We Need More Servers

[dcm]

So what you're basically saying is that you want to play Squad, but in PR...
1 hour matches with teammates who care about nothing other than rushing into an objective, dying respawning and trying again. I think you're in the wrong place my guy, because PR is not meant to be a fast pace shooter (Rising Storm, Squad to some extent), nor is it meant to be a slow pace Mil sim (ARMA for example). It's literally meant to fit right inbetween those two. It's not too fast nor is it too slow.

I don't think changing the game will make anything better. It will just make the veteran players stray away because it's not something they are used to. I mean just take a look at the changelogs, anytime something major happens all the older players gather to criticize it with little to no experience actually playing with those changes (Recoil changes; AR deviation changes; the old 'realistic' Damage changes which was reverted in just a few days; 'Semi' Fire and Forget)

Not quite. What all those games lack is the gameplay that PR has. Pace is one thing. gameplay is everything. PR would be ideal for me, if I could get it to a point where I want timing wise with some minor gameplay tweaks and have it be easily accessible to the casual playerbase without a need for IP searching. Because let's face it, most people are even scared to type 127.0.0.1 in the address bar.

Veteran players are slowly disappearing day by day. I want a way to bring in more casual players into PR to keep it alive. My own interest in PR waxes and wanes. There are times when I just wait for minutes on end, deciding whether to open the game or not. Not knowing if I'll get a good game in. I was very busy IRL for a few months, the whole time having PR installed on all my personal computers. Not once did I launch it, because I didn't feel like it, like I was going to get a good game in. And I chose to rather do something IRL to blow off steam(no pun intended). I dont even play any other games but PR really. I have no interest in maintaining steam or any other digital distribution services account at this point. Because all the games bore me. I only keep a steam account around just to play PR. My main steam account with thousands of games(most which were not bought on sale btw), I gave away to family members, because I was so bored of all the garbage I had bought. If something does interest me. I'll buy it, play it to completion and either give it away or wait for future dlc if the game is good enough to warrant my patience.

P.S. Ironically enough when I do decide to get back into PR. I lose my account login info because of failed hard drives on my main desktop and spilling tea on my laptop. SSDs also fail too. If you move as much data as I do on a daily basis.

[Joovy]

Veteran players are getting banned on HOG is more like it. HOG admins are banning players that have been around since the 2000's . Those old fucks are gonna ban the game into non existence because they get offended too easily. Old people and adminship dont mix and HOG server is proof of this.

[Tommygun]

This is only about listing the server.

This.

Well how about it? Try a month or two? See if anything at all happens? At least it might be fuel for the forums.
I cant see a month or two of seeing what happens breaking a game as solid and long lived as PR.

[SemlerPDX]

Old people and adminship dont mix and HOG server is proof of this.

No offense taken or intended, but folks only demonstrate their own ignorance when they make such stereotypical statements. They are not helpful, or accurate, and you probably know that. I have nothing against HOG, but also no undying loyalty - just another server to me - but just stating the fact that 'age' is not a factor for a person being cool or decent to their fellow gamers online, or with regards to adminship.

Also, you take away any ownership of actions or accountability for behavior from HOG members when you state that it's because they are "old"; people are responsible for their own actions and attitudes regardless of age, don't let anyone off with the excuse that they are "old". If you have a legitimate concern about an individual, address that individual and that concern, don't lump everyone from some group into the same bucket - that is no different from brushing a problem under the rug and saying, "there's nothing that can be done".

Because let's face it, most people are even scared to type 127.0.0.1 in the address bar.

Seriously? Who is scared to type in an IP address into the Servers Join IP address bar, now? The Strawmen of the North?

[Brotherscompany]

Sry DCM feeling lazy not going to quote your message. Im not attacking just giving my opinion BTW.


In my eyes I dont think trying to make the game more casual or accessible whatever you want to call it will translate for new players to stay around as a strategy to maintain the player base numbers or the gameplay quality as trying to retain the Veteran player base.

New players come and go, there seems to be around 850 new players per week but they dont stick around that long, PR is a extremely ruthless due to its nature, even if those steps are taken only people that really want to play the game stick around. New players need to have a good experience to be able to keep having a incentive to come back to the game.

In contrast you have the Veterans that do stick to the game for years coming back almost every single day especially due to the social component which are a important constant number of players. If you look at HOG as a example there is no way or discussing it, a lot of Veterans are indeed prevented from playing the game while HOG is up and look at the recent matches that happen in HOG (at least from what I saw these couple of days): for most of the day during the week the server doesnt actually fills up, even in EU peak time and the gameplay in some occasions suffers due to lack of experienced players to fill up the SL, Assets and Trans seats. Thats not a environment that allows a new player to enjoy himself, being dropped in a game where no one is talking or isnt coordinating, having no clue of what the objective is without having competent SL to provide a guide/something to follow and just getting shot out of no where or a massive Stomp from the other team.

