Foxhole has a problem

Foxhole has a problem. But that's Okay. In this video we analyse the possible causes, and most importantly, potential solutions to said problem.

Most of all I want to hear from you. What is your experience of Foxhole since it's full Inferno release in September 2022? Are you a new player? A veteran who has never enjoyed the game more, or have stopped playing for your own reasons?

00:00 Intro

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[twiglets]

Foxhole is an amazing achievement. But even amazing achievements have teething problems as they grow. Hearing and appreciating opinions and points of view of every kind is incredibly interesting, and may even result in a solution or two. What's your opinion on Foxhole at the moment?

[Noogi]

The hard truth is that facilities just suck. When playing a game like Factorio the pay off to building a factory is automating production, but in foxhole your reward for build a facility is more time spent cooking gsupps. Foxhole doesn't respect your time and this update pushed the scales to being too much work for not enough enjoyment.

[jackarybones]

I love almost everything about foxhole and mostly play logistics. This said, I believe that there is a slight problem with facilities in the game at the moment. Most of the facility aspects that are in place only help with making more facilities while only certain aspects help the front in any way. You also have to go searching across the map to find a facility that does something that can help you. Do I want to go to a facility to make a vehicle variant? I have to search for the right facility. Do I want to bring pallets of barbed wire to the front? I have to search around for the right facility. It would be very nice if there were a map overlay feature where people could mark their facilities and what the facility has for public use. My opinion with foxhole right now is that there are so many great features in place it is just difficult to use them and cooperate with other players sometimes and I feel like there are some improvements that could be made to solve this issue.

[Buicanhthai]

Foxhole needs a communication update. Something like a quest issuing mechanism through the chain of command: A higher up/clan can issue a quest for a certain number of people with guaranteed commendation bonus. The quest team automatically form a squad so that the issuer have some control and communication. You can only take 1 task at once, it only finishes once you quit or the issuer marks it as a success. This makes ranks more meaningful beyond SSgt. Fun thought: we may have a commanding center for all sort of paperwork/office/coordination job for people to occupy backlines more too.

[ashleydavis]

Not too complex; complexity is good. It is too tedious.

[Mith]

As someone who played a little in June and then September, the biggest issue is that without being in a clan it seems there is no clear purpose. Instead of being asked to just join a region with activity, it would help to have a in game system that makes it easier to join some kind of operations, either defensive or offensive, likely organized by clans but open to anyone willing to help or full up roles.

[Omidion]

I've made a 9 month break from Foxhole and came back to 1.0, was excited to see facilities. When i got ingame and saw how deep it went i got overwhelmed and just said "NOPE ! Not touching that." it seemed like facilities wanted me to commit to it, hard, to marry it and live with it from the get go. Seems like facilities are made for the ultra committed players, not for the casuals like me.

[virgilio]

Make Logi easier, or better yet, make it more automatic. Give Logi players the ability to automate resource collection and manufacturing, give them the ability to make multiple trucks and assign each an area to just dump supplies and return to reload. Basically let Logi players do Logi work in the background so they can be part of the main fight aswell. Too few people enjoy just being a Logi player throughout the entire war as it is right now.

[stonefox]

I would say that Foxholes struggle with reducing grinding vs. game balance is made harder because of the need for immersion. Something I think we can all agree is that playing Foxhole is great at feeling like your just a soldier, a regular man put into dangerous situations. If they added minigames or easy artificial fillers, it would really break that immersion and style the whole game works for.
Not to say it is impossible, but the Developers have been spending more time building up the game with new content. Only coming back to old stuff when its easy to fix or required for moving forward. So they been focusing on the problem of grindy-ness for not nearly the time needed to properly combat it.
I hope they shift their focus to work on quality of life and refining current content.
Which they might be looking at the newest update, quality of life and all that. I just hope this is a trend and not a fix they hope would will allow them to continue on their way with new stuff.

