Slow down buckeroo. We're all well aware how easy(ish) it is to kill some dude with even the most difficult of weapons.



But recently i've had a few friends try this game out. All of them were gamers to the core and knew their way inside out of the likes of TFC style games, FPS's, RTS, MMORPG's and so on.

And yet, they seemed negligent to discovering the very fundemental basics to Soldat.

Jumping before jetting, skipping across terrain, how to aim (after all, you don't put the crosshair directly on the enemy), and even having problems with working out how to score a flag ("where do I put this [IMAGE]ing flag?") in CTF. After an hour of trying they just gave up.

Maybe Soldat's just more vastly different from other games than we realise for these poor newbies? Or is it too unforgiving?

Meh...were they only trying for an hour? I think all of us took a little while to get a feel for all of those things you mentioned which make gameplay that much easier or effective (jumping before jetting, etc). I think a few more trys are in order for them to get a better grip on the game. But Soldat is a pretty unique game as far as the gameplay goes...I havn't found one quite like it that I've enjoyed. :)

Yeah, you kind of have to stick with it for a while until you get the hang of it. I remember when I first started out even though the maps were straightforward I had no idea where to go. I also didn't know what to do when I accidentally ended up with the flag because I had never played ctf before. I would have quit if I wasn't lucky enough to get teammates who told me what to do.

i dont think i get it :S you said they know their sh!t in games like TFS, and that theyr hardcore gamers and stuff.. but they dont know how to return to base in ctf ?
CONFUSED AND TIRED!!!!!!!!

yeah i thought that was pretty dumb too. They couldn't understand that when 'our' flag wasn't there we couldn't score, for some reason.

I had a similar problem when I started soldat a couple of years ago. The learning curve was somewhat steeper than most mainstream games and it took about 2 weeks for me to get good enough to compete in the more prestigious servers. I stuck with soldat because it catered to a personal facination of mine. See, I design games as a hobby for the past 10 years, and a special interest of mind is taking old school gameplay and putting modern hardware into it, like Soldat does. The old school being a 2-d sidescroller. The modern being the orgasmic physics, the rez, shell ejections, animations, and terrian.

Soldat hard and steep learning curve? I wonder what would you say if you would try to play Quake 1 :DDD In Q1 newbies dies within a few seconds after respawn and almost always end up with negative scores (because every suicide = -1 point) They can hardly see what's going on...
Soldat is quite easy for newbies.

it didnt take me too long to get good. it's really easy o learn if you have basic intellegence :/
shoot around in a circle till the clip is gone. 'oj, so that's how it works?'

I learned minigun surf in space of two secs. It was like check the size of that [IMAGE]er then I sprayed around and beat my friends in races ;x. Then I got a few lucky shots with m79 and thought it was cool so I learned to use that and haven't stopped ;z. I learned the skipping pretty quick also and flag capturing came of ease.....maybe some of us are just born smart.

quote:Originally posted by JazI learned the skipping pretty quick also and flag capturing came of ease.....maybe some of us are just born smart.

It must be something else ;)

My friend MADE me try Soldat for a long time. I started getting bored since I sucked so much, but then I finnaly got into it. So... Tell anyone that tries it in a hour to play longer!

It is a kind of tricky game. I can't think of many others where one has such a short life span. You have to get used to not really caring about deaths and caring more about kills...the game's funny that way...

Try playing Wulfram. Only about 1 out of every 10 members end up staying to play it.

Soldat isn't hard, it takes a while to learn the basics (theres a lot to learn) and it also seems hard when you join your first multiplayer game and end up in a server with a bunch of vets.

I sort of did that, my first multiplayer game was in realistic and I chose minigun, and was like WTF??????

Soldat is not easier than Q or CS. But for some reason I am godly at soldat, and average at FPS shooters. I dont suck that bad, I am just hmm.. average. So go figure.

