The Downfall of Roblox Phantom Forces 

bro doesn't miss the old PF, he misses how he felt when playing old PF.

Old arsenal was peak. Now the game is full of sweaty tryhards and emoting children

Went from Phantom Forces to budget Call of Duty

The game didn't have a downfall dude, the old fanbase just doesn't like the changes. It objectively better now.

it still averages about 2.5k players on roblox so I wouldn't say it's a complete downfall, but I guess in terms of gameplay yeah.

I don't even play the game and the amount of bias here still hits hard.

phantom forces is not a game about snipers 💀

words cant even describe how fun the game was going for barriers and slideshots back in early 2018, will never be forgotten for sure. i hope stylis eventually makes their own archive of multiple versions.

phantom forces is now a sweatfest literally every server has that one person who always sweat and use meta guns and it's just not fun to play but most people play it because there's just simply no better game that is similar

Pf back then was so much fun, almost everyone was low lv and i didn't have to sweat to win, the lobby was full of curious ppl. Also a rank 100 back then was considered legend. But now, the game is just a bunch of tryhards and alt account players, i can't even enjoy the game

For me personally, I find the game still enjoyable after years of playing the game. Some changes I would agree weren’t fun, I stuck with the changes and still manage to have fun with it today. I do like the changes brought to the game now honestly because it helps feel more polished and smooth. Also to include that they’re still trying new features such as a damage graph and attachment changes which does help change the flow of the game per update now on what is either good or bad.

What a completely awful video oriented to trickshotting. Biiiig deal buddy, can we talk about the actual problems? Not once did I hear anything about the evident tryhard problem that’s been plaguing this game too. Oh my God, WRAP IT UUUUP. Edit: I’m not gonna go through the hassle of figuring out why a fresh reply will show up when filtering by Top but my fresh reply won’t, so I’ll just say this: rage bait used to take more effort. Don’t be the first reply. Two words is stale at this point.

its still quite a good game. It just is very sweaty now. This seems like nostalgia bias. Also, the movement is at a pretty good state now, just look at LJtheperson's videos. How can you say the movement is bad when you dont even know the movetech, empslide, jumpslide, longjump, etc. The only really bad thing Ive seen recently is that sliding speed was lowered for gun with less walkspeed, but raised for weapons with more walkspeed, so empsliding with bare fists is really fast now.

Personally, what got me to eventually stop playing was, I absolutely hated most of the new maps, and the movement/slide changes, both absolutely killed my mood for the game. Also nerfed my favorite shotgun (Remington 870) but oh well. Aswell as not seeing a lot of my favorite maps anymore, like Blizzard, Farmlands, Jungle, Peak, Rust Belt, etc.

Oh man, I remember when I first started playing Phantom Forces. Was early/mid 2017. I remember the older HUD like it was yesterday. Sliding was crazy, and hallways back then could be completely covered in the blood of other players. I was never really involved in the clipping scene, though I do remember seeing many clips, which inspired me to try and get better at the game. After July 4, everything started to pretty much go downhill, as said in the video. People started to play in crazy ways, and I realized quite a few things about Stylis: >They like to nerf guns that would have otherwise been fine without being nerfed. >They like to buff guns in one of two ways: They buff the gun in a way that makes it absolutely broken, and then they forget about it until there's a public outrage about said gun being overused and too OP, or they buff the gun in a way that's completely insignificant to the gameplay and wouldn't really change anything. >They liked (not as much anymore) to shadow nerf and shadow buff guns. >If they nerf something that actually needs to be nerfed, they don't nerf it enough the first time. They will wait until users start complaining about the gun again to do something (i.e., it took several nerfs to properly kick the shit out of both the M60 and the HK21. Especially the M60, that thing was absolutely horrible to play against...) As well as this, I've noticed that the game does an absolutely terrible job at registering hits. I was just playing PF again before I watched this video and I've noticed that no matter how many more times you hit your opponent than they hit you, some of your shots are bound not to register as having dealt any damage, and could literally end the firefight early with you getting massively... _(ahem...)_ ...dogged on. TL;DR - I'm a veteran PF player that genuinely hates how Stylis decided to update the game over time. Hitreg is terrible. Outrage during gameplay is inevitable.

I remember playing it when it first dropped on console, man things are different now...

