Civilians

[Stukadriver]

I am repeating this from an earlier post I did...because I am not sure how these things get read or considered...
I just said that I thought an element of realism could be to add civilians to the situations in that there always were some poor souls who did not evacuate for one reason or another and found themselves in the middle of a fight. So perhaps at times during a battle, a few civilians could try to make a run for it to get to better shelter, so to speak...or be in a room or hole in a building you are trying to clear. That would sharpen up a player's trigger impulse, add some excitement to the situation, and if you inadvertently (or otherwise) shoot the civilians, you lose points...
Sometimes it seems that when I am playing with a bolt action rifle, someone runs into the room with their automatic on full bore at full speed...then runs out again...hey...that works, no question, but if some more thought went into the tactic, it might make people spray less and cause more intensity.

 

[Avtomat]

That would probably lead to 2 things.

1,People will stop caring, sometimes just shoot civilians for the lulz (With RO classic mode coming, points won't really matter anyway)
2,Feature gets censored in countries like Germany.

BF3 had civilians in singleplayer, but they were invincible.

 

[Stukadriver]

Yeah...probably right...funny creatures, these humans...

 

[shadowmoses]

Again. What would it add? I honestly feel this moves farther away from the type of game that RO is and always had been.

Ultimately (and at it's bare bones) you have two sides. They fight over objectives. A player has the ability to remove other players and be removed himself by shooting and being shot at. The side that has killed the other team and/or captured all the objectives first, wins.

It's that simple but complexity comes in with how sides chose to reach their objectives dynamically, ie way points, order of reaching objectives, player classes and how each class is deployed and where they are deployed to, ect. Personally I find it to be a lot less dynamic than it should be with too few cut off routs, destroyable doors/walls for engineers to produce new way points, flanking points, and so on). But these point mostly to map complexity or the lack there of.

Realism note:
Why would civilians be running around in the streets when there is a battle going on? The battlefields we fight in are clearly torn up and fought over prior to any match starting. Civi's would have most likely been killed, moved on, or even relocated by the time fighting had started. I just feel this is adding an element that would change the game into something RO has never been.

In my opinion, the game needs be adding elements that encourage more team dynamics in a more intuitive way. Not adding systems for the sake of adding systems.

EDIT:
There is a game that does use a civilian type system called Project Reality. It's a mod for BF2. The difference here is that human players assume the role of a "Collaborator" Class on the Insurgence side. He does not carry a weapon (except for stones to throw) and there for he does not meet ROE. If he is shot at then the player that kills him will lose a lot of points. If he does pick up a weapon however, he will be considered a threat and he can be shot and killed with no repercussions. His role in the game is to be a bit of a nuisance and provide intelligence on enemy locations and can sometimes act as human shields. He can also help build assets, set up booby-traps, IEDs, and throw a grappling-hooks if memory serves me right.

 

[Andrew Blake]

IMO this is just ****ed up, reminds me of the School Shooter: North American Tour 2012 mod. What a mess that was.

 

[I. Kant]

There are civilians in ARMA. I think I may have shot some a few times, by accident. Luckily, they were just virtual representations of humans, so no guilt trips induced (though it did trigger a bit of a reflection about my trigger reflexes, if you excuse my cunning punning). I don't think ARMA is banned in Germany, is it? Or are the civilians removed there?

Could see it in a mod or custom content, why not. Making the battlefield confusing and unpredictable, thus removing automatisation of player behaviour is something I'd like (case in point: flying papers on some maps in HOS right now; I think they garnered quite a few positive comments for exactly their distracting nature).

 

[Cyper]

As said above me, civilians are used in arma. I think it could workout well if there was an option to turn civilians on / off. There could simply be a penalty for shooting civilians. I am not sure if it would be controversial actually. Not if its used for simulation purposes at least.

 

[Snuffeldjuret]

Were there even civilians in battlezones like stalingrad?

