Thanks for Your replies, I have definatly learned a lot about FH2 and the mod scene itself.
I do think that PR has an edge because of the way it built its community slowly. PR was first a humble minimod with just a few changes to vanilla BF2 and eventually became what it is now. It certainly must have gained a loyal following over the time it has been in production.
Well analyzed. I agree.
Player numbers: It is quite interesting. You would think something like PR would generally turn a lot of people away with having such a steep learning curve, but it is the most populated mod for BF2 by far.
I think You hit the nail on the head. It can't be the models, since FH2 has plenty of them as well, they look good and have different characteristics. So what is it exactly, the so called steep learning curve of PR? I think I am going to answer You this question with a long post.
If You do not want to read anything about PR, please skip it. This thread was not intended to be an "PR vs FH2" thread. Also, I would be interested to know what kind of experiences kept You playing FH2. I, for instance, found the tank fights very amusing. Also, albeit much more difficult to master, was flying the fighter-bomber craft. But I did not play the mod enough to give a long story about what this game is to me. BAck to the topic..
Looking back what attracted me to Project Reality in the first place I have to say it was not the models. Of course, they models and maps look really beautiful. But it was what they were marketing, "a realistic, team oriented military simulation", and ultimately, what I found behind it: A game mod which had some very specialized and limited intergration of players into the battlefield and required a high level of coordination, teamwork and social skills on the other in order to be successful. You can really find out a lot about Yourself when playing this game, for instance, about the level of Your social skills, Your multitasking, Your tactical awareness and learning capability in stress situations. I always tell my subordinates:
You will fail at some point.
This playing culture, as I will call it now, has evolved with the restrictions and limitations applied to the player on the many development steps of PR. Take it away, and Project Reality will loose most of its attractiveness to "mature" players (Sidenote: Before the big BF2 advertisement of PR, about 33% of the players were older than 30 years. I think that is quite unusual on such a scale). Currently, the community is struggling with to absorb or deflect the big stream of newcomers, who do not know or do not want to play the game how it is intended to be played. You can see a clear impact of this uncontrolled growth of the playerbase on the quality of gameplay.
Also, while beeing a small entity on the battlefield, the player often still has the feeling that he does contribute to the overall outcome of a match. These are, of course, more seldom events than in FH2, but on the other hand they are experienced much more intensively. Let it be the infantry grunt, who in the heat of battle, running through psychodelic ("Armageddon Now") pink, yellow and green smoke grenade fumes, just managed to flank an enemy bunker with a hostile squad inside, only to find out that his gun is out of ammo and that he has to fight it out with the knife or grenades. Or the greenhorn squadleader, who fails to direct his squad correctly, and feels like the "idiot-rookie" officer that does not know what to do in all all those critical war movie situation. Or the insurgent, that experiences total victory after having waited 4 minutes in the shadows of a trash container, only to see his IED blasting a whole squad of Bluefor soldiers to hell. Or The commander, that gets shot into the head in his command truck at HQ, realizing that he should have commanded Squad 4 to close that gap in the front line. Or the feeling of achievement after heaving guided Your squad to liberate a village from opposing forces and clear out the rally point. Or the situation of getting a tank stuck in the boonies and wasting one truck and 10 minutes time to recover this important asset.
You see, these are all experiences that really got me excited, because they were bound to an emotional experience, for within the boundary of the game mod rules, I had contact to other human players, and I really invested in these moments in terms of time and communication. Those players who can grasp these elements of PR will probably stay. All others will sooner or later leave, for either they do not accept the restrictions, or they will be removed from the community for bad behaviour.
Some people have replied to me that they find it ridiculous to walk over these huge maps and search for enemy contacts. You must understand while this can be annoying sometimes, often it can be made more enjoyable while socializing a little - a very amusing aspect. Also, any squad member would rather walk 1000 meters in-game than crashing their valuable limited kits with a incompetent chopper pilot. He would do this to get his single short time window and use his precious Heavy-AT to blast this cursed T-72 tank, that had the other squad wiped out twice.
And please, do not get me wrong: PR has many flaws. One of them is this long learning curve. I, for sure, will never be a chopper or jet pilot, since it takes too much time to learn to fly these assets, and it takes even longer to learn how to use them correctly and efficiently on the battlefield.
Also, one things that disturbs me is the current ruling of tactics in PR: It is one of its major strenghts, but also, one of its major weaknesses.
