READY OR NOT OR SWAT 4?

[Jug]

Yesterday I watched some of my old Swat4 videos, and I came to an important realization. *It's a better game than RoN by a long margin*. It's fun and engaging to play according to its own premises. It's really enjoyable to actually try to arrest the criminals and resort to deadly violence only as a last measure. The game implements it in a semi-realistic way, the thugs telegraph their actions quite obviously once you get the gist (which can be criticized), but still, the game is very respectful to the player's intelligence. It's mature, realistic, very well acted (voice-acting, etc), and it looks like Police work.

You don't have to deal with 'never surrendering / never attacking' thugs whose only contribution to the gameplay is to have your ears spammed senselessly with 'hands up' yells, as if you were in a nuthouse. You also don't have to deal with the quite stupid gameplay loop of having instant reactive / ultra precise / wallhacking enemies vs your magic armor and high HP, so you can tank bullets and keep playing. No. In that game, they telegraph their violence, but if you allow them, they can be quite deadly. You're dead with one AR shot, as it should be. Also, they have nailed suspect's accuracy in ways Void could never dream of. Gang members were bad shots, terrorists would keep you on your toes.

The SWAT AI is also important to mention. In S4 they are responsive and deadly, they cover your ass quite effectively and the absolute best: you can control them with your voice!

In RoN they're a literal joke. They overshoot corners and get killed because of an evidence, they can't overwatch, they can't take cover against enemies, and if you think the mofo in front of you is taking too long to surrender and clap the guy, you still risk being shot in the back of the head by the ltl beauties. Ridiculous.

The maps are very carefully crafted, and from all things, it's the only aspect in which RoN is on par and can supercede the predecessor, other than the obvious graphical and sound technology, which is unfair to compare. There is also another problem with RoN: Its identity crisis. Some scenarios don't make any sense for a SWAT operation. They're well implemented, but the absence of a reality footprint can be bothering. I've always thought the game could become much more if it ditched the SWAT thing altogether and became a tactical shooter in a broader spectrum. SOF, HRT, SWAT, etc.

All in all, IMO, Swat4 is very enjoyable to play by its rules, while RoN is insufferable, as unbalanced and unrefined it is, in terms of gameplay.

Yes, I only play RoN nowadays, but that's because I play by my own rules, deeply modded and solo. After modding it, RoN becomes great as a lethal tactical shooter, but as a police arrest game *it sucks*.

Thx for reading. Have a great day!

[Thermal Lance]

Come on now. Swat 4 AI had a lot of problems.

Unless you mod it the dumbasses are likely to rush into a room before the nade goes off.

[Zaeld]

Swat 4 was made by extremely skilled developers for it's time. I think if they made a modern swat shooter, it would be so much better now given how much more tools you have available to you and how much gaming has advanced over the years. I Don't think we'll be seeing a new Swat game by them tho, at least not anytime soon, if they ever do make a modern swat shooter, but there's a huge community of swat players that would buy it in a heart beat and support the devs if they ever do and it will likely live up to much better expectations than ready or not ever did/has.

[Majestic-Casual™]

Originally posted by Zaeld:

Swat 4 was made by extremely skilled developers for it's time. I think if they made a modern swat shooter, it would be so much now given how much more tools you have available to you and how much gaming has advanced over the years. I Don't think we'll be seeing a new Swat game by them tho, at least not anytime soon, if they ever do make a modern swat shooter, but there's a huge community of swat players that would buy it in a heart beat and support the devs if they ever do and it will likely live up to much better expectations than ready or not ever did/has.

I only remember bits and pieces of playing Swat 4 back in the day but one game that came out around the same time that I think is even better than both games is R6 Vegas 2. It just had the best combat, animations and physics you could of hoped for at the time. It's still a fun game to play now a days as well. I don't know how the tactical aspects of it hold up against Swat 4 or RoN though.

[RedBjorn]

Originally posted by Thermal Lance:

Come on now. Swat 4 AI had a lot of problems.

Unless you mod it the dumbasses are likely to rush into a room before the nade goes off.

Say it louder for the people living on nostalgia in the back. I loved the game, especially modded - played it for like 15 years. These were noted in some of the original reviews for the game as well, but people seem to ignore them. Yes, RoN has some issues, but it's no worse than the issues we had to suffer through in SWAT 4. And yet, I still love both games.

