Hi everyone,
I'm nKM, I hosted the conference with Ramm-Jaeger and Wilsonam.
I just read through this thread and I would like to clear up some of the comments made herein:-
So what is this gonna be all about, didnt fully understand?
Well, the conference was specifically for competitive gamers, and many of the attendees and those I consulted in the Battlefield community about the game were not RO fans or indeed aware of it. TWI has made an effort to make HoS more accessible to those not familiar with RO, and I was asked to host the conference by TWI and invite gamers from non-RO gaming scenes to ask questions.
In reality, the turn out was quite low - a combination of it being Saturday night and the Dreamhack Summer event going on in Sweden meant that some of the people I really wanted to be there could not be there, including for example, reps from ESL and H2KTV. Hopefully in a subsequent discussion they will be able to make it and give thier input.
a huge amount of prick waving, thats the first thought of competitive gaming i have
I don't think that is a fair comment to make. Did you listen to the discussion?
Finished listening, really interesting and well spoken by TWI altho i've to say that some of the "competitive bf2" guys in the show had an attitude issue which was just lame and unneccessary.
The game has more support than ever, open server files, mod sdk and tons of features you can't have everything, but at least you can mod it now. Realize that Ro2 isnt cod or bf plox.
There was a bit of disagreement on certain points of the discussion, yes. I wouldn't go as far to say that it was 'lame and unnecessary'. Prior to the meeting, John Gibson, Alan Wilson, UmPato and I had exchanged a number of emails, Skype chats etc. and it was said that the discussions would be frank and honest, and I'd say that is what these kinds of meetings will always become.
A number of people started to flame Klasbo publicly and privately to me. He made certain comments disagreeable to the RO contingent in the channel, however I would not say that he was being lame. He simply had an opinion in the minority. He wasn't abusive, and he wasn't detracting from the discussion - he simply didn't see the point in certain features in the game and is perfectly within his right to say so. Any games developer will have consumers who disagree with thier outlook on and it's not unreasonable to expect that there will be disagreements.
In summary, he wasn't offensive, so he wasn't muted, as some of you asked or expected.
To your second point - Yes, the game does have a lot of the functionality that we need in a competitive game, but if you think that we want HoS to be BF2 or COD4 then you need to do a bit of research on our community. Nobody wants TWI to turn out another BF2 game, we just want to have the competitive support from the developers.
I just saw the link recently and jumped in, had hoped it was an RO clan interviewing instead of some random bf2 guys that haven't even played the first game.
I could smell the unappreciative attitude as soon as i got in though.
This is my opinions*
As was detailed in the thread title, it was a competitive discussion.
I don't understand where this 'unappreciative' tone is coming from. I think it was said a number of times during the conference that we were delighted to see a developer listening to the community. I think it's rather short-sighted to presume that because the particular BF guys involved don't consider everything TWI has done to be appropriate for competitive gaming that some how we don't appreciate that TWI has got a lot of things right and giving us something that AAA devs won't.
For example, someone queried the value of the Heros in the game, from a competitive standpoint. I clarified with him and others that it's not the Heros itself that is important, it's more the fact that we have the ability modify its effect in the game. So, we can have 1 hero per team, or 4, or indeed none at all. The ability to change the variable itself is more important than what Hero actually does, and for that we are grateful.
I've got some choice articles here that detail some of the issues we had in our scene:-
[url]http://www.cadred.org/Users/Details/Articles/82873/[/URL]
I thought the attitude was brilliant. Everyone was very polite and honest. Honesty is exactly what TWI was after. Plus that we were 30 people in ts3 and there were no problems with noise etc =).
This was specially designed to be a chat with non RO fans. That is why bf guys was there.
Exactly, if everyone was in the channel backslapping each other and talking about how great John and Alan are, they would get nothing useful out of it. I would defy anyone to say that last nights discussion wasn't productive for TWI.
