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About "RO2 Dying"

[TW]Ramm-Jaeger

Tripwire Interactive President
Oct 11, 2005
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www.redorchestragame.com
I've just closed several "RO2 is dying" threads. Not because we want to censor the forums, not because we don't care about feedback, but just because it all is getting a bit silly.

So lets chat a bit about the situation. I've said a lot of this before, but I'll mention it again just to make sure everyone gets a chance to hear it. RO2 had a rocky launch. You know it, we know it, everyone knows it. We learned a lot about hitting retail deadlines (when they are simultaneous with the digital launch), setting timescales, taking LOTS of risks, pushing the envelope on both gameplay and performance and more. So with what we've learned we'll certainly do a lot of things differently the next time we release a game. With that said, it's time to stop beating that dead horse. Whats done is done, and we should all look to the future, not the past. For our part we have been and will continue to work our butts off solving issues with the game as quickly as we can. We've already knocked out the lions share of the major issues, and continue cranking away at it.

So what about the player counts. Many people is touting the drop in player counts as the death knell of the game. Certainly I think we'd all be happy if they were as high as they were a few weeks ago. But this is really to be expected. We've been saying all along we expected to take a hit when BF3 and MW3 ships. You can't have two games come out with a combined marketing budget of $200 million dollars and not expect to have some players go check them out. Before BF3 came out peak player counts were around 3,000, now they are half of that. Peak players of 3000 at this point in the life cycle of the game is the best we've ever done. Especially considering the rocky launch the game had, I'm pretty happy with those numbers. Putting it into historical context though, even with peak player counts of 1500, the game is much more popular than any game we've ever done at this point in it's life cycle. Killing Floor for instance was peaking at about 800-1000 players at this point in its life cycle. Eventually however it grew to peak player counts in the 4000-5000 range.

So what does the future look like? As I've previously mentioned Killing Floor player counts dropped off pretty quickly after launch. But then something happened. Tripwire's commitment to the long term success of the game turned it around. Through polishing up the game, doing special promotions like free weekends and special themed events, and through releasing lots of free content for a long time after the release of the game it grew and grew. You see it is a key difference in the strategy of Tripwire vs the EA's and the Activisions of the world. Their strategy is to spend a 100 million dollars in marketing to get everyone to buy the game day 1, then to nickel and dime you for the next year with overpriced DLC's. Tripwire's strategy is to market the game as well as we can for the launch (although we aren't yet big enough to spend 100 million dollars), and then provide continued value for our customers over the long term. It is this long term value that in the end will bring the player counts up just as we did with Killing Floor. It will bring new players in, and bring existing players back.

So what are we working on right now?

First off we're making great progress on the mod SDK. We've recently released an update with functionality so modders can compile their own code to make mutators and mods. Soon we will release the full SDK with support for publishing mutators and custom maps. Why has it taken so long? Frankly we were caught off guard by the complexity of getting the modding tools working with "cooked content". All of these tools worked fine internally for or development content. But when you pack up and ship a UE3 game all the content gets "cooked" which reduces the file sizes and improves load times. So the SDK had a lot of issues handling this "cooked" content. But as I've mentioned we've got most of these issues worked out and will be shipping the full mod SDK soon.

Next we're continuing to work on polishing up the game and fixing issues. Two key things we're looking into is further reducing ping and increasing ping stability, and improving client side performance especially with higher player counts. That isn't all we are working on, but that is just a snapshot.

We are also starting work on our first batch of free content. This includes finishing up some of the features that didn't quite make the shipping date. We'll have more news on this going forward but suffice it to say we've got some cool stuff coming for the game.

The other thing I see a lot on the forums is grumbling about various aspects of the game, particularly that the game is either too realistic, or not realistic enough, or not realistic in the particular manner that whichever person posting the thread thinks the game should be. We're keeping our eye on the community and will certainly be incorporating community feedback as we move forward. You all can help us with this though by not making us wade through thread after thread that is either just blatantly flaming, or is just another useless "RO2 is dying" thread. Threads and posts like this make it difficult for us to get to the meat of what people's concerns and feedback truly are. So please help us receive your feedback by making well thought out and constructive posts, and keeping the flame thread/posts to a minimum.

I would also like to point out that no matter what we'll never be able to get the game exactly like everyone wants it. There are just too many differing opinions. So I would suggest that people play around with the tools we've provided to customize the gameplay to their liking. This is a really great testbed for you guys, and if someone has a certain type of custom setup that gets really popular, it shows us Devs that it is something the community likes. In our last update we added the ability to limit weapon and class perks, which allows those of you that don't like certain high end weapons to limit/prevent their use on your server. Additionally there is functionality to tweak a lot of gameplay parameters (damage, etc) as well. So on both ends of the spectrum you can easily make the game more/less hardcore. So start playing with those values and see if you come up with something that a lot of people like, then let the Devs know about it!
 
People are still waiting for an answer why changes were made to the MKB.42 and AVT availability. TWI promised us it would be different in the previews and interviews, but the game is still swamped with ''rare'' weapons in the hands of non-heroes.

