39 replies to this topic

[Zenothist]

Hi Protozoan,

 

You are correct, we didn't advertise multiplayer as much in relation to how much work that was put into it. 

 

Though it isn't mentioned verbatim that multiplayer is possible, I supposed that such a feature was a given, since it was previously available in earlier versions of the mod as well.

 

Perhaps I'll rephrase the description and its bullet points later to make that more clear, but I am unsure if that will have a major impact. Of course, we want people playing online just as much as you do, which is why there is a tremendous amount of work being done to bring Mental Omega to CnCNet 5.

 

Just speaking from personal experience here, every person I know who plays the mod primarily wanted to play on LAN-games with friends.

 

Perhaps because it's just as much fun to muck around in the game with buddies as it is to win games from strangers? Who'd be I to stop them? If people prefer having fun with that than being online, then more power to them.

 

All in all, you have some good points, and we'll try to get as many people online as possible, that's all we can do.

Edited by Zenothist, 17 December 2013 - 08:56 AM.

[lovalmidas]

What Zenothist said.

 

To think I started playing on a multiplayer server only when I was kinda forced to as a tester in the dev team.  (Yes, I never played any game in a multiplayer setting, excluding browser games. That's until MO3.0 happened.)

[Protozoan]

Hi Protozoan,

 

You are correct, we didn't advertise multiplayer as much in relation to how much work that was put into it. 

 

Though it isn't mentioned verbatim that multiplayer is possible, I supposed that such a feature was a given, since it was previously available in earlier versions of the mod as well.

 

Perhaps I'll rephrase the description and its bullet points later to make that more clear, but I am unsure if that will have a major impact. Of course, we want people playing online just as much as you do, which is why there is a tremendous amount of work being done to bring Mental Omega to CnCNet 5.

 

Just speaking from personal experience here, every person I know who plays the mod primarily wanted to play on LAN-games with friends.

 

Perhaps because it's just as much fun to muck around in the game with buddies as it is to win games from strangers? Who'd be I to stop them? If people prefer having fun with that than being online, then more power to them.

 

All in all, you have some good points, and we'll try to get as many people online as possible, that's all we can do.

 

I think this could possibly be the first time someone from the Staff has agreed with something I've said.

 

I dunno if it'll have a major impact either, I was only speculating, though it'd be good to see more than 10 people in the lobby when I jump on in the afternoon.

 

It is more fun to play with friends than strangers, and I would be but I currently don't have any friends who actually play Red Alert, or even any of the Command & Conquer games, let alone Mental Omega.

[Zenothist]

It could also be due to your time zone. The majority of our players are from the States and Europe, so it's generally much more active then. You can see the server activity for Mental Omega here. Maybe then you can pick up a pattern and join when the most amount of players are online.

[Abood]

I'm going to assume that many people are hesitant to play multiplayer for the same reason I was: people don't like to lose.

 

I don't mean the lack of sportsmanship, rather that it's really boring to lose most of the time. I'm gonna say it: being good at competitive RTS is hard and counter-intuitive. Some people prefer not to play rather than try and then ragequit.

 

What sets RTS games from, say, FPS games, is that in RTS, you're responsible for many things at once, including but not limited to, building your economy and military, defending your base, and deciding whether resources go to defending what you have or building further (military vs economy). The responsibility for getting right the many things that can go wrong puts stress on the player, and that stress is multiplied in multiplayer.

 

Most casual players don't like the stress, and just want to build a huge base, get a lot of money, and train a big army of awesome units and use them against the enemy, all at their own pace. AI opponents provide that, and with a little bit of challenge to boot (mental AI).

 

For comparison, in an FPS, all you have to worry about is usually obvious, such as taking cover, shooting accurately, sticking with your team, etc... Because it's fairly straightforward, even bad players have a chance of winning a little, even if they end up dying alot. In RTS, good players will always triumph over worse ones.

 

Of course RTS multiplayer can be very fun, especially with friends, but it might not be worth playing with a stranger if you're not very good.

[Zaker]

I agree with Proto,playing MO 3.0 on Cncnet is something really nice and would profit from some advertising,and among all the free online methods I've tried for playing C&C games I find Cncnet the most stable and straightforwardly easy to set-up,especially for MO.

 

I hope that once CnCnet 5's support for RA2/YR gets released and people would play online more,the same would happen for MO3.0. 

[Petya]

I think advertising wouldn't help much. Who wants to play online, plays online. We can't force everybody to play online if they don't want to.

[Seth]

Well I am up for a short 1vs1 if anyone wants, busy with exams right now.

Need to study becuse is the last year and I have that big exam..

 

I also became anime addicted over night and kinda forgot to play any games T_T

[UprisingJC]

Even when RA2/YR were still one of the main popular games, most people only played singleplayer.

 

Possible reasons are:

1.They either play the game just for fun, and A.Is are challenging enough for them.

 

2.They don't want to lose. It's just inevitable that beginners have to encounter a certain period of time that they'll lose almost all the matches.

I was also one of those who only played singleplayer. 12 years ago,I hadn't played RA2 online for 1 year until one of my friends known on the Internet asked me to give it a try. Of course I got pwned hard by a lot of people, but I still kept playing multiplayer because I thought it was fun and thus tried to learn how to get better in playing this game. However, NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO PUT TOO MUCH TIME ON GETTING BETTER, BUT THEY ALSO DON'T WANT TO ALWAYS LOSE. THEY JUST WANT TO PLAY THE GAME FOR FUN. You can't blame them as not everyone wants to play games competitively, and no one likes losing. That's why most people only play singleplayer.

