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RO1 realism comparison to RO2 realism. Trying to be unbiased.

Poerisija

Grizzled Veteran
May 15, 2009
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In this topic I try to open some eyes mostly blinded by hate or nostalgia or I don't even know what. Try both games. I've tried to describe both games truthfully and unbiasedly. If I failed somewhere, please notify me and I'll correct my post.

I'll say it here first so you keep on reading. RO1 is a wonderful game that changed the world for me and many others. RO2 is a wonderful game that refined what RO1 did, and with slight tweaking will grow and be something we all wanted from old Ro:CA players to newcomers seeking tactical realism they've wanted.

I played Ro1 for over 200 hours and DH for 150 hours more and currently at 125 hours in RO2 retail and 67 hours of beta. While there are differences in RO1 and RO2 realism in many different areas, you cannot say RO1 was more realistic. Let me elaborate below.

While I haven't been in actual combat, I've played Airsoft games for years with my trusty MP40 and I've been to army where we had training exercises with laser guns. RO2 is much closer to what my perception of "actual combat" is based on army exercises and training, and to a lesser degree - airsoft.

6_190.jpg


Above is a picture of the system we were wearing in these simulations - laser attached to gun shooting blanks and detection system attached to combat gear.

Again, this is just MY opinion and NOT based on any actual hard facts someone is sure to dig out. Please read the whole thread before hitting down/upvote.


RO1 non-realistic quirks - some present in RO2, mentioned below.

You can reload while crawling. Without losing any speed.

You can aim down the sights while crawling and it's very accurate. This one in particular is rather game-breaking.

You can go from crouching to standing without losing the aimpoint. You'll be 100% accurate while pop-up-shooting. Again, gamebreaking. Also present in Ro2.

You cannot aim accurately beyond 50-100 meters without crouching and putting your nose up against the screen. I realized this the other day while playing FallenHeroes and trying to shoot someone in the middle of the park (about 70 meters or so from where I was) - I couldn't see him if I was slouched back on my chair, I had to crouch and put my face about 30cm away from my 22" screen. Engagement ranges are nowhere near realistic or even sensible. Also, it's bad on your back to nerd-crouch.

You cannot accurately fire SMG's to any degree beyond 40-50 meters.

PTRD and in general tanks - again very unrealistic due to wtf-angling and bad penetration data guns and armor data on most tanks. I blame the old engine on this one.

General clumsiness and slowness of everything. You can't hipfire MG without pressing mb2 first, you cannot cancel reloading except by tossing your gun away, you're slow, unresponsive and cannot run, even if in mortal danger, for more than 10 seconds or so. This is one of the biggest unrealistic things about RO1. I'm not fit my any standards but I can run for a few kilometers at faster pace than RO1 soldiers can - with all the modern gear we had to carry in the army.


And now, to be fair and not biased, I'll list non-realistic quirks about RO2, some present in RO1, also mentioned.

Speed of aiming down the sight after sprinting. This one seems bugged, since It's much faster after sprinting than say, trying to do it while standing still - where it's almost perfect.

Slight lack of inertia. Inertia IS there and it's ALMOST perfect, but sometimes you can stop slightly too fast. Also there's the issue where people run up and down stairs way too fast and over rubbled ground there should be a, again, SLIGHT speed decrease. Maybe 5% or 10%. Running over uneven ground doesn't so much slow you down as it increases the risk of tripping and falling on your face, thought I'm sure this won't get modelled. The best abstraction is slowing guys down while running over rough rubble.

PTRS again is way too powerful, the omnipotent AT rifles have been a problem in the series always. Tanks also seem bugged in the armor department - PzIV is invulnerable from the sides (damn near so at least) and T34 front armor is too vulnerable to PTRS. Again, I hope these are bugs and will get fixed. Again, present in RO1 with a different AT-rifle.

Tank Aimbot-AI. AI - good idead. Aimbotting AI hullgunner? Bad idea.

