Regarding accessibility..

[Cyper]

I came to think a about something that I would like to share with everyone else here. Do not consider this as the absolute truth, it's simply the product of some of my ideas that I was thinking about regarding accessibility in RO2 and the huge playerdrop and all the complaints.

RO OST created It's own niche audience that was quite small one but it did wonderfull things for the game - just look at all the wonderfull things done for RO OST in terms of mods, and entusiasm from everyone.

However, this niche audience doesn't just consist of RO OST players.
It also consist of Codemasters cancelled 2011 game Operation Flashpoint: Red River and most importantly of all - the whole arma community which is really big for being a niche community. RO2 have been discussed really well at both of these boards and before it's release; there's 100 pages with a lot of positive feedback about RO2 on the Bohemia Interactive board.

From what I know, these people are like any other gamers: Intrested in all kinds of games, expect that they're intrested in hardcore games aswell. I believe that the current state of RO2 makes both these communities less interested in the game. The reason that they wanted to play RO2 was certainly because they expected it to be a hardcore tactical shooter like the first game. Then we had the Roosters who expected a spiritual sequel to RO OST. Regarding the complaints on this board it seems like RO2 didn't fully deliver that. Then, we have the casual gamers which maybe expected RO2 to be something similar to Battlefield in terms of realism and difficulty due to all this talking about skillpoints, upgrades, and increased accessibility to help new players. The mainstream consist of over ten millions
of players. Now, the question is:

Where are they?

Where are the millions of players that were in need of this accessibility TWI invested a lot of time to implement into the game?

Where are Codemasters Flashpoint community that was dissolved this year?

Where are the thousands of players from the arma community?

All this somehow tells me that RO2 didn't became more accessible. It became more inaccessible. The reception - from all kinds of gamers - seems to be lukewarm a part from a small audience that actually loves it. It became less accessible for the Roosters, for the arma community, the flashpoint community, and It's far from being accessible to the mainstream. It somehow made me think of PCgamers verdict on OFP Red River.

''Red River takes all the things the Flashpoint name is associated with

 

[CuriousOrange]

I think I agree with you. It was a strange move to change the game in the way they did. Did feel like they were trying to make it more accessible. Which when competing with BF3 and MW3 seems a bit suicidal.

Luckily none of the changes are game breaking in my opinion. They can all be smoothed over with patches and fixes. I'm patiently giving it time, haven't been playing much recently. But since BF3s disastrous launch I'm ready to come back. Haven't actually managed to play more than one map of BF3 before it crashes.

 

[DasFist]

I totally agree with OP

 

[Krobar]

The whole thing with sequaling I dont really get. Sequaling promotes a progressive story and a sequal would continue that. RO:OST is multi-player based with the only singleplayer being multi-player with bots. The game has no story but history. (omg, pun master general here) An Ostfront "sequal" would take place after 1945. While a game "true to its predecessor(s)" would remain similar in most ways to them and a sequal, no matter on content or features would happen after the events of the privious' take place.

 

[Cwivey]

There's the posibility they're waiting to see how things turn out, with all the Nay-saying, doom harbouring, "game is dead" talk after release, I wouldn't be surprised at least one or two people were put off. But hey-ho, things are proceding nicely, performance is vvaaasssttllyyy improved and gameplay tweaks are being done constantly, so I can imagine they'll want to at least give it a go at some point in time. ^^

As for accessability, this game is definatley accessable. Personal expectations may be different, causing all the ruccuss, which is essentially what this thread is about, isn't it?

 

[Apos]

To sum it up:

- Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45
Metacritic score: 81 + many awards, User score: 86

- Red Orchestra 2: Heroes Of Stalingrad
Metacritic score: 76 + "game is more accessible", User Score: 66.

@Op wrong game designer decisions of RO2 have been mentioned on this forum many times. We need to have hope that TWI will bring back RO spirit into HoS in further gameplay fixes. So far we only get reduced (a bit) number of SMG/Semi-auto weapons. It isn't enough, but I'm aware of fact that priority is to fix game/crashes/performance/etc.

EDIT: Community already showed up the direction that RO2 should follow: it's Darkest Hour. RO2 went in opposite direction.

 

[GRIZZLY]

I'm with you to the end Cyper.... Please bring back Red Orchestra!

