So many things wrong with this game

Was going to type a lovely long post just about player numbers etc but gave up, a paragraph will do.
The playercount of RO2:HOS behaves in exactly the same way as any other release on steam. Peak player counts plumet after the release of any games, fact. Current RO2 Peak player drop from release, 90%. Sounds bad right? No! Current Deus Ex: Human Revolution peak player drop from release, 95% and yet that game is still as fantastic to play as it was on release. See the trend? RO:OST was an exception to the rule, it already had its playerbase there so no significant drop occured.

The large majority of the so-called issues people state with the game are personal preferences, and to react to every whim and idea would be a shocking thing for TWI to do, nevermind being impossible. Mutators / modes could be the only way everyone will find what they want in this game, from tactical realism to realistic-ish arcade modes. Admitidely there are some things I would like changing, but i wont lose any sleep over them not being included and i sure as hell wont stop playing the game!

I enjoyed RO:OST and I enjoy RO2:HOS just as much, if not even more for it's increased playability (for me at least ).

Time for a lie down...

Calumhm said:

Oops, meant to DIS-like. This could happen, with a hyped-up, well known, super polished game like COD5 or Uncharted 2. But you're asking a game made by a modders-made-good company, with a miniscule advertising budget, and negligible hype outside of the forums (until near release) to equal their well-ripened, fully mature previous game's playerbase within a few months!

Compare to Arma 2 for instance, utterly broken for around 2~ months after release, and probably looked like a catastrophic failure compared to the playerbase of Operation Flashpoint. But with time, updates and content, it grew. Just as I'm sure early players of RO1 will tell you it did. But yes, being their largest ever project, it's fair to say RO2 had their rockiest launch yet

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It doesn't matter who the publisher is/was. Fans of RO could overcome the bugs of HOS easily, as much as the OF/Arma/Arma 2 community could forgive Bohemia on the bugs.

The major problem for many supporters of RO/RO2 comes from promises that were made pre-release and then not kept. The best example for this is the realism mode. When the first gameplay videos came out, we were told that those were recorded on "relaxed realism" and that there will be a realism mode for the RO-players. Where is this mode? I mean, what's the difference between those 2 modes? Can you tell me?

TWI has done everything possible to keep the RO-players (some call them "vets") happy with statements that the game (RO2) will be like RO if not even more hardcore because of the new features. TWI knew that the former RO-players will help them a lot in advertising their game and intentionally or not, many people think that they have been mislead by the statements and promises that were made pre-release when they saw the game.

Pre-release I have told many of my friends that RO 2 will be "The game" they should buy. None of them did so until now because I told them to better wait after that buggy release. Some of them have played it at my home now and rather like it or dislike it. Still, I don't think anybody bought it because I told them what my issues with the game still are.

Beta testers like Zetsumei and hockeywarrior seem to have their own issues as they have addressed feedback to TWI directly and I believe, somehow were not allowed to give feedback on the forums. If I had read that one of those 2 doesn't like the game, then I would've been worried as well as I am pretty much feeling about RO/RO2 the same way as they do. bswearer could sing a song about publicly critizing the game pre-release...

I can only conclude for myself that I will not pre-order a game from TWI anymore. I will first wait for feedback from friends that own the games for quite some time and who I consider reliable and honest on giving me true feedback.

What baffles me is that they didn't really understand what made their first game so great and improve on it. They rather understood what made CoD a hit and tried to improve on that, which didn't really go well.

_Dariuszek_ said:

Facts?
You you are a gaming industry analyst?
I see...

If you want to talk with me send private msg.
I will not spam forum anymore talking with you.

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LOL, what could I possibly want to say to you in a pm? You have made your own mind up about the player numbers and you don't want to let facts get in the way.

That's your problem, not anybody else's

Rak said:

What baffles me is that they didn't really understand what made their first game so great and improve on it. They rather understood what made CoD a hit and tried to improve on that, which didn't really go well.

