yosh56

No

Believe somebody mentioned Renegade 2007 on A Path Beyond one day. Looked it up and made a forum account, but not much else. Downloaded the UT3 beta and actually quite liked it, though like none of my friends did so I didnt get to play it much. Uninstalled it, but kept up with it occasionally, then kept up ALOT that January before it released. Been with it since beta 1 release, save for some downtime around beta 3/4

I'm honestly probably not even going to play the remasters. I liked them as a kid, but coming back to openRA Twisted Insurrection and TS finds them not appealing to me at all. RA2 is timeless though. TS honestly is.... uhg. It's actually the most boring of the older games.

You also have to remember, OldRen is basically just an interactive chatroom with how slow it is.

Getting older doesn't inherently make you more mature.

I hate you......

Basically the Brief History You Never Asked for That 'hundreds' of players lasted for about 1-2 weeks.. When beta 2 dropped, there was no auto-patcher, so asking all those people that were barely getting into the game from the beginning to re-download the ENTIRE game again was a massive loss in population. Then there was the fact that beta 1 and 2 were both buggy as hell and full of hackers/exploiters, namely speed-hacks and extremely obvious aim-bots. The crashing after every round didn't help either. By then it was already down to about 2 active servers at a time, then beta 3 hit and we had 2 active 40 player servers at prime time generally. As much as anyone doesn't want to admit it, a lot of that was due to having the TMX vs. EKT rivalry, where many a TMX player just hated the settings on EKT's server so much that we'd only play on TMX's server. That's back when the server options were vanilla All-Out-War, or 100+ mine-limit marathon. Cue the segway as to why the game INITIALLY lost population, but still has held on just fine for almost 5 years: People don't like 'stalemates' in FPS games. That was like 90% of all-chat complaints back in beta 1-2 when it was a surge of newer players. When it was marathon that only compounded the stalemated feeling, especially because there was no veterancy, no really strong anti-building infantry, or leeway on building losses (Losing the Barracks or the WF just meant... you can't buy anything except free infantry). The games just never felt like they were going anywhere, namely to people who didn't read chat and coordinate, which was a massive number of people who were already confused as to what was going on. HELL, I originally stopped playing OldRen because it had turned into nothing but marathon servers being populated (which isn't the case anymore). For that matter, I had moved on to Planetside 2 instead of RenX, though I still played a bit when my Planetside crew wasn't around. Secondly, but possibly more important, is just that Ren's infantry combat is... different. People compare it to Quake and Unreal with its reliance on headshots and high-TTK, but going back to both of those aforementioned games, neither of them has as ridiculously inflated TTK/Headshot multipliers as Renegade did. It made/makes infantry combat feel exceptionally unrewarding, and running back and forth holding down the left mouse button wasn't most people's idea of entertaining. This was only compounded by 200 damage, 1-shot-per-second, no-spread 1k snipers running trains on people who dared pick anything else pre-beta 5.x. Both of those reasons are why I could never get any of my own friends into the game. That includes the ones who used to play OldRen for hours on end, but nowadays can't really stand it beyond a few minutes of nostalgia. -------- Roughly early beta 5, pre-Yosh, was when the steady population decline really started to happen. That's when Constructive Tyranny rose out of the dissolved ashes of TMX, and the TMX server died off, which left people not wanting to play on EKT, but not wanting to play some other half-dead server. It took CT a little while to ever take off as an AOW server, but even then it was unlikely to get those player counts back up to make 2 40 player servers. Game wasn't being advertised, and to be fair, development was at a snail's pace. It really was when I was at least contemplating leaving Ren(X), since my people were leaving all around me, but it was still fun to make mutators and stuff. Cue the next phase in Ren-X's life: The era of @DoctorB0NG and @yosh56 Basically, beta 5.1 is where infantry finally got overhauled to be a bit more like A Path Beyond, without fully committing to whatever the hell APB did to infantry. It also was when repair tools were introduced, and when building armour was finally just FORCED on, as opposed to a server side option. By then, -everyone- was basically forced to play marathon, so I, influenced by some very outspoken community members, basically convinced the devs to take back their own game, and if everyone was going to have to deal with the marathon epidemic, then the game might as well just build itself for having no time limit. So, building armour, infantry being given actual characteristics , as opposed to just re-skins with different guns and linearly escalating health values, and the removal of buyable Carbines/Tib-weapons basically caused this hugenormous uproar from, let's face it, the people that completely made their living off of broken shit. Some tried to complain that building armour made killing buildings too easy, but they would bring up the complaint in like... a 4v4. Then some ignorant individuals claimed Engineers were useless now because the repair tool existed (Because you can 'totally' hold the field with repair tools). Long story short, many a purist left that day. However, we had a second player-base building anyway with the pick-up-games, which filled in the gap of those who were up in arms over any change enough to leave, and once the initial shock of the changes wore off, the population stabilized itself. In fact, the population actually grew a bit, but the mentality of joining empty servers never did. Then, because this still isn't over, @DoctorB0NG was thankfully brought back into the game by yours truly, thanks to some commander shenanigans back in the day, and his server expertise helped us survive and mitigate the Great DDoS Blizzard of 2015. It helped us survive, but by no means did that not hurt the player base before it could really increase back to what it used to be in beta 3-5.0 ish. The DDoS blizzard lasted for about 6-7 months, with a few hits here and there for another year. Through it all though, I refused to stop updating, and B0ng refused to stop hardening servers burning his eyes out sifting through packets for patterns. Fast-forward some years, and even though they told us this game was going to be totally dead after like beta 4 (because the Ramjet lost its 1-hit body kill =| ), we're still kicking and actually hitting higher playercounts on weekends than we ever did back in beta 3, with triple digits common during the PUGs. It also helps that the game gets patched fairly regularly, especially when you factor in the number of people actually working on it. That helps keep it in the public eye on Facebook and around the internet --------- So in conclusion, the game only really had those 100's of players on many servers for about a month after release. The issues of OldRen plagued it enough to keep new players /uninstalling after a few games. Beta 2 having to be re-downloaded killed those who gave it a chance. Bugs/CONSTANT crashing/hacking/exploits killed it some more. Then there was just consistency after that, with the decline after beta 4, then the leveling off, then initial decline when the first big patch for beta 5 was released with me there to blame for everything (whether I did it or not). After that the player-base grew again and leveled off. Then we had the great DDoS blizzard which helped kill off more players, and now we're just refusing to die so long as we're filling a server everyday, and know we can hit 100+ on weekends. I've been a part of dead games.... this isn't one of them. Section 8: Prejudice was a dead game. Struggling to get 8 people in a game built for 32 players: that's dead.

