[Poll] Frustration in Renx

[LavaDr4gon]

What makes Renegade X frustrating to play?  Any nail biting, rage inducing moments that you wish were fixed?

This poll will help us understand what makes players want to leave the game and prevent new players from trying the game.  You can chose more than one option if there are multiple problems.

The topic will be kept locked until the results are in.  After some time it will be unlocked and you can discuss the results. 

[LavaDr4gon]

Topic is now unlocked for discussion.  The poll will remain open if you still haven't voted yet.

The results at the time are: 46 members have voted.
1.  Team Stacking, 24 votes
2.  Community, 18 votes
3.  Other, 9 votes

The least frustrating part of the game is:
1.  Bugs/Glitches/Hacks/Exploits, 2 votes

You may now discuss the results in a public forum for the world to see.  Are you surprised by the results or as expected?  What are your solutions for handling the situations?  If you voted "other" please explain what other frustrating elements are in the game.

 

[limsup]

17 hours ago, LavaDr4gon said:

The least frustrating par of the game is:
1.  Bugs/Glitches/Hacks/Exploits, 2 votes

Please allow me to grasp this opportunity to thank all those who have helped us discover, report and iron out bugs in RenX, and I would like to thank Try-Out personally for his 5 year long efforts in helping out both community members and developers alike in the aforementioned area! 

[TheOlsenTwins]

I voted other:

1. Mining System (Overmining, mine placement, lots of lost matches/players just by bad mining)
2. Ppl leaving tanks to repair as GDI (>MRLS) and not understanding that locked tanks don't lock against the enemy
3. Why even after years, we still cannot give Noobs just 1 sentence of explanation about 1. and 2. builtin  into the game. (yes i know, we can chat everyone up, but at this point it is just annoying to do that every second public match)
4. Snipers too powerful IMHO (Headshot Multiplier, any paid unit >200 should not get killed in 1 shot, when full - especially up close with no scope, that is still just silly and annoying)
   As i understand it, their main role is to kill the repairs from behind the tanks, and not just go on a killfest the whole game, which is their role mainly. (maybe improve their power against eng./adv, eng. and weaken against everyone else)
5. 64 players are too much for most maps - IMO best gameplay 20-50 players

Edited June 5, 2019 by TheOlsenTwins

[Ryz]

A lot has been said in the topic about FPI. 

Unfortunatly it is not allowed anymore to balance teams and block switching sides. For me this was a huge step forward. Yes I couldnt play with friends anymore (annoying when I have a visitor) and yes I lost so many games cause being Nod and half the team SBHS (sorry, just don't like playing Nod  besides the arty). Still in the end the games would last longer. 

The best games I had were a good and fair fight which could sometimes last till up two hours. It wouldn't get boring cause a lot was going on and the teams were more or less equal. In many of these games we even lost after a long defence. Remember some epic games where we killed multiple maxed out stank or flamerrushes to only eventually lose. Great times.

The worst games are the single sided slaughter fest in which you play 3 rounds in 30 minutes or less and just don't stand a chance. Since (previous, not sure now?) teams will stay the same round after round you would just stay in the same losing team (where people are also leaving).

That's, but this must be clear from the previous posts, stacking is a huge problem. I am sure willing to see that people like to play with friends. But in the end, if you have a group of very good players which are friends, you will only be left over to play with these friends since the server just empties. Usually the 'stacked' players leave before this point.

To emphasize on thing. No this opinion about stacking doesn't target specific people like Poi, JPJ and Sarah (I just name them before someone else does :D) but all players in general who make the teambalance go off too far... I know people can't help it they are good and they shouldn't be punished for it. It would just be better if they would take the challenge and fight against eachother for a deserved win instead of stack for an easy /easier game... 

AFKS are a problem sometimes. I would see people die or go into a afk modus (removed from game, but can rejoin in x-minutes) automatically. Teams to refusing to get a commander is also annoying sometimes but lesser a problem. 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Ryz

[limsup]

We need better tools for team/squad organization, in my humble opinion I feel that this problem could be optimally solved from building on the server's momentarily present population...

[TomUjain]

Agree with lim on this one. Even if FPI continued enforcing the 'anti-stacking' I highly doubt much would change. As I also pointed out it is a tad unfair to pin point all game loses on stacking; primarily as having stackers on your team does not always mean a win.

With that said, I still think something has to be done.

The new team shuffle was a massive step in the right direction -- maybe homimg in and improving that would be worth while. Adding to that perhaps having a 'mechanical power gap' for when teams are uneven -- as an example, it could be based on point different

1,000 point different (losing team get 5% damage buff)

2,000 point different (losing team gets 10% damage buff)

etc.... etc...

as a rough example.

Player limit - set at 64 probably is not helping; most maps are not designed for it. Its painful as a good chunk of the players like the 64 limit (I do too) but in my hones view we need to set it somewhere between 40 - 50.

 

[Tommy]

1. Toxic af community sometimes

2. People calling out their team followed by different forms of team hampering like VP feeding, prevent team mates from repairing buildings, etc.

2.1. surrendering after the literally least important building died and there is still a good chance for a comeback

3. Same maps over and over again, could be changed by delisting played maps for longer time from map votes

4. Learning curve is hard yeah, I mean I know the game overall but it's really to get new players into it for me at least

5. No active auto balancing while the match is running which sometimes results in e.g. 15vs20 situations (isn't happening that much anymore though)

6. 64 players limit - results in shit performance for almost everyone besides some super strong PCs, no further explanation needed.

 

If more come into my mind, I will make a new reply for that.

Edited June 5, 2019 by TRRDroid

[SvN91]

1. 64 players (64 players on snow, do I need to say more?)

2. games with a team that isn't playing as a team (Often it is a player that takes a leading role that is required)

3. always the same maps being played

4. butthurt players that spam " FU LOSER TEAM etc." in the chat while not doing anything useful themselves, doing change map and surrender votes for the smallest reasons

5. It just feels Renegade X was more comfy to play some years ago but maybe I remember wrong. Started playing RenX again yesterday after an over a year long pause but the problems that made me leave are still there I think.

[STANISLAV]

1) A very small number of players, because of what, when I have the middle of the day - the servers are empty.  

2) Snipers. Especially when one of them is poi 

3) Sticking

[HIHIHI]

I voted community and other.

Other first:
This was basically a vote for those times when I join a server because people are playing Eyes and then 5 minutes later, it's game over... Not a problem with the game, it's just that I join my favorite map at the wrong time... It's really the most frustrating thing about actually playing RenX in general (except, perhaps, getting locked in base and sniped inside buildings... Doesn't happen too often, and I can still enjoy being locked in base all game sometimes when the snipers aren't having a field day : ) ).

Community:
Basically people need to not bash each other when debating topics, as this is unhelpful and can be frustrating to everyone... Just bring forth facts and logic (opinions too, of course, because those are very important, but with basic civility, if nothing else). My thanks go to those who do so, and my requests go to those who do not, that they attempt to keep a level head when debating topics, trivial or important. It will be better for the game and community as a whole, and make it more attractive to new and old players.

Thanks for reading,

     HIHIHI

[isupreme]

1. Too many players and maps so big its hard to follow events.... and too many players on a small map.

2. In a tunnel - Snipers that can swing a  huge sniper rifle around and kill me faster than i can even aim a pistol at them.

3.  Lack of team squad organization.    ( why not give some of command abilities to the players?)  ( where are the leaders we need to organize tunnels or field when the commander is busy?)    Stolen vehicles due to stupidity.

4. A general lack of STRATEGY in teams beyond forming mass rushes in the base.

5. Repeating maps over and over.

6. Antiquated radio commands.     ( where is the radio command that says:    Tunnel rush inbound!!!   or :    We  Hold the Tunnels.)

Edited June 5, 2019 by isupreme
better thought.

[Madkill40]

The fact that APB has an excellent 'H' for Help function which provides an pop-up for the player to know the controls of the unit they are presently using, as well as any other small tidbits of information. 

[DeadAccount]

What type of culture does RenX wish to cultivate?

