Couple of ideas...

[Mobious 0]

Just a couple of ideas for after the game has been released.

When I played IL2 and Pacific Fighters a group of people created a program that would capture a players stats from one server and saved them to a Db to be displayed on a website. I think this would be pretty cool for the server that run the CTI game mode or really any of the multiplayer game modes that AA will have.

The other program I used while playing WWIIO was a program that would show you where your team was on a map. The "Commander" view of this program had a map of europe and would show you the current position of anyone in your squad that was running the client, this would allow the commander to direct his team which way they need to go. All the client program would do was to grap the X and Y coord that was displayed on the clients screen. I know everyone would like to be as realistic as possible but this isnt to far fetched.. Concider this as like a GPS system. With the enormity of the AA map it would be helpful in planning attacks and managing player troop movements.

Just a thought...

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault can not be compared to other games mate. When I play OFP it is not about scoring the most or to be on top of the list but the teamwork and the fun you have.

Working in a team, maybe staying behind as your commander tells you or wait for your team to wipe out the enemy AT positions to roll in in your tank to support them, all this stuff is what Ofp is about and I personaly am not at all interested in such a program. Why should I look at them in the aftermath and say: "hey wow look at me im the best".

On the other hand it could be an intersting way to save the calculations done in games for any kind of leagues.

And as for the GPS... some missions have that already and it depends aswell. For example in FCM there was such a thing for most of the missions.

But imagine you go in as a troop of Resistance fighters and you have GPS

[Al Simmons 0]

SOBR[1st-I-R] @ Oct. 23 2006,14:25)]And as for the GPS... some missions have that already and it depends aswell. For example in FCM there was such a thing for most of the missions.

But imagine you go in as a troop of Resistance fighters and you have GPS

Yeah i thats right, but normal OFP has a GPS available, if u ask teammembers for status they reply there positions.

[Batukhan 0]

Yeah i thats right, but normal OFP has a GPS available, if u ask teammembers for status they reply there positions.

I guess they just counted their steps from SQUARE1 or something..

But about the resistance fighters having a GPS: The game is set in modern times, and a GPS is a very common and cheap tool. It would be quite logical for them to have it.

About the helper programs:

I wouldn't go there. If you need to know where your teammates are, you ask them and they reply. It's realistic and it works.

[PainDealer 0]

that's a good idea... for some other game. OFP & ArmA that's a no no

[GBee 0]

It's been discussed before, but stats tracking is IMHO a bad thing for a game like Arma. Stats tracking doesn't encourage teamplay and tends to create a very unfriendly and competitive environment. If you've played games with any stats tracking, even just end of game scoreboards, then you probably know what I mean.

The "I 0wn y0u @all" and "Our clan is l33t" type banter isn't really helpful or interesting to anyone. Neither does the rambo player, who abandons his team to try and get as many personal kills as possible - even when that means his team loses. Or even the case of the sniper, who is just doing his job but gets labelled a "camping frag wh0re" because he has a higher K/D ratio.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

It's been discussed before, but stats tracking is IMHO a bad thing for a game like Arma. Stats tracking doesn't encourage teamplay and tends to create a very unfriendly and competitive environment. If you've played games with any stats tracking, even just end of game scoreboards, then you probably know what I mean.

The "I 0wn y0u @all" and "Our clan is l33t" type banter isn't really helpful or interesting to anyone. Neither does the rambo player, who abandons his team to try and get as many personal kills as possible - even when that means his team loses. Or even the case of the sniper, who is just doing his job but gets labelled a "camping frag wh0re" because he has a higher K/D ratio.

nice explanation!

[HappyG 0]

Something like this was already discussed here - http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=52383 - and IMO every decent modern game with a scripting engine SHOULD have XML API which could be used by mission makers to read and write various data in XML files.

All programming languages have libraries that support XML manipulation, therefore you can use that data for virtually anything, and most importantly display it on your website with ease.

It is very easy to add in the game (all ArmaA needs to do is to provide functions to read/write XML files to a disk drive), can be served to 3rd party applications easily (you can set up small web server application on your ArmA server, that will serve them ), and I'm sure ArmA development community knows it well. I'm pretty sure tons of scripts for all kind of data manipulation and presentation would be made by ArmA community in less than a month.

You can use it, either to show server status on your website, state of a long-term games (i.e. real time maps with captured cities for CTI), or simply collect data for squad statistics (member activity, lifetime kill/death ration, no. of fired bullets if you want!.

With popularity RSS has recently achieved, you can make your RSS reader warn you when enough people for a decent fight come to your favorite server, and all that funky stuff.

Basicly what I'm trying to say is that out-of-the game candies are very important for today's multiplayer games, and after all, statistics is important science in every war, and it's resoults are foundamental for further improvements. This should not be overlooked because you can use it to argument your superiority. It's the same, as saying "metric units should not be invented, because people use them to measure their p***".

