This community is interesting to say the least, you have your realism nuts who probably represent the greater majority of these forums and then you have your fans who just love the game because it is fun.
Even the biggest realism nuts here have to admit that there has to be a balance as realism in many cases would just kill the game where people don't want to play it anymore. For example, not having guns jam when they realistically jammed very often such as a drum magazine for a PPSH, you have to strike a balance.
Tripwire when releasing RO1, pulled off something amazing but realistically, there wasn't a huge amount of competition out there at the time. I think from memory, COD Offensive Front had just been released before RO1 was released on steam. I think a lot of people were looking for a new game because COD had been out for a while at this point and steam offered a new way of purchasing a game which is the reason why I bought it.
RO1 at its in inception was incredibly hard but it offered something different, a competitive advantage by achieving a level of balance through "realism mechanisms". Each gun had its advantage and disadvantage and I think a lot by chance, they created a level of balance that has not been matched to date. Probably the biggest problem with RO1 and the balance that they got the most wrong was the grenades. The grenades were so powerful and everyone had 2 of them, the game suffered severe grenade spam.
We then got a mod which almost absolutely nailed it, Darkest Hour.
Everything was just about perfect. PPS was fantastic short range but terrible long range. MP 40 was slightly worse than the PPS at close range but slightly better than the PPS at longer range. The bolt action was amazing at long range, more accurate than the Semi auto but lacked RPM. The MG was fantastic because if you shot somewhere near someone, they would be suppressed and they basically couldn't shoot at you. A sniper was the perfect counter to it. The 44 was more powerful than everything else but there were very few of them. Bolt actions got grenades whereas Semi autos didn't, another balancing decision which made the classes closer while still different.
The tanks in DH were fantastic, they were powerful but there was a fantastic new counter that created a great new balance. Bazookas and Shreks which also created teamwork making them fantastic in teams of 2 with reloading of them. We also had some fantastic maps that were well thought out and really got the balance between map size and player numbers. Schetnsteppe was a god of map making, sorry about his name because I know how wrong that was
The key point was that Darkest Hour was a mod which at one stage because it was more popular than RO itself which is an incredible achievement given it was a mod.
Unfortunately, Trip didn't learn the lessons from this. They looked at RO1 and thought the biggest competitive advantage that RO1 had was that it was realistic and focused the majority of their energy on this and created relaxed realism on the side to try and resolve the difficulty problem which cost them so many players.
The key point here is that they went for realism over fun in most areas and it has almost ruined the game. Look at tanks for a perfect example. They spent so much time working on the insides of a tank to be realistic. The hull gunner has literally a pinhole to look through making it boring as all ... to play. So they decided to allow AI gunners to play because they knew no-one would want to play as a hull gunner.
Another example, MP 40. In real life, you can smash things from 200 metres without a huge amount of problems so yes, as much as you all complain, the gun is very accurate when aimed properly. The problem is that this completely wrecks the balance and makes the game less fun. You have a gun that is fantastic from short, medium and long range, it's insane and nobody would choose another gun unless the 44 is available. I'm a very good player (don't want to sound like a dick) and I can make a mess of people from 150 metres with a PPS, the balance is broken at the moment.
Doing some comparisons to get people to understand the differences and why the game is in the state it is now. A MP 40 is DH was very good short range, average to poor at medium range and horrific at long range. It was also much harder to kill people because of the damage system in RO and you don't have a zoom. So in comparison, you have a gun which is now 3-4 times as accurate, kills far quicker, has less recoil and can zoom now. It can kill much easier with one shot to the heart, It's completely different. What was a good gun just went to bloody insane gun.
Let's look at the 44. In DH, there were very few of them. They were the most powerful gun in DH still but they didn't do as much damage as they do in RO2. Quite often, you will need to hit people in the chest twice to kill them. It has slightly less recoil than DH and now you can zoom and the gun is actually far more accurate, every single fire round hits exactly where you aim. On top of this, you can now shoot through walls making the 44 far more powerful because it has 30 rounds and bullet penetration. People who had 44's didn't have grenades (i think) they certainly didn't have a bayonet or a scope.
Let's look at bolt actions. They don't kill as easily anymore because sometimes you hit people in the chest and they don't die, sometimes you kill them and they get 5 seconds to kill you and being a bolt, you almost certainly die because even while going dark, it's easy to kill someone. You lose your pistol now and you don't get the advantage of having a grenade and the opponent not likely having any. The bolt was the most underpowered weapon in DH and in RO2, it is way more under powered. In saying that, the bayonet is fantastic and does help out.
The key point here again is the balance between guns has been shattered making the game far less fun.
The other huge point that Tripwire got wrong was the variation in types of games. One of the best things about RO1 is the fact that you can jump in half tracks, jump in lots of different tanks, tank maps, combined maps, different maps with different gun load outs, the amount of content was insane.
Instead, TW, decided to specialise on a particular battle using two tanks which were the most used tanks in RO1 completely moving away from the second biggest competitive advantage that they had. You don't have the communication that you have in RO2 that you did in RO1. MG's don't lock down areas and teams needed to work together to save it, it's 1 out gaming pretty much at the moment.
