Identifying players?

Unless you memorise the face of another player, it's pretty impossible to identify another player when friendly tags are turned off. Obviously you can remember what their face looks like, or remember what weapon they had etc, but in a squad of men, it can be difficult identifying your friends.

The only way around that I've found is to have your friend do something (like nod his head) so you can identify them in a group. But this is a rather annoying solution.

This is obviously only a problem on "realistic" servers, but it would be nice if there was a setting you could enable so you could identify other players up-close.

EDIT: Also, it would be nice if the image in your squad.xml could be displayed not only on vehicles but as a patch on the soldiers too, I'm sure an addon maker could do this. Like a shoulder patch or something.

Yes the shoulder patch was in OFP also. Seems like a good solution. And It looks cool also

I would like to see this in 1.06

in OFP it looked like this (LLW marines)

I fully agree, it is impossible to identify TKers and other idiots on a 'realistic' server -- an option should allow friendly tags when you have direct line-of-sight to a friendly soldier.

A hud overlay to identify individual friendly soldiers would be an excellent idea, if suitably limited to say 20m.

It's not a problem when you know where to look. You can look at the scores to see who's shooting and getting kills, look at kill messages if you're playing PvP, learn how your friend plays and see who is staying still when he types. It's a good distinction to know if his face is black or white and which weapon he uses.

I dont agree that any additional ID is required for friendly players.

With the use of comms, shoulder patches/custom faces and teamplay/coordination additional ID measures are just not required......

Stick with cadet mode servers if you want player ID functionality , after a few months playing you'll find that you no longer need cadet mode and can then move onto the vet mode servers.

But we don't have squad.xml shoulder patches, do we?

But we don't have squad.xml shoulder patches, do we?

We could... when we get the new tools.

you can customize your face or use camo faces. you can even scan you own face and put it into ArmA.

it would be cool if your player name would be presented directly on your vest but i dare you could read it ingame

Quote[/b] ]WOOOOOOW

THIS IS BEAUTIFUL : )

HAHA that is wicked funny

is he talking about the arm patch or OFP?

I have always thought it is a bit ridiculous that you can't identify a squad member when he is just in front of you.

I am all for playing without friendly tags, it means you have to be cautious and think before opening fire because there is a chance you will end up shooting a squad member and it's good for realism, but really, like someone said before in this thread, when the friendly player is less than 20 meters away from you, his tag should be visible.

It makes coordination kinda hard on pubs and really it is often messy enough as it is. Besides tkers really have a field day with this system. I was playing on a server where a little prick kept shooting people in the legs at the start of the mission and there was no way to tell who did it. I think it took us two hours to finally find out who it was.

I have always thought it is a bit ridiculous that you can't identify a squad member when he is just in front of you.

I am all for playing without friendly tags, it means you have to be cautious and think before opening fire because there is a chance you will end up shooting a squad member and it's good for realism, but really, like someone said before in this thread, when the friendly player is less than 20 meters away from you, his tag should be visible.

It makes coordination kinda hard on pubs and really it is often messy enough as it is. Besides tkers really have a field day with this system. I was playing on a server where a little prick kept shooting people in the legs at the start of the mission and there was no way to tell who did it. I think it took us two hours to finally find out who it was.

if a TK got a big SKULL symbol over his head for 5 mins after he had TK'ed then it would make it very easy to see who is a disruptive player on a Vet server.

good player almost never TK, so they would not be affected by the skull.

Friendly tags visible within 20 metres would be a great solution.

Yes but if he just killed a friendly player, i would have seen the kill message and kicked him because i was admin.

He only shot people in the legs at the start of the mission. That's why it was a problem, since without player tags it was tricky to see who did it.

Memorising faces isn't the half of it.

I looked at the images of each face from a link in the biki earlier today, and although it seems like there were 40 odd, I managed to distinguish:

1) Mildly surprised caucasian

2) Mildly surprised african

3) Old, mildly-surprised african (this may or may not have been Morgan Freeman).

Good luck!

Yes but if he just killed a friendly player, i would have seen the kill message and kicked him because i was admin.

He only shot people in the legs at the start of the mission. That's why it was a problem, since without player tags it was tricky to see who did it.

Why then nobody got the bloody idea to kill that guy who

was shooting everybody in the legs just to identify him?

~S~ CD

You think we didn't think about that? I don't want to give people ideas so i won't explain in details how he did it, but let's just say that he knew when to shoot while everybody was busy or looking away. And that's only half of it.

I really hope a dev reads this and adds an option in the difficulty settings to allow friendly tags to appear when squad members are less than 20 m away, both to prevent that kind of annoying behaviour but also to make it easy for players to work together on public servers in veteran mode.

Whilst it may be unrealistic, adding Teamkill options such as "reflective" (as in, you get hurt with the damage you would have done), does wonders to reduce teamkilling.

