Rant on Reddit about AAPG, some good takeaways

Twitchr.Carbon8

Copy Pasting from Reddit, some good feeback on the game though

I was an avid AA2 player and has played around a little bit with the beta of this game, and the beta that the army calls "final version". Alot of hate, and alot of love overall.
But, last night the server I was playing on switched to a remake of SF_CSAR, and let me tell you, it was fantastic. It was a user made map, but a darn exact recreation. All the same clutch spots are there, the objective changed, but the gameplay was awesome.
If any devs read this subreddit, YOU NEED TO PROMOTE THIS. Look at CS:GO, the most popular maps? Remade maps from CS1.6, and CS: Source. I hope all the other awesome maps are remade, and functional.
TL;DR- This game in my eyes got 50% better. Just my opinions on all of this of course.

The custom maps are actually really cool. It actually made me wonder
I liked aapg originally, though not that much. For me, it seemed like free to play FPS like Combat Arms. Even though I know it is a FTP FPS, it did not feel polished, somewhat broken, performance issues, terrible sound,and just felt unfinished. The recent patches they have really stepped up there game.
It may just be nostalgia, but playing some of these old AA2 maps has made me think maybe the core of what was making the game were the maps. I have some preference on the aapg maps, but none are really spectacular. They are ok, kind of similar to Combat Arms(and I played that game for like 1 weekend, 5 years ago). It seems like in AA2, almost every "good" spot in the map also had a "counter spot" and that "counter spot" had another "counter spot".
To my point, Mt Mckenna bell tower. If you were up there you had an advantage on most of the peek spots on the map. However, there were also 2 or 3 windows through windows(there were many, one that comes to mind was a lower charlie window, through upper charlie window) you could spot the bell tower and take him down. Also very susceptible to nades. If one of your teammates called out belltower, you could rotate to a great spot. Communication was key, and fantastic. And the Yellow-Upper charlie battles were great, very well balanced, and peeking skills brought winners. Church to A, Lower yellow to front church/grey. Tunnels to Tunnels. Everything seemed balanced.
It was very skill based as opposed to what AAPG feels like 50% skill, 50% luck. Hipfire, and even zoomed fire seems random, sparatic. In AA2 firing a burst, I always had a good feeling where each of those 3 bullets were going. You could learn either by playing alot, or practicing, firing at blank walls. When doing that in this game, it seems like you get a different result every time. I know this may seem potentially more realistic, but definitely takes away some of the fun, and the sport of the game.
/rant, though it may start up again later

https://www.reddit.com/r/AAPG/comments/3t60zy/sf_csar_remadepsa_to_aa2_players_who_werent_aware/

4DChessGenius

I do agree that there should have been a push for AA2 maps a long time ago. I know people who do mapping for a living aren't super crazy about remaking someone else's work, but to neglect popular AA2 (and even AA3) maps was just a bad move. It could have set the foundation for the game, generated buzz and got a steady player base. Then the Devs could have started pumping out new maps. Instead we got a version of bridge that plays entirely different than the original (not like I liked the original anyway), a version of hospital that didn't even feature the game mode of the original (and instead the inner version ended up being popular and the full version hardly played), and a version of Urban Assault that is kind of the same, but different in such major ways that it plays entirely different from the original.

Maps like McKenna were promised but never delivered. Pipeline was "blown up" in AA3.

CSAR, Weapons Cache (which I'll admit doesn't play too great in this game), Insurgent Camp, Border... some of the most popular maps in AA2 were never considered.

Oh well, I hope that the promised AA2 remake contest actually comes to fruition, it would be a nice shot in the arm for the game.

Another side effect of this was that the UMM scene's first major push was "Remake every AA2 map!" Instead of people putting out great original maps, they were busy remaking old ones. Granted, even for me, remaking a couple old maps definitely helped me learn the editor, but how many original maps do you know of that are really popular? Not many I know.

P.S. Bring back VIP for Hospital!

-=}WoLvErInE{=-

When I read things like this , it makes it worthwhile having spent 4 months on it. Thank you for the kind words!

[FILO]_cpt.thc

AA2 remakes was my dream when i heard AAPG was coming out. A remade hospital map, I thought sweet!!! Can't wait to play VIP..... hopefully one day we can have some of the great maps from AA2/AA3.I would love to see Radio Tower back with 203's,m82 and such. As for CSAR you did a great job updating it,love it!

=IK=Doba=

Its just a review from a random who played AA .. no different than what we do here.. however it seems most of his arguments are map related.. somehow according to him maps from AA2 will save this game .. meh..

