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My Opinion: Why WWIIOL is dead.
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All part of the same package. Remember the talk of newbies having trouble finding a battle? Cramming the spawns together and the players all in a few battles was the fix for that. Going to be like some always on FPS combat, but still MMO game. As you said yourself above, ending up instant action hehe.
Sad thing was, it wasn't like we didn't have a HC already. That worked for the most part because it was voluntary. You could get into the big push if you wanted, or not if you didn't. That removal of choice was a killer, especially if you've built your playerbase based on the grand map and so much open freedom. And somehow it's the playerbases fault for not liking the changes.
BTW on the topic of misleading, look above. Yeah just take the one line and not the explanation before it and after. Here's the original
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STUG
"So what you are saying is forcing people to fight and reduce camping was bad for a wargame which is arguably about combat and the people that left the game where the ones who weren't interested in the fighting combat simulator side?
Sounds like a recipe for success fighting = wargame."
Tonto
Spawns now 5 feet away from the cap points made for required mass camping to cap any city. Squads had to group together just to get enough to mass camp because the 20 guys on a squad were no longer enough to cap. With lag, stuffing the CP doesn't work (one SMG charge does it) and tossing nades from the depot window, despawn, repeat also worked a peach for defense. One trick was to sachel the CP before capping so you could nade spam easily. It was FUBAR.
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So on a talk on REDUCING camping, you're now happy that the changes back then took even MORE camping as that's TEAMWORK.
But you try to ignore the original point by picking one line. Strawman argument.
Well I would suggest that talking about how good a fix was as it was against camping, and is still good or even better when it increases camping because it's 'more teamwork', is misleading and hypocritical. Pot and Kettle.
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And that Wrath, is why. It's not the intent, it's the how. And it's not doing your cause to keep the game alive any favours.
"CRS gave power to HC over squads to move the map."
Who makes up HC? SQUAD MEMBERS. Squads STILL have power to move the map, and when the pop gets back to the uber pop levels of 2000-2003 I hope that they can review the game mechanics again.
"A system in theory desinged to emulate an high command structure does not work in a game where people's interests are selfish and paly for entertainment. "
Is the HC perfect? NO - it needs to evolve, as we know the game does (see point below).
But I find it amusing how squad leaders are painted in a better light than HC when Squad leaders and members can be HC memers and Squad Members are HC too....the only difference is the design difference. Trying to make the old day "squad leaders" to be some sort of perfect human beings, without egos or dummys to throw out of prams is completely unfair - again you are making misleading points.
"This wouldnt have been so bad if the people making these decisions were people you elected , you chose to follow (aka squads) but they werent."
What? HC players are from your side and from your sides squads so you too can have squad members in HC.
But what you might actually be saying is you dont like to share?
"That removal of choice was a killer, especially if you've built your playerbase based on the grand map and so much open freedom. And somehow it's the playerbases fault for not liking the changes."
Yep - because WWIIOL Skirmish online was really keeping the payerbase engaged because gameplay pre-AO was killing the game because it was that craptastic people weren't staying with the game. Concentrate the action = battles = retention.
Before it was all Whack a mole and rush to the town that got capped......
Bang in AO's and 5+ years of relative stability.
So when it is said "Say it with me now FAILURE" I say you are wrong - it is a success.
Does the game need to keep evolving? Yes it does - but if it was not for AO's we would have lost WWIIOL years ago imho.
"..and turned the game into a nothing but a kill farm, instant action game wehre the only fun was in killing the enemy not winning a war."
I hate to break it to you but this game was always a "kill farm" and town by town one too....tonw x has x supply - lovely" Spawn in burn supply - move on to next attack - spawn in and burn supply - move on to another attack.
Actually the game previously was more akin to locusts going up and down the map burning up supply and well, taking one town at a time as a battle.
Sounds a bit like todays battle and fights - one town at a time, but with a bit more wider rhyme and reason. If only they could sort the attrition out to a teenswy weensy bit of a smaller time period for players this would be perfect. 6 hour battles can become a bore for those with limited attention spans.
"Loved your intro though questioning others skill level means so much comeing from a guy who plays a dumbed down version of the game with huge amounts of hand holding so your poor little online avatar isnt camped."
Thanks - I love you too dude
But compared to other games WWIIOL still has a huge learning curve, if not renowned for it putting players off.
