TomUjain

It does require some looking into (which is been done already by the sound of it) however, at the same time I do hope the devs don't pull out the nerf gun and nerf the MRLS into oblivion. Artys are still (as they have always been) the bread and butter for Nod, while for GDI MRLs were quickly replaced with meds / mammys / APCs after the warm up section. The curved rocket has given the MRLS a practical purpose on the battle field. Perhaps reducing the amount of rockets when the turrent is 'locked' would be a way around this issue?

I know CT did try to try and replace the SBH with two new classes, I remember admiring the idea at the time - always happy to see new creative ideas, but from what I understand the plan fell pretty flat, I don't know the details. The SBH is a popular unit, taking it out would (as freak said) ruffle the bee hive. Also as Freak pointed out, when GDI has no base defence a well executed SBH rush is, in my view - one of the most deadly rushes in nods arsenal. They make excellent scouts and the perfect sniper killer; one of the ONLY decent sniper counter aside from -- another sniper or a marksman, let us also not forget they can farm crates pretty easily. That being said; a lot of players use them very poorly which can hamper team efforts. I think it would be a shame to throw the unit away, and the best way to move forward is to take the rough with the smooth.

A well managed Facebook page with regular weekly updates would be a huge step in the right direction, in my view -- if we can get a team of people willing to manage it. I'll be happy to throw my name in the hat for the job.

Everyones ideal perfect FPS is different. However, if you follow the statistics and data most of the 'tripple A' developers follow we know pretty much what is 'main stream appeal' and RenX is not that. They all tend to follow the same path for a reason, because it sells. You wouldn't see any serious developer dead with RenX, its a passion project and does have plenty of holes that make it far from perfect. This is the main problem we will have when advertising. Yes we can pull in numbers, but those numbers will be few and far between because as I said, RenX is a niche market. Lets also not forget it was never designed to be a main game in-on-itself, it was a sideline they threw into the game as a bonus feature. So, in essence it would be like trying to advertise for the online mini games in Resident evil, for example. As a bare minimum (and all of this is totally unrealistic with the resources / times we have by the way) we would need a solid, account bound 'progression' system, different modes and unlockables as a very bad example, Star Wars Battle Front 2 (without loot boxes) why? Because this is a model that is proven to retain players and keeps players invested - look at all the successful FPSs on the market from CSGO, Fortnight, COC etc... etc... I say this from experience. I put down a lot of money and put my heart into custom, professonal advertising and did several promotions myself -- players come, they come in droves -- but, and this is a big but; they don't stick around for very long. A classic example of this is when totalbiscuit did a review for us and it brought in 100s of new players but this effect was brief and not sustainable -- and that boils down to design, as I said already. As I said, we can find ways around this - but if we are being realistic, RenX has pretty much reached its peak.

Hey Kira, In short -- No. I ran it briefly during the DDOS attacks as well as a few server wide mini games but aside from that this project pretty much was halted. I've gone over why before but to go over it briefly again in lay-mans terms: We were not retaining the new players, I can't give you the reason why -- the data does not say that but we can guess. My theory is due to the very design of the game itself, it is a very niche market and if we wanted to brake into the mainstream and attract and retain new players several critical design changes would need to be put in -- which, at this point is simply not an option due to the resources required. Now i'm not saying hope is lost, it simply means that the advertisements need to be targetted at a very specific demographic of people we would also need to 'be more of a community' by that I mean hosting events like PUGs, creative contests uploading youtube guides, writing comics (red vs blue?) etc... etc... in short: we need more social media out there. But. And this is a BIG but - the game is still in beta which keeps us in this limu stage which isn't helping our case either. The data from Google showed that out of the people who download the game, very few were staying for longer than a week. Basically I was pouring money down a bottomless pit so I deemed this a very uneffective way to bring in new players.

