What will it take to save RO?

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Yes, maybe they are in another mod, or searching in the web browser for another server, any server that isn't running Danzig or Arad or their thousands of bastard variations. I will admit, at least in the past, that at times I will spend 10-15 minutes in the browser looking over maps or player lists for familiar name before I either join or give up because I don't want to play the same maps over and over. Lately it has been better especially with the fix map names and player numbers in the server.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

My guess is that the stats are counting the mods along with regular RO.

that's what i thought at first.....thing is DH and MN are actually counted as seperate stats since according to steam they are independent games from RO. DH used to peak at 1000 during it's first 3 weeks released, now has dropped to around peak 500 and averages around 200 at any given time. MN doesn't even appear on the list as it is only top 75 games.

[url]http://store.steampowered.com/stats[/URL]

interesting that KF peak has not dropped as much as i thought it would. if you really look at it, TW games still make up 3 of the top 20 most played Steam games.....that's at least something good.

 

[SJ_PDSM [FIN]]

Well.. i tried it again after a long time.. and unfortunately felt the need to uninstall.

I will purchase the new RO on release though..
Heres a bit of explanation of my current feelings towards RO:

It used to be great fun in the past.. graphics were good at the time.. there were loads of nice teamwork, people were often vocal and we had some good matches.. there were loads of nice community maps around. Now, ive been away maybe a year and a half or couple years, and now when i fired the game up, my impressions were totally different. Not many players around, no teamwork whatsoever, people who were vocal did it to cry or complain or cause problems, graphics felt somehow very outdated, same old boring maps get played instead of the amazingly good maps there are. Gameplay needs bit more spice, apart from realism it can get monotonic, especially for RO and fps game veteran. It was one of the greats, but unfortunately i really feel like its time has passed by.

Im really looking forward to the new one, all the possibilities it might have, and updated graphics. A realistic WW2 shooter is propably the optimal shooting game for me, and its where i feel most at home. There are plenty of alternatives at this time also, Armed Assault 2 is enormously fun and hard to beat despite its technical problems. What im expecting from the new RO is basically.. better graphics, spiced up gameplay meaning some new interesting gamemodes, realism, and proper attention payed to controls, even with realism it doesnt have to feel like you are controlling a ten ton mech (Arma2), they are agile soldiers after all.. of course then theres the kickass community, that makes 50% of the game.. i hope we can smoke all unwanted kids and trolls out from new RO quickly.

Let RO:Ostfront die peacefully.. It has served, and it has served well. Lets head on towards new battles!

 

[BL4Z3>FAS>]

Well The new mods & maps are always welcome , but its also the social part of it that can keep it going with things like events , tournaments etc maybe make like an ro events group where everyone gets notified through steam group of different events from tournaments to even an informal bolt night , I dont even think of it in terms of a game because its so far beyond everything else,,, I think of it as a simulation , a work of art that time cant touch
The other thing would be media , adverstise it to anyone who will listen & make crazy fan pages & get them ranked #1 on google search under terms "realism game" or something

 

[johnkeel105]

I think they should give away a copy of red orchestra ostfront to each person who preorders the new Red Orchestra Heroes of Stalingrad. Allow the preorder to be around for well over a month. This would boost player numbers for a while and maby even get some new people into the game. Some of these will stay will the old game and some will move on to the new game. But player counts for both games would benefit as the install base would be higher.

 

[7-CLOWN-7]

People have to remember this is summer, this has happened to every single game in this genre. Every year the same influx happens. Now as far as player numbers they are there but they are not on at the same times or evenings.

We have a DH server and there are some nights we get 40 easily to fill it then other nights you are lucky to get 2 folks in it. This goes on from night to night, week to week, month to month.

If the same folks that frequent our server would just come back on a regular basis it would ALWAYS be full. We have anywhere from 10-20 regulars and just having all of us there at one time is hard enough during the summer, we are lucky to have 2 of us on during this time. As an example the other night we filled it up and it was only 2 of us regulars on it the rest were folks just coming by.

The issue currently is there are too many servers. If folks would join together and get into say 5-10 servers then those servers would always be full, instead we have 2 full servers and 30 with 5-20 folks in them to several having 0-10 in them.