Out of everything said in the posts above I think this is the most interesting suggestion (which i do not agree with wholeheartedly but has some interesting points).
"CRS know nothing about pvp gameplay, they are WWII nerds, trying to trace a piece of art, they're re-enacters. No one wants to play a re-enactment event. We want a GAME."
I think this is an interesting (if slightly hysterical) point - they are treading the balance between building a game based around a military grade physics simulator yet have to sell it to a wider audience.
What do you guys think about this point - Tonto, Rendus et al
Maybe its changed since that last map where DOC took control and made people mad, but squads are not controlling maps. There maybe one or two members from a squad IN hc but that doesn't mean its squad run. No, so many times I personally was told that CRS was tieing hands and directing the flow of the game. All behind the scense, like the great wizard of oz, they controlled movements, attacks, and flow of the game.
That's fine, but when I have high ranking "hc" officers from my squad telling me how crs ties hands and dictates what is going to be done, or sends out apb's on MAKING A PLANNED EVENT during live server operation, that simply is BS.
This control and taking something a team worked sometimes DAYS fighting for and losing it in a blink of an eye because CRS deems it "not for the good of the game" is BS also. I wasn't paying the highest rate around ($18/month) for a game advertised as player controlled when in fact the days of work and the subprice I committed to the game was negated by DOC coming in and telling "my team" that it had to stop attacking or deliberately surrender a town for the "other sides enjoyment".
I'm not talking this last axis deal either. I'm talking about the last several years on the allied side. I am not side biased anymore......as I simply stopped paying and playing because of the control, and the pricing. It's allowed me to see the big picture and that is the deception of the company, at that time.
Again, I don't know where they stand now I can only see the recent walk out over the Antwerp mess. I don't care if the axis lost or whatever, as it doesn't bother me in a win/lose deal. What does bother me is it appears that control, which crs thrives off of, is still alive.
This is just another reason why my disappointment continues. Just when I start feeling better about things.
I hope it changes and they play less of a role in the game and really allow the players to play and let the chips fall where they may. Anything else is a waste of weeks of pay and $18 per month.
I'm not sure why you included me at the end of your dissertation. Especially since you didn't acknowlege what I posted in it.
Historically, I've never tried to point fingers at who is responsible for the population exoduses. Back in the day, I was rarely active in the forums, I was too busy playing. So I can't comment on the politics of squads, HC, TOEs, etc etc. Hell, I can't even comment on Doc, since I've never had any interaction with him.
Here, I always try to focus on the present state of the game and what can be done to change it.
All these arguments have been done over like a million times Stug. But regardless of the reality of games current state you argue to support a system HC/AO that has failed and argue against a squad based sytem of play which you have no exprience in due to your not playing the game during that time period.
But regardless of that huge factor just answer one simple question.
Does the games path and steady population decline support your arguement ?
If your being honest you already know the answer to this question but im sure just like silky you will find some way out of giveing a straight up response. Alot easier to keep building strawmen to point the finger at aye Stug.
I cant think of a better time in WWIIOL than when squads ran the show.
I loved the game then, even with its bugs.
So much crap, so little quality.
Amen bro
Not even that they ran the show, but they were large enough to get things done and it was easier to communicate.
My opinion is laid out for all to read
I think the game mechanics are better now than they were in 2006 however this improvement hasn't translated into higher numbers, obviously. But the game is still fun and can deliver good game experiences. But I don't believe any numbers loss reflects a decline in the quality of the game mechanics or game environment.
SWG > Aces High > WWIIOL
Silky, you tank or use ATGs lately?
When you say game mechanics what do you mean specifically?
I remember the entire southern sector, south of Dinant was 33rd ID, which was 1st FJ, and like 3 other squads. We had that whole sector locked down. I remember the Allies squad that we always ran into was the 1st Laffyette Escadrille or however the put it. I used to complain that killing French tanks was killing my K/D ratio as a tanker, killing the the S35 and Char sucked. Oh good times sitting in a bush in my Stug IIIB, waiting for some Char to roll by ignoring everything, so I could pop his tracks and leave him.
So much crap, so little quality.
