Why are there literally 0 PVP servers?

[Defunkt 431]

Rather than limiting it to one size game or other missions need to be written to scale with player numbers. Four players get to fight over a street, eight players over a city block or village and so forth, if that first street is placed centrally then more objectives can be opened up outwards as players join until they're contesting the whole island. This way a handful of players can hope to enjoy a fairly entertaining game while waiting for the whole combined arms experience to eventuate.

QFT :bounce3:

[JaKe.OnE 10]

We asked this a few weeks ago, too, so we faced it.

When you need a small mission for PvP just search for "ArmA Strike". It is made for clanwars and other smaller groups. :)

Enjoy.

[whisper 0]

One of the biggest problems is that the smallest PvP maps are made for 32 players and don't really work with much less than that, so nobody wants to join an empty server, and the empty servers stay empty. That's why I made my 8v8 bunker control chernogorsk mission, which works fine even with 6 players (3v3).

On top of that, mission with less players should be shorter to avoid people loggin in and waiting too long

Ideally, Defunkt's solution is good, but mission must support that

[galzohar 31]

The main problem with defunkt's solution is that it's already hard enough to find a good location for a pvp mission that won't give either side a clear advantage. Making something that will dynamically increase the zone size while maintaining that balance seems rather impossible. Of course you can make it unbalanced but then you'll have issues similar with (at least the initial) berserk sobor where east almost always won.

It's not that hard for a server admin (or players via voting if admin isn't present) to switch to a different mission as soon as the server is full. Then again with a 16 player server is full and you switch to a 32-player mission, it needs to be one that will still work fine with 16 players and not actually require 32.

To add to it all, it seems like most mission makers seem to go with "as big as possible" which makes it so only 1 gamemode can really be played in the end because there simply aren't enough pvp players online at a given time to play more than that. If you're making a new game mode you need to start with something small, and when people like it increase it in size. The only exception is berzerk (and to a lesser degree AAS) because people already knew and liked it from Arma 1 so it didn't need such a transition.

[Defunkt 431]

There are many mechanisms by which balance can be achieved, terrain is far from the only factor, one can use respawn time, vehicles, class/equipment mixes and numerous variations on each. What's more, one very obvious piece of terrain that is already perfectly symmetrical springs to mind and if/when I get to starting on this in earnest, Utes would be my first setting with the action starting at the airfield and expanding in two directions to encompass the whole island as more players join. The biggest hurdle is the crapload of scripting required in this fussy client/server environment.

The whole voting an admin, debating/choosing a mission then waiting for everybody to vote on parameters is a huge yawn, half the players don't even know how so it's always preceded by endless chat spam telling people how and who to vote for. And if the server were to grow from 4 players to 32 in one hour how many times would everybody need to endure this carry-on to keep the mission right-sized?

But I have learnt there's little point in trying to convince you of anything galzohar, you know best and you will of course go on doing your own thing. How's that working out?

[galzohar 31]

Good luck with your continuously expanding mission. I'd love to see it. That's not something I'll ever be able to make, though, as even if I pull off the scripting, I won't be able to properly test the balance. If you have the knowledge, time and manpower for testing then I'd love to see such a map released ;)

I did not at all say it was impossible, but it's definitely very very hard compared to making missions of different sizes.

Just as a side note, servers without admins are often empty due to TKs and/or other abuse. At least that's the impression I was getting when playing on servers with admins as opposed to servers without ones.

Edited September 9, 2009 by galzohar

[Defunkt 431]

Thanks. Am dabbling with some simpler missions right now as a means of working up a few scripts required for the above. I think it will require sequential objectives, class-based loadouts, wave-based respawns (with a decent spectating system while waiting) and yes, comprehensive griefer management. So yeah, a big job, definitely in the 6-12 month plan and there are no Linux binaries for my server just now anyway. But ArmA 2 is a keeper for me and I certainly see myself playing it for a few years so I think it's worth investing in.

[whisper 0]

This was actually a suggestion by Kju about my CTB to be able to open more fronts when more people connect.

As the mission's goal is to capture an ennemy base that can be reached through different paths, the idea was to open only 1 path when low level of player count, then activate a second one once a certain amount of players is reached, then a 3rd, etc....

I'd better take some map shots for a clearer view of it

[Defunkt 431]

Well I thought about maybe forking the SBS AAS missions some of which at least have a front that is three objectives wide. For smaller numbers you could limit this to the central path and only open the 2nd and 3rd paths as the player count increases. The problem though IMO is that there's still quite a lot of other vital stuff missing from those missions, there are no player classes (everybody's a Sniper/AT Specialist and can use weaponry from any faction), I don't get the respawn queue (the antithesis of spawning in waves) unless it's intended to minimize the damage from the outrageous spawn camping (but really, why are players spawning at the currently contested objective anyway?) and the quantity/availablity of vehicles isn't well managed. All things considered I thought it might be easier to start again.

