I don't think there is much hope for the game at this point

Too many bugs, premature release, not a biggest enough fanbase, incompetent devs, toxic players. The list goes on. I don't know how hard it is to fix bugs in this game, but there are bugs that have been around for multiple hotfixes and game updates. Onee that should have been addressed in beta.
The game is clunky with janky and cheap feeling gunplay. Game Mechanics are horribly inconsistent. The game runs like garbage with losts of stuttering and awful dsync. Almost everything you do in the game feels unfinished and sloppy. Animations, sounds, visual effects sometimes don't work. Ques for capping and defending points sometimes don't play. The map design feels as if all the effort went into making the map look nice instead of it being balanced and playable. I could really go on for a while, but you get the point.

This game really doesn't know what it wants to be. A competitive and fast paced shooter, or a realistic millsim with realistic mechanics? Right it is neither. On one hand, you have vaulting that is unrealistically slow and horribly implemented, and on the other, you have full auto guns that are 1 shot kill. There are weird and frankly questionable timing for animations, with a prime example of how long it takes for you to switch from underbarrel attachments such as smoke and nade launchers. It takes about 3 or 4 seconds for you to transition, which makes no sense because your hand is already on the trigger of the launcher. Other things like reload speed, ADS, switching between weapons are all very unbalanced.

People say that there are no other games like it in the market; and well, they are 100% right. And one of the main reasons I feel like people say that, is because the game benefits casual and nee players. Not in the sense that it is an easy learning curve, but rather the devs prevent and make it hard to get better at the game. And I think a reason it has this feel, is because of the origins of the game. It came from Half Life and was a mod. You could fight pvp, but it was mostly PvE. The devs never had a competitive mindset for the game, and therefore makes it a casual game that you just play for the fun of it. But, because of how the maps and game8is layed out, it basically becomes a meat grinder.

To sum it up, this game is a mess that has really good potential. It just needs A LOT of tweeking, and devs that know where their priorities need to be.

Judging by their Recent Blog posts, I'm pretty sure their heads are in the right place.

I disagree.

Seems you've had a very low opinion of the devs, this game and even segments of the community. Why burden yourself with trying to change others people's minds if you feel the game is a lost cause? Maybe it's time to cut bait and move on. There's no shame in that.

I don't like some games but then again, I don't waste my time on them when I can be focusing on ones I enjoy and still believe have a future.

@CatNipples There's no hope for this game, well said. 100% agreed.

I disagree. They're being open, honest, communicative, and looking towards the future. You should too.

@Demotic said in I don't think there is much hope for the game at this point:

I disagree. They're being open, honest, communicative, and looking towards the future. You should too.

Eh, I see where he's coming from, though. Weapon balance is pretty wonky, with basically everything doing the exact same damage until you get to battle rifles. LMGs being one-shot kills is another issue entirely.

So far, pretty much every time a gameplay mechanic is tweaked, it's for the worse.

-> Hipfire being nerfed to fucking hell with insane amounts of extra recoil makes no sense considering it wasn't OP to begin with.

-> Crouching gives a 40% reduction to recoil (and it used to give a 50% recoil reduction), and this hasn't been changed since the beta. This makes all ARs laser beams.

-> ADS time being linked to total player weight makes no sense from a realism perspective and even from an Arcade perspective, this change seems to help no one except possibly Competitive players as they always run lightweight loadouts.

-> I'm not gonna even talk about the balancing issues with Competitive.

-> I'll just mention the Galil and leave it here. The gun's just terrible.

-> Map design is definitely questionable; it's been a major complaint from Ins2 vets for a while now.


@CatNipples' main point is something I 100% agree with; Sandstorm has a huge identity crisis. It feels like New World has forgotten what made Insurgency really great:

-> Faster ADS time, faster movement, less vertical recoil, more horizontal recoil, faster reloads, and worse hipfire all pull the game towards the Arcade side.

-> Slower turning (at higher weights), slower vaulting, wave respawning, and slower weapon switching all pull Sandstorm towards the Realism side.

What's left in-between? Well, really, nothing. Every mechanic in Sandstorm feels like it leans towards one extreme or the other. The game doesn't feel... balanced to me. Not in the sense of a weapon being overpowered or something, but in the sense that the game seems like more of a mixture and less of a solution. All of these different mechanics just don't fit with each other. I definitely think Sandstorm needs some more time in the blender for it to be a true Insurgency sequel.

last edited by MarksmanMax

An analogy I thought of is, what if you were building a car, but tightened every nut, bolt and screw only halfway? The car would feel like it is poorly put together with only half effort in every aspect. Same with Sandstorm.
I feel like they focus to much on the game as a whole and not the specifics.
Maybe if they released updates to different parts of the game one by one, it could work. Like take minecraft. Each one of that games updates is focused on adding or fixing a specific part of the game. Example, the Aquatic Update, the Redstone Update, the Farming Update, etc.

