Broken Snipers, Rediculously Bad Autobalance, and other things that NEED to be fixed! | Forums

[dmallon589]

You need to quit this elitist assumption that you are older, wiser, more experienced, and more "strategic" than everyone else on the internet. Obviously your idea of "strategy" is based on little experience and narrow minded at best.

First of all, I DESPISE COD, and I recently uninstalled BF3 and wrote that off as a mediocre-at-best game as well. There, now that's out of the way.

Of course you'll learn more in 40 minutes of playing a game than you would in 15....that's common sense. Just because it took your team a decade to either win or lose, doesn't make that round "more competitive" because it lasted longer. NOTE: I AM ADDRESSING COMPETITION HERE, NOT REALISM, OR ANYTHING ELSE. You say "go play CS". I did, I played for a solid eight years or so. If you stepped into just a minute of the competitive side of CS1.6 (the side that plays tournaments and competitions, where teams are required to use strategies, know maps like the back of their hand, and make quick game-winning calls to work as a team and win) you'd see that any well designed and well balanced game can have PLENTY of teamwork, strategy, and competition.

What you know isn't "the old mentality" it's "your mentality", this is also known as "an opinion". Beyond the fact that a 45 minute game is just drawn out and boring, if this was the AVERAGE length game time, you'd be tossing casual gamers out of the market completely (let's use common sense here, F2P game, probably going to have quite a few casual gamers, don't you think?) I've been in the Marine Corps the last four and a half years, my schedule is constantly changing based on deployment times and the next crappy place we have to go train at, sometimes I only get so long to sit down and enjoy a video game for a little bit at a time. Naturally, I don't want to sit there and worry about wrapping up my 60 minute mission I've been stuck in so I don't have to just close out and miss out on everything I did over the last hour.

Something doesn't have to be long to involve strategy.

Let's call individual plays "rounds" in football (to compare to this of course), those last seconds.
"Rounds" (from the last basket made to the next) in basketball last seconds to minutes.
CS1.6 used elimination on top of their short rounds, the strategy there was unique to most any other shooter.
REAL FIREFIGHTS on average only last minutes, so why do they need to last an hour in a video game?

[nabokovfan87]

You need to quit this elitist assumption that you are older, wiser, more experienced, and more "strategic" than everyone else on the internet. Obviously your idea of "strategy" is based on little experience and narrow minded at best.

I'm not assuming that I am older, know more, or that my opinion is the correct one. I didn't post a thread and lock it and say "no discussion my way or else...." Needless to say, for flag based games, dod:s is the single best one out there. Not by anything other then the actual numbers of the playerbase. DOD:S had around 50K players, this was alongside css, tf2, cod, bf, and everything else. Daily, 50 thousand players enjoyed that game. 2nd to only CS:S and CS. That being said, when they "tf2 patched" DOD:S that playerbase went from 50K to around 5-13K within the week, and you can look right now (Peak Today 3,201) and see that it is nothing to what it was. What did they change? Well, you now walk through players and they added a kill-cam. It has never EVER been the same. As you can see, there are many variables to a good game, and certain things that attribute to a more strategic game, an action based game, a "popular" arcade type experience, and a "realistic" experience. As I said, I have been playing all of these for a very long time and know what makes each one different. I know what flag based games require to make them "competitive", not by time or lengths or rounds/matches, but by actual competitiveness and encouraging or requiring specific things from their player base. Those are the suggestions I made, nothing more.

Of course you'll learn more in 40 minutes of playing a game than you would in 15....that's common sense. Just because it took your team a decade to either win or lose, doesn't make that round "more competitive" because it lasted longer. NOTE: I AM ADDRESSING COMPETITION HERE, NOT REALISM, OR ANYTHING ELSE. You say "go play CS". I did, I played for a solid eight years or so. If you stepped into just a minute of the competitive side of CS1.6 (the side that plays tournaments and competitions, where teams are required to use strategies, know maps like the back of their hand, and make quick game-winning calls to work as a team and win) you'd see that any well designed and well balanced game can have PLENTY of teamwork, strategy, and competition.