[yelviegonzales]

I enjoy the concept of foxhole. It can be very fun at times. The problem for me, is that I like to play with my friends. There are 3 of us total and we enjoy our freedom. The commitment needed to be put in to allow us to do the things we want to do is untenable. What things? Anything other than Frontline infantry with random equipment. We all have lives and no one wants to play just foxhole. In order to play and enjoy the game the way we want to for a day required 3 to 4 days of preparation on my end. Ultimately it just wasn't worth the effort. A week of preparation to gather supplies to take to one front to do our part, and to build and supply 1 light vehicle or push gun for a day.

[Greatdictator]

Builder here. Frontline base builder rather then facility constructor. Relatively new to the game

My biggest issue personally(from a builder perspective) is that theres a lot of elements that make it difficult to build a frontline base. The fact that new players dont know they will need a auto clicker will ensure things get incredibly tedious to dig and build, especailly if your clanless.
Things like not being able to easily get rid of husks is a huge pain, theres no construction vehicles that help with general building (The CV only is usefull for specific buildings and pillboxes outside of tapping things )
And then there is the process of maintaining a base, even if you manage to make a relatively sturdy base on the frontlines. Trying to make sure you have a base that doesnt fall apart can be a incredibly tedious process if you have no one helping you. I know cooperation is the point of the game but, just cause enemies arent currently attacking a area, does not make that area any less strategically important to secure.
And you cant really rely on randos to always help you out. Loseing a whole front simply cause you got fed up and didnt wish to maintain a base anymore cause you see others arent helping with it, is really demotivational.
It also doesnt help that the combat aspect of the game isnt incredibly satisfying, meaning even if you dont want to do something time consuming and just help out on the front by fighting, the combat can feel incredibly arbitrary wether or not youll hit, even if you have a SMG in a close quarters fight for example.

I LOVE the game but it still bears the signs of a game that feels like its in Early Acess at times.

[TheGhettoGinger]

A couple of years ago, before logistics got more tedious than it already was, I was starting to get into it. Then, a new update rolled around that more or less made solo logisitics impossible. So I stopped before I even started. When the Inferno update came out I was hoping solo players could once again help out in logistics and it's just not the case. You have to be in a clan and I just don't have the time for that.

"Don't play the game if you don't have time, wah wah wah I love gatekeeping" is usually what I hear when I say opinion about solo logistics. Solo casual players are the backbone of all MMOs.

[akiiraseijin]

Hello everyone! First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm a foxhole veteran. Joined the game back in 2016 before early acces (it was called combat prototype). I have 5500 hours on Foxhole and i am the leader of one of the oldest regiments in the game rn (11eRC-FL). I think foxhole is indeed in a state where the grind is too much compared to the fun you can have, unless you're actively part of a regiment a spread the workload out. That's a problem. The solution i've personally thought about is to bring back something that WAS in the game and was removed to be replaced by what we now know as "squads": OPERATIONS. Yes back in 2017-18 there was a feature called operations that allowed any players above a certain level/rank to create an operation and place it on the map. All players opening the map could see the operation and join it's dedicated vocal channel to be a part of it. Operations could be private or public and you had something called "operation stockpiles". Those where buildable srockpiles (Similar to seaports) that you could be locked for 48h in preparation of an Operation. During those 48h nobody (even the builder) could acces the supplies in said stockpile. So this system was not perfect because you would end up with locked stockpiles while the enemy would push you on the map where those stockpiles where and have 0 acces to them even though you were in dire need of those supplies. So i just wanted to ispire myself from these now lost features.

First, bring back the Operation system. But make it more complex instead of it having only one channel, make it have multiple "squad" channels in it (example: Logi, Build, Front, ...) all those channels would have 1 or 2 Squad leaders that can communicate directly to the Operation leader. Similarly to Post Scriptum comm system. That would allow casual, new & solo players to log on Foxhole, have a look at what operations are going on and join any activity that they are willing to do on that day withount having to join a regiment. Also regiments would be able to include willing players into complex opertions without them being required in their discord voice channels. I also think with this feature, player retency would increase greatly because of the simplicity of joining ongoing organised actions with firend gourps or solo.

