I was trying to make a thread this morning when I found out, that I don't really have a point for it. So I gave it a day, came back this evening and this time found out, that my list of suggestions is way too long to be just added into the game. It's almost like... it would need another game. Well, lets get that out of the way anyway.
Death
First and foremost, death. I've heard that a lot - despite the realism and dramatic events depicted in the game, the death itself feels way too common and more like in any arcade shooter. It's not punishing, it's not dramatic, it's just "oh, I died, wait for respawn I suppose". This is made even worse by the fact that death is actually important strategy-wise - tickets - but it's never signalized to the player that they should really try to stay alive. Of course, after a couple of mistakes he'll stop running around like an idiot and use cover, but still, that's more of a "I want to actually play" thing, rather than "hell, I really need to stay alive". Because, lets face it, you don't feel that much, unless you're an SL or something.
That's what my original thread was about. But I haven't found a way to actually make a suggestion on how to fix it without changing a game - making it a "patchable" issue. The game is kind of fundamentally flawed here, and while I don't want to just diss it and say it's an awful thing, it's definitely something to consider for future installments.
First and foremost (again?) - war is not about killing. War is about gaining ground. In RO2 terms that means, that you shouldn't aim for the most kills, you should aim for getting onto the point, preferably scaring the enemy away first. To be honest, the game already tries to do that, you'll hear the SLs constantly yell about "getting on the point, get on the f*cking point", but their frustration comes from the fact that it's so easy to kill people, that first - people want to just stay in cover and snipe; and second - they don't want to run into the open.
So I guess that here we go again - how to make the shooting harder, and we already had that discussion a couple of times, so I won't repeat myself here. The point is - shooting should not be about killing, but suppressing and scaring the enemy away. When you know where the enemy is, you shouldn't wait for him to pop out, you should cover his cover (heh) with bullets, so he'll run away and you'll be able to take his position. This also makes bunkers way more viable, from "hey, I'm here, please kill me" places into an actual defense points. Another benefit is that people will stay alive more - yes, they'll take over the ground, but the enemy won't die, but rather run away. Of course, the enemy will suffer causalities as well, but this time they actually would be important.
Secondly, the damage system. Now it's made so even if you'll be seriously wounded - not actually killed outright, but wounded - you will still die. That's fine and dandy, not everyone gets helped outright, but it can be done way, way better. It can be done so the "death" is actually part of the gameplay itself. The gameplay needs medics.
This is a suggestion, so like with every suggestion it's kind of iffy, but imagine this. If you actually die, you suffer a cooldown. This cooldown isn't small either, it's deliberately made to punish. This, however, isn't a thing that always happen, because often you'll just be hurt (especially if the shooting is harder and you won't get headshoted all the time, but maybe hit in the upper leg, shoulder or something). Often you'll just need medical help and here's where the medic comes in - he has to pick you up and can either patch you or carry back to the spawn point (actually every player should be able to carry people back, makes for a lot of "movie-like" dramatic moments). If he does, the guy obviously stays wounded, but you'll get a "replacement" right away - in layman's terms, you just respawn immediately. If you die, then, again, you get a punishing cooldown.
This, overall, makes the death more important. People will, of course, die, but you'll get a lot of this "f*ck, he died" moments players want to see, maybe someone will die on the medic's hands, maybe someone will bleed out while carried back to the medic - all in all, good fun.
Squads and SLs
Here's another thing I have a problem with - the fact that squads don't really exist and SL is just a mobile spawnpoint.
Time to face it - SL is dumb. His job is to sit behind the objective and spawn people onto it. So you got camping (or just sitting around doing nothing) and spawning people in the middle of the map, possibly right into enemy fire if the SL doesn't know what he's doing, all of that in one package.
RO2 (or RO3) would benefit greatly from realism in that part. The goals are to make the SL an actual squad leader. The game needs to form squads and teamwork on the go and I know this is hard. We know that from a lot of games, it's tough to get people going together. Here's a couple of obvious improvements.
1. Don't spawn people right on top of the SL. Rather, spawn them in the closest spawn point and give them a marker on their SLs position at all times. This gives them an obvious "hey, here's your SL, go there and join the team". Also give the player some little marker of "hey, you're near your SL, good job". You might think it's a little thing, but showing the player he's doing the right thing is important.
2. We've already concluded that dying should be rarer, so make SL more important in helping his team out. Less suppression when in vicinity of SL? Definitely yes.
3. Addendum to the third one, give SL the tools to lead his team. Learn from the MOBA games and their "smart-wheel-ping-pong-don't-want-to-write-everything" thing. It can actually be made with existing code.
Give the SL "the finger". Code it's usage like a grenade - it's a "weapon", but bound to a key, which will possibly be rebound to the mouse by the players. The finger points at stuff with a green overlay only visible to you - like the binoculars and airstrikes. "Firing it" opens a circular menu, much like the one that's in the game right now, with options for the team's fragments first (riflemen/assault/sniper/etc.) and orders later (move/shoot/etc.). Releasing the finger shouts the information. Give people "squad points" for doing as they are told.
4. Since you have a leveling system, lock the SL away from newbies. Of course that wouldn't affect server owners and people privileged by them.
RSOD
That's an easy one. RSoD is dumb and it needs to go, we know that. It should only affect the point behind the closest one and if enemies are still in the point, then simply don't spawn them there, but in the one before. You can already see people spawning in your sights on multiple maps, so we know it solves nothing. If people rush the captured point, then show the information, that "our point is under enemy fire, spawning behind it" and do so.