Four/five years ago there was a player by the name DrB0ng who was super passionate about ren and this community. Cultivating an engagement that was exciting and electric. A small band of rebels would stay up late, game together, keeping the NA servers going until early hours in the morning. Most are gone now, but they consisted of amazing people who i keep in-touch with to this day. They include the likes of heliumbunny, battlesausage, sunshine, McJohn, Drewwise, minji, yosh, etc.

Back then, there was a culture that was building towards something awesome. Fun debates would play out like whether flechette should exist as a silo weapon, or what to do with the future of gold rush. We worked as a team. Building towards something. The scale was grander as well. Sporting a playerbase nearly three times the size it is now. Two clans even existed. TMX and EKT. They had this sort of fun combativeness in ideologies. Join TMX and you'd find yourself in a timed match in a race for points, join EKT and find yourself dodging mines in a marathon. When the DDOSing began B0ng took it upon himself to save the game, selflessly doing everything in his power to keep the servers going. 

I bring this up because B0ng was the closest thing this game had as a community manager. They haven't had one since.

 

Who has filled that gap? Two devs, and the culture has changed with it.

Their personal skills have granted them control of all the community tools in the game, and with it, have slowly enabled the range of frustrations you see mentioned over and over these last two days.  Harassing dedicated players like Whistle from the community for good, pursuing attention seeking acts like deleting themselves from the community only to return with power enabling the behavior, targeting new players in servers and obfuscating the justification with modern day gaslighting. Their lack of maturity and transgressions go on and on in a role of authority. 

No one can do anything about it.

They control all the tools. The other Devs have become apathetic to this issue. Allowing them to continue to pound the dirt to the point where now only weeds grow. 

 

Which ultimately gets to the point what do we want to cultivate in this community? 

For example, do you want the game to grow a playerbase? Beyond the shrinking violet it is now? Then you can't simply say the current situation where a certain dev takes advantage of their position and enables the targeting of new players with their clique is a healthy choice. Voice this concern and you'll be banned or branded as harassing others. As quoted by one of the devs themselves, 'I don't care about the community.' It's a nihilistic self-centered culture that continues to drive people away. They continue to pound dirt.

 

 

 

It's sucks witnessing a game I enjoyed so much 4 years ago become a shell of itself. The only thing that has blossomed is the discord, but I don't want to bring up who actually pushed for that over the years. Trying to welcome new players into a community to something that once was exciting, fresh and new. Advocating to get it on the main page of the website for months just so others can join.

Now I regret ever suggesting it.

[vandal33]

Community.

Is there a mute function on specific players? Because I'm tired of hearing fu loser team this, fu stupid loser team that,.... a useless 0-score mobius in a lab coat from the other team saying "mines at 16/24" in all-chat every 10 seconds.. and give them a notification if they're muted so these fuckers know no one wants to listen to their crap. Would be nice to mute/limit radio chatters too from specific players spamming because I hate having half of the top-left quadrant of my screen blocked by green text.

Not having a commander sucks, yes. But it's even more annoying when people treats it like a serious crime.

People trolling after losing 1 building. And trash talks those who didn't vote surrender, blocking people who are repairing buildings, go into afk (even until the next game), commanders using the /c function to curse at teammates or just talk irrelevant non-gameplay stuffs.

64 players is a problem too.

[LavaDr4gon]

Community.

I always here people saying the game should grow.  The player base should be much larger because the game is so great.  Because of that I started making videos to promote the gameplay, showing the great moments.  I even recorded PUG videos to show how much fun players are having when communicating to each other to win.

But yet, the player base still remains constant.  The same players are still here and the new players that stay replace the old ones that leave.  The community is not growing because the community refuses to accept the new players.  There is no help and no guidance to guide the new players around the game.  They refuse to stay on long enough to experience the entire game because a few players make their experience miserable.  There is no difficult learning curve in the game because the players can't even play the game when they can't leave the base.

I want to see the community grow.  Others do too and try to create new ways to grow it by advertising it.  But it comes down to the veteran players being accepting to the new players when they come into the game.  

[BlackHand12412]

I have made a modern tutorial system if it needs more things please help me but the most things I see when I'm commanding is when people just ignore what I say in chat to play in the maps style and then we lose. Or when people talk trash about me commanding and just being very toxic to each other some times. And the denying commander is just getting old (ik other have said this but I'm just trying to prove a point) and I'm hardly play because of it. I also wish games would just stop ending in 5 minutes flat cause low players cause none likes that even at the servers prime time. I've once seen fpi stay full like 5 hours after it normally dies. If anyone disagrees with anything I say please let me know

[Guest]

Oi people.. the "community" isnt that one guy who shouts FU LOSER TEAM, its not those 3 people groups that play together all day every day, its not the 4 new players that step out of mammoth tanks to repair while not knowing that sbh scum are all over the map.

Look at thr definition of community (pinned somewhere, on mobile atm)

The Whole community isnt defined by a small group or groups of certain individuals.

By definition (looking at ingame public, PUG and discord) this community is one of the better ones considering its a PVP based game from the ages i wasnt even born yet. Even a creative minecraft server communities are more violent than what we have. IF you voted that the community is the problem, explain it in a way that doest call out small groups of people, but the community as a whole please.

[ex_member]

That poll is missing one point "Performance issues (low FPS, lag)" as servers and game tend to lag in many situations and people don't like to play games with low FPS, stutter, tearing, input lag or similar.

Edited June 6, 2019 by ex_member

[Stormtrooper TR8-T0R]

5 minutes ago, ex_member said:

That poll is missing one point "Performance issues (low FPS, lag)" as servers and game tend to lag in many situations and people don't like to play games with low FPS, stutter, tearing, input lag or similar.

Its all because of 64 players and too many vehicles I guess. I am all in for 50 players max. Maybe thats enough to fix the Lag?

[Nexus51325]

Here is my opinion.

I agree with the fact that 64 players is to much, i think 50 players is a good solution

About snipers i agree with the fact that they are very powerfull, especially in the hands of overpower players like poi, jpj and other when your a blocked in your base. I was playing with someone was a time that stopped the game because of that.  But these overpower players have the right to play like us, and I understand them, playing sniper is a fun thing !

Now about the maps. maps are always the same, Field, Field X, Lakeside, Walls, Island, Under. I would love to play other maps some times like Storm, Toxicity, it becomes boring.  as said above, we need a system that blocks some map if they just play .

And for new players, we need to help them instead of insulting them as some do.
 

(PS sorry if my sentences are not quite correct, im French)
 

Nexus big fan of Renegade X.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2019 by Nexus51325

[Handepsilon]

This sounds like the return for 40p cap for servers :p.

 

But yeah, 64p is just pure chaos. 40 was at least manageable

[Tommy]

9 hours ago, MintLemonade said:

I bring this up because B0ng was the closest thing this game had as a community manager. They haven't had one since.

You seem to forget about Fobby, the actual TRUE community manager we had.

[Gex_str]

About lags: RenegadeX wasn't made for 64 player servers. So the game usually starts to increase ping and FPS starts to get lower at 40+ player count from lots of venicles(they are handled by server thanks to UE3) and just having too many players.

Myself I've chosen Other option in the vote. It mostly comes down to one thing: bring back Field X Night. There's so few either big or night good maps in RenX, Field X Night goes in both categories for me.
And also the fact that we need tutorial. Both loading screens doesn't explain much information that is needed for playing.

[Handepsilon]

Also, considering the history I had with B0ng....

But I'd probably be too biased and uninformed to give opinion

[Radeon3]

18 hours ago, MintLemonade said:

Who has filled that gap? Two devs, and the culture has changed with it.

Their personal skills have granted them control of all the community tools in the game, and with it, have slowly enabled the range of frustrations you see mentioned over and over these last two days.  Harassing dedicated players like Whistle from the community for good, pursuing attention seeking acts like deleting themselves from the community only to return with power enabling the behavior, targeting new players in servers and obfuscating the justification with modern day gaslighting. Their lack of maturity and transgressions go on and on in a role of authority. 

No one can do anything about it.

They control all the tools. The other Devs have become apathetic to this issue. Allowing them to continue to pound the dirt to the point where now only weeds grow. 

 

Which ultimately gets to the point what do we want to cultivate in this community? 

