Good points:
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Large turnout!!!! Correct me if Im wrong but this is the first time Project Reality has ever been played at near capacity for the server! A major milestone for the mods history!
- I saw a genuine effort to play the game more realistically by all players. This was very encouraging and made me feel all warm and squishy inside.
- Squad cohesion was great, Squad Members were sticking together, fighting with each other, and using their roles as intended.
- Very few problems with the custom maps, FRESH gameplay because of new maps, new unique moments and funny happenenings (the mortar team on Oasis, classic lol)
Bad Things:
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Maps: In my opinion, project reality desperately needs realistic maps. All the maps (with the exception of maybe 16 player Steel Thunder) played way too arcadish. Although AAS works with the arcade maps, it sometimes gets very frustrating. What the mod needs desperately now I think, is maps to play that will take gameplay to that next level!
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Team Cohesion - (this is different than squad cohesion). This might be due to the lack of a commander, but the teams desperately need more inter-squad cohesion. Often times what ends up happening, the squads just mindlessly move forward toward the enemy, piling headfirst into a meat-grinder of a battle. This is far from todays reality, where flanking, feigned retreats, bases of fire, etc, are used all the time to best the enemy. To make this happen IMO, we need either:
A) The commander brought back, but with his Artillery/UAV/Scan removed and also his ability to zoom right down to see the battle real-time. Or, my prefered suggestion would be
B) Converting the commander roles voip channel into a Squad Leader channel, where all squad leaders can talk with each other. Designating one squad (maybe the first squad leader made??) as 'Commander' could be optional as well. This would help tremendously! There are so many times on the battlefield, where you wish you could tell Squad X that they need to pull back/move up/etc but there is no way to type it out fast enough to make it useful. This would make organising large scale battles much more precise.
You can always type to the other squad leaders, but the precision of quickly spoken word is unmatched when dealing with lightning fast evolving battles.
Map Rotation: Was getting really frustrating. It would go Zatar Wetlands, Steel Thunder, Zatar Wetlands, Steel Thunder, in a loop. Then switch to a new map and do another loop. This is a great way to make players loose interest fast!
Commander Arty Enabled: This was probably an unplanned bug, but towards the end of the night, the ability for the commander to drop arty was somehow enabled. It quickly devolved into commanders dropping arty on organised squads every 25 seconds, completely destroying any kind of chance of teamwork that this mod is striving for. My recommendation if artillery is to ever be brought back, make it player manned. Even if its a player getting in one vehicle and firing a whole Artillery Battery, anything is better than the current click and go commander artillery of vanilla.
Conclusion:
Good gaming everybody, it had some great moments! Overall, I was very impressed with the game day on saturday, and cant wait to play again. Unfortunately I think I will be waiting for new map releases before I start to play regularly, as I just cant get into the arcadish style of maps that are in the current rotation.
PICTURES:
These are from WAC INF Squad on Saturday Evening! We usually play gloryhoundz, if you see us playing, pop in the squad and say hello!
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/ca ... een006.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/ca ... een004.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/ca ... een002.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/ca ... een001.jpg