1. How do you feel about an official stats / awards system?
2. What kind of awards should there be?
3. Should awards be serious (like BF2) or fun (like TF2)?
4. Should the focus lay on teamwork or individual achievements?
5. Should we make our own awards, or focus on historical medals (or a combination)?
1. Can’t wait.
2. Those that are there already aren’t bad. Just tweak them a bit, get harder to get. I have no beef with IAR awards, single (17 shots in left eye IAR) or combination (like BF2 SL/Comm awards: N hours as a comm, X total comm points, Y comm points IAR).
3. More serious, with some fun ones thrown in. Keep the Bicycle Queen, just don’t let them die so easily (Falling off 1-meter high mound, bicylce explodes, rider dies? So much for realism mod.
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4. Both. Individual awards make people get better with certain weapons, vehicles or devices (that’s how I got better with SMGs or other automatic-fire close combat) which eventually contribute to the team’s success.
5. Both. Historical awards give it more authenticity, but, obviously, badges/ribbons should be generic as they transcend different armies.
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Couple notes on the stats system and scorekeeping.
1. Stat website while currently is pretty nice, should include more information and, possibly graphs, like bf2s.com (Why not use Jeff’s system and just reskin it? Why invent the bicycle?).
2. Include Win/Loss stat, W/L ratio and award like in BF2142 that shall reward certain W/L ratio coupled with other merits.
3. Assuming that BF2142 is based on the same engine as BF2 (Am I correct?), can individual weapon stats can be included? While SMLE and K98 are similar rifles, K43 and Garand or M1 Carbine are vastly different in feel and use and cannot be lumped in the general “Rifles” category.
4. While FH2’s scoring system is quite nice (introduction of target difficulty and assist split based on that, spotting points etc.), some improvement that promotes squad cohesion is needed (Either simple one, like extra SL success points for kills/assist/support actions for squad mates in SL order radius like BF2142, or more complex, like PR, sans all the crazy high numbers.).
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There's another system that I would hope catches on, I forgot the name, but you only hear those things that are in the immediate vaccinity.
It’s called Mumble. Just recently got to try it in PR, very nice. Not only it works in the vicinity, but also it positions itself (you hear the guy talking to you form the side he is talking to you) and fades with distance. Designed to be used in combination with built-in VoIP: Mumble vicinity for intra-squad announcements (when few guys from different squads (or lone wolves) are in the same spot); Mumble squad leader channel as a radio communication between squad leaders (esp. useful when there’s no commander to relay information); BF2 VoIP for regular in-squad radio chatter.
