Is this game already dead?!

For me this game is dead as I have yet been able to launch the game past the splash screen, and yes I have posted in the proper support forums.
PUTZ has acknowledged this very issue, (and has a sticky for it) but has yet to provide a solution for the hundreds gamers with this or similar issues.

I just started an old game that I haven't played in a long time.. COD W@W to see how that old game compares to RO2 in number of players today.
At 10:30 AM, EST (I am in Florida, USA) and there are hundreds of servers and hundreds of gamers still playing this old game.

I and all of our gaming group have never had an issue with this game, and it plays nearly lag free at all times.

I know the RO fan boys will say this isn't a realistic game, but that isn't the point of my post.
The point is .. there are more gamers playing W@W than there are playing RO2 that is only a month and a half old.
And, I believe the reason is the early release of the game with so many problems, patches that in many cases create more issue than they solve .. and so many issues that have gone unresolved.
This game is unplayable for a great many players, even those with top end gaming rigs.

TWI also excluded many modes of play that were advertised as being included at release .. one main mode is co-op .. nowhere to be seen and no explaination or a time given for an update to include it.

In europe many players and servers and a good ping.

No complaints about that.

Today a new record for RO2 ... only 2053 players ... on the other hand Killing Floor 3256 players !!

Justin MacDuro said:

Today a new record for RO2 ... only 2053 players ... on the other hand Killing Floor 3256 players !!

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That's because KF has a working SDk. which means you have many mutators. maps upon map. all equaling to fun fun and more fun. on the other hand RO2 has 10 maps, how much fun can that be? before boredom kicks in?

You see i think the biggest mistake TWI made was not having SDK available day one. here we sit 6 weeks later and still noting. most people get tired of the same crap over and over again.
and move on to other things. I just hope " I'M " wrong and this wont be the down fall of RO2.


Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes, and in the future being a small company , they need to rely on the mod community to keep their product alive, or make like 50 maps and like 5 different game mods when releasing a game.

Justin MacDuro said:

Today a new record for RO2 ... only 2053 players ... on the other hand Killing Floor 3256 players !!

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New Halloween patch came out for KF today.

It's not surprising that the game is losing players, at this point the issue is no longer bugs it's just that there isn't a lot of content. Sure they promised there will be more but honestly I don't know if I even want to wait that long. My issue is just that the maps are getting boring - it doesn't help that most of them aren't very well balanced for pub play.

Das Bose said:

I know what it means, but it doesn't apply to this game.


We used to get the same thing thing with RO1 every week. " OMG it's dead/dying ". On and on, and over again.

Guess what, people are still playing it today

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Well, to be honest, those posts were somewhat correct in that the RO: Ostfront community significantly decreased in players over the later part of the game's life. People may still be playing it, but it's certainly not as it once was. Then again, it's an older game, and that's to be expected.

RO2 isn't necessarily dead or dying. But while Tripwire says that the drop in players is to be expected after a month, seeing the game drop from 12,000 players being online at once down to 1,200 - 2,000 on the better days is certainly indicative to me that this game is suffering quite a blow.
Other shooters have quite a large number of people playing them at any given time. Ostfront was a niche game and was very successful for what it was. RO2 on the other hand, tried to appeal to a broader audience, and hasn't really succeeded. Most people who came in from other franchises will likely go back to them if they haven't already.

Given the bugs and gameplay problems, as well as how poorly Tripwire and this community responds to criticism, I expect the current number to continue dwindling further until the game meets later-life Ostfront numbers. And I expect it to happen even more quickly than it did for its predecessor.

-=}WoLvErInE{=- said:

That's because KF has a working SDk. which means you have many mutators. maps upon map. all equaling to fun fun and more fun. on the other hand RO2 has 10 maps, how much fun can that be? before boredom kicks in?

You see i think the biggest mistake TWI made was not having SDK available day one. here we sit 6 weeks later and still noting. most people get tired of the same crap over and over again.
and move on to other things. I just hope " I'M " wrong and this wont be the down fall of RO2.


Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes, and in the future being a small company , they need to rely on the mod community to keep their product alive, or make like 50 maps and like 5 different game mods when releasing a game.

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I hate to blab on again so quickly, but there's another issue inherent here that I think deserves mentioning as a contributor to the falling player count.

As often as the community mentions the SDK release heralding new content, it should be pointed out that the RO2 SDK is ridiculously taxing in terms of system requirements. A significant portion of the player base, unless they have custom built gamer rigs with over 10 GB of RAM and a 64-bit OS, will not be able to run it. And even if they do, building the maps and rendering the lighting will be time-consuming.

Now, I don't know what Tripwire did with the UDK build they built the SDK off of, because I can run the 32-bit version of that UDK on my system with 3-4 GB of RAM. They've mentioned Light Massing, but I recall seeing that in the UDK build I've run on my PC. In any case, I'm having a hard time imagining what exactly they did to modify the SDK to drive up the performance requirements like this and wonder if they couldn't somehow optimize it for us poor saps who can't afford to throw money at game developer rigs.

That minor digression aside, this presents an obvious problem. One of Ostfront's greatest strengths was the sheer amount of maps and mod content available. It significantly aided in prolonging the game, and its mods were generally well-made. With the RO2 SDK requirements, one is left to wonder how much of the original mod community will still be able to mod for this game? We may get a few new modders, sure, but only a few. The community is fairly small still, after all.