I don't know why JPoi get so much of the stick - considering we have other players who are just as skillful / if not better who constantly fly under the radar, such as Dr.schrott --who (in my view) could easily give jpoi a run for their money with a sniper rifle orConfuser as a doza / mobi to name a few. I've managed to kill jpoi many times (and I am terrible) but it doesn't help when 99% of us mindlessly charge at these players with no thought or tactic. I partly disagree, the combine they have as a side arm is no joke and can pack one hell of a punch if used correctly. Granted they have no armour but they have virtually unlimited range and good speed, unless you are crazy and get too close the only real counter to a sniper is a sniper / marksman.

I do the same, if the other team is struggling or has lower player numbers I will shift over to try and make up for it. Games tend to go smoother and are more fun that way. Unfortunatly the 'stackers' (if you want to call them that) don't see it that way, regardless if you are good / elite or just plain awful (like me) it is massively selfish to put your fun above everyone elses - and this (I think) is where this hostility is coming from. A select group of players will only play with their select few, do or die -- and will refuse to play if they can't. Now i'm not trying to say people can't play with friends, but I do feel a bit of flexibility wouldn't be a bad thing. Playing 1 game apart and the next 99 games together is not 'flexable' I made it very clear from the start that FPI staff are not allowed to all stack to one team, and if we do it is lawful and only for special banter or fun. Imagine if I was regually stacking with 10 other people all on discord voice chat and putting together fast / quick rushes - that would give us a huge advantage. I dare say the 'elite' players would take issue with that as well.

I've said this before, and I will say it again -- regardless of how you want to phrase it, balance issues / stacking it is a serious problem. FPI did try and come at this issue a bit too heavy handed which was wrong, i'll admit - but the devs can't white wash this away as 'toxic' either. I do want to point out that Poi has tried to change their image but (from what I can tell) gave up as the negative comments and gossip didn't go away. I have tried to address this problem, but bringing down the ban hammer isn't a graceful or healthy way to fix it (if anything it will only make the problem worse) Arguments can also be made that if you change teams lawfully then you are doing nothing wrong - which to me is a design issue and where we need a solid team shuffle in place. I also want to point out that having 'good players' on your team does not always mean you are going to win -- however winning or not the other team will feel a sting and this is where (I feel) the fustrations seem to stem from. Progress is slowly been made with such features as the 'CQC mod' and the (hopefully) new addition of the new team shuffle, FPI also has a 'team rebalance feature' where we / I will (fairly) and randomly shuffle teams at the start of the next round. So things ARE moving forward. We have this huge rift of 'stackers' and 'no-stackers' regardless of what side of the fense you sit on no body wants to meet in the middle. The pro stackers refuse to see this as a problem and shift all the blame onto the other side while the anti-stackers scream and shout about how the stackers ruin the game. Its an age-old argument and until we can all come together and find middle ground on this issue; it will not go away. Ramping up (or should I say forcing) server owners like CT and FPI to abide by developer rules about what we should and should not do is not only hugely disrespectful but also only widens the rift between us. It is not a wise way to 'gain control' and will not do any form of good to servers or the community as a whole, I will stake my life on that. Devs do need to be more in tune with the community and be more open with what is going on. This them vs us mentaitly needs to go away, only then do I feel that issues like the 'stacking' issue will begin to go away.

I understand the devs concern with 'turning off' a game feature and can see why the timer mechanic was put in (to get the best of both worlds) we can agree that nukes / ions have room for improvement - and we can also agree with the unfair advantage nod has when planting said beacons due to the SBHs on low player games. Scaling the time to disarm from the default 30 sec to as high as 120 sec, depending on player count would (in my view) stop this problem dead in its tracks; messing around with the price, or adding a cooldown or limit would not really stop the issue at hand. FPI did disable beacons if player levels were too low; granted this wasn't a graceful approch but it worked. Regarding 'nuke spam' (a different issue) I highly doubt a timer would put a stop to it, slow it down perhaps, but not stop it. I say this because maps like snow; using beacons is a key tactic to clearing the area of tanks and inf, so timer or not players will continue to nuke spam I fear on full maps (64 players) we wouldn't even notice any difference as their is so many people (64 timers) the spam can still continue -- granted it will stop the rare 'troll' player who plants one after another over and over but thats about all it would do. I have always felt that the current time to disable a beacon is too low, considering the power they have (to wipe out an entire building at full hp) combined with the cruise missile and SBH defending, this problem is amplified in small games. I wouldn't see any harm in increasing the default time of beacons but we would have to be very careful doing so. Paying 1k credits is a very high risk (unless you are a SBH) I do believe nukes should be used as part of a tactic and solo nuking isn't something we should be encouraging.

