to try and encourage more people to leave NS1 in favor of NS2 because monies.
• Very counter-intuitive interface that rendered mass TG and effective dossier management more trouble than they were worth.
• Virtually no response from the devs to feedback and bug reports.
• [There was an error processing this design element]
• And the one that still really fries my ass years later: They never paid Max what he was owed. In outright violation of the contract. Or Sirocco for the issues he wrote for them.
• And the other one that still really fries my ass years later: They never did fix that bug that kept a bunch of players from being able to use the old forum back on Jolt, and they had a bad habit (especially toward the end) of trying to step on NS moderation's toes. At least one of our users who was particularly outspoken about how shitty NS2 was they actually forumbanned entirely, which also cut him off from the NS forums. Those sorts of shenanigans helped drive the decision to go back to hosting our own, and thus we got this forum up and running in 2009.

</rant>
And no, I will never tire of that particular rant whenever the topic of Jolt and NS2 crops up.

[Langore]

Quick guys it's the Anti-Max! Kill it with fire!

[Glasgia]

When is hate week? I cannot wait to express my solidarity against the tyrannical counter-revolutionary forces of Jolt.

But comrade, every week is hate week!

But when you expressed your hate yesterday, was it yesterday? Remember comrade, doublethink is most important to keeping the forces of Jolt at bay.

((Bloody hell, I remember very little of 1984 even though it's only a few months since I've read it))

[LadyRebels]

Oh boy, you have awoken the sleeping giant.

Bringing up the despair event horizon that was NS2 on this website is a good way to get the wrath of an old veteran of the forums (or a max barry fan).

THE NSG MODS ARE COMING!!!

Rawr! Fear me and despair, for I have awoken etc etc blah blah rawr.

I remember there was an NS2 but it became a flop. Anyone knows about it please tell me.

The short version: Jolt/OMAC sucks syphilis penis. (And no, I don't know why I latched on to that particular phrasing for voicing my disdain for said companies. I blame a textbook from a 'psychology of human sexuality' class at the time that if randomly opened almost always randomly opened to the section with photos of various STDs, specifically the penis belonging to someone with an advanced case of syphilis.)

The longer version:
Jolt (later bought by OMAC) was signed on to develop NS2. They were dragging their feet on it, and OMAC took over the project when they acquired Jolt. Unfortunately, the game that they delivered was plagued with issues, including but not limited to:

• They took the game to closed and later open beta despite the alpha testers saying it was far from ready for that, and without Max's consent. (It wasn't supposed to go live until he signed off on it.)
• It hardly had anything from the original NS2 design documents. What little it did have from those was butchered almost beyond recognition and just flat out poorly implemented.
• Good luck trying to micromanage your nation's stats when your issues are still totally randomized. The world was liable to mass starvation because you never got the damned food issues.
• The trade/war tools once implemented were basically non-functional. The only way to get ahead with them was not to use either.
• The game was divided into "Worlds" of a few hundred nations, so good luck playing with your friends. You were also dropped onto a random continent with people instead of into regions, and you could not change continents. (Supposedly changed later, but I'd quit by then.)
• Needless to say, without regions, the notion of the entire R/D gameplay aspect of NS was non-existent.
• Regions replaced with 'alliances', which had poorly-documented and largely nonsensical tools.
• $5 a month to have a custom flag. Plus lots of worthless little things to try and sucker people into spending IRL cash. Such as "spies", whatever the fuck they were supposed to actually do.
• Similarly, they kept trying to pressure Max and [violet] to try and encourage more people to leave NS1 in favor of NS2 because monies.
• Very counter-intuitive interface that rendered mass TG and effective dossier management more trouble than they were worth.
• Virtually no response from the devs to feedback and bug reports.
• [There was an error processing this design element]
• And the one that still really fries my ass years later: They never paid Max what he was owed. In outright violation of the contract. Or Sirocco for the issues he wrote for them.
• And the other one that still really fries my ass years later: They never did fix that bug that kept a bunch of players from being able to use the old forum back on Jolt, and they had a bad habit (especially toward the end) of trying to step on NS moderation's toes. At least one of our users who was particularly outspoken about how shitty NS2 was they actually forumbanned entirely, which also cut him off from the NS forums. Those sorts of shenanigans helped drive the decision to go back to hosting our own, and thus we got this forum up and running in 2009.

</rant>
And no, I will never tire of that particular rant whenever the topic of Jolt and NS2 crops up.

I am most certainly proud to note that I was not around at that point in time.......

[The Serbian Empire]

And NS2 never existed!

[Glasgia]

And NS2 never existed!

Nationstates Two? Nationstates is the only Nationstates and will only ever be the only Nationstates.

[Kiruri]

"an NationStates" !?

Try saying that, I dare ya! Does it not sound horribly wrong somehow? "N" is not a vowel sound and as such I really want to slap it silly 'til it falls off the title...

[Ventaura]

Who would make a forum reminding us of the dark ages???

[Risottia]

It was taken over by Comrade Risottia and his gang of far-left revolutionaries who turned it into the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Best NSG.

Totally.

And we don't allow anyone else in it. Sorry for latecomers.

[Dakran]

It never existed and you would do good never to bring it up again! All I can say is that there are... Legends about it.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

I heard that, on the eve of the new year, thousands of years ago, a portal to an accursèd ethereal plane of torment opened up in the basement deep below a software firm, and into the world slipped the twisted doppelganger of the entity we know as NationStates. At length, it was repelled back to its nightmarish abode. However, it could not be completely vanquished, and now we dare not speak its name for fear of awakening it from its forced slumber, that it might return again to avenge its imprisonment by wreaking havoc on all that we hold dear.

[Baader-Meinhof Gruppe]

We don't talk about this.

[The Serbian Empire]

And NS2 never existed!

Nationstates Two? Nationstates is the only Nationstates and will only ever be the only Nationstates.

Yes... Nationstates is the only Nationstates!

[Arcturus Novus]

Shh... we don't speak of that damnable exucse for a game, youngling.

[Nanzheng]

I remember that....abomination....

It sucked. The only halfway interesting feature that it had was war, and they couldn't even get that right.

[Kiruri]

why are you people so dramatic? ¬¬ NS2 was a good idea, I personally enjoyed it but it just didn't work out. NS was just not meant to have a sequel

[Reploid Productions]

why are you people so dramatic? ¬¬ NS2 was a good idea, I personally enjoyed it but it just didn't work out. NS was just not meant to have a sequel

NS2 as laid out in Max's original design documents was a good idea (hell, it was freakin' AWESOME.) That aborted abomination Jolt/OMAC gave us was almost entirely not that game- they gave us a hideous malformed eldritch horror instead.

[The Sotoan Union]

why are you people so dramatic? ¬¬ NS2 was a good idea, I personally enjoyed it but it just didn't work out. NS was just not meant to have a sequel

NS2 as laid out in Max's original design documents was a good idea (hell, it was freakin' AWESOME.) That aborted abomination Jolt/OMAC gave us was almost entirely not that game- they gave us a hideous malformed eldritch horror instead.

Will they ever try again with those original designs?

[Corumm]

I played NS2, it was not too bad.

[Scomagia]

I played NS2, it was not too bad.

Blasphemy!