I'd prefer to remove it entirely.... Game was never designed around it, just like 64 players. That I just bite my tongue on though.

Stealth is OP in theory, balanced in practicality. GDI also has both Mobius and Patch that have long burn times on their weapons so sbhs cant run once caught

The Elite > Heroic fight isn't too terribly hard with infantry, as that's when most of the guns become substantially stronger. The Veteran > Elite jump is iffy. Fighting 2 ranks down is the only real problem.

I played a good 12 hours of public games last week and it was pretty often that cruise missiles just got avoided or intercepted. The only time anyone complained was when they were that one guy that died to it, or when it was on a beacon.

I feel like I could take this topic more seriously if it were made by someone else. Like somebody that paid attention to the fact that I even said most of these things get intercepted nowadays anyway, and are genuinely a waste of cp more often than not. Covering beacons is really all they have going for them, or breaking up unobservant clusters. Or killing guard towers which was kind of unintentional.

You have the average veterancy of your team...so the only reason you'd be more than one rank behind anyone would honestly be your team is getting slaughtered anyway. Repairs also dont change that much with veterancy, sans the damage they have to heal being higher.

Still trying to keep everything as ground levevdl as possible. Waypoints would make sense on a map, but support powers would just open up a can of worms. Also it all sounds more useful on paper than it is in practice. The maps arent generally large enough to warrant waypoints, and sitting in an overview is taking a player away from your team.

A nightmare to code: not at all. An exceptionally convoluted concept: yes.

You can miss Nod's Airstrike and GDI's when they're actually firing off. GDI'S A10 sound only draws more attention to itself because it's broken up a lot more which catches your ear with 3+ separate sounds as opposed to one consistent one. The Nod airstrike suffers from the same syndrome as the cruise missile in that regard. It's a lot harder to notice than any other power till it's too late. People just have time to move out of Nod's airstrike. GDI'S gets more kills since it can do weird shit around corners. Most people are just more aware of the airstrike because of the blatant EVA notification. The cruise missile is still significantly more obvious. The last week of PUB games I've played have all pretty much ended in cruise missiles just being a waste of CP from people that are even slightly observant. Most either exploded on nothing, or got shot down. Was a minor learning curve to situational awareness, and said curve has pretty much been rounded.

Subsonic means it's not traveling at the speed of sound. Also again, the explosions and firing of your own tanks would be louder in all honesty. That jet noise for the cruise missile literally is able to be heard throughout most of the map, especially of you were near the target area. The entry noise is just there on purpose as a warning... a very obvious one if you somehow missed that obvious message in all caps.

Cruise missiles aren't nearly as large as planes (A Tomahawk is about 1/3rd the length of an F16), and also are CRUISE missiles. They're subsonic in speed. The loudest part is when they're initially launched and boosting, (which we've unrealistically simulated for the sake of a warning already), and obviously their actual explosion. By the time they're moving in on their target, they're not going to be much louder than the 50 tank shell explosions going off right by somebody's ears. You would by no means hear them over the sound of Mammoth tanks that late into their flight. Also their flight sound is loud enough already [As pointed out by @Sarah! ]. Nobody needs anymore headphone damage than their explosion already probably causes. It's grainy, but as you can sort of tell, they're not nearly as loud after their initial takeoff. Loud, yes. Not like blowing your ears off like a freakin' Harrier or an F16 though.

That was the joke. Nobody does Mobius rushes because they just translate into Arty multi kills without ever causing any significant damage that one random Technician can outheal

It happens when the UDK just... doesn't UDK. Happens randomly when default ini files change but it just decides not to update the other inis for whatever reason.

Can you record the incident by chance? I dont think your issue sounds like fps

This is more a product of 32v32 than anything. Really not many repercussions to dedicating five people to field reps. Have you tried using one of those super stealthy cruise missiles that they totally wont notice?

I dont think 'most' people care. Especially considering I rarely see anyone say anything in game beyond when they're used on a beacon.

.... There are literally 5 different indicators to a cruise missile's exisence...... The flare. The message. The sound the message makes. The entry sound of the missile itself and the big ass red target in the sky. Just cuz someone's gotten decent at planting them during chaotic moments, or hiding flares where they can still be effective doesn't mean it's really all that stealthy. Also commanders arent exactly calling things in on the overview map, which is on purpose. They're obvious targets of interests that should automatically make you require more situational awareness. Same concept as people calling out sbh spies. They're not an immediate threat, but it's just to make you more situational aware and expect nukes/ions at some point.

For once I'm with Madkyll... I don't think I've ever had a cruise missile sneak up on me.