You will even see this next year at this time with the new RO2, if they release this winter most servers will be full then the community will shrink again come summer, it doesn't matter what game it is. Sure the community right now is smaller and no one is guaranteeing the new game will have a much larger community, only time will tell. The RO community was never astronomical in numbers to begin with and RO2 probably will be no different.

 

[sedition]

Marketing/Advertising and the availability of new/moded maps have got to be the answere.
Value for money RO has got to be one of the best deals out. I played Orel on DH recently (? an LDG server) and it was a whole new challenge. So there is life in the old dog yet. So full marks to all the people who invest their own time in these projects.
If RO2 gets the sort of marketing thats needed I see a long future, but that marketing has to appeal to the right customers. Currently I do not think that what advertising I have seen (not much) does appeal or even get to the right parts of the market.

 

[OnCrack]

Imho it has to be more polished maps, the last update gave some of he most awful maps in the game an official state. Probably what this game needs is removing these and new maps mad from tripwire or the author of fallenheroes.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

Imho it has to be more polished maps, the last update gave some of he most awful maps in the game an official state. Probably what this game needs is removing these and new maps mad from tripwire or the author of fallenheroes.

only one map was released in the update.....and it was an official unreleased map to begin with. adding more customs has been tried, and not sustained the community. people creating even newer maps is still not going to draw people back. it's a 3+ year old game. it's had it's run, and we should let it die peacefully like SJ_PDSM [FIN] said. of course that doesn't mean us RO diehards can't keep playing a little longer until ROHOS comes out

let's look at reality though, the numbers are way down, and have been decreasing steadily for the past 6 months. the march update and the DH release brought in some, but those have worn off by now. RO in march was peaking at 1800 a day with normal average players online at 600. all july the peak has consistantly been around 800 with average online around 200-250. on the best days when there are clan matches, you'll see peak of 900 and average 300. i mean, the numbers don't lie. there simply are just not a ton of players anymore. however, even 200 is 200 and that is plenty for good battles.

Clown hit the nail on the head.....too many servers, too many random schedules. if there was only 5-10 quality servers left, people would be funneled in to fill a few rather than be spread out in a bunch of servers 0-20% filled. schedule is another thing. not everyone's on at the same times due to real life. however, if the community organized several times throughout the week to get people together, you can get a couple good nights of RO in.

so, how to limit servers.....well, imo, TWI should get together with gamesevers etc... to no longer offer public servers for RO and condense all the current remaining ones down to a reasonable number. of course, leave the optioin for people to opperate private servers for clan matches etc... but limit the number of public servers. by the numbers, the max players on at one time is less than 1000. That means 25 public servers that could vary in size, location, maps etc... should be enough for a max of 1000 players while offering variety for everyone and suitable ping for everyone.
(10) 50player
(10) 32player
(5) 24player

Have TWI pick which servers stay, and which servers go based on activity over the last few months. if people have already paid for them, give them a refund. better yet, shut them all down and have TWI set up new ones.

i know the idea is a little bold and a stretch, and might piss off some server admins, but hey it would work getting some full servers again......sometimes monopolization is the only option left. feasible? most likely no since TWI is too busy working on KF and HOS....but can still dream and have the idea out there.

 

[{Core}Craig]

IM sorry but the suggestions above make me wonder if you care about RO.

Your idea to save the community is to not allow new servers?? Im a little unsure how that could help. A major part of the community is the clan scene. Just look at the very sucessful ROLadder to see the amount of clans still active, with many more simply taking a month off for summer but intending to return. Your suggestion means the new clans cant get a war server, practice server or public server to advertise their clan. This may mean they would move game, and to lose the active clan players would put a nail in the RO coffin for sure. It also means people couldnt get new updated servers if the current company they are with fails them in hardware, cost or something else.

if people have already paid for them, give them a refund

Im afraid that I would doubt that server companies would refund. You sign a contract and depending on the clauses you probably wouldnt see a penny.

Your forgetting that alot of people like to play on home servers . . Russians like russian servers, uk like western euro servers, you like east coast US iirc. Now by only having 20 servers or so as you are suggesting, you are limiting each player to perhaps 3 - 4 in their region. Not to good of an idea, wouldnt you agree.

organized several times throughout the week

too many random schedules

You answer your own post. Too many random schedules means to simply only pub on set times/night would not work. Ive seen the last few organised event get few players, but at some times you dont expect, the server seem full.