(history noob)

 

[Lone Rebel]

Maybe in Leningrad, since the city was literally cut off by Finns\Germans forces, and actually fought for years (was supplied trhoug the Ladoga lake when it frozes in winter)

In Stalingrad, west side of the Volga, afaik, there weren't civilian on the fornt lines, just out of commons sense, plus the area was pretty hot and crowded at all times, hot battles at everytime, no much room for civs anyway.

If you take the Red October factory, that was a tank factory, you'd have workers (well... according to what propaganda said at least) working on the tanks assembly line and, at the end of it, without even painting the tank, jumping inside the tank and drove into battle against germans at its doors.

As you can tell by yourself, even if the T34 wasn't so techy as german counterparts, it would be hard for a worker to man the sistems, aiming the turrets, without some sort of training. Would be even harder that a worker on an assembly line knows every aspect of the building process, to start from scratch and get to the end of the line, plus being able to handle a tank... so, hardly true imho.

Again, I say it more clearly:

This is a tactical battle simulator on an historical setting No need for civilians, kids, cows, chickens in the battle action. No need, more cpu usage for nothing. Not historical, not realistic either.

War zones weren't like nowadays. War wasn't what it is nowadays. Don't mix up the two things. War was taken seriously and on another scale. You are not in a middle east street riot. You are on a huge war, fought with different approaches, tactics, and mentality. Civilians were smart enough to run away asap, as they should still do today.

 

[The_Emperor]

Apparently there were civilians in Stalingrad due to the goddamn mother****er who gave the city its name. I can't remember what order it was but "Not a step backwards!", There is no land for us on the other side of the Volga!" and "A empty city (no people living in it) is not worth defending!" speak for itself.

As a German soldier you are actually always suspicious towards Russian civilians. You never know if they are members of the resistance movement who will try to kill you cowardly from behind, will forward your location to Red Army forces or if they are even happy to see you as their liberators from the Bolshevik regime.
Grandfather told me it was very difficult because with the resistance movement civilians were no civilians any longer. You were always afraid for someone backstabbing you but of course you wouldn't want to line them up and gun them all down either.


The problem is today's political correctness bs about war crimes and so on.
Little example there:
You are a German soldier checking out a Russian village, you enter one building, enter the living room and you see a dead German soldier (blood is spilled around his body) lying on the floor. Inside the room there's an elderly woman, a mid-30 woman with children. Wouldn't you believe they killed the German? Are you not afraid if you turn your back on them they will stab you too? If you gun them down right now you commit a warcrime but your reaction out of hate and fear for your own life is completely natural at this moment. Still you committed a warcrime.
But on the other hand, what if the Russian women acted in self-defense because the - meanwhile dead - German tried to rape the mother? You don't know about these things but this won't occur to you in these moments, you just see a dead German, next one could be you!

This ****ty, dire situations don't come to the minds of those moralist assholes who judge those men from a today's perspective. We are at peace, back then there was ****ing war!


About the game: I already hate civilians in MW2 as you fight your way through the Favela of Rio de Janeiro. They pop out of nowhere and you in fear a milita just broke from cover will open fire on them. As it's singleplayer it will just restart you at the last checkpoint if you kill more than 2 but with multiplayer you will most likely receive a huge amount of negative score. You really want to lose all the Honor you earned by hard due to some stupid civilians "frightening" you and you blaze them down? No thank you!

And no thank you again for making the game too realistic. Shooting civilians in real life eventually happens due to fear and hate - like I said moralist assholes who sit at home happily feasting and farting in their living room with no bullets chasing past your head will go bananas, cause THEY will never do that. THEY are better humans. - You can't get the fear and reckless hate into people playing the game they probably have in real life in the same situation.

Shooting female soldiers is same to me as killing male soldiers, wouldn't mind them to be ingame.
BUT if RO2 adds civilians I will only keep on playing it if there's still maps without civilians. Otherwise I'll delete it from my HDD.

 

[Morello]

This has been discussed and rejected in the past.