 

[Proud_God]

Here, here, agreed with OP. I think it takes balls for a DEV company to change gameplay design choises after release. Let's see if TWI has balls.

 

[cucamonster]

Here, here, agreed with OP. I think it takes balls for a DEV company to change gameplay design choises after release. Let's see if TWI has balls.

This.

 

[pepihoh]

EDIT: Community already showed up the direction that RO2 should follow: it's Darkest Hour. RO2 went in opposite direction.

Speak for yourself. How I hate when individuals keep declaring their opinions as opinions of the whole community. DH is a good mod, but I enjoyed ro-ost more. Firefights were more frequent and the atmosphere was better, maps were more fun. While in DH most of the maps consist of traversing to the cap point and then getting shot from a guy you didn't even see. In my opinion, DH was more closer to the arma series, a simulator. Ro1 was a game, with the emphasis on realism but still, the main goal was to make a fun and immersive ww2 game.

 

[Nazarov]

To sum it up:

- Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45
Metacritic score: 81 + many awards, User score: 86

- Red Orchestra 2: Heroes Of Stalingrad
Metacritic score: 76 + "game is more accessible", User Score: 6.6

User Score 6.6? Not 66?
Who makes up the user score?

 

[TheRealGunther]

People forget or just wasn't around to see Ost develop I remember when it was a mod you could blow up tanks with grenades just 1 example it took alot of patches to get it the game it is today.Anyone who claims to be a long time TWI fan should know it takes a little patience to let the dev's get proper feedback from its fans.The latest patch has already showed this with more realistic loadouts ... give them time

 

[Apos]

User Score 6.6? Not 66?
Who makes up the user score?

It's 66, not 6.6, typo.

 

[Extension7]

I just think it's the change of time and new generations kicking in. It happens everywhere.

People 10 years ago weren't the same as they were today. Cars weren't the same, economy wasn't the same, and games sure as hell weren't the same.

As time shifts things eventually move one, and it's sad to see that this new generation is into what it's into.

With that said, IMO I think RO2 still has a chance, the player counts have been rising after that new patch, (from like 400s to 800s) and with the release of the SDK and more maps and free content TWI gives out, hopefully the word will get around to the other thousands of people who put the game down for a bit, and see what a change the game has made in a couple of months.

The maps from the community have to be the best, cause it's from the player, it's what they want. They can sculpt it into how they feel the game should be played. I can't wait for the SDK to come out.

 

[Cyper]

What really is annoying with RO2 is how little choice it gives to the orginal community. One example is the lockdown timer, the unlocks, perks, skillpoints etc. It could have been so easy to make it optional. There are so many things that could have been made optional which would even make the gameplay as an improved version of RO OST. But it was never done.

What could be the reason for this?

Was it because TWI thought that if a proper hardcore were optional in the game the most loyal fanbase - a.k.a the Roosters, would create servers with Hardcore mode and Hardcore mode only, which would scare the casual gamers off?

Bacause It's really damn likely that the orginal fanbase would do exactly this. Because I doubt that the first thing the new players to RO do is to set up own servers. They want to try the game first. This would mean that the majority of all servers were run in Hardcore because all of the servers would be created by people that wanted exactly this?

When it come to modders.. .

In my opinion it isn't the modders responsibility to FIX the game. What they do is simply adding stuff to the overal experience not going like ''Well, RO3 is released next week, and since it wont be as we want, we have to prepare for the next Red Orchestra mod to make red orchestra 3 more like redorchestra.''. Because we all know that there its only the most loyal players that are left keeping the game alive in the end when the smoke clears, and if these people lose intrest in the game.. well thats a problem.

Having the community working their *** off for free in one direction and having TWI working in the opposite direction isn't very productive for neither TWI or the modders. If people knew how much diffrent RO2 was, all the players that is a part of the huge players drops would probably have been the people that wouldn't have bought the game instead. So, if we think about the future, I think that there's a lot of decisions TWI has to make.. and I really hope our posts here can help them.