 

[Major_Day]

I agree with Craig, limiting the number of servers, and forcing the remaing players to play on a few hand picked servers, is the biggest load of nonsense i've ever heard.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

Sorry it's a novel but hey......it's logical reasoning

Sorry it's a novel but hey......it's logical reasoning

so on top of keeping the 10 PzDF, the 10 TWB and the 10 TaT servers that have no players, adding more new servers would accomplish what? sitting there empty as well? RO server sales are not going up, and if people are actually buying any, then they must be dillusional or maybe they're all just really rich and that's their plan to pump money back into the economy

don't refund people then....just automatically cancel the billing at the end of the next billing cycle.

like i said, let clans/groups have private servers for wars, practices etc. there are plenty of other ways to promote your clan besides having a server. if those clan servers were so successful at recruiting, then the clan community wouldn't be shrinking so badly like it has been for so long. something that goes along with not a ton of recruiting is the fact that no server that ever has players in it will allow clan recruiting to begin with. you'll probably use the roladder example again to try and refute my point by claiming the "huge" amount of "active" clans, but be honest, a clan that plays once a month (if that) is not really an active clan now is it......yeah there may be about 20-25 clans still out there that are playing 2-4 times a month, which is fantastic that roladder/roleague/drol have continued to keep teams playing, but you've got to look at the reality of the matter.

most clan matches only range from 6v6 to 8v8 which is not big by any standards. the major sign of inactivity is that only a small portion of clan players even pub anymore and when they do, it is usually maybe one night a week for a special event. plus, there is not guarantee that all these clans "taking a summer break" will really be back come fall/winter, unless of course we get some good news regarding HOS to generate some interest back into the game to "gear up" for the new one.

i'd say 80% of clan players only still play RO when it is a practice, scrim or match, all of which would be on small private servers. limiting PUBLIC servers would not lose clan players, but yes, taking away private servers for matches would, which is why i said to not do that. the ironic thing is that competition is what is keeping the few clanners alive is the very same thing that has been killing the clanning community all along! you'll find that the drama that comes with clanning and competitin is probably the leading cause for making people leave the game.

look past clanning and pubbing and simply just look at the steam numbers...they don't lie when it comes to activity. a drop in peak from 1800 to 1200 to 800 in 6 months is a pretty simple thing to graph. those peaks included even the most active days when there were clan matches.

i never specified that each region would get ex amount of servers. i said the ones that have had activity in them would be kept, or if all new ones were created, they would be based off of recent popularity history. if it's 10 UK servers, 5 german servers, 5 russian servers and 5 american servers than cool. if it's 20 UK servers and 1 russian, 3 german and 1 USA then cool. it would be stupid to have 10 NA servers if there are not enough NA players to fill them all. likewise, it would be stupid to have 3 french servers if there are only a small amount of french, who could just play on a german or UK server anyway. whatever it would be, it would be better than having 120 other servers on the list empty.

"forcing" the remaining players onto a few handpicked servers would actually be genius, which is the whole point i am getting at. in those "hand picked" servers, the people playing would determine what the server was like. it would be up to them to decide if the server should be on rotation, on voting, custom maps only, stock maps only, infantry only, 24/7 etc..... if TWI or the server admins of the servers that were left wanted to keep people playing then they'd have to listen to their "customers" or they'd have no players. i guess the theory behind having all these other servers was that "well more servers means more options for playrs to go to so there can't be a monopoly", but over the past year we've seen that that theory has been proven to be wrong.....people don't go over and populate another server, they just stop playing the game in general, which is the worst thing that could happen.

i want more people to play BG2 (very fun game btw) so i will go buy two 50 slot BG2 servers to get more players.....now trade out the game and you'll see how rediculous that sounds.... i want more people to play RO so i will go buy two 50 slot RO servers to get more people players. would you build a football stadium in Antartica to bring more football players to the continent? probably.....not

 

[Major_Day]

RO is in the natural decline that all games go through as the years pass.
Their are too many empty servers, but as the number of players continues to decline, so will the number of servers.
Radical solutions like forcing some of the less populated or empty servers to close down, in an effort to herd the sheep into the few remaining pens,would meet with much resisitance,and would only encourage the people who are not hardcore to leave the game much sooner than they would have anyway.
But if any server admins think this is a good idea, then i suggest that they lead the way, shut their servers down, and i'm sure the rest of us will follow in their footsteps (but don't hold your breath waiting.)