I commend Yosh for his idea, even if it has had a few bumpy turns. We've gone over this before so I won't kick a dead horse but - the 'get good' mentality combined with the stacking of these higher tier players has, and always will generate a lot of noise -- from both sides. Yosh's idea is a clever tackle of the issue, an issue -- which I believe is one of the key core issues facing gameplay as it stands and one issue (as I have said before) which will not go away until we are able to fill out several servers at once. At first I was heavily against the idea due to how broken it made the game; however after a few rebalances I am (slowly) starting to warm to the idea, however I am not overly keen on this approch as we run the risk of turning RenX into a Call Of Duty spin off where you are dead almost instantly, it hasn't got quite so extreame as that but it was my main concern when the mod was being tested. To add, I'd also like to point out that yes it makes it easier for 'lesser' players to retake key choke points - but it also makes it easier for more skillful players to kill you as well, it is a two-way-street. However, for now the mod does seem to have had a noticable effect.

I believe the timer is 3 mins (need to double check) as I said I don't see any harm in bumping it upto say 6 mins but turning the AFK kick off would revolt to our old problem (which I touched up on above) and be 10 times worse. I do fully understand the reason behind AFKing, some matches are generally dull and hopless; and after 3 hours been stuck on it people get fed up and want the next session to roll on. Going AFK though isn't a healthy long term solution. As I said above we are not targetting the people who want to grab a quick drink, go for a pee or quickly tab out to play a song - we were targetting the people were were going AFK constantly for upwards of 30 mins.

Hey guys, At one point AFKing was becoming a huge problem and a battle we were losing, which is why we introduced the AFK timer feature to try and remedy the problem. It was not uncommon for players to go AFK for several hours on long sessions and we were constantly flooded with mod requests about it. I am included to agree that we went a bit heavy on the issue and I see no harm in increasing the timer. AFK repair was something we allowed in the past, but from my experience all that does is encourage the people who do AFK freqently to continue to AFK. I see no harm in people that want to quickly nip out to get a snack or go to the loo; its the people who are gone for upwards of 30 mins that we were targetting. I noticed this is pretty common when key buildings are lost, aka the Hand Of Nod -- that is when AFK tended to spike (I assume these people were waiting for the game to end?)

these tanks were (ideally) supposed to be pretty rare drops from crates so the odds of getting a repair tank was low at the best of times -- and even then it has no main gun (its basically a harvester but a bit faster) and didn't heal as fast as a hotwire / techie. I would agree with your concern if this tank could be brought on the main menu, if any of these tanks could it would upset balance. Bare in mind unique tanks like the 'tick tank' and 'titan (for example) are also pretty game breaking in their own right which is why they are kept off the menu unless it is open to both teams (like crash site for example)

Now i'm not advocating for no punishments. The loss of a building should yeld a cost, yes -- but the cost of your perfectly healthy 100% obi or AGT on top of the price increase seems rather unfair. Why should a perfectly healthy building become a potato? I do not think it is unfair to have the building still function at half strength or to even increase the delay if need be. With all that said the imagionation is a wonderful thing but lets all try and be realistic and simple. It is hardly fair to expect the devs to fulfil complex ideas when normally much simplier ideas tend to suffice.

This sounds perfect. I have touched upon a lot of the arguments made by the OP as well. The power plant is 'too important' and thus becomes the most sought after building on maps with AGT / Obi due to how much chaos that building can do if destroyed. In regards to the sniper issue - I agree marksman is not the best counter against them but the new 'scope' marksmen get does give the team some basic defence at the very least so I am content with that, however I do feel that their headshot damage needs a bit of a boost. Bare in mind this unit is free and can easily be spammed. The issue raised about base locking is a different issue, as I have said in a past post - it is a side effect of having a lot of players and only gets worse when the servers cap out.

