What is going on? No CTI servers??

[big_t 1]

CTI game mode dead? Those of you claiming this must not play Arma 3 at all...And the tab lock feature was adjusted in Arma 2 with the mando addon. Prior to the Arma 3 release you could play a Rubber Edition CTI match almost any time of the day with plenty of players on either side.

Look harder people, CTI is alive and well.

Ok but Where or how should I be looking? When I click CTI filter in the multiplayer menu, there only server that pops up?

Edit: My bad... I see a few servers (had max ping on), Just out of my comfortable ping range.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Big_T

[Haywire 10]

First to answer the question. CTI type maps will eventually spawn. A mfcti/warfare combination map is on the way...in fact several types of cti/warfare are in the making.

However as the game is in beta the progress is slow as programmers are developing something that is still changing. These maps should be more stable and enjoyable than what currently is out, no offence to teetimes etc.

So there will be a small rise of servers hosting it eventually.

Secondly I played cti's from OFP as well and in arma 1&2 I played warfare. But I don't get the interest in new age cti warfare anymore.

Look ofp cti was a successful strategy map, because it held to strategy game rules. Warfare did not. Warfare is a non personal single player game in a multiplayer environment. So I am not looking that forward to cti maps to be honest.

I can compare ofp cti to starcraft/company of heroes/command and conquer from a strategical point of view. ArmA3 does not the aptitude as a platform to make it that good again.

New age cti maps simply break all the rules that makes a good strategy game and to make it valible for long term players and to bring tournaments back, you really need to limit some aspects like lowering max amount of view distance, max amount of players, max amount of target/towns, max missle distance and really narrow down and simplify the unit weapon customization, just to personalize combat and add dynamic to strategy.

Next to that if the vanilla game doesn't ballance pvp scenarios you need addons. Island and vehicle config customization. Things that new age players can't and/or won't download themselves.

Finally most strategy games have a beginning and a end. In new age cti the end is not appreciated and there is no clear start with JIP.

Basically to fix the map as a valid strategy game and thus a valid game mode you need to shred the game to become more arcade like a base for a more advanced strategy game. Since no one would actually accept those changes to the game. It's just going to be for those people who want more towns and more players. In which the game is just going to be slower and slower till the point that you might as well play coop for a better challenge. Basically what evolution did to coop missions, warfare did to cti. And personally I am just looking forward for a new game mode that adds pvp to arma3 in a more meaningful way on a map that can actually be won or lost by player input.

[spanishsurfer 58]

I don't follow what you're saying. I played CTI in OPFOR, Arma, Arma 2 and the only difference I've noticed is that the game mode becomes a little more complex each time, meaning that the player and Commander have more tools at their disposal, typically gained from lessons learned from previous version of warfare. Have you played Benny Edition Warfare? Rubber Edition? Those game modes were ALL about strategy. Matches literally came down to the decisions made by Commanders and the skill level of players that those commanders had at their disposal. I know because I frequently played as CMDR. As a CMDR the role was a lot like playing a RTS. Every town capture had to be thought out gain VS loss. Some towns where bigger and had tougher defense but supplied the team with more income/min. Some towns where smaller but were easier to cap, and in an early game where your team had primitive weapons that could mean the difference between a good or bad start. I routinely played on servers that were public and participated in tournament matches against some of Armas best players, in those cases it was all about strategy.

Warfare is a blend of co-op (player vs ai) and PVP at its best. Usually early in the match players are fighting against AI and as the game progress the fighting becomes more and more ruthless as players/teams go head to head to take towns. Warfare is Arma's best game mode hands down. I say that because its the only game mode that utilizes all of Armas technology. Examples: Guys lazing targets for aircraft, marking targets for artillery, deploying of ambush sites via mines, supply trucks running supplies between towns, creating bases and defenses for those bases, stationary equipment such as AT, AA, MG nests etc, a complex upgrade tree between teams, ability for commander to control all of the teams resources, a voting system to control who your commander is, a trading system between players which allows players to come together and purchase expensive equipment such as tanks/planes/helis to players they identify as worthy of getting a donation, ability for players to form squads and essentially have a chain of command, an advanced script that enables a complex air defense and essentially fixed the TAB system allowing pilots to develop and utilize complex tactics to survive in the air (BTW automatically downloaded in the mission file)....and the list can keep going on and on....all of this happening real-time among players on a battlefield.