For example, do you want the game to grow a playerbase? Beyond the shrinking violet it is now? Then you can't simply say the current situation where a certain dev takes advantage of their position and enables the targeting of new players with their clique is a healthy choice. Voice this concern and you'll be banned or branded as harassing others. As quoted by one of the devs themselves, 'I don't care about the community.' It's a nihilistic self-centered culture that continues to drive people away. They continue to pound dirt.

Pushing a single button wouldn't reflect how I feel about this part Mint. You've spoken from my heart and I'm glad that you also have the balls to speak out for this. This is not "my game" -to quote one of them-, not the group of my friends' game and not solely the developers' game. This is our game, the players', the mods', server owners' and the developers' altogether, in a word: a community.

RenegadeX is like an ark. We are sailing in this ark for quite some time, enclosed with a stagnating amount of people. Over the time we've got to know many of these people, some of them became our friends, some of them are friendly faces, some of them are just known nicknames silently playing with us. Also there are a few out there, who we simply can't stand for their attitudes, but we are still sailing in the same boat and want the best for our ark, even if we have personal disagreements. And it's all fair game until small elements starting only care about their own enjoyment at the cost of the whole. One day, I want this ark to reach its destination by having a healthy community on board and not a hungry bunch waiting for the fresh meet to hunt down.
If we carry on with the stacking by accepting it, the bad reputation of this is going to precede the game's release and I doubt it will attract or even keep the new people.

 

And for the love of Kane, do something with the 64 player limit already. How many times do we need to bring up its effects on the game?

Edited June 6, 2019 by Radeon3

[LavaDr4gon]

I should have specified that 64 player setting goes under Server Settings.  That vote might be higher than it actually is.

[roweboat]

I understand this suggestion would be more work (which unfortunately I just don't have the knowledge to do myself)

But I feel the launcher desperately needs a built in lobby / chat area. 

I've seen many voice that, if the current player server is low, they won't join. Which of course is a downward spiral. If a lobby was showing at minimum X# of players are looking to play, but not in a game server, this greatly help populate multiple servers.

 

*At least, perhaps, add something in the launcher, that reads along the lines "want to see if others are ready to play? Go to our discord server at ...")*

That being said, I feel all servers should be capped to 50 max, maybe even 32. (I know this has been discussed ad neauseum in the past...)

 

Many of the in game problems go away with less players all playing at once.

[Xtractor]

I voted only Community just because my personnal negatif perception toward Dev (it's personnal and not enought to frustating me to  not play RenX but helped)

To expand what Id already said at

How  many servers would been filled today if all the  many new players Stayed  from Day one ..Humm many many imo

On the TODO list their should be at the very top things to make to please New comers not only hes first game but few weeks or games played .

There is things that if Renx was popular as other AAA other Games we wont need to do But we aren't those.

This game is like a Wagon that we try to push in a rocky road we can't get the speed to make it roll by itselft Because rocks and bumpy road wouldnt permit.

Till then no hope. Clear the road then we have a chance .By Clearing I mean fixing things and talk to ppl to make them understand the situation.

As for New comers you should treat them as imporatnt guest and try to find ways to make them a Special beginner Status ..Could be an Armor bonus or similar stuff .

Imagine your selft going in a game that you never played and been treated like that ...

Or May you want to have a selfish fun on yhe back of whatever you see as an opotunuity ...Your call !

 

 

 

 

[DoctorB0NG]

I appreciate the kind words from @MintLemonade but nobody is perfect and I used to have quite the toxic side as well in the community.  FPI (the artist formerly known as EKT) and I have definitely had a rough patch in the past and most of it was my fault unfortunately.  Renegade-X has a very unique community and I had found that investing too much time had caused me to get very burnt out and get frustrated at things that I really should not have been.

I was originally of the opinion that team switching should be allowed so that friends can play together but I've now been swayed and agree that even just a small group of veteran players can dictate the entire outcome of a game.  I understand what FPI is trying to accomplish and I can see why it has caused a rift in the community.  Even with disabling team switching though, there are clever ways to still manage to end up on the same team and even without players switching, teams can end up lopsided. 

I don't really have any suggestions for how to fix the team stacking issue but if I could offer one piece of advice it would be this: If you're getting burnt out and frustrated with Renegade-X, take a bit of time off and come back with a fresh outlook.  It really can make a big difference. 

PS: I'd also like to formally apologize to @Goku , @Skeeze , @ObeliskTheTormentor and many others from EKT/TmX back in the day.  I was very burnt out and it had a toxic effect on the community. 

 

I wish you all the best of luck!

 

[TomUjain]

40 minutes ago, DoctorB0NG said:

I appreciate the kind words from @MintLemonade but nobody is perfect and I used to have quite the toxic side as well in the community.  FPI (the artist formerly known as EKT) and I have definitely had a rough patch in the past and most of it was my fault unfortunately.  Renegade-X has a very unique community and I had found that investing too much time had caused me to get very burnt out and get frustrated at things that I really should not have been.

I was originally of the opinion that team switching should be allowed so that friends can play together but I've now been swayed and agree that even just a small group of veteran players can dictate the entire outcome of a game.  I understand what FPI is trying to accomplish and I can see why it has caused a rift in the community.  Even with disabling team switching though, there are clever ways to still manage to end up on the same team and even without players switching, teams can end up lopsided. 

I don't really have any suggestions for how to fix the team stacking issue but if I could offer one piece of advice it would be this: If you're getting burnt out and frustrated with Renegade-X, take a bit of time off and come back with a fresh outlook.  It really can make a big difference. 

PS: I'd also like to formally apologize to @Goku , @Skeeze , @ObeliskTheTormentor and many others from EKT/TmX back in the day.  I was very burnt out and it had a toxic effect on the community. 

 

I wish you all the best of luck!

 

Well said Bong, and no offense taken (at least not on my end) it takes a strong guy to admit to their faults so I do admire you for that.

That been said, I think FPI got it wrong as well - we were perhaps a litle too brutal in our approch on the issue. I 100% agree that the focus should be on retaining new players, not new features -- why add new features if no one is around to enjoy them?

The real question we need to ask is: why can't we retain old players? Fire off 5 - 10 strong points then the devs need to go through the list and try and address said points. I do feel that if we could get 2 - 3 regular full servers that most of these issues would vanish over night.

[Madkill40]

15 hours ago, Handepsilon said:

This sounds like the return for 40p cap for servers :p.

 

But yeah, 64p is just pure chaos. 40 was at least manageable

Just keep up an permanent 40 player Marathon server actively running alongside 64 player slot servers. 

For players who stand by 40 player cap servers and players who stand by 64 player cap servers, this will allow two servers to grow - given enough time [3 Month trial period]

The minor difference, let it fuel two servers 

[Goku]

10 hours ago, DoctorB0NG said:

I appreciate the kind words from @MintLemonade but nobody is perfect and I used to have quite the toxic side as well in the community.  FPI (the artist formerly known as EKT) and I have definitely had a rough patch in the past and most of it was my fault unfortunately.  Renegade-X has a very unique community and I had found that investing too much time had caused me to get very burnt out and get frustrated at things that I really should not have been.

I was originally of the opinion that team switching should be allowed so that friends can play together but I've now been swayed and agree that even just a small group of veteran players can dictate the entire outcome of a game.  I understand what FPI is trying to accomplish and I can see why it has caused a rift in the community.  Even with disabling team switching though, there are clever ways to still manage to end up on the same team and even without players switching, teams can end up lopsided. 

I don't really have any suggestions for how to fix the team stacking issue but if I could offer one piece of advice it would be this: If you're getting burnt out and frustrated with Renegade-X, take a bit of time off and come back with a fresh outlook.  It really can make a big difference. 

PS: I'd also like to formally apologize to @Goku , @Skeeze , @ObeliskTheTormentor and many others from EKT/TmX back in the day.  I was very burnt out and it had a toxic effect on the community. 

 

I wish you all the best of luck!

 

 

I was surprised at the apology and I'm not saying all is forgiven but I do appreciate it and do hope we can all work towards a better Renegade for everyone and get some more fresh meat to boink.

 

---

On topic, we have taken steps towards helping to fix the AFK problem. Handepsilon has made some changes to the AFK system that if it works as expected it should be in the new patch and also FPI has taken the AFK issue more seriously and will take our own steps to help in this regard (Including logging people who get AFK kicked so serial AFK people can be punished).

