Realism vs Gameplay - Where is the fine line ??

[dawdler]

edit: ^^I enjoy seeing what I have accomplished overall, not just in one kill streak.

We all enjoy that, but that's part of the reason we die so much. If you score #1 in the game with 100 points, 20 TW points, 50 kills and 40 deaths you've done well, havent you? No one can argue that. Question is, did you *really* do better than the guy with 50 points, 10 TW points, 20 kills and only 1 death?

If we want to encourage staying alive, we have to reward it (and NOT punish deaths as that's probably the worst thing you could possibly do!).

Plus it doesnt matter what you accomplished overall if you died doing it.

If we where strictly realistic you shouldnt have any scores, period. That's pretty dull though. So the middle ground is displaying score based on the best "life" you've had.

[JavaMoose]

Maybe an idea would be to completely revise the score system to be based on the highest score a soldier has had during one life? That would be a great encouragement to staying alive! If the player "Dawdler" spawn, kill 3 people and then die, his score is 3 (simply counting 1 per kill). If he respawns, kill 1 guy, neutralize a flag for 1 point and then die, score is STILL 3 for Dawdler. If he respawns again, goes on a killing spree by brutalizing 5 enemy soldier and neutralizing a flag, his score is now 6. See where I'm going?

It might not be the most realistic reason to make people want to stay alive, but it should be a pretty good reason for them to try

That's a neat idea. It would be pretty cool too after the battle to look and be in awe of someone with a score of 20 or something - because you would know that guy has his shit together. It ain't all that hard to get a "big number" score, but it does take something to get it without dying...

I would if there would be a way to have a "Lifetime Kill" like your idea Dawdler, and also have a "Total Indiv. Map Kill" score, both shown. Think of it, suddenly the Vanilla "God" with 90 kills looks like a chump when you see that his highest "Lifetime Kill" was 2.

[Jeeves]

We all enjoy that, but that's part of the reason we die so much. If you score #1 in the game with 100 points, 20 TW points, 50 kills and 40 deaths you've done well, havent you? No one can argue that. Question is, did you *really* do better than the guy with 50 points, 10 TW points, 20 kills and only 1 death?

If we want to encourage staying alive, we have to reward it (and NOT punish deaths as that's probably the worst thing you could possibly do!).

Plus it doesnt matter what you accomplished overall if you died doing it.

If we where strictly realistic you shouldnt have any scores, period. That's pretty dull though. So the middle ground is displaying score based on the best "life" you've had.

Yes I do believe that I did better than the guy with less deaths. I was "in the shit" doing the job at hand which would cause alot of deaths but also win the game. Its not hard to go and camp (or be in a plane) somewhere and get 20 kills.

Like I was trying to say in the other post, we should not worry about encouraging staying alive becuase that does nothing for gameplay. I would much rather try to pull off the unbelievable and die 20 times than to hide behind a wall for 10 min while that saw unloads in my direction becuase I dont want to die.

With everyone only looking out for their own lives you will have less coop IMO. People will not be willing to risk their neck to save yours becuase they have that punishment for dying (or lack of encouragment). No more medics, no more self sacrafice for the team. When there is a stalemate fire fight going on, I will be that guy charging out as decoy so my team can get the shots off. Sometimes I live sometimes I dont, but I know my squad benifited from it either way. With your system (the general topic of the thread) nobody would want to be that guy.

This was longer than intended but I stand by what I say. To punish for dying or reward for living would take away from it being a game. Realism is great in games, but somethings are simply not meant for games.

[dawdler]

With everyone only looking out for their own lives you will have less coop IMO. People will not be willing to risk their neck to save yours becuase they have that punishment for dying (or lack of encouragment). No more medics, no more self sacrafice for the team. When there is a stalemate fire fight going on, I will be that guy charging out as decoy so my team can get the shots off. Sometimes I live sometimes I dont, but I know my squad benifited from it either way. With your system (the general topic of the thread) nobody would want to be that guy.