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In other words, they made it too much McDonald's and too less 5 Michelin Star restaurant.

Rak said:

What baffles me is that they didn't really understand what made their first game so great and improve on it. They rather understood what made CoD a hit and tried to improve on that, which didn't really go well.

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Exactly. This reminds me of a US ad I've seen about half a year ago, it was a chinese university class listening to a political officer. He was talking about the acient Greeks, Romans and so on. Then asking the question "why were they defeated?" and giving the answer himself "because they stepped away from their basics".

Sadly I didn't find it on youtube to get a link here.

This is actually what Tripwire did in my eyes. Instead of relying on a community that has been by their side for over 6 years (RO Mod till present) they tried to make it perfect for everybody. A thing that will never work. No car, no woman, no TV set etc. will ever be equally awesome, hot, whatever for everyone. Like I previously said: People who don't take their time to post in dev forums don't want their voices heard. Speculations about possible customers who might like certain things is alright but leaving the old guys behind is not.


Promotion and advertising was done well on this game but the potential of the game wasn't really used. You had one round in the chamber and in my eyes you wasted it. This round could have had a blasting impact but it failed, I'd say you've hit the outer perimeter of the target disc.

Tripwire showed some stuff in Cologne, Germany in 2008, which "accidentally" made its way to the public. These things were used to keep the crowd hot all the upcoming years. It's a bad thing if the stuff you're presenting in 2010 is basically dating from 2008.

RO2 on release and still now feels like that. Tripwire has begun the real work somewhat in May 2011 and therefore had to postpone the game's release from August to September. I'm certain that IF you had begun working really in 2008 and used the entire 3 years with hard labor you really had re-defined WW2 FPS. Including all of the stuff the community wanted in the game.

In that belief I too told my friends that RO2 is THE FPS of the century. When it was released and some bought it on first day, I can hardly describe how embarassed I felt when they told me their experiences and reminded me of my great enthusiasm towards the game before its release.


If you guys got balls you acknowledge defeat and get back to your desks and re-do most of it, making it the game it should and deserves to be.
I don't care if I have to download some 20GB more, as patch count and size brings us all close to that number anyway.

Zetsumei said:

The effect now is that someone set up covering an entrance, won't have any real advantage over someone just running in the room. Its purely a matter of who sees who first.

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This is explicit self-contradiction, though. If someone is set up covering an entrance, they will see the person who runs into the room first. Therefore they have, by your own metric, have a "real advantage" over the person running into the room.

Rak said:

What baffles me is that they didn't really understand what made their first game so great and improve on it. They rather understood what made CoD a hit and tried to improve on that, which didn't really go well.

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Lol, what made CoD a hit?

And what of that was copied into RO2 in YOUR opinion?

Cause only similarity I see is the unlocks (that CoD didn't invent btw).

Still way too many SMG/semis despite last update if you ask me.

MarioBava said:

This is explicit self-contradiction, though. If someone is set up covering an entrance, they will see the person who runs into the room first. Therefore they have, by your own metric, have a "real advantage" over the person running into the room.

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When you continue to run and gun you will be at a much higher level of alertness than when covering an area. If nothing happens for a while you will slightly relax your alertness. Next to that some people are simply inherently faster than others. What it comes down to is pure reaction time.

It will always depend on reaction time but the difference is whether you run in the room spot someone raise your ironsights and kill him. Or walk into the room with your ironsights already raised or your weapon ready at the hip. It doesn't take time to make your weapon ready to fire so people don't take precautions any more.

Sensemann said:

Beta testers like Zetsumei and hockeywarrior seem to have their own issues as they have addressed feedback to TWI directly and I believe, somehow were not allowed to give feedback on the forums. If I had read that one of those 2 doesn't like the game, then I would've been worried as well as I am pretty much feeling about RO/RO2 the same way as they do. bswearer could sing a song about publicly critizing the game pre-release...

