Red Orchestra Dev: CoD Has Ruined A Generation Of Gamers

[Rad Party God]

Wait what?, I can't hear you due to so many spinfusors flying past me while I furiously go full speed trying to deliver my flag in Tribes: Ascend.

 

[GAunderrated]

I think Tripwire are misdiagnosing the problem here. I have 615 hours logged on RO2 and the problems the game has is the same problem as you find in all team based muiltplayer fps. The key is the ratio of players willing to attack/defend objectives versus the number that are only concerned about K/D. In R02 too many players spawn and plink at targets with an MP40 and never stand on the point. There is also the attitude, carried over from RO1, that anyone using an automatic weapon is a noob and because you don't repeatedly stand in the same spot and duel with a rifle makes you a bad player. The idea that you might move and flank and score more kills never occurs to them. So the issue, in part, comes down to map design, I know they are using historical places for RO2 but that doesn't stop moving objectives about to incentivise the player to go there. The other thing that tripwire could do is look at is the scoring system, if you don't record the K/D stat, how many players would try to maximise it? If you reward having a high win/loose stat, more players would concentrate on maxing that. For the record my k/d is 1.67 and win/loose is 2.89, so I practice what I preach.

Wow you read my mind when it came to RO2. I liked the game a lot but the problems you listed are why I quit it long ago. I was so sad too because I had REALLY high hopes for RO2. Sadly trying to blend some casual elements made it bland.

 

[Luca72]

Can't it be said that the popularity of CoD and the attempts of AAA developers to mimic it just creates a potentially wildly successful niche market for hardcore FPS's? Natural Selection 2 is doing pretty well, and it doesn't have a trace of COD - if you run around trying to improve your K/D ratio you will A) get yelled at by your commander for being useless, or more likely B) get murdered because you decided to split up from your team.

TF2 seems to be this generations Quake, as in it's a wild, kinetic shooter that's easy to pick up but does in fact have a high skill ceiling. Hell, Tribes: Ascend was doing great at first since it offered a speed that you don't see FPS's live up to today, and in my opinion the developers are to blame for it losing popularity because they mucked it up.

So, yeah, COD is FPS candy, but it's attracting people that wouldn't have put in the time to master a more difficult FPS anyway.

 

[mateushac]

I think Tripwire are misdiagnosing the problem here. I have 615 hours logged on RO2 and the problems the game has is the same problem as you find in all team based muiltplayer fps. The key is the ratio of players willing to attack/defend objectives versus the number that are only concerned about K/D. In R02 too many players spawn and plink at targets with an MP40 and never stand on the point. There is also the attitude, carried over from RO1, that anyone using an automatic weapon is a noob and because you don't repeatedly stand in the same spot and duel with a rifle makes you a bad player. The idea that you might move and flank and score more kills never occurs to them. So the issue, in part, comes down to map design, I know they are using historical places for RO2 but that doesn't stop moving objectives about to incentivise the player to go there. The other thing that tripwire could do is look at is the scoring system, if you don't record the K/D stat, how many players would try to maximise it? If you reward having a high win/loose stat, more players would concentrate on maxing that. For the record my k/d is 1.67 and win/loose is 2.89, so I practice what I preach.

Wow you read my mind when it came to RO2. I liked the game a lot but the problems you listed are why I quit it long ago. I was so sad too because I had REALLY high hopes for RO2. Sadly trying to blend some casual elements made it bland.

Same here.
I wish they'd give us une more iteration, though. I really miss WWII games AND tactical shooters.

 

[Tiamat666]

Seriously, I still haven't figured out how a FPS can even work on a console, without a mouse controller. Just thinking about playing a shooter on a gamepad makes me cringe.

 

[rasputin0009]

I don't think he's right. CoD is really just a pick up and play game that enticed non-gamers into playing games. Those new gamers wouldn't have wanted to play RO2 if it was the only shooter available. All he's bitching about is an audience that would never have existed without CoD.

RO2 is shit. It's boring as fuck and not at all satisfying. It doesn't take as much skill/thought as he thinks it does. He needs to get off of his highhorse.

