Author Topic: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?  (Read 11094 times)

Offline Erwin

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #105 on: 01-07-2014, 09:07:56 »
On the other hand, in real life artillery caused up to 75% of all combat casualties ;)

On the other hand, in real life artillery usually being used by Field Teams which consisted of several hundred guns.

I remember having a big howitzer piece in FH1 Nordwind, 4 of them bonded together and used by one person. It was really useful and I think that is how arty guns should be.
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Offline hitm4k3r

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #106 on: 01-07-2014, 13:07:38 »
On the other hand, in real life artillery caused up to 75% of all combat casualties ;)

It was not artillery shelling the beaches that took Omaha. It was the infantry. You can kill as many guys as you want with artillery. Won't help much if you don't send troops.

Offline Slayer

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #107 on: 01-07-2014, 13:07:09 »
On the other hand, in real life artillery caused up to 75% of all combat casualties ;)

It was not artillery shelling the beaches that took Omaha. It was the infantry. You can kill as many guys as you want with artillery. Won't help much if you don't send troops.
But without the artillery shelling, the infantry might not have been able to take the beach.

Offline PanzerKnacker

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #108 on: 01-07-2014, 16:07:26 »
On the other hand, in real life artillery caused up to 75% of all combat casualties ;)

It was not artillery shelling the beaches that took Omaha. It was the infantry. You can kill as many guys as you want with artillery. Won't help much if you don't send troops.
But without the artillery shelling, the infantry might not have been able to take the beach.

Guys, guys. The Air force wins this one
He was not wrong. Amateurs talk tactics, pros talk logistics.

Offline djinn

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #109 on: 02-07-2014, 00:07:26 »
Skipped the 8 page to answer the question directly.
Good suggestion by the OP. A finer balance of maps.

100 players is actually an interesting count cuz unlike 120, we can get more people to join other servers.

So it's about what the other servers do, right? Obviously 100 player server is an attractive sell.

So how to get the other servers interesting:
1. Interesting maps. Now it may seem up for debate but it isnt. On some maps, the server count drops, on others it rises -- FAST.

People like Normandy. Go figure. A mix of a fun African map here and there may help. In fun I mean, a player doesn't have to drive or walk long distances only to die.

So further break  down:

- Maps that dont require much walking and/ or driving to a base where a death means respawning far away.
- Maps that use semi-auto rifles and more tanks with HE shells is fun compared to very early maps where everyone fires bolt action rifles, the best mg is the bren, and tanks are small and ugly.

- Maps with planes and artillery. You may not know this, but while many may like running and shooting, where the defenders get frustrating enough, others are perfectly happy to play auxiliary roles.
- Maps with a mix of everything but with evenly spaced out flags that don't frustrate players by having them get bottlenecked or having to hit the same flag to get it. If they have wiggle room to play and get to their objective, its nice.


It basically boils down to game mechanics. Players like maps that don't punish them too severely and reward them readily but for things like skill and achievement over simple kills. A few might like just kills, but most are put off by it since many people aren't skilled, and enjoy the cooperative solution.

So that's something to consider when putting maps on a small server to draw people in.
Grab em hard and keep em tight. THEN once you have the devoted following, you can sneak in your personal favorites. Till then, play it safe.

2. If a game ends, i.e. the enemy is pushed to their last base, switch maps. Trust me, the best time to empty your server is once the maps is done, and people have to wait for either the numbers to drain or the losing side to try again and again to recap a flag. Just put them out their misery and people will remain.

You can't go wrong with maps like Ramelle, Cobra, Brest, Tunis, Hurtgen (But apply rule number 2 here), St. Vith, Meurse River, Fall of Trobruk and of course Omaha.

Other good maps, Port en Bessin, Point du Hoc, Eppeldorf. Although obviously the risk is increasing compared to the last set. 

Risky maps include,
Sidi Rezegh, El Alamein, Bastogne, Hyacinth, Gazala... Not bad maps, you understand. Just maps that are likely to have people leave more than join because they are present. See a trend?

CQB For the win!

But actually, Villers Bocage will count as a risky map. It's just a very frustrating map since death is usually hidden and people do trek a bit, despite the catastrophic environment.

