BF4C3 Feedback

[Necromancer]

Make the RISK movements forum viewable to all users including not registered ones.
I think everything posted on the front page is supposed to be accessible to everyone.

[InsanityRocks]

I've tried to read each response (except WildKard's where's the TL;DR, dude?) and I feel there isn't much I can add (at this time).

Except for some miscommunication and misunderstanding (on my part), I thought the campaign system was fairly OK. I get it that some maps are played more than others, but, as was stated elsewhere, it happens like that sometimes. So we need more suggestions on how, possibly, to combat map fatigue.

I think part of the problem with map fatigue has to do with the campaign map. However it's not even the campaign map, it's the fact there are key points/territories an Army wants to protect/capture. I posit: as long as we have those we'll have map fatigue, regardless if we limit the divisions to 2, or a best-of-3 system.

However, I think it would be difficult to offer suggestions that don't also address the Risk side of the campaign. I for one, like the stream-lined version we played in BF4C3 because it seemed more approachable to 'regular' GC'er. Admittedly I probably didn't do the best job of announcing why a particular territory, and thus map, were important.

Black Ops for this campaign was a little wonky. There was too much churn in map pools, vehicles no vehicles, etc. I get the feeling there were a lot of assumptions that Rush would 'just work'. Boy, were we wrong. Clearly we didn't spend enough time trying to figure out what works and doesn't work for our style of play.

I think it was mentioned somewhere else, but what about only having 32v32 on BD and 16v16 on BO, irrespective of mode.

I'm sure I'll have more post to later...

[Jokerle]

playing a map repeatedly is sometimes boring, yes. Those who played BF3 with us will remember the endless battles in sharqi and firestrom. All BF4 single-map battles were comparably short....

BUT, it is important to listen to the (new) members that are upset about played a map too often. Our players numbers are not increasing and if we possibly can make a change towards more map diversity we should look into it. any ideas....?

----

participation in the risk-meta game was always low. I think it is partially because many important discussions are made among the officers and everybody else just plays whatever comes up.

Visibility is another issue. Following all movements/reinforcements is difficult, maybe because it is a) static b) updates are spread over a time span of a week c) somewhere deep in the forums.

Most of these things are barely changeable..(?)

[Ghoul]

Visibility is another issue. Following all movements/reinforcements is difficult, maybe because it is a) static b) updates are spread over a time span of a week c) somewhere deep in the forums.

Most of these things are barely changeable..(?)

This was addressed this campaign via the two links directly below the front page map. One linking to the forum where every map update is listed in chronological order and the second linking to the Risk rule set for anyone wanting to understand the campaign system better. There is not much more we can do when people are not interested in reading / understanding the campaign system.

[lakefisher1]

I know that some people would be interested in the RISK stuff, but mostly, unless you are actually involved with the planning and stuff, unless you actively want to do RISK Strategy; its just something unnecessary and extra to have a headache and to stress about.

[Wi1D_K4rD]

I've tried to read each response (except WildKard's where's the TL;DR, dude?) and I feel there isn't much I can add (at this time).

It isn't that long though... but I forgot too many casuals, like insanity, around to not include a TL;DR.

I suppose I could go back and edit it with a TL;DR. Not right now though. I should probably work on being more condensed with my writing.

Edit: TL;DR will add a TL;Dr to posts for InsanityRocks.

[ZebraPeps]

I know that some people would be interested in the RISK stuff, but mostly, unless you are actually involved with the planning and stuff, unless you actively want to do RISK Strategy; its just something unnecessary and extra to have a headache and to stress about.

The thing is... the RISK stuff is what decides what happens on main battledays. If you can't be bothered to be up to date on RISK strategies, then you probably won't understand why specific maps are played. There's probably quite a lot of people that likes the fact that there is a connection between the RISK strategy and the battles fought during Saturdays, that there actually is a purpose for the battles.
Provided that armies HC's let every grunt read/write in its RISK strategy thread, everyone have an influence on what maps are to be played as long as they give input in that thread. In the end, the HC will make the decision and it might not be what everybody wants - but... it's an army and the officers will make the decision.
If we drop a RISK-like strategy to impact battledays, what other kind of system could we use instead?

[o1oo1]

If we drop a RISK-like strategy to impact battledays, what other kind of system could we use instead?

off the top of my head : play every map in the map pool once per side

[ZebraPeps]

So... maybe something in line with what was used in BF4C1?

(links below are from Archive)
Map: viewtopic.php?f=432&t=23647
System: viewtopic.php?f=432&t=23644

[Necromancer]

C1 system was terrible.

With any system the question is what the winning condition?
It should be a system that can go for a while and the looser can always turn the tide.

[StarfisherEcho]

C1 ended after severe army imbalance developed. I welcome any and all suggestions as to how to prevent imbalance and/or how to salvage a campaign after attendance or skill imbalance develops.

Reviewing the campaigns I've attended (started with BF3 C2), I would say that the campaign system has never impacted the eventual outcome. The army that won was always the one that won the most rounds on the battleday. That destroys the other side's morale and they surrender. Every time.