The weapons distribution - while there are way too many MkB's around I cannot blame the game on too many smg's. It's Stalingrad, known for it's brutal close encounter combats AND unrealistic weapon loadouts were present in RO1 too. I didn't comment it on there, I won't comment it on RO2. Except for the MkB, which in my opinion, is the sole single biggest unrealistic thing in RO2. Having 1 is maybe ok, but 6? No. Just no. Also present in RO1, with MP41's available and PPD's where it had been phased out long ago. No-one complained about it there.

Guns are bit too accurate. Adding again SLIGHTLY more weight to them would be perfect. ARMA:OA did it almost perfectly. Copy them.

Lack of stamina effect on gun accuracy. This is the number one gamebreaker in RO2. Again, copy ARMA:OA, they did it perfectly.

I'd also tweak the ability to steady breathing to be affected by stamina more and in general - you don't shoot while holding your breath. It makes your muscles involuntarily tremble due to body oxygen preservation kicking in. You let breath out and don't inhale while taking the shot. This is how pressing shift should be in RO2. It only gives a window of 2-3 seconds of near-perfectly accurate aiming and then you have to inhale or start trembling. The zoom is ok, no issues with 1:1 scaling with real world.

Things present in both games - protected areas. In RO1 these were minefields that sometimes spawned on you when enemy capped an area and you were instantly blown up. People didn't complain about it in RO1, but are now complaining about it in RO2.

Wounding system. RO2 seems like it SHOULD have a deeper wounding system that just isn't implemented. Hopefully this will be fixed and RO1 had nonsense wounding system where you basically got a handicap for a couple of seconds and were free to go afterwards. Both have faults. I'm hoping RO2's system gets fixed soon.

Small maps. Maps weren't larger in RO1, at least not the stock maps. Faster movement (which is realistic - soldier in RO2 isn't inhumanly fast. He runs at about 5kp/h which is actually quite a medium speed) and ability to scale everything to 1:1 scale (the dreaded zoom) makes them seem smaller, IE:exactly the size they ARE. Some maps are too small to hold 64 players too.

Player models are too noticeable from the terrain - I suspect this is an engine issue, was also present in RO1 but to a lesser degree. More moving grass and bushes should do the trick. Looking at original Ghost Recon - where it was done good.

Progression system - I was against it from the start. I still am.

I'll edit my post if I come up with more while playing.

Thank you if you read through it - and didn't hit downvote as soon as possible.
 
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Guns are bit too accurate.

lets get this right.

guns are accurate, there wouldnt be much use in a gun that doesnt hit what you aim at.

now maybe you mean "i meant more sway etc" then get it right, because theres a difference in saying that the guns are too accurate vs saying something along the lines of "aiming seems too easy" because your not talking about the weapons...because like i said, guns are accurate, people are a whole other story.
 
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Realism in games is extremely tricky in my opinion. While many features in RO2 by fact makes it more arcade than realistic, and more run and gun than than tactical, such as perks, increased HUD elements, skillpoints, ability to sprint fast, and so on there's another factor that plays an important role.

In my opinion the weaponhandling in RO ost and ro2 are somehow equal - they're both unrealistic in their own way. But the reason why I prefer RO osts weaponhandling isnt because it's more realistic.

While the weapons in RO ost aren't neccesary realistic (inaccurate, have a lot of sway) somehow it result in a quite realistic gameplay. While the weaponhandling in RO2 is more realistic it results in more unrealistic gameplay. This is simply due to the fact that there is a need for something to hinder the player or rather punish the player for not playing the game in a realistic manner.

In real-life, the most noticable handicap a soldier have is phycological stuff, such as being scared, extremely tired, hungry, cold, warm, which will affect the way you handle the weapons and how you think. Unfortunately, this is not possible to add in a game, and even if it was, it would kinda fade away the point of a tactical game if soldiers suddenly got shellshock syndrome and were more or less incapable of playing the game.

So it's quite intresting.. people have been discussing this before, stuff about 'removing realism to increase the realism'. It's also about what the gameplay itself become in my opinion. Most of the features in arma are extremely unrealistic but result in a more realistic gameplay.
 
