Month: May 2013

@38583936 Code1026 writes…
[“Waypoints, map markers & other (well built) in-built Squad management tools can do nothing but help the game.”]

In reality players do not listen to “Attack this objective”, way points will be of no use to get them to comply with your wishes.

[“You don’t wanna use them, don’t”]

I would – unlike the general consensus in this thread, I thought the squad leader tools in BF3 were actually useful if used. Again they were simply not used.

[“ – but there is no reason not to include them in such a team-work orientated game to make those who would use them happy.”]

Catering to every little want does not usually happy – dev time is spent on other things. Enough reason to not include them. Why should they waste time growing a tool that got no use in BF3?

[“The best games had are with a squad who works together.”]

This is still the case, however I stand by my statements (in this thread and the BF3 one) pointing out how players do not play as a team, even in the most simple ways (Spawn -> assist), why is this going to improve it? Because over the life of BF3 the vast majority of lamenting VOIP/commander flat out state that it will, without a doubt, improve teamplay significantly.

If players don’t grasp the simple idea of spawn -> assist then I don’t really think any amount of tools will help.

[“ In BF2 it was a much lower ratio of people who used them than those who didn’t, but having the ability to name your squad to something like “Active Orders” always attracted like minded players who did use the tools.”]

I think VOIP over a waypoint system would help more. I don’t think VOIP would help all that much getting players to actually play together.

[“Pressing a button to highlight one point on the map that every player is either going for, or camping out anyway is not adequate.”]

To be fair even that is not required. You spawn on your squad member and look at what they are doing. Lets say you spawn on a guy near market on bazaar, near rubble road corner. Your team does not have alley currently. There are two squad members there approaching market (point C).

(referernce: http://symthic.com/aenonar/Maps/Bazaar.jpg)

Players will do all sorts of things at this point. Run off backwards to alley. Go to garage rather than advancing into market. Prone where they spawned even though it has no LOS into market really. Back up to point D. Assist taking market.

All these choices have different permutations, the guy going back to alley might stop in the tunnels near cafe and ADS camp towards alley door for some reason? He might rush and die. He might.. you get the idea.

This is to illustrate two points/problems.

First – Players do not play as a team. The team thing to do would be spawn and then assist whatever the guys you are spawning on are doing. Some of the actions mentioned previously would be obviously teamplay centric. Assist taking market? Check. Possibly going garages.. No tools will fix players making the other calls – I would be surprised if changing the obvious metrics from K/D to flag caps/assists/etc would help with decision making, a plot of the players that make the wrong call are simply not getting good KDR anyway. Commander, VOIP and now better “squad tools” are trotted out to fix this problem but the issue goes deeper than flashy arrows.

Is the player the other squad members are spawning on making the right call taking market?

Overall player mentality is broken. Or rather it is if you are trying to play the game as serious business. A big part of that is because it is a game and people play games to have fun.

Secondly BF3 had a relatively large* player base at its peak, relatively speaking. I played 300 hours logged and over 50 on scrims, not a huge amount considering how much some people play. I would say my in game choices were often overly aggressive – I don’t want to sit around and wait for stuff, especially when I have just spawned. In the time I played I did not actively seek out players to pub with, I have a small friends list that mostly consists of captians from other 4v4 teams as well as my team mates – who I rarely pubbed with. To this end I can count on one hand the number of times I squadded with the same players.

Where is this going? I would not be able to tell you if the guy I am playing with right now is good or not, chances are I have never squadded with him and will likely not do so in the future again. This means that I have no idea if he is going to make good decisions as a player and for his team mates. Ergo why would I want to follow his – rather specific – instructions if there was some sort of waypoint system implemented? Thanks but no thanks.

So who is this for? Do the serious crowd want a feature like this? Obviously unable to speak for all of them, but in my experience the team I played with would not use it. We had names for everything on the maps we played regularly and were able to assign and coordinate strategy quickly using voice. The mini-map by itself is a huge benefit for corridiating, without saying or doing anything. Check team mate locations, fill gap/assist vs spotted incoming. Done.

The crowd of semi – serious gamers that want to play Battlefield 4 together and pub but do not want to play competitively? This seems to be the group that is posting on whirlpool about the topic heavily, and these tools could possibly help them. Surprisingly they seem content with VOIP in BF3 but “it could be better with waypoints”. Why these guys? Because they play together regularly and they know each other and in game choices they would make. This means they can trust the decision of their squad leader, unlike my example where listening is likely to get me killed.

*Please concentrate on one game mode and stop fragmenting the community this time around DICE. Don’t have normal and hardcore, don’t have instant vehicles as an option on ranked servers. Don’t allow something like metro as the only “small” three point option for 64 players – either allow all on small+64 or allow none. Balance your game and then release it, the piddling changes that occurred after release pale in comparison to the balance of instant vehicle vs normal vehicles. Its funny that you bothered tweaking rifles so hard but then allow that sort of thing.

Waypoints, player allocation tools and other micro management tools are a waste of time for Battlefield 4. Players will not listen to them and they have no reason to, with the bulk of pub players not playing with friends regularly and basically not trusting the people they play with.