Project Reality is killing itself. From a fellow asset whore point of view.

[DogACTUAL]

Not at all, i know and come to realize more and more that you and others don't hold any big influence over gameplay and balance decisions. That power lies with people like alon and mats, who do a great job overall, but sometimes players like me get some triggerings with some balance decisions (AA system, for others TOW frontal armour nerf), but that's to be expected and everyone can have a dialoge together as long as noone is completely ignored or his opinion ridiculed/disregarded.

And in many cases what me and others would like to see in the game aligns with your perspectives mostly and if not, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I also have come to respect you way more and think you are a good player, especially since you stopped flaming me so much (should probably purge my signature lol).

The significant influence i am referring to is merely certain people being able to lobby/control who is being allowed entry into lower echelons of the 'team', like testing etc, because they have an ear with the decision makers and can feed them all kinds of BS about people they for some reason decided to hate on. Like 'hey don't accept this guy, he is nuts/hates the DEVs/is trying to create discord/is a trouble maker/is an asshat.
While people like this exist, this label is applied to many undeserving imo.

And in many cases decision makers will take their word for it, because they are their friends and they trust them. This creates an echo chamber and further puts a divide between certain camps in the community. What i realized is that from 'both sides' people have way more in common than they think and would probably like each other if it wasn't for that shifty dynamic going on behind the scenes.

The sad thing is that it is only if at all just a handful of people perpetuating this dynamic, but it thrives because people in the community rarely interact with each other outside of echo chambers.

Rhino probably isn't aware of this much because my guess is that he probably doesn't notice this stuff much because he is too busy and when he logs on is probably only focusing on development or forum stuff.

[[R-DEV]​mectus11]

barely knew any of the devs and still barely know them to be honest and I got in.

[[R-DEV]​mectus11]

I don't get the big deal about being a tester, I believe a lot of people have it wrong, I think some people believe it has special perks to it but it doesn't, here's what testing for Project Reality really is from my view as a tester.

You sit around playing War Thunder until a thread appears for a testing/recording session, you test some stuff for an hour or two and then you go back to playing War Thunder. Once in a while, a developer will @Tester role on Discord for something that needs to be tested that doesn't take more than one person but mostly the developers usually do their own testing immediately after they implement something into the repository.

From what I've seen big changes like a gun damage model or a change of the vehicle damage model requires hundreds of players which this testing team doesn't have so it gets released and the community gets to be involved in balancing that system and it also gets the community involved in the development process.

You get nothing out of testing other than access to a few notable changes that most of them get tested by the devs themselves or you get asked to sacrifice an hour for free time to do it. Testing is nothing special compared to how big developers do it, they pay people to do it.
Personally, testing for a mod/standalone mod is that you're just wasting your free time to make the game you regularly play better, you could also view it that you're testing features that a developer will get to put into their portfolio and you gain nothing by it.

Also the way currently testing is set up is that every tester has access to the repository unrestricted, to sensitive channels on Discord and forum sections where models/code/anything gets shared around that could get "stolen" which leaves them only with a few trusted specific people.

Doing a complete restructure for the system currently could also hinder potential testers who had the chance to have access to the repository unrestricted and contribute to become R-CONs/R-DEVs from inside the team. Not that this means you have to be in the team to become one of these two, you can easily unzip the files in base PR and make something yourself without having access to the repository.
You don't even need access to the repository, there's a bunch of tutorials on the modding forum and I'm amazed how well maintained they are for such an old mod/game, make something and become part of the PR team.

A restructure could also take a lot of time and put a freeze on current content that's being worked on.

Now those trusted people I talked about above probably have a criteria that entails being involved in the community, not having any controversies surrounding you, have been playing for a few years, been involved in various community events and all that.

Personally when I think of who could be a tester, it would be someone like Filamu, WebCole, T.E.D.F, Akiba101, Casualty and PBAsydney those are a few examples among numerous I'd love to see join the team, compared to you and how you seem to be perceived in the community by a number of people; you come up short and you definitely have a number of controversies surrounding you in this community.

I don't know how I got accepted but I can only speak for myself on what I did, I diligently played the game, I provided feedback as a player and have been part of a few clans and communities in as an admin or in a management position.
I've done some contributions to the PRT graphic design-wise over the past 2 campaigns. This has been pretty much what I did leading up to getting accepted as a tester.

