News RO Ladder Shut Down

[Mike Nomad]

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. 2012-02-23

ROLadder.net - formerly the largest and most active Red Orchestra community for competitive gaming - will be closing its doors. This was neither a simple nor an easy choice and as such, we would like to offer an explanation as to our reasoning behind this decision.

ROLadder.net was founded in the summer of 2004 by Worluk and Yankee: passionate players of the UT2K3 mod Red Orchestra whom shared a vision of creating a website for the community and a platform for competition within the game.

Thanks to the immense work of many community members, the small project evolved to become the center of the Red Orchestra clan community. Larger multi-game competitors such as Clanbase, TWL and ESL were unable to establish themselves against the Red Orchestra specialist ROLadder.net.

During the last seven years, ROLadder.net has hosted multiple ladders, leagues, nations' cups and winter cups. We have seen great matches, hot-tempered debates and the formation of strong friendships in our community.

With the release of RO:Ostfront's successor - Heroes of Stalingrad - and the assurances Tripwire Interactive, we expected that the community would be able to grow, resulting in greater competition and a better all-round experience for the clans involved. The RO:ladder staff decided to build an all-new website to bring the website up-to-date and lead ROLadder.net into a new era.

Before the release of RO2, it was the intention of ROLadder.net improve our relations with Tripwire Interactive and build a mutually beneficial bond, which would allow the site to quickly provide a stable and polished competitive arena. Despite numerous emails, IRC messages, tweets and forum messages, our various inquiries and requests were all either ignored or outright rejected.

Shortly after the release of the new game, the developers announced that they would be donating $12,000 prize money to the fledgling Scorched Earth Tournament.

Although it is the prerogative of the developers where they spend their money, we at ROLadder.net are only human and were very disappointed to be overlooked as tournament hosts, particularly as we have tried hard to sustain and develop the community despite a lack of external assistance. Upon asking the developers if they were able to provide feedback on why ROLadder.net was not chosen to host the tournament, we were asked to stop insulting Tripwire in public and were subsequently considered 'persona non grata'.

The lack of co-operation from the developers made it very difficult to prevent resentment building up amongst the admin staff, many of whom felt insulted that the time and effort they had put into helping the community was being treated with such disdain.

Although it had become clear that future assistance from Tripwire was going to be absolutely minimal, we decided to continue working on ROLadder.net in the hope that the developers would eventually fulfil their ambitious pre-release claims.

It quickly became apparent upon release that the game was far from ready and even after several months, the game still lacked polish and critical features necessary for competitive matches. Numerous small bugs, free roaming of dead players, spawning on squad leader, the complete lack of the promised ROTV and demo recording presented a very tough challenge to overcome: a problem further compounded by the fact that the release state of the game led to a rapidly eroding player pool.

Furthermore, the RO2 SDK was unavailable at release and for months after, rendering it impossible for our staff to implement the desired features and bug fixes in lieu of developer assistance. Another problem caused by the unfinished state of the game at release was the complete inadequacy of the anti-cheat measures. Unfortunately, it was proven that the time and effort required to reliably identify and remove a dishonest player from the competition was so large that ROLadder.net was effectively unable to host any meaningful tournaments while the game remained in the same state.

To conclude, we regret that Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad was not the game we expected at release and certainly not a competitive platform due to numerous bugs, balance issues and short-sighted design flaws.

These circumstances have left us with a shadow of the game we hoped to have six months ago. The ever-shrinking player base has caused many new and old clans to fold and activity has now reached an almost-total standstill. We do not think it is possible to keep the community alive with the game in its current state, the dwindling playerbase and a complete lack of developer support.

We have enjoyed our work with and for you: the ROLadder.net community. We would like to thank all admins, programmers, web designers, news posters, forum moderators and broadcasters at this point. Your great efforts and dedication to ROLadder.net have helped keep the site running for as long as it has.

Finally, thanks to all participating clans and users who have taken in ROLadder.net competitions over the years: you formed the heart of the community and we are glad you came along for the ride.
"Game over, man! Game over!"

ROLadder.net team


Thanks to all former staff members (in order of join date):

worluk, yankee, Rich, Zetsumei, Timperator, Stuart, spraduke, Krokar, Manstein, Sonicboom, aceto, Strahd, Steven, murhis, zoAr, MrT, cooper, Ender, Shifty, Paulski, Suugi, Rez, Keyser_Söze, ueber, Hachiman, Tina, Jägermeister, Milk, Schreq, Miro, Oshannon, Heniu, Metalhead, Whitef0x, Bswearer, Prophet, Fields of Blue, HSMagnet.