Arcade Mode
Just no.
So... here's a wall of text. Yoshiro will hate me.
Death
First and foremost, death. I've heard that a lot - despite the realism and dramatic events depicted in the game, the death itself feels way too common and more like in any arcade shooter. It's not punishing, it's not dramatic, it's just "oh, I died, wait for respawn I suppose". This is made even worse by the fact that death is actually important strategy-wise - tickets - but it's never signalized to the player that they should really try to stay alive. Of course, after a couple of mistakes he'll stop running around like an idiot and use cover, but still, that's more of a "I want to actually play" thing, rather than "hell, I really need to stay alive". Because, lets face it, you don't feel that much, unless you're an SL or something.
That's what my original thread was about. But I haven't found a way to actually make a suggestion on how to fix it without changing a game - making it a "patchable" issue. The game is kind of fundamentally flawed here, and while I don't want to just diss it and say it's an awful thing, it's definitely something to consider for future installments.
First and foremost (again?) - war is not about killing. War is about gaining ground. In RO2 terms that means, that you shouldn't aim for the most kills, you should aim for getting onto the point, preferably scaring the enemy away first. To be honest, the game already tries to do that, you'll hear the SLs constantly yell about "getting on the point, get on the f*cking point", but their frustration comes from the fact that it's so easy to kill people, that first - people want to just stay in cover and snipe; and second - they don't want to run into the open.
So I guess that here we go again - how to make the shooting harder, and we already had that discussion a couple of times, so I won't repeat myself here. The point is - shooting should not be about killing, but suppressing and scaring the enemy away. When you know where the enemy is, you shouldn't wait for him to pop out, you should cover his cover (heh) with bullets, so he'll run away and you'll be able to take his position. This also makes bunkers way more viable, from "hey, I'm here, please kill me" places into an actual defense points. Another benefit is that people will stay alive more - yes, they'll take over the ground, but the enemy won't die, but rather run away. Of course, the enemy will suffer causalities as well, but this time they actually would be important.
Secondly, the damage system. Now it's made so even if you'll be seriously wounded - not actually killed outright, but wounded - you will still die. That's fine and dandy, not everyone gets helped outright, but it can be done way, way better. It can be done so the "death" is actually part of the gameplay itself. The gameplay needs medics.
This is a suggestion, so like with every suggestion it's kind of iffy, but imagine this. If you actually die, you suffer a cooldown. This cooldown isn't small either, it's deliberately made to punish. This, however, isn't a thing that always happen, because often you'll just be hurt (especially if the shooting is harder and you won't get headshoted all the time, but maybe hit in the upper leg, shoulder or something). Often you'll just need medical help and here's where the medic comes in - he has to pick you up and can either patch you or carry back to the spawn point (actually every player should be able to carry people back, makes for a lot of "movie-like" dramatic moments). If he does, the guy obviously stays wounded, but you'll get a "replacement" right away - in layman's terms, you just respawn immediately. If you die, then, again, you get a punishing cooldown.
This, overall, makes the death more important. People will, of course, die, but you'll get a lot of this "f*ck, he died" moments players want to see, maybe someone will die on the medic's hands, maybe someone will bleed out while carried back to the medic - all in all, good fun.
Squads and SLs
Here's another thing I have a problem with - the fact that squads don't really exist and SL is just a mobile spawnpoint.
Time to face it - SL is dumb. His job is to sit behind the objective and spawn people onto it. So you got camping (or just sitting around doing nothing) and spawning people in the middle of the map, possibly right into enemy fire if the SL doesn't know what he's doing, all of that in one package.
RO2 (or RO3) would benefit greatly from realism in that part. The goals are to make the SL an actual squad leader. The game needs to form squads and teamwork on the go and I know this is hard. We know that from a lot of games, it's tough to get people going together. Here's a couple of obvious improvements.
1. Don't spawn people right on top of the SL. Rather, spawn them in the closest spawn point and give them a marker on their SLs position at all times. This gives them an obvious "hey, here's your SL, go there and join the team". Also give the player some little marker of "hey, you're near your SL, good job". You might think it's a little thing, but showing the player he's doing the right thing is important.
2. We've already concluded that dying should be rarer, so make SL more important in helping his team out. Less suppression when in vicinity of SL? Definitely yes.
3. Addendum to the third one, give SL the tools to lead his team. Learn from the MOBA games and their "smart-wheel-ping-pong-don't-want-to-write-everything" thing. It can actually be made with existing code.
Give the SL "the finger". Code it's usage like a grenade - it's a "weapon", but bound to a key, which will possibly be rebound to the mouse by the players. The finger points at stuff with a green overlay only visible to you - like the binoculars and airstrikes. "Firing it" opens a circular menu, much like the one that's in the game right now, with options for the team's fragments first (riflemen/assault/sniper/etc.) and orders later (move/shoot/etc.). Releasing the finger shouts the information. Give people "squad points" for doing as they are told.
4. Since you have a leveling system, lock the SL away from newbies. Of course that wouldn't affect server owners and people privileged by them.
RSOD
That's an easy one. RSoD is dumb and it needs to go, we know that. It should only affect the point behind the closest one and if enemies are still in the point, then simply don't spawn them there, but in the one before. You can already see people spawning in your sights on multiple maps, so we know it solves nothing. If people rush the captured point, then show the information, that "our point is under enemy fire, spawning behind it" and do so.
Arcade Mode
Just no.
So... here's a wall of text. Yoshiro will hate me.
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