Devastation: mission pack. Team vs Team.

[galzohar 31]

Isn't it enough that having a player reach the zone and stay there alive without teamwork enough? I'm not a fan of artificial teamwork enhancers. I'd rather be encouraged to work as a team because going by myself against the entire enemy team is a bad idea, and not because going by myself will not be enough to activate a trigger. I hope you can see why the first is much more realistic than the latter, and thus does not give an "artificial teamwork" feeling.

While my HOLD type missions are still rather fresh, they clearly show that needing only 1 player to capture does not hurt teamwork, as if a player managed to capture something on his own then it only means the defenders were not trying hard enough to defend it (in fact, it usually means they weren't trying at all).

[dr_eyeball 16]

It most certainly is not enough. You do not simply step your foot inside a circle and classify the entire zone secure. You do not simply send 1 soldier into a zone and classify the entire zone secure, especially large zones. The use of timers and "teamwork enhancers" are symbolic representations of more complex concepts and behaviours of what would really be required in actually securing the zone, which can't be easily represented in game for the average players. Maybe it needs some adjustments in some way to make it better, but removing it will be detrimental to the overall aim.

Plus it has the enormous benefit of the satisfaction of teamwork for players who are not otherwise inclined to act that way, especially on public servers. It also has preventative measures, such as controlling the flow of the game mode and preventing squads from splitting up and sending individual soldiers to attempt to secure multiple zones simultaneously or sending them behind the front line. The whole game mode attempts to avoid the arcade tactics normally seen.

If you've got 40 players on a server and you can't get 2 more people to cooperate to enter a zone with you, you're out of luck anyway. The whole mission is scaled down to suit a concise battle but to represent something which would otherwise involve many more people. Even things like bases would never be so close to the front line. The list goes on. This is a game mode which means it has rules associated with it, to make it work more smoothly in the short time limit allocated.

[Lonestar 11]

Hi eyeball,

I would like to beta test your mission. I'm already reporting bugs to DevHeaven but i have one question.

Is it possible to test your mission in singleplayer or with a few players (i mean when you host an internet game and play)? Because i don't have a dedicated server and i saw no public server runs it.

I'm new to beta testing, i need guidelines.

Thanks

Edited September 7, 2009 by Lonestar

[TAW_T-Bone 10]

It needs 3 players to take a zone. (Next version will be adjusted to allow you to test a mission with 1 player and allow taking a zone with only 1 player to see how it all works.)

Next update is still a couple weeks away, since I'm working on multiple projects.

Ahhh ok we will test this out the 3 player in a zone to take the zone.

This is very good - i do feel this with you devastation is based on teamwork so to be able to cape a flag with only 1 or 2 player isn't teamwork and realistic, you might want to think about that it should be 3 player with atleast the Fireteamleader or squadleader present to be able to cape the flag.

Our gaming community is running the devastation maps only with 2 coop maps on it, i really like this concept and we will continue playing this further.

cheers,

[galzohar 31]

It really depends how you define "securing a zone", what it's supposed to simulate etc. If it's simulating capturing a bunker, weapon cache, house, HQ, radio tower etc, then there is no reason to require more than 1. If you reached it alive then it means it was not protected.

However, if you're capturing something like a town, then definitely requiring multiple players to capture makes more sense.

Either way, though, in order to capture anything you have to first kill the defenders, which is the main thing that requires teamwork. After everyone is dead moving in and securing should be the easy part (if it's not, then you have other issues to work on :)).

Regardless, in order to make it work for varying amounts of players, you may want to make the requirement a % of the players, rather than a fixed number. Requiring a fixed number makes it so the capture methods change a lot when you have 6 or 50 people on the server. 6 people would force the entire team to get in the zone to capture it, while with 50 people less than 1/4 of the team is required.

[stribog 10]

Continuation of the project will be?

[=-H-= BrewCrew 10]

How do I chose the FOB or rally point so I can spawn there instead of the main?

EDIT: I figured it out :) ChooseBase Deployment from a crate & select your spawn area. GENIOUS!

I'm a Project Reality Player whose found my new home. Keep up the good work Dr!

I have another question I'll post, perhaps I'll find this out on my own as well. I was looking all over for the vehicle repair/rearm/resupply & couldn't find it. Checked BLUFOR Main & Outpost. Is there an icon representation?

Edited September 22, 2009 by =]H[= BrewCrew

[.kju 3244]

Might be possible to get a ClanBase ladder for Devastation as base for better organized play.

[stilpu 0]

Could anyone point me towards a server actually running Devastation? I've tried filtering for it, but can't find any.

[stribog 10]

Missions are yet ready completely. Therefore it is difficult to involve players. Our community is ready to play the Devastation. One of our servers starts a devastation always, but-is not present players. We wait when the developer will appear and will probably make versions further.

[=-H-= BrewCrew 10]

The =]H[= clan is a US Based clan with servers in Chicago. We have 53 Members & 84 "Community Members" (Community Members are those who frequent our servers & wear a special tag, though they are not full =]H[= members). We've recently proclaimed ourselves as a First Person Shooter Clan, though for the last few years our focus has been on the Project Reality Mod for BF2.

