Theory: Take away realism to create realism.

[Cyper]

In order to make a game realistic you'll have to include some factors and remove others simply because it is a game. RO1 had over-recoiled weapons, with incredible lot of sway in some cases, but the gunplay in RO1 simply ends up as a lot more realistic than RO2.

Why?

If we want to look into realism, we'll have to include real fear. This doesn't exist in a game. In real war you will fight tired, hungry, and even frustated - this doesn't happen either. There is a lot of stuff that games can't include simply because they're games. While RO1 had this quite unrealistic weapon handling RO2 simplified it even further which makes the game like any other FPS. While RO1 wasn't that realistic in terms of weaponhandling, it is a lot more realistic than RO2. Soldiers won't simply go from cover to aiming down the sight in a matter of a second and get a perfect view and shoot someone.
　
If we're looking at real war, according to documenteries, books, and witnesses, people are really damn confused in war. If anyone of you have read Evan Wright's book Generation Kill you know what I am talking about. Most of the time you don't even know where the bullets come from. The whizzle by, miss, and the soldiers have to look for muscle flashes in order to locate the fire positions. People get confused and scared. Bullets everywhere. If every soldier was as good with handling weapons such as in RO2 they would have been supersoldiers. Not to mention the fact that you're not really punished for running and gunning in RO2. This makes the gameplay itself more unrealistic since it accept that kind of behaviour which won't happen in war.

Not even military simulators that takes places in modern time demostrates this super human ability to handle weapons. And they certainly don't demostrate any ability to do direct sprints fom standing still and an instant stop from sprinting. For those of you that have played arma 2 you know the weapon handling is very diffrent from RO2 and that the weapon handling in ro2 is more in line with regular FPS shooters.

Despite that RO1 had inaccurate weapons with a lot of sway and recoil, this was a greatreplacement for the deadzone- floatzone that didn't exist in the game. Without this weapon handling the game would just have been another aim- and fire- shooter. RO1 also did a great job of making the player confused and 'scared' in terms of what you can achieve in a videogame.

In RO1, you see ricochettes coming agianst you when someone fire their MG, you hear the terrible high sound of someone of rips cloth while the MG42 fire, you see the ricochettes coming agianst you and hit the ground while the bullet impact make sit even more terrifying while the screen gets blurred. In RO2 there is often two options: You kill the gunner or you die. That's about it. That's my experience from it. It doesn't give you much chance to survive. It doesn't give the same sensation of fear. With the lockdown timer it forces the player to spread out fast and rush for the objective before their team loose within five minutes or less.

Maybe I haven't quite pointed out exactly what makes RO1 feel a lot more immersive, and what makes the gameplay a lot more realistic, but I know there is a huge diffrent between those two games in terms of gameplay. Today I played at a local RO1 server as a

 

[[TORO]Patosentado]

I always understood that IRL a lot of bullets were shot for cover... Patton said "it is always better to waste ammo than lives, as it takes 19years to make and train a soldier and hours to make a bullet". He also insisted in firing where you suppose the enemy is just to keep they down while you advance... and that

 

[Fisher]

In order to make a game realistic you'll have to include some factors and remove others simply because it is a game. RO1 had over-recoiled weapons, with incredible lot of sway in some cases, but the gunplay in RO1 simply ends up as a lot more realistic than RO2.

Why?

If we want to look into realism, we'll have to include real fear. This doesn't exist in a game. In real war you will fight tired, hungry, and even frustated - this doesn't happen either. There is a lot of stuff that games can't include simply because they're games. While RO1 had this quite unrealistic weapon handling RO2 simplified it even further which makes the game like any other FPS. While RO1 wasn't that realistic in terms of weaponhandling, it is a lot more realistic than RO2. Soldiers won't simply go from cover to aiming down the sight in a matter of a second and get a perfect view and shoot someone.
　
If we're looking at real war, according to documenteries, books, and witnesses, people are really damn confused in war. If anyone of you have read Evan Wright's book Generation Kill you know what I am talking about. Most of the time you don't even know where the bullets come from. The whizzle by, miss, and the soldiers have to look for muscle flashes in order to locate the fire positions. People get confused and scared. Bullets everywhere. If every soldier was as good with handling weapons such as in RO2 they would have been supersoldiers. Not to mention the fact that you're not really punished for running and gunning in RO2. This makes the gameplay itself more unrealistic since it accept that kind of behaviour which won't happen in war.

