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Thread: I have a bad feeling about this:

  1. #1

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    I have a bad feeling about this:

    First of all let me be clear about one thing, WoR is my dream game, I was a re-enactor for many years & have studied the American Civil War all my life. From what I have seen so far, WoR itself seems to be on the right track, but some future plans have left me with grave doubts for the success of this title.

    My main concern is the plan to allow private servers. War of Rights is an ambitious project in itself & the one thing it will need, above all else, to make this a success is....players in numbers. It simply will not work with ten players per map in the way that many other titles can do, in my honest opinion private servers will be a massive hindrance to this game, because they will water down the player base to the point where we no longer have sufficient numbers to represent a Civil War encounter. Let us be honest, this is a niche' title, it will not attract the amount of players that most FPS titles do.

    A secondary doubt, but one linked to the first, concerns Holdfast Nations at War. Napoleonic is not top of my list of interests that's for sure but I have played Warband and more recently, Holdfast. Public servers, for both of those games was, to put it politely, like Call of Duty with muskets. I fully understand that these are not simulations, that compromises between historical accuracy and game play have to be made so that's really not the issue. As has been seen during Alpha, left to their own devices players will do as they please, and the company has done nothing to stop that, team killing is a real problem & that's just in alpha! Imagine what it will be like in public. Holdfast & Warband both saw common problems, with Rambo bayonet charging, bunny hopping etc etc.......not boding well for the future integrity of WoR.

    The need, in my opinion, for at least some controlled public servers for WoR is paramount. I believe private servers will be a fatal move for WoR. I really want this title to succeed, but I have very serious doubts about it.

  2. #2
    You should get the Alpha to see some of the features that are being implemented to discourage ramboing. I don't think they'll work as well later, but it's a start. I've never heard this concern about private servers from any other gamers than outside this forum. Normal players join the server that's unlocked, has a reasonable ping, and the most players. People's favorite server they join all the time is usually one that's usually full. And the other problems are because the server hosts suck or the game doesn't do anything to prohibit 'Call of Duty' gameplay. It shouldn't be impossible to lone wolf anyway it should just be hard to the point that the majority of players choose to stick with other friendly players the majority of the time.
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  3. #3
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sox View Post
    First of all let me be clear about one thing, WoR is my dream game, I was a re-enactor for many years & have studied the American Civil War all my life. From what I have seen so far, WoR itself seems to be on the right track, but some future plans have left me with grave doubts for the success of this title.

    My main concern is the plan to allow private servers. War of Rights is an ambitious project in itself & the one thing it will need, above all else, to make this a success is....players in numbers. It simply will not work with ten players per map in the way that many other titles can do, in my honest opinion private servers will be a massive hindrance to this game, because they will water down the player base to the point where we no longer have sufficient numbers to represent a Civil War encounter. Let us be honest, this is a niche' title, it will not attract the amount of players that most FPS titles do.

    A secondary doubt, but one linked to the first, concerns Holdfast Nations at War. Napoleonic is not top of my list of interests that's for sure but I have played Warband and more recently, Holdfast. Public servers, for both of those games was, to put it politely, like Call of Duty with muskets. I fully understand that these are not simulations, that compromises between historical accuracy and game play have to be made so that's really not the issue. As has been seen during Alpha, left to their own devices players will do as they please, and the company has done nothing to stop that, team killing is a real problem & that's just in alpha! Imagine what it will be like in public. Holdfast & Warband both saw common problems, with Rambo bayonet charging, bunny hopping etc etc.......not boding well for the future integrity of WoR.

    The need, in my opinion, for at least some controlled public servers for WoR is paramount. I believe private servers will be a fatal move for WoR. I really want this title to succeed, but I have very serious doubts about it.
    Thanks for your feedback.

    Sorry to hear you have doubts!

    While we may be niche I wouldn't write us off as a strictly small audience game. The reality is that no one knows what kind of numbers we'll see when we release on early access and ramp up our marketing because there's really not a whole lot of games to compare to.

    Organization and teamplay is very important in WoR. The games you're mentioning has no line formation buff system in place (importantly affecting the outcome of the match due to morale cost being tied to it, meaning a team of solo individuals is going to have a bad time trying to win anything), no officer command systems (that I know of, anyways) and no method of maintaining a steady influx of reinforcements coming (flag bearer spawn system). There is no bunny hopping in WoR as you can't jump - you can only vault over objects such as fences.

    While public servers always are going to be more casual than organized private events (as they should be) it is our goal to create game systems that makes the casuals want to play in an, at least, close to acceptable way for most hardcore players to endure and thus have fun on the public as well as the private servers.

    - Trusty

  4. #4
    Private servers as of right now would be a horrible mistake, I wholeheartedly agree. However, if things to according to plan, by Early Access we should have a large number of players. Half the point of the private servers to take a large amount of people, put them in a server where there are people there who can moderate or adjust the game play a bit and encourage the true civil war experience. I don't see how having private servers will decrease the player base? More people will be able to accurately portray a civil war battle with admins to help keep it on track and therefore attract more people. Trust me, without admins who can control things according to rules that whoever entered has agreed to and have some order so the battle can go smoothly, people will find the game boring, not fun, or not what they expected.

    If you keep having totally uncontrolled public servers, you will get what happened in Holdfast where it's basically a total clusterfuck of people running around on public servers with the occasional line forming. On the private servers, which I play on, it's much more organized and a LOT more fun That's kinda how it is now, but it is better than that in WoR. The larger the scale and more people are introduced that more chaotic it will be. The developers can't go and manage all of their servers with all of those people with basically only the rules of "Don't hack" efficiently. But, I would personally wait until late beta or Early Access where many people have access to the game to introduce private servers so those battles can be filled with enough willingly cooperative people to make it fun.


