Global Conflict

I have yet to actually play a bf4 campaign given how buggy and unbalanced everything was starting out trying to get anything going initially. I would very much like to see if we can get one rolled out that empasis on the tactics and teamwork that made previous campaigns so much fun. That we should try to model the gameplay as much as possible to BF3 since that seemed to work reasonably well for us. It seems to me that most of the new features implemented in BF4 are what need to banned, I think if we strip the game down to what we had to BF3 and tweak from there we may have something fun for everyone. Let's nto ban commander mode though =D

SINCE strawpoll crapped out i made a new poll about mines. Please revote if you already voted since all data from the first poll is lost


NEW POLL ABOUT MINES

First of all, great work so far!

Now, I see two problems here:
1) Campaign system has barely been scratched here, all we know is how the world map should look like, which maps we want to play. How attacking/defending works, victory conditions, what you gain with BOs, different modes during BOs = different conditions <- these are just the things off the top of my head that havn't been discussed yet at all (unless we want to keep the current campaign system).

2) From the OP: "an open recruitment system so that things are balanced and one army doesn't whoop the others ass" <- Any suggestions on how to achieve that?

"no sign up a buddy bias" <- agree with this 100%

Hitman47 wrote:"no sign up a buddy bias" <- agree with this 100%

+1

I don't think mid-campaign 'balancing' should be done. Without any proof I just have a feeling it would cause more problems than solve. Plus, sometimes it takes a while before a group of folks start working well together.

(I'll probably get shot down for this) What if we balance teams according to Skill (or some other metric or combination of metrics) and figure out a why to split up the folks such that a (mathematical) balance is achieved. Intangibles there's absolutely no way to capture: attendance, enthusiasm, cohesiveness of squads (especially if we disregard group/buddy signups).


I think we should use an adapted BF4C1 Campaign system for BF4C2 for two reasons:

1) It's already developed and will need few (if any) tweaks.
2) I think a simplified Risk system is needed and (so far, to date) I haven't seen/heard anyone working to improve/streamline/pare down the Risk system.

I whole-heartedly agree that the Risk System is GC's signature compliment to Battlefield. However, to me, it just seem overly complicated.

insanityrocks wrote: (I'll probably get shot down for this) What if we balance teams according to Skill (or some other metric or combination of metrics) and figure out a why to split up the folks such that a (mathematical) balance is achieved. Intangibles there's absolutely no way to capture: attendance, enthusiasm, cohesiveness of squads (especially if we disregard group/buddy signups).

tried it, doesn't work because attendance trumps everything. A small group getting annoyed and leaving mid campaign or a similar group who didn't show up previously but started showing up mid campaign can completely throw the whole tide of the campaign. The values are also subjective to those assigning the values, and there's probably a good group of people that might actually be really good at the game but don't ever pub so you can't use battlelog stats.

I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record here, but I really don't believe we can achieve balance by design, simply because of that damned thing called attendance. My suggestion is to establish the "4 weeks" rule to end unbalanced campaigns sooner. But that will only work if we keep things going at a steady pace between campaigns, without much time between them, it's a lot of effort, I know. We should simply brute-force it, until a balanced campaign happens, and then we can extended it and cherish it like the rare flower it is!

I'm not entirely convinced simplifying the RISK campaign system will do much of anything. The people who care about the meta-campaign will care about that and those who just care about playing the game will continue to not care about planning the campaign RISK strategy. Simplicity is nice, as we don't want to overburden officer corps with work, but I think certain elements of the RISK map help make the campaign fun in ways that C1's system can't. For example, defender's choice on map side/faction gives a team a better chance to win every once in a while, rather than getting consistently steamrolled whilst playing both sides of every map. I think we ought to at least consider adding fog of war back in. I think being able to prepare for some maps and going into others blind would make for a little more back and forth while an army that might otherwise get steamrolled from day 1 gets a chance to improve before morale takes a huge dive. I think fog of war might also make FCs better and provide a less stressful training ground for inexperienced FCs. Say you've got a first-timer FC. You can let them prepare a strat for a map that hasn't been revealed to the enemy yet. When it's their turn to FC, their opposing FC will likely be much less prepared. It would also force FCs to get better at quickly formulating a strat and making things up on the fly.


Moving beyond the campaign system... Drafting balanced armies is very hard. Over the last 4 campaigns, officers have met with the opposition and tried to craft balanced armies with varying degrees of cooperation in the drafting procedure. It has been an iterative process that takes weeks. And still, it has failed pretty hard since BF3C4. In my opinion, the group desires and buddy requests of anybody who isn't in their first campaign ought to be disregarded. Beyond that, I have no ideas that haven't been tried to achieve balanced armies, besides simply having a larger pool of players. When each side is sitting out 10 players at a time, they have to rotate people in and out, heavy hitters sit out a round or two, and the days they're absent, their absence has less of an impact overall.

