COOP vs player game modes

[avibird 1 154]

Hello BI community my name is AVIBIRD 1 and I am a vet of OFP#1 for both PC and the XBOX game. For the past few years I played only the XBOX OFP#1 and yes I played ARMA#1 with all the upgrades and now it is a great game.

This post is not about PC vs XBOX play please understand this.

I float back and forth between the BI community and codemasters forums to learn about both games. I personal feel at this time BI will have the game play closer to the original OFP but codemasters might have some new ideas that will bring the game play to a new level only time will tell.

The question I have for the community? I feel codemasters has (not all players) a lot of people that never played the original OFP or ARMA and most of the people on codemasters forums feel that player vs player maps are better then COOP PLAY for team work.( this game is not COD/BF game play which is fast in your face play) They feel the game needs clans support and scoring systems to make the game good. A few works ago I ask my friend to check out ARMA and he told me that most of the games up were clan COOP PLAY. (I hate clans and a scoring system for this game. That is a different debate). If a clan is a group of guys playing COOP mission then I am ok however most clans for COD/BF type games just talk crap and care about scores not game experience. This is just my opinion.

I would like to know how many people like COOP play over player vs player missions for ARMA#2 game play. Sorry I do not know how to make a poll on this site. So lets start our own.

I Prefer COOP PLAY over player vs player in this type of game play because of the team work,communication and planning that is required in a good balance mission with limited resources,multiple objectives and well placed smart enemy waypoints (you know what I am saying hard ass maps that you only have one opportunity to complete the objective or you are dead and out numbered).

COOP PLAY- 1 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 0

AVIBIRD 1 When playing this game keep Chuck Norris home!

[celery 8]

What's the point of making coop and pvp modes seem like adversaries? Both of them can be easily catered with a good mission editor and fluent gameplay design. A good scoring system can't possibly hurt your coop experience, not to mention support for squad XMLs and the likes. If it's absolutely necessary for your game enjoyment that you don't see how well or badly you're doing, the current ArmA already has a server option to hide kill messages and the score board.

I disagree about coop requiring more teamplay: winning at CTF or C&H requires much more coordination and communication from a team because the opponents are intelligent humans with their own plans as well. Dumb AI bots can be shot by the dozens without effort if you are any smarter than their simple algorithms.

[NoRailgunner 0]

You are not automatically better if you have the highest killrate. Its more about how you like to play. I've seen some pvp missions were teamplay was ridiculous because of little combat area and people there - run and gun. In the end they were looking on the score and really dont care about their own teammates. Kind of: "Watch ya my bodycounz i'm l33t!" but his team lost the mission.  

Dont know if its too much or exists - scoring system which measures the real "value" of players movement + action, depending on his preselected abilities as machinegunner, AT, sniper etc and rank and commanding position.

[max power 21]

I'm a coop player exclusively but I support the pvp community. Right now apparently the game favours coop play apparently, given the racket raised by the pvpers regarding ArmA's more rigid gameplay. It looks like a lot of issues here will be solved in ArmA 2. In terms of missions, though, you can make almost any mission you want, so any game mode permutation is possible. I think a built in clan ladder would be cool but I'm not sure how you'd do that. I guess you'd need to register and schedule or something. I was initially going to write about how I was against forcing players to play pvp to get account perks- but I'm not really, so long as they aren't anything significant. Getting a golden AK, I think, is meaningful only to people who care about pvp trophies. Someone having a golden AK would be a cool guy in circles of people who care about that kind of stuff, and probably mildly amusing to people who don't.

[Migel 0]

Quote[/b] ]What's the point of making coop and pvp modes seem like adversaries?

Well I dont know the point but i can explain the thoughts behind it.

Skill x preparation and teamwork ^ 2 = outcome for coopgame

Skill ^2 x preparation and teamwork =  outcome for pvpgame

So its easy to see that in eyes of pvper the coopguy is called noob because his reaction time and being adaptive to different kind of situations is not that trained compared to pvpers.

And otherway around that pvpers often run into certian death because they lack preparation, timing and teamwork.

I think the hate comes that both groups have on more occasions called each other noobs but exspecially for coopers its hard accept because often the skill level of pvper reaches so high that he doesnt need preparation and teamwork to kill loads of ai in this game. While on the other hand only a handfull of good pvpers ( rest of slots filled with noobs ) can beat the smack out of a good coop team that is working toghether.

I think in arma2 like in evolution or crcti the scoreboard needs to be stearing the newer people more. Giving them points for bringing people to frontline in chopper or when taking a sector should be awarded just as much as the guy who can simply rain havoc on the frontline.

I dont think ladders are needed and i have never seen them give a realistic view of how games goes.

