Teamwork

[gaurd502]

Making teamwork easy would ruin it. As someone else posted a while ago, "make it so that even and idiot can play it and only idiots will" Making commanders get to arty every 12 mins and making it so that infantry can kill Armour easier would ruin it for Armour and doesn't make the team actually work together. Its like in a game like Bad Company, if your whole teams rushing something together its because the game makes it easy to spawn on each other, not because the players wanted it to happen. I'm not saying we should make it super complicated for the sake of it, but any easier because people changed isn't going to fix it, I don't think and developer change would.

[BigNaptizzle]

As far as I am allowed to contribute (as I am certainly one of the newer players here) I gotta say that some pretty valid points have already been raised that maybe didn't get the attention they deserve.

Give the players more incentives to actually work together, by reducing the possible punishment for doing so gameplay-wise.
Just one example: I see APCs rarely used as actual transport/infantry support vehicles because people are afraid of the additional responsibility, as their vehicle is already worth a decent amount of tickets and they probably would be flamed to death as soon as they get HATted randomly with a full squad inside.
So I could imagine that in this case, reducing the ticket-cost of transport/teamwork relevant vehicles could make ppl use it more often as originally intended.

Furthermore, I've made the experience that server admininstration is the most important factor regarding teamplay. Had the best rounds in on PRTA when one of the admins did nothing else but standing inside the MEC main checking everyone entering or exiting the base if his mumble is active and working. I can imagine that this is probably not the nicest job to have, but for me as a regular player the experience increased dramatically. So big props to all the good admins out there, just btw.

Another thing that I would love to hear your thoughs on is connected to a topic already raised by dtacs. Why is there no slight ticket-bleed for the team holding less than half of the flags? This would encourage the players to actually attack and not getting into the mindset of:"oh they are gonna waste enough assets if we just sit back here and defend our last flag, so we still gonna win lulz."

[Garack]

^^hate this mumble forced servers, its like you must have a facebook acouunt ot get kicked, bf 2 voice is good enough..

onr reason to go to arma, theres no addon force or kick atm-

[Wicca]

^^hate this mumble forced servers, its like you must have a facebook acouunt ot get kicked, bf 2 voice is good enough..

onr reason to go to arma, theres no addon force or kick atm-

I like the point made, where teamwork is hard. This game does require you to sacrifice time and patience for a good game. We all know the time is worth it, and the patience we might lack comes to us sometimes.

But when a tool comes along, that allows us to create such a better experience, we dont hate it. We embrace it.

Mumble to me is just completly perfect. It makes pr so good, that i cant play without it.

I got a new computer about one week ago, i used to play everything on low, it look like shite, and ran at 15 fps, and even less. And that is what you get for using an 8 year old computer. But with this computer i have now, i have everything on high, AA highest. full HD.

I love it, but still, i would make all that looks go away, cause in the end. To me, its not about how she looks mate, its how she makes me feel

[PFunk]

I think removing flags, and letting it be less stressfull to rush flags and defend them, will let squadleaders focus more on their squads and tactics. instad of flags and team performance. Cause the flags, are the essential reason why people lose games. I dont care if my KDR is shit, i can have a fun round with the right people in the squad. But when i see a flag goes down. I want to leave.

I think you miss the point of actually playing games as a whole and instead are focused on romanticizing the specifics of the experience a bit too much. You focus on the experience of leading people or playing with them as a group, but feel that strategic imperatives like 'objectives' and 'flags' ruin it. You forget that the only reason anybody uses tactics or strategy is to accomplish an objective.

Maneuver is pointless if you hold ideal defensive positions. Without flags or objectives there is no purpose to any strategy other than picking the best position and holding it. Yes attacking will work, but defense still works better. The team that always attacks the better position will lose. With this game being based on tickets then the team that holds the best defensive position for the longest with the fewest losses will win, hands down, every time.

Even if you don't take the most obvious defensive positions, you just find a nice spot, sit in ambush, and wait. The ones who wait will die less and win more. Those who move will die more.