I dont disagree with him that Maps can help but he talks about it like its the holy grail.. comes across like another one of those guys that are stuck in AA2 times.. no new maps can be good.. only AA2 maps or die !

-=}WoLvErInE{=-

I don't think playing aa2 maps will save the game. It's a combination of many things. I've been mapping for a very long time and even with 16 + years of experience it is still very very hard to make a good map. It's not just about adding few routes, creating choke points. Many things need to come together to have a successful map. However, I can also tell you designing towards aa2 style or type of map, you'd have a lot more sucess. Believe it or not things like door breach, 203, incendiary had a lot to do with the game, more than you think. It kept players engaged, it kept you on you toes. It made the game for challenging. We're they noob sticks, maybe... But that's what made the game what it was. It was special, you had to work for everything you got. [TOS Violation] now you just join any server pick what ever weapons you want and go destroy. Everyone running around with freaking scopes and same weapon. It's all about who has the better hand eye coordination.

Look I'm not saying make aa2, but use what made the game successful and build of that.


Every weapon not having scope will help, add aa2 design maps will help. Adding squads for better teamwork will help. Bring things like, grenade launcher, door breaches, RPGs back, make them limited to certain maps it will help. Enemy spotted lol will help. Vip will help.


You know what everything I posted above does? Keeps the player engaged, keeps them interested, keeps them coming back for more. Now it gets boring real fast. You can only do repetitive work for so long before you get tired of it, of course unless your inner player, not sure what's wrong their.lol.


Add things as I suggested make maps that are more goal oriented, and come back in about a year or two and let's dicuss this again. I guarantee you, we'll be talking about the sucess of the game.

Keep it this way, with one bedroom apt maps. Run and gun, every map at few minutes and we'll be looking for another game to play soon.

And I hope to god I'm wrong, because there is great potential to built from now. Don't limit the game, expending will help it.

I truly have faith in the Devs that most of those things will come, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

Crushmaster

Good post, Wolverine. Love your positive attitude.

RedBaron64(ITA)

Wolverine made a good and valuable point. The game is too fast in many views. The standard 4 min round is a big mistake. For flo maps you consider 15 rounds standard; in about 30/40 min you finish the entire match and in a 2 hour session you could play 3 o 4 maps in this really fast way. No weapons to unlock, no abilities to unlock, only rank and some mimetic/optics things. Really after 1 month you have no goals about this game, that become 'boring' too fast. The UMM are not enough because the userbase is too small and poor minded, full of 'bedroom map' oriented players that aren't be able to think play in no way except 1vs1 'ok corral' style (and to play good in that way often they use massively mouse's macros). Sometimes i think that all new player's generations are a bit retarded....no way to learn a big map, they need a stamp and running in a circle. But when we see at arma 2/3 statistics we see 40.000-50.000 players so we can say that the players are not a problem. They are there but they dont want play AAPG nomore.
The game should be slower or nothing should save it. No way to compete with commercial 'run and gun' games. And Dev's should give it a 'soul' and very detailed and unique gaming aspects.
The standard way of play should become slowed but how?
- no more automatic reloading;
- no more 'superman' changing of weapons;
- no more 'weapon's use' when you are running
- for flo map 5 min rounds
- for bdx map 3 min round
- comp mode 'fast way of play' only for bdx maps
- promote UMM maps (contest are not enough) through a cycle in which publishers and beta testers are involved to upgrade e promote the maps that check the requirements decided by devs. Tens of maps should become officials in this way. Probably most of them will not be of maximum quality but there are already many maps that could be played very well. I think about an 'accepted in game' mode (revised every month) that automatically update client and server side.
Sorry but i want advise you that i dont know if AAPG could survive to some new published game like 'Squad' or similar.....

4DChessGenius

Right now, with the way the game is designed, none of the standard maps need 5 minutes or more.

I've always been a fan of slowing down the actions and such.
-Automatic Reloads
-Extremely quick weapon and grenade changes (I think it takes almost the same amount of time to look through the scope of the M24 vs. switching weapons).
-Almost instant ready after sprinting
-Sprinting and reloading in the same speed as if you were standing still

All of these things need changes. Add in doors. Do all of that and then you'll be able to make a better argument for extending round times. As it is, only some of the UMMs need it.

