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Rising Storm 2/RO could learn a lot from SQUAD

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Bane5

Bane5

Grizzled Veteran
May 27, 2012
278
5
#1
For those of you who don't know, there is a new tactical modern warfare FPS out there called SQUAD. A 50v50 game in UE4 made by the devs of project reality.

The game has been well received, and there's big overlap between the audiences of SQUAD and soon-to-be RS2. It is only in anti-matter games interest to examine closely.

Squad does several things right.

1). Sound design

Sound design--one of the best in a shooter I've seen. The main reason is that weapon sounds are LOUD. You cannot hear much else within a firefight. Describing it is difficult. Videos do a much better job.

Here is the loud BOOM from an RPG firing in SQUAD 45 seconds in the video:
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256656395/movie480.webm?t=1449990873

Now here is a grenade explosion in red orchestra 2....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W4F8Scn3q0


Notice a huge difference? The grenade explosion sound has no punch to it.

As for gun sounds:

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256656394/movie480.webm?t=1449990855

SQUAD weapons have a real thunderous sound to them. RO2 sounds are a bit lacking in this regard--sounding a bit flat and muffled, although RS made some minor improvements in this area.

While on the topic of sound design,

2). Immersion Under Fire

SQUAD captures that feeling while being under fire the best. Bullet cracks are loud just like in the IOM mod. Shots kick up thick volumetric puffs of smokes, not just simple 2-d thin brown sprites. Suppression is handled well also. Instead of greying out your screen, your vision at distance becomes blurred making it hard to see shooters.

I command a lot of squads in SQUAD. Firsthand, I witness how new players panic when under fire. They huddle together and start firing in the direction someone else happens to be shooting at randomly. Often times I have to yell multiple times at them to get them to start shooting 180 degrees in the opposite direction where the enemy actually is :rolleyes:. In fact, the simulated confusion when under fire is so well done, I often seen friendly vs friendly firefights happen at distance between 2 far-away buildings/positions. One guy starts shooting at a building, its friendly occupants randomly shoot back. Once again, I'm usually the guy walking over and breaking up the mess over comms. Honestly part of it might be that the gun sounds are so loud and so immersive that it just looks and sounds cool to spray.

Once again videos to illustrate the difference:

Suppression in Squad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZITa2BXDq8

Suppression in Red Orchestra/Rising Storm:
https://youtu.be/tDFfH3kLr7U?t=1m48s

3). Teamwork/Meta Gameplay

This is a rather broad category. First off positional VOIP does wonders for SQUAD. I can warn nearby enemies of a grenade, I can tell the guy next to me that there an enemy in that building ahead of him, etc. Red Orchestra 2's lack of position VOIP tends to reduce the communication down to a single team leader yelling "get in the cap" or go left or go right to the whole team. Sometimes it extends a little beyond that, but thats all the system can usually allow without positional VOIP. With a single a shared team chat VOIP, only 1 person can talk at once in practice. I know the devs say VOIP is an expensive resource hog, but I truly do think its worth investigating even if the system requirements go up a bit.

Finally for Squad, there is that need to find where the enemy actually is. In Red orchestra 2 there's a constant front which is fine but you always know that there is enemy in front of you. The need to protect from spawn camping with the spawn protection red zone really limits the ability to out-maneuver your opponent sometimes. When people reminisce about large maps in R01, I don't think they miss the large wide open space (people from experience hate ARAD2/Barashka in RO2), but the uncertainty of where your opponent could be on a grander scale. I think this could be resolved by having a single spawn for each team on the ends of map, no out of combat zone for each cap, and letting squad leaders place a spawn point (think vietcong tunnel entrance/insertion point) so their squad members can spawn at a more forward location just like in SQUAD. Although RS2 map sizes will be smaller, this would still allow for more randomized chaos in where fightfights happen and allow dynamic strongholds to be created. Not to mention, it would better capture the guerrilla nature of the Vietnam conflict.

-----------

Those are my 2 cents. I am excited for RS2, but it does need to improve and innovate a bit to co-exist with the competition thats out there now. The RO series has much already going for it such as simulating gore and PTSD, etc. I do hope some of these things are examined at least.