No objectives means no purpose to the game. I get it Wicca, you like people and playing with them and I do too! Being in good squads is all about memories. I can remember some truly epic rounds I've had with some individuals. However, Combat is not a Social Game. It doesn't thrive on chilling and being cool with each other. Its about accomplishing objectives and doing it badass style along the way.

Without flags we are just playing Deathmatch. I don't want to play Project Reality Quake Edition... or maybe I do. *Mind Blown*

[Wicca]

I think you miss the point of actually playing games as a whole and instead are focused on romanticizing the specifics of the experience a bit too much. You focus on the experience of leading people or playing with them as a group, but feel that strategic imperatives like 'objectives' and 'flags' ruin it. You forget that the only reason anybody uses tactics or strategy is to accomplish an objective.

Maneuver is pointless if you hold ideal defensive positions. Without flags or objectives there is no purpose to any strategy other than picking the best position and holding it. Yes attacking will work, but defense still works better. The team that always attacks the better position will lose. With this game being based on tickets then the team that holds the best defensive position for the longest with the fewest losses will win, hands down, every time.

Even if you don't take the most obvious defensive positions, you just find a nice spot, sit in ambush, and wait. The ones who wait will die less and win more. Those who move will die more.

No objectives means no purpose to the game. I get it Wicca, you like people and playing with them and I do too! Being in good squads is all about memories. I can remember some truly epic rounds I've had with some individuals. However, Combat is not a Social Game. It doesn't thrive on chilling and being cool with each other. Its about accomplishing objectives and doing it badass style along the way.

Without flags we are just playing Deathmatch. I don't want to play Project Reality Quake Edition... or maybe I do. *Mind Blown*

That is the real mind blower isnt it?

I dont play PR to cap flags. I dont think anyone does. Its just a gamemechanic. Placed in there, cause we have nothing better to put in.

[Arnoldio]

What wicca said.... flags are retarded, but so far its all we got.

[spiked_rye]

But when a tool comes along, that allows us to create such a better experience, we dont hate it. We embrace it.

Mumble to me is just completly perfect. It makes pr so good, that i cant play without it.

That I can agree with, mumble is fantastic when it's used. However, it can create a language barrier to those of us (for our shame) who can only speak one language. I had this problem when I used to work night shifts, when the only times I could play the chinese servers seemed to be the only populated ones, so I was mostly confused, and following the squad, trying to guess what we were meant to be doing. Maybe some squad only map markers could be useful (like for example, the vanilla spotting system) if that's possible?

[TheComedian]

Maneuver is pointless if you hold ideal defensive positions. Without flags or objectives there is no purpose to any strategy other than picking the best position and holding it. Yes attacking will work, but defense still works better. The team that always attacks the better position will lose. With this game being based on tickets then the team that holds the best defensive position for the longest with the fewest losses will win, hands down, every time.

Even if you don't take the most obvious defensive positions, you just find a nice spot, sit in ambush, and wait. The ones who wait will die less and win more. Those who move will die more.

Don't we have mortars for just that reason? To counter static defenses? There is no emplacement that is immune to mortar fire.

The reason that I like Wicca's map Karez Offensive is that there are no statics to fight over. The teams make their own objectives!

I played as an LAV driver, gunner, mech inf and defense in the special testing event, and I can say that static warfare happened on few occasions, mainly when two fobs met on the top of opposing hills.

Most of the time we were ferried to and from hotspots and called in CAS on the defensive emplacements.

However, I doubt that a no-flag layout would change the gameplay of the existing maps.

All the maps that we currently play have some form of natural chokepoints (e.g. warehouses, bunkers, T-buildings, parking lots etc.)

If the gameplay is to be changed a new approach to map-making must be taken:

- Less natural cover
- Some sturdier FOB emplacements (so mortars spam would be less efficient and won't destroy the FOB outright)
- A possible defensive position must have atleast 3 ways to be broken

[Truism]

Flags are all you have?

CnC mode?

[saXoni]

^^hate this mumble forced servers, its like you must have a facebook acouunt ot get kicked, bf 2 voice is good enough..

I guess you're one of those guys who can't make it work properly, and just give up.
BF2 VOIP isn't good enough after you've experienced Mumble.

