Trench Warfare

[connnnn]

Just because a game is fast-paced doesn't mean there's no strategy or teamwork. The faster the game, the more quickly decisions have to be made and the more important it is that you can make those without being able to sit down and talk about every move ahead of time. Thinking on your feet becomes the most important second-to-second goal while trying to accomplish a heirarchy of larger objectives to win in whatever game/gametype you might be playing. It may not be chess, but it's got plenty of depth. It just emphasizes on-the-fly thinking rather than every move being calculated.

If you're talking from the perspective of random public games... no game has any real teamwork in random pubs. Teamwork requires communication, which simply doesn't exist in any consistent form in pubs. This will probably be the case with most of Huxley regardless of how you set up the gameplay, because there's no way you're gonna have 200 people all communicating with each other. The best examples of organization will probably require less than 20 players per side broken into groups that are all familiar with one another. The largest fights will have individual cells of organization within chaos... but there's really no realistic way that I can imagine around that.

As far as a "star player" goes... if 3+ people attack 1 person, there's no reason that 1 person should survive regardless of how good they are (presuming similar armor, ranks, etc). If a single player is raging, just multi-team him and take him down. There won't be anything he can do about it unless he has good backup, and if that's the case then it's not 1 person beating you anyways, it's the whole group working together.

[Savag3Shadow]

If you're talking to me connnn, I never said I wanted this game to be an agonizingly slow shooter. Reasonably fast is fine with me, I just want it to be slower than Unreal. Also, as far as the actual people you play with, I never said that I would actually try to use teamwork when I go in with random people. I was saying that for my clan.

[Mandalore]

I agree with shadow on this one...i wouldnt like the game to be as fast as unreal, that...to me...would just be mindless killing over and over again.

-Mandalore-

Merc for hire

ps shadow...great website, awsome clan man, good ideas.

[connnnn]

What I'm saying is that the speed of the game doesn't decide whether or not there's any strategy/tactics/whatever being used. Even the fastest games have all of that. The differences lie in what's emphasized in combat and how quickly decisions must be made. If I end up playing this game, I'll likely get my teammates in other games to play and we'll probably spend most of our time in smaller fights where it's basically 5-10 people vs 5-10 people, simply because we like as much organization as possible and less randomness (even a well organized squad in a 400 player battle will have a hard time if 50 of the other side decide to rush them at once).

[Mandalore]

I agree with Con a bit on this one as well, 5-10 man squads against each other would be very tight-knit. The strategy on that level would be amazing because the possiblities would be endless. This also brings up another point though, if you were in a 240 battle, you would have to be tight knit just as much as a small scale, if not even more so. The reason for this would be foul ups in battle tactics, because if one squad fails, they rest of the battle force will begin to crumble. Again these are just my views.

-Mandalore-

Merc for hire

[Felix12g]

Naw, what you find in mass battles like that is a squad not paying enough attention, getting wiped out, and nobody noticing or caring beyond the people looting the corpses. Granted 10 people can make a great difference in those large fights, but usually not. I'm really interested in seeing how they manage the large fights to keep them from just becoming zerg fests like all the fights you find in PS.

[KopMcginty]

10 men in a full on zerg battle can 'always' make a difference, they just have to be the right 10 men. How relevent it will be i dont know but take Planetside as an example of what you cna do strategically. Both sides are fighting over one base and have almost their entire forces bogged down in a grunt battle. In Planetside there are outfits (like mine) that specialise in tipping the balance. One of the most common is for a squad to load up in a dropship and assault the base from the air, usually aiming for the base generator. Blow that and the enemy cant respawn/rearm there.

Blowing it is the easy bit though, what the organised guys can do is then keep that generator locked down indefinately against the enemy trying to get in and repair it. This can be done against massive enemy superiority in numbers with the right men carrying the right equipment.

In this way one 10 man squad has made more effect on the fight than the 100 other guys charging over and over at the base walls. We in Fight Club do this almost every night, if Huxley offers similar strategic operations within a large fight, its fair to say we and others like Nordic Assault who i see around here will be found taking advantage. :D

[Felix12g]

The outfits i've been in did gen holds as well. Hell, most of the outfits did in all probability. Maybe less frequently, but still. Anyways, sitting in a single room for a half hour hoping that the enemy is going to come zerg you and not bring a bunch of plasma spam and heavies isn't exactly the most fun game. Hopefully Huxley won't devlolve into that kind of pathetic attempt at "Tactics"

It's a strategy yes, but what does it consist of?