Btw, not defending CoD, it's shit, too. But a totally different pile of shit.

 

[Church185]

Um...how is it different from Call of Duty's multiplayer? I'm serious because he didn't list anything that's different, save for that small time difference at the end there. I ask because everything seems like Call of Duty multiplayer to me. Okay, granted, I've only played Modern Warfare 2, Halo 4, a bit of MW3, World At War, and barely any Black Ops. Tried both Medal of Honor games too. But from what I've seen, all multiplayer shooters boil down to running around killing each other and they all felt exactly the same.
Now I get extremely bored with multiplayer--except MW2 because I could be an actual sniper--rather quickly, so I don't know the differences between games except that Halo 4 lets you jump really high. So how is Red Orchestra 2 different?

If you want a game where you can be an actual sniper, you should check out Battlefield 3. The maps are huge and there are plenty of places to hide and watch your prey. Also getting a headshot from a long ways away is a great feeling, especially when you take into account bullet drop.

Longest headshot in BF3 for me was 1199m. For those of you reading this who have played BF3, I was sitting on top of the mountain near where the US side spawns in conquest on Operation Firestorm, and picked off a Russian player who was still in their base. I almost couldn't believe it.

 

[godofallu]

To all of those people saying COD takes no skill there are plenty of tournaments that give out thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Go sign up and win some it's free money!

In all seriousness there is a difference between realism and fun. COD will happily toss aside realism if it makes the game more fun, where RO2 will happily trample all over fun for the sake of realism.

COD is the arena shooter of this generation. It has great hit detection, small/medium sized maps, quick movement, and well balanced weapons.

RO2 is the niche realism type of game which isn't even the best in its genre with ARMA and a few others beating it out in popularity. Do you want to move slowly around a giant map struggling to find someone and getting shot after 5 minutes of wandering around without ever seeing the opponent? Do you want a cover system that sucks? How about a game which makes it extremely difficult to tell friends from foe since from far away both uniforms look the same? How about bullet drop that sounds like a needed feature. Oh you want tanks we have those! You just have to load each round into the barrel by hand.

 

[A Weakgeek]

Wow. So much unwarranted hate for the RO series here.

The real problem here isn't that RO is a bad game, the problem was trying to appeal to the COD/BF crowd. As insane as it might sound, some people do like trying a bit more realistic games once and in a while.

Then again, judging from what Ive gathered so far, realism is like a curse word on the escapist.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

I'm no CoD supporter/fanboy etc., but their map design is reeeeeeally good. And the action is not so much flinch trigger based, as say CS:GO...CoD games just have really good gameplay.
And playtesting with people who's comment in the end is "It's not like CoD", is idiotic and may indicate what your problem is.

Yeah... COD is not about "flinch" as in needing to have good aim, it's not about skill, it's about random encounters, whoever sees the other first, with all likelihood gets the kill. It's slot machine taking turns killing each other, you only have the illusion of control offer your destiny, like maybe if you pull on the One-armed-bandit just right you can get the result you want. You can camp, you can rush, but really it hardly matters what weapon or perks you have, it's ultimately just a huge hide and seek contest.

Games like TF2 or Quake have in depth strategy of engagement of counters and manoeuvres, there are pages and pages of strategy. But COD all that's irrelevant to who sees the other first, the weapons are so accurate and powerful, it's little more than a game of hide and seek. COD has to be the most terminally boring spectator game.

People can play COD drunk, high or while watching a TV show. It's faux-hardcore, it's casual dressed up in the clothing and pretences of modern soldiers and military equipment.

Now I'll admit, Red Orchestra is kind of throwing the typical COD player way in at the deep end... but the problem is a serious disconnect between what COD players claim to want and what they actually want. There is this huge problem with a generation engineered to play multiplayer without any kind of deep strategy... they fall for BS distinctions between the weapons that are near identical.

Where do you go from there? People get their "kills" without trying.