We did a player cti competition in ofp and suddenly all players started to do suicide runs into high enemy concentrations in order to get high scores and get praised for it.

[avibird 1 154]

STOP, WAIT and HOLD on You guys so far are missing the point of the question.

It's real simple, do you prefer COOP or PLAYER vs PLAYER MAPS. Give a small reason why. This is not trying to make adversaries? Just a basic poll

Celery for player maps

NoRailgunner no real answer

plaintiff1 for coop maps

Migel I have no clue what the hell you are saying

COOP PLAY- 2 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 1

AVIBIRD 1 When playing this game keep Chuck Norris home!

[wamingo 1]

A good scoring system can't possibly hurt your coop experience.

I've gotten the bad habbit of checking my score to verify kills - and be competitive, so I think a scoring system absolutely can hurt. I much prefer servers with the score turned off now. I still press 'I' out of habbit...

And coop is usually bad when becoming competitive.

The text messages: x player killed y player and friendly kills and such, although perhaps necessary if you want the ability to kick and ban players, also kills the atmosphere to an extent.

This is all just my opinion of course.

As for the teamwork pvp vs coop I have to say again, it's just very different.

In pvp you can be in constant monologue to issue orders or to notify of enemy location and such and that's teamwork alright.

In Coop however, the best teamwork is when you quite literally cover 360 degrees. Even if there's a less than 10% chance that the enemy will come from the other 315 degrees, it is those 10% that matters most in coop. One man cannot cover 360 degrees. Even 2 men is hard.

In PVP, points matter a lot, deaths not so much. Pvp'ers are best off splitting up and be unpredictable. Even if the chance of being sneaked up on is a lot higher in pvp, that % risk don't matter. PVP'ers almost never turn around, moving forward is safer than standing still.

In Coop, deaths matter a lot, points not so much. You've only truely accomplished anything in coop if you've completed the mission with very little or no dying at all.

The best way to stay alive is to cover 360 and that just can't be done if your team is all over the place. It can't even be done with 10 man within whispering distance ... if you're all facing in the same direction.

Teamwork in coop is mostly about the ability to forget your personal score and start caring about not letting anyone die.

When was the last time you healed at another player medic in pvp? Ineffective, right? Well in PVE that's a constant occurance.

Ergo, teamwork in pve and pvp is virtually exact opposites.

I'll give you that it's pretty easy to abuse the inabilities of the AI, but it's only as easy as you make it yourself. ie stay away from the heavy weapons like HE cannons (lamest weapons in arma).

edit: am 98.4% coop.

[ck-claw 1]

We here at |19th| are a co-op clan have been since our 22SAS OFP days!

But hell we all enjoy PvP games too!

Have to agree with Celery!

Cater for all!

One big happy family!

[avibird 1 154]

Thank you for the replays

COOP PLAY- 3 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 2

PS. When you add a replay just add up the score and post at the bottom so we all can see the poll score after each replay

AVIBIRD 1 When playing this game keep Chuck Norris home!

[Commando84 0]

I like both coop and pvp but i favour coop some more or more precisely warefare wich is a mix of both

[lockjaw-65- 0]

I like both types of play, this depends what mood im in or how much time I have.

I like the warfare map but think it needs some improvement.

I like the domination map, when there are a decent amount of players.

The problem i find when its pvp and large teams the comunication aint that good and everybody does there own thing.

So if i had to pick a favorite at the moment it would be coop..

COOP PLAY- 5 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 2

[76 0]

I disagree about coop requiring more teamplay: winning at CTF or C&H requires much more coordination and communication from a team because the opponents are intelligent humans with their own plans as well. Dumb AI bots can be shot by the dozens without effort if you are any smarter than their simple algorithms.

I agree with Celery and on another note COOP is getting rather boring, AI is either way to hard (killing you with one shot from 600m with an AK ffs) or they are way to easy, PvP or Vs is far more enjoyable for me, its a pity that of the hundreds of servers in the gamespy browser you'll be lucky to find ONE that is PvP and don't mention Evo, Domination or SL... I think I through up alittle bit in my mouth...

edit: Warfare is cool weather its AI or human...

COOP PLAY- 5 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 3

[deltasniper 0]

I gues im really a coop guy, allthought i havent played ofp in internet and my computer cant handle arma..

But i gues that PvP can be fun if it's "clan" match. begause i just cant stand that "take-gun-n'-run" gameplay. Coop is just, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TEAMPLAY!!

COOP PLAY- 6 VS PLAYER VS PLAYER - 3

[bigshot 64]

exclusively COOP here - its a much friendlier atmosphere.