If you have suggestions for FPI/EKT to improve things or steps we can take etc then please pm me or Jenzuj/SaintPepe.jpg or Tom/Yumi on Discord and we will discuss it internally.

In their own way, I think everyone here would like a better renegade for everyone!

Goks

[Guest once upon the time]

@DoctorB0NG

Although it may seem insignificant to many, but Dr.Bong you have regained my respect.
Admitting mistakes is evidence of size for me.
I hope google translated that correctly.

[OTT]

19 hours ago, DoctorB0NG said:

I appreciate the kind words from @MintLemonade but nobody is perfect and I used to have quite the toxic side as well in the community.  FPI (the artist formerly known as EKT) and I have definitely had a rough patch in the past and most of it was my fault unfortunately.  Renegade-X has a very unique community and I had found that investing too much time had caused me to get very burnt out and get frustrated at things that I really should not have been.

I was originally of the opinion that team switching should be allowed so that friends can play together but I've now been swayed and agree that even just a small group of veteran players can dictate the entire outcome of a game.  I understand what FPI is trying to accomplish and I can see why it has caused a rift in the community.  Even with disabling team switching though, there are clever ways to still manage to end up on the same team and even without players switching, teams can end up lopsided. 

I don't really have any suggestions for how to fix the team stacking issue but if I could offer one piece of advice it would be this: If you're getting burnt out and frustrated with Renegade-X, take a bit of time off and come back with a fresh outlook.  It really can make a big difference. 

PS: I'd also like to formally apologize to @Goku , @Skeeze , @ObeliskTheTormentor and many others from EKT/TmX back in the day.  I was very burnt out and it had a toxic effect on the community. 

 

I wish you all the best of luck!

 

Respect 

When it came to toxicity back then,I probably gave as much as I got or maybe worse,so on my end I'd like to apologize to you and the ex-TmX members back then whom I was at times very nasty with.I appreciate your comment and

9 hours ago, Goku said:

 

 hope we can all work towards a better Renegade for everyone and get some more fresh meat to boink.

 

it's hard to cooperate with others when some people already perceive as trouble or a rogue one (talking about myself and others).

Personally,even the people I hated so much in the past,I had zero doubt that these people care about the game/community,I always thought people had different views on how to improve this game and community(egos clash though),I hope this continues to be the case in the future.

 

Sorry for off-topic ..

-- I voted team stacking,as someone who did it in the past when we used to use TS3,I can see how destructive it can be,while I and my friends used to have fun,the other team was just being destroyed over and over every map,and many players tried to switch to the team we stacked in to taste a win if their luck threw them on the other team,which also imbalanced the teams even more,also some of those who failed to switch just left the server killing it eventually.I understand why they leave,from my humble experience in gaming,being on the losing team in a RenX game can be one of the worst feelings in any game,zero fun,it's unbearable at times.

At times when we had 10 or more people on ts3,we used to switch channels based on how the server shuffled us,was good times,but I think the issue is a little different right now.

While I don't have realistic solutions to propose for this issue right now,I think looking at the consequences of preventing teamstacking  and the consequences of allowing it,I can safely say that the latter causes the game/community more damage (<<< my opinion)

-- Another issue is player limits(the reason I rarely play right now),most maps weren't made for 64 players,as people already acknowledge,not to mentions lag and fps issues for a lot of people,I already talked about that in many other topics,so not gonna talk much about it,while I'm very biased when it comes to this issue/topic,I can still understand why servers' player limit was increased,and understand why some people prefer 64 player limits over 40 (especially in public games),both sides have very valid points in this issue,this is a tougher issue to handle because of the limited number of players this game has.

My humble proposition would be "trials",for a week or so,all servers should be set to 40 limit,and efforts by the community should be made to try and fill 2 servers,and see how it goes,after that make another trial by setting the server limit to 50 players,and see whichever ends up with better results.

I don't think this proposition or any other solution should be forced on server owners,it should all be a consensus between Devs/Com Devs themselves and between Devs and server owners and players too(I know I'm asking for too much).This should also apply for several other issues (how many times did I say the word "issue" now ?)

See ya all on the battlefield,

Peace!

[vandal33]

Since we are already talking about why newcomers don't come back, I see a few things that may be frustrations to them.

One-sided games: Nobody finds being trapped in your own base for 2 hours fun. Most players on the team would just sit in base, repairing buildings and try to fend off the attackers holding them under siege. But new players would off course buy something expensive and tries to get out of the base. They would end up being killed over and over again (espeically if the other team is stacked and kill-whoring) until they realize it's not possible to leave the base alive and quits.

Community: (yes im not done with my community rant) New players won't feel like they are welcomed. One obvious example that I didn't mention in my previous post is the proximity C4 placement. A newblet picks a technician and finds he has proximity C4. Wouldn't take long for him to realize it works like a land mine, so he just places it all over the field and a veteran player sees this. What did the veteran do? Tell the new guy his bad mine placements is gonna hamper the team and asked him to remove them because mine count is limited and team-shared...

Off course not, he's gonna outright call a mine ban on the guy. Urging everyone else to press F1 and the vote passed. How woud the new guy feel? He has no idea what he done wrong and discovers that he is banned from placing more mines (might even think it's permanent) so he's gonna say the community was just bullying him and he won't be coming back. I think the learning curve is not the bigger factor, anyone can think if mines are limited, the smartest location to place them is at the bottleneck of the objective you are defending (building doors) so I think people can get along with the learning if the other factors didn't scare them away.

They don't understand and appreciate Renegade: I won't be surprised if new players have no idea what's going on when they were playing the game. People using weird terms, radio spam drowning all the other sounds, etc isn't a good atmosphere to them. Even if you say "mining", some are gonna think about mining diamonds or minerals instead of laying mines (even a C&C player who doesn't play renegade might think it's about harvesting resources).

Another thing is tiberium, the game didn't say anywhere they are harmful. People might just think its grass and get frustrated when they die on it. Then there's the blue colour one which could bait them to die from it as well. And what if they wonder why is an old man (mobius) is a high tier character? Those who played Renegade knows he's an important character in the story and the devs just reuse him in multiplayer as a playable character but since renegade x doesn't have singleplayer, newbies won't understand and they won't appreciate it like we do. This isn't a big factor, but I once lost interest in a game simply because I don't understand the lore behind it because whenever the game shows something iconic about it, I felt clueless.

[Guest once upon the time]

Will briefly add my "last mustard":
I voted for Community, Learning Curve and if I remember right Sever Settings:
Server Settings is a matter of server owners themselves and I just do not like 64 servers.

Lern Kurve: Actually, it would not be that hard to "learn" and play Ren X if the "more experienced" players would bring more patience. You should even remember "their" beginnings.
I was fortunate that I was able to meet a lot of nice players who had these qualities, unfortunately, very little of them are still playing.

Community: Unfortunately, it has once again shown that (which is also human) the differences between certain "interest communities" is very large. But there are also solutions if everyone strives to find compromises. It would certainly do the game good.
Small "thunderstorms" can have a clean effect if you interpret them correctly.

All a nice weekend

Silent

[Darkraptor]

You know whats realy frustrating: When you want to play and the only servers with players has already reached its limit (64/64) so cant join and play

 

 

Edited June 8, 2019 by Darkraptor

[Quinc3y]

Whoa, this thread escalated quickly.

On the topic of developers, I have nothing but respect and appreciation for everybody who contributed to creating this great game. Ren X has been improving for years and I'd say it's in a very good state right now. As for the community, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Really, it's a pleasure to play with you all.

On frustration in the game: I have voted for map design. I think maps have a great impact on gameplay, and too many of them are too small & with too many choke points. I'm actually suprised how few votes this option got.

[Handepsilon]

I appreciate that B0NG. Admittedly I had been quite toxic in the past as well especially in the middle of all the server politics (really don't wanna get back into it again. It was a total mess)

Anyway, back on topic :

After last night's games, I'm inclined to vote for community. People seemed to like blaming losses to their teammates. I mean yeah, losing sucks, especially if it really looks like that the other team is far more coordinated than yours, but when people starts saying 'OMG loser team' or 'noob team', it kinda made me want to play less and less. When will people realize that saying things like those will just lower your team's morale even more?