So what you are saying is the only way a competitive FPS can be good is if it is a hardcore skill based shooter. Did you ever pause to think the reason why CoD got so mainstream was because that's precisely what it is not? What Call of Duty has done an amazing job with is creating a game where both the hardcore and casual can find enjoyment. THe game offers enough depth in the unlock and metagame as well as shockingly, reward players for learning the basics of the game, as well as the layout of the map. But at the same time your random joe can pop the disc in, play a quick game of tdm, get a killstreak or two and call it a day.

 

[II2]

I'm not sure if I'd call the guy pretentious, exactly, but certainly misguided in trying to sell a PC shooter to CoD/Blops players. They like what they like, and that's CoD or - occasionally - battlefield, if they're feeling adventurous.

As others have mentioned, might have felt his game was better received by the people who are into PC shooters in general. The Painkiller, Serious Sam, Counterstrike, Natural Selection, ARMA, Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, Tribes, Team Fortress, Opposing Forces, Quake / Unreal, etc, players.

Basically, PC FPS fans who like trying new (and keeping alive old, beloved) things.

 

[Treblaine]

So what you are saying is the only way a competitive FPS can be good is if it is a hardcore skill based shooter. Did you ever pause to think the reason why CoD got so mainstream was because that's precisely what it is not? What Call of Duty has done an amazing job with is creating a game where both the hardcore and casual can find enjoyment. THe game offers enough depth in the unlock and metagame as well as shockingly, reward players for learning the basics of the game, as well as the layout of the map. But at the same time your random joe can pop the disc in, play a quick game of tdm, get a killstreak or two and call it a day.

You know what I said.

Yes, I know that's why COD became a success, but that doesn't make it a good thing. Slot machines making loads of money doesn't mean slot machines make for better games than chess.

I am saying if you had any idea what the alternatives were and were open to trying them you wouldn't tolerate COD. It is terrible, but what have you got to compare it to?

where both the hardcore and casual can find enjoyment.

By what definition of "hardcore"?!?!

Competitive gamers are utterly derisive of COD. Hardcore for COD is not hardcore in any kind of broader terms.

And "What Call of Duty has done an amazing job of" is deluding casual that they are hardcore because they can game the system slightly in their favour by cheap and cowardly attitude in games, or just getting a string of luck scanning in the direction they pop out from. It's not about skill, it's about exploiting the inherent unfairness.

The game offers enough depth in the unlock

Depth? Meaningless depth. The unlock weapons that are almost totally indistinct. From sub machine-guns to machine pistol to assault rifles to light machine guns, they are all high damage, high rate of fire weapons. It's just several dozen reskins of a Quake Lightning-Gun with quad-damage.

Very few weapons break the mould significantly without being nerfed with the clear intention of saying they shouldn't be used other than generic full auto weapon.

The perks are nerfed and have to be because they can be used in so many unbalancing combinations. The "Create a class" system is inherently flawed by how it allows so many positives without negatives. Games serious about balancing have set classes. It's all good on the surface but any hardcore gamer very quickly sees the flaws. The perks don't change gameplay much.

And that's the problem, YOU the player, your skill, that is not progressing. Your weapons and accessories and perks are upgraded in almost entirely superficial or trivial way. It can't escape from how the weapons all fire so fast and are so powerful they are almost identical.

The depth should be in the gameplay, using the weapons and items in more and more advanced ways with new weapons being used in different ways, often to enhance your area of expertise.

reward players for learning the basics of the game, as well as the layout of the map.

You think COD is the only game that does this? For such a slow and simple game it's not that is has a shallow learning curve, it plateaus almost instantly. It's just about edging out and spraying on people. It's too random, look left and they are on the right, you're dead.

play a quick game of tdm, get a killstreak or two and call it a day.

This is part of the problem, this is the worst kind of reward to give in the game, it's kind of the dumb thing to ask for but that you shouldn't really take, like eating the ice-cream dessert before the main course.

Killstreaks reward the player with kills that don't play into the inherent gameplay of one-on-one combat.

It's a pavlov association trick. They get a number every time they get a kill, then you can just give them a number and they don't even see the kill and they get the appreciation. Either it's automatic where they don't see it or they are hugely detatched firing from some orbiting aircraft at Red-squares.