Bock wrote:I'm not entirely convinced simplifying the RISK campaign system will do much of anything. The people who care about the meta-campaign will care about that and those who just care about playing the game will continue to not care about planning the campaign RISK strategy. Simplicity is nice, as we don't want to overburden officer corps with work, but I think certain elements of the RISK map help make the campaign fun in ways that C1's system can't. For example, defender's choice on map side/faction gives a team a better chance to win every once in a while, rather than getting consistently steamrolled whilst playing both sides of every map. I think we ought to at least consider adding fog of war back in. I think being able to prepare for some maps and going into others blind would make for a little more back and forth while an army that might otherwise get steamrolled from day 1 gets a chance to improve before morale takes a huge dive. I think fog of war might also make FCs better and provide a less stressful training ground for inexperienced FCs. Say you've got a first-timer FC. You can let them prepare a strat for a map that hasn't been revealed to the enemy yet. When it's their turn to FC, their opposing FC will likely be much less prepared. It would also force FCs to get better at quickly formulating a strat and making things up on the fly.

I'm going to review BF3C6's Campaign System, specifically the Risk mechanics. I was referring more to the Risk mechanics instead of the Risk Map or the general Risk approach.

What is 'fog of war'? Where and how was it used? I'd like to learn more.

And as for playing a map twice: I think it 'looked good on paper' but in practice was kind of a morale crusher when we got steamrolled twice.

Bock wrote:Moving beyond the campaign system... Drafting balanced armies is very hard. Over the last 4 campaigns, officers have met with the opposition and tried to craft balanced armies with varying degrees of cooperation in the drafting procedure. It has been an iterative process that takes weeks. And still, it has failed pretty hard since BF3C4. In my opinion, the group desires and buddy requests of anybody who isn't in their first campaign ought to be disregarded. Beyond that, I have no ideas that haven't been tried to achieve balanced armies, besides simply having a larger pool of players. When each side is sitting out 10 players at a time, they have to rotate people in and out, heavy hitters sit out a round or two, and the days they're absent, their absence has less of an impact overall.

Sounds like we need to have a recruiting push. Future attendance can not be measured. It seems having a large number of folks to draw from is one way to that, though.

insanityrocks wrote: What is 'fog of war'? Where and how was it used? I'd like to learn more.

FOW just limits your vision to opposing territories. You know the territory is owned by the enemy, but you don't know the map until you attack it or how many divisions are on it until you win 1 round, or you get all that information by using a black ops bonus for recon on that territory.

We used in BF3C3, can't speak for C4 as I didn't play due to finishing school up but I know we didn't use it in C5 and haven't used it since. Personally I think it's better to have, but there are arguments for/against it and I'm sure there was much deliberation about it. You really need people to have a deep interest in the strategy of map/division placement to make the risk system work well, if you only have 1 person doing the whole thing it can lead to some issues.

as to playing the map twice, it's harder to make the risk system work without knowing map imbalances for the map draft. Having a surprise imbalance show itself in the middle of a risk campaign can be a morale breaker/booster in itself, although so can taking a heavily imbalanced map and practicing the hell out of it so you win (apparently happened in C4).

As I recall, GC used to have a group for neutrals. How useful was that as far as balancing things?

IMO a large part of last campaigns failures was officers and aircrew leaving, and the terrible command chat. Just ban jets and don't pick flaky officers

TCZapper wrote:Just ban jets

WAT

TCZapper wrote:As I recall, GC used to have a group for neutrals. How useful was that as far as balancing things?

IMO a large part of last campaigns failures was officers and aircrew leaving, and the terrible command chat. Just ban jets and don't pick flaky officers

wat

Aircrew only left because the gameplay was baed
We do actually want to play lol

In C3 we had a full fog of war, so any territory you did not yet attack, you didn't know what map it was played on, and could not prepare. plus you only revealed the number of defending divisions once you won a round.
it lead to a very defensive RISK play as you had very little to no information of what you are going to attack, and so it was pretty obvious what the enemy would attack.
in C4 it was dumped in order to encourage a more aggressive and bold RISK play, but with full information its possible to deduct the enemy course of action and prepare, leading to a similar conservative play. i think we need a hybrid version, where an army can hide at least part of its activity on the RISK map.

TCZapper wrote:As I recall, GC used to have a group for neutrals. How useful was that as far as balancing things?

IMO a large part of last campaigns failures was officers and aircrew leaving, and the terrible command chat. Just ban jets and don't pick flaky officers

+1

i don't understand how you can fly a jet without reps. no regen means you are doomed from the start and you can't do anything about it. seems pretty frustrating to me.

Necromancer wrote: i don't understand how you can fly a jet without reps. no regen means you are doomed from the start and you can't do anything about it. seems pretty frustrating to me.

land and repair yourself? Airforce is no place for princesses

I think that was the least of our issues