[Jug]

Originally posted by Thermal Lance:

Come on now. Swat 4 AI had a lot of problems.

Unless you mod it the dumbasses are likely to rush into a room before the nade goes off.

Swat 4 had indeed many problems by release. I could only play it after Elite Force came about, which corrected and enforced almost all of the game's mechanics, which ultimately underlined the gameplay loop into something truly great.

Maybe, when / if RoN's SDK gets released, we'll see something similar, but some of the appointed mistakes are structural / conceptual. The vanilla gameplay loop is broken in a number of places and the senseless missions will stay like that no matter how modded the game gets.

Still, and I reinforce my point, this is the best tactical shooter in the market, if you play it modded and all-lethal. On the other hand, It's insufferable if you try playing it as a police simulator. RNG wins are the absolute worst.

[DuckieMcduck]

I'll always be stating that if this game leaned towards the Rainbow Six crowd with paramilitary folk rather than Police and their rules of engagement it would have been a top grade, must have game.

But since it didn't do that, it gets a shoddy score in my book. Hell they even leaned into it with the Dark Water DLC; those operations belong to the Coast Guard (military branch).

Saying this as owner of the Supporter edition, RoN is discount bin stuff that basically needs mods else you're turning CQC into CBT for no real benefit of your time.

[RedBjorn]

Originally posted by DuckieMcduck:

I'll always be stating that if this game leaned towards the Rainbow Six crowd with paramilitary folk rather than Police and their rules of engagement it would have been a top grade, must have game.

But since it didn't do that, it gets a shoddy score in my book. Hell they even leaned into it with the Dark Water DLC; those operations belong to the Coast Guard (military branch).

Saying this as owner of the Supporter edition, RoN is discount bin stuff that basically needs mods else you're turning CQC into CBT for no real benefit of your time.

This is the antithesis of those types of games, and purposely by choice by the developers from the very beginning. It is obvious to me that they wanted this game to be the spiritual successor to SWAT 4, down to even the team menus.

There's overlap between those crowds, but one of the major draws of this game is that it IS NOT kill everything on sight. There's hundreds of those types of games already, and this simple change tilts the gameplay in a way that folks myself prefer it.

[DuckieMcduck]

Originally posted by RedBjorn:

Originally posted by DuckieMcduck:

I'll always be stating that if this game leaned towards the Rainbow Six crowd with paramilitary folk rather than Police and their rules of engagement it would have been a top grade, must have game.

But since it didn't do that, it gets a shoddy score in my book. Hell they even leaned into it with the Dark Water DLC; those operations belong to the Coast Guard (military branch).

Saying this as owner of the Supporter edition, RoN is discount bin stuff that basically needs mods else you're turning CQC into CBT for no real benefit of your time.

This is the antithesis of those types of games, and purposely by choice by the developers from the very beginning. It is obvious to me that they wanted this game to be the spiritual successor to SWAT 4, down to even the team menus.

There's overlap between those crowds, but one of the major draws of this game is that it IS NOT kill everything on sight. There's hundreds of those types of games already, and this simple change tilts the gameplay in a way that folks myself prefer it.

They wanted it, but it isn't what they got.

And unfortunately, roughly 5% of the playerbase ever got through the game with Rank C+ or higher, so out of the 10,000 people playing right now, only about 500 care for the actual "major draw" of the game. It's been this way for a few years now.

Dare I say that if it actually did SWAT correctly, it may have not gotten as popular. Mistakes into miracles, as they say.

[RedBjorn]

Originally posted by DuckieMcduck:

They wanted it, but it isn't what they got.

And unfortunately, roughly 5% of the playerbase ever got through the game with Rank C+ or higher, so out of the 10,000 people playing right now, only about 500 care for the actual "major draw" of the game. It's been this way for a few years now.

Dare I say that if it actually did SWAT correctly, it may have not gotten as popular. Mistakes into miracles, as they say.

I'd say quite a few of my friends fall outside that 5%, and it's not for a lack of playing. They just don't care. Doesn't mean they don't like the game, or don't play it, however. From a sales perspective, if your friends are playing it, and you bought the game, win. I got a friend I play with regularly, for example, that I'd be surprised if he's bothered to get any unlocks. He even plays it solo. But, when it comes to the score screen, he literally couldn't give a damn, and that goes for all achievements for any game he owns.