The original reward for killstreaks was announcer accolades. The likes of Unreal you couldn't just get a lot of kills, you had to get them in rapid succession. And you got your name revered on the whole server.

Now what's on balance better? Screwing up other's day with having them killed by super-bots, or awarding them with badass accolades?

I mean why are you stopping to use an ipad in a first person shooter?!?!

COD is casual... it's so casual. You can't care about the game it's just about getting random kills and to hell with balance. Hardcore games don't have things like killstreak that fly in a chopper gunner for getting a few kills in a row.

 

[Commissar Sae]

Oh, fuck off you pretentious git.
The reason Red Orchestra didn't sell well is because it's a fairly unknown shooter based in a time we've all moved passed that played and ran like shit, and also doesn't focus enough on supporting objective based play.

There's still a bunch of "hardcore" shooters out there, this guy needs to stop making excuses as to why his game didn't sell well.

As someone who joined in the beta stages of RO2, a lot of the complaints he mentioned are things I actually heard. The people who bought it on a whim tended to be mad at not having a KD ratio readily available for each match and spent most of their time running out into the open getting shot or complaining that the sniper rifle had to be manually sighted.

I also heard a bunch of complaints from the old RO crowd complaining that it was oversimplified and too easy to play so you can't please everyone.

RO2 is a harder game to get into than CoD, because you can't just run around solo and still do well. You can be the best player out there, but the objective based nature of the game means that if you decide to sit around and camp it will be a long boring game and you will lose anyway.

 

[Demongeneral109]

\

I see a lot of people here claiming that CoD takes no skill. Wrong. CoD has a low barrier for entry, that's why it's popular. When you have to devote a huge amount of your time to learning how to game's conventions actually relates to player action (I.E. the way things are intended to work in compared to what people actually do) then people get turned off. CoD is a good introduction because when you shoot someone, they die. You don't need to memorize camping locations, what weapons to spam, or sigh with irritation because 99% of the game is fucking redundant because one particular thing absolutly dominates the entire game. As a side note get off your fucking high-horses. Just because people don't share your taste in games doesn't make them inferior. No one here is an arbiter of games with the power to say what is "better" or (god preserve us) "real".

So in conclusion; when you ***** because people don't take the time to wade through miles of frustrating bullshit to become even mildly proficient at your game, they aren't spoiled. You design games that require an investment of time that most people aren't willing to put forward.

EDIT: After reading the actual article I must say, this guy's tears are fucking delectable. Like a diamond goblet of the finest ambrosia imbuing each of my taste buds with the fiery grace of aphrodite herself. His entire argument amounts to this "I made a game based on what I consider fun. When I showed this to other people they didn't think it was as fun as a game they had fun with. They are stupid." Delicious.

first of all this post is unreasonably antagonistic. On to the real issue, while a low barrier to entry is a plus for COD, one cannot argue that it doesn't really take skill to play, only twitch reflexes and a decent gun that takes maybe a few hours to unlock. I haven't played COD since BLOPS 1 but it is more about the illusion of skill and knowing where to camp than anything else.

There is nothing wrong with having a learning curve to a new game, and your rage at the mere concept proves the directors point, if you just want to jump into a game with instant mastery that's kinda being an entitled twat. What the director is saying isn't that there's anything wrong with their definition of fun, but that they expect to be good with no effort when, as with all things there should be some investment to being good.

 

[Treblaine]

I see a lot of people here claiming that CoD takes no skill. Wrong. CoD has a low barrier for entry, that's why it's popular. When you have to devote a huge amount of your time to learning how to game's conventions actually relates to player action (I.E. the way things are intended to work in compared to what people actually do) then people get turned off. CoD is a good introduction because when you shoot someone, they die. You don't need to memorize camping locations, what weapons to spam, or sigh with irritation because 99% of the game is fucking redundant because one particular thing absolutly dominates the entire game. As a side note get off your fucking high-horses. Just because people don't share your taste in games doesn't make them inferior. No one here is an arbiter of games with the power to say what is "better" or (god preserve us) "real".