Currently, the Squad Leaders dictate the direction the game is going. The Commander has allmost no strategic options to choose from. By strategic options I do not mean artillery strikes or UAVs, but actual processes on how to define a "mission/game goal" and decide on the number and type of team assets as the investment for the completion of this mission. Currently, in PR's traditional symetric warfare, the best strategy is defense - it seems pretty clear, since You usually need a factor 3 in fighting power to overhelm Your opponent in a clean way. And for now I see no changes in map and game mode design that would successfully add more options to the strategic layer of the game.
Also, the necessity to stay 1-3 hours in one round does not make this a game for short breaks. Another major setback, which many players are willing to accept.
Interestingly I more often hear the opposite criticism about FH2 being "to hardcore" or "frustrating".
Lol why do you even play BF if you hate its features. One more of "I hate bf2 and don't even know why", its a great game. Everybody just want bash it, because some others do as well.
I hope this gives You some insight in what my current experience and pattern of expectation was when I started up looking around into other mods of the original, for me quite disappointing, vanilla BF2 game and its "playing culture of the smallest delimiter".
on the other hand we have 1940's, old rifles, territories totally occupied by one force, there are defense lines built for 4 years, bunkers, trenches.. no way of transporting troops behind enemy lines except a few paradrop scenarios (very un-stealthy and clumpsy compared to helicopters). Also we build the game on WW2 tactics, which means: the army that sends the most meat and steel in to the other teams frontline will win..
True. Different technology requires different tactics and strategies. As a humourous remark, I really do not want to know how a battlefield mod in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte would look like.. 32 players standing in 4 rows, clad in red costumes, shooting at the 32 players, clad in blue, who are standing 200 m away ;-) The commander would be there to shoot deserters..
I understand now why the maps have been chosen to have such confined gaming space: The HOT zone is everywhere.
when playing FH2 then, Squad and Teams is not #1 priority, simple as that. The entire team is the #1 priority, the combined arms of arty, tanks, infantry, pilots. we want 32 vs 32 to battle intensely on every map, we dont want scattered small groups of 4-8 players here and there to carry out "missions" without seeing eachother..
Agreed. Then, my questions are as following:
1) What is the perfect player base for FH2? What steps can You make to shape the player community? Is maybe the lack of VOIP in the playerbase a major setback (in PR it is)? How could You impregnate the players to follow a basic code of conduct?
The playerbase and the playing tradition of a game are essential. You need to define what is good, and what is unwanted to have, and You have to employ measures to filter the bad things out.
To give those guys an idea who still believe that playing culture is not important: I know a guy who sold his (very innovative, simple and so far unique) strategy browser game to Skotos. He had to make sure that, in order to have an successful transition, the community at Skotos had to embrace the playing traditions of his old players. They had to know how to play the game so that it as fun. For that, many of his former players received free games at Skotos and brought a lot of the gaming culture with them.
2) How much impact does the Squadleader have on the performance of the team. How much does the commander decisions to the flow of cannonfodder to the enemy positons change the tide of the game. How do the players currently group together?
3) The WWII feel of the game was one of the major reasons I always wanted to give this mod a try. Like Knitschi mentioned it before, if You replace all models and graphics with another mod, would You still experience the type of WWII gameplay You aimed for? If yes, excellent! If not, what could You improve to make the game more characteristic?
Fh2 is not perfect, we are still in heavy development, and 2.2 is alot different, trust me
I am looking forward to it, trust me
I really hope the mods gets the following it deserves.
Still, I am not sure if the remark of a previous author is correct that a game has first to loose its popularity in order to give it's game mods more air to breathe. Of course, the players not fitting the mod will move on to another game.. however, this will also reduce the influx of possible new players. Or am I wrong?
Cheers,
Wuschel
p.s.:
I spwaned as a guy with a hadful of rocks?
Spawning with a handfull rocks is fun and can be the basis for a masterpiece in tactical gameplay and should never be underestimated. Imagine the BLUEFOR soldier is annoyed by these stones hurting him and follows You around the corner of a house.. only to look right into the AK47 barrels of a full squad of insurgents. Stones are ... priceless ;-)
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it is WW2 and our players "role" is the frontline soldier biting the first bullets, those that die first in Saving Private Ryan when they open the hatch to the boat. In PR they are actual Ryan and his buddies waiting at the bridge at the end of the movie..