[DenWellingston]

If we talk about the most serious, this is:
* an imbalance of commanders. No one wants to play for losers.
* Rare updates. I do not know why, oh, I personally feel that there has been little content lately. What for? Well ... as if tomorrow I'll post a bunch of concept art on this topic. Like this. And it's not about the content. The sight on a rifle with an optical sight was fixed only after my complaint.
* It seems to me, but the physics of shooting and aiming are pretty outdated.

Edited June 10, 2019 by DenWellingston

[LavaDr4gon]

3 hours ago, DenWellingston said:

Если говорить о самых серьезных, то это:
* дисбаланс командиров. Никто не хочет играть за неудачников.
* Редкие обновления. Я не знаю почему, о, мне лично кажется, что в последнее время было мало контента. Зачем? Ну ... как будто завтра я выложу кучу концепт-арта на эту тему. Как это.
И дело не в содержании. Прицел на винтовку с оптическим прицелом был зафиксирован только после моей жалобы.
* Мне кажется, но физика стрельбы и прицеливания довольно устарели.

Google Translate to save a few clicks:

If we talk about the most serious, this is:
* an imbalance of commanders. No one wants to play for losers.
* Rare updates. I do not know why, oh, I personally feel that there has been little content lately. What for? Well ... as if tomorrow I'll post a bunch of concept art on this topic. Like this. And it's not about the content. The sight on a rifle with an optical sight was fixed only after my complaint.
* It seems to me, but the physics of shooting and aiming are pretty outdated.

[Agent]

I voted for Server Settings and Community.

Server Settings

Much of my frustrations have already been expressed in the other thread, and so I certainly shouldn't rehash it here. Much of those concerns have since been addressed anyways, so I'm not sure if I would still actually vote for this. I do absolutely agree however with other members however that 64 player limits don't seem constructive to the game, and it was certainly not how the game was designed to be played. I hope I can soon come up with an automated soft-player-limit framework to allow the best of both worlds, that we can incrementally continue to improve on over time. I think a lesson that can be taken from here is that striving for a single perfect solution that can be implemented all at once isn't going to be realistic. Instead we should implement something that we know will be an improvement, and we know can continually be incrementally improved upon over time based on some road map and feedback. I'll see if I can't make a post going further into my thoughts here elsewhere sometime soon.

 

Community

The Renegade X community is by far one of my favorite things about Renegade X, and also one of the most frustrating and sometimes outright heartbreaking. There's always been and always will be toxicity, but that's inherit to almost any game or gaming community. However, there's still a lot we can do to improve ourselves to try and become better people individually, and also a greater community as a whole.

Toxicity towards high-skill frequent players is something that was discussed heavily in the other thread, but to sum up my frustrations, I feel many players are treated and harassed unfairly based upon both their skill level and frequency of play. These players aren't necessarily the absolute best in Renegade X, but their solid skills and frequency of play is high enough that they've earned name recognition. I feel that it's important to ensure these players aren't treated unfairly or specially based upon those things, and that we should encourage and assist servers and their staff to try to address harassment targeted towards these players. There's still more we can do to discourage the community from blaming or targeting these players. We should also try to focus on encouraging all players to coordinate with friends, and there's a lot of things we as a community can do to that end; we can try to get more players onto Discord, invite our own friends, skill share with newer players, and overall just befriend other players in-game. There's also things we can do on the development side of things; we could increase the priority of implementing an in-game voice chat solution, we could investigate methods of keeping friends together and adjusting the default balancer to accommodate for this, we can investigate new alternative balancer algorithms that take into account leaderboard rank. This is definitely an issue that should be addressed both as a community and as a development effort.

Toxicity towards new players is very similar to the toxicity towards high-skill players, and many of the solutions are the same to try to address this. Skill sharing and befriending these players will have by far the largest impact of anything we can possibly do. More on the development side, we really still need to start (and finish) the development of a tutorial level, and hopefully we can start prioritizing this once City is wrapped up. If there's any community members who might be interested in contributing to a tutorial level, please reach out to me privately so we can talk about it, especially if you're at all familiar with kismet in addition to level design.

Toxicity towards developers is hardly new, but I do feel it's gotten worse as of late. I really feel much of this is rooted in poor communication and lack of community presence. I'm personally trying to help in this area by trying to be present and active more in the community, such as joining EKT's Discord server, but not every developer is going to be able to do the same. We're already rather strained, so I'm hesitant to encourage others to heavily focus on engaging with the community more as opposed to focusing on the rather large backlog of work we have queued up. I feel like community engagement is a key responsibility that falls heavily upon myself and the other leads collectively, and that we need to step up engagements with the community on a personal level. We need to be active to make sure people remember that we're all human, we love the game as much as anybody, and that we're still kicking.

Community engagement aside though, I do feel that other developers are often unfairly persecuted by the community. This is an issue that's been brought up more than once. A common source of toxicity that's gone on for years is when a bug or other error is introduced -- if it's known who introduced or pushed that bug, that developer is unfairly blamed and bashed by the community. We've done some small process changes to try and mitigate the possibility of that, for example anonymizing the patch notes, but we really need to do a better job about advertising who worked on what features. Claiming credit for work should be done at your own risk, and publicly naming which developer worked on a feature or possibly introduced a bug needs to be discouraged -- an area I can improve on myself as well.

 

 

A good example of toxicity and misinformation towards developers, I feel, is in this very thread:

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

What type of culture does RenX wish to cultivate?

Four/five years ago there was a player by the name DrB0ng who was super passionate about ren and this community. Cultivating an engagement that was exciting and electric. A small band of rebels would stay up late, game together, keeping the NA servers going until early hours in the morning. Most are gone now, but they consisted of amazing people who i keep in-touch with to this day. They include the likes of heliumbunny, battlesausage, sunshine, McJohn, Drewwise, minji, yosh, etc.

Back then, there was a culture that was building towards something awesome. Fun debates would play out like whether flechette should exist as a silo weapon, or what to do with the future of gold rush. We worked as a team. Building towards something. The scale was grander as well. Sporting a playerbase nearly three times the size it is now. Two clans even existed. TMX and EKT. They had this sort of fun combativeness in ideologies. Join TMX and you'd find yourself in a timed match in a race for points, join EKT and find yourself dodging mines in a marathon. When the DDOSing began B0ng took it upon himself to save the game, selflessly doing everything in his power to keep the servers going. 

I bring this up because B0ng was the closest thing this game had as a community manager. They haven't had one since.

 

Who has filled that gap? Two devs, and the culture has changed with it.

 Their personal skills have granted them control of all the community tools in the game, and with it, have slowly enabled the range of frustrations you see mentioned over and over these last two days.  Harassing dedicated players like Whistle from the community for good, pursuing attention seeking acts like deleting themselves from the community only to return with power enabling the behavior, targeting new players in servers and obfuscating the justification with modern day gaslighting. Their lack of maturity and transgressions go on and on in a role of authority. 

 No one can do anything about it.

 They control all the tools. The other Devs have become apathetic to this issue. Allowing them to continue to pound the dirt to the point where now only weeds grow. 

 

Which ultimately gets to the point what do we want to cultivate in this community? 

 For example, do you want the game to grow a playerbase? Beyond the shrinking violet it is now? Then you can't simply say the current situation where a certain dev takes advantage of their position and enables the targeting of new players with their clique is a healthy choice. Voice this concern and you'll be banned or branded as harassing others. As quoted by one of the devs themselves, 'I don't care about the community.' It's a nihilistic self-centered culture that continues to drive people away. They continue to pound dirt.

It's sucks witnessing a game I enjoyed so much 4 years ago become a shell of itself. The only thing that has blossomed is the discord, but I don't want to bring up who actually pushed for that over the years. Trying to welcome new players into a community to something that once was exciting, fresh and new. Advocating to get it on the main page of the website for months just so others can join.

Now I regret ever suggesting it.