I’m gonna be honest. Your arguments are all biased and very flawed. And over all “The downfall of Phantom Forces” argument hardly exists. The vast majority of the growing Roblox player base is mobile players, which couldn’t play PF if they wanted to. And I can guarantee you that if PF stayed the way it was at it’s “peak” it would be certainly deader through history. PF isn’t as popular as it use to be at the moment, but it quite literally was when you quit, which emphasizes that you’re only talking for the niche community you were a part of. They made obvious bug fixes and balances that upset you because that’s some how “trying to be too realistic.” You play it for the first time in years and of course you dislike it, you’re washed, and you remember a time when you were good, but because you stopped playing and never adapted to the, honestly minor, changes throughout the game, you’re not gonna have a fun time. There’s also what I call the arsenal effect, which is when the majority of the player base is proportionally bad enough for a decent player to always feel like they’re really good. But once the average player became less dogshit at the game suddenly arsenal is bad and less fun and people complain because they no longer win every game and it’s “full of sweats everywhere”. This applies to Phantom Forces as well and not just decent players but competition everyone. Additionally if you play a game consistently for as long as you did of course it will get stale to you eventually. Also I’m really unsure what movement update you keep mentioning, for the near first year of PF you couldn’t even slide, it’s a bit clunkier now perhaps, but it’s relatively the same, and there are quite a lot of niche movement tricks you could learn to up your skill ceiling. All of your reasons are completely on self bias and no actual analytical analysis of how, why or even if the game actually “fell off”. Additionally the last part is just flat out wrong, PF doesn’t take down modded versions because they’re ashamed of the old game, they take down modded reuploads because they don’t like people profiting of stealing their work.

Nah these takes are so bad, the only problem with PF right now is the player base is too sweaty, new player would immediatly leave after getting spawn camped for 20mins straight

It is still very fun imo. Sometimes I hop on and I always enjoy myself

Video is really well made but most of this video is just your own bias. The game naturally had to improve to stay alive and the game has more content than ever. New things have to be added and bugs have to be removed. Sorry to tell you.

Its sad to admit that even just fps games in total will never return to their golden ages. Its not a lie to state that everyone has just gotten better, whether its better technology that supports more frames or even just better skill. There used to be a time where it was the skill gap between new players and experienced players, and now its just everything inbetween.

your bias has made your opinion completely unrespectable, you didnt even bother checking new weapons or quests, all you wanted was dopamine rushes because atleast 1/3 of the video was you complaining about trickshotting and clipping. trick shotting and feeds get boring after YEARS of doing them agian and agian. It is your problem you failed to find a new way to enjoy the game and not stylis's fault for not sticking to the same thing and loathing over the old playerbase.

Although I'm still technically kinda new (Started 3 years ago), I do agree that there was a period of time where phantom forces truly was on the verge of dying out due to just garbage updates but they are improving now. They recently buffed almost all the pdws in the game, rebalanced some snipers like the svds, svu (now dmr), and they gave the intervention slightly less torso kill but gave it a higher firerate which a lot of people in the community liked. I feel like they are listening to the community more now and so far most of the recent changes have been very positively received by the community. There has been a lot of lows, some of the advanced movement techniques and its very wide selection of guns made pf unique from all other fps games on the platform.

It wasn’t till like early 2020 that Xbox received the big update that turned Phantom Forces into its PC counterpart. Before that, it was basically the 2015 build of the game and god damn it I loved it. It was simple, fun, and it wasn’t as sweaty as it is now. I’d rush home from middle school and hop onto the game with my friends and we’d try to dominate. Little things make my old clips nostalgic to me such as the sniper sound not working, no blood, really clunky grenade mechanics and more. The game is still fun today, but it’s not the same.

i had the misfortune of leading a sniping clan from 2022-2023, it was genuinely difficult, mainly because the clippers themselves all hated playing the game, all that was left for them was "the closer" which for most, never happened.

Stylis need to remember this quote from Gabe Newell: "Fun Is Not Realism, But Reinforcement"

lots of this video seems more like u miss the nostalgia of the early days of pf. overall today the game is in a better spot in my opinion. i will give u credit tho with pf devs trying to make a roblox game realistic which really doesnt make any sense but its recently added a lot of overall positive changes to guns which is keeping overall gameplay fresh. i was not a clipper or really used snipers back in the older days of pf so i have no real remembrance of how they worked but the game isnt too far off how it is today just with more features good or bad.