Which is why I'm seriously against punishing deaths. My score idea doesnt mean you have to play any different from what you do now. All it would do is just display the highest acheived k/d ratio combined with the teamwork score, per life. Technically you could go on a killing spree in a tank then sacrifice yourself for the next 20 minutes by dying every 20 seconds for your squad, and still achieve relativly high score... Because in one of your lives, you did good (realistcly speaking).

[Martini]

Realism vs Gameplay,


The part you enjoy vs. the part that is fun,


I think you just have to know where and when to apply 'reality' before you can have full servers of any givin mod.

Most people seem to enjoy realistic things that have to do with general gameplay, real sounding weapons, realistic infantry models, squad structure, etc. But it seems most everyone can agree they don't like realism where their failures during a match are concerned, ie: no respawning after death.

I know as long as the parts of the game I enjoy are realistic, then i am happy. And if my player can avoid death by avoiding the laws of physics a couple of times, well thats quite ok too!!

Maybe the whole death thing should just be left as it is for a while, who knows, the answer will come eventually.

There now we can move onto much much, more important things like why we can't have a front passenger in the Humvee!!

[Tom#13]

good point.
the devs have got along time to think about it so im sure itll all come together

[BrokenArrow]

I believe the idea has been to balance authenticity and realism with gameplay from the begining. I think that was the idea UK_Force had in posting this .

[Jeeves]

Which is why I'm seriously against punishing deaths. My score idea doesnt mean you have to play any different from what you do now. All it would do is just display the highest acheived k/d ratio combined with the teamwork score, per life. Technically you could go on a killing spree in a tank then sacrifice yourself for the next 20 minutes by dying every 20 seconds for your squad, and still achieve relativly high score... Because in one of your lives, you did good (realistcly speaking).

I understand what you are saying. I just think that everyone would be thinking about that first life (and everyone after that). I wouldnt mind the idea of having both, almost like a best kill streak in the final tally (with all the other best cap/kill assist/medic/etc.) But to reward or punish deaths would realy take away from the game play.

[beta]

Like I was trying to say in the other post, we should not worry about encouraging staying alive becuase that does nothing for gameplay. I would much rather try to pull off the unbelievable and die 20 times than to hide behind a wall for 10 min while that saw unloads in my direction becuase I dont want to die.

With everyone only looking out for their own lives you will have less coop IMO. People will not be willing to risk their neck to save yours becuase they have that punishment for dying (or lack of encouragment). No more medics, no more self sacrafice for the team. When there is a stalemate fire fight going on, I will be that guy charging out as decoy so my team can get the shots off. Sometimes I live sometimes I dont, but I know my squad benifited from it either way. With your system (the general topic of the thread) nobody would want to be that guy.

It may just be me, but I think that making people fear for their lives (virtual ones of course ) this will actually promote squad work.

One game we had a new player in our "hardened squad", they said they had never played a BF2 game like that one because before they never really saw teamwork in action (I mean real teamwork, not just medics running around zapping and throwing med packs at people).

We ran into a situation like you described, there was a Vodnik that pinned our squad down, the map was Road to Kygon'Ni, (sorry for the butchered spelling of the name) no one in our squad wanted to die because it meant a long trek back, so our SL tells our assualt soldier to pop some smoke, then the LMG and the rest of the squad to try to suppress the Vodnik while the AT soldier moves to a position to destroy it ... teamwork!

Now if everyone feared for their lives, sooner or later they are going to try joining a squad, or give up because they can't "rambo it" anymore alone. Quite effectively weeding out the non-teamplayers .

The key is to implement this "fear" effectively, a one life per round implementation is a bit harsh for 30-45 minute rounds, but 20 seconds till you're back in is not harsh enough. I think a 1 minute death timer is a good idea. Also re-implementing (everyone seemed to have forgot this ...) BF1942's "global" spawn system sounds like a good idea, but it could prove to be difficult.

Someone in this thread suggested a higher ticket loss per death. I figured I'd write my ideas here too (might as well, the more people who read it, the more people might think it's a good idea).

Basically, the more "expensive" the equipment is, the more it costs your team if you lose it.