Todays winners: Seyley - Best Support Mamothmkll - Best offence / support Roweboat - Best Defence Shpetim - Best commander Congrats to the above for taking part, all gift cards will be awarded shortly.

Hey guys, Sorry for the late reply never really got the chance to explain how this works. To address the confusion I'll write up everything here to address any confusion. Starting from the 3rd Aug around 9pm GMT each weekend I will be in spec mode as Yumi and awarding prizes (see below) for players who are able to achieve in-game feats. How it works: The prizes will be talled up based on how well you perform in game, how well you work with your team and how commited you are to the role. I will be watching via Spec mode over the course of 60 mins of gameplay or 10 games (whichever comes first) To enter you need to simply play for the full duration - leaving session will be classified as a forfeit. How I award points - I will be watching from a birds eye view and marking down players who perform the best in the below groups. Points will be given for progress and removed for making mistakes. This will all be done on my end so all you need to worry about is to play your very best, I will be able to see team chat from both sides as well ;) Best Support - (£10 voucher) Keeping tanks and units alive Deploying anti-tank mines Reaction time on field Best Commander (£10 Voucher) Rallying team Leadership skills Arranging tactical rushes and counters Best Defence (£10 voucher) Keeping base mined Detecting sneakers Saving buildings Best Offence (£10 voucher) Tactical takedowns (i.e. hotwires, tanks etc...) Use of cover and units The amount of times you are killed FAQ How do I claim my reward if I win? - All winners will be announced after the session and you will be asked to contact tomujain directly on Discord for their prize. Can I win in more than one area? - No, switching from (for example) best offence to a defence will deduct points and make it harder for you to win How will I know when this starts? - I'll do a shoutout on discord RenX channel so you know the event has started. As always guys, this is a bit of light hearted fun and not to be taken too seriously. I look forward to seeing you all in game, and if you have any questions feel free to approch me directly. I want to stress that this is my idea so please don't drag any of the FPI mods or admins into this as this wasn't their fault >.>

FPI do move people over via !team2 on IRC if the teams are 'unbalanced' and the person volenteers; this allows you to keep all your credits (we have a clear defination in our rules what we classifiy as unbalanced) however.....very, very, very rarely does this happen as the players never want to be on a losing team. I've pointed out this problem in a previous post, typically between 1 to as high as 10 (on a full server) players will rage quit / leave when they are on the losing end of the stick. Allowing credits to move on swap would only compound this problem as (99% of the time) players move to either stack with friends or to shift to the winning team, not the losing team.

I think the OP is trying to draw attention to how easily they are to pick off to snipers due to how slow they move. Truthfully I don't think giving any form of buff to the LCG would be wise due to how universal they are. Gunners have it just as bad (granted they can move and dodge better but are still a sitting duck to snipers) In truth i've always loathed snipers myself due to how many sneaky sneaky places they can hide and pick people off from way across the map. Deadeyes don't even give off a 'line' so a sneaky-sneaky sniper can just keep picking shots until he/she hits without the target knowing. The only real counter to a sniper is.....another sniper; unless of cause you are able to stumble into the guy 500 miles across the map I do however, feel snipers play a part in RenX and removing them all together would be a waste. Buffing the LCG is not the best way to address the problem. Perhaps adding sway when the sniper moves? (reduce accuracy) I don't know the answer. A lot of players play snipers as mains and play nothing else, so any change or issue brought up about the sniper will stir up a bit of a hornets nest.