I can only conclude for myself that I will not pre-order a game from TWI anymore. I will first wait for feedback from friends that own the games for quite some time and who I consider reliable and honest on giving me true feedback.

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They certainly kept it under wraps well pre-release for a casual observer like I was. I feel kinda bad for recommending RO2 without even playing it myself and wish I knew before hand about potential issues with gameplay. All I could say was positive stuff about TWI and that they were the dev team to keep an eye on. If I had known I would have been disappointed but would have stayed away. I guess Tripwire just wanted to use the fanbase to sell the game then who would hear the Ostfront player's complaints if RO2 was a success with the mainstream? You know there would be no realism mode improvements then.

TBH I think dev team members just need to clear the air and come clean on some things. I think a lot of what was posted before launch was all about keeping the fanbase quiet to help keep a positive vibe around the game. Now after launch they don't post at all about these things they said before. Not addressing them just leaves an unpleasant smell in the air. I certainly never expect another sequel now sadly, and I think people in charge of RO2 will draw all the wrong conclusions about why RO2 got this negativity and will most likely decide realism games just aren't for them anymore.

They should have made it clear before release that RO2 would be very different to Ostfront in terms of gameplay style, and they probably should not have called it an actual sequel. I don't want the devs to feel they have to make a game they don't want to make, but they should have been open about it pre-release and let people discuss it like Zets or bswearer or whoever else who was kept silenced. People would have been a lot more understanding. I actually like fast paced games but I expected a very different style of game with RO2

Zetsumei said:

When you continue to run and gun you will be at a much higher level of alertness than when covering an area. If nothing happens for a while you will slightly relax your alertness. Next to that some people are simply inherently faster than others. What it comes down to is pure reaction time.

It will always depend on reaction time but the difference is whether you run in the room spot someone raise your ironsights and kill him. Or walk into the room with your ironsights already raised or your weapon ready at the hip. It doesn't take time to make your weapon ready to fire so people don't take precautions any more.

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Even worse, if you're holding down a doorway with a bolt-action rifle, your first shot may hit them straight in the chest or leg without killing or fazing them, allowing them to mow you down as you frantically try to bolt.

Here are the changes I'm waiting for:

--More sway, a little less zoom
--Better squad system ( HERE )
--Fixing inability to melee prone enemies
--Fixing Tank Hull MG AI
--Better wound system (limb disabling, full suppression when hit, slower bleeding and bandaging)
--Fix LMG hipfire
--ability to choose which unlocks to equip
--Fixing tank armor bugs/inaccuracies
--sound fixes: clipping, death sounds, footsteps, soft explosions, etc...

I just played for good 2-3 hours and I WAS NOT BOTHERED by hipfiring MG's or run&gunners because they really aren't that popular tactics. You people play the game recently?

melipone said:

long text

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Absolutely right. I couldn't have said it better. If I had known before launch that RO 2 will become like RO 2 currently is, I would have probably still bought it because it's TWI. Most likely, I wouldn't mind the gameplay then because it would be acceptable.
Since it was advertised as a RO 1 + better graphics + more features + more hardcore realism + easy accessible, I expected it to be just that. And now it's not. The devs put the expectations so high and couldn't match them by either leaving features out up to now (online campaign...) or by not standing up to their words (realism/relaxed realism modes).

For me it lead to big disappointment when getting my hands on the game and up to now, every time I am playing RO 2, I end up thinking of "How awesome of a game this could've been".

Yoshiro said:

I can see how that can be taken badly, but it is a factual comment on the forum size versus the customer base. We have found that most customers will never make it to the forums (forum population vs people that own the game). This has held true for RO 1, KF, and RO 2.

I don't remember the exact system we changed in RO 1 based on forum feedback only at this time (sorry), but I do remember the backlash we got from people who signed up for the forums, emailed us, and used other forums of contact to express their displeasure. This is why we need to be careful about only using these forums as a point of reference.

As others have postulated, a player count of 1k at any given time means roughly an average of 10,000 individual players a day are playing the game.