If the average player can't make maps or custom content, the lifespan of this game is almost certainly threatened. I've heard multiple times how bored people are with the stock maps, how much they wish they could change things about them, and how they want to create new maps. I feel much the same way myself, having mapped in Ostfront and Darkest Hour, and with help from the modding community, having made custom skins and textures.
But I can't run the RO2 SDK, so I can't make the changes that my realism unit (Remember us, Tripwire? The realism community you talked so much about?) would like to make for the game to better suit our interests. And I can no longer feel the joy and frustration in learning how the Unreal Engine works so I can create content for it. There have been rumblings among some in the community as a whole about moving back to Ostfront. Suffice it to say, the lack of mod capabilities for this game are driving me to feel that way as well.

Only 380 people on :C

Field Marshal Rommel said:

What amazes me is that there are more people playing pos Day of Defeat Source than this.

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Not surprising, Valve being the big devs and TWI being the Indie Devs.

I kinda think this demostrates what most casual gamers think about RO2..

''I got it for

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ok game dead
-2000 players after 2 month s release .... total fail
ty tripwire.

Cyper said:

I kinda think this demostrates what most casual gamers think about RO2..

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This is just my personal opinion, but I feel RO2 was never intended for "casual gamers" - it was simply intended to spread out from the genuinely "hardcore gamer" audience of the previous games. For me, a true casual gamer is one who plays flash games and things like Peggle I don't count those who usually play your typical FPS and then choose to try a WW2 realism game, as "casual". Maybe that's a disagreement on terminology, but even given RO2's loosening of mechanics - I still don't see it as casual gamer material.

The "reviewer" you quoted states that he gets arty'd all over the place and can't get kills before dying. Myself, I can count the number of times I've been repeatedly and annoyingly arty'd on two hands - yes it happens occasionally, but that's more a sign of clever arty use than a broken game IMO He's exxagerrating, and as such, the merit of his review is lessened. Arty is incredibly effective in the right hands - if it wasn't, it'd be a weak and pointless game mechanic.

I do sometimes fail to get kills between respawns, but usually that's because I'm a Rifleman, and the situation requires me to take ground in a risky way rather than hang back and let the Assaults do the real risky stuff. If the situation isn't desperate and I'm doing the job of my class, I get kills - and I'm not highly skilled by any stretch

The game is pretty much dead for me. First - very bad release day, with performance problems and not working stats at all. Ok, the performance stats got fixed little by little but the stats pulled off many players, including me. If the stats were just broken for everybody, I mean not counting for everybody ok.. but to fights against players with max level and weapons while you are lvl 0 is just bs. Other than that - the maps... they are so imbalanced for the russian team, even I got annoyed from that because I play as the axis by default and we always win, its boring you know. Axis' weapons are superior too, you know which weapons I have in mind xD My last hope are Rising Storm and IC: Vietnam. If those mods can't bring back the game from the dead, nothing will can. I was waiting RO2 so much, I imagined how I play it and in what epic battles I participate. Nothing of this happened tho :/ And I was fairly disappointed after the release day. Im fine with the 40 euro TF2 hats and KF chars that I got with RO2 pre order. The money are something that we can earn back but the end user trust and respect its not so easy to earn (unless you are cod kid or bf fanboy).

Rattler said:

Other than that - the maps... they are so imbalanced for the russian team, even I got annoyed from that because I play as the axis by default and we always win, its boring you know.

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I play Russians, and I've come to the conclusion that all weapons on both sides are pretty well balanced (except the DP-28, which barely competes with the MG-34, but that's an issue with the gun itself and not with its representation in the game). It's also quite possible to win maps as Russians, but it demands extra coordination and teamwork. For example, we won Commissar's House today. I'd never seen Russians win it before, but everyone knew that they needed to push hard, there was smoke where it was needed, the whole thing just clicked. It got a little lonely on VOIP, though.

I guess you are not playing for the first time, so you have some rounds on this map.. do you think its normal to see the russian team to win Commissar's House after so many matches played on this map? I dont think its normal <.<

Rattler said:

but to fights against players with max level and weapons while you are lvl 0 is just bs.

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I looks bad, but in game on hardcore almost every hit can result in death, so killing other players, even those experienced ones, is not that hard after you learn how to shoot in order to hit and learn maps.

Rattler said:

Other than that - the maps... they are so imbalanced for the russian team, even I got annoyed from that because I play as the axis by default and we always win, its boring you know.

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I've see many different results. The most important thing is communication and cooperation or just play with tactic in mind. All classes have their ways and if you will use them how they should be and each man will do his duty then it doesn't matter what team I am in - we win, because of that.

Rattler said:

Axis' weapons are superior too, you know which weapons I have in mind

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I blame a man instead of the weapon. I've had good results with any weapon on any map. If you're competent enough you can kill anyone even with old rusty bolt-action rifle.

To many automatic weapons

To many automatic weapons

There are to many automatic weapons classes in RO2, and for me that is a big turnoff; and I find myself not playing RO2 so much anymore because of this sole reason.

If I want a autweapon-fest I would by BF3 (which I'm acctually am considering now).