Not even military simulators that takes places in modern time demostrates this super human ability to handle weapons. And they certainly don't demostrate any ability to do direct sprints fom standing still and an instant stop from sprinting. For those of you that have played arma 2 you know the weapon handling is very diffrent from RO2 and that the weapon handling in ro2 is more in line with regular FPS shooters.

Despite that RO1 had inaccurate weapons with a lot of sway and recoil, this was a greatreplacement for the deadzone- floatzone that didn't exist in the game. Without this weapon handling the game would just have been another aim- and fire- shooter. RO1 also did a great job of making the player confused and 'scared' in terms of what you can achieve in a videogame.

In RO1, you see ricochettes coming agianst you when someone fire their MG, you hear the terrible high sound of someone of rips cloth while the MG42 fire, you see the ricochettes coming agianst you and hit the ground while the bullet impact make sit even more terrifying while the screen gets blurred. In RO2 there is often two options: You kill the gunner or you die. That's about it. That's my experience from it. It doesn't give you much chance to survive. It doesn't give the same sensation of fear. With the lockdown timer it forces the player to spread out fast and rush for the objective before their team loose within five minutes or less.

Maybe I haven't quite pointed out exactly what makes RO1 feel a lot more immersive, and what makes the gameplay a lot more realistic, but I know there is a huge diffrent between those two games in terms of gameplay.

Good point, one I tried to make in the original post with less detail and explanation

 

[ledurpy]

1. There is no argument for the zoom , the human eye cannot magnify under any condition. Changing the field of view is not what is being presented in the game , what is being presented in the game is ZOOM plain and simple. this isnt realistic and is the PRIMARY reason that this game plays nothing like red orchestra 1 and the primary reason it never will.

I played this game in the beta with the zoom set all the way down , and guess what ? it was ****ing fantastic , why the devs chose to screw up the most important game mechanic is beyond me. if you dont like "pixel hunting" cry me a river and go play call of duty.

2. the audio for this game is frankly alot less than it should be.

for example this is what being shot at sounds like

Long Range Balloon Shooting with Ballistic Crack - YouTube

 

[Proud_God]

...muscle flashes...

awesome

 

[Proud_God]

1. There is no argument for the zoom , the human eye cannot magnify under any condition. Changing the field of view is not what is being presented in the game , what is being presented in the game is ZOOM plain and simple. this isnt realistic and is the PRIMARY reason that this game plays nothing like red orchestra 1 and the primary reason it never will.

I played this game in the beta with the zoom set all the way down , and guess what ? it was ****ing fantastic , why the devs chose to screw up the most important game mechanic is beyond me. if you dont like "pixel hunting" cry me a river and go play call of duty.

[/url]

Ok, one more time. While you are running around you are actually zoomed-out. What you refer to as 'zoom' is the normal view with respect to how big everything looks.

 

[hoodedmanx]

Ok, one more time. While you are running around you are actually zoomed-out. What you refer to as 'zoom' is the normal view with respect to how big everything looks.

If thats true I think that explains the limits on FoV.

 

[triple25mm]

Removing zoom would fix soo many aspects of this game.

 

[dogbadger]

i'm glad someone put up PR cos i was going to say you have prolonged engagements in that game.
True there's no IS zoom although there are many scoped weapons of but ofc the scale of the maps is larger anyway, so you tend to open up from a greater distance - and with more initial caution due to target identification.

i've been playing it again recently after having to re-install the lot following the latest patch - and tbh i still can't see anything touching this for PvP realism - so rather than get upset about other games phaps not living up to expectations in this regard I can just play this, cos it does what it set out to do.

