Fifty-two individual games played, three days, over seventy players, a huge pile of loot and almost a thousand continuous viewers on stream for the finals on Sunday. What an absolute blast, this was the Logitech Beta Tournament.

Here are the final results from the tournament. North American and European round-robin brackets lead to two cross-Atlantic semi-finals, followed by an epic European clash in the grand final. Congratulations to Archaea for taking the prize home, and to Exertus for making it in second.

Anyone who watched the stream will have been blown away by the epic clash of Exertus and Inversion, surely one of the most incredible games of competitive NS2 ever played. In over fifty minutes of play, neither …

The clock is ticking, the days are running down. It is difficult to believe that in 12 days Natural Selection 2 will be released. But then again, maybe it isn’t. After all, there have been over 370,000 games of NS2 played so far. If you search YouTube for ‘Natural Selection 2’ there are loads of gameplay videos, previews, and general shenanigans.

On the weekend, there is a big beta tournament happening. Last weekend there was another one. And in a few weeks time, there will be a really big one. This game is being played in a lot of places by a lot of people, and that is very heartening.

But it cannot stop the nerves. It will …

Over the last few weeks, tournament announcements have been coming thick and fast. Last weekend, we had the Guru Tournament. This weekend, you are going to have the opportunity to watch the Logitech Tournament. And now for something completely different.

Now to take it to the next level.

What is the one thing that has been missing from competitive NS2 so far in the beta? The teams, casters, streams, prizes, and audience: They are all there. But what about an arena. What if you were not just watching the best players play, you were watching the players as well?

On November 10, you can.

On November 10, some of the best players in the Natural Selection 2 …

Build 223 is now live on Steam. This build includes hot fixes for some issues with the dedicated server and client in Build 222.

There were two problems that caused a lot of confusion with yesterday’s patch. The first problem was we failed to effectively communicate changes about the dedicated server configuration to server operators. We’re looking into setting up a mailing list for server operators so we can get this information out more effectively in the future. Stay tuned for more information.

The second problem was that there were bugs with the dedicated server that made the situation even more confusing. We should have caught these before the patch went out, but thankfully the community very helpfully provided information …

Build 222 live!

Special note for dedicated server operators:

There were many changes to how a dedicated server is configured in this patch. All you should need to do is run the server with -webadmin
in the command line and open your browser to localhost/index.html. From this web page you are able to configure your server. Consult the
Dedicated_Server_Usage.txt file for more information.

Feature

• Rewrote server browser (much faster now)
• Added dedicated server web interface (thanks devicenull!)
• Added map cycle and mod configuration through the web interface.
• Added auto-join to the server browser.
• Added server tick rate to the server browser.
• Servers can now marked as favorite in the server browser.
• Reworked the the web admin interface setup to allow

This weekend, starting at 1100PDT / 1400EDT / 1800UTC, the RTS/FPSGuru sponsored Guru Tournament is happening live on Twitch TV. Featuring twelve teams and about 90 total players, it is going to be epic. The early rounds will be starting on Friday, watch our Twitter, Facebook, and G+ streams to keep updated on when the first round action kicks off.

But how about the weekend after? A weekend of rest, recuperation, and quiet streaming right? Wrong! We are proud to announce the Logitech Beta Tournament, sponsored by the kind folks over at Logitech.

This is an open ‘double elimination’ tournament to which any and all teams are welcome to register, we have space for 16 teams! …

As the old saying goes, ‘you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.’ To which we reply: ‘swallow it whole.’

Creating Natural Selection 2 was a risk, and an immense challenge. Combining two genres, Real Time Strategy and First Person Shooter, is difficult. Not only that, but creating an entirely new engine, Spark, for it all to run on added layers of complexity to the development.

The challenge has been met. Two factors have led us to this day. The first is the drive, skill, determination and dedication of the founders of Unknown Worlds. An entire company was built around this game. The second is the incredible commitment and support of the Natural Selection community. You funded it, you tested …

This has been an epic patch for us. We hit "lockdown", where we aren’t putting in any new features or big changes for v1.0. So we are now focused on bug fixes, balance and optimization. We are very much in a "That sounds GREAT for after v1.0" mode. We hope you enjoy it.

Balance

• Increased flamethrower "on fire" damage by 50%. Reduced on fire energy recuperation rate from 80% to 60%. Reduced cost from 30 to 25 so new players don’t think of it as "better" than the GL.
• Increased time that umbra "drags" from .2 seconds to .5 (so aliens in it can retain the benefits for a short time as they leave it).
• Lowered Lerk speed from 13

There comes a time in every game’s life when it must stand up, start walking, and show people what it is made of. Over the next two months, Natural Selection 2 will start to stand. As it does so, more and more people will have the opportunity to show the world how good they are, how skilled their play is, how tight their teamwork is.

Often, competitive communities are built not born. The thrills, spills, drama, and excitement of a competitive scene is seen as a means at not an end. A way to build popularity, rather than celebrate the play itself.

Not this community, not this game. Today marks a milestone for Natural Selection 2. It is the first …