After reading the forums a bunch, I feel a few things need to be said. I don't really know a better way to introduce this topic so i'm just going to start.
I get the impression reading a lot of threads, that players think that TWI are somehow trying to destroy their own game. Given the sort of posts floating around, you'd be forgiven for thinking TWI were anything other than a bunch of drunks drooling over their computers and spamming their software with random stuff trying to break their own game.
The guys went to Russia. They studied buildings and weapons. Took mesurements. A massive amount of research went into this game. They've released a BETA, are supporting it. They're encouraging and supporting modding. For the amount of money they put in to RO2, they could have made a CoD clone, released in on Xbox and tbh probably make more money. Yet they havn't
There's always uproar for sequels for anything. Always. Words and phrases like "dumbed down" or "sold out" get thrown about. Can you honestly say TWI have dumbed down RO2? TWI are one of maybe four companies currently producing PC focused shooters with mechanics and functions that we have to come to expect from PC games (The others are Valve, DICE and Bohemia Interactive).
Making a game more accessable doesn't mean it's a bad game. Or dumbed down. If new players don't join in, the community only gets smaller, producing the games demanded becomes less profitable and companies start to drop out from developing. Right now it might seem awful that a bunch of new players are in the game, running and gunning, but in a few weeks when the playerbase starts to improve, learning the maps and mechanics, getting to that point where unspoken teamwork starts to gel together and flow, these types of players will start to get cut down fast. What happens then, is they either get bored and quit the game, or they try and improve and the community grows.
There's a lot of talk about realism. That TWI have upped the realism, or removed it. RO2 is not a realistic game. Neither is RO1. A realistic war sim is a game you play, and the first time you die is also your last. You can never play the game again. Weapons jamming is realistic, should we add that? Or tripping over? Maybe we should include a system that won't let you play the game until you wear a vest that simulates pain when you get shot?
An enitrely realistic game would not be fun. Realism is simply a core concept the game is built around. Dirt 3 attempts to realistically simulate the speed and handling of rally cars. The Total War games attempt to realistcally simulate politics, economics, logistics etc and how they affect warfare of various periods in history. Red Orchestra's realistic concept is that individuals are not supermen, stronger alone than whole armies. Sure it's possible ingame to go on a lone spree, taking out the entire enemy force (And if you've read any Victoria Cross or Medal of Honour citations you'll know this occasionally happened), but the mechanics are in place to ensure that even if one team has three very good players, but twenty players not contributing, they will never overcome a team of players who aren't individually good, but are attempting to work together.
Which brings me to the topic that is closest and most important to myself. The bolt-action rifle and it's impact upon the game. I started gaming with UT, playing instagib. I then moved to MoHAA, playing rifles only, followed by CoD1, rifles only then CoD2, rifles only. There's an elitism around rifles only. We want to continue to play RO2 like we have played other games, and when we can't perform exactly like we did in previous games (RO1 included), there's a tendency to believe there is something wrong with the game itself instead of our own inability, or unwillingness, to learn and adapt.
To cry for realism, then complain when using a bolt rifle that it's not possible to outgun players with automatic weapons at 50m is not logical. This is where TWI have the incredibly daunting task of balancing a game that is a representation of war, something that is by it's nature imbalanced.
The big issue here I believe is the skill floors for different weapons. If you were to take two players who up until now had next to no experience with first person shooters, and give one a bolt-rifle and the other an SMG, the player with the SMG would probably come out on top. This is almost certainly an accurate representation of the real world circa 1944; an unexperience recruit would probably be better off with an automatic weapon than a bolt-rifle. This is where people take sides. Some believe the automatic weapons should be less accurate or do less damage, to balance them against bolt weapons, whereas the other side believe that reducing the amount of automatic weapons as they perform now is a more faithful to history way of balancing the weapons.
I think a better way of looking at balance is this; if a player joins a server and sees only the rifleman class available, he should always believe that taking that class will fill a role that is crucial to his team. If at any point a player joins the server and can't take any class other than rifleman and thinks "There is no point me playing", this is when the game has a serious balance issue.
I'm going to wrap up by saying what I believe to be the best course for balancing right now. I think bolt-rifles should always kill, with the exception of shots to extremities (Although rounds should penertrate arms and then chests, so shooting someone in the arm from the side should still enter their chest and kill them). Remember though, i'm a rifle elitist, so i'm always going to want my beloved bolt-rifles to be better. The nature of meta-game is that right now, it feels like SMGs are kings and bolt-rifles are placeholders until you can nab yourself a different weapon, but we may find in a few weeks or months when people improve that the meta-game shifts and bolt-rifles become the weapon of choice and there's an outcry to nerf them. Maybe after that pistols will become the meta-game Gods.
Also, props to TWI. Please, please, please continue making PC oriented shooters. Please keep including things like Firefight to try and grow the community. Please keep allowing us to customise our experience with mods, and allowing servers to have many options open to them. Some of us really appreciate that you're still supporting games that we want to play and that you've not left us by the roadside in favour of greater profits (Activision).
If you have something to say, by all means say it. Tell me i'm wrong. Just be civil about it. There's no need for trolling. When threads disolve into flame wars, the community splits. Then it shrinks. It then becomes harder to find incentive to put time, effort or money into making games for minority communities like this that want those sort of games, and everyone suffers for it, so please think before you post.
