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What We Are Up To - Map Balancing and More

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Yoshiro

Yoshiro

Senior Community Manager
Staff member
    • Oct 10, 2005
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    #1
    Welcome back to another What We Are Up To post that lets you, the fans, know what we here at Tripwire are working towards. Things have been busy here with the recent release of the Killing Floor Summer Sideshow

    Killing Floor Summer Sideshow 2012 Trailer - YouTube

    As well as our upcoming move to our new offices (to make room for all the new talented people who are joining our team here, and our continued search for more. We also have an upcoming patch for RO 2, for those not keeping track, we now have eight (8) fully playable custom maps available in RO 2, so be sure to check them out and provide feedback to the mappers as they get their maps ready for the Counterattack Mapping Contest. And if my eyes do not deceive me, I have spotted at least five more in development.

    Speaking of the upcoming RO 2 patch, one of the least known features of the GOTY update for RO 2 was the implementation of the Steam stats tracking system. This is the same system used in games such as TF 2 to all the developers to find out how players are playing the game. Our goal with the system was to help us track map balance, and make changes to the maps based on that feedback, and I am happy to say that the first map updates based on the results of the feedback is ready with the updated maps being made available in the next RO 2 patch. Moving forward we can continue to use the system to gather feedback and make tweaks as needed based on how the community as a whole is playing the game!

    We’ve also been working on several bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and several client crashes. One of these that players will see shortly in the upcoming patch is a change to the spawn protection system. Defenders who are in a “spawn protection” area when it is activated will now have more time (twenty seconds) to pull back. In the future we will also be bringing news of our next planned content update and our plans for the game moving forward. As details are worked out we will start to present them to the players.

    I’ve thrown the word upcoming patch around several times in this update. The bad news is that I do not have a patch release date to give you yet, the good news is that it will be within the month (if all goes well). Near the release of the patch we will also be posting the first of a series of dev blogs which goes over what a developer has been working on and the details behind it.

    See you on the eastern front!
     
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    #4
    MeFirst said:
    Good News even when I was hoping for more solid informations about more gameplay content.
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    And I wish I could bring it to you, but until plans are finalized I can't put anything out on that topic :( I wouldn't want to say "This is the direction we are moving in to introduce content like A B and C" and then have to retract it as plans change. But we are working on nailing down those plans and once that is done I can start bringing that information to the community.
     
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    #7
    Hopefully, in the future updates/dev blogs you guys can address or at least elaborate on the Poll (and what many believed were the eventual inclusions) of increased stamina pool/speed for Classic Mode.

    I've personally have been playing Realism for quite some time but I'm sure many are just as curiously inclined as I am concerning any (in my opinion, much-needed) tweaks to this particular Mode.

    Other than that, looking forward to what may come. Thanks, Yosh (and all).
     
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    #10
    Yoshiro said:
    And I wish I could bring it to you, but until plans are finalized I can't put anything out on that topic :( I wouldn't want to say "This is the direction we are moving in to introduce content like A B and C" and then have to retract it as plans change. But we are working on nailing down those plans and once that is done I can start bringing that information to the community.
    Click to expand...

    Yeah I already thought that something like this might be the case. It is never good to announce something that is pretty vague an in the end it is pretty different from what has been announced.
     
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    #11
    Yoshi, I really appreciate all you and the team at TWI have done and are still doing for the community.

    However, and it truly does make me sad to say this, I think it is too little too late for RO2. The day after classic mode was released, I, like many others on these forums, was singing tripwire's praises and celebrating the rebirth of the classic RO gameplay. However, fast forward not even two months, and the game is once again dead in the water. There is only ONE classic server that i can ever find active (US East Coast player, and I believe the server is 40-1 UK Classic or something like that), and even then it only usually has about 20 people playing.

    The sad truth is, this game should have shipped with at least one more tank for each side, transports, classic mode included, and at LEAST 4-5 more maps (including some large, more classic RO style maps). I hate to say it, but the "trolls" were right: games today really only get one chance to grab and hold players, and that is at launch. Unfortunately, as we all know, RO2 launched with a multitude of glitches/performance issues, and not nearly enough content to keep even the most hardcore military/WWII buffs interested. You can't possibly hope to grow a healthy community if you're struggling to play catch-up the entire first year that your product is on the market (another prime example of this is SWTOR, if anybody has played that). It's that simple.

    Sure, future content updates will bring some people back and future sales will likely bolster players numbers some, but the hard truth is that most of those who played RO2 in the last year have moved on to bigger and better things.

    Before you all kill me, let me say that I LOVE this game and Tripwire in general. I purchased RO2 on day 1 and I have supported this game and Tripwire from the very beginning. I actually still hope that I'm proven wrong on this, but right now its quite sad indeed to see a game with RO2's potential dying because it was pushed out too early. And to hear, almost a YEAR now since launch, that we are not even close to the release of some new official maps or vehicles? I understand that you are a small development team, and I hate the modern day "entitlement gamers" just as much as the next guy on these forums.... but I just think that launching with so little content, and following it up with ONE new map in almost a year since release, is simply unacceptable in 2012. I'm sorry but that is just how it is for me....

    Don't get me wrong, i'll likely hang out in the dark corners of these forums still, and i'll probably hop on the game once in a while just to see if anything's changed, but for now, i've given up on RO2.
     
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    #13
    The game really needs new content. And it's sad to see we still don't have the multiplayer campaing nearly 1 year after release. And wasn't it mention prior to release we gonna get new vehicles etc. every couple of month? Well I don't mind to wait but after nearly 1 year not even a single WIP picture of a new weapon, vehicle or map. Just some hints here and there. I just got a bad feeling that with this speed it will take ages until we get halftracks and really big combined arms maps.
     
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    #14
    Cwivey said:
    An intriguing update!


    And bangalores, less of the doom and gloom please! This was always going to be a small game, saying it's "dead in the water" because it doesn't have a peak of fifteen thousand players is just a little pre-mature.
    Click to expand...


    Maybe so, but for a player like me who really is only interested in playing Classic mode, one server with an average of 20-30 people on it actually is quite "doomy & gloomy" and "dead in the water".
     
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    #18
    Moskeeto said:
    Hopefully the addition of new employees really starts to speed up productivity. I want new content! :D
    Click to expand...

    The release of RO 2 helped Tripwire learn many things. Among those was what areas Tripwire was lacking in terms of development staff. We have been aggressive looking to fill those positions to help the team have less things on their plate to juggle (wearing multiple hats) and bringing in new expertise as the company has grown.

    Game development is very different when it is 4 to 6 people working out of the same room and everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and then going to 25+ employees working out of multiple offices (as you have kept taking over other rooms as part of your eminent domain!) and multiple projects and trying to keep a handle on everything.

    We are working towards new content for RO 2, but sadly one reality that has hit us hard is that it is much harder now to produce content on modern engines (UE 3, UE 4 and similar engines) then it was in previous generations. But that is one of the areas we are looking to improve as well as looking for innovation solutions to help offset the problem (such as mapping contest and helping mod teams).
     
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    #19
    Whoa, that KF trailer was really well made, high production value.

    I like that you recognize the issue with spawn protection, but I think making it 20 secs is not an effective solution (albeit better than nothing).
    If you're interested at all, see my proposed tweak to the spawning that counters the spawn-protection issue without allowing for spawnkilling (http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=80807)
     
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    #20
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