Heres an update ladies: I was again suffering AH burnout (all that stamping your feet at moderators, yelling and screaming at La7 dweebs, it wears you out). With the 'Welcome Back Soldier' offering I decided to once more delve into WWII Online and see how things have progressed.
I downloaded the latest version, 1.73, installed it and away we went. The first few days was really getting re-orientated and getting my controls setup.
First points are good. One of my criticisms of ww2ol was the razor-blade terrain - long rows of razor thing grass good for cover from one angle. I was happy to see not only have they fixed this with 'bookends', ie chunks of cover at each end perpendicular, they'd also added top horizontal cover. So now trees for example, cover in all 3 dimensions. This puts the cover not on par but a bit better than games like OFP.
The game also looks a lot prettier, with better hi res textures. The long distance views are really nice. The only thing really missing is a bit of depth fog. There is depth fog right at the edge of your range of vision, there should be more closer in. At the moment you can see sharply for a good 3km.
I played only Axis, and focussed primarily on the ground war. I flew a few air missions and quickly decided that this wasn't the part of the game for me.
After a while you realize there a few key points where the battle tends to 'rage' back and forth. For me this was the front at Flavion. Flavion was occupied by the Allies and to its East were 3 towns occupied by the Axis. After a week of hard out playing (and nearly getting divorced) I started to get a good grip on the game. So its a good idea to find a spot like this, then you learn the terrain, layout, and really enjoy yourself.
The game has, imho, taken a turn for the better. The gameplay is there, the graphics are coming together as is the terrain and the vehicle set. Whats more a smart thinking ground pounder can do exceptionally well. The cover the new graphics provides allows for effective ambushes, flanking manoevres and all sorts of fun. Axis tanks have speed, manoeverability, but not the armour or firepower. Allied tanks are slow beasts but tough. Playing Axis my hit and run fighting worked extremely well (ie setup ambush point, hit the close from behind, make the kill, pull out setup new ambush point). You can really enjoy yourself, theres nothing quite like ambushing a couple of allied tanks from behind as they roll past you.
There are still so extremely dweebish things, just like AH has, and also some real issues CRS need to fix.
First of and most frustrating is the mission structure and rank. To earn rank you must complete missions, basically for a tank this means spawn, be out at least 10 mins, make a couple of kills and rtb. You can't post missions until you reach a certain rank. You can spawn a limited set of gear without missions, but usually this is useless gear. And if you spawn non-mission you don't seem to earn any rank points.
Which is OK except, say you're on in the wee hours, the Dinant Firebase is getting attacked, no senior guys are around to post a mission, you can only spawn crap armour to defend it (if any), and even if you do a good job you don't get recognised for it. Theres also a bug, once you hit Sgt you get limited to a small number of tanks and infantry you can spawn as. Theres a 'cheat' though, apparently if you spawn a heavy transport and sit in the garage for 10 mins then despawn you get rank points. Theres similar bugs for the airforce too.
Next major gripe, the damage model. If you guys think AH is bad, whoa horsey, you ain't seen nothing yet. I am of the firm belief CRS has some old croney reading tarot cards out the back to calculate damage. I have ambushed allied armour, like Chars and S35's, hit them with the Stugs 75mm AP from 200 yards, 6 times, and the buggers have driven off like nothing has happened. Similarly you might be driving along the road happily humming away then whack whack whack - your engine is dead and you see a D520 buzz past. Yes an aircraft with a single 20mm Hispano and 60 rounds of HE ammo can take out any armour the Axis put up with ease (even from shallow 20 degree attacks).
Then theres the Panhard, this little armoured car wields the power of an M1A1 MBT, not only does it have the most amazing gun (supposed to be 25mm but I swear its got a howitzer), it has a bug where if you kill it the gunner doesn't die, so CRS have enabled a server forced despawn 20 seconds after the commander dies. That 20 seconds usually allows the uber-Pan to obliterate you as revenge. One would think with such major issues this vehicle would be disabled, but alas no. Currently the Axis strategy is shoot the panhard, stop firing and hope he doesn't see you before the 20second auto despawn activates.
Infantry is ... interesting. Most uses I saw of infantry were, ummm, one way missions. Basically storm the enemy town, grab the CPs, rush the bunker. If we die oh well grab another Opel and do it again. In fact 'organised' in WW2OL seems to only refer to this - either an organised FB killing run, or an organised Bunker rush. I saw no use of infantry in say like OFP ways, ie patrols, combined armour moves etc. Which I found a bit disappointing. What I also found annoying was the netcode sucks when it comes to infantry. The update speed is bad, so bad it makes proper infantry and squad combat 'flakey' at least. Trying to track guys with SMGs is a joke.
Having seen the bad side of things, its interesting to note that I've gone from slamming the game engine to actually exploring the gameplay. Which says a lot about how far the games come. Which is good news. But CRS really need to ramp it up, on my list of to do's for them I'd put:
- the need to look at their netcode, especially the infantry sid
- they need in game vox BADLY, this game is all about teamwork and relying on 3rd party product like RW doesn't help
- they need some fog/weather effects a la OFP. Distance viewing is just way to sharp.
- if vehicles are obviously bugged they need to disable them til they are fixed
- they really need to rework the rank/mission system. Honestly they need to take a peak at AH's perk point system
- I'd also like to see a semi-auto driver a la OFP, where u can order the driver to stop, turn left right go forward etc from the gunnery position
- they need to sort out the server lag (especially vehicle lists in missions)
One thing I did notice, around 25% of the people I came across were trying the game out again. Either on free trials or reactivated accounts. I also noticed a lot of squeaking, covering ALL of the above. If CRS want to keep these people they need to work on it fast.
I'm 50/50 on whether to stay or not, which is a big turnaround from my last view of the game. I'll stay til the freebie ends then review it at that stage.
Let the flames begin...
