Red Orchestra 2 Beta is Now Available on Steam

I hate you all. Bought. GMG for $33 Deluxe Digital version. Got my key instantly so my PC is dl'ing the beta for all those worried about whether GMG gave beta access. Used the summer savings code 20SUM-MERSA-VINGS to get it.
 
BrLvgThrChmstry said:
Ditto here. So um, this my first purchase via GMG... how do I download the beta?

You'll get a code (i.e. xxxx-xxxx-xxxx) that you can use on Steam to download the game and the Beta if you bought the DELUXE Edition. Steam starts automagically downloading BETA then.
 
BrLvgThrChmstry said:
Was the key for the beta emailed to you or does it show up in your account on GMG?

Both. Go to "Your Games" and click on "download" on the RO2 icon. It then shows you the code.
 
Dina said:
Walking is _really_ fucking slow and boy does FuriousFighters encourage camping. Lots of camping in general in this game. Objection could have been more prominent as I often have no clue where to go or get lost in the maps.

That said, the hitbox detection is really good and picking off people with a kar of mosin nagant will never get old. It's not great, but it's enjoyable.
Press M to bring up the map.
 
I posted this in the first impressions thread on the TWI forums:

The game didn't make a good first impression. I had almost ragequit 5 minutes in because I didn't know about the U3 redistributable yet. Once I ran that the server browser was still janky as hell but I could at least join a server without constant crashes. The first 30 minutes or so weren't a lot of fun. One shot kills get really annoying when you are trying to learn how to play a game. I almost ragequit again.

Then the game sucked me in. I got to learn the maps a little, the mechanics became more familiar and I was scoring my first kills. I also started noticing the surroundings. This isn't a great looking game, but it does ooze atmosphere. The maps are full of little details and look very believable. The audio is very atmospheric as well. The gunfire reminded me of Bad Company 2, it sounds very realistic. The screams of dying men can be creepy as hell by the way.

All in all I enjoyed myself a lot during the two hours played the beta. Here are some of the things I noticed, either positive or negative:
- The game only records your kills, not your deaths. I like that. It stimulates experimentation and makes the punishing nature of the game bearable.
- Character models, either enemies or friendlies, clip through each other. I don't like that. Such an unrealistic feature in a realistic game sticks out like a sore thumb.
- As mentioned I really like the audio, but the gunfire could use just a little more oomph. It should be louder compared to the other sounds in the game.
- I didn't use the cover feature that much, but I do like how you move up a little when you switch to iron sights. It makes popping in out of cover feel really smooth.
- The game runs really well. Aside from the server browser I encountered no technical problems.
 
Corto said:
Both. Go to "Your Games" and click on "download" on the RO2 icon. It then shows you the code.


Ulchie said:
As soon as you buy it, it is displayed on the page showing purchase details.


Thanks for the information guys, appreciated. Went to my games, copied the key below "The following key may be required to play your game" -- opened steam, add game, activate a product on steam, pasted key and.. nothing but this "please activate the original game.. something about activating the original product first" -- not sure if I'm doing something wrong or what but I'll call GMG support tomorrow I guess.
 
Dakota47 said:
- Character models, either enemies or friendlies, clip through each other. I don't like that. Such an unrealistic feature in a realistic game sticks out like a sore thumb.

I have to agree with that one. It makes no sense.
 
I for one love the clipping models - clipping through teammates should be the norm in multiplayer shooters. Nothing more annoying that getting stuck in a crowd of dudes in a hallway. Although, clipping through enemies is a huge pain, especially in melee situations.
 
wdpylytle2nxtefc5s0nwl1sx5uhaowk.jpg

"Grandpa, tell me what you did during the great battle of Stalingrad."

img_14631_red-orchestra-2-heroes-of-stalingrad-remembering-trailer-gamescom-2011.jpg

"Not much actually, spent like 30 minutes staring at walls and spawnscreens, never saw the enemy before they kept getting me. I did fire a couple of shots in their general direction though, that earned me a medal. And also 15 years in a gulag for wasting ammunition."
 
Keasar said:
"Not much actually, spent like 30 minutes staring at walls and spawnscreens, never saw the enemy before they kept getting me. I did fire a couple of shots in their general direction though, that earned me a medal. And also 15 years in a gulag for wasting ammunition."

