Making Maps Larger Won’t Fix the Real Problems in Multiplayer.

[theliberalleft]

Bigger maps won’t do it and I’ll do my best to explain why:

When GR2 was first released, people did play tactically. Most used stealth, they called out contacts and kills and many people communicated their positions effectively, by using the grid numbers provided on the map. Teamwork was prevalent.

That’s how Ghost Recon should be played. Unfortunately, it’s not how GR2 is played by most people today. I believe this is due, simply, to players knowing the maps too well.

You have to exercise caution when entering an area you’re unfamiliar with. However, if you know that you can B-line it from your spawn point, to that one big rock near the middle of the level and you’ll arrive at precisely the same time an opponent reaches the truck parked directly across road from your new position, then why wouldn’t you?

You have to. You’ve started on his side a million times in past games. You know how long it takes him to get to that truck if he runs and you know that if you don’t take off from the start too, you’ll be letting him advance even further, effectively giving his guys the advantage, by putting your team in a bad position.

So what happens? The same thing, over and over. People run to the same **** spots, over and over. These levels are already huge, but we hardly ever see most of them, because we're stuck racing for the choke points.

<span class="ev_code_red">Random level boarders and spawn points</span> might fix this problem.

By putting people in unfamiliar territory, w/o knowledge of where the other team might be starting from, you could bring back that “new game smellâ€Â� and keep things fresh. People would be encouraged to play tactically and talk to one another again â€" if only to say, â€Â�Oh ****! They’re coming from the hill this time!â€Â�

This would also enable us to concentrate play in some of the cooler areas of the maps that we hardly see. I’m telling you guys… this is one way to fix multiplayer. Ubi has already hinted at it, but they need to take it further. Make it really random.

[Agent Green]

I'm with you on this one. I stopped playing online for the very reason you pointed out. I don't want to fight over the choke points and if I don't, the team gets mauled.

Random everything might do it. I love being in the "unknown" situations. My dad and I play together and call out targets, cover one another while moving, and so on. We even set up fall-back positions if things get messy. That makes for great multiplayer where some skill is involved.

[theliberalleft]

I just think that... when your team spawns together, to start the round in a Ghost Recon game, your first instincts should be for everyone to grab the best/closest cover available and set up a make-shift perimeter. Then you come up with some kind of plan for going after/completing your objective.

Not run to the chokepoints lol.

[Agent Green]

Those "Where the hell are we?" situations are great when you're just starting a new game with some friends. Having that every time would probably make me stop playing anything else. So...listen up dev team! ;pokes;

[theliberalleft]

Exactly, man. Exactly.

It'd be rather humorous if every once in a while, they'd spawn the two team pretty close to each other. You might have a contact in the first 30 seconds or so... **** would hit the fan and it'd take some quick thinking to escape or overcome that situation.

From then on, that close encounter or the potential for those kinds of round starts, will always be in the back of your mind when spawning for a new round.

That guy who usually runs off on his own might think twice about it from then on.

I don't know. I’m sure it's not an easy thing to implement and that it'd take a lot of time and effort to properly balance it and work out any kinks.

But I can't help thinking it's a great idea. One that aims to steer GR multiplayer gameplay back in the right direction. i.e... towards teamwork and tactics.

[XyZspineZyX]

Originally posted by theliberalleft:
we're stuck racing for the choke points.


Thats the key, its not the map size or even knowing it too well (although that will always have some bearing on things) Its linear maps forcing teams into 1 or 2 specific routes to the base. As you say as everyone scrambles for the choke points your missing out on the rest of these great maps, and this happens because no matter how much of the map you use you can still only get through on certain points.

I played some Island Thunder last night and even on small maps like City Blocks theres more routes of attack than huge maps like Fuel Depot in GR2. Now that says something

[theliberalleft]

That's an excellent point ms-kleaneasy.

Do you like the idea of randomizing everything, or do you think the issue could be solved solely through level design?

Personally, I think it's a little of both. I think your suggestion makes the most sense, but I've really been won over by the idea or possibility of a different gamplay experience every few rounds or so.

[XyZspineZyX]

I would personally say the change in level design would be a major breakthrough but bringing the random element is always a good thing http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/25.gif

[StrikerD]

A great example of this is in all of this guys's server's (his name has TOTO in it). He never puts any invulnerabilty time, and just gets his team over there (he has no lag, he's the host) and start camping. It's so annoying, only 3 spawns and he's got all of them!

So, take my idea, creat all of mexico city as a map, enable 100+ players. Use random spawn points. When you do the random spawn points, make sure you write software for the game that creates spawns rather than randomly select preset ones. Be sure to enable a property that ensures enemies are X amount of meters away from the spawn, so that nobody spawns w/ their enemies.

[Jam_Dammer]

Wow, a post that everybody agrees on...meaning this might possibly make it into GR3??

I'll "second" the call for total random spawning of enemy characters and/or random spawn points for team on team.

And, as long as were getting into randomized functions...let's even randomize the total number of enemy spawns, where the total would fall somewhere between 80 and 120 enemies, and DON'T give us the text boxes that tell us there are 20, 10, 5, 3 enemies left. Don't tell us at all, because without the text boxes, and without knowing how many enemies there really are, the tension level will be left on HIGH all the way until the end, when the last enemy is down.

Then, we could relax and story-tell in the Lobby about how cool that last randomized map we just ran was!!!

[Climatik]

ill have to agree.

It was a big turn off in MP. I didnt want to run a certain way and always know that somone will be camping cause they know i will have to come through there eventually.

[Prozac360]

yep... ill agree too...

Somthing about an option setting how big the play area is and random spawns....

also a way to select a play area and random spawns..

or possibly a team commander selects the spawn in the play area ... that would be sweet


ultimatly a 64+ multiplayer support would be awsome too

[crtChunk72]

I know, I'm a PC guy commenting in a console forum... sorry...

