doover
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Joined: 03/13/2005
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I've loved the battlefield series, but the last installment, battlefield vietnam, I felt left a little to be disired in the game play stakes, it seemed to me there was a woeful lack of balance... 1942 wasn't without its faults either, but they were far fewer in number.
Vechicles .
We all know and love the battlefield series to be about the fact its a great FPS, with lots of vechicles to drive, often, in vietnam, it felt without a vechicle you werent even in the game... some ideas to help balance things.
Pilots / Drivers
My first thought was to consider a separate pilot / driver class, which would perhaps make you able to fly / drive the vechicle more accurately than say another kit, this I think would probably make for horrible scrambles at spawn points, so I scrapped that idea!
However what I think would work alot better is the player effectively becomes that pilot / driver kit upon entering the vechicle (as a driver, not obivously as a passenger). This would mean the old kit would be left behind, so if a plane was shot down, a tank destroyed but the driver escaped they'd only have a pistol, until they were able to scrounge a kit, rather than falling out a plane with a m60! (for realism it makes some sense). Once converted to this kit, the other equipment you would have is a parachute, rather than as we saw alot in 1942 any lacky soldier being able to drop off a bridge / building and pull a chute!
This would mean the tables are entirely turned on the escaping player, where as in the vechicle they had a massive advantage over a regular troop, now they'd be at a large disadvantage. It could also help to balance some of the less "advantageous" vechicles, jeeps, apcs etc, by allowing the driver to keep his/her kit for those.
Perhaps however a pilot/driver who gets back to friendly checkpoint, would be able to get a new kit selection screen, infact this could be inplace for all troops, allowing a single swap every few minutes (to ensure players don't simply have every weapon at there disposal!) at a friendly checkpoint.
Fuel
What we saw with the new battlefield vietnam, was the introduction of helicopters, these made a HUGE difference to game play, a good pilot (maybe copilot in some cases) could take down dozens of troops, tanks, capture spawns, generally anything a troop could do, but faster, beter armoured and 100 times more firepower. Whilst I don't doubt the ability of a modern helicopter in reality, there primary ability to hover and 'spawn camp' tends to reduce the fun for those on the receiving end, with little ability to destroy it (even direct LAW hits would take 3-4 shots).
What I propose is helicopters, and jets would both have fuel, meaning both would have to work on a more 'sortie' based style of play, they'd be enough so the helicopter could engage in the fight for only a mere couple of minutes at the extremes of its range until it needed to return to refuel (e.g enemy fixed spawn!), meaning the effectiveness of the chopper would increase the closer to home it was because of longer flight times. Jets being much faster would not have quite the same problem in terms of range, but again it would mean they would have to break off now and then, rather than being able to constantly dominate the sky.
Potentially damage to the vechicle would increase fuel loss, to the point a near fatally wounded flyer would be losing fuel at an alarming rate! (For realism think, less effiecient damaged engines, less aerodynamics due to bullet holes etc).
Paper, Scissors, Rock!
Certainly with pretty much RTS you'll find a certain amount of paper, scissors, rock mentality, this is pretty much how vechicles should be...
Tanks - Deadly to troops, light ground vechicles (jeeps etc)
Chopper - Deadly to tanks, less effective against fast moving
agile targets such as jeeps, deadly to troops out of cover.
Plane - Deadly to choppers, much biased arsenal of anti-air, less availabilty of bombs, though these would be effective versus dug in troops (unlike the chopper).
Light Armour - Deadly to all kinds of troops, anti-air capability?
Troops - Weak under fire, but versatile against anything with the right kit.
Slight exceptions might be anti-air vehciles which would be vunerable to everything but with awesome anti-air (plane/chopper) capablilty.
Repair Areas
A simple soultion to preivously seen repair bay sitting / fighting / camping.
A vechicle under repair by a pad or hangar cannot fire.
Engineers however have the advantage of being able to keep a vehcicle operational whilst they make repairs.
Other Air Tweaks
To make helicopters less 'super trooper' like as mentioned before the simple answer is they cannot in anyway, shape or form take a check point, the only way for the pilot to do so, is to land and take it him/herself.
As I mentioned, jets should be ALOT more about anti air work, making them less of a threat to ground troops / tanks, but completely dominant in the area they live, the sky. Bombs would be available but only in limited numbers for specialised bomber jets, lacking their own AA superiority they may need an escort to dump off their payload.
Kits
Battlefield has tended to have no limit to kitting, leading to large numbers of what most people would consider of specialist troops, rather than typical soldiers.
I think a scalable (depending on how many playing) a percentage could be a given class, meaning both players might have to try something new some times.