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Though difference between really realistic ones and ro2 might seem small, that small difference make all the gigantic differences in overall feeling and gameplay.

Just compare overall feeling after playing GRAW2 pc mp, ARMA2 PR and pony RO2.

Simple 2nd magic badange ride is enough to take away all of your battlefield tension and fear among other things.
 
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Like I've said before, they do not need to add sway in order to gain realistic play. If they would add a longer time to align the ironsights in several situations. Make some adjustedments to the inertia of the character, such as being slow on stairs or rubble would already achieve much of the desired result without having to compromise for realism. And preferably add a wounding system which makes bandages less useful.

In other words, I think that taking away realism to create realistic gameplay is just BS.
 
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Though difference between really realistic ones and ro2 might seem small, that small difference make all the gigantic differences in overall feeling and gameplay.

Just compare overall feeling after playing GRAW2 pc mp, ARMA2 PR and pony RO2.

Simple 2nd magic badange ride is enough to take away all of your battlefield tension and fear among other things.

True.

Even the smallest changes can make a game more realistic or unrealistic. For instance, even adding a autohealing feature in arma2 and increased resistance agianst bullets, would totally kill the game. Even removing the lockdown timer and somehow figure out away to make the player 'scared' of being killed would make huge changes in terms of how people play RO2. By the way, of course removing certain realistic features makes it more realistic. If I could climb make three meters long standing jumps, do wallruns, or swing between bars, which is perfectly possible in real-life, it would kill the game.
 
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I agree with pretty much everything you said, especially in regards to inertia and movement over inclines or unstable surfaces.

The suggestions regarding reduced speed in swinging larger weapons around I've seen on the forums would help solve the problems with the assault troop machine gunners that are becoming more prevalent on servers.
A delay for sprinting soldiers in raising and steadying their weapons would also be nice, as having to stop the forward momentum to raise the sights and acquire the target is a bit too easy. I've been frequently killed while behind cover by people who simply sprint into the open, spot me, and immediately raise their sights and kill me in a single shot or burst.

As you pointed out, though, this is something you'd often see in Ostfront, too. It was harder to do, due to the unrealistic weapon sway, but a lot of people would dive in the open and instantly pick off people behind cover.

In regards to climbing inclines, I agree there should be a degree of slowing down. It's not uncommon to see a German with an Mkb.42 sideways-strafing quickly up and down the staircase in the Command Center on Apartments, firing down into the basement hallway with no loss of speed or hip-firing accuracy. And it's not uncommon for people with the low ground on a staircase to simply sprint up and kill someone at the top who you'd think would have the advantage (As a former stair builder and installer, this annoys the hell out of me).


Also, while Ostfront did have rare weapons, I think that those weapons are somewhat more excusable in the context of the broader scope of the game, as it encompassed 1941-45, so in the earlier war maps, you could justify having a scattered PPD-40 there somewhere for variety. Some maps used rare weapons with no real historical basis, but the maps were significantly more accessible for editing purposes.

In RO2, however, the rare weapons have gone from the initial premise of the elite Hero weapon to becoming standard issue. And there's little-to-no real justification in having them in such numbers in Stalingrad. This is more a problem with the German side, however. The Soviets used PPShs and SVT-40s in fairly large numbers. And so did the Germans, who, due to stricter delegation and smaller numbers of MP40s and G41s, often picked up Soviet weapons to improve their CQC performance and firepower.

I argue that MP40s should be given to squad leaders and commanders with the option of a PPSh, while German assault troops use captured PPShs. German semi-auto riflemen should also have more SVT availability, as the G41 was widely disliked and seldom used compared to the hundreds of thousands of superior SVTs they captured earlier in the campaign.
 
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Good post Poerisija.

I think this points out that we need to come up with a different word for "realism", or at least a better definition of it in with regard to FPSs.

Some people are "rivet-counters" for whom realism means uniforms, weapons and load outs, whilst others expect "real" behaviour on the battlefield with units, orders and morale, and then we get those who demand that weapons behave according to "real" physics.

