Just putting up some suggestions here for consideration or discussion in light or many exciting and sometimes controversial changes to the game coming.
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Stop squads running around on engineer building: I am an engineer, getting ready for the next waves of foes bearing down on the next cap. I gotta dig in, build up, and shoot stuff down. Sometimes, I am in a good flanking position, and all the reds aren’t paying attention to me - or perhaps we’re on offense sneaking in a spawner. So, set my squad to behave, formation close, and start building. AND ALL MY SQUAD STANDS UP AND RUNS THE F AWAY FROM ME. Omg, position blown, defenses exposed, I should’ve murdered my own soldiers. I mean really WTF. Part of me gets it - AI is confused and blocking your builds, so they auto scatter to give you room. But… just no. Stop it. A freeze command? A better AI? Allowing clipping of soldier models? Do sth please.
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On to less angsty suggestions, I suggest awarding kills in dogfights to players that shake planes on their tail. This is not actually for me. I’ve been outflown before by tree-hugging maniacs and died - or even BOMBED - they bomb drop and the upward explosion kills me. No wait, I killed myself according to the game. I mean, come on, can something be figured out? If plane X chases plane Y in reticle and plane Y starts flying evasively instead of bombingly, etc, and X dies because Y outflew 'em, well, rack up some score. I’m couch suggesting here, so this is probably harder than I suggest, but here it is.
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PVWhat. Subtle indicators that you are attacking bots instead of humans, or human squads (to feed into my next point).
Gaming manbots is sometimes easier than humans (no I’m not asking to make bot farming easier, on the contrary). Other times, when I was taken out or spotted by otherwise impossible means, a bot might have killed me by some unfortunate coding by the devs rather than some POS cheater. I can accept ongoing dev work on AI causing my death, but NOT hackers. I don’t want to waste time reporting a bot for ‘cheating’. Further, I think how many bots are on our team should be transparent, not hidden. We can understand better why we won, lost, and how; plus we will give devs feedback on what balances are more or less acceptable. If we keep losing because two of us on a team are humans and the rest are bots, that’s a game problem - if it’s balanced and we suck, that’s a call for self improvement. Not telling us what kind of players are on is kind of gaslighting - plus speaking in chat and getting no replies should be distinguishable between ‘humans are busy’ and ‘bots are bots’.
By subtle indicators I mean something like unique uniform configurations that wouldn’t give different advantages. Etc.
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Tiered scoring against squad/player types. Point (3) above would lead to bot farming without an intervention, and I think there could be a solution that counters that and gives more benefits: Human scalps payout the most in score, human squad members close behind, whereas bot squads give increasingly diminishing returns. I am assuming that the average-enough human player is more cunning than bots here, rather than 1km sniper super bots that do a terminator whip around and murder pilots 500 high. Tiering would persuade more human pvp interactions and since more often humans gun for the most active zones as there would be more points there. Farming the edges should be possible, but increasingly worthless.
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With points 3/4 in play, perhaps we could loosen up on the game wall? There may be better ways to keep matches active than murdering (human) squads that are in the fog. Some long-range or planned strategies cannot by executed against entrenched (campy) enemies because of this. I might be asking a lot since the maps might need to widen, but I do like freedom.
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Thoughts on new grenades. The new grenade types to offset the complaints of explosive packs I think is a good way to make the game mechanics more dynamic without simply deleting expacks because reasons. As a former f2p, expacks are one way to get stuff done without prem stuff.
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Thoughts on new ranking system. Like a dev said, let’s give it a try. It might collapse though if there isn’t enough population in the player base, in matches, across different sides, to support such competitiveness. If they game becomes fixated on competition and neglects gameplay, then I’m out, so please make being more casual more rewarding in its own way too.
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Record matches for all players and allow access to anyone post match, from the POV of the controlling player. Did I get cheat-killed, or am I just being a whiney butthurt? Impossible to know most times without a review after the match. Also, why is that guy getting 179 kills and me 23, while still very active? Are his/her mad skills transferrable, trainable, or is he using a weapon or position in a particular way that is fair but uncommon, unfair and exploitive? Who knows? Why keep this secret? I can think of some reasons but none are good. I mean, I could use it as evidence to out wall hackers, and I could use it to up my game. In the former, as evidence, I can use timestamps or some data about time/place/player to perhaps save labour in identifying cheaters - I mean, if finding cheaters is a sincere thing.
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Stop inadvertently punishing players for pressing ‘Join any team’, which defaults you into low-pop high-loss matches. This is bloody murder without knowing map/team/server populations. You want spread out matching right? Think Uber. The busy times act differently than the quiet hours. Put a transparent score multiplier on matches that are under popd, if there are enough players to go around for either side.
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Allow for map filtering to combat ‘deserters’ instead of whatever other things the devs are trying out right now. I’m a rare leaver but after getting the frigging MANOR the THIRD time in a row, fk it, I’m out. Also, people often leave clearly brutal matches. Anyway, why punish players for looking for maps they like? Have we not learned from Netflix trying to punish its subscribers? Players get: Maps they want; devs get: data on which maps need work - which may also be used to cut back on maps that aren’t performing if you would like the population elsewhere.
Another Added: Please fix the auto-removal of shots or grenades launched in the air when firing at an enemy who shoots at you first, hits and kills you but not before you get that shot off.
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Keep up the great work.
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Steam, when you can, please.
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Long eh, sorry.