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Why don't people play tank maps as much as the first RO?

QofLife

Grizzled Veteran
Jan 2, 2010
59
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I bought the game quite recently and was curious to know why tank maps weren't played as much as in the first Red Orchestra. I know the infantry is great and fun to play but tanks were also a huge improvement. I love playing as a tank crewman but unfortunately no one plays the tank maps.
 
for me...and mind you I have VERY little ROHoS tanking under my belt...it feels like for all the detail they put into the tanks, they are almost too complex to operate, especially from the single tanker aspect. there is a little too much to control. pair that with the above-mentioned AI behavior, and it makes for a poor mix.
 
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I think my buddy Ricky said it best and nothing more needs to be said by me:
Before I begin writing this, I know I am going to become all nostalgic for what I loved about tanking in RO1, and as a result it will sound like I am flaming RO2, but that is not the reason for the post.

I represent the <AKA> gaming clan. My in game name is <AKA>Ricky. <AKA> won the Red Tide tanking tournament and we like to think we know our RO1 tanking pretty well. We in <AKA> loved the tanking in RO1. We were so looking forward to RO2 tanking, especially after the previews of what TWI were going to do with the tanks. I honestly thought they were going to do something amazing with the tanks, and to an extent they have. The problem is that TWI havent made a game that is about tanking at all. The models look great, but thats about all that the tanks are good for. They look great, nothing more.

Tanking is atrocious in RO2. There is no skill in engagements. It does not feel like there are any sweet spots where I can aim for, which require skill and cunning and tactics to get the kill, at any range, on the horrendous tank map that TWI have provided us with. It doesnt seem to matter where I hit any tank, the thing will randomly blow up or stay intact. It doesnt appear to matter at what angle I am at to the enemy, I will randomly explode when hit. Basically there is no skill required to tank in RO. It feels like I am just a big hit box, with a certain amount of damage Hitpoints, and some random Chance generator that gives a possibility of me blowing up no matter how many hitpoints I have.

Now I dont care if RO1 was a dumbed down model that was not realisitic. The best day of tanking I had on RO1 was taking hits from 58 shells before I died on Moz's BlackdayJuly. To stay alive for that long was down in part to my skill at angling, and also down to luck that other players didnt attack me from the correct angle. It is also down to having a game engine that actually accepted that it was first and foremost a game. It was fun with accepted game mechanics that it worked within.

I remember many a time when I had the chance to play Orel on the FK server, and I was sitting in the company of all those fantastic tanker players that you mentioned. It is amongst that type of company that I truly came to appreciate the tanks in RO, and for what TWI achieved with the game model. It was the first game I had played where the tanking actually worked.

I had to be a master of angling, not only towards who I was shooting at, but also at the right angle towards any other enemy who may be about to shoot at me, while also then moving my tank to get the best position to shoot at the other enemy tank that I was in a personal duel with, because their skills were just as good as mine, and it was all down to my decision and risk taking and the batte of wills with the other tank. I loved dancing with other tanks in RO1, Maneuver, reload, fire, maneuver, choose not to fire so that I could take a risky maneuver to get a better position? Wonderful gaming moments. Memorable gaming time that made RO1 stand out above EVERY other game that was released for 5 years. Nothing matched RO1 for fun. I have plenty of other games that I have played in that time, but RO1 was above them all, because it had something that other games didnt. Fun.

And the respect that I had for those other tanker players? The reputation that many of those players had in the game. Not just from me and my clan but in the tanking community? That is all part of what made RO1 so unique. Kirby34 as he was known when I first battled with him was an incredible tanker. He was a devious little sod too, which is what made me admire his gaming skillz all the more. He brought everything to the battle. Skill, Cunning, Tactics, Deviousness, Movement, Organisation, Teamwork, Inspiration, Respectfulness. And of course, the one thing that tankers in RO1 regularly used to do? They gave public recognition of when they were bettered by another tanker who had achieved a skilled kill during an engagement.

None of these things happen in RO2. And that is not because of the change in the type of players. Maybe TWI didnt play Orel with us, for any length of time, to appreciate just how much of an amazing game they had managed to make for us fools that loved RO1 tanking. I dont recall ever playing tanks with or against an RO developer. Is it ironic that they may have made the greatest tanking game, but never played it enough to know what they were missing out on? And then of course, they managed to ruin tanking after one of their patches by screwing up the whole tank damage modelling so that angling didnt work so well.

RO2 is not failing because of TWI lack of technical abilities. They have plenty of people that are capable. RO1 , KF and RO2 all prove that they have technically competent people. They are failing because they don't seem to understand what they provided gamers in RO1. They provided an environment where a persons skill and their willingness to improve their own skill is what made the game a unique and satisfying experience. The game was fun and addictive like no other game has managed to achieve for me.