As for AI settings in Arma2 I think its important to standardize the way players and mission makers can adjust the difficulty settings for both friendly and enemy AI. Right now in arma1 we have a few different ways of adjusting skill level and it gets too confusing and results are over-varied and difficult to attain exactly what is desired by the user because we all have our own method of making these adjustments...for instance, you can adjust skill level in the front end but that slider will adjust both accuracy and aggessiveness simultaneously, when most of the time you really will want to turn DOWN accuracy but turn UP aggressiveness...which is not possible right now from the GUI as it can only be done from the players.ini file. Then theres the slider in the editor as well...so as it is right now, we're adjusting our ini's, then were adjusting in the editor and we're ending up with very different results and even some weird results at times.

I think it would be best (due to there being so many different styles of missions and combat situations) to simplify this adjustment process by:

1. eliminate the possibilty of being able to manually make the adjustments through the player ini, perhaps by moving the difficulty settings out of the player ini and into its own encrypted file located somewhere within the mission itself.

2. Then, place 2 standard sliders (1 for accuracy, 1 for aggressiveness) both in the editor (for mission makers) and in the mission briefing screen (for players). The sliders in the mission briefing screen would indicate/match how the mission maker adjusted the difficulty in the editor, and would allow the user to turn each slider (independently) either higher or lower than what the default settings are from the mission maker.

...to me this seems like a more streamlined and simplified way of dealing with being able to make this adjustment from mission to mission because right now its being set in both the front end, the ini and then also the mission and the settings are fighting each other...and 1 adjustment is not good for ALL missions...we need a slight change like this...i feel its important.

[lockjaw-65- 0]

exclusively COOP here - its a much friendlier atmosphere.

As for AI settings in Arma2 I think its important to standardize the way players and mission makers can adjust the difficulty settings for both friendly and enemy AI. Right now in arma1 we have a few different ways of adjusting skill level and it gets too confusing and results are over-varied and difficult to attain exactly what is desired by the user because we all have our own method of making these adjustments...for instance, you can adjust skill level in the front end but that slider will adjust both accuracy and aggessiveness simultaneously, when most of the time you really will want to turn DOWN accuracy but turn UP aggressiveness...which is not possible right now from the GUI as it can only be done from the players.ini file. Then theres the slider in the editor as well...so as it is right now, we're adjusting our ini's, then were adjusting in the editor and we're ending up with very different results and even some weird results at times.

I think it would be best (due to there being so many different styles of missions and combat situations) to simplify this adjustment process by:

1. eliminate the possibilty of being able to manually make the adjustments through the player ini, perhaps by moving the difficulty settings out of the player ini and into its own encrypted file located somewhere within the mission itself.

2. Then, place 2 standard sliders (1 for accuracy, 1 for aggressiveness) both in the editor (for mission makers) and in the mission briefing screen (for players). The sliders in the mission briefing screen would indicate/match how the mission maker adjusted the difficulty in the editor, and would allow the user to turn each slider (independently) either higher or lower than what the default settings are from the mission maker.

...to me this seems like a more streamlined and simplified way of dealing with being able to make this adjustment from mission to mission because right now its being set in both the front end, the ini and then also the mission and the settings are fighting each other...and 1 adjustment is not good for ALL missions...we need a slight change like this...i feel its important.

seen this post somewhere before lol

[Sergei_Q 0]

All play modes are fun as long as they're played with similar-minded people. Well okay, I don't think that some 'capture the flag' goes that well with ArmA, because those matches tend to ignore the best points of the game and reveal its weaknesses while trying to emulate something that Battlefield 2 does better (because BF is tailored exactly for CTF type play).

The great thing about the game is though that it allows for a lot of variety in game types - capture the island, Sahrani Life, car races, chasing serial killers, three sided scenarios. Unfortunately most designers and players don't want to try new things. Also, a good game experience requires some patience - something that players seldom have.

[POTS 0]

I think a problem with the internet gameplay on arma is the multiplayer acts as a filter for the new players. When they discover this game is very differen't from most games, such as dieing or never winning on multiplayer no matter how good he was before he started playing, they either leave or they usualy join a clan or unit or tournament(me). I wish something would be required before they could get on the internet so we wouldn't have to deal with players like that. Something that would show them the direction of the game before they can play multiplayer. Then most people online would have the same tactical mindset and expectations. There are to many run and gun players discovering how much they suck at a realistic game. Where you cant jump 5 feet or survive 3 rounds to the chest.

[celery 8]

All play modes are fun as long as they're played with similar-minded people. Well okay, I don't think that some 'capture the flag' goes that well with ArmA, because those matches tend to ignore the best points of the game and reveal its weaknesses while trying to emulate something that Battlefield 2 does better (because BF is tailored exactly for CTF type play).

