Vehicle and body persistence

[Carrick1973]

Here’s the one immersion detail that all games screw up on – namely persistence on the battlefield of dead soldiers and burned out vehicles. I know it takes a lot of CPU to keep track of where everything is and devs need to make a balance between too much stuff on screen and not enough, but personally, I’d take a hit on performance or eye candy to be able to have true persistence. When I’m standing behind a burned out wreck and it (and the smoke it’s generating) disappear, that’s just damn annoying.

A couple of points come to mind. If a vehicle is known to last an entire round, it could be used as a means of blocking a street to provide bottlenecks for a defending team. The attacking team would then be able to move the wreckage aside with tanks by allowing a tank to ‘chain’ up to a wrecked hull and move it aside. Tanks would also be able to plow into - and up and over some wrecks (APCs), but not others (tanks). If CPU really is an issue, then limit the number of total vehicles to 20 on smaller maps and 50 on larger maps. This adds to the realism in that if you know you’re only going to have 10 vehicles per round, you’re going to take much better care to not screw up. Additionally, there just wasn’t wave after wave of vehicles available at all times. The smoke generated by a vehicle when it’s burning could be limited to 10 or so vehicles, with the first vehicle destroyed going out and just leaving the wreckage, and as additional vehicles are destroyed and start to smoke, others stop smoking. Some vehicles would stay smoking for the full duration just to add realism. I’ve read of tanks during the war that would burn for several days. The key is that when a vehicle is destroyed, it remains a part of the game for the duration.

Body persistence is key because it shows where danger zones are. If I come to the bottom of a stairway and I see a mound of my soldiers slain at the bottom, I’m going to figure another way through. Besides, if you think about it, when we respawn, we’re not supposed to be the same person, we’re supposed to be a replacement coming into the battle, thus the original bodies should remain where they were.

If nothing else, please let us make a mod on the server so that the level of persistence can be updated.

[Overholt]

People should just amp out thier cpu gpu or whatever to play on servers with these settings.

[Carrick1973]

Originally Posted by Overholt

People should just amp out thier cpu gpu or whatever to play on servers with these settings.

Agreed - as long as everyone has the same persistance settings and sees the same stuff throughout. Perhaps some servers would have a warning that you're PC isn't fast enough and will have framerate issues if you join.

[Mein Leben!]

Even better, make it a client-side option. This way you can have as many dead bodies strewn across the battlefield as you want without other players taking a performance hit.

[Carrick1973]

Originally Posted by Mein Leben!

Even better, make it a client-side option. This way you can have as many dead bodies strewn across the battlefield as you want without other players taking a performance hit.

That's not a problem with bullet holes and stuff, but bodies and equipment/vehicles has to be an all or nothing, otherwise, I'd be hiding behind a burnt out tank and someone who has the option turned off would see right through the tank.

[Cpt-Praxius]

Originally Posted by Carrick1973

That's not a problem with bullet holes and stuff, but bodies and equipment/vehicles has to be an all or nothing, otherwise, I'd be hiding behind a burnt out tank and someone who has the option turned off would see right through the tank.

Indeed.... using a blown up vehicle for cover is common in RO, and now in RO2 you can use bodies if you want to..... having them on your side of the server and not on anybody else's means you'll think you're covered, but to everybody else, you're standing with your bird flapping in the wind and an easy target.