All these comparisons to ostfront, complaints about automatic weapons, fixed bayonets...
What if the disappointment among veterans has less to do with game design and more to do with the theme of the current maps in the game? For the longest time I could never figure out why so many people do not love this game. I am a major fan of urban combat and Stalingrad is a fantastic urban combat setting. It is a story of a complex battlefield where danger is literally everywhere at any time. It is not about soldiers sleeping in foxholes with a good view of the direction of the enemy line. It is a setting where a lot of combat took place at relatively short distances, and lives where risked to take single floors of ruined buildings.
By all means, it was a very different kind of fight than the typical pushes across plains and forests that makes up a majority of the geography fought for in the war.
Tripwire has gone all-out with this theme. Every map in the game is a decisive push to destroy the enemy and claim the ground they were holding. Every map (except Gumrak) is a close quarters prepared infantry assault against more or less prepared positions. All maps are fights for single buildings and landmarks. This is very much in line with the Stalingrad city fighting theme.
Maybe that is the problem. Infantry assaults were often prepared for by creating stormgroups specifically tailored for this kind of fight. That means as many submachineguns, automatics and explosives as you can muster. No doubt the bolt action rifle was the most common type of weapon used in Stalingrad, but every single map in the game is themed around urban stormgroups making decisive attacks on enemy positions, they are not themed around ordinary platoons just stubmling upon eachother at the edge of a forest.
Since every map is themed around assaults against a small number of small landmark buildings, it doesn't leave a lot of room for fancy long range sniping and slowly evolving frontlines as in the most popular ostfront maps. This game belongs to the assault troopers, and the whole map is a small piece of the jagged frontline.
It is rough, it is fast, it is the close infantry assaults of Stalingrad. Few Ostfront maps were as specialised as these, they were mostly conventional warfare, especially the community made maps had that broad scale with vanilla platoons engaged at conventional distances with their standard equipment. For example, it made sense in Ostfront to be able to attach/detach the bayones because maps usually had a much larger scope. Rare was the moment you were attacking an objective where the bayonet was needed, normally you did not want it. The maps in Heroes of Stalingrad however are microscopic battles where fighting at bayonet range is intentional for whole duration of the map. You do not detach the bayonet just to fire a few rounds across the square and then put it back on when you advance. The theme for the entire map is to represent 15 minutes of brutal close range assaults, the assault has already commenced so the bayonets stay on at all times.
Maybe this bloody and brutal assault theme, this microscopic view of the fighting on the eastern front being made into an entire game, is just not every ostfront veteran's cup of tea. The remedy for HoS then is for the potential future inclusion of non-assault themed maps, where ordinary infantry platoons are not being afforded the luxury of SMGs, get to fight in low intensity opportunistic battles. Maybe some random urban combat where opposing platoons happen upon each other in the ruins, not specifically being on a mission to assault and capture landmarks but rather that the objectives just happen to be assigned on the go as the firefight breaks out.
What if the disappointment among veterans has less to do with game design and more to do with the theme of the current maps in the game? For the longest time I could never figure out why so many people do not love this game. I am a major fan of urban combat and Stalingrad is a fantastic urban combat setting. It is a story of a complex battlefield where danger is literally everywhere at any time. It is not about soldiers sleeping in foxholes with a good view of the direction of the enemy line. It is a setting where a lot of combat took place at relatively short distances, and lives where risked to take single floors of ruined buildings.
By all means, it was a very different kind of fight than the typical pushes across plains and forests that makes up a majority of the geography fought for in the war.
Tripwire has gone all-out with this theme. Every map in the game is a decisive push to destroy the enemy and claim the ground they were holding. Every map (except Gumrak) is a close quarters prepared infantry assault against more or less prepared positions. All maps are fights for single buildings and landmarks. This is very much in line with the Stalingrad city fighting theme.
Maybe that is the problem. Infantry assaults were often prepared for by creating stormgroups specifically tailored for this kind of fight. That means as many submachineguns, automatics and explosives as you can muster. No doubt the bolt action rifle was the most common type of weapon used in Stalingrad, but every single map in the game is themed around urban stormgroups making decisive attacks on enemy positions, they are not themed around ordinary platoons just stubmling upon eachother at the edge of a forest.
Since every map is themed around assaults against a small number of small landmark buildings, it doesn't leave a lot of room for fancy long range sniping and slowly evolving frontlines as in the most popular ostfront maps. This game belongs to the assault troopers, and the whole map is a small piece of the jagged frontline.
It is rough, it is fast, it is the close infantry assaults of Stalingrad. Few Ostfront maps were as specialised as these, they were mostly conventional warfare, especially the community made maps had that broad scale with vanilla platoons engaged at conventional distances with their standard equipment. For example, it made sense in Ostfront to be able to attach/detach the bayones because maps usually had a much larger scope. Rare was the moment you were attacking an objective where the bayonet was needed, normally you did not want it. The maps in Heroes of Stalingrad however are microscopic battles where fighting at bayonet range is intentional for whole duration of the map. You do not detach the bayonet just to fire a few rounds across the square and then put it back on when you advance. The theme for the entire map is to represent 15 minutes of brutal close range assaults, the assault has already commenced so the bayonets stay on at all times.
Maybe this bloody and brutal assault theme, this microscopic view of the fighting on the eastern front being made into an entire game, is just not every ostfront veteran's cup of tea. The remedy for HoS then is for the potential future inclusion of non-assault themed maps, where ordinary infantry platoons are not being afforded the luxury of SMGs, get to fight in low intensity opportunistic battles. Maybe some random urban combat where opposing platoons happen upon each other in the ruins, not specifically being on a mission to assault and capture landmarks but rather that the objectives just happen to be assigned on the go as the firefight breaks out.