[Tarranauha200]

Yes, mumble is much better than Bf2voip if you wanna talk to specific person. Extreme usefull in CAS/Armor squads.

[PFunk]

What wicca said.... flags are retarded, but so far its all we got.

Flags represent objectives, and those are what armies fight for or defend. All war is usually something to do with economics. Even if its sold as an ideological struggle the objectives are always focused on economic targets as well as military ones.

What is the purpose of modern war? To render the enemy incapable of fighting, usually. This is done not by simply meeting in the field and having our armies kill each other like its the middle ages. Its fought over economic and military targets which troops and assets are deployed around.

There is no war without objectives and if we didn't have flags, or some different but identically purposed concept, then the game would be stupid.

Don't we have mortars for just that reason? To counter static defenses? There is no emplacement that is immune to mortar fire.

Mortars aren't perfect, and mortars themselves are a static defensive emplacement, so really what you could really have is small groups of guys moving around actively looking for the mortar sites, while the bulk of your force sits in hiding to avoid getting marked.

See being in a good ambush position actually means YOU get call the mortars first. You call mortars, as soon as the first round falls you open fire. You do maximum amount of damage, and if you don't destroy the enemy outright you immediately withdraw to avoid being counter-mortared. The key is to be the first one to see the enemy, which is a helluva lot easier if you're prone and hiding than upright and moving.

This is classic guerrilla style warfare, the kind you fight when there are no objectives other than 'kill the enemy'. Being on the move makes you a target, but being in a known and obvious defensive position does too. However being in a built up area affords you some protection or being in dense foliage denies totally accurate fire. Every defensive position can be broken, which is why you move on and withdraw before that happens.

Mortars would have to be on the move too because they would get isolated and hit eventually and then there'd be a gap in mortar cover.

However given the limitations of this game a purely infantry based game would mean that there would be situations where you wouldn't be able to break the enemy easily. Maps like Gaza and Asad Khal demonstrate this. Despite objectives, the map basically bottlenecks you into a ridiculous firefight that is definitely uphill for one side and is very disproportionately costly. With assets in play however a lack of proper cover guarantees the infantry fight is null and void.

If the gameplay is to be changed a new approach to map-making must be taken:

- Less natural cover
- Some sturdier FOB emplacements (so mortars spam would be less efficient and won't destroy the FOB outright)
- A possible defensive position must have atleast 3 ways to be broken

Less natural cover would be retarded. As it is PR doesn't really cover the full extent of realistic cover you'd find in forest and woods. In reality there would be MORE enterable buildings than we usually have. So to reduce this would really be a step away from the basis of this mod which is 'reality'.

All this stuff sounds like the kind of contrived map design you see in games like CoD and Counterstrike. You have narrow bottlenecks and pre-determined routes of approach. In DoDS there were always 3 ways to a flag. You knew it, it was the basis of design.

What is so appealing about PR and games of its ilk is the true to life way that you can approach from any direction you want to. Some are smart, some are not. Still there is the need to ensure that its not impermeable, but thats not the same as contriving an impossible to defend position to encourage an artificial amount of movement, which itself is not smart unless there is a purpose to it, like moving to an objective.

I get it, people like the idea of freedom. But no army deploys giving its men total freedom. Even when Sherman was doing his march to the sea and burning crops and barns and tearing up railroads, given total reign in that area, he had a set area where he was to operate, and that itself was around the idea of an objective, to deny economic viability of the region to the Confederacy.

I like the idea, but to say we shouldn't have objectives is to totally fail to recognize the purpose of all military action and of training. The idea of fighting freely without objectives is saying we might a well be making squad based deathmatch. Deathmatch is synonymous in gaming with 'tards'. Without objectives we will become as spammy and annoying as the kinds of players we're all whiny about in other threads.

I'm all for new ideas, and if someone can come up with a more organic way to implement what flags do in PR I'd love to give it a shot, but I KNOW that stripping away all objectives from a game would mitigate the whole purpose of representing realistic military operation.

End Opus.