There are other games that allow you to enjoy yourself in that gameplay you described, the description that Coalz did nailed in describing PR and straining away from it would take its magic

Your idea would cater to the new players alienating the Veterans even more and I dont see the positives out weighting the negatives of that implementation. Not only that there is only room for 1 server like it was already mentioned in the beginning of this discussion so if your server did indeed go up everyone in PR would be forced to play a more Arcade way of PR.

[dcm]

@brothers

The veterans will always be there, but overtime our population will eventually dwindle down to practically nothing. It's the new players, that I'm concerning myself with. They are both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they keep the game population up. And a curse because they really dont know how to play and some of them actively fuck around. I like to fuck around too, but only when it's appropriate. When I need to get serious, I'll get serious of course. But most of them time I just wanna blow off some steam.

I feel like, if there was a split mode for casual and core PR players, it would be an overall benefit for PR. I speak to alot of these new players, and most of them tell me the same thing. They love PR but hate co-op because of the bots. Truthfully, I cant stand to play with most of them, because they do fuck around alot. Which actively and negatively affects the gameplay experience for the rest of us. If PR was split into two modes, you'd probably have a handful of 'Core' servers for the veterans and dozens of servers for the casual newbies.

PR's magic lies in it's gameplay, if that is preserved then all is well. I dont like most modern fps games; milsim, casual, etc. They suck. I'd rather not get into grueling specific reasons why, but the same main issue arises for every almost game I play; it's the gameplay and game mechanics. Insurgency is fun, but the wave spawns suck. Arma rp is fun, but everything else feels like a chore. Squad and it's derivatives feel like a half assed version of PR. I'd much rather play PR. But I dread the day when player interest in PR is too low to justify further development.

[Outlawz7]

I feel like, if there was a split mode for casual and core PR players, it would be an overall benefit for PR. I speak to alot of these new players, and most of them tell me the same thing. They love PR but hate co-op because of the bots. Truthfully, I cant stand to play with most of them, because they do fuck around alot. Which actively and negatively affects the gameplay experience for the rest of us. If PR was split into two modes, you'd probably have a handful of 'Core' servers for the veterans and dozens of servers for the casual newbies.

"Game doesn't have enough players, let's split the population up into two different games."

Otherwise, for core players we had the PR Tournament that died in favor of PRTA tournament that also died with PRTA following behind.
I'm sure everyone was relieved on Saturdays when all the vets were locked in one server with themselves for the evening.

[dcm]

"Game doesn't have enough players, let's split the population up into two different games."

Otherwise, for core players we had the PR Tournament that died in favor of PRTA tournament that also died with PRTA following behind.
I'm sure everyone was relieved on Saturdays when all the vets were locked in one server with themselves for the evening.

Then what will revive the game? Right now it's stagnant. Player retention is at all time low.

[Tommygun]

There are downloads of the game happening reasonably frequently (it was said earlier), probably the best thing us 'Vets' can do is be really welcoming to any new players we come across and maybe even engage in a little hand holding. It might create a warm atmosphere and make people want to stick around. Shouting at noobs maybe fine in oversubscribed games but we do not have that luxury. Be nice!

[Nate.]

Then what will revive the game? Right now it's stagnant. Player retention is at all time low.

1. improve onboarding experience:
- tutorials/guides for the basics instead of text-focussed manual (feel free to post your ideas/additons here: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/showth ... p?t=134819 )
- welcoming and forgiving player base

2. promotion
- PR has unique gameplay and depth + it's free (feel free to promote the game in your circles)

3. continued updates
- Development is not over, and much more is to come -> new players are not investing in an abandoned game.

[Danielj15]

this thread is legit just dcm talking out hes ***

crazy to see people still crying about hog legit just go seed u777 or a different server or shut up and play on hog

btw hog should of been shut down years ago but here we are

[willylumplump]

1. improve onboarding experience:
- tutorials/guides for the basics instead of text-focussed manual (feel free to post your ideas/additons here: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/showth ... p?t=134819 )
- welcoming and forgiving player base

2. promotion
- PR has unique gameplay and depth + it's free (feel free to promote the game in your circles)

3. continued updates
- Development is not over, and much more is to come -> new players are not investing in an abandoned game.

excellent points! point 1 is the most important to help keep new players. i see too often how new players are treated by a majority of players. a minority of players will actively seek and mentor newbs. i guess some people do not realize you get more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

[Grump/Gump.45]

i see too often how new players are treated by a majority of players. a minority of players will actively seek and mentor newbs. i guess some people do not realize you get more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

Vinegar makes tougher flies. I can teach the basics, but some people don't learn that and stick to bad habits. They join my squad, i teach them, they get it for a day. I dont play for a week and those players went through some dumb squad leaders. Who cant do both setting objective and standards within squad, the SL's poison their minds with useless discussions of flanking, too much focus on elementary school level words and not having discipline to do it right in effective use of the definition of these words. Its like a Sesame Street squad leader with "word of the day", for pre-schoolers learn very slowly with almost nothing useful on the screen or coming out of the speakers. Let alone staying in view of each other to immediately save each other while doing anything. Either they are too close to each other or too far away to help, being shot by the same machine gunner/grenadier either all together or one at a time.

