Hello stalkers.
Our very first streaming with Klean_Uppguy is done, RoH itself was not shown but we talked with community about our project. We also have a statement to make regarding Coop and server hosting.
The information given for past 2 years has been false, RoH is multiplayer standalone game hosted by us. Provided by our own servers. No CooP or server hosting will be available to you guys. You will be able to play with your friends on our servers we host, so in a sense it's a "coop".
This came out as a "shock" for couple of us developers. As this information basically was total opposite what we have been thought for past 2,5 years. When we joined RoH team we had a team member who was responsible for information sharing, and we had no reason to doubt him as he was our bridge to Russia and RoH information. At the time we were "International Team of RoH", nowdays there is none of that, just 1 team consisting people from Russia and all over the world. Maybe our previous "lead" of international team might have gotten that information wrong too at the time, but since he quit on RoH team over a year ago and is unavailable we might never find out which it was. To this day it just never occurred to us that the information would be wrong, and that we have been trusted on spreading the word and handle information management for community, no other Developer thought that we would be telling wrong information. So we never looked deeper into Server hosting and CooP after couple months had passed. Heck I mean even RoH ModDB site was written with (online coop mod) when recruiting started for RoH. I wonder why the hell no one noticed that before... Only just now in recent stream we learned some new things and that RoH itself has been under the work from 2014, but online components and code has been there longer. It was passed on to our founder who is working on RoH this very moment. So RoH itself is only 3 years old, but some parts of the code is 6. So that's where we made a mistake telling people "RoH has been under work for 6 years" when it actually has technically been only 3. We know few of you really wanted local LAN, Co-Op with only friends, but sadly none of that will be there. RoH is multiplayer game, standalone, provided by our servers.
I want to say that the team is sorry that we made a mistake like this. And this will not happen again.
RoH is well underway as it was always meant to be.
We updated Q&A too, if there is not information you seek in the list. Ask in comments, I update the information on the list. You can find it in Articles names Q&A 2017.
Stay safe stalkers. And good hunting.
Well, that's sure strange, but nonetheless I am still excited for the multiplayer experience. As long as that too doesn't turn out to be a hoax
Well that would destroy the idea of stalking in the zone with other people if we took multiplayer off from that. Mod itself is server based.
>RoH is multiplayer standalone game hosted by us. Provided by our own servers. No CooP or server hosting will be available to you guys.
This has pretty much killed any excitement I've had for this mod then, not only does this mean a few friends can't start their own game without worry of other people ruining the fun but modding potential is dead and long after RoH is finished and the team moves on to other things it will die.
Sorry to say this guys but this is a poor decision and not one I support, hopefully the team reconsiders this, or someone else comes along and make an actual Co-op mod for STALKER.
Agreed, this is the end of my support for this mod, sorry guys, you messed up.
Who knows, maybe things go in the direction. Gotta finish the base game first and play around with the servers a little bit.
I agree, if for whatever reason the servers go down no one will be able to play the game and it will in a sense be useless. They definitely need to reconsider this before the game is fully released.
Is this mod owned by Electronic Arts by any chance? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Twitch.tv
Recording of the stream here.
Maggy_ 9hours ago
Is this mod owned by Electronic Arts by any chance?
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Ray-Of-Hope 6hours ago
Twitch.Tv
Recording of the stream here.
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you don't get it
"simcity reference"
Might just sell DLC package of "host your own server" with 10.000€ each.
Why is it always that when something about RoH comes up, I start thinking "That sounds kinda fishy..."?
Please, don't get me wrong. I DEARLY WANT to believe and support this project, but until now this always has been a wild ride regarding any kind of information, be it on actual progress, development itself or features planned, with a lot of questions marks popping up everywhere and everytime you try to explain RoH to us.
I hope it turns out the way you want and ... actually kinda now "promise" us, because it is still an interesting project nevertheless.
It's just been bad communication and information sharing at first for the most part. Within the team that is. And silly thing like this passing trough my radar. If I was an *** I could had just kept it myself and at the release date drop the bomb "lol nope, no hosting for you people" What do you think? should I had kept things quiet?
Nah man, better now than on release day.
I'm not surprised about the reaction here though, as i see it, the STALKER fanbase is compromised of people who like customization and mods, they are all about shaping their experience with this game series to what they find exiting, be it atmosphere, realism, gameplay and what not.
Being limited to locked, managed, always public servers is the polar opposite of what made the STALKER series so appealing in the first place.
All that is needed for a good coop STALKER experience is adding support for 2 to 4 players via dedicated server and fixing the bugs that arise with that addition plus maybe adding a less robotic AI for human enemies, that's it, everything else has already been done before by one of the many mods out there.
But maybe RoH will be all of this and all the bickering was for nothing.
Ah well that sucks. I was looking forward to a private Coop game with friends and not DayZ-like shoot-on-sight deathmatch. Also considering that a large part of the playerbase would speak russian, that is another reason I am turned down by the fact there wont be private servers.
Ok so you might be interested about this conversation I had in FB with follower.
