Simple yet critical problems with simple solutions

[galzohar]

After playing PR for quite a while, I think I have narrowed down the main issues that are most likely to cause people to stop playing or not enjoy the game nearly as much. I know if I get frustrated by something sometimes, then other people get 10 times more frustrated. I have ordered them from most to least important, though I believe all are quite important.


Problem 1: Loss of focus and teamwork over time. This is mostly caused by rounds lasting too long to fit within most people's attention/time/whatever span.

Solution: The thread regarding this issue is long enough and has everything I have to say on this topic.


Problem 2: It is mostly impossible to cover everything with the available manpower in practically all missions. Fighting is too spread. When the area of operations is so large that you need 4-7 FOs to cover it (and in some missions even that isn't enough), plus defend 1 or more objective while capturing 1 or more objectives, it is simply impossible even for a 50 player team to properly cover everything. This not only makes the game less fun because everyone are spread out all over, but it also makes it impossible to defend all FOs and objectives while also attacking the objective. Once you clear out an FO of enemy and go attack, 1 enemy will sneak from behind and capture it. Move to attack a distant objective, and you lose the one you needed to defend. The forces need to be spread so thin to cover everything, that to get anywhere you basically must gamble where the enemy is and where he isn't, as there is no other way. For example, leaving 2 guys at every FO already takes away 14 players and isn't really enough of a defense anyway. This also forces FOs to be mostly hidden rather than fortified and defended. Let's face it - 50 players, even with FO and RP spawns, is just not a large amount for a team, and even that is often not available on the server. And besides, a 50 vs 50 fight in a small area is quite awesome anyway, as was shown in the first RGG event on "First Light".

Solution: No huge missions. Asset availability is fine, but the maximum distance between objectives and the distance between the first and last objective needs to be limited, so a very small number of well-placed FOs can cover it relatively well. Limit the maximum number of active objectives in A&S to 2 (1 attack, 1 defend) and in A&D to 1. CI would need to just have the potential cache spawning area (along with the FO build restrictions) reduced in size, which would also help with #1. FOs should also be easier to build, but that's discussed further in #3.


Problem 3: FO logistics take too much manpower, time and knowledge. There is a reason people are rarely willing to help build FOs. First, you need to have your whole squad respawn at main to effectively set up FOs (while a drop-off can work, it rarely does and usually screws your team over and takes much longer making the problem even worse). Then, if there are more than 30 players on the server and you play bluefor, you need an extra vehicle on top of a truck loaded with 2 FO crates. Once you are willing to set up an FO, you then become frustrated that you're the only one willing to do it, or the ones that are also willing to do it don't want to suicide and respawn in main base (suicide shouldn't be encouraged, anyway!). Also, setting up FOs quickly at the start of the round is very important, and any slowdown can easily make your team lose the whole round (be it current 3 hour round or tweaked 1 hour round, is still too much for being 1 minute too late with FO setup). In large missions where more than 4 FO crates are available, you need up to 16 (!) players to get involved in FO setup during the first few minutes of a round, and if some of them fail, they might need to keep at it for quite a while longer. This again reduces the already low amount of players actually fighting in the area of operations by a significant amount.

Solution: Since it is already enough of a chore to set up an FO on your own, just remove the requirement of having more players with you. I believe requiring a truck and driving it all the way up to the FO position is already more than enough of a requirement. To avoid some idiot that nobody wants in his squad from messing the round up by setting inappropriate FOs, require the player to be in a squad of at least 2/3/4 members if there are at least 2/12/20 players on his side. FOs are already enough about teamwork in the sense that the whole team needs them, no need to force everyone to take part in building them - They have plenty of other stuff to do already.


Problem 4: Rally points are often ineffective. Yes, they can become very powerful, but even the best players have a good chance of having their RP rendered useless and un-salvageable. No tactics will completely prevent you from getting screwed out of your RP. In large squads their power is also greatly reduced, while I believe allowing a more flexible squad size would overall be beneficial for cooperation. It is also impossible to "recharge" the RP, even if you bring a new pack from the FO.

