Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad (RO2)

So did beta start?

Looks like we're still waiting for the word.

Edit:

[TW]Yoshiro: Tripwire is working hard to bring you the DDE beta as soon as possible
[TW]Yoshiro: it will be about 4 Gb when it is released, it is NOT yet released
[TW]Yoshiro: when it is, it will show up in your steam library if you purchased the DDE of RO 2
[TW]Yoshiro: When we have more information to share we will post it in here, on twitter, facebook and our own forums if we can reach them at some point. They are still under heavy load
[TW]Yoshiro: As of this moment in time we are still expecting a release today
[TW]Yoshiro: today being in the Tripwire time zone
[TW]Yoshiro: of -5 GMT

I'm in for the regular pre-order. Looks like it will be a lot of fun and am looking forward to hearing how the beta is.

From what I've heard the developers have been working all day to get the beta in a releasable state, and will go ahead with it as soon as that happens.

I set up a GWJ Red Orchestra 2 group. It is a little early, but hopefully it will allow what beta players we have here to organize.

Edit: The beta is out now. Look for a separate game entry for the beta in your Steam library.

Hmm, can I sneak some of this in before my fantasy football draft tomorrow? I'm gonna try.

Installing the beta now! I hope the melee isn't as busted as it was in RO.

I wasn't expecting to find active servers in my neck of the woods, but I found a crowded Korean server with a long ping.

Some early impressions:
- Very punishing game, but very rewarding
- Melee is fun (I don't know if it is busted, but charging someone and whacking them with a rifle is a hilarious one-shot kill)
- Teamwork will be pretty important.
- Don't wander too close to the enemy spawn or you will be instantly exploded (to the disbelief and amusement of my teammates)
- I don't know of any balance issues yet, but I played with both the elite and basic weapons. A better weapon won't make you a better player.
- Cover is really important. Like super important.
- Don't camp, because the death camp will give away your general location and people tend to want vengeance when they die.
- Don't die! It sucks to die because the re-spawns are generally long and the reinforcements are generally pretty low (if at all, a la Counter Strike)
- Play early! No one is good at this game yet!

A couple more thoughts:
- I am crashing a lot.
- Sniping is really really fun. Each team can only have one sniper though.

I'm in, I'll be on this evening sometime (East Coast, of course.)

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596947343293995741/C1CD8B132D0B66F69B1610C3B79E443594490E83/)

What happens when you get to play as sniper in the big open winter map. Lots of kills, but notice I'm not at the very top. You have to complete objectives to get points to get you to the top of the kill board. KDR isn't as important. Notice they don't even show deaths. (Mine was 29:2 :D!)

Edit: Looks like "Ferret" was their other sniper. I'm not sure because I never really got locked into a Enemy at the Gates-esque Sniper battle with him. In fact, it seems like snipers reign supreme over everyone if they stay far enough back (but close enough to be useful). The best way to deal with snipers is to send an assault class with an SMG into the opposing team's buildings. Snipers rarely turn around and they'll have a hell of a time dislodging you.

Edit2: If anyone has crashing problems, go to the Steam forums. There are a lot of issues, but the biggest one is this: If your game does not launch, crashes on start.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/wyIbE.jpg)

I'm rather jealous of you right now Grubber, but keep posting.

I only played it for a little bit, but does the gun and ammo drop separately in this game? I hated that with the original RO, you would pick up a new gun and realize you also need to pick up ammo for it too.

I crash when the map changes, and thats when i'm lucky to get in. I normally crash just as the map loads. None of the suggestions have worked for me yet.

Game starts, but when I select the training mission, I get a few loading pics, then it pops me back to the selection menu. Rinse and repeat.

I think the singleplayer menu is in there, but doesn't have the resources to work, they just didn't bother to disable it. There's only 3 multiplayer maps in the 3 data files.

Ah, cool.

Alright, I need to eat, then I'll be online and in the vent channel until our fantasy football draft starts.

Brutal and quite fun. I noticed there's a lot of lag in the server window. But the game itself is smooth on a low ping server.

Yeah, the server window is terrible with lag. And now I keep getting a crash when I go to it.

It's slightly worrying to hear about the bugs. I kinda figured it would work just as well as RO, but maybe be a niche game. Hopefully they figure it all out soon. The only thing worse than another Elemental is a good game that refuses to work.

Tripwire released a patch today that should address some of the problems. The notable stuff is that they have fixed the server browser and some of the crashes. Also, at least for me, the patch dramatically improved my performance. Overall it looks like the beta is in a far more playable state.

Good, now people can stop complaining in-game that it feels more like an alpha. I was getting annoyed with that.

I always love that about test versions - if you want to play the final thing, wait for the final version. No one is forcing you to test.

Tannhauser wrote:

Tripwire released a patch today that should address some of the problems. The notable stuff is that they have fixed the server browser and some of the crashes. Also, at least for me, the patch dramatically improved my performance. Overall it looks like the beta is in a far more playable state.

I thought the heavy movements and aiming was done on purpose to be more realistic, but that all went away after the patch.

So whats the early read on this? I loved the original until I was chased away by a killer bug I couldn't resolve.

Solid game?

FlamingPeasant wrote:

So whats the early read on this? I loved the original until I was chased away by a killer bug I couldn't resolve.

Solid game?

I'd say it's still too early to give any sort of definitive answer, but what I played last night looked and felt like RO and the new cover and suppression mechanics work great. I like it. A lot. It's like RO, but more user friendly without sacrificing too much (or any) realism.

They put out a 711MB patch today to a 4GB client, and that's day two of the beta. The beta is a small subset of what the final game is going to be.I really would feel bad about giving an opinion of what the final game is going to end up with so much up to change in a few weeks.

A 711mb patch doesn't mean they changed 711mb of stuff. It's just the way Steam's file system works. It could've been a 13mb patch, but touched stuff that was packaged together such that you have to download 711mb again.

Something like that. I hope that makes sense and I'm not discounting your point, just saying the file size doesn't always matter. How many 7 gb patches did the Witcher 2 have that were ~20mb on GOG? I think it was 5 or so.

I'm having a very good time with the beta, even with incompetent players and unfamiliar maps. Some really nail-biting tension in this game.

Had a wonderful bit where I was following one of my team-mates through a building. He went down a set of stairs; I stayed up. He was shot at the bottom, so I continued past the stairs, crouched and counted to five, then went around the corner. An enemy was just going into the room where I had been (the one across the hall that contained the stairs.) I simply walked up to about ten feet from him and nailed him with my PSh.

The sets are very, very well done and the air is realistically filled with dust, smoke, all sorts of crap to obscure vision and remind you that the city is burning down and falling part around you.