Chakra it took me a couple days to start jumping before jetting =) Good times

I had a bit of a problem when i first played soldat ... and i gave up after 10mins. Around about 1/2 a year later, i found it and i started playing again, and i've played ever since (around a 5 months)

I first 'discovered' the efficiency of jump-skipping across terrain about a month or two into the game. I also found out that jumping just before jetting is much more effective than just jetting about a month or two after I saw how effective skipping over terrain was ;). No, Soldat is not *hard* by any definition to me. I was just patient. I also understand that if you 'dragged' your friends (who were playing TFC and all kinds of elaborate games) then they would be quite impatient with the 'crappy 2D piece-of-[IMAGE] game' that you showed them. If I call any game 'hard', it would concern the general difficulty of gameplay *after* I'm at least proficient with the game. That's impossible, because Soldat is multiplayer-based, and if you dont do well, it doesnt mean that the game is hard, it just means that players are just better than you are, since every player is entitled to every asset in the game equally (unless one is a cheater). You might wind up saying, as the arguement progresses, that Soldat is not newb-friendly, much like CS and other games, but I wont. It wasnt so hard for me to start out, at least.

People that are used to RPG's FPS TFS dont understand the simplicity of soldat. They make it too hard.

Hah, nobody that had played a flight simulator game would ever say soldat is hard.

Wow, wulfram. I played it after tanarus went pay to play and certainly it had something that apparted me from playing it. Maybe the complexity of aiming with keyboard on rough terrains.

quote:Originally posted by pallocoHah, nobody that had played a flight simulator game would ever say soldat is hard.

rotfl, good point

quote:Originally posted by MikeShinoda.pheonixPeople that are used to RPG's FPS TFS dont understand the simplicity of soldat. They make it too hard.


That's the most unreasonable thing I've expected to hear. I came right out of Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and their expansions to play Soldat. I actually welcomed some simplicity into my gaming sphere. Whats not to "understand" in Soldat?

I had a hard time adjusting to Soldat when I first played it. I just wasn't ready for something so simplistic, I suppose.

Now I have a hard time playing anything in 3D, but I don't care. 2D games are retro, old-school and all that jazz.

When i started playing it was just fun with some friends of mine. We were on a LAN party and none of us really knew how to play the game. They just liked it because it looked funny. So we learned playing the game together. At home I started reading the hints and tutorials on different Soldat pages and practiced online (with my 56k). I don't think it's hard by any means...

Im good at 3d games but only above average....2d games is where its at, there much more addictive. Like the worms series.....maybe its something about getting owned in a simple 2d game that gets me really annoyed and wanting to own that person back ;x. So I play for years till Im better then them..i'll never know.

I would problably quit soldat if i would get a new comp, right now i play it because i am bored. I'm above average player. Better if i actually manage to have fun.

quote:Originally posted by lieroguy and it took about 2 weeks for me to get good enough to compete in the more prestigious servers.


yea the same, I can still remember my first ctf when I was trying to cap, I had the flag, I was in my base but I couldn't score, I was jumping, shooting and doing other ridiculous things and after a couple of minutes I realised that there have to be my flag in the base to score, eh great times of noobility :P

To be honest, I never really found Soldat hard to get into. Maybe because prior to discovering soldat, I played Liero a lot...

i was used to the 2d aiming of worms armageddon..so i can watch my soldat having my aimer really close to me.....:O.

quote:Originally posted by BMFSoldat is not easier than Q or CS. But for some reason I am godly at soldat, and average at FPS shooters. I dont suck that bad, I am just hmm.. average. So go figure.

Chakra it took me a couple days to start jumping before jetting =) Good times
You suck. Last time we played I kicked your ass.

Haha you wish asswipe

by the way, why don't you like me anymore? I want to be special friends

I am better at FPS or TPS then soldat, but only those that use some sort of startegy or tactics. Soldat can be used like that, but hardly ever is.

Aaaaah the battles i had with Hitman, I loved blasting him apart with my m79.