Naturally, this mission pack is right up our ally. I wanted to see what your plans for this mission pack might be, officially or unofficially. Also curious how the manual is coming along.

I would really like to see this mission pack running fulltime on one of our servers. The gameplay is right up our ally.

[Kalikorz 10]

I would love to see the Teamwork scoring supplemented with a points/deaths ratio to indicate level of skill [read reputation of effectiveness] this ratio could change the AI levels of your recruits to higher possible levels e.g. a .95 max range high AI rating at 200 percent points over deaths. Then overall points attained could narrow the range of your AI [you can pick em better]. e.g. slowly the range goes from .2-.6 to .4-.5 the idea being you would get better and more elite squads the farther you moved along (if your a good player) but unless your good the good AI doesn't always want to be on your team. I hate it when sucky players get high benfits for perserverance. In RL dumbo stays dumbo he doesn't become captain dumbo and at no point is it that suddenly everyone wants to do what he says.

EDIT: It also leaves a way for grunts to stay grunts just by going off and doing our own thing and getting killed too many times.

[Rak 0]

What happened to this mission? This was so promising, yet I can't find a single server running this anymore. Is it bugged or does it just can't get the attention from TvT players?

TBH I don't like the coop missions like Domination and Evolution dominating the online servers. Berzerk is nothing but a lag fest. This one promised to bring PR style to ArmA 2, which I believe is the right way.

So any news?

[whisper 0]

Is it bugged or does it just can't get the attention from TvT players?

I think it's the latter.

Out of Berzerk and AAS, PvP scene is far and few between

I keep reading people crying for this kind of TvT gameplay everywhere (often from PR background, btw), but once you present the missions online, nobody is there.

[dr_eyeball 16]

Next release was supposed to be out a few weeks back. Time is against me. I haven't gotten around to completing the extra missions yet, plus I never find the time to test the latest changes fully, so I didn't want to release an untested version to general public. I'll see what I can do soon(-ish) - at least some sort of update.

Plan is that this next one would be the last beta and next one after that would be the first full version. Beyond that could be new missions and maybe a game mode - not sure yet. Hope to still follow that plan.

[Rak 0]

Next release was supposed to be out a few weeks back. Time is against me. I haven't gotten around to completing the extra missions yet, plus I never find the time to test the latest changes fully, so I didn't want to release an untested version to general public. I'll see what I can do soon(-ish) - at least some sort of update.

Plan is that this next one would be the last beta and next one after that would be the first full version. Beyond that could be new missions and maybe a game mode - not sure yet. Hope to still follow that plan.

Thanks for the update, I'm looking forward to it.

[.kju 3244]

Dr Eyeball and PR loving folks - ClanBase could host a ladder or cups with Devastation.

Basically whats needed:

• A mission version suitable for clan vs clan play. You guys are the best to judge what needs to be done.
  
• It would be good to have someone support the mission (pack) with updates, like Dr Eyeball or more people.
  
• One league admin to adapt the AAS rules (not much work), get teams into the league and make sure the league is running well.
  

More info here:

Potential CB leagues

And the big new post:

Welcome ClanBase - welcome ArmA II at ClanBase!

[warlab 0]

Next release was supposed to be out a few weeks back.

Have you had a chance to continue your work on this Doc ?

Thanks

[dr_eyeball 16]

Unfortunately, my primary hard drive crashed recently.

So I lost a lot of my recent work covering 1-2 months for multiple projects, due to the stupid way I did partial backups. Some things are salvagable but require manually updating and merging from multiple projects. Some things like new missions were totally lost, but can be redone. All my design notes were lost too. I wish I had released the progress I had done weeks ago, even if incomplete. It'll take quite a while to redo things, so there probably won't be an update until next year, but I do still want to at least release a final version with some new features. Sorry guys.

[.kju 3244]

Very sorry to hear Dr_Eyeball! :(

If you are interested, svn/git can also be used a backup very nicely.

[Alex.XP 0]

How to capture the sector?

When I test the mission on our server(2 men), we can not capture the sector...

Person is too less?

[galzohar 31]

afaik you need 3.

[Rak 0]

With the public release of ACE 2, I can't think of a better mission than a Project Reality like one to play it.

I just don't understand why a game PERFECTLY suited for PR style PVP, is bogged down with Domination/Evo type boring MMO style grinding missions, yet PR does wonders with it's very limited BF2 engine reach. Which the limitations are the reason I don't like PR.

[Sekra 10]

the funny thing is.. PR with 5vs5 is more fun than ArmA2 TvT gamemodes with 20vs20... probably something to do with the fact that all PR maps are developed by the devs of the "game" (mod) compared to arma where there is just a very limited amount of options properly developed by the devs. i'm not saying that all the community made stuff isnt good, there are real gems too.. but they are too few... and usually the replay value is non-existent of those gems..

[.kju 3244]

Somewhat unlucky to see this discussion happen in Dr Eyeball's mission thread, as it

rules out discussing other missions concepts aiming for similar / more teamplay and tactical

orientated gameplay.