Second, bring back the operation stockpiles but make it available to all operation members istead of it having a lock for 48h. Sure you can have a lock if you want but make it unlockable at least.

Concluson: The game is indeed complex and tedious if you play it alone or with a reduced amount of players. But believe me, communication and teamwork resolves all of that. Just imagine if all players in a backline region worked together to effecietly manage facilities on x map or supply x front. Just imagine if all players on a front could work together to take a single objective. The main problem the game has right now and i think is the root of all issues we are experiencing right now is: The devs are adding more and more teamwork intesive gameplay without having strong communication tools for the players to actually play AS A TEAM but more importantly AS A FACTION!

TLDR; Foxhole doesn't have communication & teamwork tools and devs keep adding features where intensive communications & teamwork are NEEDED?

As for the bigger shards. It's really hard because Devs are stuck with unreal engine limit of 240 players on a server. They could have more if it wasn't a sanbox game where, sometimes, thousands of structures are built and destroyed. The solution the devs found to that was Gsups and Bsups. You cans statisticly only create a certain amount of them per day so there is actually a limit to how much players can build on the whole map to avoind the game to be unplayable. DO NOT expect reduction of Gsup & Bsup production timers unless UE4 does something on their side to allow that.

[Max_Griswald]

I am on break at work, so I don't have time to post a full list of suggestions, but there are a few things that I think would make the game so much better.

1) Change the timeout length of personal refinery/stockpiles to 3 days instead of 2 days. As it stands now, players can't take a weekend off without losing anything they've built-up in the refineries or stockpiles. Sure, it gets released into public so it isn't wasted, but it's probably gone, or at least a lot harder to access, by the time you get home and want to use it.

2) Allow shirts to be made in bigger bulk. I spent a little over 2 hours making 200 crates of shirts the other day, and that was about the only thing I could be doing with the time, because I had to babysit it every 5 minutes at two factories. Then, when one of the factories got a queue (Because people always use the easiest/closest the most), I'd have one factory finish 3 minutes before the other. There's really not much you can do gathering resources, etc, in between cycling the shirt production. I believe that having factories give 10 shirts, but crates be of 100, and allowing mass production factories to produce the 100 shirt crates would help, just allow shirts to be added to the stockpile uncrated, just like vehicles (I don't understand why I can't add resources and stuff to the stockpile without it being crated, it just makes a big mess when a bunch of people put a bunch of stuff in the inventory slots because they don't have enough to crate).

3) Allow people to pull a specific amount of resources out of personal at the refinery! Sometimes I don't want to pull a full fucking load of bmats out just so I can go make a couple shirts or slap together a vehicle. I have to either take random trash and split stacks to "fill" the inventory to where there is just enough room to pull what I want, or I have to now take that extra to a storage depot. Worse if I don't pull it as crates directly from the refinery, because unless it is directly crated, it can't be submitted to a private stockpile! Then it takes 3x as long to pull back out of the public stockpile and people may end up using it when I already had plans for it.

4) Make the cities/towns a bit more user-friendly, narrow streets and sharp turns are horrible when you have a lot of people online.

5) Make the refinery easier to reach from all sides. There are quite a few dead spots where you can be touching the refinery and yet not be able to access it. This causes needless headaches and congestion.

6) Double the size of seaports and storage depots (Put 4 bays on a seaport, maybe only two able to be used by freighters, but people trying to pull vehicles and such can have two other bays. Depots could have one more bay opposite the current one.) This makes it easier for people to work. It's frustrating when you are trying to pull a vehicle out and spend 15 seconds doing so, only to be told the bay is blocked because some idiot put the nose of a truck into the bay. Same thing when people are trying to use the seaport but someone is trying to fill a shipping container from public and it takes them 45 minutes to finish.

7) Make the little rock walls destructible. God, they are the most annoying thing, besides other players, I have ever experienced in almost 40 years of gaming.