Solution: Squad members required to set up a rally point will be 50% of the number of squad members, rounded down, and require at least 2/3/4 players in your squad when there are at least 2/12/20 players on your side. Tickets will be 9 + half of number of squad members, so 6-man squads would be the same as they are now, while bigger squads get a few more tickets and smaller squads get a few less. Remove the squad leader requirement to set up an RP and allow any kit to carry an RP backpack. Allow removal of RP from the interaction menu at the armaments crate. RP ticket count should be saved in the backpack (have multiple class names for backpacks for each different amount of ticket count), so that packing up an RP can be followed by either redploying the same one with the same number of tickets, or deploying a new one brought from an FO. May also need different class names for different squads, so that you can safely remove all squad-specifc RPs upon deployment even if they aren't currently being carried (so, for example, you cannot load up multiple RPs into a vehicle and use those repeatedly).


Problem 5: No frontline. This has been discussed, before, but I'll sum it up shortly: To win you will most likely be building enemy FOs and setting up RPs behind enemy lines to attack from multiple directions, including ones where the enemy would normally be coming from. On top of spreading out the already small amounts of players, it makes it so there is an extreme blur regarding which area is "yours" and which is not. Going behind enemy lines is nothing special when there aren't any real enemy lines.

Solution: Only allow construction of FOs within 750/1000/1500 meters (in small/medium/large missions) of zones you won. If you no longer own a zone withing 750/1000/1500 meters of the FO, it becomes blocked until the zone is re-captured. An option to abandon the FO should be available from armaments crate menu so you don't have to go behind enemy lines to pack it if needed, but can just disable it and set up a new one if you prefer placing a new one over re-capping the lost zone. Allow rally points to only setup within 500/750/1000 meters of any zones or active FOs you own, and again block or destroy them when you lose all zones/FOs within 500/750/1000 meters. Currently there are similar rules in place for rally points, but I believe the distances are different and the RP does not become disabled once you lose the FO/zone, and it will be even better when combined with the FO restriction. The FO restriction will also reduce the number of FOs that need to be set up in a rush at the start of a round.


The following are some smaller, but still important issues:


Problem 7: Can abuse rally points by leaving/joining squads. If you really need to teleport to a certain rally point, you can just jump ships, use the RP and then change squads back so you can use your squad's RP next time.

Solution: Leaving a squad removes 1 ticket from the RP (whether it is or isn't deployed, as long as it's not a fresh backpack).


Problem 8: FOs are too difficult to defend. On top of the manpower issues, the fortifications just aren't good enough.

Solution Include some new custom fortification objects. Even some of the existing ones scaled for a bigger size would work great.


Problem 9: Can spawn right into enemy fire. Often need to spawn-camp or sneak in order to successfully deal with the constant spawns while attacking an FO.

Solution: Any damage taken due to enemy fire by anyone within 100m of an RP/FO/HO will block that RP/FO/HO for 2 minutes. That way you cannot spawn into combat. Hopefully when combined with the other changes it will not make FOs too difficult to defend.

Problem 10: Kit restrictions make no sense from a squad structure point of view. You can have a squad of 4 grenadiers or 2 marksmen and a sniper or 5 LAT+HAT specialists, leaving other squads without any of those kits available. The kit you take rarely has anything to do with what your squad is lacking and more to do with what you want to use right now against the current enemy. Of course, some kits are too limited to compensate for that, which will become an unnecessary limitation if the original issue is fixed.

Solution: No squad can have more than 1 AA and a HAT kit. Squads with less than 6 members cannot have more than 1 of the same kit. Squads 10 members or less cannot have more than 2 AT kits (both HAT and LAT count here) and no more than 2 scoped 7.62X51/7.62X54 weapons. Squads with more than 10 members cannot have more than 3 AT kits and no more than 3 scoped 7.62X51/7.62X54 weapons. Every class should be allowed to carry any of the backpacks.