 

[Nazarov]

People forget or just wasn't around to see Ost develop I remember when it was a mod you could blow up tanks with grenades just 1 example it took alot of patches to get it the game it is today.Anyone who claims to be a long time TWI fan should know it takes a little patience to let the dev's get proper feedback from its fans.The latest patch has already showed this with more realistic loadouts ... give them time

I understand the process involved. The part I'm having trouble understanding was simply that RO2 already has a working foundation (RO:OST).
I just didn't see the need to recreate the entire game style from the bottom up.
One would expect take some of the learnings from a prequel and then carry it over. Being that Tripwire is not a big company like EA, I would've thought they would try to increase efficiency that way.

The name just throws me off. If Tripewire to just call it 'Heroes of Stalingrad', then I think it would be a different story because already it's a different title.
And their intention was obviously different than that of what many RO players were expecting.

 

[Nazarov]

It's 66, not 6.6, typo.

Lol ok that makes more sense...
I was gonna say, it had a bad reception by some but it couldn't have been that low

 

[Sensemann]

Cyper, I share many of your thoughts, but can only give my ideas/impressions/feelings to this.

You are questioning yourself, where the players are. In my eyes, it's not difficult to tell where the players are. In a certain way, CoD15 (?), BF3 and Skyrim had an impact in gamer's behaviour currently. I am very convinced that releasing the game before these 3 anticipated games was a big mistake. Not just because of less time to ironing out bugs, but because of attracting players. The mainstream players.

I don't want to create a discussion about why CoD/BF is better/worse than RO/Arma gameplay wise, but no one can neglect that the core target audience is significantly different.

To stay up to date, I sometimes check a German PC-gaming magazine (online). RO 2, while searching for it, I found 3 articles pre-release from.
For 2 weeks pre-release of BF 3, I found 5-6 articles A DAY on the same page. Needless to say that the reports were, well, nothing but gameplay pictures and info about which member of the development team gave a fart caused by which dish they selected for lunch. But it was there, thanks to Marketing budget. For the mainstream, this is enough.

80% of your feelings are stimulated by what you are seeing. If you are a mainstream gamer (with that I mean, not a fan of BF or RO, you are selecting what attracts you most) listening to Alan telling about the 100 features of RO 2 is interesting. If you have the time. But if you see a video of BF 3 explosions, graphics and so on and so on, then your senses tell you that BF 3 is the one you want. Very simple. The same as why you usually pay more interest to the sexy chick with the short skirt, than the one with the good character but the less attractive appearance.

But back to topic, where are the players:

Now, the question is:
Where are they?

I answered that pretty much for the guys that I called mainstream before. They are on skyrim, BF 3 and CoD.

Where are the millions of players that were in need of this accessibility TWI invested a lot of time to implement into the game?

This target audience, I am pretty sure, is still with BF 3 and CoD. And right so. Why would they risk spending money on RO2 when it's predecessor had a steep learning-curve? Because Alan promised that it will be more accessible? (nothing against you Alan, I am refering to pre-release videos). No, they will be on BF 3 and CoD, because they KNOW it's easy to control. It's rewarding because Mr. John Doe, busy worker with 1 hour/day of game time can be Rambo and get his fix. No need to learn a game.

Where are Codemasters Flashpoint community that was dissolved this year?

They are on Arma 2 and it's hundreds of mods, thousands of maps and coop missions. Very simple.
I like Arma 2 and love Ro (1). They have similarities when it comes to creating a realistic battle environment, yet they have huge differences. I disagree with the current thought that Arma 2 crowd would always be happy with Ro 1/2 and vice versa. RO is a (more/less) realistic multiplayer shooter, which is focusing on single battles. Once you learned it, you can have a quick battle for 30 mins, right before you go out for a pint of beer.
Arma 2 however is more like a realistic war simulator. If you ever played Arma coop with a friend or 2, you will most likely have played a single mission that lasted 2 hours or more. Or you are playing around in the editor "to make it your way".

Where are the thousands of players from the arma community?

I wouldn't expect thousands of Arma 2 players playing Ro. Maybe there were thousands that bought the game, but I doubt that most of them are still in. Reason for this is simple: RO 1 was already not as realistic as Arma (simulation wise) and RO 2 is a step away from Arma 2.

With that said, It's a shame that not more people play RO2 nowdays. It's an amazing game in It's deep core, but simple decisions seems to have driven away people from the game. I feel sad for Tripwire for this but at the same time I wonder what they expected. Question is, where will we head from in the future? How does the future look?