So they werent told grenade spread and other things for a few days, but they know it I hope. Its common sense in words, not actually a whole lot in game and lots of things are pretty common. Like grenades, very common or the whole category of varying sizes of explosives. Its in their kits but they dont know how spread out to walk, its stay in view of each other by stay grenade spread minimum. What does that mean for tactics? They dont put any type of discipline to stick to it, at least 50% of the time.

Its hard for me to do what I say 100% of time. Then once im doing it i need to make it work, take out the aggressive parts of it in imagination that get you killed but dont let that reduce aggression of the tactic. Its ok to step out of angle of enemy, everyone wants to survive, they were alive before you showed up, they will likely be alive after if you mess up so no need to rush and ruin the squads experience. Everyone makes complaints to me "but squad leader enemy isnt dead" as if its guarantee when I or my friendly goes in that we will kill that enemy.

Its dealing with people who have personality disorders that make them think they are a main character in a movie who will always win or something making these complaints about my tactics. Hollywood and Call Of Duty. True control is being able to walk up, pre-fire, psychologically pin them deep in room and walk away. Play with the food more, tear up its psychological plan it had for that area before it eats you. Which is where people get stuck on the next step of creative escapes because they just trashed your little plan.

[Grump/Gump.45]

excellent points! point 1 is the most important to help keep new players. i see too often how new players are treated by a majority of players. a minority of players will actively seek and mentor newbs. i guess some people do not realize you get more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

You dont need to kill enemy right then and there all the time at distance when they see you, step out of angle. Every player wants to survive as much as the other, why shorten the experience going for 50/50 chance shot of "who is better at aiming and can kill who first sitting still". Those guys take away from better players who would bail away in my squad, leaves me with just another useless player who calls for medic while having their body watched. That is some PRTA server bullshit from back in the day I noticed was once exclusive to that server, HOG nipped that medic calling shit in butt back in day. 60 seconds to set standard so things go good on objective, not getting blown up in one spot with everyone.

Understandably, putting four "separate" things together like 1 man per cover, move cover to cover, stay in view of each other to save each other and grenade spread is hard for some people. Then adding on camouflage, dont shoot unless you see them see you. It does complicate things. Its not even those advanced things that mess them up, its the very basics.

Staying in view of each other to save each other, to save a friendly fast you either need to shoot or get shot at. When enemy is shooting your friendly you see tracers coming from behind the enemies exact tree, but because the tree or building corner is blocking his body you dont save your friendly. Either out of lack of confidence what shooting would do in this situation or selfishness without awareness that enemy is currently shooting your friendly.

Some or none dont even try to put enemy just out of angle to snap bullets over their head or next to enemy. Its frustrating, either people dont understand it, dont want to try it or dont see its value. Everytime an enemy shoots its likely at a friendly, you see the cover enemy is shooting from behind but just because they dont see the enemies body to shoot they dont even fire, they just look. They take so much time trying to get into angle, sit still, aim then mentally confirm aim, sometimes they just sit still watching that muzzle flash/tracer source coming out of cover.

Me, I just start shooting to direction of sound or tracer, I dont need to see enemy to effect them. Nobody needs to see enemy, if the enemy gun goes quiet it means i shut them up for at least a second. I do this for people all the time when they get shot at the second enemy starts shooting, but nobody does this for me because Call Of Duty mindset, they are mentally trained to see the enemy before shooting. Its retarded. Its why I started teaching pre-fire.

If im minimizing my exposure, then they stand right behind me casually like a casual player, like they need the sniper we don't know about yet to shoot when to take cover. "yeah this game has snipers. why are you following and standing behind me after i said '1 man per cover'? *kick from squad*". Not 1 man per cover, not even taking cover, just following and standing behind me ruining my experience after I gave clear instructions without stuttering. Which is always even if there is nothing at all.

Being seen running into spot somebody is hidden because they dont know how to actually follow somebody. They will gladly fire past your head not caring how you feel, but they dont tolerate it for one second themselves, its just they wait longer to say something either until shot in back of head by friendly or annoyed.

