BF4C3 Feedback

[A Docile Sloth]

RE: Black Ops length.

BOs are supposed to run from:
EUBO: SBT+2 till SBT+4.5 with last round starting at SBT+4.25 (quarter past)
NABO: SBT+8 till SBT+10.5 with last round starting at SBT+10.25 (quater past)

They should be about 2.5 hours in length, not 4-6 hours. If they were that long then I have no idea what was going on.

BO rounds typically last 10-20 mins each depending on game type so 2 round may be a bit short.

Out of curiosity, what time do the BOs start in local time? I know the EUBO starts at 20:00 UK and this is probably the earliest time anyone starts from Europe (unless I missed someone from Iceland joining). This means that the latest it starts is 22:00 local. From my bad calculations, NABO starts at 21:00 in the East (latest) and goes back from there to 18:00 (earliest apart from Alaska) on the pacific I think. Can anyone confirm my maths? If this is right, there may be some merit in pushing the NABO back an hour so the latest start is 22:00 at the target audience. (this is assuming we have no one from further east than a +2 timezone)

[cancel_man]

The 4-6hr time was EUBO + NABO. It seems like a lot of the people who play BO at all will play both just so we have enough people playing. So 2.5 + 2.5 = 5hrs game time plus showing up early so we know numbers plus post-game chatter = ~6hr commitment on Tuesday.

Can anyone confirm my maths?

Your times are correct. I'm on Pacific time so EUBO is in the middle of the work day (12:00) and NABO is right at the end of the work day (18:00). If NABO was an hour later (19:00-21:00) it would be easier for me to attend, but would end up being really late for Eastern US players (22:00-24:00).

I don't have a good solution for this, it's just my gut feeling that a lot of time and effort is spent on BO's and that directly relates to people not wanting to spend time on team practice on Thursday.

If BO's didn't have Campaign consequences and they were just done for fun, there would be less importance on Tuesday attendance and maybe we'd have better turnout on Thursday team practice. But maybe not. I'm just spitballing. Ultimately BO's didn't have a large impact on C3 and LN7's practice attendance was crap regardless.

[Necromancer]

The draft system is as good as it can be, its simply not enough to guarntee balance.

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.

There is no point to pick two laid back generals either, as they hardly do anything when their army starts loosing. Small imbalance turns into all out stomp in few battles and its all over. With a bad taste too. As we've witnessed numerous times now.

I don't know how many candidtes there are or how you pick them. But the campaign will end after 6 weeks with massive imbalance regardless of the player draft result if you don't choose competitive Generals.

[Spreez]

Again, post something with a suggestion and not a criticism. Otherwise we get no where with these discussions.

[RazY70]

How is a general actually picked? How many apply? What criteria do you have when you make a decision? How much of a factor do personal dislikes/likes play in the decision making?

Basically the process is a blackbox. The community knows nothing about what's going on except for the announcement at the end. Sometimes it's reasonable; others it leaves you scratching your head.

[StarfisherEcho]

1) People sign up
2) That 'who should be general thread' pops up
3) We try to match #2 with #1, while also matching general styles, by talking to the candidates and gauging their seriousness.
4) Eventually we find or coerce two people into doing it

For some campaigns, we've had basically no applicants for General. For others we've had a few. I've never seen one with a large pool to choose from.

Necro isn't wrong; the best campaigns are those with the psycho competitive generals with the most time to devote to GC. It's just that it's a hard bit of feedback to work with. We don't intentionally select generals we think are non-competitive and/or not going to be around. We just don't have that many people signing up with those attributes. Attendance, incidentally, is the major issue with most general candidates.

One of the reasons player drives are so important is that by having a large community with lots of fresh blood around, you increase the probability that a lot of people will have a lot of time to devote to making a campaign great. It takes a HUGE amount of effort to be a good general (and a slightly broken mind), and the HC positions are very similar. Getting 6-12 guys who are all willing to go all out at the same time is pretty rare.

If there's a takeaway here at all, it's this: the campaign is as fun as you make it. If you don't like the way your army is doing things, work hard to change it! Be the guy who posts the long AARs and works to organize practices and tries to get everyone to go to the next level. We need more people like that, because they're the ones that make GC as awesome as it can be.

[o1oo1]

The problem comes with people wanting to make it fun a fun and accessible for all and to win. You either have fun or you win. You can rarely have both. Ask the losing armies in the recent campaigns if they had fun. So with coming campaign the decision makers need to decide if they actually want to be competitive, want to win and follow the rules set forth in the wiki or if they want to be forthcoming and ensure that both sides have a fun time.