You can argue all day long really about the realism of certain features like zoom, recoil, sway or whatever - but the bottom line is does the overall game give what you feel to be a realistic experience?
PR does, and that's that really - job done

 

[ledurpy]

Ok, one more time. While you are running around you are actually zoomed-out. What you refer to as 'zoom' is the normal view with respect to how big everything looks.

no , there is simply no broscience method of trying to damage control this.

when you press the right mouse button , the camera ZOOMS IN through the iron sights.

This isnt a change in field of view , if it was , the image would be squished narrower or stretched wider on your monitor. there would be no zoom what so ever.

Do you know how i know this?
Because early in the beta they had a option in the menu to change field of view , and it didnt magically zoom everything in by 2.5x.

Every attempt to explain this as "how real vision works" is completely moronic in of it self. Eyes cannot zoom ever.

 

[Serrow]

No one is trying to tell you that our eyes can magically zoom in, but because of how a monitor works, it can not properly scale things to how a Human eye perceives things.

The 'zoom' feature as you call it, is actually bringing it up to a realistic ratio, and how you would see whatever you're looking at in real life from the distance you're standing.

If you can't get it with that, then there isn't much more we can do for you.

 

[Paas]

Okay, before I even start. Credentials:
Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps
26yrs of Age
Combat Deployment in support of OIF 792 with Regimental Combat Team 1

...okay, we have that out of the way.

A lot of you are simply misinformed and operating off of home cooked theorem and speculation. Firefights are not the objective of combat. We don't strive to produce them, we don't aim to waste ammunition (it's a lot harder to resupply than you think).

The catalyst of a firefight is simply our will to live as people. We put rounds where the enemy has a angle. We put rounds where the enemy's muzzle flash is last spotted. What we don't do is shoot at NOTHING. I know a lot of Hollywood movies portray these hour long fights and it seems like nothing is being hit. The reality if the situation is that EVERYONE is aiming at SOMEONE. If that said someone was to expose themselves for even a second (especially under 300m) they are as good as dead.

This is where suppression fire comes in. You KNOW where the enemy is, do not want him to move, and do not want him to have the ability to return fire. You want to control your enemy, so you suppress him. Suppression Fire is not necessarily always sustained, rapid, or cyclical fire. Sometimes it's as simple as putting a double tap in the last known position and holding the angel. Sometimes it's as complex as breaking contact (shoot till your barrel glows). Most firefights are not the cavalcade of munitions you have been shown.

Firefights are in this game, I have taken part in them with other RO2 players from this base. It's just a matter of training and having expectations based on experience, not an outsiders perspective into combat. Most of you don't know small unit tactics, and it shows. You don't know how to cover angles, post over watch, bound, display disciple in your fire, cover vs concealment, etc. etc. Your ignorance (and complete disregard for mortality) is forcing you to do things no trained serviceman would do. You run across open ground. You rush to open fire on the enemy's known position with little regard for your own safety. You expose yourselves for prolonged periods in an attempt to find a target. All things that make absolutely no sense if you're trying to kill and survive.

The game is just letting you! All things you can do in real life. You will die, quickly, but if that's your goal in (digital) life then that game will facilitate a realistic outcome. Are they flaws? Yep, to list a few:

Lack of Inertia
Lack of Realistic Wounding
Shoddy/Random Close Combat Hit Detection
etc.

But even if all of those things (and more) are worked out you're still going to be an untrained rabble (most, not all. I'm sure there are other military personnel who play this) thrust into a game tailored to realistic tactics.

...and the Zoom thing has been beaten to death. 1:1 scale, let it go already.

-Paas

 

[hockeywarrior]

leave it as it is ?

I quite like it as is and have sustained firefights with other people who know how to use the cover system. Everyone else just dies quicker.

The cover system is largely worthless, mainly because it doesn't even protect you most of the time, and it's clunky in the short engagement distances of RO2. I do much better ignoring it altogether.

And the prolonged firefights of RO1 are no more in RO2 ... it's a snipefest where you its either kill or be killed most of the time. K/D ratios of 80+ in most 64 player servers are a testament to this.

