I am, of course, talking about the fast chat/ action wheel that we have ingame and how i consider that other older games did it better in a simpler way.
The year is 2003 and Call of Duty 1 is released, an amazing game at that time that was the first to allow you to do many new things including lobby rage. Now, the reason i mention COD1 is that it’s release and marketing overshadowed the release of another game, a little forgotten rough jewel named Hidden&Dangerous 2.
While this game didn’t have the fast action of COD, it had a tactical feel closer to modern day ARMA series. What it also had, and keep in mind this was in 2003, was bullet drop, campaign co-op, a good inventory management system, a good stealth system, and the most important thing… a good fast squad management system.
That squad management system had a small menu activated by the numpad and covered all the actions you needed, shooting, movement, formation, action.
Now let’s compare the “Behaviour” tab from Enlisted to the “Shooting” tab from H&D2.
While enlisted allows you to choose from a very diverse range of “aggressive” or “passive”, H&D2 had “fire at will”, “wait for my shot”(WE NEED THIS ONE), “don’t shoot” and “cover fire”(WE NEED THIS ONE ALSO).
The movement tab from H&D2 had “follow me”, “don’t move”(that worked and the squad didn’t move regardless of how far you moved from them), “take cover”(WE ALSO NEED THIS).
Also the squad formation tab had more options including “close formation”, “wide formation”, “column formation”, “line formation” etc.
Also character movement speed in H&D2 included: sneaking, walking, running, sprinting and was controlled by the scroll wheel on your mouse… A fast brilliant way to control how fast your character moves.
My question is this: why do we have such a basic squad management system in 2022 when a game from 2003 did a far better job?
we do need this along with markings for when you use it to comunicate with other players (example, asking for players to follow will highlight you in the map so they know who to follow)
Answer is pretty easy. H&D is singleplayer, its easier for them to program AI than for Multiplayer shooter with multiple players in one battle, lots of ground, much, much more pathfinding, everyone has different perks, different guns etc.
I agree about programing AI that is not idiotic / terminator.
But why we have only quite basic orders (that bearly work)? It shouldn’t be so hard to do. Balancing them / making them worth spending your time on could be tricky though.
Imo they are wasting the potential of AI because of this approach.
They are releasing a new campaign while bots can’t even stay inside a building for 10s.
Like, AI squads is the main reason why I play this game and what I see disapoints me.
You’d expect at least when you mark some troops that the AI from your squad would become aware of them and start engaging, or when you mark a tank that the guy from your squad shouldering an AT rifle would stop picking his nose and shoot the damn thing.
This game is also available on console where there are a lot less buttons to use, I imagine that would be one factor. Hard to replicate a numpad on a controller.
Well that’s true, but i was refering more to the fact that H&D2 had more orders you could give to your squad, not how you accessed them. The reason i mentioned the numpad was to show that it was a similiar system to the one we are used to and structured in the same way.
when cod was good…