SOURCE

[Mike Nomad]

While I regret to see these events occur, they do and they are always sad.

Nevertheless, its an inevitable consequence when those who are involved as volunteers forget that they are just that and not a dictatorial source of edicts.

ROLadder, in and for itself, was a good thing, a grand idea and while many of its members are fine upstanding folks who have my respect and friendship, a certain few of its members, their "friends and supporters" had become party to abusive practices and posts in the TWI forums and elsewhere. The bad guys at RoLadder got "too big for their britches". Much too big.

Read their parting statement carefully... perhaps more than once. It'll soon dawn upon you just what is meant by abusive and quite possibly, you'll also realize just who was and is condoning the TWI and other forum abuses. I assure you, its NOT the Developers. On top of it all, their parting statement is nothing more than a finger pointing bag of sour grapes inflated with self-serving BS.

In reality, ROLadder's leaders brought this on themselves with their elitist BS and attempts at forcing their will upon Tripwire and many of us. So much so, that one in particular, had earned the rep as a TROLL.

To the bad guys at ROLadder... F.O.A.D. You did yourselves in.

Frankly, I had always felt they thought their scat didn't stink.. Well it did then and now, it really does.

To the good guys at ROLadder go back to your roots, make your maps, mutators and mods - Most of all, support the users.

[Wizz]

Originally Posted by Mike Nomad

-- snip --

It'll soon dawn upon you just what is meant by abusive and quite possibly, you'll also realize just who was and is condoning the TWI forum abuses. I assure you, its NOT the Developers.

-- snip --

Really Mike, its not the devs. Hmmmmm so who was it then that allowed you to be hung out to dry and hanging from a tree with a noose around your neck over there this last time. 4 days they the devs allowed that shit to go on and you got hammered into the ground and of all people to be done this way.

You have supported RO since day 1 and to this day you support it but I am sorry it is the devs fault and they should have put a damn stop to the abuses going on over at the OFFICIAL ****ING FORUMS and yet they did nothing but sit on their ass's while the shit was being slung around.

My tune will change when I see some action and some firings going on over at the forums. I am not saying fire a actual employee of tripwire but I am talking about the volunteer staff types who are abusive and is abusing their admin/mod powers.

Wizz

[Mike Nomad]

Originally Posted by Wizz

Really Mike, its not the devs. Hmmmmm so who was it then that allowed you to be hung out to dry and hanging from a tree with a noose around your neck over there this last time. 4 days they the devs allowed that shit to go on and you got hammered into the ground and of all people to be done this way.

You have supported RO since day 1 and to this day you support it but I am sorry it is the devs fault and they should have put a damn stop to the abuses going on over at the OFFICIAL ****ING FORUMS and yet they did nothing but sit on their ass's while the shit was being slung around.

My tune will change when I see some action and some firings going on over at the forums. I am not saying fire a actual employee of tripwire but I am talking about the volunteer staff types who are abusive and is abusing their admin/mod powers.

Wizz

The forums are not run at all by the Devs...

They are run by

• [TW]schneidzekk - Administrator

and his Moderators

• Blimey
• Bobdog
• Fu. Svedberg
• Gregs2k2
• JCoquillon
• Morello
• PUTZ
• Ralfst3r
• Switchblade
• Tekkobra
• Wolfsglen
• Zips

They are the responsible parties.... of whom only a few I suspect of being BIASED.


Tripwire itself are far too busy to be involved in the forums.


I hold the Forum Admin and his moderators responsible.

[Mike Nomad]

From [TW]Ramm-Jaeger;


By now many of you may have seen the news that RO Ladder is closing via a news post on their website. We are sad to see them go as RO Ladder has been a fixture in the community for a long time. What saddens me even more though is for them to take a parting shot on the way out, particularly one that is so full of flat out lies and distortions.

The posting on the RO Ladder website would have you believe that TWI blew off the RO Ladder crew, did absolutely nothing to support competitive play, did nothing to support anti-cheat, etc. All of these things couldn't be farther from the truth. First lets take a look at our relationship with RO Ladder.