So what we need to do is focus on the purpose of the system:

1) Create flavor/fun excuse to play Battlefield
2) Maintain the GC "brand" - armies, campaigns and battledays

What's fun will naturally drift as the community morphs over time. Right now we're seeing a push for "I don't want to play the same map more than a few times on a Battleday", and the Risk system as it stands is not a very good way to ensure that. A map pool will guarantee new maps each battleday, but needs some flavor to ensure it still "Feels like GC" (ala C1).

There are other ways to force many maps per battleday:

• Change how divisions on a territory effect number of rounds played.
  • - Divisions could become a "power" rating instead of their current "territory health" indicator. If the defender and attacker divisions are matched, then you only play one round, winner take all. For each defender over the attacker, you play one more round to a maximum of 3.
    - Reduce the number of divisions allowed on defense
    - etc
  Change how territories and attacks work (eliminate divisions)
  • - Simple adjacency with BO3 rules
    - Simple+ adjacency with BO3 rules (add paradrops, other ways of skipping tiles)
    - Change the map to a region of the world with lots more adjacency and no choke points

Or we could replay C1 in some form if all we want is a map list.

[Necromancer]

C1 ended after severe army imbalance developed. I welcome any and all suggestions as to how to prevent imbalance and/or how to salvage a campaign after attendance or skill imbalance develops.

Pick active and competitive Generals.
They will adapt to each other and evolve their armies to new levels of teamplay and tactics as they will seek every piece of advantage to topple each other.

What GC has been trying to do in the past is make an even draft. Its never going to happen. And even if it happens it never going to last. A micro skill imbalance will develop soon after the draft. Better put your resources into finding adequate Generals.
competitive Generals will know who to pick, and the draft will come out rather equal. The small imbalance will be toppled with their efforts of improving their armies both on and off battleday rather then raw skill/attendance as happens now. Plus people from their armies won't drop like flies from a single defeat as they'll have some faith in their general.

Had enough Saturday pub stomping. How about some challenge?

[Spreez]

C1 ended after severe army imbalance developed. I welcome any and all suggestions as to how to prevent imbalance and/or how to salvage a campaign after attendance or skill imbalance develops.

Pick active and competitive Generals.
They will adapt to each other and evolve their armies to new levels of teamplay and tactics as they will seek every piece of advantage to topple each other.

What GC has been trying to do in the past is make an even draft. Its never going to happen. And even if it happens it never going to last. A micro skill imbalance will develop soon after the draft. Better put your resources into finding adequate Generals.
competitive Generals will know who to pick, and the draft will come out rather equal. The small imbalance will be toppled with their efforts of improving their armies both on and off battleday rather then raw skill/attendance as happens now. Plus people from their armies won't drop like flies from a single defeat as they'll have some faith in their general.

Had enough Saturday pub stomping. How about some challenge?

Yay theory crafting! What you have said being correct or not, there is somethings in this I can not agree with.

One is you place to much emphasis on the generals. The are only one part of the entire army.

Secondly you "critique" our current draft system. We can not make the draft any better then it already is for every campaign. We should not expect it to be any better honestly. They spent quite some time making sure that everything is in order and the draft on its own is as balanced as possible. How can anyone foresee anything past the draft? You take what you have to work with and go with it.

If you have an suggestion on how to rework the draft or general selection systems please place those on here instead.
Please do not just say what is wrong with something without offering some fashion of solution to the system.

[Gwynzer]

I'm not sure how you think we go about organising campaigns but do you think the execs take a look at the list of generals and go "Let's pick the two worst applicants we can!"? There are very few people who sign up to be General each campaign, and the people who make the choice of whom to offer the role discuss it for quite a while. People who haven't signed up to do it are "encouraged" to change their minds if the execs think they will be a good fit for the campaign.

There's no point matching a person who will be super competitive to someone who's going to treat it in a quite laid back kind of way. We know how that'll end, and we can look at GC's history to prove that.


Given you've been part of planning drafts and such now, I'm not sure where your critique on drafting is coming from either? Generals themselves have chosen if they want to do some kind of "predraft" or if they want to just do it on the day. What you're saying should happen is happening... the generals (and their team) are making the selections. There will never be 100% balance, we've got an international community made of people of all backgrounds and ages. RL comes first so thigns could chance for any of our members at any time. We can aim for it though, that's why we do a draft in the first place. . .


As for the complaints regarding teams improving through practice instead of just showing up and having a "higher skill". . . that's already what happens! It's always been happening! This campaign LN7 started off strong, TCF did practices and did them well, TCF won. The army who does practices (or has best / highest attendance practices) tends to win the campaign.

As spreez says, complaints without suggestions on how to improve (other than "do what you're actually doing right now") aren't helping us much.