How is any of what I just said need fixing? If anything I want to see Arma 3 CTI continue on the path from before and develop new ideas with the upgrade in game engine. Sure new players may find it daunting to learn these game modes but the community is VERY good at teaching new players. Hell, I'd be willing to make more YouTube videos on how to play it.

[Haywire 10]

I get your point. I am familiar with the maps and I got a taste of the new BE product. Which will be a more basic version I believe, before a new warfare is made. I like the idea because new users, instead of only veterans can get to know the concept before they are thrown into deep with the warfare concept.

The concept of warfare is indeed nice. But how it works in detail can be easily compared to strategy games and older cti versions to show it shortcomings:

1) Normally if you kill a squad or unit in a strategy game, it is dead, it is gone. It will not return to the battlefield before something new comes from enemy base. In warfare depending on the spawn setting, you are either going have a tough time traveling and taking the enormous amounts towns with enormous numbers of resistance or you are going to get awarded by dying. Killing someone then is awarding them with your location, rearmed weaponry and removing injuries. If you don't have spawn of your own, killing the enemy was a bad tactical decision. Which I find an odd concept. The strategy you talk about seems about workarounds to make sure the enemy actually does return to base when it's death.

2) A set number of tactical positions. Almost every game has a limited amount of key areas that must be held. This number is limited to the function of strategy. There are flanks, usually 2 positions on each side. There a key points usually on the middle of the map for increase income. There are safe towns which are close to spawn, but can be attacked if undefended. Warfare doesn't use this concept. The islands from the past games make room for vast landscapes with various large amounts of towns. You have guys going on towns hunts somewhere in the north while enemy is pushing from south, completely away ( like 20 minutes ) from the front line to make silly amounts of income ( point 3 ).

3) The older cti's and strategy games make use of inverted or normal natural income logarithms. This is important because this means that the more income and units on the field, the slower the increase of income will be till it reaches a hold. So there is a set amount of units of various types on the field at a certain time, which allows tactics. The new cti's dont use this at all. In fact most towns increase income over town. The money system is something a engineer would describe as an system showing serious signs of instability. Which leads to the weird billions of cash in longer games on both sides.

4)Fog of war. Strategy games have areas you can't see. In older cti's, engine and pc limitations made this natural. But with the new arma any base can be shelled from a 7000 meters away. In older cti's the use of arty was marked, so that the enemy team could do something about it. This also happens in most strategy games, where either a vehicle show ups in the fog of war. In warfare you find yourself killed often either by arty, long range missles etc without ever discovering the source. You could attack a base with a small tank platoon just to have it shot away by one javelin guy camping on an unknown hill ( point 5)

5)Realistic weaponry. As the games progressed the tanks have become feebler. Old 4 minute long tank battles, which were extended by reinforcement of people on both sides from flashpoint made room for the realistic 3 sec average tank survival. This does not lead to strategy. In fact it creates a hole in the standard inf/heavy/air combination that most strategy games have. Strategy games are more forgiving, giving the team time to respond to an attack. Realism doesn't add much to fair fights.

6) Know how versus skill. If a guy is the best cqc pvper in the arma community, can I kill him easily with my years of experience? Yes, i know plenty of work arounds, exploits and tricks that other people would like to define as skill. I call it know how. If I know that i put a piece of paper on my flat screen with measured distanced to shell your base from any location on the map with my tank by making a map marker with a ai commander. While looking the unit cam to see shell landing. I would say there is a bit of difference in game influence between a player like me and random guy that just joined arma 3. In a strategy game there also players that are better, but they get pooled with better players in most games. In warfare you can just stack a team, either with numbers or skill. Even battlefield has workarounds for this, we need special scripts that doesn't allow this.