Hey this is a good video and I agree with most of your points, I used to hard grind in 2016 just to quit after a couple of months because I sucked, but I play a lot again now ever since 2022. I feel your points, especially the bad balancing, but your video really feels like a bias to nostalgia. The game has genuinely improved a lot, I would expect a 7 year old game to stop being fun when you have 1000+ hours, like what can I say from experience. Anyways, that was a good video keep up the good woro

2016 was peak gameplay for us all cuz we mostly up against children on crappy PCs now they’re all developed common sense to apply more delicate movements those are normal players i haven’t mention now there’s alway 2-3 players sweating hard really disrupting our killstreaks but still a good old time that put a smile on our faces whenever we think abt ❤

loved and liked the video, man its crazy how it feels like a completely new game from the one I used to play. it just makes me regret not grinding more back then during prime.

they could have kept the game the exact same and clipping would have still died. the reason it's so hard to feed now is because the average skill of the player base has gone up massively. not to mention there are only a handful of people actually willing to edit montages, so no wonder the community is so dead.

there was a ww2 version of PF but sadly died after the group tryed to do a big change (they stayed 2 years with the game closed)

To this day, the lack of Call of Robloxia 5 still leaves a small hole in my heart.

I think Phantom at the moment is doing good with their updates, adding ways to get more credits apart from leveling up or crates. Now with their new PDW update many of them (that needed a buff) got a buff. One thing that should happen is Stylis releasing the older version of PF, it would drive a lot of older veteran players like you back to the game. I don’t feel like Stylis is airing on the side of realism as you can make guns like a bfg, intervention, m4a1, Hecate etc have no stock and a short barrel. As well as a can cannon existing within the game. Their sight and scopes overhaul benefitted the game, and to most people made the game better as the scopes needed a overhaul. With them removing instaswapping, a overpowered glitch within PF, they removed it so you couldn’t make a sniper have the same rate of fire as the Scar SSR. You can still absolutely and easily hit killfeeds, it’s not something that’s unobtainoum to a regular player like you and me. If you played the game now you might like it more with the different balancing changes, some of them you might like and others you don’t, I 100% respect your opinions as everyone is entitled to them. I think some of your arguments are influenced by nostalgia bias and by the fact that you took a break for a long time and are rusty to the game. As well as that the skill gap between high and low ranking players became a lot smaller. With lower ranks hitting clips and towards the top of the leaderboards. Which I think is good, cause getting to the top of the leaderboard shouldn’t be unobtainable to a lower rank. I’m rank 146 after the big change and I was 68 before the big change. I‘ve been playing for years, playing before the big overhaul. The game was fun before and it is now to me.

banger video. phantom forces is one of the greatest roblox games ever made but the completely unwanted changes to snipers have just completely ruined a magical game that was loved. i stopped playing in 2018 but came back in 2020 and man it was just tooooooo different

phantom forces is too good to be a roblox game, needs to be his own game at this point , thats why is dying you can not be a roblox game forever, even roblox gonna have to move on at some point like roblox 2 or something

The old version of this game, the sliding felt smooth and almost like mw 2019 slide canceling, now it’s like mw2 2022 sliding that’s the best way I can describe it

I don't play PF anymore because of the sweats, i main snipers but even getting to a good position is difficult when someone constantly sliding and sprinting gets to you and deletes you with a gun that shoots bullets faster than you could comprehend it.

This video is really well made and has really good points. A lot of people that think new PF is better clearly have never tried sniping and didn't play back then. I see people commenting that its not changed at all or that the movement is the same which is completely wrong. I started playing pf in mid 2018 and only started clipping recently but hitting my first Quad and first triple ts are moments that I will never forget.