I don't want this to be interpreted as any personal attack, but this post is littered with erasure, revisionism, and absolutely unwarranted baseless attacks against unnamed developers based upon what I believe to be a personal and unnecessary grudge. Based on context, the two unnamed developers are myself (see comment about Whisle), and Sarah (see comment about leaving). I try not to respond to these types of remarks, truly, but seeing 7 community members react with "Thanks" makes it clear that I absolutely have to, because there's some strong misconceptions.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

Who has filled that gap? Two devs, and the culture has changed with it.

 Their personal skills have granted them control of all the community tools in the game, and with it, have slowly enabled the range of frustrations you see mentioned over and over these last two days. 

I don't think any developers are responsible for player frustrations around team stacking, nor harassment, except myself for my own inaction until recently. Community members and developers expressing frustrations in both this thread and the other thread are certainly not bad things. These were (and still are) major issues that needed to be addressed, and nobody else seemed to want to be driving a public conversation around the issues. That's why it was important to reply to the other thread, and to this one. We need to drive a conversation so that we can hopefully resolve those frustrations. If you're referring to a frustration other than the ones I've just mentioned, then I apologize for not being able to catch and address your concern there.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

Harassing dedicated players like Whistle from the community for good

This is clearly pointed towards me. I did not harass Whistle, but instead had a very inappropriate outburst. I recognized very shortly afterwards that the outburst was absolutely inappropriate, and as a consequence apologized to @Whistle the very next day. In private we both recognized our own contributing mistakes, most of which were my own, and we moved on. I don't think it's fair to judge me, any other developer, or any other person on earth for a single inappropriate outburst.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

pursuing attention seeking acts like deleting themselves from the community only to return with power enabling the behavior

This seems pointed towards @Sarah.. Sarah is not the first developer from the team to leave as a result of stress, in part caused by the community, but I most certainly hope she'll be the last, and I most certainly hope that her most recent departure is not permanent. I would like to point out that developer departure is not an attention seeking act, and often has permanent consequences (such as the developer simply never returning). Trying to blame someone for leaving for the sake of their own mental health is unfair, absolutely infuriating, and disgusting. I don't believe anybody has chalked off community members leaving as "attention seeking acts" when they become frustrated with player toxicity. People leave because they do not have the tolerance or ability to withstand other people's actions. In this case, Sarah has left because the community has very unfairly targeted her. Nobody should have to deal with the level of unfair scrutiny, public bashing, harassment, and mistreatment that she has endured. If you have issues with any person's behavior or actions, you should try to resolve them with that person. In the special case of a fellow developer, if you're not able to reconcile and truly believe they're malicious and damaging to the community, then please just reach out to me so I can try and diffuse the situation. I cannot resolve issues that I'm not aware of. Bad mouthing that developer you've formed a personal grudge or issue against is entirely unnecessary. Report the issue to me instead. If you don't like whatever response I take, or the lack thereof, then please by all means criticize me to your heart's content. Please however do not bash other developers. It drives them away, which does great harm to the development team and, consequently, the game and community.

I have no idea what "only to return with power enabling the behavior" is intended to mean.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

targeting new players in servers and obfuscating the justification with modern day gaslighting. Their lack of maturity and transgressions go on and on in a role of authority. 

 No one can do anything about it.

 They control all the tools. The other Devs have become apathetic to this issue. Allowing them to continue to pound the dirt to the point where now only weeds grow. 

I'm not aware of any developer targeting new players, or any players. I'm not aware of any developer attempting to gaslight the community. I'm not sure what tools you refer to, all source code is shared between all developers. No single person has sole access to any portion of our infrastructure, access is heavily shared among system administrators. I'm not aware of the development team becoming suddenly apathetic; we all love and adore Renegade X and want to see both the game and the community prosper and have a good fun time. None of this is clear or makes sense to me.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

Which ultimately gets to the point what do we want to cultivate in this community? 

 For example, do you want the game to grow a playerbase? Beyond the shrinking violet it is now? Then you can't simply say the current situation where a certain dev takes advantage of their position and enables the targeting of new players with their clique is a healthy choice.

Again, claiming that developers are targeting players seems unsubstantiated. I've not heard of any such incident where a developer has targeted any players.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

Voice this concern and you'll be banned or branded as harassing others.

I believe this refers to your temporary ban from the Renegade X discord, which was admittedly somewhat improperly handled, but not unwarranted. Your behavior was absolutely inappropriate for the Renegade X discord server, devolving into unnecessary personal attacks. Targeting or harassing members of the Renegade X community, including developers, is against the server's rules.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

As quoted by one of the devs themselves, 'I don't care about the community.' It's a nihilistic self-centered culture that continues to drive people away. They continue to pound dirt.

The entire development team absolutely cares about the community as a whole. One developer making a poorly worded comment a single time does not negate that. It's absolutely fair for developers (or anybody) to get frustrated when they're constantly being bashed or harassed and they're unable to do anything about it. I don't think the development team has anything close to a "self-centered culture", but I suppose our constantly, daily internal discussions on a wide range of topics aren't exactly the most visible. It's not that we ignore or don't listen to the community -- feedback from the community definitely gets read and discussed internally. Just because we decide not to incorporate changes based on a piece of feedback, does not mean we ignored it. It could mean literally anything from "this is a great idea but we don't have the development resources to implement this", to "well we just had an hour+ long discussion on this and it seems like it would be best not to do this based on <x> <y> <z>". We're not trying to drive people away, nor do we have any reason to believe people are actively being driven away. Player activity has been rather stable.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

It's sucks witnessing a game I enjoyed so much 4 years ago become a shell of itself.

I'm very saddened that anybody feels that way.

On 6/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, MintLemonade said:

The only thing that has blossomed is the discord, but I don't want to bring up who actually pushed for that over the years. Trying to welcome new players into a community to something that once was exciting, fresh and new. Advocating to get it on the main page of the website for months just so others can join.

Now I regret ever suggesting it.

We as a team have put a ton of hours into being active on the Renegade X discord, which has really helped improve community engagement. I'm really glad I set it up, and that the community has been rather active on it as well and really thrived. I do still want to improve its visibility on the main page by implementing the originally planned social media / affiliated links block, but yeah, I'm glad we decided to add the Social dropdown menu for the interim time.

[ex_member]

In the past I saw few questionable banns and kicks. I also experienced one too: 
I've got a permanent bann from one of RenX discord servers just because I was joining and leaving the server from time to time.
Apparently admin didn't like this and he kicked me forever.
No hard feelings on my side, just an example of how we as people react to some situations.

As far as I know, Mint stood to fight for someone else who was stressed in the game, not himself.
Which from my point of view is honorable and proves his dedication to the game and the community.
The discussion was taken over to discord and the ping-pong ended as it did - he got banned.
Have you asked yourself, what was in his chest, how did he felt while he was writing his statements in discord and arguing with you ?

Banning someone does not prove that you are right nor does getting personal.
For a conflict you always need at least 2 sides involved, and in very rare cases only one side is responsible for it.

About gettin personal: I didn't see any people in charge banned from the discord when they cross this line.
So, fairness relies on measuring with the same measure for everyone.

Regarding having devs leave, I am sorry to hear that. 
This game really needs more devs.

Nevertheless, being good in technical stuff, does not mean that you are good with managing people.
So, perhaps to lower the pressure on your stuff, be aware of strengths and weaknesses of your stuff and you will avoid situations where people leave due to frustration and issues with others.

People colide in certain moments, but in most cases this collision was driven by a larger time period and by variety of reasons.
Very often, isolating the collision moment will for sure distort the whole picture and do no good, for none of the involved sides.
If one is really interested in helping and therefore understanding the other, you need to find out what has been driving the whole situation into that collision moment.

Everybody knows, that I leave RenX community every now and then, saying: I am out, never gonna get back.
But, after a while and let loose, I take some time and think over everything that happened and try to understand.
And you need to try to change your angle and put your self into the position of the other party and look with their eyes.
After having that done, you will be on a good path to understand the whole situation far more better then looking into it from one side.
When I do that, I ask myself a lot of questions, like:
Was this person showing any other signs of behaving like it did ? If not, what was the trigger ?
What have I done to cause it? Have I done something wrong ? Is there anything I can do to make it better ?
Have I missed something? Does everything make sense ? What would I do in their situation ? Has the other party doen something wrong and why I think is wrong ? What would someone else I know do in that situation ? ...