Problem 11: Engineer kit is boring and pointless. Currently there is nothing in PR that needs blowing up aside from ammo caches and FOs, and even those have alternatives. Hardly anyone would take engineer kit just to maybe use it to destroy an objective, and it is rather chosen when it's needed, which is both annoying and unrealistic. Not to mention FO destruction requires 1/2 an inventory worth of satchels and anyone can temporarily grab an engineer kit just to drop himself some satchels and/or a satchel pack.

Solution(s): Either find more uses for the engineer (that players will actually find worth using in-game, which unfortunately I can't come up with any), or ditch the class and let everyone use satchels to blow up FOs. There's already enough of a team effort involved in attacking an FO, no real need to put this additional restriction for destroying it. Especially if the other suggested changes are made and thus FOs are more defend-able due to increased manpower and improved fortifications. If engineer is kept, though, make him the only one actually able to use satchels, as there's no point in an engineer if anyone can grab his satchels and use them. Also, some kind of tweak that will make FOs require only 1 satchel without increasing their vulnerability to other weapons would be great. The UI is clumsy enough as it is, and requiring more than 1 satchel to blow up such a small bunker makes little sense.


Problem 12: Arming static weapons is annoying, counter-intuitive, and unrealistic. When you unload a complete weapon out of a crate, you assume it would come loaded, because it already appears set up and ready to fire. It being unloaded means you have to go through an annoying procedure at the base of unpacking it, unpacking its ammo, arming it, reloading it and then packing it back up (or disassembling it if you have no vehicles with appropriate PR cargo slots, for example when playing US Army). Then you may need to take additional ammo from the static weapon ammo crate if you want any extra. Of course, the kit versions of the static weapons are made completely useless due to this, in addition to the fact they replace a "real" weapon that is usually much more limited than its static weapon alternative. These weapons currently contain too many "noob traps", as in, making noobs waste a lot of time achieving nothing simply because they don't understand how something works. It is generally bad design to implement features that have no use other than trapping newbies into using them improperly. Eventually, when you do disassemble the launcher, the launcher itself remains armed and can be carried by 1 person, which would generally be way too heavy and unsafe to do in real life. The ammo counts also don't always make sense when it comes to something a soldier is capable of carrying on his back.

Solution: Static weapons from crates should come loaded and good to go. Disassembling should actually provide 3 pieces - Ammo pack, launcher and tripod (same as would be done in real life). Technically (engine-wise), the ammo pack can be considered the launcher, so that it saves the correct ammo count. In the kits, remove them altogether to make them limited, as any changes that would make them useful as a part of a kit will also make them readily available in a very unrealistic fashion. Perhaps also add back an AT and/or an AA launcher to (some?) FO crates as well.


Of course there are probably a lot more stuff that need to be changed, but I think the above are the easiest fixes that would have the most significant (positive) effect on the gameplay and the ability of most players to enjoy this game.

[hiddengearz]

I have to disagree when you said fobs are to hard to deffend, there was one mission a couple months ago were blufor had a fob behind a enemy fob and the enemy had a second fob on the other mountain. I think this was on taking candy and we called it fob restrepo, maybe a couple of people might remember it but back to the point. We were able to defend the fob while covering people to destroy the two other fobs. We took heavy casualties and it kind of became the new objective of that map but it was still doable.

[Atkinson]

Excellent points Galzohar and I pretty much agree completely. Though we never know if changing those things would make that much of a difference but I sure am willing to try.

Medic kit as well needs some rethinking as does Engineer Kit. Medic could be a mule atm but iirc he can't pick other than medic backpack. Though this and other backpack etc restrictions can be bypassed if someone just drops the pack to ground or to some vehicle where it can be picked up.

About the FOB defending; I find it the best defense tactics just to build as many FOBs as possible so your mission doesn't get set back that much if u lose 1 or 2 fobs. I hardly use time defending a fob unless I spawn there and are getting attacked or the FO is very important, or the only FO available.
If one could build the usual FO defense: circle-of-hechos-with-one-backwards-ramp with a single click I suppose defending FO would be easier. Perhaps the engineer could build more complex structures faster and easier?