Now obviously there are segments of the community that are upset with parts of RO 2. We are looking at and working towards addressing those without alienating those who enjoy the experience as it is. A more realistic "realism" mode seems to ring a chord with many of these players so it will be something we focus on first.

In terms of level design, many of the new levels we are prototyping are also aimed to provide a different play experience then the ones that shipped with the game. This is also directly in response to player feedback. As I stated in my "what we are up to" post, we are focusing on getting the SDK out this week and are hoping to have it ready early next week so others can also create the maps that they want to experience.

In summation, just because we don't act or appear to act on something right away doesn't mean it was ignored.

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Your words are greatly appreciated on these forums Yosh,
this is such a great thing to hear. It's nice reading something from TWI that doesn't make you think that we are talking to a brick wall. Its my opinion that if the Higher Up(s) could write something like this, instead of writing something that comes off seemingly condesending with a little "" at the end of every sentence, then people wouldn't get in an uproar as quickly.

This talk of the forums being made basically of people disappointed with the game is bollocks. Before RO2 was released the forums were full with people that loved RO1 and were here just to discuss, ask for improvements and such. The cause of the majority staying silent is also not because they are satisfied with the game, but for several reasons like not speaking English or lacking interest for the game. I know about 50 people that have the same problems with the game as I do and almost all of them are part of the silent majority.

I'm completely certain that the concerns of a certain percentage of this vocal minority are the same as the concerns of about the same percentage of the silent majority. If the devs felt like creating something based on community feedback, the only way they could know what the community wants is by checking the forums. What other way could they learn the concerns and the wishes of their playerbase? The only ones that can express what the playerbase wants is the vocal minority in the end.

Zetsumei said:

When you continue to run and gun you will be at a much higher level of alertness than when covering an area. If nothing happens for a while you will slightly relax your alertness. Next to that some people are simply inherently faster than others. What it comes down to is pure reaction time.

It will always depend on reaction time but the difference is whether you run in the room spot someone raise your ironsights and kill him. Or walk into the room with your ironsights already raised or your weapon ready at the hip. It doesn't take time to make your weapon ready to fire so people don't take precautions any more.

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Flagging alertness should be the problem of the player whose attention has lapsed, not the game developers. I just think you keep exaggerating. First you said watching a doorway has no advantage. Staying alert is your responsibility in that situation. Then you said readying your weapon "doesn't take time". It clearly does, just not enough for your preferences.

I can see your point though I disagree with the exaggeration. I only think it needs slight tweaking (your exaggeration "doesn't take time" suggests major tweaking). I guess my caution is that if you make it too slow to line up the sights, it won't be a case of encouraging the player to do it beforehand because unless they add a new movement mode (some kind of "assault move" where you can move faster with iron sights up for a short time) there already is a big disadvantage to doing it that way that you can't get around: you move too slow through a zone the enemy has their sights on; you're a slow moving target and you will be seen first.

And then it will be kinda like how it was in RO1: people got around the clumsy mechanic by getting really good at hipshooting because that was the only way to move fast and then shoot. They also got good at "dolphin diving" until that was addressed. You see people will always find ways around what seems to give them a disadvantage they can't control. In RO1 and in RO2 you can get better at hipshooting, but you can never make yourself move faster with iron sights up. So they'll just get better at hipshooting and never use iron sights at all in those situations. It'll be saved for longer ranges only. Because the movement speed with iron sights up will be universally perceived as too much of a disadvantage when entering a body-sized space where the enemy is already aiming. The first shot will still almost always be shot by the person watching the doorway...if you're on the receiving end you'd rather it be a miss and the best way to help yourself besides suppressing/killing with grenades is to move fast. Then you just play like in RO1 and just get really really good at hipshooting because a)you move too slow with ironsights up and b)it takes too long to raise iron sights.

it will always depend on reaction time but the difference is whether you run in the room spot someone raise your ironsights and kill him. Or walk into the room with your ironsights already raised or your weapon ready at the hip. It doesn't take time to make your weapon ready to fire so people don't take precautions any more.

