State of Affairs as of 10/30/17

[John Cooley]

Would it be possible to perhaps have some form of minor buff for players in 'loose' formation (AKA skirmishing) as opposed to the full negative ticket loss? Perhaps half-ticket loss?

Four tickets lost out of formation.
Two tickets lost in skirmish formation.
One ticket lost in formation.

Nice looking compromise there.

@Dether
Can't agree with you more brother.
We are on a good track and testing great things that other games gloss over.
Can't wait to get back to scouting and skirming soon.

[Sir_Squiggles]

I like this idea a lot

Never thought id agree more with Brave.

[Borat Sagdiyev]

I agree

[NozA]

Granted this is Alpha, and Early Alpha at that.
We completely understand that the Purpose is focused on Testing Game Mechanics and possible Features.
Further, Bug Reports and Testing the product for Play-ability and Launch Readiness are chiefly the purview of BETA Testing.
That being said ... a few issues need to be addressed.

Recent Changes have NOT been successful in guiding the Testing toward Line Battle Mechanics, as intended.
- The inability to scout or deploy skirmishers, combined with the ever present sniping by sharps rifles, has resulted in the almost exclusive use of one tactic ... hunker down and prepare for Custer's Last Stand.
This could be fought as a Line Battle but adjustments to Spawn points and out of Bounds limits has made bunching together in a square the only way to keep a good eye out.
- Then there is the 4X Ticket Loss mechanic.
It has had the intended effect of getting everyone to stay grouped but ...
Having a group as small as 6 scouts means that after the death of the first guy the remaining 5 now cause the massive Ticket Loss that can not be absorbed. Scouting Parties need to be large and unwieldy. 3 Man skirm groups are no longer possible and Watching the Flank now falls to the main Line.
This Ticket Loss is greatly felt when the enemy is sniping reinforcements of a few men, a PUG Rambo keeps charging instead of playing as a Team and if the Defender doesn't focus an undue amount of attention on falling back and staying shoulder to shoulder.
I say UNDUE Attention because it is one thing to Fill In for a lost man but if ... and this has happened to me several times ... you are anchoring the end of the line and the two guys to your left get killed just before you, during a volley, then you are shot ... you are considered Out of Formation. There ought to be a small window where the chance to Cover Down is available.

The effect of these Recent Adjustments has resulted in several sweeping changes. It is possible that this is intentional but we wish to Note them here for Informational purposes ...
- We NEVER see a map timer run out. 10 minute battles To The Death are the new norm.
- The Ticket Disparity now has the Rebels losing almost every engagement when before we lost very few. Not a complaint but rather an observation of how much the Game Changes are having an effect.
- Win Parameters are now overly skewed to the Union side. The best example from this weekend was a Skirm in which the Yanks NEVER took the Point, not even once. The Final Death Toll was 87 Yanks dead to 38 Rebs. The Timer only ran for 8 minutes ... and we LOST.
- The Weekend Events used to be composed of 4 Events consisting of approximately 3 skirmishes each of which the Rebels won all but 1 or 2 of these 12 to 15 ... on a bad day.
Now, we play at least 25 Skirms and are lucky to win 1 all weekend.
We now have a bit more empathy for the Pain of our Union Foes but losing when you dominate a battle is not right.

This brings me to our Final Point ...
The Confederate Leadership is finding it increasingly difficult to convince our Troops to attend anything except Drills.
Nobody has a problem with Losing due to our own Mistakes or Miscalculations but it is hard to motivate a man to spend his few free hours a week Testing a game that makes no sense.
Again, this IS Early Alpha and we are testing mechanics but no testing can be done without Players.
We aren't asking for Favoritism or an Easy Ride ... you don't build muscle, courage or camaraderie by having Victories handed to you. However, it is not fun for anyone to feel they are wasting their hard earned Time on being a Pop-up Target with zero chance to win because the battle cry has been changed from Deo Vindice to Deus Ex Machina.