If you don't like the way your army is doing things, work hard to change it!

Other problems will be army roles , officer activity and such but that comes after generals.One problem i see is that HC can only be from GC senate, Greatly reducing the amount of people available. I suggest letting generals pick whoever they want for any role they want and for the TA's to accommodate and to provide server access whenever and to who ever needs it not to just trusted people.

If you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and correspond and depend on several people to run practices , make strategies, scout a map it just makes the entire process demotivating and its just easier to not do it.


tldr: facilitate people

[StarfisherEcho]

Er, HC are not drawn only from the Senate. In fact most of them usually aren't senators. In the past it's been traditional to have one "veteran" HC, who would be able to provide perspective and guidance, but that doesn't have to be a senator.

I wasn't active enough this past campaign to comment on server access issues, but ideally the entire HC and officer corps will have procon access. If that didn't happen this past campaign it's a mistake that will be corrected for the next one.

[A Docile Sloth]

Ask the losing armies in the recent campaigns if they had fun.

Standing as probably the single best spokesperson for "The losing army" (I'm 0 for 7 in case no one else was counting), yes I did have (and do have) fun. Sure there are tough days and tough weeks, but there is never a day I've played where I have walked away regretting playing or without a fond memory of the day.

I don't believe is all win or go home. Winning and having fun are not mutually exclusive. I'm equally not advocating unbalanced campaigns.

But then I may well be the exception that proves the rule. Or just deeply broken.

[Necromancer]

Again, post something with a suggestion and not a criticism. Otherwise we get no where with these discussions.

- First, realizing where the problem is is the first step in solving it. So stop blaming everything on the player draft and player balance, and start giving the generals some responsibility is a step in the right direction.
- Second, I cannot comment about a system/procedure I have 0 knowledge about.

[Spreez]

As sloth pointed out just a min ago. One thing you have to remember is that this is a game and we are here to have fun. Not everyone here is going to be all hardass and competitive. Much less every general we look at. Dont force blame where there really is no one to blame.

Everyone here has real lives outside of this community. I myself had to take time out recently for that exact reason. That being said, not everyone will be around every battleday or for the entire battleday. One army could have the top 10% of players in the game but if they only show up for 1 battleday a month, where does that leave you?

Dont press making someone responsible. The generals are volunteers to fill a needed role to get things rolling and maintain momentum. If we treated everyone with the attitude mindset I feel you are wanting to go with, we would not have anyone throw their name in the hat for general. I know I wouldnt.

[o1oo1]

If people dont want to be responsible and want a casual campaign, then make a map pool , play best 2/3 games on every map and drop the risk system all together , split the people who want to play in two randomly. Most casual way there is to have a campaign. Only people that are needed are TA's to set up the server

[mrBLUE9]

I don't know where are you guys getting this concept of GC being casual from. Heck, I'd argue that GC is much more competitive than casual. Generals and HC choose their army based on competitive stats, tactics are made before each Battleday with the sole purpose of winning, then there's practices to make the army better. Everyone here plays to win. If we were a casual community we would have stopped those unbalanced campaigns in the middle and just swapped people around, until everyone's having fun. But we don't do that, both armies play to win until the end.

What happens is, there's people that like showing up for practices, that pub everyday and then there's people that only show up to play for the Battleday, and that's ok. GC needs to accommodate everyone, but that doesn't mean people are going to play 'worse' just to cater for the more casual players, that has never been the case.

What has been pointed out repeatedly so far, and it's the bottom line, is that GC is simply lacking people. Our best campaigns here were the ones we had a full server plus a waiting room. When we have that many people around everyone is more motivated to write strats, post AARs, show up for practices, etc. That's why attendance is important.

[Jokerle]

I don't know where are you guys getting this concept of GC being casual from. Heck, I'd argue that GC is much more competitive than casual.

I agree, but...

There has always been a balance between more-competitive and more-casual players. I know that in BF3 i actually practice stuff on empty servers and being pretty tryhard when I joined GC (and it paid off, i improved a lot). In a fully competitive environment, similar would be required from everyone and we would actually make people sit out if they are not at a certain play standard. But we dont do that for many many good reasons! Thus, I like to call GC semi-competitive. And this balance will always cause some friction between players and expectations, but nothing that can be overcomes so everyone has fun.

[ZebraPeps]

If we want to use BF4C3 campaign system - a recruitment drive is needed to fill up numbers, get more "blood".
If recruitment drive fail or isn't gonna happen - use a campaign system similar to BF4C1.