At the end of the day this is my opinion as a tester for a few months, it's nothing special, you just waste your own free time. This whole deal about testers being tight friends with the developers seems like a disingenuous attempt that people use when they don't get what they want.

If you really think testing for a mod that's based around a dead old game and you get to put it in a resume as a way to help you get into the gaming industry then you're going to get laughed out of the front door. Even voice actors were given shitty contracts or didn't get paid at all by big studios, read up on the 2016–17 video game voice actor strike.

Here's also a Kotaku article on how video game testing actually works in the video game industry that shines a light on how QA testing actually works in big studios.

[DogACTUAL]

Do you even read my posts before you reply?

I already know what testings entails and did 'boring testing' by myself and like i said dfoot was the one who pushed me to apply in the first place. I thought it would be a good opportunity to help out my favourite game without having to learn how to use the editor and get to know the team behind this game a little bit better.
I also said that now i am not interested in becoming a tester anymore.

I also am not planning to have a career in game development or bolster my resume, i don't know where you got that idea. I guess you revealed more about your intentions and aspirations than mine.

I have like you also been playing this game for some years now, participated in one tournament and multiple events. And lately i am making some efforts to catch hackers to hopefully make a dent and make gameplay a bit cleaner (doubtful).

So i guess you could consider me having made some kind of contribution, although i never donated any money (sry).

I also fail to see what kind of controversy is surrounding me?
Did i ghost hack/hack/grief in the past?
Did i edit .con files and set them to read only so i can spam jump up steep hills and shoot semi auto weapons faster and automatically?
Did i strangle someones puppy?

Can you tell me what i did wrong please?

[[R-DEV]​mectus11]

Originally Posted by DogACTUAL

I also am not planning to have a career in game development or bolster my resume, i don't know where you got that idea. I guess you revealed more about your intentions and aspirations than mine.

I have no interest in working in a rotten industry like the gaming industry.

My post is aimed at anyone who wants to be a tester and my personal experience/view point on it, I even highlighted key words in my post.

My post is my view point on things and my view point could be wrong, I wouldn't take it as gospel.

[agus92]

Originally Posted by DogACTUAL

Not at all, i know and come to realize more and more that you and others don't hold any big influence over gameplay and balance decisions. That power lies with people like alon and mats, who do a great job overall, but sometimes players like me get some triggerings with some balance decisions (AA system, for others TOW frontal armour nerf),
etc

You've been told AA issues aren't balance but broken vanilla code. Fix is WIP.

As to discussing your controversies, if you're truly asking for feedback, I think your lack of flexibility when arguing on forums has hurt your rep a lot. Also holding unconventional views regarding w/e (like equipment) without backing them up (MY OPINION).

Anyway, I don't think this thread should focus on any individual, be it Front, FGG or Dog.

[DogACTUAL]

You make it sound more simple than it actually was, as if i misunderstood broken VBF2 missile glitches as being created by DEVs (it also didn't help that at one point they actually even contradicted this and said AAVs were intended to be like that, only later the missile code thing was brought up). I understood that the recent issues with AA stemmed from VBF2 missile code being unreliable, however the DEVs were still responsible for the recent updates making AA completely broken.

Before the recent updates AA, in practise, effectively wasn't behaving like it does now and was balanced out quite well by various factors. One of them being AA many times just flying past a jet without exploding, which effectively offset the issue and made it far less prevalent. The system was pretty much balanced by playing various engine glitches against each other, pretty fucked up if you think about it. But it worked and produced a generally balanced AA system.

But then as i understand, the implementation of a higher 'tick rate' for missiles in a recent update grossly amplified the (already in missile code existing) issue and made it very apparent, because now missiles would not just fly past jets without exploding anymore. So missiles ingoring flares suddenly became a very big issue.

So the DEVs should have never implemented this without first finding a solution for the code that makes missiles ignore flares . They are still responsible for introducing a change that lead to this result.

About me, all i have been hearing so far is basically, i critized some decisions the DEVs made and you think i presented flawed arguments, but what does this have to do with being eligible for testing? This is basically admitting to excluding people on basis of them just disagreeing with one on certain things.