8) Widen the roads. In busy logistics sectors there are always a large majority of people who just can't drive.

9) Program a real cruise control option that allows you to chat and stuff while still driving. Making logistics runs is aboutbthe most tedious thing you can do, and holding W the whole time and having to stop to type in chat or use voice chat is stupid.

10) Speaking of tedious things, piloting a freighter. Just give me double the view range at least. It's so annoying not being able to see anything except the boat you are on.

11) Speaking of boats, when I accidentally Q into a boat at the seaport, don't toss me in the water if I Q out of it! Fuck! That is so annoying! A freighter pilot cannot Q and end up on the shore, they have to change positions and THEN Q to end up at the dock. That is so fucking stupid!

Anyway, I am sure there are way more things that I forgot and don't have time to type on my phone right now, but those are some of the biggest.

[mehmedmaloparic]

I gave up about a month ago because game is tedious and doesn't respect my time. In fact, I fear that developers did their best to push the limits of how tedious and grindy they can make the game without outright pushing everyone away.

My regiment burned out maintaining our medium sized facility. We needed 60k coal a day to maintain it because oil fields are so scarce and all major regiments hoard them with extreme jealousy and they do NOT like to share.

Worst part is, we were mostly a partisan regiment, specialized in naval landing and support of the main frontline. Why did we then need a facility?
Because geniuses that developed this game decided to lock all vehicles variants behind the facilities. Long gone are the days we could just get a few mortar halftracks and go to war supporting a frontline. No no, now we need to do a second job maintaining a facility in order to maybe, perhaps -- IF WE ARE LUCKY -- get a chance to build a mortar halftrack and use it in an operation we planned. Often we would not be able to because someone would just steal it because we can no longer reserve them. So we need to guard our equipment that we worked for. Frequently we would just lose all the resources too because players would just use our own train to take out stuff from our base and there is NOTHING we can do to prevent it other than guard it 24/7 and then risk a civil war.

By the end of this experience we even forgot our identities. This was no longer a war game. It was a game about doing repetitive, grindy, unrewarding actions over and over again and HOPE that maybe sometimes in the future we would get to have fun the way we wanted.

"why dont you just ask other players from the faction to give you equipment" you may think.
Sure. Good idea. You know how many times that works? Not enough to help plan any operations that may have an impact. You reliable access to equipment and foxhole just completely ruined that. Its just a slugfest now with whatever you can find.

This game hates its player base and it is why i changed my positive review into a negative one on steam. I really, really dislike foxhole now and I wish I didn't because I enjoyed pre 1.0 a lot. After full release game just went to shit.

[skylordmax]

As a mostly solo player who focuses on logi, I feel like what killed a lot of retention for me and others I know are the changes made to vehicle variants in facilities. When they were originally getting added I thought it would work by keeping the tech choices and having the upgrade building just be used in instances where if you don't tech a vehicle variant but have its hull (Such as choosing the bardiche over the spatha, but already having the falchion teched) you could go in and make that vehicle that wasn't teched, albeit at a higher cost. That way solo players can still build most tanks in the game, but clans would have access to more advanced vehicles and some all-around nice benefits. I had also thought that there might be some special variants that would be available only to facilities (Like the Talos as it uses 75mm, and the bonelaw as its original intention sounded much more powerful than it ended up being. Maybe flames as well.). But the current system locks players out of being able to access tanks if you don't have a facility. It feels like the same thing that happened with the CV, how it only recently got changed to only require one player. Devs intended for it to be multicrew, but people just drove to the location and swapped to the other seat. It's forced cooperation rather than a necessary position. And it's especially hard on players because facilities require a lot of time and dedication, and its for something that was originally part of the base logistics system. I feel as though facilities should supplement the base logistics system rather than overhauling it.