I used to play a lot of PF back in 2016 (or whenever the public Demo came out), and I get what you mean by the game changing. From what I remember, early PF felt a lot slower in terms of movement and gameplay-which was either the result of the game being new or the current video game climate at the time. Either way, it felt like one of those games you could easily pick up and play and get a kill within the first few minutes of playing. Nowadays, it's extremely difficult. You have so many movement shooter kids sliding everywhere and making it difficult to react because of how quick they move. Getting suppressed causes your character to have a seizure and makes it impossible to aim. And a lot of the additions for the sake of "realism" make it extremely difficult to play when you first played the game when it felt like BF4 & BO2. You either have to adapt to the play style or-if you're not able to-simply drop the game. And not everyone can simply "get gud", especially when they have medical problems that make playing games a little difficult. I do hope we someday get a classic PF-styled shooter game someday. But given the current video game climate with all that slide-canceling nonsense, I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.

as a phantom forces player since 2016 who stopped playing 2019-2022 and came back recently, pretty big difference from the "golden age" of phantom forces was definitely the player base. lobbys were much easier back in the day compared to now, you could argue this is skill issue or absolute decay in terms of skills for me but i rewatched a few clips of mine and man i swear its way easier back in 2017-2019

Your return reaction is exactly what happened to me, except I was present for the updates, then left after their release. The skillset completely changed.

Just found this video and wow does it feel like words have been taken out of my mouth. It also sure has been a while since we last interacted, hasn't it? Almost 4 years. Last year I returned to clipping and I can safely say I still feel the same way about the game as when I quit. Very crappy gameplay experience for the reasons you mentioned in this video among others. Thanks for making this! It was a very enjoyable video to watch!

Imo, the downfall started when they let Mar start overshoving a bunch of senseless and shitty conversions to a shitload of guns, followed by a good load of bad balancing choices AND the stupid amount of pedofilia drama on the discord The peak of fun on my case was the beginning of the CEOs server that was around early 2019 iirc, until mid 2021

What's that R700 setup if you don't mind me asking?

good to hear perspective from players that have been here the whole time. Good vid

I played for XE and ApeX from 2016 to 2018. I recognize the majority of these clips and clippers lol. That period was really fun. Having a community of players and editors discovering new exploits and techniques on a silly roblox game. It was a perfect storm of opportunity but as to be expected, it left eventually. I still play occasionally, and while you can't feed 6+ without getting split, the game is still pretty fun. Sure, sniping might be in a rough spot, especially because of the aim-punch and screen shake; but there are plenty of other ways to play that I've come to enjoy! There's also some cool movement tech I've seen, that, while isn't trickshot-oriented, is still fun. Overall though, the power creep of certain guns, especially newer high-rank guns is hella apparent, making the catalog more unbalanced and meta-centered. I liked the part where you talked abt the history of the sniping community. I remember when there was even a pro league! The PF Sniping community taught me how to edit videos, curation, and put me onto some of my favorite music! And I thank it for that. We've moved on to become creatives, graphic designers, game devs, musicians... and Christian preachers.😅 PF was an important stepping stone for us 🖤

2015 is definitely the golden age of roblox, so glad I played it around that time.

I got sick of it when it became mandatory to dropshot every single gunfight. Main game I play now is Dummies vs Noobs bc its PvE but difficult enough to feel good when I play good

The movement is pretty good once you know the cool down between sliding and diving it's pretty good.

underrated channel keep going bro love this

Whenever I try to play, even if it's just one pixel of my body sticking out of cover, some dude on the other side of the freaking map will somehow find a way to headshot me.

Very well made vid. I feel the same way. It almost feels like they specifically went after they’re biggest and most dedicated players, and it seems like they just don’t care.

Another big nerf on the snipers sometime in 2017 was that they nerfed the headshot hitboxes, the old ones were like 1.5x bigger than the actual head

I'm not sad pf's sniping went downhill but I'm glad I got to be a part of it. Everything was clean before with how everything looks, how everything feels to be played and how the clipping and editing community interacted. I was a simple kid with a crappy laptop seeing DanTDM's video about the game and my journey started there. Grinded the game and catered to the sniping playstyle, and I learned editing just to make fun montages as I wanted to do what Paradox Poke did. I got recruited in Paradox around 2018 and met some nice people there. Eventually people have to move on. The game wasn't the only ones who changed but we as the players also did. - Former Paradox player/editor

I left in 2019 at the rank of 289. I went from a noob, to sniping god with the help of paradox poke's videos and seeing different ways in how to snipe faster and cooler. Never focused on clipping or tried to go for trick shots mostly bc I was using a workstation laptop that couldn't handle recording anything let alone the game, but I remember two trickshots that I remember quite fondly. When the hecate was added, that was my peak as for the next few months even after the sniping changes, I would be using that gun to quickscope and feed. The only reason why I stopped was when I started getting into youtubers who didn't snipe, but were running and gunning, so I moved back over to assault rifles and smgs. That has gotten me to 2019 when I started to play less and less. Lack of content updates and games like Bad Business and Bloxburg took my attention away. I liked the look of Bloxburg and decided why the heck not spend hours making massive good looking houses and Bad Business was just really fun because the movement was really fast and the gameplay was gravitating. Now, I don't play either of them instead I gotten into Battlefield 1, Battlefield 5, Battlebit until that got stale, and War Thunder.