So, for example, if you die as a generic rifleman, it only costs your team 1 ticket, but if you die as a LMG gunner, since a LMG is more "expensive" than a rifle, it costs your team 2 tickets.

Adding even more, if you lose a MBT, a very expensive piece of machinery, it will cost your team 10 tickets, and if, somehow, you manage to blow up that multi-million dollar jet (you weren't doing anything stupid, right?) your team loses 20 tickets.

Now, with the last idea, obviously vehicles would have to not be able to be destroyed over and over again by the enemy at their spawn locations, and they DEFINATELY should not randomly blow up after you leave it for 5 minutes, so I propose to make the vehicles spawn, and another WILL NOT spawn until the vehicle is destroyed. Also, if the vehicle is destoyed where it spawned, the team loses no points (to prevent vehicle camping)

Hopefully someone reads and likes my ideas enough to implement at least some of them .


Whew, long post ...

[dawdler]

The key is to implement this "fear" effectively, a one life per round implementation is a bit harsh for 30-45 minute rounds, but 20 seconds till you're back in is not harsh enough. I think a 1 minute death timer is a good idea. Also re-implementing (everyone seemed to have forgot this ...) BF1942's "global" spawn system sounds like a good idea, but it could prove to be difficult.

1 minute spawn time compared to 20 seconds means 1/3rd less manpower on the field (roughly speaking). When both teams loose that, you loose pace pretty badly, especially with few players. While doing that, you basicly accomplished nothing. People wont "fear" death just because of slower respawn. It'll just make them angry and annoyed, on both the killing side (fewer targets, less combat) and the dying side (was going to die regardless of 20 second or 1 minute spawn).

As I said before, someone has to die. When I fight, I never want it to be me, I already "fear" death in the fact that I just dont want to die. But I know it will happen, because its either me or my enemy. That's pretty poor odds.

The ticket idea is great though.

[beta]

It is true, with less people you don't need the 1 minute spawn time, but with a team of 32 players in a CQB map, 20 seconds is WAY too short, you can't get anything done.

Spawn times almost need to be map and player amount dependant ...

Or a better solution must be created.

[Koolchamp]

Well I just read the 5 pages of responses, so I thought ill give my 2 cents.

On the matter of the "fear" of dying, for game/mod developers thats kind of hard in a multiplayer game. Its alot easier to do in a single player game. One thing that I though would be cool to see in a BF mod would be a limited number of lives. No not 1 life. I mean somewhere between 5-10 lives depending on what map your on. This bring up the problem of 1 guy is still alive hiding somewhere in a map and just sitting there. Well the DEV of the mod would have to configure the game so that it recognizes things/situations like that. Im not a game programmer (working on it though) so I don't know if that would be possible.
But IMO, having a limited number of lives would have people "fearing" to die, but at the same time know that they still have 4 or 5 more lives left that they can work with.

On the topic of the AAS system, maps like Karkand work well because it kind of bottle the player up in these narrow street and whatnot. While in open map Oil Fields i guess it doesnt work because its "too" open for the AAS system. If the developers could give the players a choice of what flag they go after, but still making some uncapable tell another flag is hit. Say you have two flags that could be considered "flag 1", but you choose which to attack or not. When you cap that flag it opens up the "flag 2(s)". IMO this would be extremely difficult to accomplish.

For Realism vs Gameplay, that is really a matter of the players as individuals and not as a group. Take me for instance, I believe in "War is Unfair" so I would like a war game like that. Where you get your enemy in an unfair fight becasue you have better weapons/vehicles them him. This of course could be considered an unbalanced game (which I don't mind...more of a challange). But take some other random person who thinks war games should be ballanced and the teams should have similar weapons/vehicles that do/have the same damage/range.

I just rambled alot, but I dont ever post in forums normaly. Thanks for reading and sorry if you can't understand any of this. Im not good at writing...or speaking for that matter. But thats what happens when your a loner.

[Martini]

Hmmm,

It would be cool to see how a squad from the MEC with mosin nagants (spelling?) would fair out against the currently equipped USMC, since alot of it just comes down to player experience.

I know I would like a shot at it.

No wait, I want a kar98!!