Why are public games in ArmA II so terrible?

[Yoma 0]

The whole "public game is not good" argument is completely moot.

Your just playing the wrong missions at the wrong public server with the wrong people.

Find some server with a lower number of people, playing some nice custom mission. Get on TS. You'll have less lag and a great time.

[galzohar 31]

The whole "public game is not good" argument is completely moot.

Your just playing the wrong missions at the wrong public server with the wrong people.

Find some server with a lower number of people, playing some nice custom mission. Get on TS. You'll have less lag and a great time.

Unfortunately those servers are pretty damn rare. You'd usually have to organize a few friends in advance in order to play like that, which makes it not so much a "public game" even if it's on a public server. Besides, there aren't too many "simple, short, good, no-respawn missions" out there, and the majority of the ones that are out there are pretty bad (which is understandable as hardly anyone actually plays them and comments about them so that they can be improved).

[oktane 0]

Use Yoma Addon Sync or HLSL, to see server list.. find server running a coop you like and has the squad members who run the server, currently playing on it. Have fun. If you don't like them, try another. (although there aren't TOO many choices)

If one doesn't exist, try making one?

If the server that fits your preferences doesn't exist, I don't know what to suggest except make your own! Make the others 'see the light'... or pick a different game that has a much larger MP community, which would then statistically give you better chances of finding something you like?

If you guys figure out a map that is ideal for public servers and meets your requirements for forced teamwork, I'll sure give it a try and host it.

Since there are so few of you all compared to the 'unwashed pubber masses who don't like teamwork', I hope that you make the mission scale well for different player counts.. because servers that run one that doesn't adjust will either be 1) full or 2) empty.. more commonly the latter.

Are you guys against revive too? I like no-respawn missions too, but I play them privately on lan or closed servers with friends.. Voice comm is totally required.

Anfiach:

I wish that the voice comms in A2 weren't half baked.. at the very least it needs a separate volume control. TS is like talking to someone in freaking outer space, the delay is so long.. but at least it is reliable and has whispers for larger groups and CoC. If you have a group that runs a 3rd party app, it is pretty much required to disable VOIP otherwise you have people talking all over each other.

I think it would be a worthwhile effort to hack up Mumble (low latency, open source) and make it able to handle whispers and such.. try to adopt the whole A2 community to it. OR better yet make enough noise to get BIS to fix voip.. then we wouldn't need it.

galzohar, your stance on Domi not being able to be edited is horseshit. Any part of that mission can be re-used and reshaped into anything you want, with minimal effort. It is modular, and any part is capable of helping you bridge the gap between this ideal small mission vs non-teamplay yet public optimized mission. You want a disaster, take a look at the old Evolution code. Its a bunch of copied and pasted scripts that use the same variable names. :eek: If the domi x_scripts folder was named 'Advanced Mission Builders - Commonly Used Scripts and Libraries' and was a separate download, I think you'd think differently of it. That is what it really is though.

Maybe you meant from an outward game design appearance it is unsuitable... but from my perspective (I spend a lot of time in the scripts) it is capable of anything you imagine.

I was thinking of how I like those small realistic ops, kind of similar to side missions in domination, but more along the lines of a good standalone coop with a story. I think a cool map idea would be a bunch of classic one shot coop w/ revive scenarios, in a single mission. So if one was not suitable for the playercount, it wouldn't be loaded. Players could vote on the next mission they wanted, objectives would be static per the loaded 'scenario', bodies would stay, etc.. except when it was over (or earlier), you could vote for the next scenario and the last would be cleaned up, all in one mission. No starting base, limited classes chosen out of pool on senario start as defined by scenario. An open framework maintained.. new scenario scripts submitted by mission makers for inclusion in next version. This kind of thing might be ideal for public servers imo, but what do I know.

Perhaps more checks for 'is the whole group here?' need to be placed in missions before they can continue?

Edited November 21, 2009 by oktane

[viibez 10]

it seems missions with respawn encourage immaturity! like "hey i will fly my plane into your base, it dont matter cos i will respawn"! :(

Perhaps only have team respawn (if i can call it that), to limit resources. eg; If there is a 12 man squad & 1 dies then it is an 11 man squad (ah wont work if all players are real ppl) and you can respawn as another player, onmly if there is AI..

Otherwise the best thing to do that i can think of is make a 5 minute timeout if you die, before being given the chance of respawn. then players will take it more serious because they dont want to have to sit it out and wait if they die.

[GLeek 10]

i didn't read the whole thread.

but i have an simple idea.

why not create a zone trigger , forbidding any travel outside of it , if player isn't in a sub group , with associated objective ?

with that ,any freelance player is blocked inside base, with no other choice : protect base, or join a sub group and take part of the war.

no solo game .

[Daniel 0]

I still think you will get much better (and more satisfying) teamwork on a simple, good no-respawn mission though, especially if the admin does his job.

Absolutely right. Of course simple, good no-respawn missions are few and far between on public servers, but they beat all other types hands down.