1.) Get a zerg of players together in a big transport.
2.) Jump out of it at a door.
3.) Run like mad past all the enemies and since the guns in the game do shit, you usually can.
4.) Blow up a generator
5.) Sit in that room for a half hour until you run out of ammo or enough enemies wipe you out.

You find better plans and tactics is kiddie strike. Lets hope that you don't need to do this kind of thing to get past a foot zerg grind in huxley.

[KopMcginty]

One squad of 10 men isnt a zerg. Not when the forces on each side number 100+.

If you have co-ordination it doesnt matter if they bring plasma and heavies, you still survicve and they still die. The only thing that countes a small organised team in those situations is a larger organised team taking them down.

You dont 'hope' the enemy come, you force them to by choosing the right time and place to strike. I have had lots of fun in our genholds because we generally get a constant stream of enemies to shoot.

How is one squad turning a whole battle against multiple times its number a 'bad tactic'. It might not be earth shattering but you work with what you have in a game, it is effective and was an 'example' of how in the right circumstances a small organised group can make a difference. Its certainly a better tactic than endlessly rushing that same chokepoint you died to the last 10 times.

Whatever opportunities Huxley offers for a small strike team to screw with the enemy, will be taken advantage of by someone, regardless of whether you think its fun or not. Different tastes, different playstyles but like i say, it was an example of how small teams can win against larger odds - I thought that was what we were discussing, not whether you think Planetside is crap.

[Felix12g]

Oh I agree, constant zerging on a base hoping to take it down isn't good. But like I said, having the gen holds the only way to break a stalemate sucks, which isn't a "bad" tactic, it just isn't really tactics. Running past enemies hoping they don't shoot you, just to sit in a room for a half hour and camp, is not something I want to see in Huxley.

I've got nothing against squads doing things together, I much preferred that over mass battles. But I still don't think a mad rush to sit in a room is really strategy, moreso it is just the ideal spot to camp.

[Savag3Shadow]

Three points:

#1: Fast paced Strategy
No, you can't have strategy in an extremely fast paced game like UT 2007. If you don't even have enough time to type out orders, or even say them if you are lucky enough for you and your teammates to all have mic's, then it is impossible to have strategy. I mean, if, by the time you finish giving a tactical command based upon your current assesment of the battlefield, that battlefield and the placement/state of your troops has changed considerably, what use will that tactical command then be? In that style of gameplay, its basically every man for himself, and "oh yeah" they just happen to be on teams.
One more example before I move on.
Say you are comparing Tribes: Vengeance (a fairly fast paced game, as far as PC games go) to Halo 2. Now, which one do you think would be more condusive to actually using teamwork? By the time you finish telling someone to flank from the right hand side along with so and so, they are already 1/3 of the way across the map, in a firefight. Now, in Halo 2 (not the fastest game, but certainly not slow), on say, Coagulation (thats Blood Gulch 2.0 for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about), if you wanted to have three guys go in a Hog for the rockets and one guy rush their sniper with a Banshee, and then have a sniper cover the rockets in the middle, you would actually have time to say/execute that strategy, given the right team.

#2: Huge Team Battles
No, you don't just cower away in fear of playing a 120 vs. 120 because you think it will be chaos. You organize a group of people using the echelon system to fight in those battles. Who is to say that you can't have 4 groups of 12 that are guided by a commander who works in conjunction with four other commanders who do the same? Why wouldn't that work? There is no reason that it wouldn't.

#3: Tactics
Some of the above mentioned tactics for other games may be "cheap", etc. but since when is war supposed to be fair? Do you think that the U.S. Army, or any army for that matter, would enter a battle that was a fair fight? Why battle fairly when you can battle using "cheap" tactics? Why kill a man when he is ready for battle (and able to harm you) when you can kill him when he is not? Why fight on open ground and rush the enemy when you can take cover inside some sort of structure and let them come to you?
Why not take advantage of everything in the game that you can (as long as it isn't cheating)?