Of course, most of us have an opinion on each of these facets, but arguments about realism in forums (not just here I might add) often go along the lines of "It's not realistic because those camo patterns weren't used til '44" vs "It is realistic because you lose peripheral vision when iron-sighted" which is pointless.

Stahlgeist - you posted whilst I was writing - take none of the above personally!

I think Cyper is pointing the way with talk about ending up with gameplay which feels real, or perhaps feels like we think WW2 would be like (if you couldn't get hurt) by chopping out "realism" aspects which actually just get in the way of their supposed aim.
 
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Also, death is not penalized enough. People take stupid risks and it results in silly gameplay at times.

Faster and more agile movement is compensated by more deadly and accurate guns. This is good, but when you can just spawn close to combat after dying, it's kinda pointless and results in meat grinders that require little thinking.

Squad leader spawn is a good thing, regular spawns being close to combat is not. Or maybe put a longer spawn queue. 30+ seconds?
 
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Like I've said before, they do not need to add sway in order to gain realistic play. If they would add a longer time to align the ironsights in several situations. Make some adjustedments to the inertia of the character, such as being slow on stairs or rubble would already achieve much of the desired result without having to compromise for realism. And preferably add a wounding system which makes bandages less useful.

In other words, I think that taking away realism to create realistic gameplay is just BS.


This was talked countless times, but actaully grab a rifle and try to shoot them in a range for 100m,200m, 300m targets standing, or crouching, not prone, if possible.

Try to hold the rifle almost perfectly still pointing at one small target far away for more than 7 seconds.

Even the small but inevitable twitching movement can pretty much derail your accurate shot which is different from current ro2 arcady system.

Not just one perfect shot but couple of successive shots, then you'll understand why arma 2 have varying twitch like small but fast movement not super slow sway of ro2 while aiming down the sight.
 
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In this topic I try to open some eyes mostly blinded by hate or nostalgia or I don't even know what.

You failed to intrigue me there.
People came to RO not because of its realism.
I know I loved RO because it wasn't like any other shooters out there with people running all over hip shooting or run-prone-spam. RO, while not realistic, had the realistic feel to it.
I was so fed up with arcade shooters and games designed towards with adolescents with ADHD.
RO had a good pace to the game, enough environment to assemble forces for tactical advances.

No matter how much you argue that RO2 is more realistic, it doesn't have the game play that I enjoyed.
 
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You failed to intrigue me there.
People came to RO not because of its realism.
I know I loved RO because it wasn't like any other shooters out there with people running all over hip shooting or run-prone-spam. RO, while not realistic, had the realistic feel to it.
I was so fed up with arcade shooters and games designed towards with adolescents with ADHD.
RO had a good pace to the game, enough environment to assemble forces for tactical advances.

No matter how much you argue that RO2 is more realistic, it doesn't have the game play that I enjoyed.

That's all fine. I'm not arguing which one has better gameplay - that's purely up to each individual. I'm not trying to get anyone change his preferences. I'm trying to make people think WHY they prefer one thing over another and use correct reasoning for that.
 
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Also, death is not penalized enough. People take stupid risks and it results in silly gameplay at times.

Faster and more agile movement is compensated by more deadly and accurate guns. This is good, but when you can just spawn close to combat after dying, it's kinda pointless and results in meat grinders that require little thinking.

Squad leader spawn is a good thing, regular spawns being close to combat is not. Or maybe put a longer spawn queue. 30+ seconds?

Another idea I agree with. I think that longer spawn queues might throw people off, but moving the spawns back further away might be a better option, especially in light of the spawn camping that happens on some maps.

Part of what I enjoyed about Ostfront was actually getting to the objectives and having a bit of a journey to get there opened up different methods of approach and tactics you could use. In RO2, the objectives are usually pretty close together and the spawn is close to them, so you can easily just sprint over and keep getting into the fray. I understand they did this on purpose, but it does - as you said - turn it into a meatgrinder, and it makes capturing objectives feel tedious and unrewarding when you clear it out and they're already coming right back into it.

