Teamwork

[poesel]

I have to say that I like the game a lot. But I think it currently lacks in teamplay.

Which is a bad thing because that would be the difference between a good FPS and a great game.

Currently is nearly always the same bunch of people who play so you know each other and get things going rather well. Imagine now a lot more people which come together in this 25min of the game the first time at all. Theres no chance that they will get their act together and form a team.

I don't know many games but I really like 'RTCW: Enemy Territory'. You chose a role (Lieutenant, Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Spy) and immediatly you knew what to do and others knew you as well. You easily got a team together to accomplish a task. (oh, and I liked the skill system but that is another topic

Please let the player choose a role and thus narrow down the available vehicles for him. Something like 'Assault', 'Artillery', 'Recon'...

So you now what your teammates are up to and can act accordingly.

A set of predefined (and editable) set of tactics for a map (drop zones, direction of attacks,...) would be a good starter as well. Together with the roles would make things easier for the commander.

Hmm, I better stop now - this will get too long

I hope you can see the direction I would like to go, though.

[ClaytoniousRex]

A robust set of diagramming tools in on its way for the commander. This will help a lot. Platoons are coming, too, but much later.

Roles sound like a good idea and easy enough to implement. We'll consider that feature again when we get to platoons.

Far and away, though, the primary obstacle to teamwork at the moment (which will remain the primary obstacle regardless of technological innovations in the game's interface) is COMMUNICATION.

Every couple of days I manage to get into a game where my teammates are using voice chat, talking to one another, and supporting one another. These are great games. And honestly, with only 12 units on the field, simply talking to one another and using waypoints on the tac display is usually plenty sufficient to cooperate on various plans of action.

Current issues that are limiting even this simpler kind of coordination are:

</font>

• DropTeam does not currently do a good job of normalizing voice input volume from microphones. Consequently, when using voice chat, many players are inaudible because they don't speak loud enough or have their microphone volume turned up high enough. On top of that, of course, players with laggy connections hear choppy voice chat. Because of these two issues, some players stop using it after they initially try it. We're going to fix the first issue in the code, and the second issue will be less of a problem after the public test when servers are more geographically distributed (so players can connect to closer servers with better pings).</font>
• There are still a lot of people dropping in just to "see what this is all about" with no real intention of sticking around and playing a full game (or at least no intention of trying to win a game).</font>

I didn't mention those points in order to brush aside your idea of "Roles" or other teamplay aides. As I said, we definitely want to get to those features over time, too. I just think it's important to realize that the primary causes (and solutions) to this kind of problem aren't technological - they're behavioral.

In general, there's a lot you as an individual player can do about this. I've often dropped into a game that seems very quiet until I or someone else takes the initiative to start talking.