Fear not gramps, once you get to know the maps you will know in which direction to fire. :)
 
Qwomo said:
I for one love the clipping models - clipping through teammates should be the norm in multiplayer shooters. Nothing more annoying that getting stuck in a crowd of dudes in a hallway. Although, clipping through enemies is a huge pain, especially in melee situations.

No thanks, I completely agree with Dakota47 on this one. And.. it worked! downloading beta now!!! ...really is a steal at that price.
 
Dakota47 said:
- The game only records your kills, not your deaths. I like that. It stimulates experimentation and makes the punishing nature of the game bearable.

Seems minor but I would imagine there are a lot of people that would like this feature. Never understood displaying losses or deaths.
 
BrLvgThrChmstry said:
No thanks, I completely agree with Dakota47 on this one. And.. it worked! downloading beta now!!! ...really is a steal at that price.
I swear I has no reason to lie. Everyone that can, pre-order through GMG with the summer savings codes and get the deluxe for $33 or the standard (no beta) for $27.
 
Initial thoughts from someone who normally doesn't really enjoy HC shooters because they are badly shoehorned into CoD/BF:

The Bad

- The UI in Counter-Strike 0.5 was more intuitive than what is in RO2 at the moment. It shows it's mod roots very clearly here.
- Nothing is explained, the binds are moronic: Cover, bandage and use are on the same key? Ugh.
- Game modes: It just dumps you in with no real direction on where to go or what to do just ATTACK THIS or GO HERE. It doesn't explain how you go about doing this.
- No weapon sway when standing, almost no weapon sway at all. The only disadvantage is you're a sitting duck.
- The game doesn't explain where your ammo count is or how to check your magazine/clip.
- The animations on the weapons are... functional: No *pang* of a clip flying out once it's empty and the DoF of the hammer on the rifles isn't clear so you can't tell when you expended your last shot. It doesn't convey that urgency and panic that you're out. It feels like you're controlling an emotionless robot.

The Good

- Guns hurt. A lot. You can, if you're lucky, take two shots maximum. But it's balanced in the grand scheme of things so not everyone can have a 1000m sniper rifle with no bullet travel time.
- Bullet pen is intense and really effective.
- The sound is great, you can tell if someone is in the same building as you and it's an arse clenching experience looking around walls.
- Suppression works great. Your aim goes off your vision becomes blurred and you are forced to retreat for a good couple of seconds.
- MGs are great. Really enjoyable to mount one up on a wall and take cover behind it when you need to reload.
- Battles aren't won by who sees whom first unlike HC modes on other shooters. Weapons to hand, suppression and sheer panic of seeing someone else effect you.
- Recoil. GLORIOUS FUCKING RECOIL ALL OVER MY FACE.
- Death animations and sounds are incredibly bleak. Nothing like your team mate gurgling as he slowly dies next to you and bodies go limp if you clip them in the head, legs or heart.

The Ugly

- Shitty performance on a 580 with a i5 sandy bridge. 50 frames!
- It crashes often and takes me upwards of 5 CtD to get in to a game and then there is no promise it won't crash while you're playing.
- If you increase you're FoV past 70 you can see through some walls if you're up next to them.
- The cover system is janky, some times it works and some times you get stuck trying to escape being suppressed.
- The server browser is slower than Brink at launch.
- Learning curve: Steeper than the Cliffs of Dover. With no tutorial to let you even grasp the basics it just chucks you in and expects you to swim. Some may like this, most may not. It's a great game underneath but Tripwire do their very best to make the experience obtuse and frustrating as possible for you initially.
 
Also, objectives grant you a lot more points than kills. In the servers I'm in, you can get 15-20 points (or something like that) for assisting a capture, but only 1 point for a kill.

Furthest kill I've gotten is 162m with a standard Mosin-Nagant. Who needs scopes? :D Man, I love that rifle.
 
Spookie said:
- Learning curve: Steeper than the Cliffs of Dover. With no tutorial to let you even grasp the basics it just chucks you in and expects you to swim. Some may like this, most may not. It's a great game underneath but Tripwire do their very best to make the experience obtuse and frustrating as possible for you initially.
No bots in the beta then? It helps to learn the maps in a bot environment rather than online.
 
Yeah, I have a feeling that I'll suck at this game for a LONG time, but that's OK.