I don't think you understand my point. There is a VAST difference between a map designed for 5 minute matches and one designed for 30-60 minute matches. Of course match times is dependent on team sizes, players skills, teamwork, number of rounds, and other specific settings of the servers like class limits and base weapon modifications. Something like CS:S or CS, even COD is set for very quick rounds, at most 5 minutes long. Those maps are made to quickly allow players to move about, it is difficult to get dug in in something like a team deathmatch type mode, but there are some instances or modes where it can occur. Something like Battlefield, day of defeat, and I suspect ghost recon would be more of a methodical, skill based, and teamwork based experience. Where a good map will facilitate teamwork, strategy (not in terms of planning, but in terms of actual strategy, timing, teamwork, etc. all combined at once to win the round/match). While it is easy to see how one thing can be competitive in one way, and another can be competitive for completely different aspects, there is always a background to a game, and a "history" to how things occurred, it is very easy to learn what makes things one way vs. the other, and a good developer and gamer will know which type of experience will want and gravitate towards those games.

What you know isn't "the old mentality" it's "your mentality", this is also known as "an opinion". Beyond the fact that a 45 minute game is just drawn out and boring, if this was the AVERAGE length game time, you'd be tossing casual gamers out of the market completely (let's use common sense here, F2P game, probably going to have quite a few casual gamers, don't you think?) I've been in the Marine Corps the last four and a half years, my schedule is constantly changing based on deployment times and the next crappy place we have to go train at, sometimes I only get so long to sit down and enjoy a video game for a little bit at a time. Naturally, I don't want to sit there and worry about wrapping up my 60 minute mission I've been stuck in so I don't have to just close out and miss out on everything I did over the last hour.

Something doesn't have to be long to involve strategy.

If UBI is trying to capture gamers who want to play for 5-15 minutes at most, then fine, keep the same broken game and frustrate your playerbase. The point is that if someone wants to play for 10-15 minutes at a time there is a disconnect ****on from stopping them from spending extra time. There are times when we all have had to leave earlier then we would have liked, and nothing negative came about leaving the round early, it is simply a fact of the matter, you get killed, you get frustrated, or you simply have to leave to do something, and you leave. Now, when you say casual gamers, don't you think the hundreds of "casual" games out there, specifically the ones that are FPS based are enough? Wouldn't it benefit UBI to make something a bit more interesting, something those 50K+ players I mentioned who have been waiting for a similar type game would enjoy. I think so... And I think more then anything it would be a smart decision for a series based around teamwork, strategy, planning, and those aspects we all know and love to stick true to its identity and encourage those aspects in all of it's ventures. Yes there are some firefights that last minutes, some that last an hour, and some that last days. Things have variables. In SWAT 4 you don't sit outisde of a house for 8 hours yelling on a bullhorn that the person inside shouldn't be doing something, but it is nonetheless still the only SWAT experience and a **** good one. It has unparalleled strategy, teamwork, timing, weapons no other game has, and an experience similar to what a SWAT officer would have. I'm sure we all don't expect GRO to be some sort of "Marines simulator", but we do expect it to be a bit more work then cod, css, and the like. From moment one this game felt like DOD:S and the dev's would do welt to capitalize on it, that's it, simply put.

Let's call individual plays "rounds" in football (to compare to this of course), those last seconds.
"Rounds" (from the last basket made to the next) in basketball last seconds to minutes.
CS1.6 used elimination on top of their short rounds, the strategy there was unique to most any other shooter.
REAL FIREFIGHTS on average only last minutes, so why do they need to last an hour in a video game?

Comparing the strategy in basketball and football is quite funny. That's like Saying NHRA is less strategic or more strategic then NASCAR because of the time constraint. There are different things that go into each game, as I said before, it is a good idea to recognize which game GRO and others are, and adapt them to those aspects. It is also a good idea to see how similar titles in the past have done compared to others and try and see why or what made them good. Hopefully you understand a but more where I am coming from.

[nabokovfan87]

Please feel free to chime in everyone.