This is just a small list. If you put planet side 2 and a random strategy game and compare these with warfare it will show you that warfare is more like mmo type of shooter with rpg elements. And I think the statement of calling it the perfect ai and pvp combination a bit over the top. Especially when the older versions were simple 1 to 2 hour games that did actually have features that you could compare to strategy games and where a single persons input was balanced.

I don't hate warfare btw, but I see it as something that passes the time. It's not going to be tournament worthy and 1-2 hours games that are exiting from start to end instead of busywork are going to be rare.

[spanishsurfer 58]

If you've only gotten a "taste" of BE warfare then I don't see how you can fully appreciate what the game mode has to offer. There are also sub versions of BE warfare (RE warfare) that add even more complexity to the mission by making it more of a TvT event. A lot of the "issues" you just posted have been resolved, you should put more time into the "new warfare" that you seem to think you know a lot about.

[spamurai 3]

I love Warfare.

I think that it is a great basis to build a defining MP game mode on. It can have the potential to showcase the things that make ArmA different from other shooter/simm games. No other game can create such a visceral, raise the hair on your neck, type of game play atmosphere that is ArmA being, ... well ArmA.

Day Z made ArmA great, and ArmA made Day Z great. The combination of which was a perfect storm that bore a lot of fruit for the game in terms of bringing out the things that only an ArmA game can provide. Suddenly ArmA was on the Radar of thousands of players who never gave a previous thought to the game. I joke that only in ArmA: DayZ can you crawl through the world for an hour, never see or shoot another player and still feel like your accomplishing something and having fun. However 1 gun shot echoing through the trees and everyone gets an anxiety spike. Only ArmA can do that.

We need a Day Z for ArmA 3... and I don't mean we need a zombie apocalypse survival simulator... I mean we need something that showcases what ArmA does best, and gets mainstream attention driving people to talk about ArmA MP and wanting to play it.

It think CTI/Warfare is a good platform to build on as a "Standard" format for the out of the box MP experience of ArmA.

But it would take some work. Some creative thinking to solve the kinks in what is currently implemented in your typical custom CTI map made by users. Then BIS would have bless it and make sure it became a standard all ArmA users have access too, so we're not judging the game mode based on a 101 different varieties of it.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Spamurai

[gravedancer 10]

I'm still waiting for a big PVP mission like this. I hope someone makes it very well in Arma 3....

I'm running crCTI Kastenbier Edition for Arma 3 best warfare i have seen yet, just search "graves yard". one server in seattle one chicago.

[Haywire 10]

If you've only gotten a "taste" of BE warfare then I don't see how you can fully appreciate what the game mode has to offer. There are also sub versions of BE warfare (RE warfare) that add even more complexity to the mission by making it more of a TvT event. A lot of the "issues" you just posted have been resolved, you should put more time into the "new warfare" that you seem to think you know a lot about.

With taste of the new BE I meant the current warfare mission that is in it's final stages for release in ArmA 3, because I sent some screens from the old operation flashpoint cti menus to benny, I was able to see the product itself. Clearly, GUI wise it's superior to most cti's in ArmA 3 currently. Benny is a master at what he does. The equipment setup, the unit camera and satcam look marvelous and with the easy setup a new ArmA player can get into it. Of course with some downsides that come with dumbing down the upgrade and building system and the use of a single form currency vs the old 2 currency form ( supply and money ). So I don't know how the community will receive it.

In ArmA 1 I played warfare completely silly, back in those days the respawn of a unit was only 3 seconds on a camp that needed 2 minutes to take. It took a year before that changed and another year before suggestion of a guy not being able to spawn if the camp is being taken was used. Despite that I kept playing. Warfare has come a long way since then and playing it has become a lot more enjoyable. But all the growth always was towards a highly customisable planetside 2 set up vs a more tight and personal pvp game.