In my first match of RO1 (just tried it recently) I was riding in the gunner seat of a tank when I saw a group of three troopers coming our way, and I quickly filled them full of lead. Then in the ticker I see "Snuggler teamkilled xxx" "Snuggler teamkilled xxx" "Snuggler teamkilled xxx". I felt like such a dick.

My first goal will be to learn not to kill my teammates, then I'll focus on killing the enemy and capturing objectives. Can't wait.
 
Spookie said:
Initial thoughts from someone who normally doesn't really enjoy HC shooters because they are badly shoehorned into CoD/BF:

The Bad

- The UI in Counter-Strike 0.5 was more intuitive than what is in RO2 at the moment. It shows it's mod roots very clearly here.
- Nothing is explained, the binds are moronic: Cover, bandage and use are on the same key? Ugh.
- Game modes: It just dumps you in with no real direction on where to go or what to do just ATTACK THIS or GO HERE. It doesn't explain how you go about doing this.
- No weapon sway when standing, almost no weapon sway at all. The only disadvantage is you're a sitting duck.
- The game doesn't explain where your ammo count is or how to check your magazine/clip.
- The animations on the weapons are... functional: No *pang* of a clip flying out once it's empty and the DoF of the hammer on the rifles isn't clear so you can't tell when you expended your last shot. It doesn't convey that urgency and panic that you're out. It feels like you're controlling an emotionless robot.

The Good

- Guns hurt. A lot. You can, if you're lucky, take two shots maximum. But it's balanced in the grand scheme of things so not everyone can have a 1000m sniper rifle with no bullet travel time.
- Bullet pen is intense and really effective.
- The sound is great, you can tell if someone is in the same building as you and it's an arse clenching experience looking around walls.
- Suppression works great. Your aim goes off your vision becomes blurred and you are forced to retreat for a good couple of seconds.
- MGs are great. Really enjoyable to mount one up on a wall and take cover behind it when you need to reload.
- Battles aren't won by who sees whom first unlike HC modes on other shooters. Weapons to hand, suppression and sheer panic of seeing someone else effect you.
- Recoil. GLORIOUS FUCKING RECOIL ALL OVER MY FACE.
- Death animations and sounds are incredibly bleak. Nothing like your team mate gurgling as he slowly dies next to you and bodies go limp if you clip them in the head, legs or heart.

The Ugly

- Shitty performance on a 580 with a i5 sandy bridge. 50 frames!
- It crashes often and takes me upwards of 5 CtD to get in to a game and then there is no promise it won't crash while you're playing.
- If you increase you're FoV past 70 you can see through some walls if you're up next to them.
- The cover system is janky, some times it works and some times you get stuck trying to escape being suppressed.
- The server browser is slower than Brink at launch.
- Learning curve: Steeper than the Cliffs of Dover. With no tutorial to let you even grasp the basics it just chucks you in and expects you to swim. Some may like this, most may not. It's a great game underneath but Tripwire do their very best to make the experience obtuse and frustrating as possible for you initially.

Agreed with every single point.

Also, try turning down those shadows to High. Huge performance boost with no noticeable loss in visual fidelity.
 
DyslexicAlucard said:
I've only played about 3 hours of the game so far, but I'll try to put my experience into words.

To put it simply: it's intense. No other FPS creates tension like I had with my (short) time with RO2. When you're sniping from a window, there's a real palpable feeling of being completely vulnerable while looking for someone to shoot. Pretty much any hit will kill you, if not cripple you, effectively making you easy prey if the enemy is in any position to follow up.

It gets even more intense when you have to sprint across an open space to reach an objective. Sure, you have to do similar things in COD and BF, but if you're hit in the leg in COD, no biggie. Here, you immediately crumple, leaving you easy prey for another shot. When you do make it across a large gap with bullets flying all around you and whizzing past your head, it's exhilarating. It really feels like you accomplished something when you get past the enemy's defenses.

It's just as satisfying on the opposite end: when an enemy is charging toward your objective, pulling up your rifle, leading, and sniping them in the chest feels awesome, especially with the way the bodies slump and scream/gurgle realistically--not for the feint of heart. It's also nice to know that you stand a chance against groups of enemies. Don't get me wrong, it's always better to travel in groups. Yet because a single shot can easily take an enemy down, if you take a group of 2 or more enemies by surprise, you can wipe them out before they can really retaliate. This is much more difficult to accomplish in COD, because enemies are bullet sponges there.

