No, squads are a rather dynamic feature in RWR. People come and go. Members can leave to reinforce higher ranking leaders' squads, you can leave any squad you're following if you wish to, so it's not entirely your squad. It's not like real life, but it makes an interesting system.

If the dynamic team concept would be dropped, so that you'd respawn together with a full squad, the soldier change could work, it would be exactly like in Cannon fodder. Then there would be no exchange of soldiers, no reinforcements, as soldiers respawn as complete squads that do not change, rather than single soldiers. You are again thinking about controlling a team rather than single soldier, and this isn't that game. I'm sure there are plenty of those games around too. Never player Men of war, but isn't that a little bit like that? I've heard there are modes that allow you to control a single soldier as well? No need to do a remake of that, or Cannon fodder for that matter. RWR is about controlling a life of a single soldier, from the day he gets on the battlefield to the day he dies, and then the next one, and the next one, and...

The risky flanking can equally work without soldier change. The team carries on without you, should you get killed in the action, and they'll do their best in the situation you've driven them. It might be the crucial thing that made the battle turn, or it might not. Not all risks are equal in outcome value.

The difference between your first base-respawned controlled soldier and the next one which with soldier change feature you could just pick from the field or in your team, is that you haven't been there for the whole "life" of the latter soldier. You don't know what he has been doing, how many battles he has survived, anything. It's a psychological thing. If the whole team would respawn at the same time, then it would work. You would've seen the whole team's history. But, again, the game isn't about controlling a team. It's controlling a soldier (who's leading a team if you want to).

Actually, this makes me think of another feature that would fix your initial issue with the running from base after getting killed. Besides parachutes, you are trying to say that you want the medic feature, am I right? Any soldier near you, or someone with a medic kit, could come down there and revive you, it would take like 5-10 seconds, and you'd be able to continue from there. I haven't yet thought about it how to balance it so that not all soldiers get revived, on your side nor enemy's.

I understand what you're saying, I'm just disagreeing with your reasoning

Living the life a soldier is just less entertaining than living the interesting parts of a life of a soldier. Most entertainment products try to focus on the fun parts of whatever their subject matter is and cut off the parts that have no entertainment value. This rule of thumb can of course be disregarded, rules are meant to be broken.

Another thing I've always failed to understand that what's the fun part of squads being dynamic? Why do people came and go based on how highly ranking guys wander by? How does this make the game better? To me it would be nothing but annoying to to see that "Yep, I had three guys following me, but that goddamn general just happened to walk by and my squad is no more." It could be argued that a higher ranking officer always has the authority, but it makes it pretty difficult to put your squad to use (as it could be gone any second). And to be precise, in reality a superior officer wouldn't grab your men, it would grab you and give you orders, and you'd still be the one relaying the orders to your squad.

I also don't see why the spawning would have to by squad at a time, or why you'd consider that it's actually a squad that the player controls, instead of the squad leader. Why wouldn't it work that if the player has reached rank 3, which would allow for a squad size of 5 guys, he spawns alone, and the next 4 guys with ranks 1-2 he comes accross join up (provided they aren't already in a squad, at least not in a squad with a squad leader rank 4 or higher)? If someone dies, the next free guy with the aforementioned status joins as replacement. Or, even better, the AI sends such a guy wandering towards the squad to make sure the empty slot is filled in reasonable time. If it's the player that dies, the control is just switched to the next highest member of the squad, or if there is only rank 1s present, to any of them. There's a few ways things could go on from here; either the character the controls are switched to is bumped to the rank the player had (this is the simplest method, so this'd be my choice), or the max squad size is lowered to reflect the rank the character has. The possible extra guys in the squad could stay with the squad, stay until a superior officer comes by to leech them as reinforcements to his depleted squad, or be marked as free agents that would join the next squad with vacancy.

As a result, this should keep the player in action pretty much all the time, provided that he starts to focus on survival as his squad is running low on guys (and thus be still around when reinforcements wander from the faraway spawn point). The walk of boredom would affect the player only when he really messes up and gets his whole squad killed or disaster just strikes, as it sometimes does.

As for medic, especially with reviving capability, I really dislike that in all (war)games. It's just so implausible (and for that very reason it fits fantasy games well, magic is magic). I think it's very central to the feel of the game that soldiers on both sides are just mowed down swiftly and brutally, and that's it for that guy. That's why there's hundreds of them. I don't think a medic would solve the problem either, as the medic wouldn't be able to reach the corpse for revival for maybe about half of the time, and even when he might be, the wait could be very nearly as long as running from spawn base.

If I'd add a medic, I'd do it for some obscure resource refund mechanic (shot people don't actually die, at least every time, and if a medic is able to evacuate a wounded soldier, the next new guy is spawned 50% faster, or maybe the next spawn wave would have one more soldier in it). Still, I can't immediately see how a medic could be made to fit into the game with the mechanics in place, as people are dropping like flies. There would have to be 2-5 medics on the screen all the time to make any difference

Wow, this is a lot of writing.

If the game only concentrates on the highly entertaining, the high flying events, you lose interest in them more easily as the events have only little value as you have zero or close to none the bad times. Explaining this makes me search for an analogy from music and song structures: if the song (game) is just looping the chorus (fighting) all the time, that's probably fun for some period of time, but you're likely to get fed up with it in pretty short time, even if it would be made to variate quite a bit. This way you'll miss all the building up with bridges (getting to the fighting, preparing, hearing the sounds of war but not taking active part of it yet) or the toning downs with verses (dying and starting over).