Ever since I got the cosmetic achievement unlocks I wanted, I myself couldn't care less.

Further, I'd go insofar as to say a great majority of "gamers" have the attention span of a goldfish. I know people with thousands of games on their account, and regularly buy a new game every few days. If you only play this game once a month with a group of friends, you ain't unlocking anything. Hell, I'd say most of those people couldn't care if the game suddenly was patched up and perfect, or the gameplay changed. The tactical shooter niche is so incredibly small compared to other genres, it's barely a blip on the radar. The sales make it quite fine for a small indy company with limited employees, but there's a reason the largest tactical shooters with the largest playerbases have absolutely zero "tactical" gameplay. Look what's happened to the entirety of the Tom Clancy franchise.

We folks in the tactical shooter arena like to pretend we're a huge playerbase, but we truly aren't. Getting people out of ARMA, CoD, Rainbow Six is like pulling teeth, and you can't reproduce what they've been doing for 2 decades in the typical development timeline. Trying to pretend to do so is a pipedream. Just make a good game, and you'll find customers.

[Jug]

Originally posted by DuckieMcduck:

I'll always be stating that if this game leaned towards the Rainbow Six crowd with paramilitary folk rather than Police and their rules of engagement it would have been a top grade, must have game.

But since it didn't do that, it gets a shoddy score in my book. Hell they even leaned into it with the Dark Water DLC; those operations belong to the Coast Guard (military branch).

Saying this as owner of the Supporter edition, RoN is discount bin stuff that basically needs mods else you're turning CQC into CBT for no real benefit of your time.

I agree, but not all the time. The game has the 'potential' (I came to hate that word, for all the obvious reasons) to fulfill a broader spectrum. ROE rules that change dynamically from map to map (or inside the same map) so that they work with the situation at hand.
For instance, the Streamer level starts with a simple live check and evolves into a firefight. TOC could intervene, mid-mission, saying the ROE have been changed.

The various scenarios in the EA period were a study into how the devs could make it work. It's unfortunate they simply ditched them in order to release 1.0 earlier. Potential is nothing if stuff doesn't get done.

With some worldbuilding lore, they could easily justify the fact that in RoN's timeline, SWAT has evolved into a police AND paramilitary group, very much like BOPE in Brazil. See if their mission is 'less lethal arrests'. Would be complete nonsense, as it is in some RoN's scenarios.

[Major Fret]

Originally posted by Thermal Lance:

Come on now. Swat 4 AI had a lot of problems.

Unless you mod it the dumbasses are likely to rush into a room before the nade goes off.

It had problems with SWAT 4's AI but RoN's AI is so much worse. In the <50 hours I've played 1.0 I've had RoN's officers smoke more hostages than I have the entirety (1000+ hours) of playing vanilla SWAT 3/4.

Playing the original SWAT games after playing RoN was eye opening. SWAT 4's suspect AI feels so much more dynamic. SWAT 3 did so much to set up interesting variables with their scenarios. Both games give you the option to customize levels to your heart's desire.

I truly believe RoN could be a masterpiece, but so much holds it back.Watching RoN leave early access was like watching A grade student flunk college and become a meth addict.

[RedBjorn]

Originally posted by Major Fret:

I truly believe RoN could be a masterpiece, but so much holds it back.Watching RoN leave early access was like watching A grade student flunk college and become a meth addict.

That's a bit dramatic I think.

[Major Fret]

Originally posted by RedBjorn:

Originally posted by Major Fret:

I truly believe RoN could be a masterpiece, but so much holds it back.Watching RoN leave early access was like watching A grade student flunk college and become a meth addict.

That's a bit dramatic I think.

I've watched VOID:

• Completely botch interesting concepts such as SWATing, the border crisis and mass shooters
  
• Remove 4 game modes. Whilst I'll grant hostage rescue sucked, Raid would fix aforementioned complaints with ROE, and Bomb Threat and Active Shooter really changed how the game was played
  
• Butcher the port level into a corridor that belongs in Call of Duty
  
• Brag about the SWAT AI only to have them mag dump human shields and ignore orders
  
• Make every suspect behave the same
  
• Fail to implement things from its predecessors such as snipers, commands via helmet cam, Quick Mission Generators. That's not even getting into the lack of PvP
  
• Struggle to scale world objects for 3 years
  
• Fail to create a convenient and user friendly UI

So no, I don't think that's dramatic