Offline ksl94

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #110 on: 02-07-2014, 01:07:50 »
I love the early war maps. The bigger, the merrier is my motto when it comes to size. Everything has it's time and place. Currently some maps should be bigger, e. g. Operation Goodwood - it currently feels like a bloody playground  :-\ . To each his own, I guess.

Offline Slayer

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #111 on: 02-07-2014, 01:07:23 »
- Maps that dont require much walking and/ or driving to a base where a death means respawning far away.
- Maps that use semi-auto rifles and more tanks with HE shells is fun compared to very early maps where everyone fires bolt action rifles, the best mg is the bren, and tanks are small and ugly.

- Maps with planes and artillery. You may not know this, but while many may like running and shooting, where the defenders get frustrating enough, others are perfectly happy to play auxiliary roles.
- Maps with a mix of everything but with evenly spaced out flags that don't frustrate players by having them get bottlenecked or having to hit the same flag to get it. If they have wiggle room to play and get to their objective, its nice.
Blah, blah, totally taste dependent. I really love the Africa maps, I love it that I have to be careful not to get shot in order not to have to drive a distance again. I don't like the "fast satisfaction" thing which is apparently on maps you describe as "good" for servers and I laugh at the suggestion that Cobra is a great map to keep players - as it is 120% unbalanced atm.

Players like maps that don't punish them too severely and reward them readily but for things like skill and achievement over simple kills.
With the risk of sounding like an elitist FH2 player, I say that I have a suggestion for players like this: learn or go play CoD. It's not like anyone was born with FH2 skills.
« Last Edit: 02-07-2014, 01:07:13 by Slayer »

Offline djinn

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #112 on: 02-07-2014, 01:07:44 »
For YOU maybe. We're not talking about what works for purists. i agree on all your points.
I'm talking about OTHER servers dointhings to have them get populated. It's about what majority would want.

So yeah, NO idea why you're arguing this.

Offline Kelmola

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #113 on: 02-07-2014, 17:07:55 »
You can't go wrong with maps like[/b] Ramelle, Brest, Tunis...

See a trend? CQB For the win!
What. The above mentioned together with Chiara's boobs Giarabub devolve at 80+ players into "who spams most nades in the only bottleneck during his 5-second lifespan" (OK, Ramelle does not have much grenades so its who spams the most HE shells/zooks/Molotovs into the said bottleneck). Sure it's CQB and sure it's fun once in a while, but not really what FH2 is about.

That said, I agree that Sidi Rezegh is a risk because it really needs a good British team to make the game interesting. At worst, there's not even a British commander to fire that artillery to help suppressing the 88's. All too often the entire round is like 60 minutes of waiting that the tommies come in small trickles to be eaten by the 88's, or 60 minutes of run-die-respawn because your team isn't cooperating, depending on your side.

Offline Slayer

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #114 on: 03-07-2014, 22:07:27 »
OK, djinn, so you are arguing that some servers should adopt your ideas and then they will get populated too? Nice idea, but I think it will remain a dream unless you start a new server yourself and try it out. Maybe even then, btw.

I sincerely think that FH2 should be happy with it's playerbase, propagate the mod properly via the known channels (YT, Moddb, etc.) and try to appeal to people who love WWII more than anything. That's it. I don't think it is realistic to aim for a playerbase 10 times the size it is now, because the game (BF2) is simpy too old.


Offline LuckyOne

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #115 on: 04-07-2014, 00:07:54 »
I think the player base in EU is healthy enough. You can find a match in the afternoon/evening and on the weekends even in the morning.

It's the Americans and the poor forgotten Aussies that don't get a chance to play...
This sentence is intentionally left unfinished...

Offline Airshark79

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #116 on: 04-07-2014, 16:07:53 »
Hello everyone, 1942,2,2142,PR, BC series and BF3(ugh.) player and-2.5 year-FH2 player with some modding experience here. (A.k.a. yiyeyigit, yener79 and some I don't even remember)

I am glad that player base is an actively discussed topic whereas 2142 died off without a single bit of thought from anyone I've seen in the past. I am an EAUK veteran and a 2142 purist who happens to believe it to be the ultimate BF game ever made. Seeing how 2142 turned out despite its quality, I think FH2 dying off is not off the table, and I think some measures need to be taken, especially to get a second server other than 762 full at least at the weekends.