[Felix12g]

Actually strategy in fast paced FPSs is some of the best. It takes faster thinking and you need to weigh in more things when ordering squad mates around than you get in RTS. Not saying that RTSs don't have great strategy, but FPS strategy is decided in parts of a second.

Your first point is basically baseless, you're declaring these things with nothing to back them up. Voice command systems like Ventrilo, Teamspeak and the others are all built so that a commander can see an opening and immediately send squadmates to exploit it. Just because a game is faster paced than you're used to doesn't mean that people who play alot of FPSs aren't used to it, let alone easily cope.

Second point? I had to laugh. People play this game to do what they want usually. Especially in an FPS. Lone wolf syndrome is common, trying to get a pub group to follow another person is just plain amusing, and insane. I wouldn't follow a high ranked person when they told me to move somewhere for the simple reason i've been around long enough to know that people with rank usually don't know what they're doing, they've just been around long enough for them to develop the idea they have the right to tell others what to do.

The only control you'll find is from outfits exerting orders over their members or squads full of people that know each other or know of the others enough to trust them.

Third point. You should get a better handle of military procedures before you try spouting out what the US military does. Don't start off with "Strategy" then spout out about all the BS you just did. It is insulting, asinine and does nothing to further a supposed point that you tried to make with that last ill thought out post.



If you truly believe there is no strategy in fast paced FPSs you should try getting your hands on some tournament demos and you'll find the coordination and skill as well as tactical thinking done by some of these teams are very very good indeed.

[connnnn]

Well for starters, you could in theory have all 200 people on a side linked together with some sort of communication system... but that's not going to happen. They're not going to FORCE people to join giant comms chains just to play the game, so you will always have lots of people (and groups) who work independently of each other. This is talking strictly about the large areas where everyone will be allowed inside. You can't expect the majority of players to want to bother to organize with everyone else.

And you basically just said the same thing I did, but with a negative spin... fast paced games are just that: fast paced. If I wanted a chess game, I'd play a game of chess. But to claim that it's too fast to have any strategy is just absurd. Apparently you've never played or watched competition in any of these games... because there's plenty of communication and teamwork going on. Matter fact, teamwork pretty much always beats out individual skill. But a lot of times you don't have to communicate. The best teamwork comes from practicing together to the point where things are instinctual and you already know what you're going to do. Like I said faster paced games typically require you to have things planned out before the match starts and make adjustments on the fly supported by quick decision making. If you don't believe me, watch some competition. It's no accident when 1 person corrals an opponent into 2 waiting teammates, or when a flag carrier dives through a doorway with 2 teammates waiting there to take out chasing enemies.

In your Halo 2 example, that plan takes all of what, 5 seconds to say? It's not as though complex planning doesn't happen in the middle of faster games. The best teams in any game learn to be as efficient with comms as possible... some (including mine) use shorthand phrases to say things more quickly. You'd be surprised how fast you can transmit information if everyone knows what's going on.

[Garin]

Trenches is not a bad idea, but should be restricted to certain areas. Trench fighting is certainly not the most effective strategy in warfare, but there can be appropriate times to use it.

[Naughty]

Very nice idea IMO, Trenches would also just give it more of that war feel to the game. Being able to hop down into a trench, be safe (that is until a grenade comes in) and watch all the mayhem going on while unloading clips on people... would be awesome.

[SurfnBird]

hell yea i think it all come down to people who like to get in the shit and people who like to get in the shit but more spaced out. ok thats makes sense only to me so to put it so everyone ealse can understand what i mean is that there are people that love to get right up in someones face and but a round right threw them and then theres the guy that would rather meat in an open field run in circles and shot instead of meeting the man face to face and get satisfaction knowing that you were the better man and took his ass out and his ass is down in the dirt becuase you were better................or you just love frantic choas rained combate which a trench give you.

[Decent_xVICIOUSx]

Trenchs are part of war and thats wut Huxley is a WAR SYNvALT all is fair in love and war get used to obstacles and unexpected objects and people thats wut makes a good game IMAGINATION