And it is hard to keep calm in certain situations, we are all humans and many of us tend to escalate sometimes, at least my temperamt does this from time to time.
We also carry many other good stuff in ourselves which standout and prove our greatness. 
All we need to do is let them out more often.

Edited June 11, 2019 by ex_member

[TomUjain]

Anyone who takes up big roles like server admin, mods, devs etc... is going to get a bashing. It isn't right, or fair -- but it is what I knew I was signing up for when FPI became a thing. This, sadly is life. politicians get stick, just as much as MMO devs get stick for nerfs / buffs etc...

'In order to be able to think, we have to risk being offensive' - jordan peterson

That is why I brush off a lot of hate and anger thrown my way with regards to FPI, all we can all do is keep shuffling forward. With all that said I do believe we need to turn away from the 'i'm treated badly' theme because anyone in a power stance is going to get their fair share of stick. Instead, the topic needs to be directed towards why RenX isn't growing and why we can't retain players.

A little case study i'm putting down here to go over a few issues i've noticed over the years

 

• Between 2% to as high as 60% of the team leaving when a building is destoryed - We need an insentive to get players to switch to a losing team when this takes place, or perhaps - find the source of the rage quits (see next point)

 

• Loss of playability - Is the 2nd biggist issue I have noted, next to team performance / balance. The punishment factor in RenX is very high, perhaps a little too high. Although many will disagree with me on the issue, they will agree with me regarding the fustration factor when down to only one building (an offline AGT for example) while having pretty much everything else locked out to you.  FPI has tested the water with this by greatly increasing the ref credit tick (something which at the time was very controversial) but it has been a big hit with the community. No one should have to wait 20 mins to buy a basic unit. Now I am not advocating to put everything back into a destoryed building. I am however saying that the main reason people do leave when a building is destoryed is because that section of gameplay (i.e. sniper) is now locked off to those players. I do believe a strong punishment should still stand when a building is lost but some option should still stand for the team to still play.. Be that 5 min timers, increased costs, limited numbers or all of the above.

 

• Badly formed or poorly balanced teams - We have a clever team shuffler in place, specially requested manual shuffles from FPI (if applyable) and a new project on the way from the devs; I believe this issue (though still present) has largly been removed.

 

• Losing streaks - A problem tied into stacking / bad timing / bad team shuffles etc... no body wants to be locked into 7 sessions of failure. 

 

• Base locking - This is ultimately a player limit issue. If we are hellbent on keeping 64 players, then we need a clever map selector that only puts in maps based on the number of players, removing small maps for full servers. However, I do feel a strong case can be made for 40 - 50 player limits and would reduce several of the problems we are facing currently.

 

• Confusion  - As someone new to RenX, being thrown directly into the heart of a battle, or into an empty server gives a terrible first impression in either case. I highly recommend we remove our clunky server menu and instead add a proper menu that is a bit more user friendly. Options inc;

1. Server menu (opens default server menu
2. Get connected (links to discord, forums etc...)
3. Help
4. Play tutorial

we also need to inform the players of events such as PUGs, as it stands - having a clunky list of servers is disorienting and poorly communicates anything to the player.

 

 

 

[Riou Insuiko]

Hey y'all, it's been a long time since I've posted up on the forum. Been back in the game recently though. Surprising how so many things have changed over the years.

From my perspective the largest problem facing Renegade X right now is not player toxicity, server limits, bugs, etc. It's the size of the community. In other words, the small player base. the This exacerbates a lot of the problems highlighted in this very thread. From my perspective it effects the game in the following ways:

1 )  I very much prefer 64 player limit servers. The chaos on the small maps is what I enjoy the most. Understandably, this may cause some performance issues for some players. It also, to some extent, changes the strategies you can effectively employ on a given map. Some of the smaller maps were  not designed for such a large group of players. I believe that the major issue with this is not the player limit specifically, but the lack of choice. I find it hard to believe that the current size of the community would allow for us to fill up one 40-player limit server and one 64-player server. It's really one or the other. If the 40 player server is being used the 64-limit server will be almost empty, or at most, 20 or so players which I don't believe results in fun matches. This is most highlighted when CT runs constructed matches in the locked 40 server where, essentially, it basically kills other servers during the event.

2 ) Fewer people playing means spending more time playing with fewer people. Some personalities just don't jive well together. For various reasons, some people just don't get along. I actually don't find this to be much of a problem from a practical standpoint. Really, at the end of the day, some people will never be friends. Some might not even be able to get along with another. The problem here is that to play the game you're really forced to put these people together. Where as if there were many running servers, you could more freely associate with who you'd like to play with.

3 ) More of an addition to point #1, but because it's so prominent of an issue, I would say that team swapping (or what might be team stacking) is also an issue because of a lack of choice. It should be the case that some servers allow it, others don't, and you can choose to go where you like. Again, the problem is a lack of choice because of the small player base.

4 ) Server run times. While I haven't done a survey to more accurately assess where the majority of the player base is from, it's safe to say that it seems that most of the current players are from Europe or perhaps even Asia. Most frustrating for me in particular is not really being able to play in the evening. Notably during week nights. I live on the East Coast of the United States. If I wanted to play a match at, say 9 or 10pm, the servers would almost certainly be empty. If not, once the current match is over, the servers will basically clear. This has to be an issue for acquiring new players as well. Imagine being on the West Coast of the United States, perhaps in California or something. You basically need to play during work/school hours otherwise the servers will be dead. A new player looking to check out the game might not even be able to play the game because there's nobody to play it with when they are around. 

5 ) A veteran player base. For a new player, something as simple as placing mines in an 'improper' location will get you roasted. In some instances you might immediately have a vote placed against you to ban you from mining. All without even explaining how or why you are being banned. Simple things like exiting a vehicle to repair it might get you roasted when it gets stolen by another player. I suspect that things like this stack up and result in a lower new player retention rate than one might hope. A solution might be a mix of better tutorials and a more patient community. Not a simple fix either way.

6 ) Server variety. One of the things that is hampered by a small player base is the ability to choose a server you want to play 45 minute matches? Marathon? Snipers only? Infantry only? Well, good luck. Your ability to choose these things is almost non existent. You can either sit in a server as the only person and play with bots hoping that eventually more people will show up or you can play in the one populated server. Not ideal.

These are what I can think of off the top of my head. I'll edit as needed if something else comes to mind.

There are a few other problems that I think should be adjusted on a server-by-server basis but these are more of my opinion and probably less agreed upon as problems. 

1 ) Player voting. I think it should be done at a minimum. One thing that I don't think should be player initiated is a vote to restart the map. This should be something that a moderator initiates. It's very annoying to start a match and lose something like the refinery within the first 10 minutes, only to have an instantaneous vote to restart the map. Like clockwork. Another thing that I believe should be left to moderator initiation only is changing the map. At the end of a battle players are allowed to vote on the next map. It's entirely selfish to start a change map vote the second a match starts because you don't like what most players have chosen as the next map. Voting to change the map should be limited to server crashes where the sever defaults to the first map (I believe it's typically always Under) after it resets. Finally, I believe that initiating a vote to surrender should be limited to the active commander. As you can vote in and vote out commanders, if the majority consensus of your team is that you want to surrender, but your current commander does not, you can vote in a new commander who will act on behalf of the team.

2 ) The sound bug. It's not super burdensome, but it happens at least once every other day for me. If not more. It's not a huge deal but a minor annoyance that would be nice if it were able to be fixed.

3 ) Getting stuck is an annoyance that has caused me to lose a vehicle quite a few times. Where you either clip into an object in front of you or momentum pulls you into something like a rock for a long period of time. Either you want and occasionally you can break free or you need to be rammed by another vehicle to move.

4 ) Some invisible wall placement results in unexpected collision that seems a bit jarring at times. There are some objects like trees that you could clearly walk around, at least as far as size is concerned, but for some reason you simply cannot pass them. I'm aware that in many cases these invisible walls serve as barriers to prevent players from going outside of the map or on top of structures. I think that some serve as a reinforcement of map design, like not being able to stand on a ridge on an infantry path because you're supposed to be funneled down to a more open area before you can shoot into the field. I'm mixed on those. Sometimes it feels out of place, sometimes it makes sense. 