I personally think we should force the 50 player servers to reduce their slots to 32, that will direct some more ppl to the quieter servers, problem solved! (but i won't hold my breathe waiting on that to happen either)

 

[GlasgowJock]

I've been playing this game since 3.1 & it's still very enjoyable (way longer than my 3 year addiction to WoW) though as others have said games naturally decline. Of course they'll be diehards like myself playing so long as there's one active server with a decent ping until RO2 comes out.

I've noticed the last week or so TWB's first 50 person server is no longer active (during GMT times anyway) which to me is quite a considerable sign of deceased activity (their 2 50 person servers have always been active since 50 person servers came out, come to think of it think they have a third "old glory" 50 person server as well, can't recall). Only their second server plus the Russian one seem to be consistently active. Despite being UK based I love their NA servers, great ping. Think BoH & FR have excellent 32 person servers also though I usually just go straight to TWB ones.

I'm a big fan of the 32-50 person servers personally, I like big frenetic meat grinder battles where everyone's getting their "s*** ruined" frequently rather than the smaller tactical servers, but obviously that's just my preference.

I'm also a fan of consolidating the servers so that we have a handful of active places to play. If clans want their private servers then whatever, it's their money to fund them. I like seeing the good clan players on the public servers though, they help channel the focus of decent unclanned players imho & make for funner maps.

A handful of servers, distributed fairly across the globe with excellent admin & open to feedback from the public is the way to go to maintain player levels until RO2 releases.

 

[7-CLOWN-7]

For me RO is dead. I've been exclusively playing Darkest Hour. Our server CLOWNS Darkest Hour Playhouse has been quite full almost every single evening from 9PM EST on. This server has everything that everyone constantly posts about that they want.

40 Player pub server (All Welcome)
Standard/Custom maps
Combined arms and infantry only (No large tank only maps) There is a server out there for that.
Great Pings for anyone in NA and most of Europe - usually LAG FREE
Well Admin'ed
Skilled and mature players - sure you'll have some kiddies too.
Many Clan members from around the globe (trash talking of course)
Epic battles - usually good use of VOIP for teamwork

Anyone wanting to test their skills and want a challenge come join us on the CLOWNS Darkest Hour Playhouse. We are trying to keep the server FULL ALWAYS and not just in the evenings - just a bit of seeding and the server usually fills quickly.

We've been seeing a ton of players but the problem is they are too IMPATIENT and don't hang around long enough to get it or keep it full. If everyone who has played on this server would just stay and keep playing it would always be full - I know you have to sleep but we see such a variety of folks coming and going and who knows where they go to?

I'd like to try and get it full sometime this afternoon so come on over and fill it up and lets see what you got.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

very fun maps the other night Clown! quite enjoyed all the updates to Ramelle. those p41 bombing runs were AWESOME!!!

 

[7-CLOWN-7]

We've been having some really good epic battles in the evenings just wish those would flow over to the afternoons on weekends or ALWAYS as I mentioned.

Last night I had trouble getting into my own server and I enjoy days like those knowing that once I do get in and can play it's going to be one hell of a night and one hell of a battle.

We've been playing Berlin usually once a night (Kriegstadt DH-Conversion - by EvilHobo) and it usually is pretty epic to say the least.

Those Mustangs were nice though, weren't they???

 

[BlackLabel]

I used to play ****loads of more pub Ro when i was very active in {Core}. At the moment, i just cant stand the public servers at all. I go to a DH server way more often lately and play some of sepps maps, since they give me a bit more opportunitys than the useuall pretty linear stock RO maps. Also, i think its pretty natural to get bored of a game now and than and then go and playing something else can only be healthy.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

hey clown, please just tell me you'll never put DH-Donner onto that server!!!!!!!

 

[7-CLOWN-7]

LOL... Nope, it doesn't work anyway.