CaptainDawson

Maybe this explains why I have not been able to find any Livonia Warlords server with more than 3 players for the past several days...

Nooo don't remove it before I've had a chance to try it XD I was walking in Anthrakia and heard like auto shotgun fire I was like "what player is doing this" and they said it's just the Mini Robots LOL

Ok, I understand not everyone gets the same performance I do. I do think there is still room for improvement in the way of lag-inducing features of Warlords. Primarily, reduce number of AI (increase skill), delete AI that have strayed far from the sector and are not taking contact from anyone, reduce max vehicle count parameter (One player does not need 10 Blackwasps, reducing max vehicle also restrains some CP exploits).

I concur, cooldown should be per sector. I think 1-2 minutes would be reasonable. Sector scans are incredibly powerful, but necessary to have in matches where players are largely working on their own rather than clearing sectors as a team. On that note, I think a lot of problems with team balance, whack-a-mole, and long sector clear times could be partially addressed by increasing the server player count. I know it has been tried before and was removed, but now that you guys have better optimized the servers, maybe now is a good time to look at going back up to 50 or 64 players? Could be a little more strict on kicking players with high ping to make it more feasible perhaps. I played on 96 player official Warlords and it was still playable, even before the recent server optimizations. From talking with other players, the majority of us have been experiencing much better frame rate in the last several weeks. Granted that's not saying much, but it is still an improvement.

Ok good point I agree. Better to keep them in. Maybe just remove the Viper Helmet since it's a little OP and very annoying to see on NATO troops. Everyone still has access to the thermal goggles anyways. Also, on that note, any chance we could see NATO vests, helmets, and backpacks locked to NATO, and same with CSAT gear? Recognition is hard enough at night, it doesn't help seeing troops wearing friendly-colored uniform, but a backpack and helmet with the camouflage of the opposing team! I understand people want to use weapons from all factions, but gear with camouflage of the opposing team is going a bit far IMO and detracts a little from the immersion.

Totally agree. (Including CTRG stealth uniform of course, we wouldn't want an unfair advantage for NATO). Of course if you do that you gotta consider whether or not the thermal masking Ghillie suits stay... Would it be a bad idea to remove all thermal vision goggles to negate this problem, or is that going too far perhaps?

Ok I see what you're saying, details need to be kept secret from the other team, and so they cannot be allowed to switch teams at all. If you fully implement FoW that is understandable. If the locations are randomized, seeing some of the map locations could spoil the element of surprise. If I'm understanding you correctly, the opposing team will not immediately be able to see where the enemy base is? This could add a really cool aspect to the game, having to figure out where the enemy base is! This could largely solve the problem of unbalanced teams, if players are automatically forced to join whichever team has the least players!

I agree. And while I have noticed I've been switched a lot early on in KOTH, after leveling up to level 20, joining groups and playing for longer, I've noticed I hardly ever get team reassigned now. I think it may take player in-game time into account for deciding who should be moved. I bet it has something to do with your score and kill count as well. No no lol, this is referring to Fog of War as in unpredictability. In real life, we don't always know where the enemy is or what tactics he will use. Currently, despite using so many human players, Warlords is extremely predictable. Randomizing some aspects of Warlords would bring back the unpredictability and add the real immersion that would come with combat in real life. Jezuro mentioned he is looking into a solution and brought up this subject a few posts back. ALiVE is my favorite mod for Arma. It essentially takes a large group of infantry and vehicles and randomizes their starting positions, then uses a artificial intelligence commander to move them around on the battlefield to react to the dynamic environment. Basically it just puts human strategy into the AI, instead of the AI just standing there waiting for the player to come to them or waiting for a scripted trigger to react. In a large sense this is just the fog of war. When you play in this way not knowing where enemies are or what they will do, it is a totally different feeling than playing a standard scripted mission. Obviously that would be way too much complexity for Warlords, but even if we could have just a little bit of this sort of randomization in Warlords, both for the AI and for the players, it would really increase the immersion and make it more fun IMO. And by randomizing for the players I mean randomize the base and sector situation so that we have to make new strategies instead of doing the same thing over and over.