Apparently Yoshiro answered that question, but in fact he never answered the all important why that decision was made.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BuggerMe

Please, give us an answer.
 
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Thanks John for the information.

Well, it seems like the players have to get the cart out of the dirt via mods for themself, because I see no hint that you want to change any of the gameplay design decisions and even think, that the situation right now is fine.

And "blaming" the launch of BF3 for the hit in the player count is also a little bit the easy way out, isn
 
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It's good to hear Ramm give his two cents, and to provide an update--discussions that appear at the top of forums for days and days feel like they become more and more authoritative as time goes on, since people don't hear any information that contradicts their complaints/theories. So the devs need to jump in quickly to counter misinformation with new info of their own.
 
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Isnt there an issue that we cant use these servers with limits as ranked servers though which sort of causes a catch 22 situation.

Anyway thanks for the update, I think one thing thats irked the community is the lack of this type of communication (not such full scale essay style, just clear simple updates in a sticky).

I believe a blog is suppose to be set up just for this in the near future.
 
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First off let me apologize for my tone as well, as I know I can be blunt. But I think that I and others wouldn't post and try to give our reasons if it weren't because we see the potential in this game.

There are many people giving their opinions in a good way why they don't like things in the game. There are points indeed coming from both people that think the game is too slow and campy and the game being too run and gun. And to be honest I think both parties are right.

At longer ranges the gameplay often ends up in sniper fights, game play wise it feels as if everybody got sniper scopes, be it smg or rifle users. Its very easy to hit things accurately, and because the enemy is lurking zoomed in it makes it very hard to spot someone due to the reduced field of vision. Generally one of the things I loved in RO how some classes like the sniper were limited, now every weapon to me feels as if it got a sniper scope on it game play wise.

This makes it that its generally hard to move up and results outdoors in ww1 sort of fighting especially on the larger player servers. You will quickly be killed and probably never saw your killer until you dropped dead, and those that you pop off probably never saw you. You usually do not get any long range fire fights going.

In close quarter combat its somewhat the opposite. You can run very quickly and nearly instantly go to iron sight to shoot. Making it very advantageous to just continuously sprint instead of carefully clearing corners. And just popping people as you go. Together with that getting hit doesn't really effect you at all until you are truly dead.

My personal opinion is that outdoors fighting should get more people trying to cap and go for objectives instead of stay back and take pot shots from a dark corner. Although it is effectively realistic that people prefer to do that, it results ww1 style trench warfare that completely doesn't move forward.

While in close quarter combat people should be more careful and secure cutting the pie before entering. And I think that a lot of the contradictory comments on the games speed originate from the situation of it being long range or cqc.

In general while the maps in total size might be pretty big, the teams often spawn very close to each other (especially with the squad leader), and on 64 player servers there simply is no room to manoeuvre or out flank the enemy. The enemy is simply everywhere as is your team, and you just push the flanks up, which results in that maps hardly feel different as you can not exploit the terrain to your advantage its just push till you get downed.

I think that gameplay wise RO2:HOS can be one of the greatest games ever made and a lot of the things needed are probably not more than changing some numbers in the config files. But at the moment how everything plays together just hasn't gotten "it". Initially I liked the additional speed to go to iron sight, but that is a first impression, and I think that a lot of RO2's settings are features are set so that as individual features they feel the best, but things just don't work together in the same magical way as in the mod or roost.


Spoiler!
 
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Ramm to address your mention of lack of general constructiveness when it comes to some issues or suggestions I think the reason a lot of people are resorting to cheap shots and anger is that they feel they're being ignored and I'm sure a lot of people would like to discuss their perceived issues with the game with you in a rational manner if there was a bit more back and forth exchange.

Some suggestions are ridiculous and unreasonable but there's still quite a lot of reasonable ones
 
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The week before BF3 came out - Peak player counts about 3,000
The days after BF3 came out - Peak player counts about 1,500

Facts are facts...
So are the numbers since release of RO:HoS. :rolleyes:

I dont see any clear effect of BF3 when looking at the player amounts though.

First there is a rock steady decline, then a patch released and the player amounts got a bump and went down with a slower decline.

http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=q35450&jstime=1&from=1315803600000

Anyway for ****s and giggles player amounts for RO1 according to gamespy
16 October 2006 at 11:00 us time Roost had 1261 players
8 Jan 2007 at 18:38 us time Roost had 1609 players
May 17 2007 at 19:48 Roost had 1705 players
Aug 18 2007 at 23:19 Roost had 1407 players
7 sept 2008 Roost had 1097 players

No no Zet, you are surely wrong. Facts are facts... :rolleyes:
(Some of the people in here need to check their "facts". Yoshiro 08-14-2011 :D)
 
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Next we're continuing to work on polishing up the game and fixing issues. Two key things we're looking into is further reducing ping and increasing ping stability, and improving client side performance especially with higher player counts.
Fantastic. This game could desperately use some more sophisticated networking. The way moving targets are so hard to hit can mean running out in the open can be safer than trying to take cover, and that seriously weirds out the gameplay. It was passable with the snail's pace people moved in RO1, but it's not quite up to the task anymore.
 
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