What do yall think?

I guess you forgot that NWI is still a small studio that made a mistake with promising too much content for their own capabilities.

They discarded all they knowledge of using Source and shifted to Unreal 4, which is a harder to use and learn engine.

And i don't think their publisher Focus would be happy with NWI delaying the release a second time, even though is was neccesary.

I agree with you on some cases, mostly on the thing that the devs don't really know what the game wants to be, i think it will be better that the game will go in a direction of a realistic milsim, pretty sure that's how the wanted it to be, look at the class selection from the 2014 version, you had two separate groups, classes with very specific tasks, basing from their names.

would be best if devs would focus now on fixing the game, and making it consistent, making the performance better, and later, bring classic maps.

This game feels like its on early alpha stages, i did a break of half a year and got new PC that can handle with anything, but its still in the same situation that it was before, performance wise and gameplay, no wonder yo have so small community.

@CatNipples said in I don't think there is much hope for the game at this point:

An analogy I thought of is, what if you were building a car, but tightened every nut, bolt and screw only halfway? The car would feel like it is poorly put together with only half effort in every aspect. Same with Sandstorm.
I feel like they focus to much on the game as a whole and not the specifics.
Maybe if they released updates to different parts of the game one by one, it could work. Like take minecraft. Each one of that games updates is focused on adding or fixing a specific part of the game. Example, the Aquatic Update, the Redstone Update, the Farming Update, etc.

What do yall think?

In this case, I agree 100% with your opinion.
Many times little by little, more progress is made, and sometimes faster, because problems are better solved, focusing more clearly on them.

@CatNipples

You're right in one point: The game has problems with satisfiying two very different audiences: Coop and PvP. If one reads the forums, you will almost get the impression people are talking about two different games. And they don't mix well.
Sometimes they have completely different attitudes and ideas about the game.

PvP

  • balanced weapons
  • balanced maps
  • medium / small maps
  • intense, high adrenaline
  • competetive (against)

PvE

  • balance pointless
  • big(ger) maps
  • immersion / realism driven
  • teamplay comes first
  • laid-back, relaxed
  • cooperation (together)

Doesn't have to be exactly like that for everybody, but both modes are really different. How to mix those?

I personally think this will only get solved with the modKit. Simply because the devs can't solve it without completely redesign the game as it is right now. They have both coop and competetive mechanics in both PvE and PvP gamemodes and you can read and hear in a lot of conversations, that a lot of players complain about this.

Example: While a coop player with realism ideas about the game might welcome realistic sway, a PvP player might just see this as a mechanic decreasing his fun without need. Same with weapons, this time the other way round: While a PvP player would argue weapons have to be restricted and balanced, because only skill should matter, a Coop player might say he would like to have realistic weapon behaviour, because he/she likes immersion and it's silly to have to shoot 2 bullets point blank into a half-naked insurgent to kill him, because there isn't a "bots matter" movement.

The whole game is full of that.
And the problem is: Players who like to play the first seldom want to play the latter and vice versa.

I had a lot of fun with this game and personally think 20 $ for it was way to cheap, even with all the bugs, errors and even though my personal ideas go a totally different path (I'd like to have a coop-realism-gamemode) - I have over 1000 hours, so I paid 0,04 $ per hour (I bought the game twice) - I can't really complain about that entertainment, netflix costs more in two month, one drink costs more in my hometown ... so ...

What's really important though is, lots of players complain about the game, because they really like it and see its potential. Devs shouldn't be annoyed by that, people are rude these days, doesn't mean they don't like the game and appreciate the work the devs did. Quite the contrary: People complaining for month are probably players who really would like to see this game evolving in lots of different directions (aka mods) and will play the game for a long time and even bring their friends into the game too.

So to cut a biblical story short: Things will only improve with the modkit. At least concerning the basic attitudes of players. Why those two distinctive groups haven't been adressed by the devs is beyond me.

Suggestion would be: Make another survey, target specifically coop and PvP players, ask them, what they really miss in the game and what would be the best improvement (with exception of performance issues, I think the devs are aware of that 😉