And when you come to this point "shame that not more people play RO2 nowadays", just think of the following: How likely is it, that RO2 will now still attract the masses of CoD/BF3 players, when they see the current player numbers of +/-1000 when there are far more CoD/BF3 players?
They will most likely say: "Again I was right, betting my money on these games. With RO2 I soon would have no game to play anymore".
Vicious circle, eh?

 

[Cyper]

Cyper, I share many of your thoughts, but can only give my ideas/impressions/feelings to this.

You are questioning yourself, where the players are. In my eyes, it's not difficult to tell where the players are. In a certain way, CoD15 (?), BF3 and Skyrim had an impact in gamer's behaviour currently. I am very convinced that releasing the game before these 3 anticipated games was a big mistake. Not just because of less time to ironing out bugs, but because of attracting players. The mainstream players.

I don't want to create a discussion about why CoD/BF is better/worse than RO/Arma gameplay wise, but no one can neglect that the core target audience is significantly different.

To stay up to date, I sometimes check a German PC-gaming magazine (online). RO 2, while searching for it, I found 3 articles pre-release from.
For 2 weeks pre-release of BF 3, I found 5-6 articles A DAY on the same page. Needless to say that the reports were, well, nothing but gameplay pictures and info about which member of the development team gave a fart caused by which dish they selected for lunch. But it was there, thanks to Marketing budget. For the mainstream, this is enough.

80% of your feelings are stimulated by what you are seeing. If you are a mainstream gamer (with that I mean, not a fan of BF or RO, you are selecting what attracts you most) listening to Alan telling about the 100 features of RO 2 is interesting. If you have the time. But if you see a video of BF 3 explosions, graphics and so on and so on, then your senses tell you that BF 3 is the one you want. Very simple. The same as why you usually pay more interest to the sexy chick with the short skirt, than the one with the good character but the less attractive appearance.

But back to topic, where are the players:



I answered that pretty much for the guys that I called mainstream before. They are on skyrim, BF 3 and CoD.



This target audience, I am pretty sure, is still with BF 3 and CoD. And right so. Why would they risk spending money on RO2 when it's predecessor had a steep learning-curve? Because Alan promised that it will be more accessible? (nothing against you Alan, I am refering to pre-release videos). No, they will be on BF 3 and CoD, because they KNOW it's easy to control. It's rewarding because Mr. John Doe, busy worker with 1 hour/day of game time can be Rambo and get his fix. No need to learn a game.



They are on Arma 2 and it's hundreds of mods, thousands of maps and coop missions. Very simple.
I like Arma 2 and love Ro (1). They have similarities when it comes to creating a realistic battle environment, yet they have huge differences. I disagree with the current thought that Arma 2 crowd would always be happy with Ro 1/2 and vice versa. RO is a (more/less) realistic multiplayer shooter, which is focusing on single battles. Once you learned it, you can have a quick battle for 30 mins, right before you go out for a pint of beer.
Arma 2 however is more like a realistic war simulator. If you ever played Arma coop with a friend or 2, you will most likely have played a single mission that lasted 2 hours or more. Or you are playing around in the editor "to make it your way".



I wouldn't expect thousands of Arma 2 players playing Ro. Maybe there were thousands that bought the game, but I doubt that most of them are still in. Reason for this is simple: RO 1 was already not as realistic as Arma (simulation wise) and RO 2 is a step away from Arma 2.



And when you come to this point "shame that not more people play RO2 nowadays", just think of the following: How likely is it, that RO2 will now still attract the masses of CoD/BF3 players, when they see the current player numbers of +/-1000 when there are far more CoD/BF3 players?
They will most likely say: "Again I was right, betting my money on these games. With RO2 I soon would have no game to play anymore".
Vicious circle, eh?

Actually, in terms of accessibility and in the task of attracting the mainstream COD and BF wins over RO2 bigtime. It's simply superior by no doubt. Not to mention the fact that you just stated - Dice, for instance, have millions to spend on only the marketing with the big explosions. That's why it is so crazy that TWI tried to attract this audience. They changed the formula a bit and risk losing their core audience just for the sake of trying to be attractive to the COD/BF audience which in reallity never really would care much more for the game than before. Crazy.

