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About "RO2 Dying"

Cyper, your post prompted me to realize a couple things, so thanks even though I disagree or should I say have a different opinion. This is how polite discussion can be fruitful. I know I can be long-winded, and this ended up being a larger post than it need to be perhaps, but if it took all this for me to arrive at my conclusion then so be it. Thanks to anybody who bears with me in it.

This leaves RO2 with a completely new niche audience, e.i people that find the current 'balance' between realism and arcade fun.

As a Rooster who loved Ostfront for years and who is one of the seemingly few people who genuinely love RO2, I sure don't feel like a completely new niche audience, at least not the one you described: I definitely don't feel like what I love about RO2 is that it is a hybrid between realism and arcade fun. I'm not thinking "gee, RO2 is the perfect balance between Castle Wolfenstein 3D and Arma !!!"

This makes the game less accessible than what it was before. If RO2 was an improved version of RO OST the game wouldn't just make the Roosters intrested about it.
It would also cater the lost people that played the cancelled 2011 game Operation Flashpoint: Red River, but most of all - the Arma audience. This niche audience is bigger than we tend to think and it's certainly big enough for a company like TWI unless they want to go full out which can only be done by a proper arcade game.

I don't think an RO2 that somehow hearkens back to RO1 would necessarily bring in the Arma audience in droves. When I think back to RO1 I remember a lot of Arma people trying it out and ultimately deciding it wasn't realistic enough in terms of tactical/team play. A slower pace and more difficult aiming, which to me seem to be the main foci of changes that Roosters tend to think RO2 needs to revert, does not in itself create or define a more tactical game. For me I was a COD player but I preferred the so-called "tactical" style of server, but when I came to RO I realized that RO was what I liked about the "tactical" style of play but more realistic because some of the seemingly arbitrary limitations that had become conventional in "tactical" type servers were lifted in RO. But after quite a long while playing RO (probably my longest running commitment to an MP FPS ever, I loved it so much), other unrealistic limitations inherent to RO's design or even its engine started to loom large, and for me, for the most part, these are the kinds of things that have been corrected in RO2. I haven't played Arma so I can't personally compare, but from my impression of the hearsay, Arma was too slow for most RO1 fans, and RO1 sacrificed way too many of the features which made people love Arma. In brief, either RO1 or RO2 would have to change a lot in the same kinds of ways to truly attract Arma fans in significant numbers.

If I had to put my finger on what I love most about RO2, I keep thinking of Alan Wilson's recent podcast interview...I get the sense that what he reveals about RO2's focus is not about striking some kind of arcade balance, it's more about the simple and sheer deadliness of the battlefield in an impressionistic sense. RO1 felt like a deadly battlefield to me, and RO2 even more, and this is what I like about the experience. The "easiness" (not to be mistaken with safety--I felt safe way more often in RO1 than in RO2 where I never feel safe, even if I am lucky to survive for a long time in a good camping spot) of RO2 is for me better described as responsiveness ("hit detection" and environment interaction issues aside momentarily --these are really glitches more than design decisions about gameplay), which consequently makes the field of play all the more dangerous; and which thus requires of me as a player not more run-n-gun stupidity but less; and more teamwork and tactics.

Take for example two really simple but hugely influential elements of this "easiness" that weren't part of RO1 and aren't going away from RO2: the mantling mechanic and material penetration by bullets. A little thought experiment: Forget for a moment about run speed, gun sway, speed to iron sights, "zoom", and all the other usual suspects...and think and realize how vastly different the gameplay is because of these two simple features which are generally not part of the outcry about the "arcadiness" of the game. The fences on Spartanovka. In RO1 these fences would be firstly impenetrable cover and secondly would herd players to either end of the fences to get forward of them --to me, those two aspects in themselves are waaaay more arcade-like than all the streamlined weapon handling, slightly faster movement speed, bandaging, zoom, the number of auto and semi-autos, and all other such so-dramatically lamented new features of RO2 combined, and that was from the halcyon days of RO1! I'm remembering not-so-fondly, even though generally I loved the map, the village in Berezina as an example of arbitrary and gamey conditions created by simple picket fences.

Overall I can honestly say that my experience of RO2 has not been one where I am rewarded for arcade-style ramboism...at all. It is true, so-called "arcade" reflexes play a role...but since when in war have they not? At the moment when two enemies encounter each other face to face, they are immediately sorted into two broad categories: the quick and the dead (for example regarding the PPSh 41 in Korea:"As one infantry captain stated: 'on full automatic it sprayed a lot of bullets and most of the killing in Korea was done at very close ranges and it was done quickly - a matter of who responded faster. OMG it was so arcade-ish the korean war devs were just trying to appeal to the COD kids!" --ok, you got me, the italicized part is my addition :p ) But given this element that pervades almost all games especially FPS games and actual wars besides, to genuinely contribute to winning rounds, you've got to be way more than a good arcade player, because round wins are measured by things of which who is the best shot is only one of many other factors. So for me, when you take away elements that make shooting easier, it's six of one and half dozen of the other, really, because even in RO1 it was generally a case of who saw who first and who was quicker (It's just that the "quicker" was a tiny bit "slower" if you understand me): it's other elements that aren't even generally complained about that weigh as more significant --and to me they weigh against arcade-ishness in favor of RO2. As I play more and I get better at RO2, this is more and more my feeling.

There, I said it. Thanks for your time. Hope to see some of you back in the game in not too long of a time.
 
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Sooo... despite the gameplay changes does the game still feel like a tripwire product?
Or does it feel like another company has bought up the rights to the Red orchestra name, and produced this game off the back of it?
I'm just wondering if things get exaggerated or the HoS experience is genuinely alien to the RO player.

Honestly it feels like a TWI game. shrug.
 
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I really don't have a huge issue with the game right now. Ping is completely and utterly terrible though and this takes away from enjoying the game. I know you guys are working on it but I thought I'd weigh in anyway.

I think the ability to limit weapons is going in the right direction but as others have said I still feel like there are a lot of rare weapons on the battlefield which ruin the way I believe the game was meant to be played: less run and gun more moving and covering.

Thank you for creating a single player experience from the side of the germans. This has too long been overlooked and even though the campaign was just a warm-up for multiplayer I really enjoyed it.
 
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