[SignificantOwl]

Honestly, I half expect to be crucified for saying this, but a big part of what is definitely making me (a new player, Warden, Able) get tired of Foxhole within week 2 of playing is the 24/7 aspect. I see people asking fairly regularly whether they should get the game, too, so there definitely are new players filtering in. They just also filter out again. Personally, I think it's primarily due to 2 problems. Pointlessness/exhaustion, and poor communication.

I spend some hours gathering resources and build a small facility? Come back hours or a day later to all my stuff stolen, half the base destroyed. The solution, apparently, is to build even more stuff, AI to defend it, upping the supply burden further. Spend hours and hours over several days fighting at a front, back and forth, but holding? Come back the next day, find that for whatever reason there were 0 people holding it overnight, now it's lost to 3 colonials with flamethrowers. It's exhausting to play this game. That's its problem. It's fucking exhausting to see your effort amount to nothing. At first, you just have your rose-tinted glasses on, maybe you just head into a meatgrinder fight somewhere and have some dumb fun. Fine. But you soon realize how close to pointless so much you do is. Because while you're at work or asleep, it's 2v38 out there, and whatever gains you made, or bit of land you held on to, it's now lost.

This doesn't even touch on the massive communication problems the game has - public facilities no one knows about, therefore going unused. An operation in this or that place that could use new players and is willing to teach them the basics before flinging themselves at the enemy? No one knows. There's nothing being done about obvious alts screwing with your faction, either. Sure, that guy just "happened" to hop into a truck full of bmats at a bunker base being artied and driving it at full speed directly into the enemy only to be lost, right? Public pull timers have to be as abysmal as they are as a way to try to deal with griefers otherwise emptying the seaport and dumping it in the harbor. There are many more examples.

Lastly and as a bonus, the baffling balance decision to purposefully go for asymmetry. Not to mention when this asymmetry more often than not favors the overpopulated faction. Not to mention that having more population is already a huge advantage. You have more of everything. Including logi to supply the endless grenade spam. And nothing is done about this by the devs. There are MMOFPS' out there, like PS2, with solutions to this sort of thing. But the devs do nothing. Just eat shit and quit, player, and leave an ever smaller, increasingly bitter group of "veterans" (people who've somehow stuck with the game for 6 months) behind to continue to be rolled by the outpopping faction.

Actually, one last thing: The manufacturing/logistics in Foxhole are truly baffling to me. You could make EVE/Factorio comparisons, but as a player of both of those games, Foxhole picked the worst parts of both to base their system on, it seems. Honestly, my comparison is that it'd be like just plopping down an Azbel in Tama as a solo person to do lowsec industry in EVE. Except the reward for the risk you're taking and time you're investing isn't there, because you're at best making T2 stuff, which you could just as well make in highsec. But honestly, even the solo lowsec citadel is a poor comparison - at least it has timers to allow you to try to evacuate your stuff. People can't just waltz up and remove it all in 10 minutes. This is, of course, another aspect in which population helps. More facilities, more people to upkeep them, hunt partisans, whatever. Again, Foxhole is just... exhausting.

[heraissilly]

As a warden player only, I have only played 5 wars. Every war, we get stomped, I leave for 2-3 months, come back, send we get stomped again. It hit me so hard this latest war I actually did something I normally don't do, and looked up win rates. Apparently, collies have a 70% win rate both in terms of wars and individual days. Honestly, I think something is not balanced properly, either due to skill drain, a YouTube imbalance or gear balancing, but something needs to be done.

[thedungeoneer]

12:12 this is a pretty interesting idea. As someone who usually takes command of impromptu tank squds on random fronts something that could streamline the communication process could be really cool. I always thought it would be cool if we could make hex maps where you could draw battle plans that were visible to others or radio stations that would allow for an extended range of communication, maybe make the radio actually allow you to communicate with the backline?

[MrWhisky]

The facility topic is still largely avoided by many veterans because it is quite complex. It's a thing that you really have to take your time and deal with deeply. In addition, finding the right building site is a pretty big hurdle, trees, cliffs and beaches are really annoying when building. It would help if you could adapt the building area, such as cutting down trees.