I hope they get rid of all that level-up crap which rewards a player with improvement achievements which are earned purely by being willing to put in time on the game, as opposed to learning and improving through their own skill. I also dont give a damn if the tanking is realisitc. I know that if a tank gets hit a 100 times, and manages to rebound the shells because of the angle that I am at, that in real life that tank should already be dead. But this is a game, and it is there for enjoyment. Enjoyment is gained by a feeling of personal achievement, and I have no feeling in this game that my skill ever matters as to whether I die or survive. Get the code put together to give me a 3 degree margin of having the perfect angle against an enemy tank shell whereby I wont blow up instantly, and tanking in this game will again be about tactics and maneuvers. It will be about skill, and skill is something that TWI cant put iin the game for us. It is not something that they can give is. That is something that we bring, and we are grateful for it.

Blackday July is a masterpiece of map design. I started making my own maps for RO, because of what Moz managed to create. Prior to the RO2 game release, I had every intention of making a tanking map for RO2. Now that I have seen the way the tanks play however, I am not interested in committing my time to the SDK. I can only hope that another soul has the willingness to make a great tank map, and that TWI somehow find it in themselves to recognise what made RO1 great.

I live in hope that tanking will be great in RO2, but I doubt if TWI will spend the resources on sorting the tanks, especially considering the huge amount of problems they have created for themslves due to the design decisions in relation to the infantry side of the game.

We live in hope I reckon

Here's the original Post 'Tanker love?': http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?p=970229#post970229
 
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gumrak sux and so does the way the tanks play right now.:(
It really is THIS simple. The tank armor values are borked to hell, their operation is very buggy, the one dedicated tank map is pretty poor, and there really aren't any proper combined arms maps in RO2. Even though many of the infantry maps support tanks, they pretty much cage in the tanks to very small areas, or worse, the tanks end up fighting eachother the entire round largely separate from what the rest of the team is doing. They're simply poorly implemented and the maps are clearly not designed with them in mind.

The biggest legitimate reason that tanks are absent (via server toggle) from the regular maps is due to the aim-bot hull MG AI that has the ability to pick off players through smoke, behind walls, and generally ruins gameplay beyond recognition. All a player has to do is park his tank facing a spawn or a chokepoint and rack up the kills. It's not hard to figure out.
 
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Because unlike RO1, there is only one tank per faction. Add on top of that the inability to exit your tank. RO1's tank maps still had some form of infantry combat that RO2 lacks.

Infantry combat in blackdayjuly? You mean duelling in spawn and me running after the tank that blew me up in the forest pistol-whipping it? :p

There is only one pure tank map at the moment, so that is probably why. Also still some odd glitches and bugs here and there.

This also. I feel like a scrub tanking in the t-34 (even while topping the scoreboard) and an op juggernaught when I'm in the p4 and getting more kills than the entire enemy team put together. There is also Hockey's note that many of the CA maps feel like BF3 jet combat, ie a seperate theatre of war between you and the other tank, that the ATs can influence slightly, kinda like a ****ty version of dh-raids where you have even LESS time to support the infantry eg with HE after blowing up the enemy tank :eek:
 
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- McTank drive-thru instant repair/re-arm stations. I mean, honestly, come on; this is just embarrassing.
- Gun sights out of alignment when on uneven ground.
- Man-portable AT is super-charged (esp. vs T-34 turret).
- Engine death = ninja tank mode. You can still move, silently; easy to position where your enemy is by his engine sounds.
- Cannot get out of your tank.
- On all maps Tanks respawn far, far too rapidly. (This is an artefact of tanks spawning in the same location and under the same rules as the Infantry do.)
- Tank AI gunner. Hull MG gunner is nothing short of an infallible aimbot. Main gun often fires a shell at you before the turret has fully rotated to point in your direction
 
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I think one of main problems with Gumrak was the placement of spawn points - ended up favoring the German side.

That's since been fixed, but it's too late, since nobody plays it anymore.

I figure with the SDK, custom tank maps (Ogledow?) will get more popular, and we'll get people tanking again. When TWI releases the 2 new tanks, that should make things even better.
 
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Ro2 tanks don't feel like tanks.

Even the sound is just all wrong...

I loved tanking in Ro1 and DH. It is absolutely sucktastic in Ro2. Its now an arcade game at best.

In RO1 when I first climbed into an IS2 on Arad and fired my first round years and years ago, my reaction as my subwoofer was shaking my furniture was "coooollllll, this is a BIG gun...."

It felt like a big lumbering brute with a huge freakin gun.

When I got into a tank in Ro2 for the first time, I got stuck on invisible terrain, then I started bouncing into the air and break dancing. I tried a week later and could actually get the tank going somewhere and shoot stuff and was just shaking my head in disbelief going "Wtf is this garbage?, how did they manage to break something they had down so well before?"
 
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