IMS took a look at Red Orchestra 2 server browser. There's only one populated (humans only) Red Orchestra 2 server. IIRC a year after Red Orchestra 1 release, there was still a shitload of populated servers. Red Orchestra 2 isn't even a year old.
If anyone think Red Orchestra 2 is anything but dead, they are stupid.
Red Orchestra 2 lessons:
(1) If it works i.e. balance between realism and accessibility (think COD vs ARMA), don't fuck with it.
(2) Unreal Engine 3 is a POS.
(3) If you can't turn off depth of field without fucking everything else up, there's something wrong with the code or Unreal Engine 3.
Tripwire Forums (run by Nazis) 64 player servers debate, best quotes:
Tripwire Forums (run by Nazis) 64 player servers debate, best quotes:
The problem isn't choice, choices that are good for the individual are bad for the community.
The problem with the "everyone can just choose the servers they like problem" is this:
1. The community size is very small at the moment. Often only 400 players are online at one time. This means only maybe 100 are actually close enough for you to get good pings. People don't like to seed servers, so if people go online and see 1 full 64 player server, and 4 32 player servers that only have a few players in, people would rather wait for someone to leave the 64 player than to join a server with bots and wait for it to fill out.
This is where player choice falls down, because it incentivises a vicious cycle. For any individual player, the instant gratification is just to join the 64 player server and not seed any of the others.
You need a certain number to seed or momentum just won't build. It's probably around 6-8 players. If say 14/24 players where taken from each 64 player server, and scattered among 40-50 player servers, this would raise the average numbers so much it would be much easier to seed. Instead of the situation now where we have 1-2 good servers that are usually full and many servers that are mainly empty and full of bots, we could have around 4-5 good servers that were regularly full, free of bots and only slightly smaller (Which works better in latency and small maps anyway).
This would lead to a much healthier system, AND more player choice since right now if you don't like the settings of a 64 player server you don't have much alternative since players unless you want to play on a server with like 4 people and 30 bots.
No individuals are going to be heroes and spend all their time seeding the other servers right now. But if we temporarily reduce the player count, no one will need to be a hero since people will naturally spread over the smaller servers.
2. Bots. People don't want to play with bots. Because of the above issue of people being drawn to the biggest server, the vicious cycle is intensified because not only will people automatically go for the 64 player server to avoid wasting time seeding, but they also don't want to go because the 64 player servers usually don't have bots because they're usually full.
TLDR - What use is choice if the community dies off due to lack of good servers? When its not so hard to find a good, bot-free server then the limit could be raised again, but right now whats good for the individual is not good for the future of the game.
You really think people would refuse to play the game at all if their one favourite server lost 14 player slots? Most 64 players run a hell of a lot better with 50 players than 64 and the gameplay difference is negligible (in fact on maps like apartments its far better)
We've already heard from one clan member who said they shut there server down after they couldn't get enough players to join their server. This is going to get worse and worse and we're going to lose even more servers till the 4-5 servers that actually get players in each geographical zone are the only ones left.
Right now we have a worse situation for what you're talking about, because if there favourite server is full, they'll wait around for maybe 5 minutes trying to join and then leave if they can't get in.
Because of bots and because of the small community people are being forced to either play 1-3 populous servers, play with bots or not play at all.
Whereas if we had 4-6 populous servers of a smaller size it would not nearly be so hard to find a good server.
The problem of this isn't theory, but absolute numbers. There literally aren't enough people in the game to have more than 1-2 64 player servers full in any one zone (europe, ausie land, america).
2 64 player servers makes up over 1/4 of the community at off peak times now. You really think its sustainable to keep the community alive with such few servers? When we've gone from dozens of full servers to a handful you really think thats a sign this is working?
The patches are not going to come out in time to stop the community dying at the rate players are leaving.
Great-described problem. Thanks, that you spared me from teaching something that is obvious, for some may not. Recently 64 slots servers and bots appearing in multiplayer games are really things which fu*cks this game so much.
There is no doubt, 64 player servers is something which may be called epic - true. But taking into consideration technical problems with game, maps design. Here we want bigger maps which of course will have impact on performance. Bigger maps, we can mention ugly texture scaling. Things will be looking more and more ugly at the expense of better performance. And so on and so on.
I expected that this engine will be suitable to create a multiplayer game, but i was wrong or maybe fault lies with the devs, but it's not my case.
This is obvious evidence that the game would be better if the player limit has been set at maximum of 50 slots. It could be even less, much less.
Again, I remind myself how poorly thought project TWI attempted to create. This game should compete with another segment, absolutely not with AAA. Pushing a 64 slot server was foolish. I REALLY don't know what kind of miracle or ...tragedy happened during true beta testing that this was not understood. Twi can be even satisfied, after all they got their money. But they lost so much respect. All what they can do now is re-lunch. But please do not fu*k it again. Release HUGE patch with a lot of new content + multi campaign and overall overhaul (everything at once) during the weak and shortly after make a free weekend (even about 5 days). New people who jump to try the game at least will find more than 2/3 servers...
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