Thoughts, Comments?
 
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#2
I agree with some of your points. Something to keep in mind is that some people like a more casual experience. Not everyone wants to use their mic and coordinate teamwork at all times. I feel that the current system is perfectly fine. People will make the game as tactical as they want it to be. :)
 
Upvote 0
#3
Wargasm695 said:
I agree with some of your points. Something to keep in mind is that some people like a more casual experience. Not everyone wants to use their mic and coordinate teamwork at all times. I feel that the current system is perfectly fine. People will make the game as tactical as they want it to be. :)
Click to expand...

If you look for casual experience why would you buy RO2 then?
 
Upvote 0
#4
RO2 is pretty casual really. If you don't care if your team wins or loses, there's no penalty for playing however you'd like, lone wolf, rambo, sit back and snipe, or as part of a team. It is harder to stay alive than most shooters, but teamplay at most is the majority paying attention to the TL and spawning on their SL, other than that, it's simply a group of individuals. Tell me how often you can name the other members of your squad except for the SL. Anybody?

I really like much about the teamplay so far in Squad and PR. You are dependent on your squadmates to stay alive and to accomplish anything. You are rewarded for playing this way and penalized if you don't.

Lone wolf? You'll die more often, not get healed and will be forced to use a limited kit. Less spawns forcing you to walk further.

No mic or not being helpful? You could get kicked from your squad, leaving you with the above problems.

This dependence though is a 2 edged sword, have a good squad and especially a good SL, and it's epic. A bad squad and it's lame. Thankfully, the majority of the community is committed to the gamestyle and it's not hard to find good people to play with. You can always switch squads if you must.

I think as well, and it's likely, that there should be a commander coordinating all squads, and with additional assets, you often feel like they are operating independently.

OP, I agree with your points, I'd like to add that the chaos in virtual firefights in Squad is real. Bullets start flying and cracking by, people start shouting out contact info, or what they think is contact info, yelling for medics as they are hit. You've seen those combat videos where entire squads panic and open up in the direction of perceived invisible enemy in the hopes of suppressing? That happens a lot. A good SL can make a huge difference in how his squad behaves. Current military and vets playing comment that it's the closest to the real experience they've ever seen in a game.

Also, the game is far more randomized, with player placed spawns and fortifications, no out of bounds areas (except the initial spawn base) and randomly spawned flags mean maps play differently each time.

Honestly though, while I would like to see changes to the RO2/RS game design, I wouldn't expect RS2 to stray too far from the proven formula.

On the plus side, PR has just released a WW2 beta minimod and Squads devs are working on releasing the SDK. There is already a group of WW2 modders working on a few things.
 
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Upvote 0
#6
The game itself is not in competition with RO, in Squad you can spend 20 minutes wandering around trying to find people to shoot at, RO has never been like that. The objectives in the game get ignored because there's no point to them and it becomes a game of cat and mouse running across the map hoping the other team wants to stop running and engage you, sometimes my squad will build a little fort on a hill and we sit there and no one comes. I spend more time walking than shooting. It's a hell of a lot more enjoyable than ArmA if you have a squad that talks, and I hope more of the ArmA community flock to it so we have an alternative, but that is the primary audience Squad appeals to. There needs to be some incentive to building and attacking bases, resource gathering or land domination, something that tells players to go to that location to help win the game so it isn't just a death match on a huge map.

I like the sounds and the squad menus, there doesn't seem to be much difference between each faction - the insurgents do not feel underpowered.
 
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#7
I'll agree that right now the gameplay isn't very complex, it often feels like entire match comes down to separate firefights over individual caps that don't feel like they are part of a larger battle. Your squad can easily fight over one cap for the entire match. Unless one team is steamrolling, then you cover the whole map either forward or in reverse. :p

The community is more disjointed now due to the influx of new players after the steam EA, it'll likely tighten up as people figure out how to play it. Also, as more features are released like vehicles and the logistics and respawn system is introduced and refined, you'll have a harder time playing it in rush TDM style. Die/respawn/repeat is possible now because you can spam RP's and easily build FOBs and fortifications.