Hey guys, Lets not sugar coat this. A very spitful and narcissistic player has took it up on himself to attack the main RenX servers (hence the recent issues) lets be clear, this isn't clever and isn't justice. Any idiot can go around DDOSing small communities (inc myself and I know very little on networks) all it makes you is a bully. With that said, we have all been down this road before -- and survived (multiple times) however I, (like most of you all no doubt) am getting fed up of criss-crossing this same path. FPI staff have been talking about the best ways to tackle this issue and will be in talks with CT and the devs as well. So what are we doing? - We will be setting up several programs to help with the attacks (starting tomorrow) Let us be clear that this won't put a stop to the crashing, but it will slow it down. If that fails then I will be introducing another short term fix. A mock server will be set up titled 'Server De-listed - contact XXXX on discord for server IP' you will then have to contact the XXXX where you will be put through a 3 - 5 min interview where we will do several checks (which I will not disclose) to ensure you are the real-deal, the IP will then be handed to you. Under NO circumstances are you allowed to hand out this IP, doing so (even if it is your best friend) would take us right back to square one, forcing us to remove the server and go through the interview process all over again. This will put a direct stop to the attacks and give you all some room to play without fear of attacks (however) we are not ruling out that the IP will be found out eventually and will simply re-boot the server with a new IP every time we are found out. Annoying, yes but believe me it will be 100x more annoying to this guy. In the meantime we are looking at a more solid approch to this issue. Several ideas have been put forward (which i can't disclose) and we are slowly working up a more solid permanent solution. Bottom line is this: We are dealing a a scool yard builly, anyone can be a school yard bully. Anyone can pay a dodgy website to take down a vulnerable community. This guy will lose. It is not if, it is when - and when he loses we (as we always do) will come out stronger and better. I kindly ask that all players please bare with us (the server admins) and the devs while we ride out this wave. Here is where it gets good though! I've put aside £300 for several small prizes during this crisis. Starting from 2nd Aug 2019 every Saturday and Sunday I will be online and giving out prizes for players who can achive specific in game challenges. Prize list(s) £10 - £30 Amazon gift cards (will be brought in the currency of the winner, i.e dollars for Americans) £10 - £30 Steam Gift cards Several GOG games will also be offered as prizes All winners, and full details will be posted here before we go live - I will also be in game and on discord (tomujain / Yumi) to answer any questions directly. FPI may also (though not set in stone yet) be getting a better server during the next few months. This means better performance and less lag for you guys. Goku has also been hard at work (so please send him your love) with his anti-DDOS program(s) Community promotion project Starting 9th Aug I will be hosting a community promotion project. The rules are very simple; create a 3 - 5 min video promoting the game. It can be a trailer, a funny montage, a 'voice over comedy' -- anything your heart desires. The winner will be announced at the start of the next year (Jan) their video will also be used in a brand new advertising campaign that will be handled (as well as several of the other entries) by my marketing agent; keel over marketing Can't make videos, or don't have time? No problem! I will also be running an image promotion contest as well. Posters, drawings or flashy art -- anything your heart desires. Prizes: £100 Amazon gift card (video contest) £50 Amazon gift card (image contest) All prizes and winners will be given / announced the following year in Jan.

Good suggestions @vandal33 As @SilentKnight pointed out (and this is something i've said in the past as well) we can never know 100% what is causing the issue. I disagree with RenX not being mainstream though, it does have potential to be -- but until we find out how we can make it attractive in that regard player numbers will remain as they are for a while. I still think game stress is a factor (but I have no solid proof and could be wrong) that said, judging from what I see / have seen I believe I do make a strong argument that gameplay is (at the very least) playing some part in this issue. I also believe that 64 players is way too much and should be brought down to 40 (like before) but this is another controversial issue and something we've always had backlash on everytime we've tried to push in that direction. One thing we do need to consider is the resources we have open to us. RenX devs are already busy, they don't get paid and have their hands full -- realistically we can't expect this problem to go away anytime soon.