I have talked to hundreds of guys like you on ts and forums. But the nail hardly ever hits, mainly because the end goals are different. I want a tight exiting and relatively short game. The old cti has this, that is why back then there were tournaments with match compilations afterwards on youtube or described match reports. A player could make a name for itself. Similar to what starcraft, dota, coh,c&c, bf, cod, cs etc have today with live matches and match reports. The tightness also creates a forced learning curve for players. You play as a team and if someone plays badly he gets commented on that. It's easier to learn the game if you play 7 v 7 or 10 v 10 in a tight map versus 18 vs 18 on a large sandbox battlefield.

People like you who love warfare more, are more interested in the sandbox aspects. Longer games, larger numbers of players, larger numbers of towns equals excitement for you. When you add a missle system so that only a certain group of regulars with know how can fire it, you call it a fix, just because the amount of random deaths is lowered. Even when it just limits the effective use of missiles to a core group. Same goes to pilots, you just remove the problem by giving know how access to a small group that now think that they are experts because they can still pull it off. In reality they are fighting people that wouldn't know where the enemy base is, if you told them in chat several times and point it out with markers...let alone being able to fire missile with the new script.

I can't even sell to clan members that parameters are a bad thing. They love the customisation of their map. And it's hard to point to get across that if players on server A play on their parameters setting, they will never play together with players on server B who dislike those settings. So while everyone can tailor the map to their liking. You will never be able to interest people to play together. And you see that in the past only 2 tournaments surrounding warfare rised, both ended prematurely on these grounds. All the games i mentioned before and old cti did not have this problem.

I am not saying I know more of warfare than you, but I can say that our interest differ. And I agree with this quote by spamurai

But it would take some work. Some creative thinking to solve the kinks in what is currently implemented in your typical custom CTI map made by users. Then BIS would have bless it and make sure it became a standard all ArmA users have access too, so we're not judging the game mode based on a 101 different varieties of it.

Edited August 8, 2013 by Haywire

[fred41 42]

@Haywire,

just a question from a CTI newbe, is it already possible to get a preview from this BE CTI?

And if yes, where?

Thanks,

Fred41

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: i think i found it: BECTI 0.8 stable branch, some servers hosting it!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: my first impression: nothing for a quick match, but very, very interesting for the fans of strategy, like me :)

Edited August 8, 2013 by Fred41

[spanishsurfer 58]

Benny has been very tight lipped on the Arma 3 CTI he's working on; but it's going to be great like Haywire said, Benny is a master at his craft.

With taste of the new BE I meant the current warfare mission that is in it's final stages for release in ArmA 3, because I sent some screens from the old operation flashpoint cti menus to benny, I was able to see the product itself. Clearly, GUI wise it's superior to most cti's in ArmA 3 currently. Benny is a master at what he does. The equipment setup, the unit camera and satcam look marvelous and with the easy setup a new ArmA player can get into it. Of course with some downsides that come with dumbing down the upgrade and building system and the use of a single form currency vs the old 2 currency form ( supply and money ). So I don't know how the community will receive it.

It will be interesting to see how CTI plays with just money, I don't see that as much of a downgrade. It just means teams who are more willing to share their personal income with a commander will get their upgrades/factories a little faster. Same concept with supplies. (Those teams who ran more supply trucks did better)

In ArmA 1 I played warfare completely silly, back in those days the respawn of a unit was only 3 seconds on a camp that needed 2 minutes to take. It took a year before that changed and another year before suggestion of a guy not being able to spawn if the camp is being taken was used. Despite that I kept playing. Warfare has come a long way since then and playing it has become a lot more enjoyable. But all the growth always was towards a highly customisable planetside 2 set up vs a more tight and personal pvp game.

This part I don't follow, what do you mean by tight and personal PVP game? The matches I play it doesn't get any more personal, after a while you start to see the same players on the same servers and it gets very personal.