.dcG-Colts^

RedBaron64(ITA) wrote: »

Wolverine made a good and valuable point. The game is too fast in many views. The standard 4 min round is a big mistake. For flo maps you consider 15 rounds standard; in about 30/40 min you finish the entire match and in a 2 hour session you could play 3 o 4 maps in this really fast way. No weapons to unlock, no abilities to unlock, only rank and some mimetic/optics things. Really after 1 month you have no goals about this game, that become 'boring' too fast. The UMM are not enough because the userbase is too small and poor minded, full of 'bedroom map' oriented players that aren't be able to think play in no way except 1vs1 'ok corral' style (and to play good in that way often they use massively mouse's macros). Sometimes i think that all new player's generations are a bit retarded....no way to learn a big map, they need a stamp and running in a circle.

esnes yna gnikam ton era ouy

SOPMOD

This thread reads like a deja-vu.

From the very first day of open BETA, which is when i rejoined AA, and probably even before that, people have been pushing for an "AA2-like-game".

Then people always came in yelling "AA2 clone this" "old people that" "stuck in the past". Nobody actually ever asked for an AA2 copy btw. We just want it to be more like it but it's extremely difficult to make it more like AA2 if you don't set out to do that in the first place. All the features together is what made the game. The features, or lack of features, that one might say are less important or not of these modern times are all things that defined AA2.

- doors
- longer round time
- animation speed
- sliding
- anchoring
- spawning area/barrier/start countdown/round end music
- 3D spotting
- map dots

These are just some things i can think of off the top of my mind.
---
We need official AA2 remakes because they need to be remade completely. If i remember correctly, even the character model height is not the same as AAPG so you would need to resize every single thing on that map to make it feel like "yeah this is great".

But not Harbour assault type of remakes, they play way too different than the original. If it doesn't play like the original then it's pointless.
---
All other things aside, the DEVS and whoever is in charge there need to be in the mindset of making an AA2 successor instead of an original AA game or we can just keep the forums going for another 2 years posting the same things over and over. I don't think change is very likely anymore though unless we start talking about AA5.

=IK=Doba=

Someone just posted the monthly numbers in another thread... change should definitely be on their minds..!!!. you can't possibly think this game is a success with 500 ppl playing

Bashar_al-Assad

RedBaron64(ITA) wrote: »

The standard way of play should become slowed but how?
- no more automatic reloading;
- no more 'superman' changing of weapons;
- no more 'weapon's use' when you are running
- for flo map 5 min rounds
- for bdx map 3 min round
- comp mode 'fast way of play' only for bdx maps
- promote UMM maps

N

=IK=Doba= wrote: »

Someone just posted the monthly numbers in another thread... change should definitely be on their minds..!!!. you can't possibly think this game is a success with 500 ppl playing

7 Dec Peak - 1497
Peak after release - 2129
Obviously, looking at the leader board of weapons training, there are a lot more unique players.
So not 500.
In the top 100 peaking steam games, the 100th one has a 3,591 peak in 24 hours.
Obviously im not saying AAPG is viral, but more players than beta are playing.
Pardon my english.

=IK=Doba=

7th Dec peak ..1497 ??

Peak would be total players on at one time.. ~1500 players would equal to 62 full servers of 24 players ..in what AAPG dream...

1497 total players maybe since midnight to now..

Keebler750

Those numbers are consistent with what I've seen on the Steam page http://steamcharts.com/app/203290

=IK=Doba=

Ahh so it is 24hr peak..ok

~ 600 players at a time.. meh ..is that something to be proud of? Or a sign for change?

Twitchr.Carbon8

Also, the numbers from steam may be misleading. The launcher is tricky(I honestly have zero idea why it exists) and stays open accidentally in the background on my desktop, as I'm sure it does to others. Can we get actual in server player numbers?

Keebler750

Doba....24hr peak means the highest number of players on AT ONCE during the last 24 hrs. (not total number...)

And yes, I've heard there's some inaccuracy in that number due to how Steam does it.

=IK=Doba=

Keebler750 wrote: »

Doba....24hr peak means the highest number of players on AT ONCE during the last 24 hrs. (not total number...)
.

:*

4DChessGenius

I know I often open the launcher, maybe play a for a bit, do something offline, go into the editor, whatever, then when I'm done I often just leave it open. I often also see friends where it says they are playing AAPG, but they aren't in any servers, probably doing the same thing. Those things definitely inflate the numbers.

Also, peak numbers will probably occur in the late afternoon when US schools are out and people from Europe are still online. May have some overlap of people home from work and late night Euros as well.

=IK=Doba=

Ok so 5pm Est would be the peak I think.. late EU time, just after work...and school..before dinner lol

And when have you ever seen ~ 62 servers full of 24 guys?

Come on.