The Cook said:
Problem is... I think that in RO2 everything is too fast. You die too fast, you run too fast (not anymore in RO Classic), you lose too fast. When I play, the expected time of survival is barely 10 minutes, but when my friends play, I think that this goes to 1 or 2 minutes and this can be frustrating. I mean... how are you supposed to know the map if you are killed in 1-2 minutes? Oh, you mean that I'm supposed to know the maps playing the horrible campaign with bots, isn't it?
This is how I feel as well, and thus all the "RO Classic" shenanigans.
When I first played the beta, it was a shocking experience. Not in a "Oh wow, this is awesome!" way, but more in a "What the hell is going on?" way. It was just 20 seconds cycles of spawn-death, spawn-death and so on.
I think this was true for most of the other players as well. The game was fast paced, but the weapons were accurate and lethal. This is an awkward combination, fast paced gameplay doesn't go well with lethal weapons. The lifetime shortens dramatically and it leads to what I call an "
instagib fest", where it's all about who sees and shoots first and nested defenders having a huge advantage. It's one of the reasons it's so hard to win as Allies on Commisar's, or capture the first caps as Axis on Grain Elevator; because you have to run through open spaces while defenders wait for you with their pin-point accuracy. I think we can conclude that short firefights mean less fun and possible gameplay unbalance here.
The devs tried to cater to both hardcore base and new players by bumping the weapon accuracies and implementing realistic features, while for the "casuals" we got the zoom, faster movement, faster ADS and no sway all crammed into what is essentially a single gamemode. Relaxed/Realism didn't differ from a gameplay standpoint.
Now everyone can agree that this mode has pretty much failed satisfying anyone. That's why now TWI has made a 180 and is going the way of "diversification" rather than "unification". After some denial phase, plummeting sales and waning community made them realise it.
Right now, they're going the right way with Action and Classic modes. Action with lowered damage actually plays great, it leads to longer firefights and by longer firefights more tactical gameplay enjoyment. Classic does it the other way, by movement and sway penalties the firefights are extended again resulting in better gameplay moments. As a so called "RO vet", I think both modes are great steps in the right direction.
This brings us to our problem childs Relaxed Realism/ Realism modes. I think after Action and Classic, they will be redundant. I know they will be around for a while because of more stubbornness from dev side, but in the end compared to Action/Classic they will be less fun to play and harder to get into.
I don't know after so much time devs will be able to turn the tide(I really don't think so without going the KF way with massive sales and essentially giving the game away for free), but I hope RO2 was a good lesson for them in case of learning what their core competencies are and how are they implementing them in their gameplay designs.