I get the impression reading a lot of threads, that players think that TWI are somehow trying to destroy their own game. Given the sort of posts floating around, you'd be forgiven for thinking TWI were anything other than a bunch of drunks drooling over their computers and spamming their software with random stuff trying to break their own game.
The guys went to Russia. They studied buildings and weapons. Took mesurements. A massive amount of research went into this game. They've released a BETA, are supporting it. They're encouraging and supporting modding. For the amount of money they put in to RO2, they could have made a CoD clone, released in on Xbox and tbh probably make more money. Yet they havn't
There's always uproar for sequels for anything. Always. Words and phrases like "dumbed down" or "sold out" get thrown about. Can you honestly say TWI have dumbed down RO2? TWI are one of maybe four companies currently producing PC focused shooters with mechanics and functions that we have to come to expect from PC games (The others are Valve, DICE and Bohemia Interactive).
Making a game more accessable doesn't mean it's a bad game. Or dumbed down. If new players don't join in, the community only gets smaller, producing the games demanded becomes less profitable and companies start to drop out from developing. Right now it might seem awful that a bunch of new players are in the game, running and gunning, but in a few weeks when the playerbase starts to improve, learning the maps and mechanics, getting to that point where unspoken teamwork starts to gel together and flow, these types of players will start to get cut down fast. What happens then, is they either get bored and quit the game, or they try and improve and the community grows.
There's a lot of talk about realism. That TWI have upped the realism, or removed it. RO2 is not a realistic game. Neither is RO1. A realistic war sim is a game you play, and the first time you die is also your last. You can never play the game again. Weapons jamming is realistic, should we add that? Or tripping over? Maybe we should include a system that won't let you play the game until you wear a vest that simulates pain when you get shot?
An enitrely realistic game would not be fun. Realism is simply a core concept the game is built around. Dirt 3 attempts to realistically simulate the speed and handling of rally cars. The Total War games attempt to realistcally simulate politics, economics, logistics etc and how they affect warfare of various periods in history. Red Orchestra's realistic concept is that individuals are not supermen, stronger alone than whole armies. Sure it's possible ingame to go on a lone spree, taking out the entire enemy force (And if you've read any Victoria Cross or Medal of Honour citations you'll know this occasionally happened), but the mechanics are in place to ensure that even if one team has three very good players, but twenty players not contributing, they will never overcome a team of players who aren't individually good, but are attempting to work together.
Which brings me to the topic that is closest and most important to myself. The bolt-action rifle and it's impact upon the game. I started gaming with UT, playing instagib. I then moved to MoHAA, playing rifles only, followed by CoD1, rifles only then CoD2, rifles only. There's an elitism around rifles only. We want to continue to play RO2 like we have played other games, and when we can't perform exactly like we did in previous games (RO1 included), there's a tendency to believe there is something wrong with the game itself instead of our own inability, or unwillingness, to learn and adapt.
To cry for realism, then complain when using a bolt rifle that it's not possible to outgun players with automatic weapons at 50m is not logical. This is where TWI have the incredibly daunting task of balancing a game that is a representation of war, something that is by it's nature imbalanced.
The big issue here I believe is the skill floors for different weapons. If you were to take two players who up until now had next to no experience with first person shooters, and give one a bolt-rifle and the other an SMG, the player with the SMG would probably come out on top. This is almost certainly an accurate representation of the real world circa 1944; an unexperience recruit would probably be better off with an automatic weapon than a bolt-rifle. This is where people take sides. Some believe the automatic weapons should be less accurate or do less damage, to balance them against bolt weapons, whereas the other side believe that reducing the amount of automatic weapons as they perform now is a more faithful to history way of balancing the weapons.
I think a better way of looking at balance is this; if a player joins a server and sees only the rifleman class available, he should always believe that taking that class will fill a role that is crucial to his team. If at any point a player joins the server and can't take any class other than rifleman and thinks "There is no point me playing", this is when the game has a serious balance issue.
I'm going to wrap up by saying what I believe to be the best course for balancing right now. I think bolt-rifles should always kill, with the exception of shots to extremities (Although rounds should penertrate arms and then chests, so shooting someone in the arm from the side should still enter their chest and kill them). Remember though, i'm a rifle elitist, so i'm always going to want my beloved bolt-rifles to be better. The nature of meta-game is that right now, it feels like SMGs are kings and bolt-rifles are placeholders until you can nab yourself a different weapon, but we may find in a few weeks or months when people improve that the meta-game shifts and bolt-rifles become the weapon of choice and there's an outcry to nerf them. Maybe after that pistols will become the meta-game Gods.
Also, props to TWI. Please, please, please continue making PC oriented shooters. Please keep including things like Firefight to try and grow the community. Please keep allowing us to customise our experience with mods, and allowing servers to have many options open to them. Some of us really appreciate that you're still supporting games that we want to play and that you've not left us by the roadside in favour of greater profits (Activision).
If you have something to say, by all means say it. Tell me i'm wrong. Just be civil about it. There's no need for trolling. When threads disolve into flame wars, the community splits. Then it shrinks. It then becomes harder to find incentive to put time, effort or money into making games for minority communities like this that want those sort of games, and everyone suffers for it, so please think before you post.