5 ) As an extension of #4, I think that with few exceptions (where it might lead to B2B or it hampers the map design too much) that all maps should feature the 'flying' variant of buildings. Allowing roof access. As part of that roof access, I would like to see the Nod Airstrip changed a bit. I find that at times placing beacons inside the top of the airstrip to be a bit unbalanced. Where players can't effectively jump off of the railing to get inside to disarm a beacon. I think it's a bit too difficult to disarm the beacon up there, but it depends on how many people know how to get in there.

6 ) Map variety is a bit of a struggle. Some maps will be much more popular than others, but I wouldn't mind playing Crash Site, Toxicity, or Mesa once in a while. I mean, Under and Field/Field X are cool guys and gals, but you know, variety and such. 

Well, I ended up coming up with much more than I initially planned to. Ultimately, what I feel needs to be said, is that Renegade X is fantastic. Despite it's problems it's one of my favorite games ever. Having come back recently from an extended break I've had nothing but a blast jumping back into matches with everyone. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone in the community from the developers, to the server hosts, to the players for keeping this game alive and awesome. Hopefully some of these bumps along the road can be smoothed out. I'd love to see a vibrant bustling community for this game once again. 

[Gex_str]

Since large problems you've listed have been done to death in last 2 weeks except the problem with American playerbase being too small I'll try to get answers about smaller problems:

1.Player Voting.
I would disagree on restarting the map. When one of your buildings gets destroyed in first few minutes it's either a quick game of losing or long game of stalemates, which isn't fun(we're playing videogames for fun after all), that's where restarting might give a fair chance for everyone. But those votes pass rarely anyway...
Changing maps would be better to leave for moderators of course, but remember: there might be a time when none of mods will be online or sitting on IRC. Votes to change the map pass seldom too.
And surrender leave for team. Not every team has a commander, not everyone is willing to take that role(some people like me can't even do anything as a commander which is why I hate being one) and since we have democracy in RenX votes, why would an opinion of 1 player suddenly outweight an opinion of entire team?

2.Sound bug.
The problem with this bug is located in the engine itself(Unreal Engine 3). We still haven't found the root of the problem since we don't have people who knows how UE3 works with audio. It will take a lot of time to fix this....

3.Stuck spots.
If you found a spot where someone/something can become stuck,make a screenshot of it and post it on Bug Thread, it will certainly be fixed in next 1-2 patches.
And I don't recall any problems with venicles outside of bug with Stealth Tanks which was fixed long ago.

4.Invisible walls/fences.
Most of them were placed in order to not allow player to get out of bounds or from B2B, but I've gotta agree that some of them are questionable indeed(those invisible walls near silo on Eyes still annoy me). The only solution is to try to talk about specific invisible wall placements on Feedback and Bug Reports and try to find an alternative fix for the place.

5.Roof access on every map.
Those ramps were made for those buildings to have an access to the roof without flying venicle in the first place. They would not make sence on non-flying map except for....giving people one more place to nuke a building(except Hand of Nod and Airstrip where you can get into the building with the help of ramps)?
And some work has already been done on lift in Airstrip(example: map CNC-Paradise), but it's still looks rough. Would be good to see in Airstrip on flying maps.

6.Map Variety.
I would want to see something more than a cycle of Field-Under-Walls-Islands too, but the main feature of those maps is that they are simple in design and easy to understand, which big maps tend to fail sometimes. There some development going with making a mutator which would give a map selection based on current number of players.

[Riou Insuiko]

18 minutes ago, Gex_str said:

1.Player Voting.
I would disagree on restarting the map. When one of your buildings gets destroyed in first few minutes it's either a quick game of losing or long game of stalemates, which isn't fun(we're playing videogames for fun after all), that's where restarting might give a fair chance for everyone. But those votes pass rarely anyway...
Changing maps would be better to leave for moderators of course, but remember: there might be a time when none of mods will be online or sitting on IRC. Votes to change the map pass seldom too.
And surrender leave for team. Not every team has a commander, not everyone is willing to take that role(some people like me can't even do anything as a commander which is why I hate being one) and since we have democracy in RenX votes, why would an opinion of 1 player suddenly outweight an opinion of entire team?

My objection to the quick "restart map" votes is that it invalidates good team coordination or luck on the winning side. It's true that especially in marathon matches something like a refinery can die very early on and the match can last a long time. It goes without saying that people do indeed play for fun and I can respect that someone might not like the prospect of playing an hour long match with a building down very early in the game. 

In regards to changing maps, as you've said, it's seldom that these polls pass in the first place. My concern is not that these polls aren't effective, but that they are used improperly. The 'improper' part is my opinion, not a fact. In my opinion, things like voting to change a map right away against what people voted for is not representative of democracy of fair voting, but just disrespectful and annoying. 

As far as the surrender thing is concerned, it's true that not every team will necessarily have a commander, but the key is that every team has the ability to elect a commander. In other words, your vote counts as far as selecting the leader. It's not that one player's vote suddenly outweighs the opinion of the entire team. The leader, as voted in by the team, is the selected representative of the team. It's a form of elective democracy. To be clear, what I am talking about is merely my opinion. Rather than just stating my grievances, in this case, I am offering a potential solution. If it is unpopular, it's totally fine. I'm sure there is a better solution out there (if we even agree it's a problem) anyway. I think that limiting the commander to surrender polls would be a good solution. Because if the team really wanted to surrender and the current leader didn't want to, the team can simply elect a new commander. 

I don't really have a response to a moderator not being available. I'm not deluded into thinking that people sit around all day with the intention to moderate. Perhaps having more moderators would be a solution to that. I'm not sure. 

In reality I would say that most of the time the polling/voting has positive results. Things like changing the map right away or restarting almost certainly fail. My main objection in all of this is that I see these specific instances as examples of poor sportsmanship. This is, as I've said, just my opinion. I'm not discrediting the legitimate uses for player voting. I just think that it can be overused and abused. It's not a huge deal for me. This is the thread for posting up your frustrations, that's all I'm doing. I appreciate the feedback on what I've said regardless.

In any case, as far as the bugs/stuck spots are concerned, often times I've been too focused on running away to avoid death, only to get caught and die, and during that time I forget to take a screenshot or anything like that. I know of a few places off-hand where there is some odd geometry that causes you to clip/get stuck, so I'll try and screenshot them next time I'm on those maps and report them at the avenues suggested.

[JoeBrogan7]

On 6/6/2019 at 2:32 PM, Radeon3 said:

And for the love of Kane, do something with the 64 player limit already. How many times do we need to bring up its effects on the game?

 

On 6/6/2019 at 3:31 PM, roweboat said:

That being said, I feel all servers should be capped to 50 max, maybe even 32. (I know this has been discussed ad neauseum in the past...)

 

Many of the in game problems go away with less players all playing at once.

I'm late to the party, but I wanted to comment on this sentiment and offer a different perspective. While smaller servers may be beneficial in certain areas, they make other, existing issues even worse. Namely stacking, and issues where players get stuck on a losing team for 4, 5, 6+ games in a row.

Larger servers have a more natural tendency to balance out the gameplay. Elite players have a smaller effect in a larger server, as there are more people around to counter them. Similarly, larger servers also tend to mask the weaknesses of new players more. Teamwork usually becomes the deciding factor rather than the skill of a handful of players on each side. Since balance in this game is so critical, I think this is a very important thing to keep in mind, especially considering how much focus team stacking has gotten lately.

Additionally - it is not a foregone conclusion that everyone agrees smaller servers are better. According to this  poll, we are split nearly 50/50 on supporting servers with 50+ players vs servers with 40 or less. If you factor in a separate poll that UFO posted in that same thread, the split starts leaning towards favoring 50+ player servers.

To paraphrase my analysis in that thread, 43.7% prefer matches of 40 players or less. 56.3% prefer matches of 50 players or more. If you also consider the polls Ryz and Kaunas created in-game, the gap appears to widen a bit more.

[yosh56]

Other... for people PMing constantly in game about things that you're more likely to get answered on the forums. Believe it or not...when I'm playing the game...I'm playing the game.

If I wanted to be in an interactive chat room, I'd play OldRen.