Couple of suggestions before its too late

[Der_Landser]

..and by too late I mean the fact that game is now officially announced with definitive features already listed. So, without further ado, lets get on with it:

1. Last man standing - additional game mode:

This is, to put it simple, a cross between assault zones+frontlines. It is already in game, so(I assume) it would not be hard to implement. Edit frontline mode, disable refunding of the resources and in the first 2 minutes each player could deploy(spawn and move) their units into 1/3 of the map. After those 2 minutes buy menu would be disabled. Resources could be pre-defined by host. Middle part of the map would still be neutral and in those 2 minutes people could also build defenses and prepare for attack.

Some benefits of this are:
- giving alternative for players who think games now are too long
- no famous "spawn killing" simply because you cant spawn after the deployement mode
- units like minesweeper, engineering truck, barbed wires, hedgehogs would now actually have a use

2. Binocular view for the tanks

This is already in the game(in editor). I find my self often in need to see from position of the commander/gunner because many times I am not sure if my tank is too exposed. If any of you played some tank FPS games/mods like red orchestra or forgotten hope, you already know that it is crucial to expose your tank less as possible. Just give a binocular style 2d sprite, no need for tweaking cameras for each tank individually.

[Silentspy]

+1 from me, i like every single word of this

[alex0809]

Yes, 1. sounds like a cool new game mode because you would really have to think about what youre doing eg:
"Will i assault a bit now so I can mine a bit more without my miners being in danger? Or better retreat a bit so he runs into my minefield?" instead of just like in Frontlines preparing to defend.

[Instinct]

There are 2 questions from my side:
How do you prevent people from quitting a game once they are out of troops?
How will you prevent people from just buying super heavy tanks with their budget instead of a diversified army? Considering you can only spend your points once.

[Hartmann]

Is the map intended to contain victory points/assault zones?

[Der_Landser]

There are 2 questions from my side:
How do you prevent people from quitting a game once they are out of troops?
How will you prevent people from just buying super heavy tanks with their budget instead of a diversified army? Considering you can only spend your points once.

1. How do you prevent people from quitting anyway? Those who intend to stay, will. This is not much different from the predefined resource in MoW, or rank games which have 250 points by default (if I remember). Games should not last too long anyway since you bought everything already.

2. Heavy tanks surely are a problem, and I guess some tanks wouldn't be as useful. What one could do is to make map specific buy menu structure - for example, farmland map(in this mode only ofcourse) would not have heavy tanks at all, where some other map might not have the early tanks. Many games have certain set of units for each map hardcoded and nobody complains.

I think this is a good compromise and it adds up even more to variety of tactics since you would have to play with different units all the time.


Is the map intended to contain victory points/assault zones?

Yes. To clarify, middle part of the map would be inaccessible in first 2 minutes, so those flags couldn't be capped until deployment timer is out.

[Hartmann]

And then how many points do you have? I'd assume CP limitation would be gone, but then you would have hundreds of infantry and several tanks waiting around at spawn for every single player?

I understand what you are going for but I don't quite see the excitement in it. Seems to me that it is going to turn out like the combat gamemode, where attacking is strongly discouraged due to this time being unable to replace lost units. The most clever way to play would be extremely cautious and conservative I reckon, which doesn't really make for an exciting game. It sounds ok if you make up rules with friends that you mutually agree to, but I think the average game of this will just turn into a camp fest. Either that or something where players rush everything they have and leave after they lose everything.

The idea is ok, I just don't think MoW is the right game for it (mainly the maps).

[Instinct]

1. How do you prevent people from quitting anyway? Those who intend to stay, will. This is not much different from the predefined resource in MoW, or rank games which have 250 points by default (if I remember). Games should not last too long anyway since you bought everything already.
Yes, well that's why MoW:AS uses a totally different system that brings back resources slowly over time, so people can play to the last minute.

I can consider your suggestion to be implemented similarly to Frontlines however, if it turns out to be a good gamestyle.

[Der_Landser]

1. How do you prevent people from quitting anyway? Those who intend to stay, will. This is not much different from the predefined resource in MoW, or rank games which have 250 points by default (if I remember). Games should not last too long anyway since you bought everything already.
Yes, well that's why MoW:AS uses a totally different system that brings back resources slowly over time, so people can play to the last minute.

I can consider your suggestion to be implemented similarly to Frontlines however, if it turns out to be a good gamestyle.