Summing up, Tripwire blew their two most competitive advantages, weapon balance and diversity of maps and equipment. Some of the things they tried to do had the right idea but they were executed very badly. Ranking is a great idea and creates a desire to play longer and to focus on different classes but ultimately, they created a bigger skill distribution gap between new players and old players which doesn't help. They nailed some things better than any other game to date such as character movement, grenades and the territory concept but the product being released with bugs such as the fire button not working was a huge mistake.
How do TW go about fixing this mess?
The way I see it, they have 3 options.
1. Go back into Beta. Have an official announcement where they say, they were taking on the behemoths EA and Activision and released a product too early and advise everyone they are taking a game back to Beta and apologise profusely. Then in a years time, release the game again once it has been finished and people have been developing new maps, new content. I would offer 10-100 thousand dollars to content developers to help create maps, vehicles and other content. Something radical needs to be done and this may actually get them a little bit a brand capital back because the fact of the matter, the game they have created with the small team they have is still pretty amazing and to compete against monsters like EA and Activision is a gargantuan task.
2. Try to patch up the game as much as possible by addressing the big issues one at a time. Unfortunately, I think this is the option they will take because they are too stubborn to actually appreciate the two core competitive advantages they lost and try and keep the game the way it is. Tanks needs radical overhaul, balance needs to be addressed and SDK has to be finished quickly to allow more content to be created.
3. Fix the most broken stuff and then accept that they have severely damaged their brand and concentrate on the SDK and offer incentives for people/groups to do something with to hopefully resurrect people's faith in the TW engine. Darkest Hour 2 could do that, Rising Storm has the lead coder from Darkest Hour in it. I spoke with him recently and I was very happy to hear him discussing how to deal with the big problem they have. How do they balance the Japs basically only having bolt actions against the US so I'm looking forward to Rising Storm being the savior of the TW engine. As crushed as I am to say it, Darkest Hour is looking less and less likely to be a possibility as I tend to thing that the coder who left Darkest Hour for Rising Storm was the main reason behind Darkest Hours success.
Anyway, food for thought. I truly hope that the Tripwire listen to what I have said because I'm pretty confident that I have nailed the two main reasons why RO2 has had such a poor launch. Given how well Tripwire marketed RO2, Its truly disappointing to see the poor launch but even with the rough launch, I still enjoy the game a lot and will probably purchase a few more copies in the years to come. (i've bought two so far and will be purchasing 2 rising storms )
Even the biggest realism nuts here have to admit that there has to be a balance as realism in many cases would just kill the game where people don't want to play it anymore. For example, not having guns jam when they realistically jammed very often such as a drum magazine for a PPSH, you have to strike a balance.
Tripwire when releasing RO1, pulled off something amazing but realistically, there wasn't a huge amount of competition out there at the time. I think from memory, COD Offensive Front had just been released before RO1 was released on steam. I think a lot of people were looking for a new game because COD had been out for a while at this point and steam offered a new way of purchasing a game which is the reason why I bought it.
RO1 at its in inception was incredibly hard but it offered something different, a competitive advantage by achieving a level of balance through "realism mechanisms". Each gun had its advantage and disadvantage and I think a lot by chance, they created a level of balance that has not been matched to date. Probably the biggest problem with RO1 and the balance that they got the most wrong was the grenades. The grenades were so powerful and everyone had 2 of them, the game suffered severe grenade spam.
We then got a mod which almost absolutely nailed it, Darkest Hour.
Everything was just about perfect. PPS was fantastic short range but terrible long range. MP 40 was slightly worse than the PPS at close range but slightly better than the PPS at longer range. The bolt action was amazing at long range, more accurate than the Semi auto but lacked RPM. The MG was fantastic because if you shot somewhere near someone, they would be suppressed and they basically couldn't shoot at you. A sniper was the perfect counter to it. The 44 was more powerful than everything else but there were very few of them. Bolt actions got grenades whereas Semi autos didn't, another balancing decision which made the classes closer while still different.
The tanks in DH were fantastic, they were powerful but there was a fantastic new counter that created a great new balance. Bazookas and Shreks which also created teamwork making them fantastic in teams of 2 with reloading of them. We also had some fantastic maps that were well thought out and really got the balance between map size and player numbers. Schetnsteppe was a god of map making, sorry about his name because I know how wrong that was
The key point was that Darkest Hour was a mod which at one stage because it was more popular than RO itself which is an incredible achievement given it was a mod.
Unfortunately, Trip didn't learn the lessons from this. They looked at RO1 and thought the biggest competitive advantage that RO1 had was that it was realistic and focused the majority of their energy on this and created relaxed realism on the side to try and resolve the difficulty problem which cost them so many players.
The key point here is that they went for realism over fun in most areas and it has almost ruined the game. Look at tanks for a perfect example. They spent so much time working on the insides of a tank to be realistic. The hull gunner has literally a pinhole to look through making it boring as all ... to play. So they decided to allow AI gunners to play because they knew no-one would want to play as a hull gunner.