[Rhino]

I won't say much on this issue now but what I will say is that in basic principle, we agree with you that the "higher tick rate" has made things overall worse for the missiles than before but that isn't to say that we should just totally revert it. I think that there might be some happy medium between what we have now and before. Post v1.6 I hope we can try to address this and some other issues in PR but now is simply not the time.

[Anderson29]

Even the smallest changes to core gameplay need to at least be discussed and approved by the internal team so even if "certain clans" do have the ear of one or even a few of our devs, they still need to post these ideas on the internal forums and make a compelling case as to why to implement them. Many devs have felt over the years, including myself at many times, that it is to hard to make changes to the core gameplay of the mod. Hell there is one idea I've been pushing for, for about two years now about the introduction of a new "Medium Anti-Tank" kit to bridge the gap of the limited amount of HAT kits and to give our recoilless rifles and other AT weapons / Warheads more exposure (most at just alternative HAT kits that never see the light of day like the SMAW for one of many examples) but that has met stiff resistance for being included, mainly for artistic reasons but also gameplay ones (but most of the team are for it in terms of the gameplay side) and as such, still hasn't seen the light of day even thou to implement it with a few placeholders, isn't that hard.
[R-DEV]Rhino
PR:BF2 Developer

do you think this has anything to do with "asset whores" wanting to keep less AT on the battlefield?
i wont deny that i have often thought that some clans/persons have had some type of influence that made the game less of what "I" thought was the ideal PR. For example my favorite PR time was .98 or .99 and the Rallies. They were temporary lasting only 2 minutes max, no mater what and it was an awesome time for tactical infantry play.

If my memory serves me correctly, the main complaint was an empty battlefield and transport back to the front-line. That may have been true but it would of been nice to see how this type of rally would of played out with the introduction of 100 player servers bringing/forcing more players to be infantry. But i think there was a week or so of this rally testing after 1.0 that were some of my best experiences in PR.

I also hate how the grappling hook and everything it stands for with this being a reality mod. if anything it should of been limited to scout/spotter and not to the too common breacher kit.

the thing i did most in PR was probably inf SL and my fondest memories of PR came from taking random players (sometime newbs) in my infantry squad and giving them the best experience they ever had. (So they told me at end of rounds).

So in my opinion, why this game died is a combination of things. And i can only speak of Infantry as because that is all i did.

1st and primarily because infantry lost its tactical game-play to the rally and rally hunting. (edit- it would be nice if fob creation could only be made within a certain distance of a captured point in order to some how make a sort of "front line" to the game.-just a random thought)

The weapon are lazors and are no way this accurate IRL.-mainly reffering to asset machine guns

Too many scopes. i understand that scopes are indeed more common today than ever in our history but the way they are implemented in-game is what i have an issue with.
IRL you can ID a target man sized 500m away easy. In game w/o a scope i would say a man sized target at 150-200m is a couple of pixels.
IRL a scope can see a lot further but still the max effective range of a rifle is still 500m
so in-game your max effective range w/o scope is 200m while with scope is 500m
so in my opinion scope zoom on common infantry battle-rifles and machine-guns needs to be brought back to 2x or 2.5x magnification. not the current zoom magnification.
i know IRL its 4x or 3.5 on Acogs blah blah blah but for game play purposes i think it should be reduced. end result would possibly be longer firefights and more tactics.

The grappling hook is not common IRL and makes building up defensive positions in-game pointless. Do some of y'all remember the CQB for caves/bunker on that Russian/militia map. Some of my fondest memories involved that defense and attack. i loved doing both sides on that map. smoke, frag and clear. There would be a lot more of these situations if it weren't for the grappling hook.

these are my opinions as an infantry player for long time in PR and IRL.

also as was said before. the player base gets older. Jobs, wives, kids....i just hope this game is still around in 5 years or more... with my implemented infantry changes listed above..lol
PR will always have a special place in my heart.
thanks DEVs

[DogACTUAL]

Yes, now that the change was made it would not make much sense to remove it again since technically it improved the missile code. If a way is found to also address the missiles ignoring flares the AA system probably will be better off in the long run than it was before. I also saw a video from a DEV demonstrating a new system for controlling the position of missiles in the game or something like that, where he fired an SA-7 and it spun around in a circle, so really hyped to see what new changes will lead to concerning the AA system.