[Spec]

This is done not by simply meeting in the field and having our armies kill each other like its the middle ages. Its fought over economic and military targets which troops and assets are deployed around.

I beg to differ. Medieval combat had plenty of sieges and raids for exactly this purpose. Fighting over resources and military targets isn't a modern invention

That said, the flag system might perhaps not be absolutely perfect. Insurgency gives an alternative with destructible weapons caches, for instance. I'd find plain deathmatch a bit boring, to be frank, and I'd rather have a system in place that moves away from "kill as many as you can to win", but that's very difficult to implement, balance, and be made fun. But I understand Wiccas wish for more free gameplay... Shame I so rarely got to play CnC.

[PFunk]

I beg to differ. Medieval combat had plenty of sieges and raids for exactly this purpose. Fighting over resources and military targets isn't a modern invention

True there were plenty of examples of this, but by and large you were meeting to destroy each others' armies since that was the primary threat. Why else would armies always meet in the field instead of just sit in their strongholds?

Often armies were required to fight over extremely short periods because the peasants would just up and go home if it was nearing planting season. I think this happened to one English king who spent too much time marching around France looking for the enemy army, which smartly avoided battle knowing this would happen.

It wasn't until the Civil War that the modern concepts of 'total war' really became a central aspect of winning wars. Prior to this it was almost always a matter of destroying the enemy's force. Raids on supplies were rarer, and deliberate moves to destroy the enemy's infrastructure was practically pointless since armies marched through land and didn't rely on railroads or roads or aircraft back then, not in any way like we do. Rome built roads for her armies to march on, but a lack of them didn't stop the Romans from walking into Gaul and conquering them.

If you go back to Rome and before that, it was without a doubt totally about destroying the enemy's armies. It wasn't until late in the Roman Empire even I believe that siege fighting was properly developed into an art by some Generals.

My point though, is that the kind of carnage required to settle hostilities in the ancient and medieval worlds, carnage fought not over anything in particular except a tactically expedient piece of ground, is a thing of the past.

[Arc_Shielder]

What about increasing the capping range of flags and cut them by half so that both armies fight for a larger piece of territory?

To be honest I'm willing to present any suggestion but I think this thread is nothing more than a possible misperception. I have yet to figure out what significant changes in the playerbase some people are talking about as they don't provide any kind of correlation to mod changes, servers they usually play in or what kind leadership behavior they think it's different.

You know, data that we can work and judge rather than a mere impression. If you're playing in a relaxed or bad admined server - one that maybe went downhill with time -, then that impression is sort of invalid and misleading.

My impression is that I know where the best servers are, I stick with them, I play with random people and most of the times I get a good round out of it.

Let's also have in mind memory selection and other variables such different temperaments, mood in a certain day, in-game luck, etc.

[TheComedian]

All this stuff sounds like the kind of contrived map design you see in games like CoD and Counterstrike. You have narrow bottlenecks and pre-determined routes of approach. In DoDS there were always 3 ways to a flag. You knew it, it was the basis of design.

Ah but here you have defeated yourself.

Statics and flags already force you into a bottleneck. Should I begin with examples?

- Bunkers on Kashan
- T buildings on Muttrah
- T buildings on Fallujah
- T buildings on Burning Sands (do I see a trend here?)
- Abandoned fortifications on Kozelsk
- Warehouses on Muttrah
- Warehouses on Fools Road
- Warehouses on Karbala
- Warehouses on Qwai River
- Air control tower on barracuda
- Air control tower on Fools road
- Bridges on Qwai River

Enterable buildings are exactly the kind of bottleneck that you strive against.

Imagine an artist, painting on a canvas that has huge tears on it. His creativity will be limited by those holes won't it?

[AfterDune]

Instead of flags, I'd rather have areas to capture, like this:



But I'm afraid that's not really possible.

[saXoni]

What's the difference between a flag and an area? The radius of the flag kind of represents an area, doesn't it?

[AfterDune]

A flagarea is a circle and people often move to the center of the circle (where the flag is, most of the times).

An area as I mean it can be any shape. And has no flag, but is visible on the map, like in the image.