About 12. So true. Managing assets is sometimes so frustrating and time consuming. To even more streamline the asset handling u perhaps could unload them from the supply directly to a vehicle.

[[R-CON]James2464]

I understand your frustration right now.

In my personal opinion points 1,2,3,4,5 & 8 stem from Takistan and Cherno, I'm not disregarding the rest of what you're saying, you have some valid points about other issues.
When I first read your points however I instantly thought about what PR is played on right now and what it will be played on in the future

[malengar]

I agree when you said there no frontline.Make frontline will allow to make a better teamplay , not between squad memebers but between squad of the like side.

[galzohar]

While I think Takistan and Cherno make a lot of the problems worse and better islands might make things a lot better, these are mostly generic. You still can't have people *everywhere* no matter what island it is (in fact, the more cover there is, the more you need to place the people exactly on the spot you want to defend rather than the general area). Defending FOs is not difficult if that is the ONLY thing you do (and even then, if you get spaw-camped then good luck), but once you need to defend 7 FOs and attack/defend objectives you just can't cover everything. I've lost count of how many times I set up an FO just to have it blown up as soon as I leave it to actually try and capture an objective or defend another FO, no matter how much time I spent actually defending the initial FO. The larger the mission, the more of an issue it is. Currently unless we get up to 200 vs 200, it simply isn't possible to cover everything, so the amount of stuff and area size that we do need to cover must be reduced using the various methods I suggested.

I believe this will help for all islands, not just Taki/Cherno.

By the way, the frustration isn't purely mine. A lot of this is also based on feedback I've been gathering from friends and also from watching how others are playing this game.

[Ratszo]

12 tickets ain't much for an RP. I'd like to see 25-30.

Keeping a squad combat effective is most SL's goal. Once the RP is done we go into a non-combat mode dealing with a gameplay script.

It's more fun to press an attack than to re-do a spent RP.

More tickets is better gameplay and less hassle.

Moreover, I'd have RP's block radius decreased and the build radius from a FO increased.

The mod is about squad play, so let's make it easier to maintain a squad in the field and in the fight.

[galzohar]

I think shrinking the area of operations will go a long way towards improving squad play. You can still use the huge areas of Arma for flanking maneuvers if you wish, but the area which you actually are required to be around should be minimized even on the largest missions so we don't have to split up our forces too much.

Today in the CI mission we had a great example of exactly this. Me and my squad were defending the first FO for almost the entire round, hardly moving away from it more than 100-200m and even that with extreme care. At the end of the round when there was only 1 cache left and it was at the other side of the map so the FO became pretty useless, we decided to run down and try help destroy it. As soon as we got 200-300m away from the FO it went boom.

The above situation is fine if you only need to hold 1 or maybe 2 FOs to be effective. But once you need 7 to stand a chance it becomes impossible to defend all of them and still have someone actually doing anything else.

Increasing RP tickets too much will unfortunately make the game completely dependent on them, resulting in less focus on FOs and a lot more luck regarding whether your RP got blocked or if you placed it far/close enough, which is always a gamble of some sort, no matter how good you are at this game. Increasing the effects of the gamble factor is overall not a good thing IMO. Making you need less FOs to be more effective than you are now will IMO help much more and allow keeping RPs similar to what they are now (with some tweaks to make them more user-friendly and less about gambling).

[[R-DEV]Minimalaco]

Problem 8:i think something like that, this is a good idea ?

[galzohar]

You mean I can build those clay walls? In any case, this sort of thing is nice to have, but doesn't help when you don't actually have any walls around the FO, which is where the real problems start. The biggest problem is that it's too easy to shoot into an FO at the spawning units from far away (and while spawn protection helps, it's not a real and complete solution). Helping defense of FOs that are already built in walled-in areas is nice, but we also need a way to build defenses for FOs built in more open ground.