When it comes to Codemasters Flashpoint community I can actually say that not everyone of them have moved to arma. They ones who did that, did it after the disaster Dragon Rising. The rest were simply people waiting for a miracle to happen - a tacticashooter that doesn't require a super computer to run. Arma lacks in accessibility not for one reason, but for two: It also requires a really great hardware. This is the mainreason to why at least some of the people actually cared about Codemasters after dragon rising. This may be around minimum 10,000 people, due to the fact that Red River sold roughly over 100,000 copies in the EU, and if we say that at least 90% were unhappy about the game, it can certainly be 10,000 people.

When it comes to the arma community I see no reason to why people wouldn't like RO 1/ just because It's less realistic than arma. The experience I have gained from talking to people over there is that most of the are really open to all kinds of games. People discuss BF3, crysis, cod, max payne, skyrim, gta v, ironfront.. and then the most discussed game in the BIS gaming forum with over 100 pages: RO heroes of stalingrad, with this 3rd post saying exactly what I know other people thought about the game.

[URL="http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=72561"][URL]http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=72561[/URL][/URL]


I am not saying that the amount of players that actually discuss RO2 on the BIS board equals to the whole community, but it really tells something. Such as the fact that this niche community isn't really that small as people tend to think.

Do you know how much Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising sold?

1.2 million copies. When the fans told Codemasters that they failed with the game - which they actually did since they doomed the future by tellings lies and misleading the community - ''Creative'' (Lol) Director, Sion Lenton, posted a quote from the Codemasters CEO, stating statement that they didn't - BECAUSE the game sold good. If Codemasters sell roughly one million copies that more than enough for them to gain a lot of cash.

So why is the arma community so important?

The reason to WHY dragon rising sold so good was NOT because the game was good. It was because of the old flashpoint community, also known as the ARMA community nowdays, were fooled into buying the game. It was the brands name that made people buy it including myself. Codemasters devs, especially Sion Lenton, threw a lot of bull**** and straight out lies around him, and promised the biggest and mega best combat simulator every created blablabla and it was the best because it was called flashpoint blabla so the old flashpointers were fooled into buying the game.

What happened next?

Operation Flashpoint Red River was released this year. It was promised NOT to be a combat simulator (simulation is a dirty word in the studio Sion said) and he said that combat simulators are boring.

How much did it sell?

Well, it struggled to sell even 100,000 copies, despite the fact that it wasnt even a combat sim anymore. The old Flashpointers didn't buy the game because they knew it was ****. Going from 1.2 million copies to have problem to sell even 100,000 copies is quite a big fail. As you probably know, the game is got canned.

So I doubt it matters if ro2 is less realistic than arma. I doubt anyone expected something else aswell. The arma community is a big niche audience, but they are not playing the game, aswell as the mainstreamt doesnt, aswell as most of the roosters doesnt.

they tried to combine CoD and Arma = a no go for me

I must say, I was waiting eagerly for this game and now I regret paying for it. It's just wrong, full of bugs and weird solutions, it doesn't feel either realistic nor arcadish to me.

Not saying that these two quotes is what the whole arma community is saying... but I do think it kinda tells what most people seems to think about ro on this board atm if you look at the nature of the complaints, and most likely on the bohemia board, which this quite comes from.


EDIT: I came to think about the first group i became a member of: RO_Arma steam community.
Unfortunately, it didnt gain as many followers as it could have done. So I do believe that the arma community could have contributed a lot more to the game.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/RO_ArmA

 

[Squarebasher]

People forget or just wasn't around to see Ost develop I remember when it was a mod you could blow up tanks with grenades just 1 example it took alot of patches to get it the game it is today.Anyone who claims to be a long time TWI fan should know it takes a little patience to let the dev's get proper feedback from its fans.The latest patch has already showed this with more realistic loadouts ... give them time

I agree with the above comment, give the devs a chance, this game is very enjoyable to play as is but I think it can only improve.

A friend of mine keeps trying to get me to buy BF3, I keep telling him when he is bored of BF3 with no mod support and all the add ons you will have to buy to keep it fresh, I will still be playing ROS with new maps and free mods, and even if we have to pay for some stuff we know it will be quality.