But...

There's a PC mod for OGR that (at least for MP Co-Op) helps solve many issues mentioned here. You pick any map from GR/DS/IT, and select the mod co-op mission, and you get spawned in a random place with a random number of objectives which are random with a random number of enemies placed in random places doing random things. Talk about random!!

As an example, choose Caves from OGR, and start. You spawn in a random place, and two objectives are created for you: rescue a POW at some location and recon another location. Once both objectives are met, rendezvous at the Extraction. 65 enemies. Go!!

Get blown away, try to start again. Same map... spawn in a different place, and now you have three objectives: Secure Location 1, Secure Location 2, and Demo Location 3. 59 Enemies. Good luck!!

This randomization has completely renewed my interest in GR and MP Co-Op (it also works in SP play!!) Now, if the game would come with this kind of thing built in, that would be great!!
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif

(And it doesn't take much imagination to see how to make it work for TvT...)

[w1ngSh0t]

As someone said nothing beats the "Where the F are we and what are we going to do now...?" factor. I really like the idea of random spawns and it would definetly help keep the multiplayer aspect of the game fresh.

And the live portion of the game is all that really matters tome at this point. I play the game with a greta bunch of people on a regular basis and other than the Red X we all agree that it could be the best Xbox Live game out there with some improvements and this would definetly be one of them.

[theliberalleft]

Originally posted by w1ngSh0t:
As someone said nothing beats the "Where the F are we and what are we going to do now...?" factor. I really like the idea of random spawns and it would definitely help keep the multiplayer aspect of the game fresh.

And the live portion of the game is all that really matters to me at this point. I play the game with a great bunch of people on a regular basis and other than the Red X we all agree that it could be the best Xbox Live game out there with some improvements and this would definitely be one of them.

crtChunk72, that’s pretty much where I’m coming from, your post, is talking more co-op stuff, while my intentions were to randomize the adversarial modes. Honestly, though, random elements could work in improving almost any area of the game.

w1ngSh0t, if that’s your XBL tag, then I think I’ve played w/ you a few times.

Anyway, yeah… that’s what’s cool about playing on XBL, you get a good group of people together, you play a great game and everyone has a blast, but it’s the little things that bring it down. These games, no matter how well balanced, can get stale. I believe it’s the lack of variation that’s making people feel that way.

I can see the devs looking at that last statement and thinking, “Um, you realize we gave you like 8 million different maps and game modes, right?â€Â�

And I’d agree w/ them… but that kind of blows right by the point: <span class="ev_code_red">We Don’t Really See Most Of Them</span>.

Most people, who play the game a lot, play w/ the same group. If you can’t get at least 5 or 6 of your normal guys… well, maybe you can play a good game… maybe you’ll find a pub game. *shudders* But most of the time you just have random people join your “coreâ€Â� group. This is really were **** breaks down.

If you only have a few people (because you lock it, because the host keeps dropping dudes at the round start, because no one will join your game, whatever) then you kind of have to play the smaller levels and they all have ****ty chokepoints. They get so boring after a few rounds. If you played on the larger levels, you never can find one another â€" people just RUN around. *I’m rolling my eyes right now*

Too many random people means no communication, because all these random dudes think its easier to just “do their thingâ€Â� than it is to talk to the team, because they know the level, having played it a million times, like the back of their hand. Why waist time talking when only two guys will listen and the rest of the squad just runs toward the chokes?

There’s really no point, honestly.

The thing is that pub players are only annoying when they’re bored. If this **** was more randomized, these guys would play it right, because that’s how you’d have to play if you wanted to win. And most people want to win.

I could go on and on and on forever….

[w1ngSh0t]

W1ng Sh0t is the GT.

And we do try to keep things fresh. For a recent tourney that we had - called the summer BBQ BYOT (Bring Your Own Team) - the following were the game types played.

The Picnic - Recovery on Railway Valley. 1st flag is the chips, 2cnd flag is the hot dogs, 3rd is the potato salad, 4th is the beer. First team to get a complete picnic (4 flags) is the winner.

Water Slide (may be changes to Hangliding) - Lost Convoy or Mountain Pass. Each team takes turns launching a player off the top of the falls. Final distance will be determined with the lone wolf range finder. Teams can use whatever weapons they want for the launch. Longest launch wins. Testing showed that we probably need a firm landing zone in order to get an accurate measure of the distance.

Squirt guns - This will be a team duel - pistols only - format. Each team will send a player to the line for a 10 pace walk off, turn and shoot. We are debating having the winner stay on the line while the losing team sends a new player in and first team to 10 wins or just having each team send up a new player each round and best of 5 wins.

Water Balloons - Dam River Crossing , LMS, Grenades Only.

Tie Breaker round is ....

"Kill the Ants" on Bunkers. Each team nominates their two best snipers, and we set up in a Solo sharpshooter room. Each sniper will pair up with one of the opposing team and the pairs will take station on top of each of the center bunkers, armed only with marksman weapons. Every one else will be positioned in the middle and run from side to side (like ants) while the snipers try to take them out. We'll set a time limit and then tally up the number of kills. Team with the most kills wins.

We set this up because you can only play LMS or SS so many times on the all the maps before it becomes less than exciting. Double Seige helped keep things interesting for a while, but again the lack of random spawns let it get stale much sooner than it should have. Coop HH was fun for a bit, but once you have to set it at hard and pistols only so you have to get weapons from the Koreans you have pretty much played it out as well.

So you can make things different with a little imagination ... but having Random Spawns, being able to control the number of respawns, and better control over kits would go a long way to taking the MP aspect from good to great.

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[The_Biggy]

Random level boarders and spawn points might fix this problem.

Agreed

Can Ubi comment on this?