Perhaps as a handicap / balance system, the players who played a full previous round, but came last would get to select their kit first on the next round, during the course of the round players could change as vacancies in various kits become available.
Teamplay
The final ingredient missing from the current battlefield series to make it lengendary!
Hopefully the commander / squad leader system in battlefield 2 will redress these problems.
Whilst I've no idea what the commander will be able to do interms of game interface, hopefully these things might be on the list ;
1. Ability to chose spawn locations of his various troop kits, e.g one check point is underfire from tanks, the commander deploys his anti tank kits there (the player doesnt chose, unless allowed by commander). So repsawning anti tank troops will appear to deal with the threat. Perhaps the previously mentioned kit selection would also allow troops to redeploy where the commander has selected for that kit with the normal spawn delay, but no death. (Realism, consider logistic transport helicopter vechicles that might be less fun to show in a FPS).
If the commander got enough time, he/she could preform a mixed squad of troops who have recently died, and deploy the mixed squad at which ever deployement checkpoint they wanted.
2. Order troops in a 'RTS' style, so the commander role would be ideal for RTS fans.
For example a commander orders a given squad he/she has defined to move over a hill, that squad will immediately get a flashing move arrow at the top of their screen, the squad leader then rallies his or her squad to follow that order.
The same for a attack order, visible troops (not those in cover! a general attack/assault order might be issued instead) the vechicle or troop would be highlighted to the squad.
This kind of commanding would be definately the next step in both FPS and RTS, imagine being able to command an army of real people, then to see them carry out your orders!
Of course, they'll always be players who prefer to largely ignore orders, perhaps this could be countered with penalties to score for leaving the area of the squad. Perhaps however on the kit selection screen the player could request they are allowed to go off alone, fire at will style, it would be the commanders descretion to if they could however!
Thats all for now folks, I can't wait for battlefield 2, if it plays like it looks, it will be lengendary!
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| 03/13/05 03:56 |
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Omni
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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Couldn't agree more.
Nice Post.
Omni
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| 04/16/05 01:05 |
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DamnDirtyApe
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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I agree with you mostly, although some points should be adressed.
Vehicles overpowerd? They felt more like underpowerd to me, machineguns on vehicles were nerved horribly so you couldn't hit anything with them. Tanks drove like wobbly bricks with a gun on them, apc's barely had any use. They should have more firepower, only to be compensated by the rock and scissors system so they could take less damage at the same time.
Fuel, horrible idea. Do you really want to look constantly to your fuel meter checking if you can fly, whilst you miss half the enemies walking by? That and the fact that I think a real life chopper can at least maintain flying a couple of hours, thus an entire round in bf2. The real problem with choppers was that they could just take to much damage. They were impossible to shoot down, unless you had an sa7. Make them a bit vulnarable to small arms fire or normal rockets at least. Removing the autohover or at least an option for this would make an improvement also. Al one has to do now is press the go left button and clicking the mouse in order to circle strafe. Secondly, ammo. Circle strafing of choppers was usually accompanied by flying near ammoboxes or repair platforms.
Brings up the repairing and restocking of ammo issue. Since this can only happen true air drops stated in the previews I assume this will be pretty ok. At least they should make sure a chopper or airplane can't just fly over a patch of ground and be 100% health and ammo to go off killing again.
These are all obvious things any player sees after 5 rounds of gameplay, why it's still such an issue is beyond me. I sure hope they change it, retail or patched I don't care. *crosses fingers*
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| 04/29/05 04:49 |
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Slick1942
Posts: 13
Joined: 05/06/2005
Credibility: -31 pts
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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I respect your opinions very much on the game ,but i think the problem with pilot classes will be the whole team running round with it whal your the only one on the team with a real gun (m16,saw,and carbine),but i do like the idea of it.
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| 05/06/05 14:40 |
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Infernal
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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| 06/01/05 03:17 |
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Redemption
Posts: 8
Joined: 06/01/2005
Credibility: 15 pts
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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the major thing i hated was the reloading. you have to press 'r' everytime you wish to reload, which is, although more realistic, rather annoying at times and can easily get you killed.
Otherwise, I agree totally. Nice post.
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| 06/01/05 21:41 |
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Act1oN
Posts: 8
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Credibility: 7 pts
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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yeah i mean the game defintly shows some realism to it. especially the reload topic, it dosnt do it automitcally which is good about the game.
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| 06/04/05 23:02 |
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popenator
Posts: 35
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| Re: Learning from the Past.. |
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I think that one thing missing is that tanks (and mayb jeeps) cant go through trees or boxs. Battle tank vs wooden box and wooden box damages tank and doesnt move?!? whats that all about?
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| 08/11/05 11:28 |
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