Thursday, April 19, 2012

Welp, that's it folks; all hope for Red Orchestra 2 is gone

Tripwire just announced that they are planning to add crosshairs, camera-anchored weapons, and more resilient players into the game. It is unclear how they're implementing this, but from what I gather this new gametype is to replace the default "relaxed realism" gametype - the one where you already had a minimap, pistols for every class, and so on - with RO2's current "realism" level remaining as-is and "Classic" mode (essentially RO1 with better graphics, flaws and all - in many cases a step backwards).

Needless to say, there was a huge backlash, followed by more arrogance and strawman arguments by TWI, along with some pretty intriguing moderation. Posts openly flaming the "0.01%" of the community that railed against the many mistakes made in the game were let be, but any post that could even tangentially be construed as infractable were not only infracted but also deleted. This is nothing new from the developers who delete entire accounts, along with all of their posts, and then censor their usernames for expressing dissent, and try to press slander charges in response to perfectly legitimate criticism. The author of that blog was a longtime supporter of Red Orchestra; I saw him nearly every other game I played. A truly dedicated fan who fell out of favour because he didn't accept Tripwire's new direction of appealing to the masses to make a quick buck, regardless of the knock-on effects. Like, say, your game being a barren, deserted wasteland a mere seven months after its big release.

Speaking of which, who else is wondering just what wisdom Tripwire sees in dividing their already dying community even further with three entirely separate modes of play? These are not simple gameplay differences like CTF versus team deathmatch, these are fundamentally different games.

I've already had a post deleted (as did another goon who made a pretty good argument against a "whiners" post - which, by the way, was not deleted while his was), so I wouldn't be surprised if I soon find myself banned from the forums and totally excommunicated, too. But you know what? I'm not entirely sure I care. My hopes for the game are clearly never going to come to fruition as long as Tripwire is at the helm, the only portion of the community allowed to have a say is the one that agrees with TWI's decisions, and frankly I am appalled at the arrogance displayed by the devs when not so many years ago, it was the now-beloved casual gamers they were mocking and banishing from the forums.

Quite frankly, their next game could give me a blowjob while I play, I still won't be buying it. Congratulations on losing a customer who had, until RO2's release, regarded Tripwire Interactive as their favourite developer by a country mile and intended to buy all their games well into the future.