Another example, MP 40. In real life, you can smash things from 200 metres without a huge amount of problems so yes, as much as you all complain, the gun is very accurate when aimed properly. The problem is that this completely wrecks the balance and makes the game less fun. You have a gun that is fantastic from short, medium and long range, it's insane and nobody would choose another gun unless the 44 is available. I'm a very good player (don't want to sound like a dick) and I can make a mess of people from 150 metres with a PPS, the balance is broken at the moment.
Doing some comparisons to get people to understand the differences and why the game is in the state it is now. A MP 40 is DH was very good short range, average to poor at medium range and horrific at long range. It was also much harder to kill people because of the damage system in RO and you don't have a zoom. So in comparison, you have a gun which is now 3-4 times as accurate, kills far quicker, has less recoil and can zoom now. It can kill much easier with one shot to the heart, It's completely different. What was a good gun just went to bloody insane gun.
Let's look at the 44. In DH, there were very few of them. They were the most powerful gun in DH still but they didn't do as much damage as they do in RO2. Quite often, you will need to hit people in the chest twice to kill them. It has slightly less recoil than DH and now you can zoom and the gun is actually far more accurate, every single fire round hits exactly where you aim. On top of this, you can now shoot through walls making the 44 far more powerful because it has 30 rounds and bullet penetration. People who had 44's didn't have grenades (i think) they certainly didn't have a bayonet or a scope.
Let's look at bolt actions. They don't kill as easily anymore because sometimes you hit people in the chest and they don't die, sometimes you kill them and they get 5 seconds to kill you and being a bolt, you almost certainly die because even while going dark, it's easy to kill someone. You lose your pistol now and you don't get the advantage of having a grenade and the opponent not likely having any. The bolt was the most underpowered weapon in DH and in RO2, it is way more under powered. In saying that, the bayonet is fantastic and does help out.
The key point here again is the balance between guns has been shattered making the game far less fun.
The other huge point that Tripwire got wrong was the variation in types of games. One of the best things about RO1 is the fact that you can jump in half tracks, jump in lots of different tanks, tank maps, combined maps, different maps with different gun load outs, the amount of content was insane.
Instead, TW, decided to specialise on a particular battle using two tanks which were the most used tanks in RO1 completely moving away from the second biggest competitive advantage that they had. You don't have the communication that you have in RO2 that you did in RO1. MG's don't lock down areas and teams needed to work together to save it, it's 1 out gaming pretty much at the moment.
Summing up, Tripwire blew their two most competitive advantages, weapon balance and diversity of maps and equipment. Some of the things they tried to do had the right idea but they were executed very badly. Ranking is a great idea and creates a desire to play longer and to focus on different classes but ultimately, they created a bigger skill distribution gap between new players and old players which doesn't help. They nailed some things better than any other game to date such as character movement, grenades and the territory concept but the product being released with bugs such as the fire button not working was a huge mistake.
How do TW go about fixing this mess?
The way I see it, they have 3 options.
1. Go back into Beta. Have an official announcement where they say, they were taking on the behemoths EA and Activision and released a product too early and advise everyone they are taking a game back to Beta and apologise profusely. Then in a years time, release the game again once it has been finished and people have been developing new maps, new content. I would offer 10-100 thousand dollars to content developers to help create maps, vehicles and other content. Something radical needs to be done and this may actually get them a little bit a brand capital back because the fact of the matter, the game they have created with the small team they have is still pretty amazing and to compete against monsters like EA and Activision is a gargantuan task.
2. Try to patch up the game as much as possible by addressing the big issues one at a time. Unfortunately, I think this is the option they will take because they are too stubborn to actually appreciate the two core competitive advantages they lost and try and keep the game the way it is. Tanks needs radical overhaul, balance needs to be addressed and SDK has to be finished quickly to allow more content to be created.
3. Fix the most broken stuff and then accept that they have severely damaged their brand and concentrate on the SDK and offer incentives for people/groups to do something with to hopefully resurrect people's faith in the TW engine. Darkest Hour 2 could do that, Rising Storm has the lead coder from Darkest Hour in it. I spoke with him recently and I was very happy to hear him discussing how to deal with the big problem they have. How do they balance the Japs basically only having bolt actions against the US so I'm looking forward to Rising Storm being the savior of the TW engine. As crushed as I am to say it, Darkest Hour is looking less and less likely to be a possibility as I tend to thing that the coder who left Darkest Hour for Rising Storm was the main reason behind Darkest Hours success.
Anyway, food for thought. I truly hope that the Tripwire listen to what I have said because I'm pretty confident that I have nailed the two main reasons why RO2 has had such a poor launch. Given how well Tripwire marketed RO2, Its truly disappointing to see the poor launch but even with the rough launch, I still enjoy the game a lot and will probably purchase a few more copies in the years to come. (i've bought two so far and will be purchasing 2 rising storms
)
