Caps zones with extremely large areas

[Funker42]

This might be a suggestion more towards the map makers than TWI, but...

One of the things that have always struck me odd about FPS games dealing with WWII is the concept of a cap zone. Now I remember before DoD where we just had capture the flag, but with these new 50 player servers, shouldn't the cap zones just entail whole swathes of territory that needed to be controlled.

I don't recall anything other than the storming of the Reichstag and a few contested buildings in Stalingrad in which simply getting enough bodies in a small area would constitute a victory.

Rather, to control and area you would have to take the entire city block or entire square km of open field to really call it yours.

As it is now, just removing cap zones all together and just let people slug it out until reinforcements run out would strangely make more sense.

Secondly, the fact that the the cap zones are so small will generally give away the fact there is enemy in that particular area (I'm looking at you Orel).

I'm sure this happened in the real war:

"Dimitri! They are trying to sneak by our left flank and take the farm house!" "How can you tell Ivan!"
"Well I pulled up my cloth map and its magically flashing X's over the farm house!"

It would make much more sense to block off the entire map in grids rather than arbitrary locations like a lump of trees. That way you could look at a map and see the front, but not know exactly what the enemy was up to and their exact location.

 

[Kaneohe]

This might be a suggestion more towards the map makers than TWI, but...

One of the things that have always struck me odd about FPS games dealing with WWII is the concept of a cap zone. Now I remember before DoD where we just had capture the flag, but with these new 50 player servers, shouldn't the cap zones just entail whole swathes of territory that needed to be controlled.

I don't recall anything other than the storming of the Reichstag and a few contested buildings in Stalingrad in which simply getting enough bodies in a small area would constitute a victory.

Rather, to control and area you would have to take the entire city block or entire square km of open field to really call it yours.

As it is now, just removing cap zones all together and just let people slug it out until reinforcements run out would strangely make more sense.

Secondly, the fact that the the cap zones are so small will generally give away the fact there is enemy in that particular area (I'm looking at you Orel).

I'm sure this happened in the real war:

"Dimitri! They are trying to sneak by our left flank and take the farm house!" "How can you tell Ivan!"
"Well I pulled up my cloth map and its magically flashing X's over the farm house!"

It would make much more sense to block off the entire map in grids rather than arbitrary locations like a lump of trees. That way you could look at a map and see the front, but not know exactly what the enemy was up to and their exact location.

It's unrealistic, but it makes sense. Making small capzones means that a whole lot of people are trying to get into a small area, which focuses the action around that capzone. You can't avoid conflict in a situation like that.

With a large capzone, it can be difficult just finding the enemy, let alone killing him and taking the capzone in a timely manner.

Your idea makes perfect sense for tank maps, but I don't think it would work as well with infantry.

 

[Murphy]

I like Team-Deathmatch too, its that people usually don't fight with teams but only IN teams in TDM. So the concept of capzones makes sense as it encourages teamplay and sets smaller achievable goals where you can more easily feel involved and see your part of the success.

I see what you are coming from though and I think you are right. It should either be like you suggested, or teams should have real objectives. So instead of changing the mapsymbol of the lump o'trees they should be charged with stuff like, destroy this and that, disable this and that, get a VIP there and there, steal this and that, drive all the enemies out of this and that, activate this and that, send a message to HQ from there and there, kill infantery there and there to make a path for your team's tanks and protect them on their way through the city block, and it could be mixed up with traditional capzones as in: capture that trainyard so we can send you troops, etc.

Capzones are easier to generate though and they have a similar effect on the teamplay (smaller sub-goals) so I'm fine with them, even if they are not optimal. Info on the map is needed for coordination and while some of it is definately unrealistic it doesn't hurt that much in most cases.

What I would like to see is a return of the feature that more men are needed to successfully capture a zone instead of just capturing it faster when more men are inside. Now one man can capture a zone, back in the days of the mod, you actually HAD to team up to be able to cap one. I don't know why they took that out because it was really good for teamplaying purposes.

 

[Basil]

I also would like to see bigger cap zones. For example if the objective is a fortification with trenches and bunkers, the cap zone should stretch to cover the whole thing and not just some parts of it. It doesn't make much sense if there's loads of enemies in the trench but they still aren't capturing the objective because they aren't inside some narrow invisible area. And in tank maps these zones should be even larger, if the objective is a field then the cap zone should also be pretty much the whole field and not some 100m circle in the middle.