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« on: 23-02-2011, 06:02:40 »
Yes, this is another thread to talk about the bad things of the current SL spawn system. We, fellow FH42ers, lived perfectly fine, without it in the old days. However, we can’t just stick to the good old days. For a mod to be successful, in my opinion, constant evolution is necessary.
There were a lot of criticisms to the SL spawn system, mainly:
- It encourages un-soldierly gameplay, such as SL bailing out behind enemy lines, or, simply, rather than fighting as an SL, to sneak and hide is the primary goal of that player, which is annoying because if you died as SL, you’d be condemned by your squadmates.
- It tends to take away one’s reason, as enemies seemed to have dug an tunnel to your rear, which of course, doesn’t exist and you can’t guard that tunnel.
- Annoying things such as grenade spam, or an SL who smuggled 200 panzerfausts to your rear.
The developers and players are well aware of this issue, and that’s why they put forward an experiment, antoville-1944, in the previous versions, to test whether the removal of SL spawn would remove these frustrations and improve gameplay. The experiment, in a large degree, is a total failure. There is little doubt that the frustrations listed above were eliminated to a large degree in the experiment, but new issues surface as the benefits of having SL spawn is as well taken away. For example: squads always spawn scattered and making squadwork rather impossible. That is, the benefits of removing SL spawn, failed to outweight the destruction it made.
Without doubt, there are benefits to SL spawn, to list a few:
- It keeps a particular group of people together, not scattered around the map. And therefore less lonewolves and more teamwork.
- It makes playing with friends a lot easier, therefore much more fun.
- It makes combat more intense, a lot more intense, as replenishments could arrive without walking 1km.
- It makes the defending side fun, because you could defend, let’s say, a barn, bunker, or whatever, desperately.
If there are benefits of SL spawn, so why I have to argue against it? No, I’m not trying to urge for the removal of SL spawn anymore, rather, I want it to be improved to remove the annoyances, yet preserving the benefits of SL spawns. Overall, what I want is not a particular gameplay that I prefer, but rather one that is enjoyable to everyone.
I am wary of the limitations of BF2 engine, but let me put forward still, my main principle of my suggestion, that is:
To limit the SL spawn to a certain degree to enhance realism, yet squadwork is still largely possible.
The reason I want to keep SL spawn largely functional, is because it is an wonderful feature to rally a group of men into team action. This is extremely important to the game as it’d encourage teamplay rather than lonewolf.
But, there got to be limitations:
- I don’t want to see 30 people coming from a basement that is guarded pretty well just because a guy managed to sneak in with a jeep.
- A hidden SL in a town you’re holding is going to make any effort of defending the perimeter totally worthless, that is static defences are rendered useless.
- Bailing behind enemy lines and spawn a group of engineers to mine the road is simply lame. Could one sneak 200 landmines to the enemy rear unnoticed? This is rather.. obvious?
My vision is that, one possible solution to the SL problem, is to BLOCK the SL spawn, whenever the SL is not in the attacking direction, within the perimeter of an enemy defence, or is driving a vehicle, especially tanks.
In FH2, if you lose all flags, you cannot spawn on SL, if someone is nearby your spawnpoint, it’d turn red and prohibit one from spawning on it, so I guess, there is a possibility that this would work.
Why we have to block the spawn if the SL is at an enemy held town? The SL spawn is supposed to represent reinforcements. Reinforcements, in real life, must approach an enemy position by either walking or transportation, rather than teleportation. There is a reason why some defence are made static, rather than 360 degree rotatable, it is because there is a reason to stop enemy to reinforce their certain attack. If the SL spawn is blocked near an enemy flag, the SL, if their SM are depleted, must retreat to regroup his squad, rather than hide and wait for his squadmembers from spawning. An immediate effect is, hiding is of much less use, and to get reinforcements you need more skill rather than just patience. And there is not much need for the defending side, rather than defending the perimeter, to search for that SL and eliminate him.
SL spawns at tanks and vehicles should be limited as well, and the best would be to limit it to a radius around a friendly flag, rather than simply blocking it around an enemy flag.
For non-push maps, the blocking radius have to be high, because players have more freedom of action, therefore more restriction is needed.
In contrast, for push maps, though the rear should definitely be blocked, the radius of blocking for the capable flags should not be as large, as push maps are so densely packed that a large blocking would produce disastrous results.
The result of limitation should be that squadwork is still possible as you could effectly rally your squadmates if you're in the right place and the gameplay would not change radically for people who are currently doing the "right thing". And it would get rid of the bad things of the current system. And finally the SL could be more comfortable dying and therefore more players would be added to the battlefield, without having 128 slots in a server.
I do hope everyone who is with me, or at least agree to me to a certain degree, would post their own opinions, and suggestions, on this matter, for the love of forgotten hope.