John: At least think about some sort of system that prevents members of the same faction from killing each other. It could solve the issue with shooting on sight / getting killed 2 minutes after leaving the spawn or base, at least to some degree. Leaving full unrestricted (outside of the safe zones that is) PvP will be a huge mistake, majority of people will attempt to kill others on sight for loot or just to make sure that they don't get downed themselves.
Say whatever you want about your project being "hardcore", "immersive" or whatever else you want to call it, restrictions have to be made in order to prevent your community from immediately turning into a toxic shithole.
Stalker: Ray of Hope - There is karma/reputation system planned for RoH. If you act like an *** all the time you gonna have a hard time to do any trading with factions and even zone starts to **** you up more often. Gonna explain this in more detail in future Dev Diaries.
Stalker: Ray of Hope - There is way more NPC's roaming in the server, and unlike players. If you keep killing your faction members, NPC's shoot you on sight. Even bandits have some hierarchy. And trading will become so damn hard.
Stalker: Ray of Hope - Players can also put "WANTED" list of players with price on their heads in PDA social network. There is a flavor of being an outlaw but its not as fruitful as "hard work"
John: Thanks for the reply.
I was wondering, if there are negative effects in your karma system, are there also any positive effects? Like, let's say if someone were to get a really good reputation, would he be able to access better faction gear / get discount in trading or some other benefits? This system would promote playing according to your faction's rules / code without enforcing specific choices all the time.
Stalker: Ray of Hope - Yeap! Also by doing jobs/quests for your faction give your reputation and access to better gear with traders. Some gear is only available at certain faction. Being all neutral and working for everyone gets you a lot of different kind of gear but not the best there is to offer. But also offers you better trading routes. Zone karma is also present, as in how zone reacts to your actions, punishes or rewards the player. Interesting stuff indeed. Random encounters, the stuff we talked about in latest dev diary.
John: Thanks again, it's good to know that.
This reassures me a lot
You have all the support from Argentina Stalkers!
"few of you really wanted local LAN, Co-Op with only friends" - not few, many of us. Sadly. I, personally, dont want dayZ-like expirience with tons of sweaty tryhards and cheaters, and it's inevitable.
What are you going to do when all servers become full and queues become almost infinite? It's not a abstract situation - your mod unique and popular.
If you dont have infinite resourses to host tons of servers, only solution to this is dedicated and private servers. I just dont understand why we, players, cant host our servers.
Maybe, it's a matter of intellectual property... Eh
"Not few, many of us."
Even if it isn't that many, I suspect that it's the more dedicated fans (inc those who would support the project) that will be disappointed by this.
:( and we get this after that amazing dev diary video...
Kinda came from the left field and kick in the groin eh? sorry...
Ray of "Hope"?
Ray of poop should be fine by now.
I hope it does not turn into Day of Rope for you.
Well it's a Day of Nope over here
Sorry but no thanks, most people following RoH are not interested in another awful dayz clone, particularly one made by a development team that clearly have no organization and a severe lack of communication, why would anyone even bother when people can get a similar experience with Escape from Tarkov, made by a much more professional team.
"awful dayz clone"
Making DayZ clone is easy, we would release the game now and finish it after 6 years.
Also, Battlestate Games has their own vision of Tarkov. We have our own vision for S.T.A.L.K.E.R RoH. Different games. Similar experiences can be found in many shooters. But as Zone is rich place to explore and play in I personally think RoH far surpasses any other this type of game. No place like the zone.
DayZ'd. The fact that they made it always online multiplayer means that they want to have control over it, so it won't be a surprise if they add microtransactions too. Also it's a big **** you to everyone who doesn't live near your servers.
Can't have micro transactions and ****, you know that GSC owns S.T.A.L.K.E.R right? And we are gonna get servers rolling around the world.
How do you plan on maintaining all the servers around the world when the mod is free?
The fact that there was confusion over this issue could be forgiven, however to launch a funding patreon, to which I am signed up to, is an altogether different matter. I signed up on the fact that people would be able to host servers for friends to play on, and as mentioned so clearly above in other comments, that isn't going to happen. This now leaves me wondering, is my continued support worth it?
This isn't the first time the goal posts have been moved.
That is true, and we hold no grudge over this if players do not want to support RoH. We are still going to work on it in the vision it was intended, we hope in the end when people get to play it and hopefully find it awesome enough to continue playing.
I know that for the guy behind RoH moddb I have a reputation of a local shithead (I know I'm harsh/annoying at times, but I feel I'm being lied to whenever there's news regarding this mod) but god damn that actually hurt me, I was pretty much sold when I saw weapon modification panel
I'm willing to bet that "misinformation" isn't actually real. It's probably
1. if players are able to host their own servers, the main (MMO-ish) server won't be as popular as they would want it to, because...
2. dead playerbase doesn't yield good enough money from microtransactions
Don't get me wrong, wanting money for your work isn't a bad thing unto itself, cutting features in order to maximize profits is
Now the mod seems very unattractive. There won't be any mods, that's what made STALKER games live to this day. Most of the world excluding Russia will be ****** because they probably won't bother with different hosting locations (I base it on how they treat the international team).