Again, a few people were on IRC saying they'd be told they'd get beta keys for joining in the chat. I have no idea where that came from. The chat was for Competitive Support only. Sorry to anyone who was misinformed.
dam i missed it
Hope it was recorded
It was - we'll edit it into something listenable over the next few days I expect, and post it here.
I think one of the more important things which got "revealed" was that twi will use a modded version of punkbuster, which also should be able to take clientside screenshots, make a snapshot of peoples configs and pack that in an encrypted file.
...which can hopefully be used in conjunction with Steam IDs to make competitive matches as secure as possible. I'm very pleased about this myself.
Thanks guys for a great, informal and very informative chat. I am starting to feel just a little itch of excitement.
Also to hear you talking so openly about listening to the community and making changes based on feedback is very encouraging! Even though I knew that about you already
Oh and thanks to nKM for the heads up!
No worries. It was very informative for those not involved in RO, and yes it is exciting to see this kind of support pre-beta.
They said they were recording it when the guy who said that he didn't want to buy the game solely on the fact that there was no in-game crosshair left.
I don't know where we'd be able to find it, but I guess it will surface soon enough. I'd like to hear it as well, I only got to listen just before, during, and just after the whole crosshair conversation...
Crosshairs are a staple in FPS games. There will always be people who dislike the lack of it, regardless of the aiming mechanics.
I don't mean to stir the pot but I have to agree with you a bit. Almost everyone in that chat was fantastic and very polite. There were a couple people, however, that were strikingly disrespectful when they disagreed with decisions by TWI.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing or having another opinion, but if you can't express that opinion respectfully on a show where it's tough to get special guests, you shouldn't be allowed to speak. Oh and don't forget the fact that TWI went out of their way to hold this event which is a FAR CRY from what any other developer does.
I don't agree. I never once felt that anyone had to be muted or kicked from the channel because what they said. Disagreements are normal in this kind of environment. RO is not going to win everybody over, in the same way that I would expect some RO players or not fond of BF or COD4.
I don't believe the person in question was disrespectful, I just think it appears that way because some people had inflated expectations of what the discussion was going to produce, and somehow any animated discussions with the devs over gameplay features or functionality was somehow going to jeapordise that?
I'm sure if Alan or John felt threatened enough by someones opinion they could have responded appropriately to it. I'm sure they will come here and clarify that themselves.
There is even a new RO2 area in the FPS forums...
RO2
But that forum is so inactive it'll probably never have any posts.
Yes, we literally opened that forum a couple of days ago and the awareness in our communty of HoS is very low, hence the inactivity. Hopefully discussions like this and the articles I'm going to write to support it will change that.
I think it was interesting to discuss the crosshair topic in a competitive aspect. We all know what realism says but this discussion was not about realism, is was about RO2 competitive playability. We actually talked up until right now and I found it very enlightening to hear what other people feel about stuff. I for one is interested in how RO2 becomes a good competitive game while still remaining to be a Red ROchestra game, but to have the potential of attracting people who normally does not go for the realism influenced games.
Me too. I'm glad you grasped the topic of the discussion as well as you did. Thanks for taking part.
Apparently not, as not every game has it's own section in ESL for instance. There is theory and there is reality, we live in reality.
I don't find it strange at all. If you have never played a game competitively that does not have crosshair, it is fully understandable that you might wonder how it would really work.
*applaud*
This is exactly why people wanted to query it.
In summary, those that took part conducted themselves well. I hope that we can have further meetings like this and we can help shape the competitive features of the game.
I do hope that the RO veterans don't feel we are in someway diluting the RO experience by getting involved. We're attracted to RO2 because of its competitive support and our scene has a lot of talented modders, mappers and veterans of its own that would like to help you guys get the best out of competitive gaming and give our own ideas on how to make it great.
An example of that was the discussion on including in-game advertisments somehow in the game (in the geometry, or welcome screen, or overlay), to help stimulate interest from sponsors. It's been proven before that this works and helps competitive gaming flourish.
I hope to see you all on the battlefield when RO2 comes out - I'm sure we can give the veterans a run for thier money