Why everybody hates Mare Nostrum?

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Feb 23, 2012
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Hallo,

as the title of this thread describe my question - why players avoid to go into desert warfare?

My personally opinion is, that Mare Nostrum has very interesting and also balanced maps. Especially for experts in handling a rifle. You can play british and italian soldiers, what could be a welcome alternation.

At steam there exist a group, called about "Mare Nostrum Fight Nights PL" but always as I get the message, I go to the desert and there is still nobody.

Still I really cant understand why people always want playing the same stuff like:
-Danzig
-Arad real forest
-Basovka

What a joke, when there are few better maps and even a complete other theatre of war in the desert.
 

dogbadger

FNG / Fresh Meat
Aug 19, 2006
3,230
553
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here to kill your monster
Yeah mare nostrum was a perfect alternative to RO, with a similar feel yet contrasting nicely in landscape, and like RO featuring some equpment that was lesser known and rarely seen in games (particularly loved the early war armour)
If ever there was a mod that had great potential for alarge armour fights MN was it - and had interest been greater a move to the hills of Italy for CA maps would have been brilliant.
- but as soon as DH formed most attention both from players and devs went there.
Shame cos I thought it was more interesting.
 
Feb 23, 2012
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Just I watched the video - damn, there is some action?

This date I wasnt there, cause always the last times I went there and just me was there.

But if its now like this, I will definitly go there next time.

But outer this "Fight Night" I still believe, nothing else happens on Mare Nostrum, or?
 

LordSteve

FNG / Fresh Meat
Jul 8, 2011
341
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No, just on saturdays when the famous fightnight starts!! It is always great fun to play with those mates!! Come and join us!
 
Feb 23, 2012
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We will meet us tomorrowa at 20:00 deutsche Zeit!
How is the exact name of server?

(Cant wait, especially cause I dont know the maps well...!)
 
F

Field Marshal Rommel

Guest
If ever there was a mod that had great potential for alarge armour fights MN was it
Too bad the armor system in MN was crap (Matildas absorbing multiple 75mm long - 88mm penetrating hits, Tigers getting damaged & destroyed from repeated 2 pdr frontal hits...)
 

dogbadger

FNG / Fresh Meat
Aug 19, 2006
3,230
553
0
here to kill your monster
Too bad the armor system in MN was crap (Matildas absorbing multiple 75mm long - 88mm penetrating hits, Tigers getting damaged & destroyed from repeated 2 pdr frontal hits...)

But I think you can see why that became the case -
I dont speak for MN but you had a small team - with just one guy modelling, texturing, animating and - with assistance from another guy when he wasn't otherwise busy - coding all the non RO native tanks.
It was a really tough job just to get those tanks up and running - and by then the interest in the mod had wained.
Although the 6 pounder did eventually appear i think with a later valentine model - this gun was not present when tanks were introduced - and the devs had to get something out that was reasonably balanced and fair. (the reskinned tiger had to be used as they were desparate for different types)
Had they had enough interest from players - and potential devs - you could have seen the introduction of 6 pounder armed churchills, crusaders and similar shermans, as well as the 17 pounder on the archer and in field gun form - and maybe they also would have re-evaluated the code to a more realistic level.

At the end of the day it was as much as they could do to get these tanks in, and understandably had to make a game out of them for the ppl that were interested.
 

Major_Day

FNG / Fresh Meat
Feb 16, 2007
2,651
329
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Glasgow, Scotland
But I think you can see why that became the case -
I dont speak for MN but you had a small team - with just one guy modelling, texturing, animating and - with assistance from another guy when he wasn't otherwise busy - coding all the non RO native tanks.
It was a really tough job just to get those tanks up and running - and by then the interest in the mod had wained.
Although the 6 pounder did eventually appear i think with a later valentine model - this gun was not present when tanks were introduced - and the devs had to get something out that was reasonably balanced and fair. (the reskinned tiger had to be used as they were desparate for different types)
Had they had enough interest from players - and potential devs - you could have seen the introduction of 6 pounder armed churchills, crusaders and similar shermans, as well as the 17 pounder on the archer and in field gun form - and maybe they also would have re-evaluated the code to a more realistic level.

At the end of the day it was as much as they could do to get these tanks in, and understandably had to make a game out of them for the ppl that were interested.

Yes i agree,the mod never got a chance to fulfill its true potential because of the timescale and lack of numbers of people working on it,and the fact that RO itself was on a downward spiral itself at the time, the mod ended up being half finished.
But what we did get was some great work by a small team of dedicated modders,who have my admiration for turning out a great game which i personally enjoyed a helluva lot.
 
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Cpt-Praxius

FNG / Fresh Meat
Dec 12, 2005
3,300
1,667
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Canadian in Australia
Yes i agree,the mod never got a chance to fulfill its true potential because of the timescale and lack of numbers of people working on it,and the fact that RO itself was on a downward spiral itself at the time, the mod ended up being half finished.
But what we did get was some great work by a small team of dedicated modders,who have my admiration for turning out a great game which i personally enjoyed a helluva lot.

Agreed.... I felt MN was far more superior to DH. DH has a lot more content, more players and longer support, but the models, map layouts, the entire feel of MN was levels above.

If MN was supported just as much as DH and they kept working on it, it could have been pretty damn good.
 