Here's a thought I've been pondering for awhile: When players join, the default faction is Blufor. As in, it's the first slot list to show up, and you need to manually select Opfor in order to play as CSAT. A lot of players (including me on KOTH) just join whichever team they are seeing first on server join. This is one of the reasons that the newer players disproportionately join Blue in Warlords, because Blufor's slots are always what you see first, and very new players may not even know how to switch teams! I sometimes hear new players on Blufor asking why they get the balance parameter "black screen" and how to change teams. What if you had a 50% chance of connecting with Blufor showing first, and 50% Opfor showing first. Sure, players could still change to whatever team they wanted to play, but it at least would encourage new players to join Opfor as well instead of always joining Blufor. Take a look at the KOTH balance system if you're not familiar, it is VERY effective and fair for balancing teams for the most part. Players who are not squaded up and the players in game for the least amount of time are asked to switch to the team with less players, and are immediately compensated by a bonus if they choose to switch teams. Perhaps getting a CP bonus in Warlords for joining on or switching to the disadvantaged team could be an option? Just a thought, with the FoW changes it may be a better option to disable team switching altogether in that case, although I'm not sure how you would prevent someone from disconnecting and rejoining on the other team without outright banning them from the opposite team on reconnect somehow...

I agree, those of us who know use this tactic just fine, the problem is more the new players. Most players don't know this information (as far as I can see). So they all spawn in one location for the most part. Would be nice to have at least a little randomization generated regardless of starting location so that people can't camp the contested sector spawns. Yes, because it's you and Juju. You are not going against equal skill pilots on Opfor in this scenario I'm quite sure. If all your Blackwaps were consistently shot down before they could take off you wouldn't be able to get air superiority. Either team can gain the advantage if they have experienced players, the problem is that there is not an equal starting balance in the way of airfield spawns and camping potential. Sure, there are times when players coordinate and overcome the imbalance, but the fact that nearly the same airpower camping situation happens almost every game is telling. The possibility to win as Blufor when you have good players does not negate my argument. Again, as someone who plays Blufor more than Opfor I've seen that unless you have at least one willing and competent pilot on Blufor, there is no reason to create additional targets for Opfor by capturing AAC. If no one on your team knows how to fly a plane or heli competently there is no reason to capture an airfield. Capping sectors is what ultimately wins the game, and when half you team is at AAC spawning Pawnees they don't know how to fly or fighting a single Opfor T-100 spawn camper on the island, that is not a benefit. When you get to the point you can field decent pilots, then you cap the airfield. This strategy keeps more players on the frontline instead of fruitlessly attempting to defend AAC from incessant camping. Doesn't always work, but it's been successful when I've tried it myself. We know that air superiority affects ground units. When air superiority is not possible due to incessant camping of our only usable airfield, I would rather those inexperienced players be fighting the contested sector than spawning Blackwasps for Opfor to spawnkill before they land. Fatigue of attempting to explain why the game balance and camping meta should be fixed (apparently to no avail) has led me to just give up and stop playing warlords like many other experienced players have. But Shikra and Neo are both arguably better in air to air and it's somehow not unbalanced, despite the fact that air superiority is supposedly the deciding factor of the game? Sure I don't have any objection to reducing ATGM maneuverability or laser capabilities, it's not realistic the way it is. You realize you can lase through buildings, terrain, and even track players with a turret lock following all their teleports, even outside of the view distance? Yeah I agree it's bad. But I never use the Rhino "without fear of repercussion", it can be countered by any decent skilled player. All you need is knowledge of the literally only 3 sheds in Lakka and Neochori that they use 95% of the time. Bomb or rocket the 8 particular warehouses in the golden zone for the 8km range, and you suppress almost all Rhinos from operating under cover for the rest of the game. I've had players kill my Rhino from under cover 3 times in a row in a single game. You can literally join Blufor, find the Rhino player, switch teams and just kill him. It's not like they're planning on moving from their shed once they've set up! It is NOT that hard. 90% of players I have played with do not even know how lock onto laser designations with the Rhino! Rhino is overpowered in some respects and should be nerfed, but it IS counterable. Unlike going against experienced players in Shikras when our only airfield camped to death, for this there is basically no counter besides spawn camping Molos and Selekano simultaneously. Remove the Rhino for all I care it's not what wins the game. Air superiority is more often what affects the balance of the game, something which is decidedly in Opfors favor on the Altis map given equal team skill. The Rhino is not the only problem here. Randomized sectors? You wouldn't have people knowing precisely which shed to put their Rhino or camping airfields in the exact same way every game. Rhino AND Opfor air power should be nerfed IMO, and maybe sector/base locations should be randomized to encourage strategy instead of camping the same spot every game. I'm interested to see what Jezuro comes up with in the way of Fog of War, that's what will make me interested to play the game again.