 

[Mike 78]

Okay, before I even start. Credentials:
Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps
26yrs of Age
Combat Deployment in support of OIF 792 with Regimental Combat Team 1

...okay, we have that out of the way.

A lot of you are simply misinformed and operating off of home cooked theorem and speculation. Firefights are not the objective of combat. We don't strive to produce them, we don't aim to waste ammunition (it's a lot harder to resupply than you think).

The catalyst of a firefight is simply our will to live as people. We put rounds where the enemy has a angle. We put rounds where the enemy's muzzle flash is last spotted. What we don't do is shoot at NOTHING. I know a lot of Hollywood movies portray these hour long fights and it seems like nothing is being hit. The reality if the situation is that EVERYONE is aiming at SOMEONE. If that said someone was to expose themselves for even a second (especially under 300m) they are as good as dead.

This is where suppression fire comes in. You KNOW where the enemy is, do not want him to move, and do not want him to have the ability to return fire. You want to control your enemy, so you suppress him. Suppression Fire is not necessarily always sustained, rapid, or cyclical fire. Sometimes it's as simple as putting a double tap in the last known position and holding the angel. Sometimes it's as complex as breaking contact (shoot till your barrel glows). Most firefights are not the cavalcade of munitions you have been shown.

Firefights are in this game, I have taken part in them with other RO2 players from this base. It's just a matter of training and having expectations based on experience, not an outsiders perspective into combat. Most of you don't know small unit tactics, and it shows. You don't know how to cover angles, post over watch, bound, display disciple in your fire, cover vs concealment, etc. etc. Your ignorance (and complete disregard for mortality) is forcing you to do things no trained serviceman would do. You run across open ground. You rush to open fire on the enemy's known position with little regard for your own safety. You expose yourselves for prolonged periods in an attempt to find a target. All things that make absolutely no sense if you're trying to kill and survive.

The game is just letting you! All things you can do in real life. You will die, quickly, but if that's your goal in (digital) life then that game will facilitate a realistic outcome. Are they flaws? Yep, to list a few:

Lack of Inertia
Lack of Realistic Wounding
Shoddy/Random Close Combat Hit Detection
etc.

But even if all of those things (and more) are worked out you're still going to be an untrained rabble (most, not all. I'm sure there are other military personnel who play this) thrust into a game tailored to realistic tactics.

...and the Zoom thing has been beaten to death. 1:1 scale, let it go already.

-Paas

That you are in an army doesn't mean you have superior insight in WW2 combat conditions. Nobody ever said that firefights are the objective of combat. As it is, the 1 shot 1 kill gameplay in RO2 resembles more a lasergame with a ww2 theme than a combat simulator. You can act all veteran at the age of 26 but aren't impressing me in stating that the middle eastern wars and your supposed training have anything at all to do with the kinds of combat that were taking place in Stalingrad and all over the Eastern front. That's right FRONT, WW2 was a frontline war. Nothing like these middle eastern occuptions.

The way is seems now is that TW let go of things like weapon sway, recoil and rl ballistics which is why the gameplay is what it is right now. Not appealing for the long term. Your logics suggest that everybody should just stay put and camp it out but that doesn't give you proper simulation in a game where it is about taking objectives. The guns are to easy to aim. Untill they fix that, this game is just that much closer to arcade than to realism whatever tactics may be used.

 

[M.D.]

I agree about the bullet impact sound. It really should be louder. Arma2 is a good example.

 

[Valok]

In RO1, you see ricochettes coming agianst you when someone fire their MG, you hear the terrible high sound of someone of rips cloth while the MG42 fire, you see the ricochettes coming agianst you and hit the ground while the bullet impact make sit even more terrifying while the screen gets blurred. In RO2 there is often two options: You kill the gunner or you die. That's about it. That's my experience from it. It doesn't give you much chance to survive. It doesn't give the same sensation of fear. With the lockdown timer it forces the player to spread out fast and rush for the objective before their team loose within five minutes or less.