We need to do that again.

n00bs should start playing against bots.
That's what I did. I was afraid to go online and in that time I still had a dial-up connection.

Play against the bots, discover the tricks by yourself.
Test all weapons, choose the one you liked most etc.
Then you're ready to go online. :)

I dunno, you can't really call a game hard if there's a weapon with infinite ammo that kills with only one hit.

Yeah, Liero was my previous game. I was actually an influentional guy in the community, had a website, all kinds of stuff. But I just couldn't stnad playing against AI and nobody else where I lived plays it. That's where I got my name from. The community sort of tacked it on me and it stuck.

Besides, Soldat blows the pants off of Liero.

if they didnt know to jump before jetting and skiing across terrain, then maybe they need to play some more FPS, namely anything that has gameplay similar to the Tribes trilogy

I would never give up playing Soldat. My computer is quite good and so far I can play all the games like HL² and Doom³ without any problems. But i still get back to Soldat every now and then just to have a fast game... I think I'm a good player but it depends on my mood. In the last time I'm pissed because of school and stuff and I can't play that much so I kind of suck :(

Michal should have a brief tutorial on his website, or perhaps in the manual itself. I was just playing again with a friend and he hasn't quite grasped staying afloat in the air, instead of using all your jets at once.

Perhaps there should be a training server where noobs go just to learn how things work, it would have dedicated players who won't just dominate but will actually teach people how to play.

I've played gamers that didnt grasp some of soldats skills

It took me a week to grasp jumping before jetting, but I can move very fast. Actually, I think I can skip faster than anyone... I'd like to see anyone beat me

i also think of myself as a very fast "skipper"

but yeh, i have never played offline soldat, not even when i first started playing it, and i turned out fine, so i dont think its necessary, but i suppose it makes it easier and i also did play liero, wurmz, and lierox before and during playing soldat so i suppose that helps also

to lieroguy, now that you mention it i think i do remember you from liero
which website did you run?

those were some good times with durandal, ulvhockey, tim, pils, dom...ah yeh

I agree with DeMo, that you should start against bots. I must've played against bots for about 3 months before ever going online (although this was mainly because I didn't have the fix, so I COULDN'T go online...) but oneday I checked the site, and saw the fix. "Oh snap" says I. So I downloaded it and entered the multiplayer community at an average skill level. Made things a hellova lot easier. Also, before I played Soldat, I used to play this online game called Madness Interactive, which had controlls very similar to Soldat. There was one difference, I think the buttons for reload and change weapon were reversed, so I just switched em on Soldat, no trouble. So for ME, soldat was pretty easy to get into, but I can sympathise with those who have trouble.

Well when I started I played bots until I could consistently beat them on impossible. Yeah it is a steep learning curve but when you are consistently in the top three of every game you enter online it gets kind of too easy. BTW we need bots that are really impossible.

I started playing online right away. Never looked back

bots are for pussies

ditto. I don't quite understand it. I jumped into soldat on a 56k doing my thing in realmode (I thought everyone would probably play that, after all it sounds more hardcore), and I seemed to get by pretty adequately. Yet I find so many peeps having a hard time getting to grips.

It took me a week to get some real skill.. I mean I could play the game after a day.. But you know what I mean...

No. Soldat isnt too hard. I picked it up in half an hour. That includes terrain skipping and flag scoring. Your friends were probably trying to play it with their feet.

Soldat is a little too EASY to me, it gets kind of boring.

It's strange though, i'm usually pretty sub-par on most games, but for some reason i pwn at soldat....

Yes, but you see, these are opinions of the more experienced players, who turn out to be beta testers. Oh, and guess what, beta testers are the people that Michal listens to a bit more than the ordinary newcomer, so make the connection.

Chakra may have a point, but I can't really say. It's probably different for everyone. The mind doesn't work identically to another. Some people may have difficulty with it, some may not.

Some people are stupid, some are not.

You're so simple, Palloco. In a bad way. Try thinking about it next time.

