Spawn ideas/Complimentary classes/Scoring
Posted: 2006-03-28 05:52
Spawning: I'd love to see spawning (at least as a server-side option) with some kind of delayed effect. Several other FPSes did this with their multiplayer spawning. Say for example you enforce squadding to some degree, and only when all members of a squad are dead do they respawn at the same time and place (a spawn point chosen by the squad leader or equivalent). Basically a system that starts people out together as a team every time they come back. For all I know PRMM has this already.
Complimentary classes: Probably the game that I've played that was most successful for creating group cohesion in an assault was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I think this was largely a three-fold mechanism...
1) Reinforcements spawned together in waves...I think the default was 30 secs.
2)Gameplay was objective based, with the best maps usually having some kind of cascading objective.
3)Classes were designed to be interdependent. They complimented one another and even if you didn't -like- the guys you were playing with, you'd do much better if you played a 'role'. 'BEACH' was an example of this. You had to advance up a beachhead to the outer wall of an Axis fortress with pillboxes spitting destruction. The only way to get in the fortress was to protect Engineers, who could set timed charges to breach the fortress. Once inside you had to penetrate the interior and work your way to the basement through one of 2 routes and steal 'docs', then the final stage was making it alive back to a predesignated spot to 'transmit'. To advance to the wall the Lt. class was helpful, as they dealt out ammo and could call in airstrikes to drive defenders back from the wall. Snipers could hit the pillbox defenders. Soldiers could clear out closed areas and chokepoints with flamethrowers, etc. The point is you had to have each class present at certain key objectives to advance towards victory for that round.
Scoring: Each class got points for doing it's 'job'. This is the case in V-BF2 but it isn't much of a reward pointwise.
Put it all together with clever map design and you could have complex missions where you had to escort fellow units to a map area to accomplish a task (more dramatic than standing around until a timer clicks over), which would open the stage for the next part of the mission, etc. All of these elements are present already in some form, I just feel they could be tweaked to provide a cohesive, more immersive gameplay mode.
Complimentary classes: Probably the game that I've played that was most successful for creating group cohesion in an assault was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I think this was largely a three-fold mechanism...
1) Reinforcements spawned together in waves...I think the default was 30 secs.
2)Gameplay was objective based, with the best maps usually having some kind of cascading objective.
3)Classes were designed to be interdependent. They complimented one another and even if you didn't -like- the guys you were playing with, you'd do much better if you played a 'role'. 'BEACH' was an example of this. You had to advance up a beachhead to the outer wall of an Axis fortress with pillboxes spitting destruction. The only way to get in the fortress was to protect Engineers, who could set timed charges to breach the fortress. Once inside you had to penetrate the interior and work your way to the basement through one of 2 routes and steal 'docs', then the final stage was making it alive back to a predesignated spot to 'transmit'. To advance to the wall the Lt. class was helpful, as they dealt out ammo and could call in airstrikes to drive defenders back from the wall. Snipers could hit the pillbox defenders. Soldiers could clear out closed areas and chokepoints with flamethrowers, etc. The point is you had to have each class present at certain key objectives to advance towards victory for that round.
Scoring: Each class got points for doing it's 'job'. This is the case in V-BF2 but it isn't much of a reward pointwise.
Put it all together with clever map design and you could have complex missions where you had to escort fellow units to a map area to accomplish a task (more dramatic than standing around until a timer clicks over), which would open the stage for the next part of the mission, etc. All of these elements are present already in some form, I just feel they could be tweaked to provide a cohesive, more immersive gameplay mode.