What can we do?

It is late, but some marketing is needed. There are many people who happen to own BF2 but still haven't realised how great the FH2 experience is. And this is in some way due to it's lack of presence in youtube and others. We need to get satisfactory, raw and uncut footages of people who plays the game and has fun, maybe some who puts PR videos on youtube.

Second, is some push from behind. If there are no players, nobody will bother to join a server. So what we need is some gaming nights on one of the marginal public servers out there, at least with 10 people so that others may decide to come as well.

Third for later, is to focus on cqb. Crete 64 with 10 people is not fun, and frankly a waste of time. I am not saying it needs to be refined for grenade use or generally, but 12-16 player maps need more focus for the future, so that servers may find and keep players before switching to bigger ones.

I am keeping my thoughts a little blank so there is room for discussion.

Offline Ronson

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #117 on: 04-07-2014, 18:07:44 »
Starting a new server when the playerbase isn't big enough to support it has the potential to be a disaster and drive away more players than it brings in.

There was a big problem for a while when 762 was running both a 128 and 64 server. It all came down to which server got populated first in the day (starting Euro afternoon time). If the 128 server got going first it was fine, and you often got 100+ people playing FH2. If the 64 server got going first then you got 64 playing. And the rest of the people? They disappeared off to do something else more fun, because most people don't want to dick about on a lightly populated server on the slim chance it will fill up. Or sometimes you'd end up with 30-40 players on each server which made for a crap game for everybody. This was solved when 762 switched to running two big servers - there's now 100 slots available on each, and it doesn't matter which starts first so there's no problem, as it's not often more than 100 want to play at once.

Personally I think the 762 guys do a superb job as hosts and admins, so IMO setting up another yet another 64 server would be at best a waste of time (because nobody plays on it) and at worst harmful (because it splits the small playerbase, so both servers end up half-full).

What might be cool, though, is a dedicated *small* server which runs the CQB 16/32 player maps we don't often get to play, and strictly limits playercount. It could be available for people wanting a real alternative to the big tactical games, and the go-to server for people wanting a quick blast at times when the 100 player server is full (because realistically there's no chance of getting two 100 servers rocking except around Christmas or patch release time). It ought to be strictly limited to 16 or 32 slots though, to avoid that problem of splitting the playerbase and to make it genuinely different from all the empty 64 servers that are still around.

As Airshark says some of the small maps could be refined too, as the 16/32 layers have sometimes (not always!) been an after-thought since the focus is on 64. The smaller playerbases in NA and Oz/NZ have struggled because of this. The new updater makes it easier for quick fixes and experiments with the small maps so maybe a mini CQB server could end up with loads of variety and be a welcome occasional alternative to the 'proper' big server, as well as a draw for new players across the world.

Offline hitm4k3r

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #118 on: 04-07-2014, 18:07:50 »
Starting a new server when the playerbase isn't big enough to support it has the potential to be a disaster and drive away more players than it brings in.

762 are not the only server hosters for FH2. I am not sure whether people are aware of this? Problem is that only WaW and FlH promote and manage their servers as 762 does, though for different audiences and not necessarily for public play. Just starting a new server will do nothing but lead to an additional empty server in the browser.

Tbh, some competition would be good as it could raise the quality of server hosting (not saying that we don't allready strife for it). But who should be doing it?

Offline Kalkalash

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Re: Player base development - How do we keep this mod alive?
« Reply #119 on: 04-07-2014, 19:07:54 »
Third for later, is to focus on cqb. Crete 64 with 10 people is not fun, and frankly a waste of time. I am not saying it needs to be refined for grenade use or generally, but 12-16 player maps need more focus for the future, so that servers may find and keep players before switching to bigger ones.
Doesn't 762 have a script that changes map size automatically depending on the amount of players? Of course, you still have to wait for the current round to end which can be painful with only a few players.
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