Somebody tries to reach past my head with bullets because they are greedy for a kill, lazy to get their own angle, wait their turn for me to reload and they mess it up for me right when things start happening after long time of boredom. What is the point of all that waiting if they ruin it? They kill me, get me mad un-focused, they do everything wrong in close proximity to my body. They are the one to mess it up, which ruins my fun that I waited for and have more experience dealing with. That type of friendly ruins it, meaning once my focus is shifted to dealing with them in a firefight, because they dont understand "stop" and "no".

Frequently i have to stop what im doing, fighting, shooting and moving to tell the retard to stop shooting past my head, standing behind me in general. Thats right when enemy comes in, me stopping moving is what gets me killed, because these people need to be told something with eye contact in a video game. They dont listen unless you stop everything for their mentally slow *** to tell them again, eye to eye in a video game. I already shouted it out in local, said it at the start, said it as the terrain changed to the new tactic. 1 man per window, per cover. They are so dumb they follow me to the point that all i need to do is turn around and tell them before i get to the next window. It could happen at 3 different windows before I say something.

They will stop shooting past my head, but shoot past somebody elses head. They dont get it, they think other people are ok with that. I move around so much in fights that they start again shooting past my head not realizing its me again, thats the problem, you arent supposed to shoot past anybodies head. Not just the pissed off ones. They arent even going for kills, they are just suppressing same as me trying to reach the gun around me. What I step left and right, not sitting still when i shoot and they are reaching past my head. So as humans in games and real life we cant strafe targets because people are dumb? They dont get it, you dont shoot past any friendlies head or body.

[Brotherscompany]

Grump lm sry how is this anything related to the topic? Stop spamming your lines of text about "PR gameplay"

[Grump/Gump.45]

Grump lm sry how is this anything related to the topic? Stop spamming your lines of text about "PR gameplay"

This whole topic of "more servers" is pointless. Unless its just more places to migrate to, or a Falklands VW server full time to attract more players. Theres only 100 English server players on at a given time. Rarely HOG will have 100, then U777 will have like 20 at the same time. Then the DIVSUL server will have 20-100.

My response was to Willy's thing about teaching people, the frustrations and methods. Things like playing dead, HALO jumping into Falklands enemy main (which is a precursor to a new naval game mode), using camouflage together and listening to footsteps to stalk enemy. The pre-firing tactics, heavy suppression. These skills bring lots of new players to game, gives them something to try.

[PatrickLA_CA]

You've got to understand that PR is what now, 16 - 17 years old on a game engine that most "fresh" players would consider ancient based on the way it looks. That's never been a problem for me and I'm sure anyone else still playing PR, but you should accept the fact that PR won't ever be hyped anymore and flocks of new players won't jump in.

Most new players come either from direct recommendation by a friend or if they stumble upon PR and decide to give it a try. It is the second type of player that is highly unlikely to stick around, especially if they jump in the game directly without knowing what is going on. That is where point 1 from Nate's post needs to come in effect and ease the onboarding for clueless new players. I know that, I was one, but I think when I joined the community was a lot more helpful and that is why I stuck around with PR.

PR's gameplay and rules are what makes PR unique. I like Squad as well but I've never been able to enjoy it as much as PR mostly because the rules are a lot different, tipped towards the casual shooter angle but that is why Squad has a lot less steeper learning curve.

If we want to play a game like PR, we have to accept it has a steep learning curve and the only thing that can be done about it is easing the onboarding process and the difficult part: us players not being toxic and elitist towards new and unskilled players.

[SemlerPDX]

Dayum, Grump.... 8000 characters in 14 paragraphs in your two large replies... 5+ minutes reading time at 8th grade level -- all thorough and salient points on topic of 'We Need More Servers', I assume. If writing is your thing, humbly suggesting reviewing your writings greater than 1000 words just to help readability and evaluate if all those things need to be said in a reply to remain on point - just saying: less is more, bro...

[Chuva_RD]

If writing is your thing, humbly suggesting reviewing your writings greater than 1000 words just to help readability [/IMG]

That you die under the weight of 8k words is his whole point

[WingWalker]

BACK on topic:

No one on here said what the steps are to run your own server...
No one on here said what the total costs would be to startup your own server...
No one on here said what the time commitment would be to operate your own server...



AND:

Holy **** people...

If you don't like HOG, SEED OTHER SERVERS! there are literally 11 servers on right now and 8 are empty! What, you need 9 servers to join one that is not HOG? I don't need a 0 ping and 100 players to have "good game play" in PR.

If you need 100 people on a server to have "good game play"... you are still a noob.

Also, I can point out that Free Candy Van is back up now so go seed them and create a player base.

Casual Project Reality: A more streamlined, quicker playing and easier to get into version of Project Reality; for the more 'impatient' among us.

Here is what you keep asking for dcm...