In short, you're going to have a lot of individualism. Linear tactics will not be effective. Minute-men style players will wreak havoc on any groups working closely. Any use of player-controlled explosions (artillery) will put the finishing touches on linear tactics. The core players will retreat to closed unit-events, like they always do in realism communities, and try to force the game to work the way they wanted by manipulating player behavior through rules. They will venture out in public gameplay mainly to recruit from the masses of people wandering into the public servers. Some of whom probably came because they saw videos of clean linear warfare from those events. Trolls and derps will reign public servers without sufficient policing and without an autoBAN system in-place at a set TK limit. Without a healthy public server community, the game will suffer population-wise and activity will suffer because of the high dependency on organized events.
I'm worried about this game because I've wanted from my first gaming days a FPS like this but I think a lot of people are making wild assumptions of what gameplay in this game will be like based on early hardcores who're in game now and also based mostly on what they want to see. So I'll go ahead and make my predictions based on about 17 years of being obsessed with realism in shooters and a couple weeks in this game. I think realism is what we're going for on some level here and not a free-for-all like any other shooter.
Players play a multiplayer game for an experience or to compete against live opponents or a combination of the two. Occasionally they will role-play but role-playing is an aside and will not hold most players' interest forever. What most of you are sustaining off of right now is role-playing.
There will be no serious, competitive line battle action because of... math. ... I'm not aware of any competitive line battle fighting in any first person shooter ever made, correct me if I'm wrong or why WoR would be different. I have not even found a meelee-only game where formations hold an advantage over a pure blob. You may have house-rules in closed events where players have to shoulder up but that's where it will end. And it will come apart from there in those events. When you're only incentive to do so is your hope that the enemy does the same so it's a fair fight... you'll have about the same success rate as people claiming cash income on their taxes because 'it's the law.' On any shooter ever-made... a group makes a better target. It's math. If the only advantage of being in a tight group is 'the rules' or 'honor' or 'realism' ... you'll see this getting compromised very quickly in closed matches and almost non-existent in public gameplay.
Add double ranks into this sketch and factor in the smoke and the advantage is even clearer. In meelee combat, there is no advantage to being grouped either as it is.
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3D voice chat has a huge impact on gameplay. I love it and believe it should be mandatory in any serious FPS game of any type. I almost refuse to play an FPS without it.
You'll usually have several different officers trying to assert authority on any team at the start and at respawns. Players with friends and followers will get more. As players get more experienced, you'll have more running off alone immediately and wisely working together loosely. In a respawn-based game with objectives ... getting players into the field is more critical than any advantage currently of organizing with random people. This is counter-intuitive to a lot of 'hardcore' types who will prefer to rally and assert authority and move out together. Even if you're operating as an organized body... with a long way to go to get into the action it's more important to move out immediately. You can be a total genius, natural leader but if you aren't moving out in a timely manner you're just keeping men out of action (and therefore worthless) for longer periods of time. IMO, 30 seconds to organize a group of guys in the spawn is 24 seconds too long if you want to win. If you think your average competitive player will see some value in lining up when he was in the thick of it 30 seconds earlier half way across the battlefield, you'd be wrong. He's headed right back there. Once again, it's math. Get people in the fight faster if you want to be respected and listened to.
So thanks to the 3D voice chat, people will often blob together and follow people who sound like they know what they're talking about or have a 'good' voice. These could be serious players who know what they're doing or they will just as often be some of the plethora of trolls who will plague this game on daily basis, derping about in a non-competitive manner. Even shooting friendlies who won't follow their established rules (already saw it happen on one team in WoR) or just shooting friendlies for fun or shooting people trying to lead, even stalking them down. The 3D voice chat is great for teamwork but it is an attraction to these types. In my last game, (Resistance and Liberation), 3D voice was essential to teamwork but also presents an advanced opportunity for derping. You literally had times where you went into servers and people were playing house or having literal parties or social gatherings. Unplanned, spontaneous ones among strangers. A group of friends want to come in and make this happen... half the team will be running to surrender from spawn or otherwise playing games. It happened constantly. The power of 3d voice is amazing but if you don't have solid, and enjoyable gameplay which actually works and achieves the spirit desired by players then players will constantly stray from it and find other ways to entertain themselves and 3D voice leaves plenty else to do.
If this sounds crazy or you don't understand my vernacular, you have a lot to learn about gamers. Effectively you create a social space in 3D when you have 3D voice chat. It amplifies the experience. It stands in stark contrast to most "anti-social" games where there is a team voice chat or a public voice chat where players sit and play silently except for small-talk/smack-talk and you'll actually get a lot of blowback for being a 'try hard' trying to use voice chat constantly. It certainly means literally nothing to say "grenade!" or "to your left" because there is no context to hearing voice chat without a 3D relation.
People trying to lead in Universal voice chat
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vs local voice chat
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Derps in Universal voice chat
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vs local voice chat
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Meelee will rule. Twenty second reloads and you have a nice pointy blade conveniently there that you can close in and settle it much faster. I saw a post from a dev that said it isn't a purely meelee game. Don't assume just because you have more populated servers that there won't be constant meelee rushing. Aiming and firing can be frustrating, as it should be a lot of the time with the smoke and the reload time. So you'll have a very strong and immature influence urging the closing to meelee range where combat is more immediately decided. And yet any serious student of the Civil War knows that the bayonet was rarely actually used, even less en-masse by entire formations lunging into each other as every Hollywood representation shows. In real life it was a game of chicken, and that's the truth. And there's no reason that shouldn't be fun as well but that will seldom be the case. Especially if there is no reason to charge cohesively and therefore no reason to not just turn into a mad race. If an enemy charges you from 50 yards away and you immediately turn around and retreat.... if he doesn't stop following you, he will literally still be 50 yards away when you decide to stop running. No reason to stay cohesive, no reason to slow down. No reason to retreat. Personally, I'd prefer firefights and tactics and make the meelee a special occasion thing. There's little tactics in a one-for-one bayonet stabbing spree even when you add a timed blocking.
I'm interested to hear what anybody thinks or what can be done to avoid these predictions from becoming true or if you're okay with getting your experience from closed-server reenactments. My suggestion is a morale system, like I already posted about if you want to comment on that.
http://www.warofrightsforum.com/show...-to-harness-it