[dmallon589]

I definitely see what you're saying and where you're coming from, and I'm by no means defending the game's current state. Some of the time that I play I sit there thinking this game shouldn't even be in closed beta yet there's so much that (I feel) should be changed. Honestly I've got a solid group of core clan members transitioning from All Points Bulletin to this game, and we're craving more teamwork, strategy, and tactical support. This game is clearly set up for it, it just needs to be steered in a much more well thought out direction than how it's currently played out. So far the BIGGEST let down out of all my issues was not being allowed to play with eight of the guys in my group, and being capped to four. We'd all been *****ing every day in APB when five or six people would be on, and we couldn't all play together, and how great it would be to move to GRO assuming we'd be able to group. Of course with the current player base it makes sense that the party size is limited to half the team size.

I only bring up strategy in sports like that simply because the main thing I am disagreeing with that I see in your opinion is that this game can't have intense strategy in teamwork in these already established shorter games, and the games would need to last 45-60 minutes to be effectively tactical in your eyes. I'm not saying there couldn't be a good game with long missions like that, or saying DOD:S wasn't good (I hardly played it unfortunately, just didn't catch my eye at the time). All I'm saying is there are plenty of ways this game could be heavily based on teamwork and strategy with tweaking that doesn't involve making the rounds last days. Time to win and strategy don't have to be directly proportionate.

[ecma4]

3-5 seconds for flag captures? Hellll no.

+1

Times are perfect right now.

[nabokovfan87]

+1

Times are perfect right now.

I enjoy how 2 people think that sitting around for a minute is "strategic". Alright, so obviously no amount of trying to explain the context of this is going to be sufficient. I will download dods and record a video on one or two of the maps, show how it works with the flag times being so quick compared to this game.

I honestly think you guys are saying it is a bad idea, or that this is fine, simply because you don't know any better. Having 3 or 4 people rush out onto a flag zone in order to block a cap just to get 3 or 4 more seconds to allow the wave of teammates spawning, or the rush of grenades as the bar starts to climb is something that actually makes it more interesting then sitting. Different the GRO, right now people, sit, wait, shout and say we should move up, but never do. Like I said, give me a chance to demonstrate how it works, and then actually discuss the differences and it would be interesting to see what the consensus it as to which works better.

[ecma4]

Its just going to come down to opinion. It plays differently each way, and its not really a matter of better or worse, just whats more fun to each individual.

[nabokovfan87]

Its just going to come down to opinion. It plays differently each way, and its not really a matter of better or worse, just whats more fun to each individual.

It may very well be a "no affect" when I make the video, but I'd like to at least try and demonstrate what I am talking about. I sent an email to a very popular PC gaming podcast, the host is a big fan of DOD:S as are some of us who listen to it. I essentially described the spawn, run to flag, cap flag, shoot, shoot, die, respawn, run to flag.... He practically was speechless at simply the thought of another game on the DOD:S level. He had to see the game first, but as I said, simply the thought was an emotional enough internal reflection/response and it brought back a wave of good feelings.

Well, I'll be home tonight at around 4 PM PST, should be able to get something done tonight, edit it tomorrow and get towards having it up tomorrow night.

[JohnoBurr]

The longer capture time makes it more challenging to actually capture the point and also gives the other team a chance to fight back. If points were captured in 3-5 seconds, the match would be over within a couple minutes. This is not DOD:S, and never will be. Things that work in that game may not work in this one. If you want it to be so much like DOD:S, just go and play DOD:S.

[nabokovfan87]

The longer capture time makes it more challenging to actually capture the point and also gives the other team a chance to fight back. If points were captured in 3-5 seconds, the match would be over within a couple minutes. This is not DOD:S, and never will be. Things that work in that game may not work in this one. If you want it to be so much like DOD:S, just go and play DOD:S.

Let me lay out the arguments so far.

1. You don't want the overall game to take longer then 5-15 minutes.
2. You don't want flag caps to be under a minute.
3. Time has nothing to do with strategy or strategic gameplay.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Therefore, sitting and waiting for 20% of the round is acceptable?

I think not.

DOD:S is no longer DOD:S. I was "TF2 Patched" and pretty much everyone abandoned it. Went from 50K to around 1000 users now.

I have the first half of the video done, going to go try to find a dod:s server for the second.