From the early stage of development of the game we met with members of the RO Ladder team to formulate a plan for features to support competitive play. Our design for competitive play features was almost completely based off of feature requests by the RO Ladder team and documents that they gave us with their requests. In fact a large amount of development time was spent implementing these requests. Everything from spectating options, having options to modify the win conditions for territory mode, having the ability to force weapon and class levels to be equivalent, customizability of hud options, and more were all features requested by RO Ladder and implemented by TWI. In fact we implemented about 80% of the features that they requested before we shipped the game. Yes not all features requested and planned for were able to be implemented by launch. This is the reality of game development - you can't do everything you want to do before shipping the game or you will never ship the game. And many more came on line after shipping including server side demo recording, server side screenshot capability through anti-cheat, special specating modes to support shoutcasting of matches, and more.

I have the utmost respect for many of the crew at RO Ladder. But the sad truth of the situation is that there are a few members of the RO Ladder team who are very unprofessional to the point that it made us not want to deal with them. A prime example of this was when the Scorched Earth tournament was announced. For some reason some of the RO Ladder guys jumped to the conclusion that we were only going to support the Scorched Earth tournament and took to the internet in full on flame mode. In reality we had budgeted money to support both a Scorched Earth tournament AND an RO Ladder tournament, and were just waiting to hear from the RO Ladder guys to work out the details.

Unfortunately the actions of some of the RO Ladder members just took a turn from the worse from there. One members started an "I hate Ramm" group on Steam solely dedicated to hating on me and Tripwire. Additionally some of the RO Ladder crew had decided that the best way to get what they want from Tripwire is to publicly flame me and the company as often as possible.

Over 5 months ago I talked to the leadership of RO Ladder and let them know despite the actions of some of their members that we would still like to work with them. I let them know if they could get their staff's flaming under control (i.e. take down the "I Hate Ramm" Steam groups, etc) and have their staff get with me to work out the issues that we would be happy to sponsor a tournament with them. They said they would do this, but they never did get back in touch with me after that.

Again a few weeks ago when rumors started going around that RO Ladder would be closing down I once again reached out personally to the leadership of RO Ladder and let them know that my offer still stood, and that we still had money set aside to sponsor their tournament. This e-mail also went unanswered.

At the end of the day I am very sad to see them go. It seems to me that in the case of RO Ladder a few bad apples have ruined it for their whole team which has hurt the clan community due to the actions of a few misguided individuals. From our side, we just can't work with people that are essentially slapping us upside the head with one hand, and then putting the other hand out asking for money. It would be like punching your girlfriend in the face and then asking her to give you a kiss right after - it just doesn't work.

From our end we'll continue to do what we can to support the clan and competitive community. The $12,000 Scorched Earth tournament is down to the finals and will be coming to a climax soon. We'd be happy to get behind any ladders/clan systems that approach us so people should definitely contact us if they've got ideas. We've got big plans for the game moving forward, much of which we've been sharing with the community. The ride for RO2 has just begun and things are just going to get more interesting from here.

SOURCE

[rrodeo]

Originally Posted by Wizz

Really Mike, its not the devs. Hmmmmm so who was it then that allowed you to be hung out to dry and hanging from a tree with a noose around your neck over there this last time. 4 days they the devs allowed that shit to go on and you got hammered into the ground and of all people to be done this way.

Yes sir I agree.


And you can smell the load of bs in Ramm-jaeger response a mile away.. what a tool..

[Mike Nomad]

Originally Posted by rrodeo

Yes sir I agree.


And you can smell the load of bs in Ramm-jaeger response a mile away.. what a tool..

I'm not so sure about that severe a condemnation. In fact, even though I normally agree with your assessments, in this case, I feel you are dead wrong. You see, many have not and do not see the personal supportive efforts of Ramm-Jaeger. He bends over backwards to support individuals and all the users on a general basis. His devotion to the games Tripwire develops and their users is nothing short of phenomenal, especially when compared to other developers and publishers.

The actions by ROLadder's leaders was nothing short of ridiculous. In short, they acted like pompous asses.

ROLadder is/was a great concept. The shame is that its "leaders" let things get out of hand there. Their delusions of their importance in the community and the overall scheme of things became offensive to many including myself. ROLadder's members deserved much better from their leadership.

My hope is that their members either take up the torch of ROLadder and carry on or, migrate to TWI or the Scorched Earth groups.

[Tally]

I would agree with Mike here. From what Ramm-jaeger has said about the situation - assuming it's true of course - the Ladder does seem to have been hijacked by a handful of kids who think that whining about everything all the time, and behaving like spoilt children, is the way to get things done. If, as Ramm-jaeger claims, he made every attempt to offer the olive branch DESPITE the kids still behaving like asshats, then those in control of the Ladder only have themselves to blame for its demise.