CrisM1

FNG / Fresh Meat
Aug 13, 2011
199
38
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Pulsano
My Clanleader was a friend of a Mare Nostrum dev, he did let us clanmembers ( italians ) to playtest mare nostrum when was still in a closed beta. The game feeling was awesome, maps were awesome and desert warfare was awesome... also they put in italians in it and was kind of a fresh thing among nowadays ww2 fps.

Imho, the thing that cut off Mare Nostrum's legs was a brilliant idea that Carpathian Crosses had, put maps in the official RO game letting people just to open a single launcher. That was the most smartest move ever made by a mod ( even various battlefield had to go this way, with Vietnam for example ).

Dev had to simple put MN maps in the official RO ( with support of servers ) game without let people to download\install another launcher, so they can play ( eventaully download in-game ), and most important thing admire and feedback what dev created, everything while they normal playing Re Orchestra Vanilla. Also jumping from Eastern Front, to Africa, to Carpathian was a fresh breathe in-game itself and funny at the same time

To bad my pc broke up soon after MN was released, i was looking forward to it so badly


Agreed.... I felt MN was far more superior to DH. DH has a lot more content, more players and longer support, but the models, map layouts, the entire feel of MN was levels above.

If MN was supported just as much as DH and they kept working on it, it could have been pretty damn good.

True that, i remeber how many time they edited Thompson model... thousands of time unitl it was perfect. They also recruited a super skilled animator late in the development process that was ( and it's still the most annoying part of a mod, animations ) kinda rare
 
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Krazyxazn

FNG / Fresh Meat
Mar 23, 2009
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I remember playing it when it first showed up on Steam, but ever since I never see people online. I remember playing with bots a few months ago and reloading that Enfield was seriously long.
 

Cpt-Praxius

FNG / Fresh Meat
Dec 12, 2005
3,300
1,667
0
Canadian in Australia
True that, i remeber how many time they edited Thompson model... thousands of time unitl it was perfect. They also recruited a super skilled animator late in the development process that was ( and it's still the most annoying part of a mod, animations ) kinda rare

See, I like animating... the thing that bugs me the most is making sure the model is accurate & detailed enough and even worse is rigging the bones for animation so that they move the right parts the right way.

The moment all that is done and perfected, for me, the animation is a breeze..... perhaps sometimes tedious when you check, double check & triple check the flow of the animation, but I usually got things right the first time around, minus a slight adjustment here or there.

And yeah, with MN, the models and animations were pretty good, all things considered..... in DH, they spent a crap load of time fixing this, tweaking that, over and over again, yet still never right and the weapons, models & animations were still pretty mediocre. For the longest time, the sights on most of the weapons in the wrong perspective, in that they were too far away from the screen and you couldn't aim at anything decently because you ended up pixel hunting through a very small sight, while the rest of the sight & weapon blocked the rest of your screen where you were aiming..... and the moment you fired the weapon you'd have a muzzle flash that took up most of the screen, so unless your target was right in front of you, you lost your target quickly and your accuracy was crap.

Then I believe they tweaked the weapons a bit so that you could aim a bit better through the sights, but then the low poly count in the designs just became more apparent. I've also heard that they reduced the muzzle flashes so they were so distracting, but the last time I played, they were still pretty bad.

Then there's the scaling of the actual weapons:

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/09/red-orchestra-11.jpg
^ The BAR looks about 2/3's the size it should be

http://www.wolfspain.net/images/stories/RED_ORCHESTRA/darkesthour/sten_hipped.jpg
^ I don't even know where to begin with how this Sten MKII looks so wrong.

But looking at Mare Nostrum's Designs:
http://www.freewebs.com/tacticalgamingrefuge/Shot00224.JPG

^ The textures, shading, modelling, perspective & proportion are so much better.

I mean, everybody can like what they like, but when I hear rumours about how some in the DH crew thought they could do better than TW & RO or that it was a much more superior game than RO (or even Mare Nostrum) I just shake my head. I've seen a few people defend DH as being the far more superior game to Ostfront because it had piles more content, yet at the same time, these are the same people who make claims that TW should focus on fixing the bugs in RO2 before they start bringing content, as "Quality is better than Quantity"

DH has quantity, but I didn't see much quality.

Even back when TW was called the "RO Team" working on the Mod for UT2004, their models, animations and map quality were better than what I seen in DH..... and Mare Nostrum felt more like it headed in the right direction as RO was. You could still tell it was a mod, but things just seemed to work better, the weapons were better with accuracy, etc.
 
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luke688

FNG / Fresh Meat
Sep 2, 2012
167
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Osaka
Do many people still play the fightnights? its been a while since ive played but i had alot of fun on this mod in the past.
 
Feb 23, 2012
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I think that the most superior things of MN, next to better handling and graphics, is really the fresh setting.

Who is not bored to land the x-times at the normandy or fighting in Carentan?

I agree with the prespeakers above me, if MN would have this support like DH - it could be just great visited!

Italians, germans, british, new zealand, australians, americans and free french troops, vichy french troops and greek soldiers could fight in:
Greece northern mountains, Greece Athina, egean island fighting (at all the time of war a very unknown but hard fighting there), Crete, Tunesia and Lybia with Egypt and all this famous places, Algeria, Marocco (where vichy french troops fight against landing US), landing Sicilia, Anzio, Salerno, Monte Cassino.....

...different time periods, different kind of soldiers and a sunny, interesting mediterran warfare.

TW is making it good with their RO2 "Rising Sun".
I just dreamed about a RO2 "Mare Nostrum" :D