I can relate to this video completely. I started playing roblox at 7yrs old cuz i heard all about phantom forces and was really excited as it was the literal first game i played on the platform. And since i was a chill Call of Duty kid i really looked forward to grinding this game and yes i did and made it to rank 64 before i just stopped. Completely stopped. I still missed the old days when i got 45 kills average per game but now im playing it as a teen. I dont really get the enjoyment i used to have when i was young. It was kinda like the phantom forces i used to play was gone tbh.

the arcade style that pf was made it so fun and unique

i played phantom forces alot back then and sometimes still bootup an archived 2019 version or older, but i enjoy both, while they feel and play quite differently every version has something i love about it. in the newest version the QoL when it comes to scopes, and the huge amount of weapons is it for me. the older ones are a fun more simple game, tho i can still turn my brain off on any version and still do well, the newest however does require more attention to play well. TL;DR they feel like different games but i still manage to enjoy them all

One of my main issues is visibility. It's so hard to see anyone rn and its annoying, not even csgo has this issue

Hey question, are you RockyAli619?

Your so underrated, love the content❤

phantom forces is not dead tf? have you seen the player count?

I loved this game, it really started to fall for me when they added the AK family, all semblance of balance was thrown out of the window, and in the skins update it became too heavy for my potato pc to handle.

Imo this time especially now since the major balance changes are movement changes are a great detraction to the game and changing the guns that are awful to a really good state and makes me excited for the new update it did fall off but it's now harder to play which I enjoy the challenge as someone who plays the game at a competitive level I absolutely love the new pf

I joined phantom pretty late, last year, and did have a lot of fun, then i dedicated myself to try getting all attatchments on all guns just to have a goal to do. Now, at rank 92, and only 2 primaries and the semi auto secondaries left to just get to 100 kills, the game is damn near unplayable for my challenge. Especially after this most recent update, which I absolutely hate, because it gives players that are not good at all the ability to easily dominate every lobby they are in that doesn’t abuse the meta. New players need to learn and develop their skills rather than sit back on a crutch and abuse their crutch weapons.

i think we all grew up. I still cherish it tho, dreaming of getting into paradox lol

although i am a newer player, starting in quarantine in 2021, i would love to see a legacy version be released for the OG players to play!

this video should be called a history of PF clipping

This video says exactly what I've been thinking for several months out loud. I'm in the same situation, the only difference being that I miss 2021-23 and I still play. It's somewhat getting better, but Stylis is definitely still screwing up the whole game with every update

This feels more like a personal bias than actual arguments.

TLDR : He wasn't able to adapt to the changing meta of the game and started shitting on it after old bugs were patched

My main grudge is the amount of high fire rate weapons that just shred you in seconds and the lesser need to be accurate

The green laser felt like cheating when sniping with it back in the day.

I think why some think the game fell off is because most of the big names in the community (Poke, paradox, rage, syn...) were completely/somewhat tied to clipping, meaning viewers tried to replicate the clips they saw despite the meta becoming more and more focused on reg guns. For clippers, the game has definitely become extremely annoying, but for the people who dont clip i think pf is fine for them

The problem with Phantom Forces now is that there is no balance. At this point just use a range weapon to do everything. Another thing is maps were redone to the point that they purposely are trying to force you to play with an automatic rather than DMR, Shotgun, LMG, etc. LMGs are functionally useless, DMRs and Snipers unless it's a high-powered one you will get one shot. The Hackers list goes on of issues it has. But the Balance compared to the community server which runs on an older version of the game flows a lot better where all types can be utilized to counter one another. 1 Shot isn't necessarily a bad thing but the way it was balanced in this game is the equivalent of taking a dump and not balancing any of the weapon types. Aside from that I did notice that the hand waving thingy doesn't believe you can do that anymore. I thought it was neat back then.

i was nonstop on phantom forces during COVID, so many memories!