I was in that game, me and Snips did ask mutliple times for people to focus on the game. Unfortunately what I saw was just simply bickering / moaning so we were wary of applying any punishments to the people involved. For what its worth guys, i'm sorry about how this turned out. I have a firm believe that people are allowed to voice their concerns (good or bad) as long as it isn't breaking our smearing / harassment rule(s). People are still a little sore over the 'stacking issue' (we've already had this talk so I won't hash it out again) I doubt very much that applying brute force will change anyone minds, or do the community any good. Regardless of what people think of Jpoi -- they are part of this community too. FPI will continue to try and do (what we feel) is best for the comminity. But lets be clear, this issue won't go away over night and the root cause of this (I feel) comes down to player numbers. Regardless of what FPI or CT do, this issue won't go away until we can fill several servers at once. That does not mean however that I am not going to be in talks with the FPI team about ways we can address it. What we won't do is go around muting / banning people for a bit of whining, make no mistake though if name calling comes into play or it gets nasty we will be forced to step in and ban said people (as per the rules) Remember if the matches are one sided (see below) you can request a !modrequest <teamshuffle> and our team will do our best to sort out the teams at the start of the next session.

The idea has a lot of room for refinement. But the basic concept is to allow people to play how they want to play without having those options taken away from them just because a building is lost. I'm not saying a building loss should be nullified (punishments for lost buildings should still remain) but this class system would be a big step forward in making this game a lot less of a headache when reduced to, for example a power plant and a refinery. Yes it is loyal to the old Renegade, but I don't think it is something people want....if it was, why is the surrender vote so popular when this games occure? Why is it that between 5 - 50% of the team will leave the session when this happens? as I said before, to attract new players I believe gameplay should be king. Punishments for a building can still remain with: Timers, increased prices and even limiting the amount of times they can be taken from the menu.

It really does depend on what direction RenX wants to go. The origional Renegade was a lot less forgiving (as agent pointed out) but it was also far from flawless. If RenX seeks to be the perfect remake of the old Renegade then we have to come to terms with the fact that this game will never be main stream. Let us not forget, Renegade was a 'bonus' thrown in for fun (it was tacked on) , it was never designed to be a game on itself, it if was -- I doubt it would be the same Renegade we know and love today. Renegade requires a taste that isn't mainstream. It is stressful, frustrating and removes gameplay options open to you for ever building lost. Now I do feel that RenX has a duty to be faithful to its core (Renegade) thus striking that balance is key. I do feel strongly that having some sort of mechanic that allows players to play the roles they want, it'll stop this 'afk' and 'rage quitting' that we see time and time again, because the hand of nod is gone (for example) Perhaps a class system? Players pick at the start of the session if they want to be: <---- Support (10% speed boost, 10% discount on hotwires: able to buy hotwire / techie when building lost, everything else increased by 10%) <----- Defence (10% defence buff, 10% discount on hotwires: able to buy hotwire / techie when building lost, everything else increased by 10%) <----- Offense (10% offense buff, 10% discount on mobi / Doza: able to buy doza / mobi when building lost, everything else increased by 10% <---- Tanker (-25% tank cost: able to buy lights / meds when building lost, everything else increased by 20% Gameplay is king. We need to deside what we want, to be user friendly (to attract new blood) or be a faithful remake of the old game, understanding that the latter will ALWAYS mean we will struggle for new blood. Perhaps we could meet in the middle with game modes, having a game mode that mimics the die-hard experience of the old Renegade? I don't have the answer. I do know that if we keep going in this direction we won't solve the player problem.

I have touched up on this issue in the past when FPI was founded. I ran several professional Google / YT ads for a few months and found that the ads were bringing in new blood but a huge chunk (upto 90%) were barely lasting a week -- then vanishing completly (probably uninstalled the game) Why is this? I don't have a solid answer, however I fear promoting the game freely will probably yeld the same results. My theory? Stress. RenX is a stressful game that heavily punishes your team by removing gameplay options / play styles for every key building lost -- this effect becomes more painful if the matches drag on and your key play style (i.e. tanker) is lost, forcing you into a role you might not want to play. Or, perhaps it is the high learning curve of RenX? I can't give you the answer. However my findings do point out something clear -- something is putting a big chunk of players off playing RenX and until we find out what it is and tackle it, I doubt any promoting on any level will solve the problem.