Thank you for your Time and Attention in reading this long Post.
We greatly appreciate your efforts and will always support and test the game and its Developers.
Our Desire is to help bring this game to Fruition and, although it may be unpopular to some, we can not AND SHOULD NOT be yet another Member of The WoR Forum Echo Chamber.

Finally someone put it up , I 100% agree.

[Hienzman]

Granted this is Alpha, and Early Alpha at that.
We completely understand that the Purpose is focused on Testing Game Mechanics and possible Features.
Further, Bug Reports and Testing the product for Play-ability and Launch Readiness are chiefly the purview of BETA Testing.
That being said ... a few issues need to be addressed.

Recent Changes have NOT been successful in guiding the Testing toward Line Battle Mechanics, as intended.
- The inability to scout or deploy skirmishers, combined with the ever present sniping by sharps rifles, has resulted in the almost exclusive use of one tactic ... hunker down and prepare for Custer's Last Stand.
This could be fought as a Line Battle but adjustments to Spawn points and out of Bounds limits has made bunching together in a square the only way to keep a good eye out.
- Then there is the 4X Ticket Loss mechanic.
It has had the intended effect of getting everyone to stay grouped but ...
Having a group as small as 6 scouts means that after the death of the first guy the remaining 5 now cause the massive Ticket Loss that can not be absorbed. Scouting Parties need to be large and unwieldy. 3 Man skirm groups are no longer possible and Watching the Flank now falls to the main Line.
This Ticket Loss is greatly felt when the enemy is sniping reinforcements of a few men, a PUG Rambo keeps charging instead of playing as a Team and if the Defender doesn't focus an undue amount of attention on falling back and staying shoulder to shoulder.
I say UNDUE Attention because it is one thing to Fill In for a lost man but if ... and this has happened to me several times ... you are anchoring the end of the line and the two guys to your left get killed just before you, during a volley, then you are shot ... you are considered Out of Formation. There ought to be a small window where the chance to Cover Down is available.

The effect of these Recent Adjustments has resulted in several sweeping changes. It is possible that this is intentional but we wish to Note them here for Informational purposes ...
- We NEVER see a map timer run out. 10 minute battles To The Death are the new norm.
- The Ticket Disparity now has the Rebels losing almost every engagement when before we lost very few. Not a complaint but rather an observation of how much the Game Changes are having an effect.
- Win Parameters are now overly skewed to the Union side. The best example from this weekend was a Skirm in which the Yanks NEVER took the Point, not even once. The Final Death Toll was 87 Yanks dead to 38 Rebs. The Timer only ran for 8 minutes ... and we LOST.
- The Weekend Events used to be composed of 4 Events consisting of approximately 3 skirmishes each of which the Rebels won all but 1 or 2 of these 12 to 15 ... on a bad day.
Now, we play at least 25 Skirms and are lucky to win 1 all weekend.
We now have a bit more empathy for the Pain of our Union Foes but losing when you dominate a battle is not right.

This brings me to our Final Point ...
The Confederate Leadership is finding it increasingly difficult to convince our Troops to attend anything except Drills.
Nobody has a problem with Losing due to our own Mistakes or Miscalculations but it is hard to motivate a man to spend his few free hours a week Testing a game that makes no sense.
Again, this IS Early Alpha and we are testing mechanics but no testing can be done without Players.
We aren't asking for Favoritism or an Easy Ride ... you don't build muscle, courage or camaraderie by having Victories handed to you. However, it is not fun for anyone to feel they are wasting their hard earned Time on being a Pop-up Target with zero chance to win because the battle cry has been changed from Deo Vindice to Deus Ex Machina.

Thank you for your Time and Attention in reading this long Post.
We greatly appreciate your efforts and will always support and test the game and its Developers.
Our Desire is to help bring this game to Fruition and, although it may be unpopular to some, we can not AND SHOULD NOT be yet another Member of The WoR Forum Echo Chamber.