[KaiserPanda 0]

I think the greatest part about open-ended games like ArmA is that instead of coming away bragging "I got a 4-1 k/d ratio and 50 kills!!1" you have cool stories to brag to your friends about. "I got isolated from my unit and spent the better part of a half-hour picking off enemies and hiding. They never found me!"

[InqWiper 0]

Quote[/b] ]This should not be overlooked because you can use it to argument your superiority. It's the same, as saying "metric units should not be invented, because people use them to measure their p***".

I dont think statistics should be tracked because that will make too many people rush to take a tank or helicopter just because its easier to get many kills with them even if they suck with tanks and helis and lose the game for theire side. Im not really against the possibility though. Let the hexxenkessel servers use stats trackers if they wish but I dont think more serious servers like zeus will use it. Hopefully servers with coop and templay wont implement it.

[dmarkwick 261]

I dunno, I say let's leave the high-scores thing to BF2 and the like. As far as I'm concerned, I'm more interested in how the team does. Looking after the back door in any squad is a thankless task and won't get you your kills necessary for scoreboards, but it's a necessary task and needs to be done well. How do you score that? You cannot, and why would you want to.

As a previous poster said, getting seperated and successfully surviving against the odds is much more of what AA is about, having the high scoreboard will only cheapen the whole thing. But then again, if it gets people playing, it might be good. But not if each person is trying to get the highest score, that way madness lies

[HappyG 0]

Let the hexxenkessel servers use stats trackers if they wish but I dont think more serious servers like zeus will use it. Hopefully servers with coop and templay wont implement it.

Yeah well, thats the point of my post. BIS should give us a tool, it's up to community how they want to use it than.

Since I only proposed a scripting command, every mission maker will use it in his own way, so this obviously won't lead to any global high-score ladder.

It only seems natural to me, that deathmatch missions would use it to track kills, while coop mission makers can use it for anything else.

Same goes for different squads - if they want to show their member's kill ratio on their web site - let them have it.

Tactical squads could use it for debriefing, logging squad mates positions into an XML file and showing their movement on the map later - sounds like a great tool for tactics improvements.

It would also easen up different leagues (that will pop up like mushrooms after the rain when ArmA comes out) organisation, organisators could put some script code in their missions and fully automise match reporting, etc...

Ability to write different things to a file during the mission has a potential you cant really predict until people surprise you with their scripts

PS: BF2 has little to do with this, we're talking about ability to show some in-game data out of the game, and use it for various purposes.

BF2's problem is central statistics for all players and reward system bound to it. ArmA has no such thing - if someone wants to rush with a tank for the kill ratio in one single mission, he can do it with in-game score table alone, and has nothing to do with this proposal

[Call911-AGE- 0]

Could careless about my score, for me its the tactics an the assults an the team play. Maybe takin a squad loadin em in trucks an loading mines extra AT-4's an settin up an ambush spot along the bad guys approach routes then hittin hard then backin off then settin up again to do it all over again. Whats cool is to have a cpl Apachies attached to u an havin them hit about the same time as u attack. That one screenshot with APC's movin down the road with trees on both sides woulsd be perfect spot 8)

[DarkOmen 0]

I have to agree with the others in this post. The score is not important and leads to unwanted competition.

There are times when kills don't matter...

[frederf 0]

While I don't personally think stats help gameplay, I would fight to the death your right to have them.

Also, if you've ever played WGL mod missions you have probably seen the unit marker scripts that function very nicely to show where individual units, groups, or both are on the map. WGL is even complicated enough to give the option that you can make the unit marker tied to a radio. Such if the person loses the radio their unit marker "gets lost" and will disappear/freeze.

[Quenaelin 0]

People like to compete with everything and scoreboard is very important to see how good you are in this game and it is very helpfull also becouse you aren't necessarily able to confirm your kills in the heat of combat. Somebody may like to put scores in the web also, though I don't care about scoreboards or ladder systems in webservers. This isn't anykind of adventure game where your kill ratio doesn't count You should also score points for doing missions tasks not only kills. Maybe somebody likes to play this like adventure game with no stats and points to score, but I like game where you are able to score points, even though I am not very top on the multiplayer scoreboards but I am better in singleplayer

[low light 0]

The score board idea has only one use (in my mind) for ArmA and thats to enable a clan/team to have some guage of performance that will enable promotion or specialisation within the team.

I believe all Clans/Teams should have a kind of testing mission for thier recruits, whereby thay can guage skills and abilities. With the points systems the team can then allocate ranks and therefore enable a command system. If through successive missions a players points increases (different points for different abilities: e.g. Driving, flying, commanding, accruracy, etc) that recruit will be promoted and can then diversify into a specialism (e.g. Driver, Pilot, Officer, Sniper, etc).