Thank you for taking me back to much simpler times

the reason why PF is slowly dying is cause stylis has yet to realize that they need new players to keep the game going, and PF is not new player friendly. All of your points were effectively "they made balancing patches" and "they fixed bugs" and my personal favourite "they made the movement bad" even though the movement feels the best its ever been.

3:55 this aged well

Seeing clips where you can snipe without getting ran up on or sprayed down from across the map takes me back man. I have no idea what the exact statistical differences are from 2015-16 phantom forces but it definitely isn't the same. I wasn't in the community since i was just a dumb kid at the time but it was still fun to go on rampages with the snipers. edit: Especially the crane clips, you could just spam down the crane and get collateral after collateral as people kept spawning edit: now i know the changes, some of this stuff didnt even occur to me, just felt worse

i honestly dont see an issue with the movment. i can still do dive jumps to gain height etc. for me it all seems the same lol.

The problems with pfs currently is something that to me is inevitable. The game simply has been popluar for too long. As the game ages, more players play the game with leads to the appearance of experienced or pro players more common. The game didnt turn bad or anything, the skill curve is simply stretched too far to a point where new players have absolutely zero chance of even playing the game. The presence of experienced players is simply too common that even server at least has like seven rank 100+. Back in 2018, is when i started playing, having multiple rank 100+s are relatively uncommon and i think thats when a lot of us started playing. In short, the game just became more difficult to play. To me, the game needs to find someway to be a lot more beginner friendly somehow, or else the player count WILL keep dropping.

you have 9 subscribers??? underrated af

Man I dunno what you’re on about. I think I’ve had more fun on PF within the last year than the previous 6 and a half that I played.

The so called "downfall" stylis never had a grudge against trickshotters and snipers its about balance and somewhat realism, you dont miss old PF you miss how you felt in old PF, the game is good as it is and if it stayed the way u would want the game would be more boring or at all dead

bro is legit rusty and pissed off that he is rusty

good video :)

The game is in a very good state now i am still playing this game even after 4 years the game is more competitive now but i think thats an asset not an issue

This game was just fun to play during school when you got lab time (computer room) for a class or two. I've never once thought of playing this during my spare time at home.

some how M4A1 feel abit weird used to get many kill with it now not since kill i got

The downfall all started in 2020.

I remember when I was in the 3rd grade in 2017 and getting hyped to get on to phantom forces to grind. I still play the game, but I don’t have play it as much. I used to average over 120 kills a game but now I only average about 50😂. I also used to get a rank every single day but now I get one a week. And, there is no point for me to grind bcuz I had saved up credits and pre bought every single. I miss the old game, but it’s not because of the mechanics or graphics it’s because of the simplicity of it.

Tbh the movement isnt even bad, its that the sniper slows it down and stuff like quickswitching doesnt work anymore, you have to adapt and use new strategies to play

I remember when during early access they would do open weekends. I'd grind out every second out of those days.

“It’s so hard to see” Turn off the day and night cycle

I know I'm late but holy crap this game isn't casual friendly. I tried it 2 days ago and jesus christ I only played for like 10 mins and I was already 0-20 I was convinced that there may have been hackers in the lobby at how quick I was getting kill to say this game is nothing but the sweatiest of the sweatiest is an understatement you need millisecond reaction speed to be able to play this game the only game I ever played that had gameplay that required millisecond reaction time was for honor but at least for honor had a good learning curve this game will give professional overwatch players a run for their money, by the time I see a enemy player they already some how did a 360 crouch slide and shot an entire magazine into me before I even shot a single bullet. I thought call of duty was toxic in 2009 but this game is a close second, I can't even spawn without some guy across the map doming me in the head with ksg or take a step without shot at in every direction. I don't recommend this game for kids or anyone who wants to play casually. The guns are also horrible, I couldn't even tell the difference between any of them, they all have so much recoil at every range.

Call Of Robloxia was the peak, when PF became a thing, it was the beginning of the end

this video isnt 'the downfall of roblox phantom forces' its more like 'how this game changing made me not like it personally and why the game 'is' dead because of that'

16:06 the devs dont care if any old version pops up, its the stylis mods