[Mike Nomad]

Well put Butch....

As for Scorched Earth Tournament.. You can expect our full support in any endeavors pursued. Anything that sheds a positive light and excitement for the world of RO2 is worthy of our full support.

Now, I'll pick up on John Gibson's (Ramm Jeager) unenviable position. He is at the desk of "the buck stops here". That means he must bear the brunt or enjoy the applause for everything that goes down at Tripwire and their forums.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... The TWI forums need a bit stricter policy. While "free speech" is the goal, the ultimate goal is RESPONSIBLE FREE SPEECH.

That means those who wish to vociferously make themselves heard must be held responsible for what they say and do. If what they say is done responsibly, respectfully, factually and well thought out then fine, there's no problem.

However in the TWI forums, off the wall clowns, ridicule, bad humor, sarcasm and insult seems to be the order of the day perpetrated by the same 16-20 users, day in and day out. Regrettably at times, it appears to be encouraged by the forum's Administration and Staff. (Ever notice that the "free speech" dealio is always hollered by the worst offenders?)

Whether they like or not, Tripwire is forging ahead and entering the "Big Leagues" of gaming development, publishing and promotion. They simply must become professional businessmen first and "buddies" to the users second. Especially if they wish to continue with the growth factors of million plus annual sales and growing.

There is no reason to tolerate the unruly spoilers that habituate the TWI forums.. Old time users or not. Those users are abusing the privilege and respect TWI offers them. In fact, if and when they are sternly moderated, either publicly or privately, the high levels of sarcastic disrespect levied at others and constant creation of flame bait topics will miraculously begin to cease.

The aura of "bad feelings" is encouraged by the lack of mature supervision in the forums. Until the correction of this malady occurs, the risks of detrimental effects upon TWI and their future run high. Face it, the TWI forums, whether those at TWI or those at Steam.. are in fact, in conjunction with their other PR efforts, their "best foot forward".

The larger game corporations spend thousands if not millions on advertisements and public relations. Tripwire does not have these resources ..yet. Therefore the forums, both theirs and Steam's are the best they have for both advertisement and public relations. They must use them to their best advantage.

At this point in time, the old time users are very busy disrespectfully discouraging those who disagree with them and worse yet, discouraging new users who see what's going on and quietly leave. That... is a tragedy that must be stopped. The abusive users in the TWI forums must be reigned in or, got gone.

TWI are not taking full advantage of the potential these powerful venues afford them. Making changes and/or additions to the staffs that manage the forums (both TWI and Steam) is the first step. Improving the interface with the users and ultimately creating and maintaining a friendly, respectful atmosphere is the genuine goal.

Ultimately a congenial atmosphere in which the users, the world over, may make themselves heard and enjoy doing so instead of fearing retaliation by the same few insulting trouble making dolts.

This very same result will offer the Developers an incentive to continue to openly support the players, mappers, modders and mutator coders. Folks, its a win/win situation.

Tripwire has a wonderful future ahead for themselves but only if they are willing to go the distance in all directions. The forums included. At this time and for the foreseeable future the forums are their "best foot forward" - they simply must take full advantage of them as they are effective and affordable.

Most recently, the interview with Alan Wilson... was excellent. Yet the insulting comments allowed to persist in the forums was, without a doubt, an ugly but perfect example of just how BIASED, lackadaisical and/or misguided the Administration and Staff of the forums truly are.

They need direction and must understand that Tripwire is "growing up" and they must grow up with Tripwire. Else, changes must be made. Either in policies or personnel.

The Bottom line, in plain English....

The ragged, rough edged insults, repetitive slamming and biased complaints by those angling to "get their own way" MUST STOP. The "ever present" demeaning BS must also come to an end. The users with the VULGAR "Elitist" location "club" need counseling, the users with OFFENSIVE language and/or pics in their signature pics need those pics deleted. Those staffers and users who cannot or refuse to adjust need to get gone. They are hurting Tripwire in more ways than one can ever possibly imagine..

That might be oversimplifying the matter but it says it like it is. I might add it comes from the heart.

I truly care.

[Mike Nomad]

Here we are..... EIGHT months later and still..... No Clan Competition for RO2. One must wonder if RO Ladder was intentionally done in to make way for a ladder wholly controlled by TWI.

Hmm the state of RO2 (bug & anomaly wise) practically dictates that competitive gameplay is out of the question.

Just another nail.......