 

3.Mental Omega 3.0, in my opinion, is more than just a mod. I'd treat it as a new game. Units that still exist in MO 3.0 mostly don't act the way they do in vanilla RA2/YR.

 

An deployed elite G.I can outrange a sentry gun or a pill-box in vanilla RA2/YR, but in MO he can't.

A flak trooper deals with vehicles and structures VERY EFFICIENTLY in MO, but he doesn't in vanilla RA2/YR.

A navy SEAL can take out a conscript squad by himself and destroy a building by detonating just 1 C4 in vanilla RA2/YR, but he even has a hard time dealing with just 4 conscripts by himself and 1 C4 can't destroy almost all the structures.

 

Even existing units have received a lot of changes in MO, not to mention that there're many new structures, units and of course new maps that need to be learned and it takes some time.

 

Some people tend to know the game better before going to play multiplayer. Take myself for example, I started playing MO3.0 when it was relased on 11/30 last year, but I hadn't played any online matches until 12/20 or even later.

 

If people don't want to play online, there's nothing you can do. Just keep playing the game.

 

 

4. Mental Omega 3.0 is a new mod, but it's based on Red Alert 2 and its expansion pack: Yuri's revenge and they are BOTH OLD.

Red Alert 2 was released in 2000 October, and Yuri's Revenge in 2001 October. Now it's already 2014. Most people have either turned to other games or stopped playing games and it's hard to try to get most of them back. Well I was one of those who had turned to other games(Dead or Alive, a FTG, just look at my avatar) and decided to get back to play this game with the mod MO 3.0 activated because of having a good impression on Mental Omega 2.0.

 

I first started playing MO 2.0 in 2008 as one of my friends recommended it to me, and it took me roughly 3 weeks to finish all the missions in it. I just got impressed with how the missions had been designed. They were way more challenging than those in vanilla RA2/YR.  It took me 8 days to find out how to clear the final mission of each faction on hard difficulty.

Edited by UprisingJC, 22 January 2014 - 08:58 PM.

[Pasidon]

I'm going to assume that many people are hesitant to play multiplayer for the same reason I was: people don't like to lose.

Or that the game is ancient, regardless of the mod being new, and people have better things to play online.  

[Speeder]

Having 30 players at the time when RA2 has 80 and YR has 30 is quite good in my opinion. Most people prefer singleplayer indeed so you can't use the number of 40000+ downloads as a reference.

[Protozoan]

After seeing CnCnet crap itself with just 30-50 players, I think I'd just rather keep those numbers. Ya anyway, I get the thing about Single Player, I never played Online til' Mental Omega, I have to say 1 thing though, most of the players I've encountered seem to be fairly new and around the same skill level, if players jumped on within this time frame they have a likely chance of being equal to the current players, it didn't take me long to pick up multiplayer, a couple of matches or so. Hating to lose to the point of where you don't even want to try is just horrible sportsmanship. If most of the players are veterans then it shouldn't take them long to pick things up quickly either.

[X1Destroy]

I've never played multiplayer before MO, but I did win and lose many times.

I haven't ragequit much since the first day I play the mod. Except when the lag is so terrible.

However, I would prefer to play compstomp with my friends instead whenever I play multiplayer. It's more fun, and the battle always last longer.

Most people who played this game before are good at anti AI tactics, but horrible when it come to PvP so it's reasonable for them to stay away from that.
 

[Zaker]

*Thinking of ways to get more people to MP...
I remember that on one of the streams someone mentioned tutorial missions being recreated (not sure if true or not) but if it is,it might be a good idea to add some advanced play mechanics that play a great role in MP matches,such as scouting,build orders,micro,rushing etc..

[Speeder]

I believe that when stability of the service and the game improves there will be more players on multi.

[SlySluavity]

I'm a bit reluctant to join, myself. It's not so much that I hate losing, but to be swept over by the current metagame. I like to take time and keep my forces varied -- as in using a plethora of units that compliment one another, rather than rush to send T3 vehicles en mass. I honestly feel little gap to be had in these tiers, too, so it's off-putting. While I can adapt and have respectable macromanagement, it's not conducive for my variation and to keep up consistently as PF. So long as tech rushing remains so potent, it might drive away interest.

[Speeder]

RA2 metagame didn't tier up, MO metagame tiers up too quick, huh. I'll be improving this according to the feedback.

[HoodedWanderer]

Hi people. I've been playing Mental Omega online for a week or so now. Just wanted to shout out and give the dev team a great thumbs up for this awesome work, it is not often projects of such a scale come so far in the modding scene. Really legit despite issues and niggles.

 

Been going by the nick DarkWanderer on CnCnet, not sure if I may have met some of you already.

 

I'd like to find fellow players interested in competitive online play, maybe arrange a few 1v1's / 2v2's what not. It's a real shame that such an amazing work has such a small MP playerbase tbh, it's really like an entirely new game that captures the essence of the original.

 

Also, how does one go about donating (sorry for off topic!)

 

Cheers

 

The Wanderer

[Speeder]

We're working on that option, however it's not available yet. We'll let you know about further developments.

[HoodedWanderer]

Cool.