Servers on other games I have played have taken this to a different level... after a TK you get a warning, after another, it gets set to reflective (just for you)... so one accidental TK doesn't harm your game (it can happen)... anyone who continuously intentionally TK's, kills only themselves.

Obviously this only works with gametypes that are supporting respawn.

Whilst it may be unrealistic, adding Teamkill options such as "reflective" (as in, you get hurt with the damage you would have done), does wonders to reduce teamkilling.

Servers on other games I have played have taken this to a different level... after a TK you get a warning, after another, it gets set to reflective (just for you)... so one accidental TK doesn't harm your game (it can happen)... anyone who continuously intentionally TK's, kills only themselves.

Obviously this only works with gametypes that are supporting respawn.

Great Idea would be amusing to see Sg.faggot kill himself 30-40 times till he got bored....

Hi all

TK and TK wounding are easy to prevent and negate a simple side check off a hit event detects it instantly then just keyboard lock em, negate their effect and allow them to be forgiven; job done.

Any descent map now has a TK prevention script. There are various options: wound matching and negation or reflection as Bingo calls it; and my favourite 5 minutes keyboard lockup, some have forgive functions some have trigger levels. There waste of time kick and server bans and ban list creators they useless as the TKs just come in with different faked IDs,

While a good admin is useful I think any method should be automatic to save the admins valuable game time. I admin occaionally and in the end it ain't much fun. You hardly get to play you spend so much time having to track the accidents and stupidity along with the anti-social, admonish idiots as well as the perverted, and punish the odd TK queen with a ban that lasts as long as an ID change and JIP.

I think wound negation with 5 Minute keyboard lock and Forgive function is the best solution.

From that the TK learns their actions have no effect, they are made impotent and with the inability to affect the game world they emasculated and the forgive function allows for the stupidity we are all capable of, just as often the TK victims fault as the perpertrators.

In the end it is a simple problem solved by scripts that already existed and did their job in OFP.

Kind Regards walker

Enabling friendly tags close up is a solution I guess, but if you're playing "realisticly" it breaks immersion a little. For me one of the most ideal solutions would be printing the soldier's name on their uniform. Because some players have long names this would be a six letter figure, either the first 6 letters of their name of perhaps some custom ID tag they can write themselves.

Thats a real life solution as well since most soldiers write names on their equipment so it doesn't get mixed up, the added benefit that people can read their name off their equipment as well (webbing/armour etc).

This would also make ArmA very customizable since if the game had squad patches on soldiers as well then players could customise their face, shoulder patch, and put their name on their gear.

I don't know how possible it is, but it would be nice to see.

Friendly tags at close range would be OK as a representation

of the various subtle cues you use to recognise someone in

the real world (things like gait, posture, physical size, habits)

none of which are represented by the clone-warriors in ArmA.

Even better if you could toggle the display as needed with a

keypress.

being a combat veteran of the US army there are solutions, 1 you can shoot first and hope for forgiveness. or you could implement the challenge and password concept. you hit a key and it post a challenge and if they friendly identification would pop up, if they aren't then your indent pops up to the enemy giving your position away. I have ran in to this situation in real life not knowing if i should shoot or not, luckly i didn't. That is why prior to any operation a challenge and password is briefed, I say orange and if you don't say truck, i shoot you no questions. then when they investigate why i shot a friendly and it was because the dude forgot the pass, it isn't on me. It is on them. it could be integrated into the game, have it work with in a certian radius say 15 to 20 meters. if a friend you have them identified if not they have you identified.

That's quite neat, actually... I like the idea of challenge/pass... system would generate the words, of course... and you could actually do this using just scripting, I believe...

Enabling friendly tags close up is a solution I guess, but if you're playing "realisticly" it breaks immersion a little.

How does it break immersion to be able to tell who that squad member is when he is standing just in front of you???

When he is 100, 200 meters away, fine, you have no way to tell, as it should be. But when you're unable to recognize your buddy supersniperx on the runway before boarding the choppers and have to point your gun at the sky or lean left and right like a retard, so you can embark together, or when a team leader goes, "bravo squad follow me" and you have no clue who your leader is, now that kills immersion for sure.

That ideas about having names printed in uniforms sounds good in practice, but really I doubt that's feasible. Same thing for the password idea. Sounds a bit too complicated. It's not about identifying someone moving in the bushes, or finding out if that soldier you saw moving inside a house is friendly or not, it is simply that there is no way to tell who that teammate 2 meters away from you is.

Any descent map now has a TK prevention script .

And Walker, no offense mate, but I have played countless mp missions, and i have yet to find a single one that had an anti tk script. Saying every little problem can be fixed with a script is just a cop out.

But like I said, this isn't just to fight tkers, it is also to make teamplay and coordination easier. It is hard enough as it is in this game to get people to work together... Yes I know, organized squads don't have that problem and there is always cadet mode, but for some reason I really like veteran mode, and I feel it could be improved and made more realistic with a little fix.