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Thread: Leadership and formations

  1. #1

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    Leadership and formations

    If I get it correct, the current implementation of formations is based purely on the number of players regardless of their class. In reality, keeping formations together was task of officers with the help of NCOs; also, the flag was important as a point around which the soldiers gathered. Hereby an idea to implement realistic function of the leading classes:

    for close order formation:
    - at least one of the leadership classes (NCO, officer, flag bearer) is needed in order to allow formation buff to switch on, without leadership the formation can be skirmish at most (i.e. close order pack of private soldiers without leadership or flag will still be a "skirmish")
    - formation with flag AND officer included will provide even more buffs
    - count NCO equivalent of 2 private soldiers
    - count officer and flag bearer as 3 private soldiers
    (i.e. more leadership means less requirements to set up a formation)
    Note: obviously the number of soldiers needed to switch on close order formation buff needs to be adjusted and tweaked


    for skirmish formation:
    - count NCOs and officers as 2 private soldiers (so one NCO with private close to him will do the skirmish formation)
    - count flag as 0 soldiers for skirmish formation (flag bearers were not included in skirmish screens and pickets)

  2. #2
    It's not a good idea to put the onus on individual players of specific classes, even if those classes did mean anything more than "I connected to the server first."

    I don't like the idea of flag bearers or NCOs or officers providing any sort of artificial bonus. Their bonus aught to be doing their dang job if they are playing the roles properly and if any selective channels (like a server host) put them there for an event or the game had a way of electing or selecting them. Leave the morale radius to the tactical strategy game.
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  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by Poorlaggedman View Post
    I don't like the idea of flag bearers or NCOs or officers providing any sort of artificial bonus. Their bonus aught to be doing their dang job if they are playing the roles properly and if any selective channels (like a server host) put them there for an event or the game had a way of electing or selecting them. Leave the morale radius to the tactical strategy game.
    It is not an "artificial bonus", but reasonable requirement to switch ON already implemented feature "formation". Formation without leader does not make sense - soldiers gathered around flags, were being put together by officers and NCOs.
    Also, it makes gameplaywise more reason to have these classes. Without such features, you are left to roleplay leadership only and flag bearer is purely roleplay class.

    I agree, that there should be a better mechanism to select the class, but this is another topic.

  4. #4
    There is no correlation to people in leadership classes and leadership. Any bonus should be from having good leadership, regardless of 'class.'

    You can never rely on individual players to do their job. The idea that you'd have to be 'out of formation' just because you don't have someone of a special class is no good. It gives artificial power to a class that shouldn't have artificial power even if it was selected properly.
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  5. #5

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    Then there should be no officer, NCO and flag bearer classes at all - what is the point of having meaningless different skins and/or different weaponset? Two regular troopers with fancy uniforms and revolvers per side? Rather get them off... But I would strongly disagree. These classes should have realistic roles. Devs already stated, that flag bearer will be movable spawnpoint, which is more powerful and more “artificial” feature (less realistic ) than I am suggesting.

    Regarding your concern - by my experience even on a public server people usually try to play to win and use their class abilities to greater good of their side. There are trolls and clumsy players, but usually it works. Have you played Verdun? Officers have quite some abilities in this realistic wwI game and it works.

  6. #6
    The officers I'm seeing in game don't impress me much. And it cannot be mistaken, when your two officer roles are gobbled up by the first 5 players joining a team... the most qualified people are not getting those roles in the overwhelming number of cases. There's no connection to the class and the player being any good. That isn't sustainable for something people choose to believe is important. As I've said many times before the players in the game now are the hardcores. Quality will decline greatly with a wider release. That doesn't mean the experience has to get worse it just means there has to be reasons why you pump 10 times the number of players into the game that it would work any better than "sometimes" having trolls and most of the time having very poor leaders who nobody will listen to. With this system... a guy who just installed the game can take an officer role if he has the good PC and connection. And they will.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bivoj View Post
    Then there should be no officer, NCO and flag bearer classes at all - what is the point of having meaningless different skins and/or different weaponset? Two regular troopers with fancy uniforms and revolvers per side?
    I practically agree with that unless they can be implemented smartly and with clout to back up the players playing the classes. But that must be done very carefully indeed.
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  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Poorlaggedman View Post
    The officers I'm seeing in game don't impress me much. And it cannot be mistaken, when your two officer roles are gobbled up by the first 5 players joining a team... the most qualified people are not getting those roles in the overwhelming number of cases. There's no connection to the class and the player being any good. That isn't sustainable for something people choose to believe is important.
    I agree with you, but this is another topic to be adressed. I hope the devs are well aware of this issue and they will solve it somehow (voting, limiting how many times you can pick the officer/NCO per round, bounding somehow to company tool etc.). This issue is there since class system exists (I remember the pain in RO public servers, where inexperienced players picked rare sniper and MG roles...), but it is not an argument against implementing reasonable features to classes.

  8. #8
    Yeah but I don't think it's reasonable to pit players on the same team against each other on a routine basis. We already have that with the penalties on lone wolves against the whole team. It isn't a huge problem yet but it will be as players watch loners getting killed over and over again to ruin their efforts to win the match it'll spark backlash. There's a difference between allowing players to work together through heavy advantages vs compelling players to through unrealistic penalties. Compelling means they have to in order for the game to work right. Obviously if you're losing your formation buff because your officers are idiots then that's bad. Realistically that's a minimum thing that you expect officers to do in real life... to be present. You can't in a video game. More stuff to go wrong there. You're asking more of a smaller pool of players which is a bad formula. It's why the flag bearer spawn will make people rip their hair out after a while trying to tinker it to success
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