I never knew there was a connection between the starting position and ending position, is there a way to make this so players don't spawn on the same place regardless of where they start? Because currently we have players using thermals marking the spot where they see players appear at the contested sector on the map and then camping players who teleport to the sector. (Yes I have been guilty of this in the past too XD)

I've suggested this before, it's not one specific tactic that is the problem here. It's the meta that allows spammy tactics. You say it is ridiculous that one side has hidden artillery. Would you say the Rhino was overpowered if it could only fire 4 shots and kill one tank or 2 tanks total? What's overpowered is not the Rhino. It's the reload mechanic. It's not supposed to be artillery, it's supposed to be a Tank with a few BLOS AT missiles. Change the unlimited reload, and you fix the problem. It's not overpowered with the only 4 missiles it comes with. Reduce the ammo, reduce the cost. For all vehicles, not just the Rhino. T-140's sit up on the hill outside Titan range and rain down 120mm fire on the noobs at main airfield. With ammo and repair trucks sitting right behind him. Unlimited reload unlimited repair in a couple seconds. Also Specktrum device could be a great counter to the Rhino's targeting system, as well as all laser guided weapons that are designated by a drone. In the campaign it can be used to detect and jam the AR-2 Darters. But it is currently only scripted functions I'm told, disappointing. Here's the thing. What you said is true, but don't you think if Blufor had a significant advantage in airbases, the roles would be partially reversed? AAC gets camped not just because Opfor air power is "better", but because Blufor has only ONE base from which to spawn aircraft, while Opfor has 2. Molos is fully encompassed my a sector, AAC is not, etc we've already been through this many times. Well I'm going to be playing the Livonia Warlords from now on so I don't think this will be the same sort of problem there lol. One team does not have an immediate advantage in airbases over the other, there is one airbase, and both teams can interdict traffic since the sectors and bases are so close. This has been suggested several times, but yeah I completely agree with you. Doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like this since I know Bohemia was probably not planning an Opfor carrier. USS Freedom for both Opfor and Blufor is still better than it is now. Almost without exception there are only 2-3 competent Blufor players at one time who actually use their microphones and coordinate. There you go, there's the endgame solution to Blufor camping. You can win every time if they fall for it lol. BTW when I'm online if we're going to suppress air I make sure we have people on Selekano and Almyra too. It only works if all can be suppressed at the same time of course. I have been able to temporarily suppress all 3 by myself using AI manpads, Cheetahs, and mines, but of course with 2 aircraft spawns vs 1, Blufor cannot hold out forever against the likes of Sopheles, Jujupossum, and Raikkonen! Imagine if Opfor only had Molos and Blufor seal clubbed everything that spawned there. That's what playing Blufor feels like. It wouldn't be a fair match for Opfor, and it isn't for Blufor now. Funny thing is, almost every team I've played with fails to recognize the fact that one thing is far more powerful than all the others. Infantry. You have access to essentially unlimited supplies of thermal masking suits, thermal goggles, and anti tank weaponry. If you use the stealth suits, there is often no way to find you in an aircraft besides a sector scan. If you use the portable AT to it's full potential using teamwork, you can render ground vehicles nearly useless. If people just coordinate, use the Arsenal, and get on the ground capping sectors as infantry, they are an unstoppable force against a few players in tanks and aircraft. Infantry can respawn and teleport for 50CP in SECONDS. You can't spawn a plane or tank and drive to the AO in 15 seconds. Every game it happens. Whichever team has overwhelming force on the ground capping sectors can win even with a massive disadvantage in tanks and air-superiority. But players often choose to play on their own instead of as a team... and when players start leaving it ends up becoming the inevitable game of Whack-a-mole.