I'm referring to ToES, and it's associated AOs and HC
As far as the FRU goes, I'd agree it needs adjusting
SWG > Aces High > WWIIOL
"But I find it amusing how squad leaders are painted in a better light than HC when Squad leaders and members can be HC memers and Squad Members are HC too....the only difference is the design difference. Trying to make the old day "squad leaders" to be some sort of perfect human beings, without egos or dummys to throw out of prams is completely unfair - again you are making misleading points."
Sorry, it's on you again. It's not just design, it's ENFORCEMENT. Hell we had HC orders already when we had both HC and squads (no AOs) and there was no problem. Putting in a system where they can ENFORCE it and limit all players to where they can spawn in, that's totally different and so the squads left as they now had nothing to do.
And Squads were different than HC because they'd ask people 'so what do you want to do tonight'. They are the buddies you rolled with doing what you wanted to do with your buddies in a GAME. HC just had general locations of where to fight IF people wanted to push. And then when HC could enforce everyone goto XXX, Squads couldn't even make the offer to their members of what do YOU want to do anymore because of AOs. They are NOT just two different set of people giving orders. Or maybe that was CRS's big problem, like you they thought of them that way and walked into their huge mistake.
edit- I had said 'how could you not know of the difference between squads and HC while having played the game", then I saw Zbus comment. So you never played during this time period? And you really wanted to post an opinion discussion on it and accuse someone else of misleading points when you haven't? Boggles the mind if Zbus is correct.
"Yep - because WWIIOL Skirmish online was really keeping the payerbase engaged because gameplay pre-AO was killing the game because it was that craptastic people weren't staying with the game. Concentrate the action = battles = retention.
Before it was all Whack a mole and rush to the town that got capped......
Bang in AO's and 5+ years of relative stability.
So when it is said "Say it with me now FAILURE" I say you are wrong - it is a success.
Does the game need to keep evolving? Yes it does - but if it was not for AO's we would have lost WWIIOL years ago imho."
Just because the game is still around doesn't mean AO's saved it. You could cut the arms and legs off a patient who only needed an arm removed, and claimed it save the patient just because they are still alive. The fact it's still around proves nothing. On the other side though, there's lots of indications there was a large pop drop with all the squads breaking up with 'AO's coming in. With the slow loss they had, who's to say they still couldn't have been better off. They had way more people playing than now (long time to get to current low levels) and the squads themselves helped player retention as they were so good picking up new players. And it certainly doesn't rule out that if they had gone back and looked for another solution instead, they wouldn't have been better off than eating that population loss. They had time to work things out.
They should listen to the market as it pays the bills. BTW if you've changed your targeted market at the same time as your improvements, improvements can still end up with a worse result. As in you improve the game (debatable) but while also changing the targeted market from one that you owned solo, to one that is heavily saturated. All of a sudden your game who's uniqueness brought in players who didn't mind the weaknesses due to no competition, now goes against games where there's a direct comparision of game strengh and weaknesses (most of which weren't improved before the switch).
The high command and TOE systems haven't been able to provide the content that the previous much-simpler town supply system did.
The game has more camping now than it did years ago. It has less gameplay variety, less battles and less subscribers. This is despite numerous changes and tweaks to every aspect of the high commands, attack orders and brigades.
I've seen very talented people in the industry admit their mistakes. The guys at CRS can't even patch their own product anymore and they refuse to concede that their systems have failed.
You can't fix anything unless you first acknowledge that it's broken, so even if you discount the company's present lack of coding resources the game is going to die because those in charge of it do not recognize it's fatal problems.
If they dropped the AO system and kept the TO&Es it may still work. The thing is AOs were an attempt by CRS to try and stop the breakfast club capping by latenight EU or early morning PACRIM players.
So much crap, so little quality.
They're sitting on top of a decent armor and air sim, they have a large game world already built and have around three nations worth of units already modeled. Infantry play is low quality but still very satisfying when scale is considered.
They could go to town supply and have AOs determined by # of players within 4km of town. They could do what you mentioned and keep TO&E but get rid of AOs. They could do any number of things.
The product has some decent fundamentals but instead of saying "Whoa, this doesn't appear to be working, let's change it up some." they appear to have stubbornly pressed on with their flawed ideas and when those weren't popular, when the game didn't take off and they lost subscriptions they just blamed demographics.