I have talked to hundreds of guys like you on ts and forums. But the nail hardly ever hits, mainly because the end goals are different. I want a tight exiting and relatively short game. The old cti has this, that is why back then there were tournaments with match compilations afterwards on youtube or described match reports. A player could make a name for itself. Similar to what starcraft, dota, coh,c&c, bf, cod, cs etc have today with live matches and match reports. The tightness also creates a forced learning curve for players. You play as a team and if someone plays badly he gets commented on that. It's easier to learn the game if you play 7 v 7 or 10 v 10 in a tight map versus 18 vs 18 on a large sandbox battlefield.

I disagree with this. What you're not seeing is that the new matches with larger maps, more towns, more players are still VERY personal. The only difference is that they are much more EPIC. You may have 36 people playing in a match (or 64vs64 with Arma 3) but it is still a learning experience for new players. When matches get big like this we would often break down the team into squads with the commander orchestrating where everyone would go and what everyone would do, the squad leaders delegated details. Among the squads players would easily help each other out or help out the new guy. Our server made it standard practice to help all newcomers, we were especially level headed when it came to new players acting out by TKing, base destruction, etc...often instead of kicking giving a warning and asking why they did that, usually they were frustrated because they didn't understand any of the objectives. It CAN be harder to learn a game when you have massive amounts of players running around the map without communicating, but as soon as someone opens up the dialogue I find that players tend to help one another (as long as your not on side or global :) )

People like you who love warfare more, are more interested in the sandbox aspects. Longer games, larger numbers of players, larger numbers of towns equals excitement for you. When you add a missle system so that only a certain group of regulars with know how can fire it, you call it a fix, just because the amount of random deaths is lowered. Even when it just limits the effective use of missiles to a core group. Same goes to pilots, you just remove the problem by giving know how access to a small group that now think that they are experts because they can still pull it off. In reality they are fighting people that wouldn't know where the enemy base is, if you told them in chat several times and point it out with markers...let alone being able to fire missile with the new script.

Well if a player can't even find markers on a map then he probably has no business playing on CTI. The player should instead play the tutorial and read the field manual, then get back to us. As for people who have a hard time understanding somewhat complex firing scripts, most of the answers are on youtube and not really that complicated. I will admit that many did not know how to use the system but it was often explained and links were always provided on how to use them. I will add this, those scripts where NECESSARY since BIS never did much to alleviate the amount of dominance the vanilla system provided aircraft. On servers that did not use MANDO systems I could literally stay airborne for hours and blow up everything I saw on radar, it was absolute ridiculousness. That ridiculousness was addressed through scripts and I would argue that it BENEFITED newer players since they were not constantly getting smart bombs dropped on them from the sky.

I can't even sell to clan members that parameters are a bad thing. They love the customisation of their map. And it's hard to point to get across that if players on server A play on their parameters setting, they will never play together with players on server B who dislike those settings. So while everyone can tailor the map to their liking. You will never be able to interest people to play together. And you see that in the past only 2 tournaments surrounding warfare rised, both ended prematurely on these grounds. All the games i mentioned before and old cti did not have this problem.

You're right you'd never sell me that parameters are a bad thing. They're very good for customizing a map based on what type of match you want. Want a quick match (<1 hour)? Then lower the town amount, increase the cash flow, disable the upgrades and now players can quickly take towns and have a small war in a quick amount of time. You might have 64 players who are mostly asking for a long match, with plenty of towns: done. Maybe everyone just wants a ground war with only transport helis, done. Parameters allow an admin to modify a map based on the needs of the current players in the lobby. If you can't change parameters people tire of the same match over and over and will stop joining your server.

I am not saying I know more of warfare than you, but I can say that our interest differ.

We differ in opinion but I feel like you would probably be an excellent CTI player and you may actually love the way things are going. I'm only discussing your opinions with you because I feel like you're looking at CTI from an outsiders POV and you are missing out on some awesome gameplay. Find me on steam, SpanishSurfer, and I will gladly play CTI with you.

[trnapster 12]

We are currently hosting it on our server. It isn't perfect at the moment but it is definitely fun to play.