I feel that in OFP/ArmA a points system on the lines of say a Unreal score board would not really have much use unless of course it was an individual capture the flag mission!

Just my 5p's worth (or 10 Cents at the current rate of exchange )

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]I believe all Clans/Teams should have a kind of testing mission for thier recruits, whereby thay can guage skills and abilities.

No.

We have our clan quite a while and we don´t need such.

We judge people by their attitude ingame and their ability to achieve goals or work as a team together.

Killcount doesn´t matter at any point of serious online battling in OFP today. What matters is the team effort.

Rambos are not welcome in any serious clan I know.

[Goeth 0]

Killcount doesn´t matter at any point of serious online battling in OFP today. What matters is the team effort.

Rambos are not welcome in any serious clan I know.

Truth.

[bravo 6 0]

Quote[/b] ]I believe all Clans/Teams should have a kind of testing mission for thier recruits, whereby thay can guage skills and abilities.

No.

We have our clan quite a while and we don´t need such.

We judge people by their attitude ingame and their ability to achieve goals or work as a team together.

Killcount doesn´t matter at any point of serious online battling in OFP today. What matters is the team effort.

Rambos are not welcome in any serious clan I know.

i agree with Balschoiw!

[low light 0]

Quote[/b] ]I believe all Clans/Teams should have a kind of testing mission for thier recruits, whereby thay can guage skills and abilities.

No.

We have our clan quite a while and we don´t need such.

We judge people by their attitude ingame and their ability to achieve goals or work as a team together.

Killcount doesn´t matter at any point of serious online battling in OFP today. What matters is the team effort.

Rambos are not welcome in any serious clan I know.

Fair enough

NOTE:This was merely a statement of what I personally feel and not a dictation on how people should play the game, so don't take it that way. Please note that I use words like '...I feel...' and '...I believe...' representing personal views and thoughts.

I was merely commenting on a use for a score board system; should one be implemented (I hope not). Hence I began the post with:

Quote[/b] ]'The score board idea has only one use (in my mind) for ArmA'...

I personally don't believe in them in OFP, but feel that, if it could be useful for anything, it would be a helpful guage to make decisions within teams.

I didn't mention kill counts. I simply hinted that points should be allocated for skills (don't ask how this would be implemented, I was simply brainstorming and expanding on Quenaelin's point) used in missions. This is a suggestion for a tool that could be used by Team leaders who can't sit and watch every clan members performance in battle while they themselves are engaged in the same battle.

Re: the term 'testing': Maybe I should have said 'training' rather than 'testing'.

I completely agree with the NO RAMBO's issue. I believe in realistic tactical gaming hence I play OFP and not...well any other game

Hope that clarified my somewhat simplistic post earlier.

edit: The beauty of OFP and I'm sure ArmA, is that it's flexible enough to be played in any way the player wants to play the game, through custom missions. I am personally a realism and a tactical gaming fan, but I'm sure that ArmA will have people who enjoy rambo style gameplay with kill counts and scoreboards; especially since it will attract new players to the game who might be used to that style of play, so I guess it's all up to the individual to play the game the way they want to.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Truth.

Word !

Quote[/b] ]I am personally a realism and a tactical gaming fan

Pack your bags and join us tomorrow night for the CiA coop nights.

[tykimies 0]

Isn't it quite normal to keep track of your kills? For example: ww2 fighter pilots, tank crews, snipers etc. I bet they all had a somewhat accurate estimation of how they did.

The way I would like to see the scoreboard working:

Ingame the scoreboard is not accessible but when the mission ends you could see how you did and who you killed and/or who killed you.

I think the scoreboard is closely tied to the "kill-messages" which occur when you kill a human player. I'd like to have an option to turn them off completely.

example with "kill messages" ON

You see a group of soldiers walking towards you. You open fire and kill the first one. A message appears that you just shot a friendly guy and you know to stop shooting.

example with "kill messages" OFF

You see a group of soldiers walking towards you. You open fire and kill them all. When the game ends you learn that they were all friendlies. Triple the fun on irc.

[low light 0]

Quote[/b] ]Truth.

Word !  

Quote[/b] ]I am personally a realism and a tactical gaming fan

Pack your bags and join us tomorrow night for the CiA coop nights.

Hey I'd love to but I mainly stick to LAN based multiplayer. Don't have agood enough connection speed . Will change with ArmA though. Plus I like using UK based tactics, doctrines and equipment! Cheers anyway dude

[Kirby 2]

Isn't it quite normal to keep track of your kills? For example: ww2 fighter pilots, tank crews, snipers etc. I bet they all had a somewhat accurate estimation of how they did.

Just count ur kills. lol.

But yeah, a scoreboard should be a server side choice. like for CTF's ect. they could have a K/D, capture score, whatever. But in serious game it should be off.

And your other idea is good. lol.