King of the Hill

[duckfine 0]

Hey,

 

i am currently redoing a KOTH gamemode from scratch.

The problem i have is that i do not really want to copy the common modes from samatra, acedemy, etc.

What features do you think are nice?

What dont you like about the existing modes (samatra etc) and think i could improve?

I totally appreciate ur help!

 

Have a nice day,

Duck

 

[pooroldspike 129]

Hi, I've logged about 4000 hours on the KOTH servers over the past few years, they're very good but not perfect.

For example they're biased against tanks (hard to get) and I get fed up having to play as a grunt most of the time.

After all, tanks were invented to make war more fun..:)  

[duckfine 0]

21 hours ago, pooroldspike said:

Hi, I've logged about 4000 hours on the KOTH servers over the past few years, they're very good but not perfect.

For example they're biased against tanks (hard to get) and I get fed up having to play as a grunt most of the time.

After all, tanks were invented to make war more fun..:)  

Nice point, i personally dont play on non infantry servers.

So you mean that the major part of the servers are Infantrys because "tanks are op"?

[squirrel0311 16]

Well I'd say it mostly depends on how much work you want to do. I started a KOTH/CTI style game mode over 4 years ago but have pretty much given up since my computer was stolen and all my work was lost. 8/

King of the Hill is by far my most favorite multiplayer gamemode, I just think it gives what a lot of the others fail to provide; and that is quick, basic, military styled, dynamic action combat.

The main strengths of KotH in my opinion are:

 

No Mods required: King of the Hill allows a vanilla player to join a server and get right into the fight without needing to search for different required mods in most cases.

 

Only one Area of Operation: There's not 15 different objectives being fought for at one time, which allows your entire team to focus their efforts on one area. Since most Arma multiplayer servers can only run with about 90 to 100 people max; when you've only got 30 people against 60, manpower counts. 

 

Various Methods of Transportation: Fly, drive, or parachute in. If the enemy has one way of travel locked  down, you have other options available.

 

Fast paced Dynamic Combat: This is mainly due to playing against real people instead of boring and predictable AI, but it also has to do with the ability to simply spawn in and go without needing to gather  your gear every time.

 

Different types of King of the Hill: Personally I'm a HardCore Infantry Only player, which means 1st person Only, No Crosshair, and No Armed vehicles. If that isn't your style though there's are plenty of populated servers with tanks, apcs, jets, and attack helicopters and even 3rd person...

Weaknesses of King of the Hill and ways to improve them:

 

Balanced Teams-
3 teams often takes away much needed manpower when the server population is low.
King of the Hill already has this solved for the most part although it could be further dealt with by only having 2 factions involved. If you're on one faction, for example, Bluefor, what does it matter if you're fighting Csat or Altis forces as seperate factions?

 

The route I took for my multiplayer gamemode was to display the alliances. Nato(US/UK) Csat(Iran/Altis) so you can play as a member of either uniformed force depending on your faction.

 

Balanced gear-
This is one that feels like a lot of people really don't look at when it comes to making multiplayer gamemodes for Arma. You have to remember that military technology in general is built to give the person using it an advantage over their enemy, therefore it's extremely important for the mission maker to look at the capability of each weapon and vehicle and try to think of all the ways a player can use them and decide what effective means the opposite side has to counter it. Individual gear needs to be considered as well.

 

Sure it's fun to play Gary Gear Queer dress up time and pretend to be super secret special dark shadow space seals; but often what that boils down to in multiplayer shooters is someone getting the most devistating gun with a silencer and usually a ghillie suit then camping a road or hiding in a bush. If thats the kind of combat you wish to encourage then that's fine but it probably wont be very popular. It's slow, tedious, and not fun for the people who don't have the capability or dont' want to play that way. 

 

One thing I don't like about King of the Hill is that certain DLC loadouts provide a lot more protection than what a newbie or vanilla player can get. (EOD kit) While many like that arcade-shooter aspect of earning money and ranking up to buy new gear, when you're a new player who's limited to 5.56mm only, having to put 8 - 10 rounds into someone to kill them is extremely frustrating when they can shoot you once with a Navid and drop you. A lot of people love the look of KotH and Arma3 in general but when having to deal with starting at the bottom as well as learn the game in general it becomes more tedious than fun and they usually just quit because other games can give them the same thing at a much easier learning curve. (I'm not saying everything needs to be given up front, just that certain things can be balanced better.) 