In frontlines everything is too predictable because of the resupplying timer that you always see, thus making it easier for one to prepare his strategy.

How about resupply waves that would be random in quantity and time ranging from, lets say, 3-10 minutes? You could never know for sure when your backup is coming and how many resources will it be, making you implement tactics "on the fly", instead of just waiting for that heavy tank.

I am not sure how to make everything 100% playable and fun because people would need to test this first but I think there is a rabbit in this hole waiting to be pulled.

[FFA702]

sound interesting...

[Sven]

I like Landsers first idea too, except the "last man standing" mode, due to the amount of probable quitters that have burnt their resources in a game.

A compromise could be a gamemode between Assault Zones and Frontlines. One team is the attacking team and the other team defending the flags. The defending team gets a less amount of resources than the attacker, who has to move and occupy the flags within a certain time. This could be implemented on the current multiplayer maps by letting the defending players have a flag (or 2) each to hold and the attacker has to move forward to take them.

Both the attacker and defender gets to build up a line, they start a 3-5 min build up with something like 10-15% (or whatever) of the total resources, the reinforcement later on runs like in a normal Assault Zone mode. The resource system should be balanced so that the attacker gets more resources than the defender. This needs of course to be tuned both at the start and during the gameplay.

As an example I´d like the uses of mines to be fairly limited so they are not too dominating for the game as in the Frontlines mode - if they are too abundant it makes the gameplay boring. But of course they should be in it!

I don´t see heavy tanks being a problem in the setup if the starting resources are limited to a reasonable amount. I can only see one problem that needs to be considered. In the normal mode you start with your resources that are early war based and then it runs up to late war material in a well implemented game logic and balanced system in Assault Zone gamemode - and that works fine and seems balanced.

If you start with more resources those early war equipment (pz 3, Sherman M1, T34/76) would probably not be chosen if you could go for "better" tanks/equipment in this defending/attackin mode already at the start.

But this could be solved in a early/mid/late war option when playing this mode. You still need to balance the resource setting for the attacking versus defending team and I don´t see that this will inflict on the balancing in Assault Zones from early to late infantry/equipment.

In early you get your pz3 and pz 4 and the most elite is the fallshirmsjager..
In mid you get your panther and Tiger, and your pgrenadiers..
In late you get your KT and Sturmtiger and basically everything...

Similar for the other nations..

What do you all think?

[Der_Landser]

I like Landsers first idea too, except the "last man standing" mode, due to the amount of probable quitters that have burnt their resources in a game.

A compromise could be a gamemode between Assault Zones and Frontlines. One team is the attacking team and the other team defending the flags. The defending team gets a less amount of resources than the attacker, who...

What do you all think?

Well that is too similar to frontlines game mode, imo. Problem with this idea is that not everyone has the same chances because one is defending and one attacking, one has more, and one has less resources, so to make it even you would have to restart round and switch sides(just like in frontlines). What I was originally suggesting is fight for no-man's land(the neutral middle) with possibility of pushing your opponent back.

Problems of players quitting and heavy tank spam I have explained in few previous posts, but let me sum it up:

1. Players quitting issue -> make resources come random in time and quantity. Players can not predict incoming resources and would have to do with what they get.

2. Heavy tank spam issue -> make specific buy menu structure hard coded for each map (for example village would not have heavy tanks or rocket artillery, some other map would have only stug and tiger on one side and equivalents on the other side). I'm all for this because if you make 3 time-settings than you would have to multiply it by 5 since you need "early-no infantry, no artillery, no special units,infantry only, and than all of those for mid and late war settings. Too many choices in one list(like certain mods have) is not always a good(professional) thing. Assault zones game mode would stay and have every unit on every map, but this mode could have map-specific units thus giving each map even somewhat of a historic meaning.

[SS-Kommando]

2. Binocular view for the tanks

I have been suggested to implement this in CoW2, and I must say that I consider it an interesting idea. I think that it would add a nice advantage to turreted tanks, and also make the game more dynamic (you can't fully expect your tank to be invisible until it fires).

It would be interesting to hear what others think of the binocular view idea (I only noticed people commenting idea #1).

[gogy]

More micro is always good, i like the Binocular idea :)

[Der_Landser]

[quote="Der_Landser":xoav0btb]2. Binocular view for the tanks

I have been suggested to implement this in CoW2, and I must say that I consider it an interesting idea. I think that it would add a nice advantage to turreted tanks, and also make the game more dynamic (you can't fully expect your tank to be invisible until it fires).