So in conclusion; when you ***** because people don't take the time to wade through miles of frustrating bullshit to become even mildly proficient at your game, they aren't spoiled. You design games that require an investment of time that most people aren't willing to put forward.

It really doesn't take any skill... the weapons are so powerful and with aim assist.

COD does not have a particularly low skill barrier, it just plateaus so quickly and there is no escaping how powerful camping is. And he game is just so full of bullshit like claymores.

And the series have such simplistic ways of dealing with things like "oh there's a perk for that". What about a STRATEGY for that, something that is about the player skill, not just another computer aid.

because when you shoot someone, they die.

That's the problem, if you walk into someone's firing line before them there is virtually no counter. The weapons and tactics become irrelevant, it's just a huge game of hide and seek, it's futile to bother trading shots (especially due to lag compensation) with the drop on you it's over, not effort at all for them to get the kill. After all, they have a weapon that fires up to 15 rounds per second, and does 1200hp damage from fully loaded gun against foes with only 100hp. You don't need to be precise, you don't need to go for headshots that are almost always worthless (mere 40% more, sometimes only 10% more damage).

You don't need to memorize camping locations, what weapons to spam, or sigh with irritation because 99% of the game is fucking redundant because one particular thing absolutly dominates the entire game.

...

That's COD.

Cod has even greater problem with campers, not least you even have robot campers with landmines like claymores and bouncing Betties. So damn ofen you will have to progress through an area where the camper could be on either side of you. It's totally random look left or right, if he's on the side you look you live, if not you die. And you cannot flash every corner.

And COD is the game with one weapon to dominate them all: the automatic weapon.

Don't tell me the inane details of how this Subgun is different from that assault rifle. They all do near the same damage and from the same fire rate they are used in the same way, just run the reticule over them while pinning the trigger. Aim assist will sick to them just long enough for the few hitscan bullets to hit. Easy. Here's +100 points.

Just because people don't share your taste in games doesn't make them inferior.

Yes, very true. It's the other way around.

It's because COD is so inferior that they don't have a taste for it.

people don't take the time to wade through miles of frustrating bullshit people don't take the time to wade through miles of frustrating bullshit to become even mildly proficient at your game, they aren't spoiled.

That's the definition of casual gaming, they don't want any kind of challenge, they don't want any kind of possibility that they can't immediately start getting kills for bullshit. With no effort.

There are bot modes. There are training ground. You could just man up to a challenge and not get put off.

No, they really are spoiled. They want to be able to beat veteran gamers first time. This is slot machine gameplay, it's just random uncontrollable encounters with such powerful weapons that why be precise and accurate?

 

[JoesshittyOs]

It's because it does well what 'most' fps players clamour for; fast paced and responsive gunplay that makes you feel like a badass. It's done what Doom and Quake did back in the day.

No, Doom and Quake were about 'dogfighting', really fast movement, and positioning on the map. Cawadooty is about centering your targeting reticle around a person with red text over their heads and then pushing a button. Maybe grenades and killstreaks if you're really good at that.

Take this Q3 video for instance:


And compare it to this BLOPS 2 video:


(To be fair, I haven't watched all of the BLOPS 2 one because my audio is dead right now, so I just picked it out at semi-random)

My point: Call of Duty, as a trend/phenomenon/whatever, has both done miracles and fuck over the multiplayer FPS market (at least on consoles). I admit, it is a wonderful introduction to that genre of gaming, but because of dog piling and annual releases it has stunted the expectations of MPFPS players, as they haven't been given a chance to "grow out" of it and move in to other games requiring more skill and dedication on the player's part.

I know it wasn't on purpose, but you just picked the most bullshit comparison video for CoD that you possibly could have picked. You chose the Search and Destroy gametype, the game that has only one life each round, leading it to be a very campy gametype.

Let's put it this way. The games aren't comparable to each other. At all. They're both from extremely different generations of gaming, that cater to many different types of gamers. Not to say someone can't enjoy both.

OT: The FPS genre is one of the biggest genres out there, with hundreds of unique subgenres involved in it, despite what most people on the Escapist would have you believe. This developer just didn't make a particularly memorable game. He even says himself that he wanted to cater to the Call of Duty crowd. The complaints with people saying "it doesn't feel like Call of Duty"?