Gametracker

[BLSmith2112 0]

I miss RTS from OFP. Towns that rewarded you for holding a town over-time by generating additional resources, buildings that grew out of the ground, base defenses, end-game $200,000 nukes, capturable towns (even by AI) and even "town upgrades" that players (not commanders exclusively) could upgrade, supply routes that needed protecting if you wanted supplies/money to flow... Artillery wasn't point-and-click ether and required some time and skill to zero in on (thus giving defenders time to hear the shells landing and allow them to get into the air to scout for their attacker).

The actual point was to blow up the other teams base. I've played a few CTI/Warfare maps in Arma3 where destroying the other teams HQ resulted in a ban. Or Arma2's CTIs where you could place base buildings 1000s of meters apart and have as many as you wanted - where the game would never end... instead of a base/range limit. What has become of CTI these days? Hell, even PVP? CTF/Conquest/C&H/RTS are now shoved out of the mainstream. It's really sad...

I made this trailer 5 years ago for Arma1 fresh iteration of the OFP classic.

The creator, KaRRiLLioN, now seems interested in other games. He could script like a god and would be able to make substantial changes in a matter of hours/days. The people that played it loved it. Now I guess I'll just go kill brainless AI over and over again in a repetitive attempt to find some originality for once. Sure there's some private servers out there, but its the community at large I'm disappointed with.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Victor

[Muecke 114]

Sure there's some private servers out there, but its the community at large I'm disappointed with.

Yea, me too.

But it doesnt help to wine for old days. I havent seen your RTS version before. In OFP they are still playing the crCTI since 2002 and almost full servers daily.

Today you can deside by yourself. Play OFP,Arma 1 2 3 you will find cti´s there. Finding full servers with balanced cti´s in ArmA 2 3 is another question.

[BLSmith2112 0]

Yea, me too.

But it doesnt help to wine for old days. I havent seen your RTS version before. In OFP they are still playing the crCTI since 2002 and almost full servers daily.

Today you can deside by yourself. Play OFP,Arma 1 2 3 you will find cti´s there. Finding full servers with balanced cti´s in ArmA 2 3 is another question.

Yea it doesn't help thinking about the old days. /cry... I guess all I can do now is hope things will turn around. I've tried scripting several times over the past 10 years, but I can't retain any of that knowledge. We are the community though, and it's up to us to change it. I might set up a dedicated server this time around with Arma3 and try to promote pvp/cti. From what little I've played Domination and Wasteland, I'm already bored with them.

[ironhearse 1]

we've got a few arma 3 players that would be interested in a good PvP CTI mission. Although none of us can script we have access to a dedi box and enough players for testing. if we could help you Victor please get in contact.

[Blue1 10]

Ironhearse, i know you've been around my servers before so, you know there is at least one very good Mission/Server that is going the PVP-CTI-way ;)

but as you may have noticed we recently went the "first optimize, then new features"-way.

But i am glad to tell you, that optimizing is nearly done so far - even if a working HeadlessClient seems to be impossible for the moment at Teetimes Warfare :(

So we've set our prioritys new and will start trying to add new features & functions soon.

I know it won't be the same like an Bennys or crCTI - but thats because i want an intense "PVP-styled and much communication needing-Mission" instead of click&command RTS stuff.

Of course i want to add some features like they have (basedefending structures / statics for example) but as i do face a lot of work in RL also, i could need some more help with that (contact me via PM if you want / can help).

best regards & cya

Blue1

[ironhearse 1]

your inbox is full blue1. i tried to pm you

[Blue1 10]

cleaned up =)

[spanishsurfer 58]

Best CTI version is out...Benny has released his first version.

[Blue1 10]

Well, good that different people have different definitions of "best" or what they personally like ;)

I like Bennys WARFARE because it is also playable "alone" like a Singleplayer RTS game - but for MP/PVP, personally, i do prefer other Editions/Variants of CTI.

[spanishsurfer 58]

It's as much PVP as any other CTI, the AI can be modified.