[cancel_man]

My week-late feedback

Black Ops:
Better establish the rules of each game mode and which maps/modes we'll be playing. If rule/map changes occur publish them so everybody knows. For example: vehicles- it was decided during C3 that we wouldn't use vehicles in BO because the player turnout was lower (and rush with vehicles was unbalanced), but then we played obliteration on Golmud and vehicles were back in all of a sudden. I don't disagree with any of the decisions made, but documentation/announcement of changes was lacking (though I see now the wiki page was updated several times to reflect changes).

NABO had weak turnout. Maybe it's time to poll the players and see what time works best for NABO? Move it earlier or later to get more people?

BO also runs longer than I'd like. 4-6hrs of BO on Tuesday is a lot of time. I know I don't have to stick around for all of it, but if I don't then my team is short on players. I think a long EUBO also detracts from people participating in NABO and Thursday practices. Maybe shorten BO's to 2 hours or a limited number of rounds (2?).

I never fully understood how Black Ops affects the campaign (re-reading the Campaign System, I still don't). Maybe turnout would be better of us grunts understood what was at stake?

Server Settings:
Reduce the bleed rate. Matches are won too quickly because 1 team only needs the upper hand for a moment to get a strong advantage from bleed. We need to offer a little time to mount a counter-attack and try to take back flags. I'd prefer to win a game with skill and battle tactics rather than ticket bleed.

Campaign System:
I preferred the "Win 2 out of 3" method in BF4C2. A map could be over in 2 rounds or at most 3. Quick, simple and easy to understand. I know the divisions system allows more Risk strategy (troop movement/stacking gives everyone an idea of where attacks will occur) but that system was created for the dice-rolling tabletop strategy game, not the boots-on-the-ground FPS tactics game we play on Saturday.

Reducing the number of divisions might help or maybe find a different way to express the division stacking/advantage. For example: if you only have 1 division defending a territory, you don't get vehicles; the attacking army with 2 divisions gets vehicles.

The matter of spending an entire BD on the attack or on defense came up. I agree this gets a little tiring (especially if you're defending the same map for 5-6 rounds). Has GC ever tried attacking in turns on Battleday? So Team A attack 1 then Team B attack 1 then Team A attack 2 then Team B attack 2? I know this has some inherent issues/problems, but it would give both teams the satisfaction of being on the offensive/making progress every week instead of spending an entire day losing territory. Hopefully this would help slow down/draw out the campaign as well- right now if the defending teams is having a bad week they can lose 4-6 territories and that can crush a campaign.

Agree with CrookedBarrel that some aspects of the campaign system are hard to understand (especially for newer players) and can detract from the experience on Battledays. Either simplify the system or do a better job of explaining it (better yet: both).

Maps Used for Battledays:
To continue beating the dead horse: We gotta find a way to switch this up and stop playing the same maps over and over. I know tying a BF map to the campaign map makes strategic sense, but maybe after a BF map has been played it gets rotated to another spot on the campaign map (off the front lines). Sure there's a balance & fairness issue with changing it up like that, but nobody cares about the campaign map balance when we're all pissed off about playing Guilin Peaks for the 10th time in 2 weeks.

As a matter of personal preference, I play Battlefield because there are vehicles. So playing 64i annoys me- I might as well be playing any other shooter out there. With more maps coming out, maybe we can reduce the number of 64i maps on the board.

Timing & General Running:
First of all - thanks to all the TA's, HC and others who make these campaigns happen. I know it's a lot of work to enable the rest of us play a game.

I'll repeat the issue of the poorly announced pre-campaign events. I missed the draft and first scrimmage because I didn't know when they happened or what was expected of players. I check the forum regularly and somehow missed the memo.

We should consult the calendar earlier for days we might not hold Battledays due to holidays and other conflicts. August 30th Battle Day wasn't cancelled until 1-2 days before, but that's a major US holiday that most of us knew long prior we wouldn't be able to play on. By the time BD was cancelled, it was too late to organize an alternate activity. As the campaign is starting, look at the upcoming weeks and determine which BD's will be skipped so that players know ahead of time and can plan accordingly.

Other Thoughts:
Player balance- especially regarding attendance and skill- is always going to be tough. The last 2 campaigns were scrapped when 1 team got the upper hand mostly through player skill dominance. Maybe we should consider finding a way to re-shuffle the deck when that happens rather than scrapping the campaign and all the work that goes into setting it up (seriously- over a month of setup & pre-campaign for a campaign that barely lasts a month is crummy).

Switching games (eg: BF3) isn't going to fix any issues or get more players. BF4 has its problems, sure, but the world player population is going to keep migrating to the latest game, not the older one. I see some people wanting to grow the community and some wanting to move to an older game- I think those 2 goals are opposed to each other.

TL;DR:

• Rotate maps on the front lines so that we don't play the same ones over and over.
• Go back to "best 2 out of 3" or reduced number of divisions (or find another alternative to this).
• Switch Attack/Defend turns on BD's so that nobody gets rolled all day long.
• Reduce bleed rate so rounds aren't won with a single flag cap.
• BO needs some timing fixes.
• Better announce campaign events & days off.