Do you guys think that closing a server and imposing artificial game rules ("line battles") is going to contribute in developing the game for public consumption?
The thing is with line battle
culture is if the game isn't adequately made for it then it's full of bickering and arguments and forces players to go against their own instinct which is inherently hopeless. The biggest problem with 'realism' communities across all games like this is a lot of people are totally happy retreating into locked servers a couple days a week for drills and closed events to the point they're only out and about to recruit. So unconnected new players are greeted with empty servers full of trolls and sub-par gameplay.
That was the trap we fell into in Resistance and Liberation. I believe almost anyone would agree. Some people blamed me for destroying the community because my events were too good (or I banned too many people).
Attachment 10011 People only wanted to play events in closed servers because it more closely provided the team-oriented gameplay they came to the game for in the first place. The developers had not taken a radical enough approach developing it in order to make players work close together and not rambo about. So public gameplay was not what people wanted, they wanted forced behavior. It got so bad that it became more and more difficult to muster enough players to go into a server to begin an event. As soon as we reached a threshold of a 2/3rds full server, a stampede would come. But your average player all but refused to spend time in a server playing the game normally for more than 10 or 15 minutes.
It'd be infinitely better if the game coerced desired behavior to the point that a 'regiment' can just show up in a server and operate realistically and be successful. I think the balance is reachable but we're not there yet.
I don't think a lot of people imagine this as being attainable so they just want a closed server. I admit that it's a little ridiculous to be able to have a server and not password it right now (among the more serious issues of not having admins - might want to add a disclaimer before people buy servers thinking it's anything other than a billboard ATM
). But I'm glad it's the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIkNv_gmKOM