[Mission feedback] Rising Scud

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Black Mamba
Posts: 335
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 12:11 pm

[Mission feedback] Rising Scud

Post by Black Mamba »

After two playtests, it's probably time to open a feedback thread for this one as well.
Suggestions, remarks, and all that jazz are welcome!

For now, I'll review the marker system, as it's been pointed out to me that the yellow/orange stuff is ugly and prevents you from reading the map.
Also, if you have suggestions for a better name, well, keep them to yourself, cause I like this one, it is very manly. Or cloudy.

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Ferrard Carson
Posts: 565
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:08 am

Re: [Mission feedback] Rising Scud

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Like you mentioned already, the marker colorings do make it somewhat hard to read. Also, it was unclear to me both times we played that mission as to what the green zone is supposed to represent. Is this where BluFor is supposed to teleport to? Both times we've played, BluFor has teleported to just outside the green zone and then walked / rode forth.

Asset menu is way too much choice for an FA mission, and the assets themselves are, for the most part, useless (unarmed Humvee, MTVR) or should really be selected in the slotting process (M60E4, MH-6J).

The mines without warning are a bit punishing and discourage anything but "charge up the center" if someone doesn't have a GPS to see where the zone starts. Some sort of "5 second" warning would be good.

The mines don't prevent a little-bird loaded fireteam from looping around behind and skipping the defenses, which actually seems to be the only way to avoid a frontal assault on prepared defenses.

Overall, between the insane minefield placement, the arbitrary buying of assets ingame, the manual teleportation, and frontal assault being BluFor's only option besides the little-bird sequence breaking, the mission feels incredibly "gamey" compared to our normal fare. It's not a feeling I like.

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

Black Mamba
Posts: 335
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 12:11 pm

Re: [Mission feedback] Rising Scud

Post by Black Mamba »

Points taken. Then again, this was some kind of concept, which I know is absolutely not what we're used to play around here. The goal here was to put some accent on map reading (which is easy when you have dirty markers on it, right?) and taking good advantage of new terrain features for every playthrough.

I'll try and answer point by point (which doesn't mean I refute yours, I'm merely trying to explain the thought process behind, and see if this must be ditched or can be made better).
Ferrard Carson wrote:Like you mentioned already, the marker colorings do make it somewhat hard to read. Also, it was unclear to me both times we played that mission as to what the green zone is supposed to represent. Is this where BluFor is supposed to teleport to? Both times we've played, BluFor has teleported to just outside the green zone and then walked / rode forth.
Yeah. Basically the green marker was designed as a buffer zone, to prevent OP and BLU being already in visual contact when the weapons live signal would be given.
Ferrard Carson wrote:Asset menu is way too much choice for an FA mission, and the assets themselves are, for the most part, useless (unarmed Humvee, MTVR) or should really be selected in the slotting process (M60E4, MH-6J).

On this one I disagree. Every single asset does have a use, even though, obviously some are more useful/an edge than others. Even empty humvees can be used for transport, ammo refills, or cover. the trucks can be used in the same way, or to set up a repair rearm point for the chopper.
Why did I chose to have them selected in mission and not during slotting? Exactly for those reasons: the defending team, even though it has the advantage of (intelligently fortified) terrain, doesn't know beforehand what the enemy will bring. For example, it would be an error to leave the objective uncovered while you don't know if the enemy has air transport or not.
The little size of the AO should allow "left behind troops" to quickly join the front if it's confirmed the enemy is not attacking via air.
Ferrard Carson wrote:The mines without warning are a bit punishing and discourage anything but "charge up the center" if someone doesn't have a GPS to see where the zone starts. Some sort of "5 second" warning would be good.
I could include one, it's actually already in there, I used it for debugging purposes.
Ferrard Carson wrote:The mines don't prevent a little-bird loaded fireteam from looping around behind and skipping the defenses, which actually seems to be the only way to avoid a frontal assault on prepared defenses.
See above. Then again, the mission was designed as a corridor frontal assault. Short-intense firefight adversarial (well, a mission-maker can dream, right?). The amount of tools plus an edge in numbers for BLU are supposed to somewhat balance it.
Ferrard Carson wrote:Overall, between the insane minefield placement, the arbitrary buying of assets ingame, the manual teleportation, and frontal assault being BluFor's only option besides the little-bird sequence breaking, the mission feels incredibly "gamey" compared to our normal fare. It's not a feeling I like.
I don't really know what to answer to that, since I'm not sure I get it right. What do you mean by "gamey"? Is that something you reckon can be fixed without totally gutting the mission?
Just for info, the manual teleport was implemented to avoid issues with automatic teleport that would stick you in a rock or a tree (which you'll admit is not that fun). If that kind of stuff happens, all you have to do is mapclick to be free!
Also, the idea behind all this stuff (which I guess is what you dislike) was simply to create some sort of "intelligent radomization", if you will. Thus avoiding the "they did this last time, let's do that" or "I know by experience that lcation is key". Not to avoid metagaming, that was not the goal here, but more to emphasize on the ability to make a new plan, adapted to the new terrain, everytime, and the right choice of assets to suit the terrain.

On the other hand, while creating the mission, I was considering making basically a "twin" one, only the objective would be to take a random town. The area reserved to the defenders would then be a circle around that location. I abandoned this idea due to the already sheer number of "village attack defense" missions we have.

What I take from your input, while still trying to keep the original concept:
- The LB (at least the transport one) should be removed from the choice
- An idea I had at the beginning, was to just give the attacking force a choice between two or three assets, from which only one could be selected. Keep the surprise element, remove the unnecessary fuss (then again, the current systems scales to the player count, which I think is a good thing)
- A warning for people entering the border zones, giving them a fair chance of realizing it before dying stupidly, thus not ruining their game
- Of course a revamp of the markers system

Would that sound better?

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