The sound design is also awesome. All of the ambient sounds as you walk through a creaky, decrepit building add to the already sky-high tension, especially when the echoes of footfalls are heard all around you. Distant gunfire sounds exactly like it should, and comes from where it should--to the point where I used it to keep tabs on where the battles were taking place more-so than the mini map.

The musical score is also really well done and gives the game an epic feeling that I don't get with CoD's score-less multiplayer matches.

Aside from some rather (OK, incredibly) annoying bugs--like one where, at random, I'm instantly switched to the opposing team when I kill an enemy--I'm having a blast. I was certainly getting frustrated when I first started playing (ask Salsa!), because I'd walk into a map I'd never seen before, go to a window/corner/wall, pop up and get sniped before I even saw anyone. This was pretty much my first hour. But once you get your bearings and find a loadout you like, it's an experience I think no other game really duplicates, especially in today's COD-clone games market.

Oh, and please make sure that who you're aiming at is an enemy. Occasionally TKing is certainly understandable. I was just as guilty as any when I started out. But getting TKed 3 times in one round, forcing me to spend most of it browsing GAF while I was waiting for another spawn to be earned, suuuuuuucked.

You summed up my feelings perfectly :)
 
Danne-Danger said:
Oh oh oh, can helmets fly off? Please tell me that they can!

I don't know about flying off, but I've noticed about... twenty floating helmets near where an enemy was killed. Sometimes in a state of blinking in and out of existence. Kind of immersion breaking.

Though in its current state I'd be surprised if anyone could play this game for five minutes without seeing something going real bad in the physics / animation department.
 
I've never been in combat, but I can only assume this game is the closest it comes to simulating the "feeling" of the lethality of war. Fuck windows, man.
 
Keep in mind that if you want the game to improve, please submit feedback on their forums. Provide dumps for crashes. Give detailed descriptions of your issues. Be a good beta tester!
 
I haven't been able to play a game since I downloaded it last night. The server browser is extremely laggy -- so much so I can't select a game. The "Find Match" option doesn't do anything for me either, other than cause the game to crash.
 
killamockingbrd said:
I haven't been able to play a game since I downloaded it last night. The server browser is extremely laggy -- so much so I can't select a game. The "Find Match" option doesn't do anything for me either, other than cause the game to crash.

Load up server browser and let it load for a while, when done go through and right click>add to favorites on the servers you will be playing.

Next time you click on server browser just quickly click favorites and join game from there

Max said:

Does that stop crashes? I thought that was only for no servers showing up?
 
TheExodu5 said:
Keep in mind that if you want the game to improve, please submit feedback on their forums. Provide dumps for crashes. Give detailed descriptions of your issues. Be a good beta tester!

It's probably a good thing that I enjoy playing half-broken games. As frustrating as falling through world geometry can be, I'd gladly take a game with ambition over yet another Some of Thing 4 clone.
 
killamockingbrd said:
I haven't been able to play a game since I downloaded it last night. The server browser is extremely laggy -- so much so I can't select a game. The "Find Match" option doesn't do anything for me either, other than cause the game to crash.

I have good news for you!

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=58473
[TW said:
Ramm-Jaeger]Or you can just wait a few minutes for the update we're about to release

Looks like an update is going to come out to fix the issue.
 
Huh, guess I should refresh before replying to a thread.

Anyway, this game is kinda frustrating. Being killed and not know who killed you and where from is confusing. I'd also like some sort of hit marker so I don't have to look to the right hand corner to find out if I killed someone or not. A tutorial would have been nice as well, took me a hour of game time before I realised there were objectives to complete, I thought it was just TDM -_-
 
I just installed the patch and now I can't interact with the menu at all.
Mr. Snrub said:
Great. Post-patch, every server I try to join says it has DLC I don't have.
Yeah I was hoping that wouldn't happen.
 
Mr. Snrub said:
Great. Post-patch, every server I try to join says it has DLC I don't have.

I think that's just a mistake. It's properly a server-client version mismatch. I got that message for a few servers, and finally found one that worked.

Patch is working great! Server browser is as smooth as butter!
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
I WANT IT NOW

But I need someone to confirm that I can play the game on my crappy PC:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+ @ 2.9 GHz
ATI HD Radeon 4670 1GB
4GB DDR2 667 RAM

:(

Goddammit, GAF, how scalable is this game?!
 
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