I'd envisage (say) five sequential objectives in close proximity with the starting teams fighting over the center one (maybe a single building), the team that pushes the other back and grabs all five wins the round/map. If at any stage before that happens enough players join all five of those objectives are distilled into a new, larger central zone (maybe a small town) which is still contested as the current objective and two more objectives are added either side of it in opposite directions. So you still have five objectives and you still have to hold them all to win and it's basically a russian doll, you could repeat that distil-&-add indefinitely though I don't know that you'd want to much more.

[sbsmac 0]

Don't know if you are interested in contributing some of these ideas to my PVP script pack but if so, get in touch -it's getting to the point where I can't do it all myself :)

[whisper 0]

I don't know how you allready did all that yourself, tbh, mac ;) Tough job and nicely done

[Defunkt 431]

I may yet take you up on that mac.

I've took a few screenshots of what I've been sketching out for Utes. A few choice props are used to fabricate a central objective on the runway (C130 loading in progress).

Small (Up to maybe 12 players). Probably fairly long capture times as there's effectively no travelling between zones.

Medium (Up to maybe 18 players). The outer two objectives (which can't have been captured or the round will already have ended) are moved further out.

Large (18+ players). The remaining Charlie sub-objectives are distilled into one and two more are added to the extreme North and South. It's now a fight for the whole island.

Something like that anyway.

[sbsmac 0]

I don't know how you allready did all that yourself, tbh, mac Tough job and nicely done

Thank you :) TBH if I had realised what it would grow into I probably wouldn't have started ! Originally the intent was just to put together some quick scripts for some CTF missions.

My objective is to provide a framework or toolkit for mission designers to be able to create the kinds of gametypes they have in mind. In this, there is a slight difference of approach I think to some of the other projects who are trying to provide a well-defined 'standard' game-type. Ie, I want the mission-designer to be able to pick and choose features as they want irrespective of what kind of top-level gamemode they have chosen...

Think that class-restrictions are the way to go in CTF? Just turn them on

Want to limit total respawns in DM ? Just enable the ticket-system

Want to mix protect-the-VIP gameplay with capture the flag? Just add the appropriate markers for those kinds of objectives...

Etc, etc

I may yet take you up on that mac.

As I say, it's definitely getting to the point where I would be interested in working with more people. At the moment I have fairly good collaboration with mission-designers but implementing all their ideas, testing, keeping the documentation up to date, creating instructional videos, doing other things I have in mind and finding time to actually play the game (!) is a bit of a challenge :)

[cri74 10]

To the tread starter

I was looking in the server light last night and to my expectations the only games i saw was COOP and CL revolution.

Where the heck are the PVP games? Not every1 wants to play COOP server admins. I don't find it fun shooting computers, it's not satisfying.

WELL Koroush... I've gone and done somthing about that :)

Welcome

This is a followup thread for this topic

Original thread

Thanks for all support

battle.no is now open for all Arma2 players. At the moment we can offer 2 servers and a brand new forum for Arma2 players hosted by a community for players by players ! Battle.no has no clan/team/squad alliances, but focuses on bringing forum service and low ping servers witch everyone can enjoy.

Here is our setup

CPU : AMD 2CPU@3,2GHZ 8 Core

Bandwith: 40+ GB up/down

Most scandinavians will enjoy a ping of 8 -15

Most northern european countries will enjoy a ping of 20-30

ALL SERVERS

Everyone are welcome !

We hope this will be a good alternative when you want to play public, as mentioned the servers and the forums are not owned by any clan/team/squads, but belong to the community. In other words this is a chance to make what ever we want, we are given the tools and we(the players) make the rules...THAT MEANS YOU ! If you want to contribute you are welcome to join the team or by forums decide how the servers will be managed and what the community will focus on, regardless of experience or skill level. We are looking for players, mission makers, mod makers, server admins.. whatever level you would like to work on you are welcome to join. There are nearly 200 people working as volunteers at Battle.no on different levels. Exactly 0 people are receiving payment or benefits for the extraordinary work they do. You are invited to take part in a growing community.

WWW.BATTLE.NO

Is sponsored by TV2, Norways largest commercial TV station (Thanks TV 2 for this opportunity). News and articles at battle.no are connected to partners nation wide such as spillmagasined.no and various newspapers both online and in paper form. All servers are named TV2 so please filter us to find us :)

Upcoming events !

Our first event is a challenge ! NoPryl of Norway has challenged battle.no players to a match in Warefare. We will ofcourse take the challenge and we hope more will join us to match NoPryl. Everyone can join ! So please visit us and sign up in the forums

Best regards

cri74

Any answers to this post should go to Original thread !

Thanks to all the players, BIS, admins at battle.no and everyone that contributes to the community

Edited September 13, 2009 by cri74