Soldat isnt hard to learn O.o.....i dont actually remember how long it took me, but then agian, i dont remember that i had any problem either...lol

I started teachin 3 of my classmates to play, it's funny, they can't take me on 3v1, until they choose Ak...than it get's hard ^^ Soldat is really subjective, it depends on what games you play/played before, and your game style, and...the setting of mouse sensitivity.

If you cant explain something in a way that even idiots understand it, you dont really understand it

new players are coming... some are better then before...

The first time I played Soldat (1.0.5b) was... like magic. I was playing the whole evening, and during the whole next day in school I was thinking about that great game. I wasn't really experienced, but the second time I played it I learned mostly everything about the game 'tricks'. CTF wasn't hard at all for me to understand. The same with the issue of rolling down slopes, jumping when jetting and that kind of things. I have actually never found Soldat of hard playing, but sometimes hard to beat the opponents. (One time I was incredible bad, but then I turned on the game music - and voila! - I played much better, somehow.)

Soldat isn't hard to play. But you may need to give it a couple of days to really understand how to master it.

palloco is one of the smart ones on this board

Well as for me, I started playing online just like some of you. I never tried offline. Although, I wasn't fairly familiar with 2-d side scrolling shooters I adapted rather quickly. Ctf was the first mode I tried right away. Now anyone who's played CTF on other games should know that if they have the enemies flag, they can't score in home base untill their own flag is returned. That's commen sence.

I started the first day 1.1.3 came out. First thing I noticed was all the people with High kill counts was using a barrett. Myself was using spas. But, I still was scoring rather close to the top on my first day. Also, I was sufficed to use 56k and still have that same connection today. Only aspect I didn't come to terms with right away was skipping and how to gain momentum. Now, I did know that some peaks of the polygons would give me little boosts it seemed like.
My first thought it was just little glitches.

I thought I was still as good as anyone I was playing with, and was getting bored rather quickly. If it wasn't for seeing some clans and hearing talk of competition I probably would have made an abrupt stop to soldat within my first two weeks.

Yeah, it's fairly easy. Anyone who thinks for themselves should grasp the concept of soldat within 3 or 4 hours or atleast get the general idea of it. This was my experience and I've never played anything besides quake 1, 2, and 3, Unreal Tournement, maybe some Soldier of fortune but not much more at that point in time. So, I dont think its hard for anyone with half a brain.

Soldat aint hard =/ I got inside of that in notime. My friend showed it to me in 105b and i got hooked up. It was boring with bots and i stopped cos of not much time to play with my 56k. And i started again in 1.2. It was changed, but not any harder.

quote:Originally posted by pallocoSome people are stupid, some are not.


PRAISE BE TO THE MASTER OF OBVIOUS

Soldat is a pick up and play game, I learned most of the moving around things from other people, then went on to forge my own style that worked, rather than stick my head behind a barret scope and wait for silly [IMAGE]ers to jump infront of it.

The only problem I have with Soldat is just how everyone dies so fast.

I agree, soldat does feel like a pick-up-and-play game. But at the same time i'm finding experienced gamers plummeting into a pit of boogie men repeatedly. :|

quote:Originally posted by Icarius...
The only problem I have with Soldat is just how everyone dies so fast.

It's realistic that way.

And it's also fun that way.
I also agree, Soldat feels like a pic-up-and-play game. But it's hard to become really good with it.

<-- The 500th post!

Its not about how good you are at the game its about how much fun you have while playing.

If the game is fun it dosen't matter if its hard.

people play games for different reasons...
fun,honor,respect,rep and so on

I picked it for all of the above.

I play it for the fun, also killing my friends who aren't as good.

haha, noob basher. ;)

its not difficult to pick up, but its also easy to get out of shape if you stop playing it for a while...

quote:Originally posted by Freekillits not difficult to pick up, but its also easy to get out of shape if you stop playing it for a while...

Amen :-o

yeah untill you come back again. then it takes a mere 1 hour and your back in shape...