By now Red Orchestra 2 can be considered an 'old' game, perhaps one of the newer 'old' games but still somewhat 'old'. It's still a great game and I enjoy it but the problem is the dwindling player count. Players buy the game (usually on a sale) and then the game will get close to a thousand players, which is great! Many servers are populated, and you can get 64 player action quite easily.
The problem is the stacking. You may be wondering why I bothered to mention the playercount? Well this is where it dwindles; after a sale, rapidly. Right now there are only 2-3 servers with a reasonable ping (<150, i cant play any higher and even at 100+ it's difficult) and when you jump on these servers, its just an absolute mess of one team destroying the other. Other servers will be full of bots, completely empty or too high a ping to even consider playing on. (or a combination of all these things)
I can't remember the last time a game came out really close and both teams had a nice distribution of kills and points. Right now, you just get a small handful of players with 40+ kills and the rest of them will be lucky if they can get 10. Many games the attacking team will struggle to cap past the first objective (or even their spawn point) or defending teams will crumble within minutes and the game will usually end with more than 75% of the time and tickets remaining.
These skilled players flock to one team, there is a common myth of 'staxis' (stacked axis) but I think this is misleading. Axis are commonly stacked, but its not anything to do with the axis faction, its simply the attitude of certain members of the community and I believe it's purely coincidence. (or people just like Germany better, the reasoning is irrelevant)
I am calling out to server admins first and the perpetrators second. Please server admins, enforce harsher rules against stacking, pick on the experienced players on the stacked team and encourage them to switch, even force them to switch if the situation is bad enough. Stacking is KILLING this game, newbies don't stop playing the game because the game is too hard (it isn't); they leave it because it is a very frustrating experience of getting killed by vastly superior players and most of the time not even knowing where they were killed from or what they can do to avoid it. The dwindling player count actually makes the stacking worse, due to there being a more concentrated group of skilled players who will typically just play whatever team has other skilled players on (whom are all regular names at this point due to the small community), so I can usually tell what team will win based on the presence of a small group of individual players.
As for the perpetrators well, whenever you play in a sever it is sad to see this legitimate problem be written off as "whining" or "crying". I personally would consider myself one of the best players on this game, in the top 10 easily so I am not intimidated by the (arguable) 'skill' of some of these players, but there's just such a huge difference in losing a game, and just getting steamrolled by a stack. At the end of the day Red Orchestra 2 is a GAME, and if certain members of the community keep making the EXPERIENCE worse for new comers, the community will die.
Obviously tripwire will do absolutely nothing to address this quite legitimate issue, so it is up to us, the consumers and the fans to make this game more enjoyable for everyone, and to offer a fair experience and more important a fair CHANCE for new players to engage and learn the game without feeling that they're never going to make any progress.
The problem is the stacking. You may be wondering why I bothered to mention the playercount? Well this is where it dwindles; after a sale, rapidly. Right now there are only 2-3 servers with a reasonable ping (<150, i cant play any higher and even at 100+ it's difficult) and when you jump on these servers, its just an absolute mess of one team destroying the other. Other servers will be full of bots, completely empty or too high a ping to even consider playing on. (or a combination of all these things)
I can't remember the last time a game came out really close and both teams had a nice distribution of kills and points. Right now, you just get a small handful of players with 40+ kills and the rest of them will be lucky if they can get 10. Many games the attacking team will struggle to cap past the first objective (or even their spawn point) or defending teams will crumble within minutes and the game will usually end with more than 75% of the time and tickets remaining.
These skilled players flock to one team, there is a common myth of 'staxis' (stacked axis) but I think this is misleading. Axis are commonly stacked, but its not anything to do with the axis faction, its simply the attitude of certain members of the community and I believe it's purely coincidence. (or people just like Germany better, the reasoning is irrelevant)
I am calling out to server admins first and the perpetrators second. Please server admins, enforce harsher rules against stacking, pick on the experienced players on the stacked team and encourage them to switch, even force them to switch if the situation is bad enough. Stacking is KILLING this game, newbies don't stop playing the game because the game is too hard (it isn't); they leave it because it is a very frustrating experience of getting killed by vastly superior players and most of the time not even knowing where they were killed from or what they can do to avoid it. The dwindling player count actually makes the stacking worse, due to there being a more concentrated group of skilled players who will typically just play whatever team has other skilled players on (whom are all regular names at this point due to the small community), so I can usually tell what team will win based on the presence of a small group of individual players.
As for the perpetrators well, whenever you play in a sever it is sad to see this legitimate problem be written off as "whining" or "crying". I personally would consider myself one of the best players on this game, in the top 10 easily so I am not intimidated by the (arguable) 'skill' of some of these players, but there's just such a huge difference in losing a game, and just getting steamrolled by a stack. At the end of the day Red Orchestra 2 is a GAME, and if certain members of the community keep making the EXPERIENCE worse for new comers, the community will die.
Obviously tripwire will do absolutely nothing to address this quite legitimate issue, so it is up to us, the consumers and the fans to make this game more enjoyable for everyone, and to offer a fair experience and more important a fair CHANCE for new players to engage and learn the game without feeling that they're never going to make any progress.
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