Agreed.

[Redleader]

The Confederate Leadership is finding it increasingly difficult to convince our Troops to attend anything except Drills.
We greatly appreciate your efforts and will always support and test the game and its Developers.

Balancing a game is a difficult excersize and the recent changes made it harder to win a map on the confederate side. (like already posted, the CSA took 2/5 losses against 3/5 for the Union ... we held the point and lost) So yes the whole morale thing (also for the Union) is a thing to keep in mind.

The whole intention of the system was to give great advantages to sticking together in an effort to lessen the amount of lone wolfs and skirmishers.- Trusty

The ticket system is a great idea, but it needs some tweaking However, scouts and snipers (later artillery) have become a risk since they might get caught out of formation and I do believe multiple roles are interesting to work out.

You need to balance realism with entertainment. .

Could not agree more, the whole realism thing is great and most of us want some role play ... but I get that some just want to load the musket and shoot or stab people with a bayonet

I agree with you here Trusty.. but I believe what Timo means is the so called pugs joining who do not know the mechanics.. if you have a lot of em you loose a lot of points FAST.

Agree with Dether and Timo here, problem is people might get frustrated if people get ordered around or shooted at from people they don't know. For different regiments on the same side, I also get there should be some liberty of trying things (a regroup, a charge ...) without people getting upset about the formation/ticket system.

I agree with the statements listed above and want to also bring attention to how short the matches are now due to the ticket system, personally I always enjoyed fighting a long hard drug out match because it had so much more potential for either side to sway the battle. Now on average the matches that were pooled over this weekend with all of the new mechanics in place was 16 minutes and 12 seconds. With the longest match being 22 minutes and 31 seconds long and the shortest match being 1 minute and 45 seconds ... 6th LA Trump

Like already said, multiple 'servers' are an option : a sort of fast 'skirmish' server with less tickets and a server where you can have long line battles (with maps qualifying for that sort of gameplay)
Some find the fast gameplay a bit arcady/cod/bf and some find the long line/marching battles boring.

Four tickets lost out of formation.
Two tickets lost in skirmish formation.
One ticket lost in formation.

+1 -> great idea

[John Cooley]

We decided to Prove Our Point and played as Union tonight.
It was laughable.
Not only did we win every map but the Control Meter was Red a grand total of 2 times all night.
I am not talking about totally red either ... it had a bit of red control just twice and we cycled through some maps more than once.
I would love to see the stats on our Experiment.

[jwhal]

Union = Easy Mode.

[Poorlaggedman]

My biggest concern is that you're putting the lone wolves in a position of being doubly annoying, for the enemy and their own teammates. I'm not seeing less success at all in terms of being a lone wolf, which I only occasionally do. I'm actually seeing a lot more success as people are wrapped up in blobs of easy targets and focus on another blob. It's more fun for the loner. I hear that the loner get's a longer spawn time further out... so? As opposed to eating a bullet predictably over and over? A message after you die is considerate but it's not enough. It doesn't matter if I'm only killing 2-3 each life (which I'm seeing happen a lot of time when I lone it towards a blob), it's fun and I'm usually not shrouded in anyone else's smoke but my own.

Now if my character were to panic when completely alone only after a few shots towards me in a short period of time then that would be a better deterrent. Being mostly combat ineffective vs more concentrated enemy receiving my shots.

I just feel that the effects should be on the individual and not the team. All your anger and energy should be directed at enemy not teammates trying to have fun in what they feel is a competitive manner.

[TrustyJam]

Thank you all for your feedback. Keep it coming.

Would it be possible to perhaps have some form of minor buff for players in 'loose' formation (AKA skirmishing) as opposed to the full negative ticket loss? Perhaps half-ticket loss?

Four tickets lost out of formation.
Two tickets lost in skirmish formation.
One ticket lost in formation.

This very idea was discussed during our design talks and never ruled out. You very well may see it in testing at some point.

- Trusty