Arguably not, if a player joins without the intention of staying on the team more than a few minutes, there is no CP to lose. If players put enough thought into it, they can just for example go on Blufor to use the friendly player markers and find vehicles in a static position like Cheetahs or Rhinos, immediately switch to Opfor and mark all those units for their team, etc. When we already have campers who know where all the fast travel to contested sector spawn locations are, you can't make me believe there aren't players who switch teams to gain an unfair advantage. Also I would argue it is not a very dynamic game when I can predict certain players and certain vehicles being very predictably in the exact same locations nearly every game. I am interested to see what Jezuro comes up with in the way of randomization, any randomization at all would make the game less predictable and more fun. Would add a lot of depth to Warlords too...

There's much worse than that, like the fact that a player can screenshot the locations of all the enemy units, switch teams, and mark them all for his team. The mines are not for people like you who will simply avoid them, they are for the players who continually call in aircraft after aircraft without anyone stopping them. Now that all the longtime players know how to take advantage of the map layout, there is not much left to do but camp airfields and spawns. Today I killed over 5 helis and Shikras at point blank range that Opfor was calling at the main airbase. Get's boring after awhile, waiting out until the Shikra players leave so that Blufor can win.

In any case, they are back up now. There aren't any changes I can see yet.

Was a fun little chance to play Malden Warlords with other players for once, since everyone was forced to only use the smaller servers! I assume they are updating or changing the Altis servers, perhaps in preparation for the next update. Looking forward to seeing what changes were made!

Hey, how did you get these skins in Arma 3?

All I can say is, myself and many other players are really looking forward to the removal of the Jets DLC from Warlords coming up. I know it's only a temporary fix, but I think the average players will start to have a lot more fun during that period. Now every game Blufor feeling obligated to mine Feres and camp Molos to delay the Shikras is just getting annoying. And of course, nearly every game we see Opfor camp the heck out of AAC. Forget Blackwasp vs Shikra or anything else, 2 aircraft spawn points on one side vs 1 on the other is going to create an unfair advantage for one team. Again, air-superiority fighters operating from bases so close to the frontline in this situation is kind of ridiculous. Arma is an infantry oriented game, Jets DLC in Warlords does not present the most realistic or fun side of Arma to the new players.

But why? I don't think you need to put mines on AAC to suppress Blufor air power lol. Whatever actually reaches the ground on spawn will not typically last long enough in the air to deal significant damage to Opfor. Exceptions being early in the game if Opfor doesn't spawn any planes, or if Opfor doesn't happen to have any pilots logged on, or if Blufor can suppress Opfor by camping all 3 of their airfields simultaneously. The balance is hopelessly messed up... AAC is typically the only place Blufor can spawn jets, and the runway is not even covered by the sector, meaning Opfor can literally stand on the runway and shoot everything that spawns, and even put mines on it. Molos IS covered by a sector, meaning Blufor cannot place mines at all. I've only recently figured out how to suppress Molos Airfield, Feres Airfield, and Almyra simultaneously, and it's not so simple as it is for Opfor to camp the single AAC airsptrip and completely deny Blufor any air assets. And still most players prefer to continuously spawn air assets for Opfor to destroy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no reasonable counter to Opfor's Shikras when AAC is being suppressed, and that happens every game. I've been pushing a new strategy for Blufor lately, which seems to partially solve the issue of incessant camping by Opfor. Just don't capture AAC, until the right time comes. Unless you have ready and willing Blackwasp pilots logged on, there is no reason to create additional targets for the Shikras and Neophrons. They don't come over to Blufor side and camp when there's nothing being spawned! AAC is just a killing ground for Opfor, they even have an island from which they can camp with tanks with almost no fear of immediate retribution. Noobs have no idea where they are being shot from. All those players (with the exception of a few experienced players) that spawn Blackfoots, Pawnees, Wipeouts etc. are literally wasting their CP if they will immediately be shot down within a minute of taking off. It must have worked, cause the lack of Blufor aircraft made most of the Opfor pilots to switch to only Neophrons, until we had enough CP and Blackwasp pilots to actually fight back. Look at this. Top 4 players obliterate everything in the match. You can tell by the kill distribution who is using what vehicle. Me camping airfield spawns and using Rhino on Anthrakia, Sopheles and Juju spamming Shikras and Neophron. I just want the camping to end. Currently the only way to suppress camping is to camp the enemy yourself. I'd like there to be no more spawning vehicles halfway across the map in enemy territory, no more mining and seal-clubbing aircraft spawns, no more unlimited Rhino and Kajman ripple-fire exploiting. Just let us play the match team vs team instead of 2 campers vs 2 campers dominating the entire match.