 

For my multiplayer gamemode, I had set fireteams and set classes within each fireteam that a player had to choose before spawning in. Choosing a certain class determined what kind of weapon you could carry but all weapons for both factions were restricted to 6.5mm and below. (TeamLeader-MXGL/KatibaGL, MGGuner-MK200, Medic-MX/Katiba, ATGunner-MX,MAWS Mod0/Katiba,Almut, AsstAT/Repairspec- MX/Katiba) Everyone was equipped with a .45 caliber pistol and either 2 11rd mags or 4cylinders depending on which faction. They also had Plate carriers and Enhanced Combat Helmet / Raven vest and Assassin helmets for CSAT, CarryAll backpacks, 2RGO grenades, 5 Green Smoke grenades, 4IFAKs, GPS, NVGs, Binos, map, radio, compass,(Range finders for TL) Everyone had the standard uniform for their faction. No ghillie suits, no civilian clothes, no thermal hiding cammies, or anything else that made it hard to identify what side you were on. Also there were no suppressors. Anyone could pick up a weapon off a dead body but spawning in with pretty much everything you needed kind of cuts down the time it takes for Tactical Timmy to stop playing dress up or asking in voice chat which weapon he should buy. 

 

Balanced vehicles and avaliability-
This pretty much follows the same principles as above. Careful consideration should be taken to determine the full effectiveness of a vehichle and how it will most probably be employed, not just how it's supposed to be. 

For example: King of the Hill when Bluefore had the Armed Blackfish or the armed Ghost hawk... Everyone flocked to Bluefor because it just wasn't fun getting sprayed from 400 meters above. 

Or in the case of warlords and the Rhino, setting up as far as you can get from the action and effectively halting any chance the enemy team has at possibly winning. Again, all of this depends on the type of gameplay you want to encourage so if that's your thing then so be it, but as for myself and many others I play with, it's not. Server rules can midigate some of it too but if there's no admin on, you might be losing players.

 

The way I handled this was that only a certain number of tanks and apc's could be spawned at once and then there was a cool down period... (I never got all that working right though. It may not be possible)

 

Point system that rewards camping-
This ties into the above...
If you allow people to gain XP and Money by simply killing enemy anywhere they wish, then envitably you'll have those who forego the purpose of the game and simply camp a spawn or a road from spawn because seeing their score or money go up is more rewarding than fighting someone who has a chance to fight back.

Server rules can stop this too but with my gamemode, I made it so that kills only count when both parties are inside the AO, the AO's were bigger though. 

Voteban feature-
This is something that every multiplayer game needs in my opinion. I hate having to stop playing so I can track down an admin because someone is griefing or hacking... Plenty of times I've watched a game screech to a halt because no admins were present.  A feature that would take a 2/3s vote and ban a username or steamID for 3 hours would be great.

 

There's a lot more I could talk about but you've likely stopped reading by this point. haha
 

P.S.

Endgame wounded system- This would be neat too but instead of just being able to revive wounded teammates, I had wanted to be able to "Capture"(revive) enemy players as well. Doing so would send them back to spawn and count for double points. (Never got this working either)

[pooroldspike 129]

On ‎8‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 5:13 PM, duckfine said:

So you mean that the major part of the servers are Infantrys because "tanks are op"?

 

What's "op"?

All I know is that on the KOTH servers you can't buy tanks at all if there aren't a lot of players on the server, so most of the time you have to play as an infantryman.

I've posted about it in the C4G forum and even offered to pay for a new server in which tanks are as easy to get as a pack of chewing gum, but so far I've had no takers.

[pooroldspike 129]

19 hours ago, squirrel0311 said:

King of the Hill is by far my most favorite multiplayer gamemode, I just think it gives what a lot of the others fail to provide; and that is quick, basic, military styled, dynamic action combat.

 

 

Yes, in KOTH we can just jump straight in and do our own thing without anybody telling us what to do..:)