All boils down to the players and how coordinated they are. On public servers there is always a compromise.

[galzohar 31]

If you want teamwork, though, the compromise should be by "making the missions shorter, simpler and easier" and not "adding respawns so anyone can complete them", because that immediately kills any motivation for teamwork other than "stay with the team or you get kicked, we don't care if the mission will succeed anyway". The biggest problem with putting such missions on servers (other than actually finding good ones) is that it requires an actual admin choosing a mission suitable for the number (and skill) of players available, and we all know that one of the biggest issues of public gameplay is lack of admins on the servers.

As for finding such servers, once in a while I sort servers by # of players and scroll down all the way from the biggest servers to the near-empty ones, and there's hardly ever one running actually a mission that isn't domi/evo/cti/CL/etc. Sure we play on the Israeli server from time to time when we have enough players, but not many people rush to join in because of the ping.

[Zipper5 74]

I'm very surprised that people keep saying to play Project Reality if you want teamwork in a public game. I got enticed by such claims and decided to download it since I still have my Battlefield 2: Deluxe Edition sitting in the closet.

All I can say is - wow. What a waste of my time, and over 4GB of HDD space.

There is about as much teamwork in their public servers as there is in ArmA II's. The maps are huge and there are hardly enough people playing them to fill them out. I also have yet to see anyone using voice communication. Already, I am bored of it.

In fact, I would go as far to say that PR is worse than ArmA II from my experiences so far. Sure I may not have found the right servers or something, but that's exactly the same arugement being used in favor of ArmA II. So it's no better.

[Sirex1 10]

I'm very surprised that people keep saying to play Project Reality if you want teamwork in a public game. I got enticed by such claims and decided to download it since I still have my Battlefield 2: Deluxe Edition sitting in the closet.

All I can say is - wow. What a waste of my time, and over 4GB of HDD space.

There is about as much teamwork in their public servers as there is in ArmA II's. The maps are huge and there are hardly enough people playing them to fill them out. I also have yet to see anyone using voice communication. Already, I am bored of it.

In fact, I would go as far to say that PR is worse than ArmA II from my experiences so far. Sure I may not have found the right servers or something, but that's exactly the same arugement being used in favor of ArmA II. So it's no better.

To be blunt, god rideance if you can't make the time to adjust to the game and search for infomation and devote time to PR.

[Zipper5 74]

To be blunt, god rideance if you can't make the time to adjust to the game and search for infomation and devote time to PR.

I did. I spent many hours downloading it, along with the 1.5 patch for BF2, which took 4 retries before it worked. Once I had my miserable experience I went and searched the net for tips on how to play. I found very little. I then tried many other servers with higher numbers of players, but it was still exactly the same. I managed to get into one with one person using voice communication, but he left soon. I must have tried 30 servers already, and I've played it easily for over 5 hours.

But the thing people keep saying is that public play in PR is better than ArmA II's. So far, it's worse. In my experience, at least. I haven't given up yet, it's just not as impressive so far as people keep making it out to be.

[An Fiach 10]

To be blunt, god rideance if you can't make the time to adjust to the game and search for infomation and devote time to PR.

Mate, that isn't even a decent rebuttal to his comments. He didn't state that he had issues figuring out how to play. Now, he could be simply trolling, I don't know since I don't play it, but if he is being genuine then it blows that claim out of the water. If you cannot join any active PR server and find that great team play with lots of communication, then it isn't any better in that respect than ArmA 2 is.

[MangoForLife 10]

Endless Respawns + MHQ = No Teamwork. What do you expect?! - Random public players COULD play as a team if they were pushed towards it, but alas, we have to offer ALL the options in order to satisfy everyone.... (so how come in the end 90% of the games are dominated by this stupid easy game setting??) So enjoy, your No-Teamwork, MHQ Teleporting, Run & Gun who cares if i die, silly public play, because Arma2 IS SUCH A FREE GAME, EVERYONE gets to play just the way he likes.........

Edited November 21, 2009 by MangoForLife

[Pain0815 10]

I'm very surprised that people keep saying to play Project Reality if you want teamwork in a public game. I got enticed by such claims and decided to download it since I still have my Battlefield 2: Deluxe Edition sitting in the closet.

All I can say is - wow. What a waste of my time, and over 4GB of HDD space.

There is about as much teamwork in their public servers as there is in ArmA II's. The maps are huge and there are hardly enough people playing them to fill them out. I also have yet to see anyone using voice communication. Already, I am bored of it.

In fact, I would go as far to say that PR is worse than ArmA II from my experiences so far. Sure I may not have found the right servers or something, but that's exactly the same arugement being used in favor of ArmA II. So it's no better.

Arma is great but best public teamwork pvp you will find in project reality.

Try the 10th, tg or t&t server. and only join voip squads. by the way communication is the key, you need a mic!!!!!