    Addition: As I was typing this and posted it, I discovered the speedy TrustyJam and Poorlaggedman both addressed points I would also in their posts.

  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Poorlaggedman View Post
    You should get the Alpha to see some of the features that are being implemented to discourage ramboing. I don't think they'll work as well later, but it's a start. I've never heard this concern about private servers from any other gamers than outside this forum. Normal players join the server that's unlocked, has a reasonable ping, and the most players. People's favorite server they join all the time is usually one that's usually full. And the other problems are because the server hosts suck or the game doesn't do anything to prohibit 'Call of Duty' gameplay. It shouldn't be impossible to lone wolf anyway it should just be hard to the point that the majority of players choose to stick with other friendly players the majority of the time.
    Well I'm a member of the team that produces the Unsung mod for Arma 3 & a moderator for the servers. So I'm aware of the difficulties that abound in producing a game for the public domanin & for historical accuracy. My real concern is with the centralization of the player base, thus having the numbers of players in a single place in order to generate a Civil War experience, as opposed to an FPS game with muskets.

    If Alpha was viable financially, then trust me, I'd be there. I'll see you in Beta for sure
    Last edited by Sox; 11-29-2017 at 03:43 AM.

  6. #6
    I love the Unsung mod by the way, lots of fun and the attention to detail is great! Keep up the good work.

    And I understand your concern with centralization. But honestly, the game just needs people. And yeah, it could function and still be fun with public servers and events are still doable totally. However, here’s what the people who create or participate as leaders or players in the events notice, I have heard some variation of these four or more times.

    “Damn, I wish we could have control over maps and cycle them for the event.”
    “Random players jumping in mid event and going Rambo keeps fucking the events (although,this has declined thankfully)”
    “The CSA/USA have too much/too little time/this map always takes forever (going back to wishing for control over maps) and it’s not fun to spend half the event on a mediocre map for this”
    “The CSA/USA has too little/too many tickets”
    “The random in the server took the last officer slot and now we can’t get it”
    “The respawn timer takes too long/is too short”
    “I wish we could see from a free view camera to spot out all of those small groups who are breaking the event rules”
    “We have no way to actually enforce the event rules (hear this a LOT)”
    “I wish we could make the drill server fucking day”

    I could keep going. The recurring pattern is, people want control of the servers to make the experience run smooth to make fun and so we don’t have to deal with annoyances all the time that could wear people out of the game prematurely.
    Last edited by McMuffin; 11-30-2017 at 03:02 PM.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Sox View Post
    My real concern is with the centralization of the player base, thus having the numbers of players in a single place in order to generate a Civil War experience, as opposed to an FPS game with muskets.
    Players go where there are players. Check out any server list in any online game ever and you'll see that effect. I'd be awful impressed if servers with this engine could get beyond 120 players anyhow.

    It's pretty much the opposite of what you're describing. How in the hell do you have events on a server where nobody involved has admin rights? It kind of, sort of works now in WoR but not really. It's more of a matter of there only being hardcore players present who spent $70 and found this game so early on. With game-owned servers you typically have these tools who've weaseled their way into admin positions with zero merit. Non-Private servers are notoriously horribly-policed. The only thing they're usually enforcing is European online speech standards. At least you occasionally find good private servers. That's also where innovation comes in. Not centralized bureaucracy.
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  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Poorlaggedman View Post
    Players go where there are players. Check out any server list in any online game ever and you'll see that effect. I'd be awful impressed if servers with this engine could get beyond 120 players anyhow.

    It's pretty much the opposite of what you're describing. How in the hell do you have events on a server where nobody involved has admin rights? It kind of, sort of works now in WoR but not really. It's more of a matter of there only being hardcore players present who spent $70 and found this game so early on. With game-owned servers you typically have these tools who've weaseled their way into admin positions with zero merit. Non-Private servers are notoriously horribly-policed. The only thing they're usually enforcing is European online speech standards. At least you occasionally find good private servers. That's also where innovation comes in. Not centralized bureaucracy.
    Sometimes it pays to read what is written on the page, as opposed to listening to those voices in your head sir. You might also want to broaden your experiences away from AAA titles and go look up some games that do work exactly as I've described, actually I'll save you the bother. Battlefield Europe - a single server, open world FPS game where the Admins, for over a DECADE, have been the players themselves. So please, don't try to tell me something will not work when in fact I've seen it in action, and more than once.

    @Trusty. I really admire what you are trying to do here, especially the methods you are testing in order to ensure that WoR will be played like a Civil War battle, and I wish you all the success in the world. The industry needs more innovators like your team that's for sure & I look forward to defending Bloody Lane in the near future

  9. #9
    Sox,

    It occurred to me just now I should clarify as to what I mean by "private" servers. Private servers would be privately owned by an individual or group that is not part of the official WoR staff. These servers could be open or closed to the public or only be closed for event days and open for the rest, which is a preferable option as I think it may alleviate your worry a bit. There could be other options, but the point is, the private servers I am talking about do not mean always closed to the public.

  10. #10
    A little note, Private servers or locked servers are great for events. I played arma for years and many other games and sometimes private servers are so much better.
    You don't want this game to turn out like Blackwake do you? Squad also is another game that you want to avoid the public games with. Plus games like this needs to have it for training troops.

    Reason why? Games like WW2 Online really needed training servers. We had 1 major one, but it needed to have private Company/Squad servers for training. I go back into the 80's btw so i pretty much played most of the games out there. Mainly loved FPS and MMO's

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