Why don't people like the North African front?
I think it's good for RO2 gameplay, lots of big open spaces and tanks and such.
dunno,
I was so excited when i heard about burning sands (later to merge with the italian campaign mod to become mare nostrum) - cos i thought it would complement Ro brilliantly, by way of depicting another theater that rarely gets seen in games, but with a completely contrasting geography.
I imagined large orel map sized to and fro tank battles in N africa with crusaders charging across the sand dunes, through the rugged terrian of tunisia and on to tight combined arms battles in the picturesque hills of italy.
I could see a nice mix of well known hardware as well as rarer stuff never experienced before.
I expected most Ro fans to feel the same.
However i was disappointed when Darkest hour was announced, not so much because i personally felt is was a dull alternative, but i could see from the discussion threads that this was picking up 3x the interest as both MN and the other mod i was interested in , Carpathian crosses.
I knew it's relative success would be to the detriment what i saw as 2 far more interesting mods.
So it's not so much why N Africa was unpopular, but why the western front was - which i would put down in part to the familiarity to the front (which is exactly what puts me off tbh), particularly in light of the influence of Saving Private Ryan - which I acknowledge probably got a lot of ppl interested in WW2.
I think a lot of US players want to play ww2 games as americans - i seem to know there is one clan who never played Ro but got straight into darkest hour for this reason. Again, as someone who enjoys new experiences I think this is strange but there you go.
Also it seemed a lot of fans of Darkest hour seemed to be German heavy armour fans, which of of course they could find in the western front. And darkest hour obliged them with king tigers and jagdpanthers - there were even calls for the jadgtiger ffs.
I always thought this would make balance poor in tank games, but that was never seen as a problem by those who, of course, would be using them.
Weird thing is, if MN had had more support and interest, the US players would have had the chance to play in Tunisia and Italy , and the German tankers may have been using panthers, nashorns and ferdinands in defense of Italy.
So yeah in sumary I think it would be great, but i've already faced the dismay of a N africa/italy mod not becoming the success it should have been once, and i'd hate to see it again.
