Have you ever wished for a better WW2 game?

[NKato]

I have.

There are a few good WW2 games out there, but they seem to always come up short in a lot of ways.

War Thunder. Feels visceral, like you're actually there.
The problem? It's being horribly mismanaged. Ground Forces battle ratings got compressed in Tier 5 from 9.0 to 7.7, which means you've got Cold-War Era tanks like the T-10, the M103, and the Leopard 1 going up against tanks like the Maus and the Tiger II with the blueprint gun. In other words, it's a ricochet-fest or insta-one-shot-death hell. It doesn't help that their english-language community team is full of power-crazy, ass-kissing imbeciles.

World of Tanks? Nice right? It's arcadey, which kinda turned me off, despite having sunk a couple hundred into it.

Red Orchestra 2? Great gameplay, terrible, horrible, shitty map design. I call it the "WW2 Funnel Shooter". It's a great game hobbled by idiotic map design. Your tactical options are so severely limited that you have no real capability to, you know, actually flank the enemy in any real meaningful capacity.

What I really want, is a WW2 game that properly respects the profession of the tank crew.

That is to say, a game that puts you in charge of a tank, and you have NPCs in there that develop alongside you. And you can machinegun Infantry (like in RO2) with the bow gunner or the coaxial. Or maybe the ability to actually dismount and use the turret-mounted .50 cal?!

I suppose the best way to describe my dream WW2 game, is "Fury". Why? Because in World War 2, it was equal parts Tank vs Infantry/light armor, and Tank vs Tank combat. You didn't have pure tank battles in WW2, either.

I've actually spent time on and off writing a brainstorm document to serve as a guidance for developing such a game. The problem? I lack expertise. I lack the time. I lack the experience. I cannot make a game like this on my own, so I wouldn't mind if someone else picked it up and ran with it. Provided, of course, that they actually stick to what the vision is. :p Besides, being Deaf kinda makes it hard for me to interact with people and therefore build up network connections to make such a vision possible. :\

Here's a snippet of the document of the first few bullet points:

• Singleplayer/Coop Campaign, able to host private dedicated on PC (and public peer-to-peer on consoles, for cost-savings) servers for Coop/Multiplayer games, might scale up to 4 vs 4 (or different combinations for balance - after all, Tigers are OP as f*ck).
  
  
• Business Model: Similar to Payday 2 - buy to play with a set of prepackaged campaigns and missions, focuses on selling campaign DLC with bonus content like tank camos, customization options, and the like.
  
  
• Possible Game Engine choices: CryEngine, Unreal Engine 4
  
  
• Platoon Command/Tank Command, “RTS Mode” for managing your tanks and infantry. (Via a separate interface, possibly by clipboard?)
  
  
• Have the ability to have multiple players crewing the same tank? (For further development)
  
  
• There will be two primary difficulty modes: Arcade and Simulation. The game design/development will focus on the Simulation aspect first as a point of reference, and adjust from there for Arcade Mode.
  
  
• Quality AI, able to make decisions for themselves in engaging the enemy. (Ambushes, flanking attacks, etc) Could possibly utilize the Kythera AI, maybe?
  
  
• Large maps, at least 20x20 to 50x50 kilometers. Multiple missions within the same map. Non-linear progression can be adopted by the player, by visiting different FOB’s along the battlefront. (can be made possible with double-precision floating point code)
  
  
• Players can “invade” co-op games similar to Dark Souls’ Invasion mechanic. The player will spawn as an advanced WW2 tank such as a Tiger, King Tiger, IS-2, etc, and be placed within range of the Co-op party. They will have at a minimum, 15 minutes of fuel. (Visual Example:
  )
  
  
• Need to aim for 1:1 scale realism, that is to say - the sense of scale needs to make it feel like you’re actually interacting with a real steel beast. Other games give you third person perspectives, and other design elements that inevitably “play down” the sense of scale.
  
  
• Must have realistic ballistics, armor penetration mechanics, and damage mechanics. Realistic vehicle handling as well. Referencing from historical sources will be key in developing assets.

If anyone wants to see the document itself in its entirety, they're welcome to ask - I'll provide a link via PM. I'll probably also do some graphical drafts (drawings) to help illustrate how it would generally pan out. Maybe.

If there are any game studio owners in TEST Squadron, it'd be pretty awesome if they were interested in this, they can get in touch with me. Given the odds, though, I find that extremely unlikely.

Just one very important bullet point to remember: Victory Day in Europe (When Germany surrendered to the Allies) will have its 75th Anniversary in 5 years. So by May 7, 2020. From a marketing standpoint, it's the perfect time for a resurgence in WW2 games - although I imagine a lot of the publishers are going to be late to the game and have half-assed shitty products as a result of their profit-driven shortsightedness.

If anyone here is a game developer with at least two functioning braincells, they should be able to recognize the significance of the timing of my post here. :p (Hint: It's so that anyone that runs with this idea has five years to develop a full-featured product that meets expectations instead of the usual 2 years like Call of Duty.)

Any questions, thoughts?