Maybe, rhetorically, had we had a pay to play model, this game would be completely abandoned alongside almost every other paid title of similar age… But it’s hard to even conceptualize, the entire gameplay loop would need to be different. I guess the campaigns could be released as expansions, but that’d run into the same issues. The game is already on the older side, further development needs some type of financing.
Regarding rushed campaigns and poor decisions relating to premium content, it moreso indicates that they are having trouble keeping players hooked. Improvements are made to all game aspects, but they arrive slowly compared with new content.
As things are now, releasing new content so you are never “maxed” IS the gameplay loop. Matches feel rewarding because you progress in various ways. But you hit a ceiling, and then what?
HG used the war map to alleviate this, each battle affecting the war. We need something like that. A true endgame. Then they could probably get away with focusing on troubleshooting, but people NEED to be playing regardless of new content, or that is impossible.
They released it 13 days before the end of the current battle pass, which makes no sense. I think it was accidentally released. There’s almost zero advertisement too, which is absurd for a huge update like adding the Pacific front.
pay to play model would probably never work. you would need finished product, and then it would just become something like x video game series… release buggy mess and then patch it for next 2-3 years for decent game.
with freemium model they can have incremental development alongside wide bug testing without players being upset cause they didnt get full game when they paid for it. but then again they have over priced premium squads compared to similar games.
biggest problem i see in this game is that it is 10-15 years lagging behind other similar games. for “MMO” it is pathetic to see 10v10 games, considering that battlefield had 64 players for 20 years and they only market themselves as multiplayer fps. planetside 2 is real MMO fps and it is some 8 years old and can host 100+ player battles on multiple locations on same server.
This is the end result of the current level tree and unrestricted game,.
I once suggested adding the spawn Score System to limit and enrich the player’s choice, many people objected.
So what is the end result of the unrestricted? Now, They couldn’t even add the Stug A to the current Moscow campaign, so they made it a premium vehicle, even at a high price, unacceptable
is sliding into an abyss where game content cannot be added in the right way,
A mod editor might save this, but there’s still a lot of work to be done by the dev team
The development team is really working hard, they have added a lot of game content, but these game content cost the development cost but cannot be widely used by players, and potential consumers such as me are also unable to pay these fees most of the time
This new release was so bad my friends have now uninstalled… I cannot continue to play the game as its not fun enough alone. Truly frustrating how bad Gaijin did again.
Yes this update has been rough around the edges but I’ve still been enjoying the new campaign. And even though the road this game has been following has been a little rocky, I’ve still been satisfied with the game through and through
This game slowly gets better and grows, little by little; and I’m personally happy with it
This is me just personally complaining but getting stomped by premium americans in the pacific campaign is just digusting. I get it you need money but to make playing so much more painful for the free players is sad.
Imo the update should have come with the new battlepass.
Not only would that prevented some bugs, but we would have also get some gold oder shit and more orders for the new campaign. I liked that back in SG.
You made a lot of good points. But the point, the main key point, should be the development and improvement of the existing elements in the game, taking into account player feedback, using the same financial resources for which new “candy” is thrown now, so that, as you mentioned, “players are hooked”.
In other words, it is a lazy business model that has apparently worked, which is why there is no longer an effort to fundamentally change something, even though the approach was different at the very beginning. This is exactly why players get bored when this whole thing is just copy-paste.
Personally, in general, I would like to have just one big campaign, with sub-categories that are constantly improved, looking for a synergy between arcade and realism.
As for H&G, well… It was a phenomenal game for its time, unmatched. But the old RETO guardians destroyed that game, for the same reason. Didn’t listen to the players and didn’t manage to use the available resources.
I believe the realism aspect has overall been a severe limiting factor on development. Maybe there could be “historic” and “nonhistoric” battles, it would be pretty easy to just throw in Japanese VS. Italians on a Berlin map and let them fight. It’d be fun.
As far as gameplay loops and player retention, I always preferred extremely slow cosmetic unlocks. Near-unattainable achievements work too. It doesn’t take very much investment at all to make a rewarding “loop” since the gameplay itself is already enjoyable. But there has to always be something to work on, or work towards.
H&G was my favorite first person shooter until their team decided to mongle me. I bought some XP for an unlock, money gone but no XP, support doesn’t respond. I cancel payment. Next day acc is locked. “we will unlock your account when you send the money”
I had over 2000 hours on that game and I never touched it again
Yes, very scummy move indeed. But I hear a similar story, not for the first time. The customer support team there was just pathetic.
I joined H&G in 2016. And it was my main WW2 shooter, which I dedicated a lot of real money to, very wholeheartedly supporting this project, hoping that it would be a revolutionary game that would allow a small Danish company to explode the WW2 shooter market. I remember very well the moment when the game was still in the BETA stage, when it seemed that so little was missing to make the game great. At that time there was a great creative community that endlessly created amazing ideas on the forum. Dev streams have been steady, promising.
But there was always a feeling that something was being done up to a certain point and then everything was just frozen. They were so confident in their abilities that when they finally built their game engine, they just shot themselves in the foot, completely ignoring the game’s smart monetization model that would keep them moving along. All that gold crap just didn’t work. Like for example, they released their first battle pass only last year. (when not a single person remained from the old RETO team)
The turning point was when RETO went to Steam, announced the game - finished. At that point, they just didn’t have any more money. The RTS side of the game was completely dropped, all updates were made with new skins and new toy updates, they released bots, because there were simply no more people to fill the ranks of empty players.
Now there is a new team that easily supports the life of a morally outdated game, just gives in to the flow, and lives, from the dedicated players out there. H&G is a perfect example of how simply wrong management policies and too much trust can destroy a great project.
I’m from Denmark myself, so I really wanted to support the project as well. Lots of potential. It was fun while it lasted, but the mismanagement was too much at the end.