Spawning further back will also be important when they introduce the Sdkfz.251 and Universal Carrier in the first content update. I'm looking forward to that and hope there'll be more room for combined arms maneuvers.
 
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Another idea I agree with. I think that longer spawn queues might throw people off, but moving the spawns back further away might be a better option, especially in light of the spawn camping that happens on some maps.

Part of what I enjoyed about Ostfront was actually getting to the objectives and having a bit of a journey to get there opened up different methods of approach and tactics you could use. In RO2, the objectives are usually pretty close together and the spawn is close to them, so you can easily just sprint over and keep getting into the fray. I understand they did this on purpose, but it does - as you said - turn it into a meatgrinder, and it makes capturing objectives feel tedious and unrewarding when you clear it out and they're already coming right back into it.

Spawning further back will also be important when they introduce the Sdkfz.251 and Universal Carrier in the first content update. I'm looking forward to that and hope there'll be more room for combined arms maneuvers.


Aye, I have high hopes for the bigger maps with APC's. It might open a totally new side of RO2 we haven't really seen yet. Like Ro:Ost is totally different when playing say, Danzig and then Berezina.
 
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The only point you presented that I'm completely against is the MG hip fire. I really liked how we had to press RMB to be able to hip fire MGs in ROOST. MGs are very heavy weapons that require a very specific stance to hip fire, and pressing the RMB simulates that in RO1. Besides, they don't have any inertia in RO2, so you can move your MG around at the same speed as you can with an SMG, making the MG-34 way more effective at hip firing that an MP40. The MG is also a long weapon, and you can't jog IRL with it in a ready position, so it should be carried like the PTRS is carried. ATM the game encourages you to use your MG as an assault weapon instead of a support weapon.

And I agree with Cyper that in order to achieve realistic results, sometimes we must take away realistic features.
 
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Even though this argument has been going on for too long I read through it.

I agree about the mkb limited for Heroes, but if this is true about Ostfront:
Then wtf.

On some maps you could choose MP41 instead of MP40 and PPD instead of PPSH.

Both weapons were really rare (not MKB rare) at the time those maps take place.

Not a big issue as MkB, because MkB is an assault rifle which totally changes how the weapon performs.
 
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Realism in games is extremely tricky in my opinion. While many features in RO2 by fact makes it more arcade than realistic, and more run and gun than than tactical, such as perks, increased HUD elements, skillpoints, ability to sprint fast, and so on there's another factor that plays an important role.

In my opinion the weaponhandling in RO ost and ro2 are somehow equal - they're both unrealistic in their own way. But the reason why I prefer RO osts weaponhandling isnt because it's more realistic.

While the weapons in RO ost aren't neccesary realistic (inaccurate, have a lot of sway) somehow it result in a quite realistic gameplay. While the weaponhandling in RO2 is more realistic it results in more unrealistic gameplay. This is simply due to the fact that there is a need for something to hinder the player or rather punish the player for not playing the game in a realistic manner.

In real-life, the most noticable handicap a soldier have is phycological stuff, such as being scared, extremely tired, hungry, cold, warm, which will affect the way you handle the weapons and how you think. Unfortunately, this is not possible to add in a game, and even if it was, it would kinda fade away the point of a tactical game if soldiers suddenly got shellshock syndrome and were more or less incapable of playing the game.

So it's quite intresting.. people have been discussing this before, stuff about 'removing realism to increase the realism'. It's also about what the gameplay itself become in my opinion. Most of the features in arma are extremely unrealistic but result in a more realistic gameplay.

Agree on this. Although RO1 was in some aspects less realistic than RO2 the gameplay resulted in a more war like experience in ro1.(and again it was not overdoing with realism because it wasnt meant to be a simulator like arma) That is why I am really looking forward to the Fire and Maneuver mod, the mod creator shares your opinion that "the game needs to sacrifice some realistic features to play more realisticly because it is a game"
 
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