It would be interesting to hear what others think of the binocular view idea (I only noticed people commenting idea #1).[/quote:xoav0btb]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, can you explain in more detail?

Maybe we are thinking about the similar thing. How about if, once you activate binocular view, you could have "plain view"(no fog of war and without blue/red occlusion on the units)? Player would have to use his own eyesight to see units. Just some benefits I see from this:

1. This is not a "better" unit spotting view, its just an alternative. Remember, binocular view sits on low ground and you cant see behind solid objects like houses, terrain, grass, bushes, trees. Remember, grass becomes automatically visible on low ground so it conceals crawling infantry in binocular view.

2. To actually see something you would have to expose your tank making it more vulnerable to enemy

3. You would have to actually think twice before leaving your units on open field in the distance where it might be visible to enemy tanks

Again, none of the suggestions are any good without other people's comments, so feel free to do so...

[SS-Kommando]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, can you explain in more detail?

Maybe we are thinking about the similar thing. How about if, once you activate binocular view, you could have "plain view"(no fog of war and without blue/red occlusion on the units)? Player would have to use his own eyesight to see units. Just some benefits I see from this:

I thought you meant that the tank would have a view resembling the officer's spotting with binoculars where it aimed its turret, and would thus not be as dependent on other units for scouting.

Also, can you clarify the bold text?

[Der_Landser]

Here is what I meant - binoculars view, low sitting camera but no fog of war and no blue/red unit occlusion. Normal camera, fog of war is back, unit occlusion is back. Here is some pictures to demonstrate:

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/2415/74319365.jpg
This is something close to what I was imagining. No fog of war. You have to use your own eyes to see where enemy is. You don't see too much because objects and terrain is covering units you will see in picture number 2.


http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/336/85872427.jpg
Here you see the same situation but with normal game camera(fog of war is off because of purpose of demonstration). You see how many tanks in the background were concealed by map objects?

So, there would be 2 views, each offering different informations of the battlefield adding up to overall tactics of combat - now you couldn't put your tank in the open even if you were out of reach of view from other units because someone might spot you with 1st person view just because he can really see you with his own eyes in the distance.

Here is another example - this is to demonstrate that turning off fog of war in "binoculars view" does not automatically mean great advantage over normal view, its just an alternative to spot enemy units that someone left in the clear open.

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/3415/91185007.jpg
"Binoculars view". Panther commander seeing nothing out of ordinary.

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/8453/96714339.jpg
Unit occlusion turned ON for purpose of demonstration(should not be on in real binoculars view). Each of those units has a shot on the panther. Red line is ground level.

3rd example - infantry is pretty much covered by the grass in prone position:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2591/62833537.jpg
"Binocular view" - nothing strange here

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/158/15394000.jpg
View from different angle (fog of war off)

I hope it's more clear for everyone now, sorry I needed so many pics :)

[SS-Kommando]

Thanks for the explanation, Landser. BTW, do you have any thoughts on how it would be possible to implement (in terms of coding)?

[Orrie]

Its possible to use this mode in the editor, activating it through a hotkey combination, ( That I don't remember ).
So the mode is already implanted, and you can use it in a British campaign mission.
The only thing that needs to be done is to enable it in multiplayer, and add a button to it / better hotkey.

If its possible, I'm not sure, but we can at least show support for it, and it might be considered. :yes:

[Der_Landser]

Thanks for the explanation, Landser. BTW, do you have any thoughts on how it would be possible to implement (in terms of coding)?

Sorry I am not a modder, hats off to anyone who does make content for MoW though. As for what Orrie said, you can load up editor and press shift+f to enable first person view on any unit, but its sort of buggy(while units move model interferes with the camera and blocks the view).

I am not sure if all of this would be possible in this stage of AS development as some features like fog of war being disabled during gameplay, or having zoomed and unzoomed "binocular view" might require a lot of work for something that would also need to be tested.

I'm sure it would be quite interesting though.

[triumph]

This would be great for a new game thats going towards more of a RTT/FP hybrid.

[Heer_sturmfuhrer]

Is there any chance we could get some sort of echoing on in-game sounds. I.e Most modern titles these days have reverberations/echoes on sounds such as explosions and weapon shots, would give MoW a much more immersive feel in my opinion. Also would be nice to here the whizzing of bullets as an attached sound file and the whizzing of artillery and mortars as the shell arches over and begins its descent.

Cheers
Sturm