Doedel wrote:I'd half agree with what you've said. I didn't play the game very long, but my POINT was, which seems to have been lost, is that while BF2 is best played with teamwork, PR almost NEEDS teamwork to be any kind of enjoyable experience. The game I played that led to that gripe was probably the most pathetic attempt at a side desperately trying to not die that I've ever seen in my gaming history. Now, not to say that I don't like PR, I actually do like it.. yes, I have some issues about it, but whatever. My point was, this mod is going to REQUIRE very active teamwork and coordination between players.
I agree 150%. Teamwork is absoltuely necessary for PR to function. The problem is, you cannot force anything on a gamer. Trust me on this.
People will not adapt to the gameplay.. they will try to make the gameplay adapt to their style. If a group of people are incapable of playing as a team, there are no features/additions that you can add that will change this.
This is why large tournaments like 21CW exist (and why 21CW adapted a modified version of PRMM).
I don't know if you've played previous version of the BF series (BF1942 is the best of course).
If you did, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. Those games didnt force teamwork
at all, whereas BF2 pushes teamwork on the player. What has changed? Nothing. Nothing has changed because you can add all the little teamwork features you want... people will not play as a team if they dont want to. Oh, and using the spawn on squad leader thing as an excuse to say that BF2 is team oriented in pub servers is wrong... spawning on your squad leader changes nothing if you're not working as a team anyway.
It's important to understand that if you are planning to play on a public server, with mature adults and immature children... you can't expect much. Everyone has their own strategy. Some like to sneak, others like to rush, others like to do whatever it takes and others like to be fair.
What I'm trying to say here is... putting in features like the UAV (in its current state, not the one that PR will have) doesn't do anything except tell you where the enemy is. People still go their own way and some dont even pay attention to the UAV.
To further my point.. the reason you guys have had problems in finding a battle in public servers has nothing to do with the UAV or even PRMM. It's map design. Map development is the absolute key to have a good experience in BF2 or PRMM.
AAS mode pretty solves all of the issues of teamwork. People are forced to stay together in a logical manner.. and the battles are more intense since you actually clash with the enemy.
Anyway, I don't really like the comment about having to make realism sacrafices for gameplay purposes. For one thing, I thought this mod was a REALITY mod. For another, EA sacraficed realism for gameplay purposes and look where it's got us -- Project Reality.
100% agreed once again.
You should check out Insurgency mod for HL2... their forums have some very interesting discussions on this issue. The guys that are working on Insurgency the best of the best in the modding community (in my opinion of course).
The basic idea there is this ...
It's absolutely impossible to recreate the real world in a video game. There are WAY too many factors to.. well.. factor in :] Things like breating, eating, walking, human strength, variety in human endurance, weather, sickness, mechanical failures, size of attacking force (a wee bit more than 32 people to assault a whole city), vision, fear, accidents, adrenaline, squad assignments( no such thing as 10 snipers on a 32 man team, etc) and more.
The things I listed above just cannot be accurately recreated in a video game, but have serious effect on a real life battle.
What Insurgency is doing (and what I agree with) is focusing on creating an
authentic (not real/realistic) experience for the player.
In any case I still have to disagree about the armour. They SHOULD be slaughtered wholesale by AT weapons (AT weapons in and of themselves however should be much rarer than they are), but they'd still be devestating if used correctly. Afterall, MBTs like the M1 and T-90 weren't designed as infantry support/heavy weapons platforms for urban environments. They were designed to combat enemy tanks head-on. They're sometimes used as infantry support platforms in support of infantry in urban settings but if you've ever seen that, you'd probably notice the tanks either sit in one carefully chosen and defendable position, or move very slowly. They do not burst full-speed up some closed-up urban avenue, right into the middle of an enemy position swarming with dozens of enemy soldiers. They're more used as direct fire support against positions infantry need to pummel with a large amount of explosives.
Once again, I'm in agreement :] You are right, tanks are not used to roll around like a rolls royce around urban terrain.
But thinking in this regard... tanks are also used to clean out enemy troops from a distance. And they are deadly effective if you know where the troops are. A tank can completely demolish an apartment building (like those in Karkand), killing all of those inside.
Even more, most of these infantry units position themselves inside of buildings to hide. You cannot go inside of structures in BF2. The structures cannot be destroyed either.
And even more, in the real world politics play a role too. Sometimes troops are ordered to minimize the destruction of public property and confirm before they fire devastating rounds into apartment buildings.
Think of it like this.. how are these things used in real life? What kinds of situations will you see them in, and what will they be doing? And why?
Continuing from my previous point, if want to make it easier to eliminate the armor because it is that way in real life (I'm guessing your more of an infantry fella like me, heh), you would have to give armor its destructive power as well... which is impossible because the BF2 engine can't handle it or won't allow it.
One other thing to note is view distance. The view distance in BF2 is hella low for performance purposes and tanks rarely ever engage at such distances.
If a tank can see you, you can see him. That of course, will make it VERY difficult for tanks to be used like they are in real life. In order for me to take out out infantry, I have to get close enough for them to terminate me with AT rockets.
Armor can even engage infantry at pretty long distances (see my collection of war footage
http://www.artnez.com/war/ for example).
My vote, tanks should be armed to the teeth with deadly weapons.. HE and AP ammunition, coaxial machineguns, two top-turret machineguns, smoke launchers, etc etc.. but their susceptibility to AT weapons should be realistic too...
This will not make them any more effective because they are driven by one person.. and you can only aim at one place at one time. Like I said above, the view distance limits you to the point where you have to get pretty close to infantry to kill them.
If the PR devs choose the allow manned tanks (a driver, a gunner, etc), this will cause more problems it's the equivalent of putting a nascar driver in a tank and say 'ok, drive into the battle' with circus clown as a gunner.
And one final example I will give is that people do not respawn on real life. It's an obvious point but it seriously applies here. A military does not have an infinite number of AT weapons... so it would be kind of unfair if 20 people out of 30 on a team spawned as AT soldiers. When they died, they would respawn as AT soldiers yet again. The fact that they can respawn should offset the fact that they need to shoot a tank twice.
). Hope this settles the UAV questions.