[Zipper5 74]

Well, I played for about another 2 hours after school today, joining a few different public servers, and I still have yet to see this common-found teamwork that's supposedly available to you in Project Reality public servers.

It's a fun game, hence why I have put so much time into it. But it's far from being the teamwork godsend that people keep making it out to be. Perhaps I've just been having different experiences, but the idea was that public games in ArmA II were bad and they're better in PR, which has turned out to be false for me.

[jw custom 56]

People can't just sit back and wait for the teamwork to come to you, sometimes YOU have to do something.

Sometimes i just start to follow someone around when playing Domination, that sometimes lead to good teamwork and then other people start to follow.

Also try speak to people, try organize things that has also proven useful for me.

The point is you have to take part in getting the teamwork going, though i'm aware that sometimes it is next to impossible to communicate with some people.

[tractorking 10]

I mentioned this earlier and have no particular ties to this server but.....

Ive found good admin and teamplay in only one open server 3rdMD

Any of the other good games Ive had were in passworded servs.

3rdMD really keeps people in line or boots them, In fact lately we have seen very little

bad players doing stupid things because they have been consistent in kicking people for bad gameplay and they just dont come back to that server anymore.

Goes to prove that good admining can force good game play but I will also say that they have had a heck of a time getting there and it is a constant job to monitor plyers and ensure that only teamplayers stay in the server.

And oh yeah, they run Domination most of the time.

[Cowboy Pilot 10]

Thank you for the reference Trackerking, and its great to see you jump in now and then. Due to polices our player base of regulars (most of which only play on our server) has grown significantly, and most of these individuals have a mindset of tactical realism game-play, and a teamwork based attitude. We have little room for those who are not team players, and no room for those who come in and just want to team kill, randomly shoot and destroy stuff at base, and stir up issues with our unit members and public members.

Our success shows, and even though many of said that we will never be successful and nobody will ever play since we ban so many people, our server became the highest ranked server in all of North America in just under a months time and 6th in the world. We are now on our way to have the top server in the world (and take the 1st place and show the US can have great servers and not just our German friends ;) )

For those who have military background, or love very tactical baesd play, we also suggest dropping by our forums at www.forum.3rdmd.net. We frequently host Public Tactical Co-Op events that are very organized and extensively use ventrilo to separate subordinate units, and use other channels with the use of phantoms and voice binds to act as Communication Nets (where we us proper radio communication).

Anyway I would like to say to those who have been supporting our server, both financially and by being present and putting those long hours, thank you. Thank you again TrackerKing, hopefully we see you once again at another Public Tactical Co-Op. The next one is this weekend on the 28th ;)

[Cain_ 10]

Did anyone say bootcamp? Can i be instructor, I always loved to teach people how to play this game :)

[Murklor 10]

Did anyone say bootcamp? Can i be instructor, I always loved to teach people how to play this game :)

It'd actually be fun to have a good multiplayer bootcamp mission in this game, teaching you a variety of things about the gameplay.

One of the scenarios must include a shiny new MHQ just standing there and a OPFOR unit ready to take it out if it moves an inch. You can call it the "Trial of Weakmindedness".

[Inkompetent 0]

I was actually positively surprised the other day. Me and a couple of friends were playing a small 4-man COOP, only the three of us, and I had forgot to password the server, and during just one single round we had 3 different players attempting to connect to such a small game.

Neither of them could play though due to not having the required mods, but it made me glad to see the interest in a game on a European server at 2am CET. Small COOPs aren't completely dead ^^

[An Fiach 10]

It'd actually be fun to have a good multiplayer bootcamp mission in this game, teaching you a variety of things about the gameplay.

One of the scenarios must include a shiny new MHQ just standing there and a OPFOR unit ready to take it out if it moves an inch. You can call it the "Trial of Weakmindedness".

That's just gold.

[galzohar 31]

Yeah basically if you require any addons on your server you're not going to get anyone joining. It just doesn't make sense to search for and download an addon you never tested, just to play on a mission that you never tried on a server with people you don't know. Too much effort for too little potential benefit.

[Defunkt 431]

Agreed, add-ons and public servers just don't work without auto-download. Mods like Mando Missile, Norrin's Revive and Jones' Mortars (which can be incorporated into, and downloaded with, the mission) rule for this purpose.

[Inkompetent 0]

Well, it's not like we intended others to join. Just my mistake in forgetting to password a private game ;)

[Lonestar 11]

Yeah basically if you require any addons on your server you're not going to get anyone joining. It just doesn't make sense to search for and download an addon you never tested, just to play on a mission that you never tried on a server with people you don't know. Too much effort for too little potential benefit.

Same thing if you don't allow custom faces/sounds, a lot of players will be kicked and will never put the time to deactivate their custom face. It's a pity but some faces/sounds are ugly and kill realism. We run a public server for the french-speaking community (thanks to Whisper for the server) and as an admin I had to choose between having people join our server and realism. I chose realism ;)

Edited November 26, 2009 by Lonestar