Fucking good. Continue doing what you are doing. I'm a CoD player myself, and I'm completely okay with that. Screw trying to develop a game that caters to that line of thinking. Honestly, who the fuck are you getting to test your game? Why are you bringing in players that apparently only play CoD to come play this game?

You made a PC only title, yet somehow you're finding that you have problems with CoD players. That right there tells me that you are doing something wrong.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

COD is people running around. No thought. There was even a video of a pro Counter Strike player owning an entire server on his first try.

That sounds VERY entertaining, You have a link?

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

The maps are too small to provide any real tactical opportunity and it usually boils down to whoever is seen first gets killed first. Games with larger health bars provide a degree of tactical gunfighting... games like CS:GO where perma-death is switched on every round encourage more careful, meditative play...

Call of Duty is a popcorn shooter, a game where you can switch it on and get points and unlock weapons and level up. Which is fine! That's cool! Nothing against that! But to say CoD has depth is blatantly untrue.

And that's my point: depth in CoD - which you fairly identify as a popcorn game - comes from this variety in game types and play styles. To the point that Battlefield, CoD's primary competitor, whose players like to think of it as the anti-CoD, put out their Close Quarters expansion which copies a lot of CoD's game types. People think CoD is all about Core TDM kiddies because that's what's on YouTube, but the actual game is more than that.

I wouldn't call it "depth". I'd call it "variety." And I don't want to sound like I hate CoD, by the way. I think I'd disagree that it has any kind of legitimate "skill" is involved (games like Quake III, conversely, have a deftness that could be matched by 2D fighters), but that doesn't mean I don't believe you can be skillful at it, or that it's easy... I just don't believe there's truly anything in CoD - even considering the "hardcore" modes - that I'd call genuinely competitive. Which isn't a slight against it, I just don't think it's properly built that way.

And definitely, Call of Duty is not at a lack of variety. Single-player, co-op, competitive multi-player, more game modes than you can shake a stick at, zombies mode, zombies mode with co-op, zombies mode with competitive multi-player... oh. Oh lord, no, it's a pretty complete package year in, year out, which is definitely impressive.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Yeah... COD is not about "flinch" as in needing to have good aim, it's not about skill, it's about random encounters, whoever sees the other first, with all likelihood gets the kill. It's slot machine taking turns killing each other, you only have the illusion of control offer your destiny, like maybe if you pull on the One-armed-bandit just right you can get the result you want. You can camp, you can rush, but really it hardly matters what weapon or perks you have, it's ultimately just a huge hide and seek contest.

Exactly. Which is why the good players would tell you it's about map control. The person who's going to win the fights is generally whoever sees who first, so the smarter players take advantage of that. They position themselves in the right place.

People can play COD drunk, high

No you can't. I've tried both. It's quite simply to fast-paced. No drug addled mind is able to keep up with it. You're less likely to care that you can't keep up with it, but still. It's too fast paced.

Now I'll admit, Red Orchestra is kind of throwing the typical COD player way in at the deep end... but the problem is a serious disconnect between what COD players claim to want and what they actually want.

And that's literally all this is. What's even more pathetic about this is that this guy is a talking about how hard it is to cater to the CoD crowd on a PC only title. CoD is not that big on the PC. It's not "small" by any means, but the average PC CoD player is probably going to also have another PC title under their belt, Such as TF2 or Trbes, or something along those lines. So yeah, that's exactly what this guy is doing. He just simply doesn't even know who his target audience is.

There is this huge problem with a generation engineered to play multiplayer without any kind of deep strategy... they fall for BS distinctions between the weapons that are near identical.

Where do you go from there? People get their "kills" without trying.

I think the problem is less with people who like Call of Duty, and more with your typical mindset of "CoD players are what's wrong with everything", sort of what this Developer is trying to say.

I was/am a CoD player, yet I've gone onto vastly different types of games. So have many of my video game playing friends. It's just a stupid argument, not much more you can really say.