I'm not convinced freedom to attack any town would bring the player numbers up because any increase from players returning for the freer gave would be offset by numbers leaving by the reduction in game quality as combat avoidance/"the towns defended lets go elsewhere" methodology takes ahold - what we can't ever underestimate is players' desire to win, and as the chances of winning the battle get slimmer and slimmer, the temptation to shift elsewhere grows larger
If I were CRS, and I had the abiity to wave the magic wand and recreate a functioning dev team, I'd do a couple of things
Firstly, I'd try and establish a dialogue with lost squads and squad leaders who might still be together playing on other games. A difficult task, and probably one that would encounter much hostility and require humble pie aplenty.
Secondly I'd look at the root causes of the squad dissatisfaction that presented itself in the aftermass of the 1.27 ToES and 1.34 (FRU?) changes. I'd do something about rotating bdes (CIty CP stops rotation), I'd do something about oversupply (take HQs off the frontline). I'd do something about the inability of new players to find battles (change FB mechanic to a capture/combat one rather than ninja/commando one). I'd do something about the loss of a working front (make FRUs truck only and make them defendable sandbag nests). I'd do something about softcaps and morale collapse in ToES (make HQs well supplied, free-roaming rear units capable of plugging holes and giving nominal defence supply following a breakout or flank move). And finally I'd look to bring in working command-control tools for squad leaders and HC, to mirror the leadership that the squad veterans and charismatic players used to provide; simple map annotations, enhanced order tools and a link into a secure HC chat channel, an overriding side strategy orders panel etc
That's what I'd do
SWG > Aces High > WWIIOL
Sounds pretty much what CRS already did. Bring in lots of hard coded controls.
Reduction in quality with a more open game, that's just your personal opinion. Others might have a different one. I think of it as what's more likely. The playerbase not understanding the better quality of gameplay of AO's, or the chance that AO's and such aren't actually what the playerbase was looking for.
Yes some folks might search out less well defending cities, but so what. Back in the day we had folks who tried to ninja, and folks who fought it out. You could pick and choose what you wanted to do. Sometimes it wasn't even that. They wanted to tow AAA near an enemy AF. To setup some ATGs and cut off supply. Or just cap a CP and cause some trouble for laughs. All were all paying customers and each got what they wanted and neither forced into the others game.
So you are still not getting the point. The QUALITY of WWIIOL to the old squads WAS the openess of the game. Whenever you logged in you could get the combat you wanted with your squad. You're not going to convince them to come back by showing even more added controls and limits. The more open any game is, the more people it can attract as they can make what they want. CRS should have dropped their idealized version of how WWIIOL 'should' be played and stick with the one that had the large player pop. Idealized can also mean repetitive and doesn't go with the 'big map, open world, not like a FPS' sales pitch. If the current combat system is what you prefer, don't project that desire onto everyone else and assume it's what everyone wants. Empathy is how you solve design problems.
SWG > Aces High > WWIIOL
Silky I'm not sure which game you're playing but presently "avoid the fight, shift the attack" is the play style heavily encouraged by the game structure and rules. There's no sense in worrying about a less-restricted game possibly resulting in that sort of behavior when it's already dominant. There's no sense in worrying about a decline in subscribers when a decline in subscribers is exactly what has happened under the current system.
The comical brigade teleporting, the lack of resupply columns, soft captures and the massive team-collapses are all problems either created or vastly magnified by the TO&E system.
It's a complicated, high-maintenance apparatus that does not scale well with server population. It's high commanders are not independent players whose priority is to win the map, but are rather unpaid company admins who are tasked with creating content for the server. Grand strategy(encirclements, major offensives) is actually discouraged because it leads to soft captures.
If a feature has not added value or increased the appeal of a product(much less decreased it) then it should be removed.
There's no point in talking about a return to town supply as - has been said repeatedly - that's not technically popossible
i agree the drawbacks of the ToES system have significantly troubled the game but I think the situation can be salvaged
SWG > Aces High > WWIIOL
You mean the one that actually had a decent population, the time they still had coders? That's an assumption, what is certain is the unsustainable nature of the game they have now. And again, like Stug you're ignoring the fact that it had a far bigger base of players than post AO's ever did. So better to make tweaks to the system that had players, than to make ones on the current one, especially NOT going further down the path that cost you in the first place. Especially if you're thinking of contacting the old squads. More control and asking squads to come back? Really? After everything that has been posted? If anything sinks in (it's like some CRS mind block) let it be that.