1. Promotion, promotion, promotion. FH needs to be talked about more. Like has been said before: write your
congressman favourite magazine. Many have dedicated sections for mods anymore. Blog about it. Tweet about it. Facebook status about it (Join the group? Just checked it:
there are three groups, one of them is locked with no activity, other 2 is not organized that well.). Talk on the forums (Ask if there are any FH players in this-and-that town/university. Some shall inquire what is FH, you tell them, some of these shall join the ranks.). Advertise something like “Normandy weekend on such-and-such server”.
2. Stats. People can say all they want about detrimental effects of stat keeping, but I think positive aspects of it far outweigh any negative arguments for the purpose of keeping sustained player base. Call me a statwhore, but I love me some of them stats. And so are thousands of players who keep populating BF2 servers nigh 5 years after its release (you’d think they’ve seen it all already).
FH2 stat system should be coming out on the heels of 2.2 release. As I understand, client-side already has it included, they just still working on the stats server (if my sig worked half the time, you’d see it’s not half-bad already).
3. As much as some people like to disrespect vanilla BF2, touting FH’s relation to the franchise is important. Battlefield series were always the first in the door to gain popularity as massive multiplayer all-out combat experience. When 1942 came out there were no other game like that. I’ve recently revisited it to realise how pathetic that thing was, yet we had tons and tons of fun.
The mods built up on that, then the next games built up on those mods (DC to BF2, anyone?) and so on. We see features evolve, we see features migrate, but the core concept is still there, whether you play 2142, FH2, PR or Pirates (I’ve just tried it out yesterday, that thing is actually quite nice.).
4. Yes, some people are getting tired of revisiting WW2 time and time again. I’ve actually heard the same argument from my brother, yet he was still interested in many neat features FH2 has. Say what you will, but people shall still play WW2 games for ages to come.
Some of it purely for technology advancement reasons. Sure, CoD was nice, but CoD2 was almost cinematic in its experience (I finished on Xbox360 while back, now I’m replaying it on PC with cranked up surround sound — boy, is that thing awesome?!).
Some of it just because it offers different gameplay from modern-based shooters. Less technology, more manpower. That’s why people keep playing WW2 shooters, fantasy RPGs and historical medieval strategies like Total War series.