I realize that this decision is probably a matter of protecting your code (from "easy" cheat development), but they could try to release it on Steam. I'm pretty sure it'd get greenlit easily
Unless it all isn't a hoax of course
Oh man, It's ok to have doubts but not once I have lied to the community. This whole ordeal was an error in our team management. In Russia RoH was never "marketed" as CooP/host your own servers. But outside of Russia it was. I just accidentally found out about whole (coop was never inteded, mutliplayer only from our own servers)
When I started working on RoH I asked these basic questions about RoH, and I told everyone what I heard. You can't even fathom how ****** up team management we had on the first year alone. On first year, me and around 15 other people were working for RoH almost everyday. And only 1 guy with russian knowledge was handling the affairs with main team. This created tons of problems, and this is the aftermath of that. He is no longer working in the team and there is no longer "International Team" Right now I am in direct contact with everyone essential on the team. Sadly sometimes we need couple other dudes in meetings because of the language wall.
And of course, our founder wants to protect his code and game. As RoH tries to achieve status we can actually make a living by doing it. But as of now GSC holds the right, so we are just working on RoH and try to get it to the point we can play it.
Once way back we talked about micro transactions on meeting, if there was one it would be something like character skins and weapon skins.
i personnally expect people/modders who are going to make RoH decdicated server launchers if they don't make them
We are also working on SDK tools, giving those to community after game is done and the engine itself is a high probability but I have to find out where we are going with RoH now and come back here to community to tell the full plan.
I hope so.
If i host a server by you.
Can i mod this server after release?
I dont need local coop, but i want modification my server in my styl.
Well, since the language barrier between the main dev team and the other people involved has been thick, I think this was no one's fault. Someone would have said something, if they'd have noticed earlier. Better late than never.
Think about the bright side of the situation, at least they didn't go all "Wormwood" about it.
Just call it DayZ: Stalker to clear the confusion.
If it was DayZ: Stalker I would not play it or even make game design on it. So no.
(buried)
Why the **** is everybody so mad about this? Come on at least we can enjoy a online open world stalker experience...
Because it will be mostly laggy Russian servers full of shoot-on-site ********, and the RoH team can decide it costs too much money to run servers at any moment and then goodbye no RoH for you. I wouldn't be surprised if they start asking for money to run the server, maybe with bonuses to those who do..These guys are fishy as hell.
First servers will be RU, then EU, from there we plan to head out for rest of the world. And of course running servers means we need money to do that. Right now we have patreon to collect to build a powerful server machine ourselves. As it's cheaper than server providers. Only thing financially supporting players would get is weapon and armor skins. You don't have to worry about game balance breaking OP weapons for mod supporting people as that's just damn stupid and silly thing to do as a whole.
That's utter bull ****. Of course servers cost money, so allow people to host their own for **** sake. You even admitted you will ask people to pay for the servers. Honestly this mod team can **** off at this point.
You don't have to give as a dime, and you don't have to play the game either if you do not like it. It's your choice. Thanks for dropping by and if you ever want to test our game after it's finished feel free to stop by! have a nice day :)
Well, has this Mr. Mudhud done anything for the mod? I don't think so. I can assure you that the team is working their ***** off and since there is a thick and huge language barrier between the dev team and the guys keeping YOU up to date, misinformation and translation errors are almost inevitable.
Besides, think about it. They work this mod for free, where as big game companies have sources to fund themselves, but when you are making a mod for a licensed game, you don't get any salary OR have the right to start crowdfunding it. Only way to support teams like this are through non-licensed protocols, such as the server funding.
These guys have normal day jobs, and they still have the will and the power to code a game on their spare time - for free. And you cry like a bitching kid in a candy store over a thing that you don't even know about.
STALKER has always been about freedom to do whatever both in the games and to the games (modding) not allowing players to host their own servers greatly limits this since you are forced to play by the rules the official servers have. giving players the ability to host their own servers means they can play with who they want and how they want, this also means being able to use custom content like more weapons, areas and quest or whatever else this awesome modding community comes up with.
No coop? Well, that was a waste of time. Might as well go play ARMstalker...
After waiting years to play this I feel so disappointed to find out this is exactly what I haven't been waiting for.. Instead of me and my friends playing stalker together its going to be me, my friends and everybody else getting our ***** handed to us by no lives who sit on the computer 24/7 or cheaters. We wanted a non competitive experience and that's exactly what it is not going to be..
Well, that sucks. Unless the developers spend the money to have a bunch of servers outside of Russia, the lag is going to be awful for most people. And unless the game pushes microtransactions (which would be bad enough), those servers aren't going to be sustainable for very long.
Either way, this is really bad news.
So much for that.
If I wanted to play a game where a small group of people can join up and ruin the whole thing for everyone else, I would sooner play DayZ. What's the point of playing something that would be even more vulnerable to hackers or would be far more likely to be shut down, and sooner rather than later?
If nothing else, I guess real Stalker coop was fun to fantasize about.