It's definitely not a threat to RO2/RS, the end goals are very different. Or ARMA, or Insurgency. It will draw players from all those, as well as PR, which is its model, but it is it's own experience.

As it stands now, it reminds me more of ARMA, where you play for the experience that the environment and the game design provides, not at all for the results or the victory. We'll see if that changes much as it evolves.
 
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#9
Proud_God said:
One thing they do seem to get wrong is people flying up/down hill without being slowed down. (see IOM)
Click to expand...

It'll change, it's planned. There's lots of things that are unrefined at this point. All weapons deal the same damage, have the same ballistics, loadout weights are the same across classes, etc. The devs are focused on the large gameplay design things at this point and how they interact. Maps, coms, balancing how the spawns work, how to encourage squad cohesion, and all the bugs, hackers and tech issues that are a problem now the game is in EA. Once vehicles and logistics are in, it'll have to be further adjusted.
 
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Upvote 0
#10
Vietnam as a theatre is going to be interesting because it is so different from ww2. I liked ro2 because it was a straight up battle between armies and included some amazing vehicles to boot (even if by the time everybody stopped playing the final vehicles scraped out). Ro2 did a great job of making you feel like a soldier in the field. The weapons felt and worked like real ones, there was a little bit of leveling that did not go too far that kept one interested.
Those little phrases really gave an ambience. Smoke and gun support were not traded off to balance things. It worked like it should. Arty support. The lot.

In vietnam we do have straight up battles but we also have a lot of patrols and sneaking around. This is where it will get compared to the likes of squad, ARMA and rainbow six siege.
 
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#11
One of the defining features of RO2/RS is a round timer and lockdown that forces a relentless push for each cap, stall for a few minutes anywhere and you're done. There's no time for patrols and sneaking around. Unless that changes, along with other gamplay design features, it will remain very different from more open world games like ARMA and squad.

I'm not saying it's worse, it's just different. That pressure to rush to each cap creates drama, forces immediate confrontations and continual fighting. It's fun, just not very complicated, not many decisions to be made. Sometimes that's what you want, sometimes a slower paced, more strategic game where you can go 20 minutes without firing a shot.
 
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#14
Squad is what i kinda wanted Ro2 to be really. it gives me the good ole ro1 vibes somehow. Love the game with a good Sl and medics and and and....its great really. And exhausting. playing SL and trying to communicate well is a challange. Especially if you like booze and marry J :D Some of the Alphur bugs are anoying
( why the **** do i allways get disconnects during the most epic/good runs ? )

As for a ww2 mod of squad...uhm...boooooooooooring. :IS2:

(people from experience hate Barashka in RO2)
Click to expand...
I loved barashka after i developed the cappenwagen strategy :/


Yes ro2 is a rather casual experience. Tho not a bad one but after i was over with it, i was over with and never wanted to reinstall after around 1400h spend on the title :D
 
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Upvote 0
#16
It does, it has awesome sound. A patch yesterday even improved it.

While you can jump in, pick a role and just play, I'm finding it very challenging as I play more and try to be more aware of what is happening around my small singular firefight. The meta game is very fluid and fast moving as battles happen across the map, then add in actually having to manage people to accomplish goals. Unlike other games that have more parameters in place to control the gameplay, and do a lot of things for you, it's far more complex.

Being a competent SL or TL in RO2 is child's play compared to this. To be a truly good SL is quite an achievement.

Here's a guide to give you an idea:

http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/10637-squad-leading-guide-with/
 
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#18
aboveplebs said:
If you look for casual experience why would you buy RO2 then?
Click to expand...

RO2 is a grown up shooter that has lots of depth and tactical gameplay but remains fairly accessible and the action is a bit more instant. Not as arcade as Battlefield but still fast enough to keep the action flowing. I feel Squad steps up the sim part up several notches. After spending a bit more time with it and as ambitious as Squad is its just not for me. Especially the heavy emphasis on using voice comms. I find talking to strangers over the internet a bit too awkward and having full blown conversations with them a bit too much.

I like the attention to detail in Squad such as the weapon models, animations and full body awareness is amazing but the gameplay for me is a bit boring.
 
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