I found my new favorite strategy for annoying jet spammers, it will have to work for the time being until the update later this month. The fact that a couple of the larger mines were missing later on tells me that my mission was at least somewhat successful

@Jezuro, I have to say, whatever changes were made to the servers in the last several weeks have definitely made a difference for the better. I have been getting up to my FPS limit of 60 FPS in Warlords lately, at least until Telos is selected. A drastic increase in performance for me, and since I don't hear as many people complaining about bad frames as much anymore, I think it is improved for others as well.

Assuming the price will still be 30k CP, I doubt we'll see them being used effectively a whole lot, for a few reasons. A little weird to expect players to spend 30k when they can be destroyed so incredibly easily and waste 30k (that could have bought 5 heavily armed helicopters). Plus the fact that the uninformed players who do not use this forum still swear they cause the game to crash regardless of the fixes that have been added... When the original fixes were being implemented, I could rarely convince players to spawn them because they didn't want to risk the server freezing up again. Lot of people were getting Battleye kicked from spawning SAMs, so I doubt many are eager to try again when they have 30k at stake, ALL of which they would lose if they got kicked! While they won't get kicked anymore of course, they don't necessarily know that. Yeah I tried it before the Spetsnaz were added and it was kinda cool. Boring to play by yourself, but it will be interesting with other players once Contact releases. Can't wait for the Opfor tears when they realize the only airbase on the map is significantly closer to Blufor's base than their own lol. Some certain players won't know what to do with themselves anymore if they can't spawn camp in a plane. Since presumably only Contact owners will be able to play on it, I imagine the players will eventually go back to the Altis servers since those are the ones with the most players online. Looking forward to it anyhow!

Sounds very interesting, I will give it a try when I get the chance!

Sure, I've accumulated over 100k by conserving and getting donations, and even 500k instantly in CP transfer glitch. But how many Shikras are you talking about Kullwarrior? While I have never seen this with Shikras, I have seen it in action on Blufor. I've been able to spawn waves of Blackwasps with the glitch without using any CP and was only limited by the max vehicle count. That match a couple months ago where I offered everyone a free Blackwasp (to test my theory of infinite CP) was hilarious, Opfor was so salty, as if they weren't taking advantage of the game themselves. If I was inclined to cheat intentionally I could eventually figure out how to reproduce the unlimited CP glitch, since there were a few things all the instances had in common. Thankfully I don't think there are any players yet who use this intentionally (to the best of my knowledge), there are only those who accidentally find the glitch and exploit it since it requires an action most Warlords players wouldn't normally try intentionally. Suspect it has something to do with the timing of being afk, auto-kick, and disconnect/reconnect, and creating some kind of paradox where the CP is incalculable. And again, removing or at least giving us some reasonable counter to the jet spam in Warlords (besides spawn camping Molos and AAC) would solve this issue even if we never find the reason for the CP glitch. Since it only works on Aircraft and Helis anyways. Nearly every match I play now the experienced Blufor players feel obligated to fly across the map and camp the Molos aircraft spawns because it seems that is the only way to give your team a fair chance against the jet spam.