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a thousand times this!

Verluste said:

In other words, they made it too much McDonald's and too less 5 Michelin Star restaurant.

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I'd say Ro1 was more of a 1 Michelin Star. It didn't rely on pretentious dessert items made with gimmick techniques. It was simple yet deeply rich and satisfying; accompanied by an outstanding depth of variety and character.

melipone said:

They certainly kept it under wraps well pre-release for a casual observer like I was. I feel kinda bad for recommending RO2 without even playing it myself and wish I knew before hand about potential issues with gameplay. All I could say was positive stuff about TWI and that they were the dev team to keep an eye on. If I had known I would have been disappointed but would have stayed away. I guess Tripwire just wanted to use the fanbase to sell the game then who would hear the Ostfront player's complaints if RO2 was a success with the mainstream? You know there would be no realism mode improvements then.

TBH I think dev team members just need to clear the air and come clean on some things. I think a lot of what was posted before launch was all about keeping the fanbase quiet to help keep a positive vibe around the game. Now after launch they don't post at all about these things they said before. Not addressing them just leaves an unpleasant smell in the air. I certainly never expect another sequel now sadly, and I think people in charge of RO2 will draw all the wrong conclusions about why RO2 got this negativity and will most likely decide realism games just aren't for them anymore.

They should have made it clear before release that RO2 would be very different to Ostfront in terms of gameplay style, and they probably should not have called it an actual sequel. I don't want the devs to feel they have to make a game they don't want to make, but they should have been open about it pre-release and let people discuss it like Zets or bswearer or whoever else who was kept silenced. People would have been a lot more understanding. I actually like fast paced games but I expected a very different style of game with RO2

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Beta games are always full of bugs, being there in the initial beta with for instance killing floor I know how quickly things can be changed. Although there are restrictions of course to what you can say it's not like testers were really silenced. At least in general people are allowed to say their general opinion on the game.

For reference killing floor went from maps without any textures on them oozing with bugs and issues everywhere to quite releasable in a time frame of 3 weeks. During crunch time things can change really fast. Its hard for a dev to predict where a game will be in a month time with the entire team working very long shifts, and for a tester its even more guesswork. Remember that TWI got full time employed testers doing the main work, and that the later beta stages were probably primarily initiated for getting play time going on full servers.

Next to that it takes time to form a honest well founded opinion on game play. For instance the beta didn't have unlocks or any of that, as that wasn't functional till after the retail release (including the unlock bonuses). Beside that the available server was running on relaxed realism, in order to be able to test and try out all possible mechanisms.

If you look at the changes with for instance the realism wishlist its tweaks like changing the iron sight speed time, or running speed, sway and loads of things like that. Those are changes that can happen in a very short amount of time and fall mostly in the area of fine tuning.

To this day I still think that by tweaking parameters the game play of HOS could become very enjoyable, and even more enjoyable than RO was for me.

So while TWI could be blamed for quite some things its not like they chained us down, and I think that with me especially initially people just saw some raw ore with a diamond inside when looking around HOS, and I still see that. There have been loads of discussions and talks on game play related things, especially because everybody without a doubt saw the potential.

Currently it's too late to save the competitive community, as that is pretty much dead. Which is sad as it was my main stay within the RO community. However I'm still around these forums because the game is still pretty close to being great, its that on a few parts small changes **** up the game play so much that I absolutely cannot enter a game of RO2 and enjoy myself.

If I didn't have and still have some hope left I wouldn't be posting on this forum any more.

@Mario
Actually I actually see loads of kills close range from the iron sight, its so quick to pop up and you can even fire before the sights are aligned, that most people use the advantage of that in close quarter combat. The difference is that the first time you put up ironsights the crosshair is dead center, meaning that if you pop up the ironsight you don't have to account for free aim at that very shot.