Maybe I haven't quite pointed out exactly what makes RO1 feel a lot more immersive, and what makes the gameplay a lot more realistic, but I know there is a huge diffrent between those two games in terms of gameplay.

Let me help you.

Here's a small tip before watching, grab a headphone, put the sound on the max, turn off the lights and enjoy.

Red Orchestra modification: Darkest Hour gameplay video - YouTube

 

[Stormer]

You can argue all day long really about the realism of certain features like zoom, recoil, sway or whatever - but the bottom line is does the overall game give what you feel to be a realistic experience?
PR does, and that's that really - job done

I think that's mostly because of the huge maps and how "small" you are made to feel, without any artificial zooming, bandaging or laser like weapons. It makes you feel worthless alone and promotes teamplay. Not many other games can do that.

 

[Unus Offa Unus Nex]

Big problem atm is that the SMG's are penetrating stuff that they shouldn't, like masonry walls etc etc... infact they penetrate all the same stuff that the rifles do for some reason. This makes the SMG's waay more powerful that they are in reality and it reduces the time of firefights simply because taking cover behind a wall won't save you against any weapon ingame atm.


Only weapons that should be able to shoot through brick walls ingame are the rifles, assault rifles and MGs, cause they actually can in real life.

 

[Cyper]

awesome

Damn. Now, where did the heck did my Z's go..

Damn2, that text had a lot of weird stuff in it. I did't even finish the last line.

Damn you, whisky.

 

[Grobut]

It's not so much about removing realism, as it is realizing that we're dealing with an inherently artificial medium, so if you want even remotely realistic behaviour, then you have to force it by whatever means you can, and some of thouse means will be as artificial as the medium they are a part of.

People are bang on when they talk about lack of fear, because this is the real problem, this is why people don't play Ro2 in realistic ways, they are not afraid to die, they take stupid risks all the time, and they do so because this is a videogame, thouse risks often pay off and get them kills, and when they don't pay off, ohh well, nothing really lost, just back to the respawn que for a breather and try again.

And you can't create that fear, you might get some of the way and create immersion, but not real fear of death.


This is why you need mechanics that emulate the results of that fear, you may not be able to create the actual fear, but you can duplicate the behavioral results to some degree. It's a simple matter of risks versus reward, if you don't want people to Bunnyhop, you add an unrealisticly high drain on stamina for jumping so they won't do it, if you don't want the combat to devolve into Quake-like run and gun malarky, you slow things down and make it more difficult to shoot on the move than it may be in reality, if you don't want every man to be a highly trained sniper who can't miss a shot, then you make shooting more of a challenge. If you want people to play in a realistic way, you gotta give them a good reason to, it's as simple as that.

Ro:Ost was doing this in a number of ways, it did put limits on you, some of which where not 100% realistic, but they all helped encourage more realistic play, and it made most people use real life military tactics even in regular pub games.
That's not to say it was perfect and got the formula 100% right, because it didn't, it punished some thing too hard, such as the SMG recoil, which actually made some realistic tactics undesireable to use rather than encourage them, and in other places, like instant weapon switching, it was to lax and made it to easy to do some pretty silly and gamey things.
So no it was not perfect, but it was a pretty damn solid concept.


HoS on the other hand does very little to encourage realistic play, that's not to say it isen't possible, if you got a bunch of likeminded players togeather, and they all agreed to play in a realistic way, then the game certainly won't stop them doing that. But, neither does it stop anyone from playing it in blatantly unrealistic and gamey ways, and infact, thease tactics will probably get you more kills and be overall more successfull for the individual (though not for the team), this is a reason why using speed and twitch skillz are a staple of any arcade FPS game, it's because it works in videogames.


A lot of features that people doggedly defend as beeing "more realistic" are actually working against the game's overall realism, take something like the speed at which we can sprint, and for how long we can do it.
On the face of it, yes it is techically realistic, if your life was on the line you could run fast and run long, adrenaline will see to that.

However, in HoS that's rarely how or why it is used, rather, it is used as basic conveyance, it is used to blitz attack enemies, to speed up combat to an all out sprint, the way it's made, it encourages very unrealistic run'n'gun tactics that no soldier would ever emulate in real life, because he doesen't want to die.