The great thing about the game is though that it allows for a lot of variety in game types - capture the island, Sahrani Life, car races, chasing serial killers, three sided scenarios. Unfortunately most designers and players don't want to try new things. Also, a good game experience requires some patience - something that players seldom have.

I don't recall ever having played CTF in BF2. Capture the flag is nothing more than a game mode with no special requirements from the game engine other than being able to be scripted into the mission. No part of the "capture the flag" rules states that players need to jump or survive 10 bullets, it's simply stealing the opponent's flag and bringing it to yours, so you can really implement it in any game that lets you do that. Just like those other game types you think as more special.

I mean, why the hell would anyone want to race or roleplay in Armed Assault when there clearly are games made specifically for that?!? And that goes double for driving tanks and flying planes and helicopters! 

[oldbear 390]

1° My "natural" trend is to Coop.

But, as I am not a member of a team or a clan, I have played on many servers, with many different people. I have played many Evo, ... probably too much.

On many servers, people are playing coop on their own , so, the so called "coop" is in fact many SP played by many peoples on the same mission.

That's why I have been attracted by "Revive" script, because it can be a way to drive players to play together.

Well, I have also played Coop with teams and clans working together as a groups with TS, and here I really enjoy coop and that's why I have make missions for them.

2°As a player I enjoy Special Forces missions, silent and deadly, without too much firing ... a SP dream. But I have discovered PvP with teams and clans I am playing with.

It has enhanced my ability as a player, no dumb AI here.

And I have found in some C&H, and some Warfare a real fight intensity, with great team working.

The true interest of the PvP game is again while playing as a team with TS.

3°This game, ArmA, is just great, it can be played in many different interesting ways.

I believe Coop and PvP are enjoyable if played as true MP not as multiple SP.

[Second 0]

PVP (If i go to MP i wish my opponents to be as smart or smarter than me)

...

However i believe my kind PVP gameplay has died. There is not "if you die you dont' respawn untill mission is restarted"-type games to be played.

...

Then again my kind COOP has died as well from atleast public servers (same death/respawn rule applies to that). So PVP remains my favorite type of game

[avibird 1 154]

Some of you guys are killing me. Just state if you like coop play or player play better and a short reason why and add up the score on the bottom of your post.

COOP PLAY ? vs PLAAYER PLAY ?

PS. I am currently playing the new farcry2 and the new player vs player mode is great. The best mode I have ever played. It makes the whole team play as a team and you must stay with the squad.

In this mode each team has a VIP. The VIP is the only person that can capture areas. (three spots on the map) When one team gets all three spots then they have to kill the other teams VIP to win the map. The other team can still retake one of the spots which then ends the ability to win the map by killing the VIP.

Most of the games end in a draw becasuse it is very hard and takes a lot of team work to complete. If ARMA2 had some type of mode like this, well it would be hard but I think I would still like COOP PLAY better for all the different maps/objectives modes that can be made.

ps. I know how to setup the AI in coop play to make the maps very hard and balanced for humans to play against AI.

AVIBIRD 1 When playing this game keep Chuck Norris home!

[.kju 3241]

Second try Foreign Legion in ofcra league:

http://ofcra.org/

[lwlooz 0]

Hello there,

I am a bit lost. I like multiplayer mission where there is humans and AI ( AI , not bots , silly Celery ) on both sides.

While the objectives and teamwork certainly is more like COOP, the dynamic enemy thing has a bit of "player vs player" in it I guess.

So where does that put me?

Tho naturally I agree with the rest that this game should enable everyone to make it suit his game-style the best and support every move by BIS to make that possible.

But it seems logical in my mind that while the engine is already complex enough to cover all basic PvP missions , complex missions run into limitations pretty fastish and therefore probably its there where BIS should give us lot more tools.

Then again, if I get a working selectPlayer(or a dynamic slot creation/removal) , a proper saving in Multiplayer , better AI and a better squad command interface (I fucked up that question in the Jerry-Buchta interview,didn't I ...) then I can imagine some pretty cool gaming nights already

[wamingo 1]

So where does that put me?

PvP.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Coop, definately. My clan has DM warmup prior to the regular coop event (usually Domination, or an edit of that mission). But I never attend the DM session. Something about putting bullets into my own clan mates I guess.

When I play DM, I prefer another engine or platform to do it from. I love DM in Unreal Tournament because it is more "tuned" to this. It has enemies you can see, short fighting distances, fighting in different heights, faster, lots of cover and escape possibilities.

Also, OFP and ArmA are about the only games I can think of that support coop play in masses. Some "buddy games" exists, but this is not nearly enough. Even Far Cry 2 doesn't have coop multiplayer mode.

I'm not against PvP, but I am against ArmA as a PvP platform, and will probably never use it that way. There exists better platforms to choose from, imho.