And as much as people defend it for it's realism, it is infact poorly implimented, there is far to little inertia and momentum making it far to easy to change direction on a dime, to enagage in high speed and erratic circlestrafing manouvers, we can vault up and down stairs at inhuman speeds, we never trip and fall over all the rubble on the battlefield despite moving at speeds that would make that very likely to happen (this beeing a good reason not to sprint down a bombed out street in reality), and even when we have sprinted to exhaustion, it has barely any effect on us at all.

Ost may have been a bit slow compared to what i could manage in reallity, and it was too clunky in various ways for it's own good, but you know what? That's why people moved in more realistic ways on the battlefield, it made them feel vulnerable, it made them seek cover rather than rely on speed, and combined with the harder to use weapons, it made them cautious, it made them think and plan their moves, rather than rush in guns a blazin'.

The HoS movement and shooting mechanics outright encourages people to play it more like a typical FPS game, which is exactly what they do.


Now i know this will fall on deaf ears, but regardless, here are some changes i belive would go a very long way twords creating a more realistic playing experiance:

1: Make aiming harder, which ever way you want to do it, be that by adding more sway, by making it take longer to line up the sights, by adding some minor random trembling, there's lots of ways it could be done, and which would be realistic (and every method has it's benifits and detractors, but that's for another thread), but it needs to take longer than it does to pull off ranged shots, there needs to be more skill involved.

2: Add more momentum, players should not be able to effortlessly and instantly change directions the way they can, it's not realistic and it doesen't encourage tactical play, we're allready at a disadvantage here because it's impossible to animate human avatars in the needed fidellity, when a real person radically changes stance, speed or direction, there's a whole host of telltale movements involved that you'd see, and games just can't reproduce that (yet atleast).

3: Slow things down a bit, pretty much all of it, from the basics of our movement speed, and all the way down the chain to things like reload animations and weapon switching. It doesen't have to be slowed to a crawl, but this is to fast, it encourages rushing, run and gun gameplay, and using speed rather than your head to deal with problems, and it robs us of feeling vulnerable, when things like reloading can be done in an instant, it's nolonger something we have to take into account in our tactics, it's just a momentary annoyance.

4: Exhaustion should matter, sprinting yourself raw should have noticable effects on your aiming, encouraging us to use it more sparingly, it should be more for that "do or die" situation when a grenade lands nearby, and less our primary means of transportation. It might also be prudent to give us less stamina overall twords thouse ends.

5: Either do something with the bandage system or forgo it entirely, as it is, it only serves to make every gun in the game less powerfull, to make hits that would have been a problem for you in Ost, into a 2 second annoyance to be shrugged off with the press of a button.
The system if handled better has the potential of beeing good, to give a sense of purpose to shot placement and add more sense of vulnerabillity if banading was actually something that took time, but as it is, that's just not the case, it's a 2 second Quicktime Event that has no emediate effect on your combat abillity, you just spin on your heel and kill your attack and then you press the magic button.

6: More realism in loadouts, yeah that's been said a million times hasen't it? But for good reason, if you give half the team SMG's or even assault rifles, then don't be supriced if everything degenerates into a CQB clusterfu.. clustersexualintercourse, replacing some of thease auto weapons with bolt actions would definately go a long way twords encouraging tactics rather than run'n'gun.

7: Perhabs remove the secondary zoom you get when holding breath. The normal zoom you get when aiming is fine, DH did it and it was actually an improvement, allowing firefights to take place at realistic ranges were they normally would not have previously (this may not be important with the stock Ro2 maps, but hopefully we will be seeing bigger maps). But the second stage you get with the shift key is probably too much of a good thing, making aiming to easy.


And that's it for the first round, some weapon and other minor tweaks might also be in order, but the above alone would probably work wonders.

But mind you, i'd recommond them for the "Realism" mode only, which is the mode that ought to deliver realistic tactical play, the "Standard" mode is probably best left as the mode for thouse wanting that run'n'gun stuff.