There's a balance there somewhere, and it's up to personal taste what it is, I suppose.

I hope you're not too much concentrating on the distance between places, as that's quite easy to fix with level design. Changing the game idea at this point won't happen anyway, there's Cannon fodder 3 for that team control system Stuff that end up in the middle ground with this problem that can be made to work that have other values as well, parachutes, medics, those can be added.

The dynamic team must be working, as I like it. You can receive squad members from other teams by using your authority. It's transparent and you don't have to deal with it manually, just look who's around you and you get an idea how big team you have. You don't have to wait up for anyone to come there, you just go where the others are and you know that a team will form around you if you have rank. And no, you still can't apply real systems with this, as it's not based on any system in reality. In this game there's only 3 levels in chain of command, that's commander, team leader and squad member, even if there would be 500 soldiers out there (not really recommended).

I don't see much issues with the medic feature. You'd be seemingly wounded/dead, and if you got shot in such place that it was a lucky shot against you, getting to your location by e.g. one of your fellow squad members or the leader wouldn't be difficult, as they are all right there. One of them would come up to you, say "Oh, look at that, it's just a flesh wound, here's a bandage, you're all right, sir/boy!", and you'd stand up, ready to fight again. Now if you died/got wounded in a place that it was downright idiotic to go there or the enemy simply had so much power that you should've retreated, it would suit quite well that you wouldn't be revived for a long time, even at all, which serves you right sending you as another fresh soldier starting from a base. If you weren't revived, the explanation can be that the wound must've been a fatal one this time, not just a scratch that scared you bigtime and made your soldier lose all the fighting morale temporarily making him unable to do anything else than lie still until someone came there.

What's the problem with this?

This discussion has been stuck for a while on the same arguments, but some creative ideas have been thrown around and some of them have been rejected due to simply not fitting the game's premise.

I'll try to summarize it, as I remember and understand it.

PROBLEM:
* Too much running, too little fighting, amount of dying seems to be ok still

THINGS THAT SEEM TO SPECIFICALLY LEAD TO THE PROBLEM:
* lucky distant not-targeted shots that end up killing you while arriving near the battle zone
* getting killed in a battle

FACTS OF GAME SYSTEM, will not be changed:
* you control one soldier, not a team of soldiers
* you respawn as a new soldier coming out from a distinctive place, a building, a bunker, a plane, revealing you to the battlefield, and you die as that soldier. The important outcome is that you experience that soldier's whole life in the battlefield.
* rank is an attribute of soldier, not player's
* the reason the rank can carry on to the next fresh player soldier is due to late decision - the soldier who respawned just happened to be of similar rank to what the player's previous soldier had, so all we know, it's just luck

FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS:
A) certain bases should be located more close to each other / more bases
* less distance between base to nearest base means less running, but no less killing
B) this just in: smaller kill probability for far away not-targeted shots
C) medic, fellow can pull a soldier to safety and revive
* no problems with logic as late decision is used: if the soldier was revived, the wound was not fatal after all, and if not revived, it was fatal. There is no magic or miracle healings here.
* would not be usable in the middle of fire, which is good
* would be usable when it's safe, so it would fix the lucky distant shots issue
* balancing not clear yet - how to deny using it all the time?
* works nicely also with players only (unlike soldier change)
* a time limit should be possibly introduced how long a soldier can stay wounded without reviving
D) parachutes
* player soldier can respawn from an airplane closer to the battle area once in a time period (3min? 5min? 10min?)
* AI, both enemy and fellow, should also use it

REJECTED SOLUTIONS:
E) change soldier control -feature, possibly with a restriction to change to a lower rank soldier only, and possibly only within the team you belong to
- fights against the game system, likely you wouldn't have experienced the whole life of the new soldier you just changed into
- it doesn't make sense that the new soldier's rank boosts up to what the previous soldier had, to carry on previous soldier's achieved rank, ultimately player's

The medic system would potentially alter how the fights progress (or rather, how they would grind to a halt). I'm assuming the AI enemy would have medics too, therefore it'd be pretty hard to actually clear an area of enemies = keep the attack moving and ultimately conquering the objective. If the enemy had a handful of guys, their combined fire would likely prevent the player from overrunning them, thus the player would have to settle for picking them off one by one until only one or two are left. Except that this culling of the herd would be difficult to achieve, as the "fleshwounded" would be brought back into the action with little delay. And this is at the heart of the issue; it's not a problem at all to throw the AI characters out of the fight and into the travel part of the spawn loop. They don't mind. But the human player does. Clearing an area of the enemy is also very much a priority mechanic in the game (and as it happens my suggestion accounts for all of this; player has the choice to either fight to the last man or retreat, either way the area gets cleared due to enemy succes, as it must for the events to proceed)

For the lucky long distance shots or stray bullets the medic solution would be passable, provided that the player would be returned to action faster than by re-respawning and re-travelling. I wouldn't implement medics to patch this issue though, as better solutions with less deep reaching consequences are available (more on that later).

I'm not quite sure about this, but switching "killed" soldiers to "fleshwounded" could have a surprisingly big impact on the game. I very much like the feeling of the soldiers being as fragile as they are (this resonates with my dislike of Hollywood/big budget shooters, where a man is taken down only after half a clip of assault rifle hits) and as you said yourself dying is a big part of the game. I think it should be, dying is fun (but the things that currently happen after dying aren't). There's another angle in this, and it's that the weapons feel powerful, as they should. An assault rifle is a devastating tool for a horrible job. The "oomph" factor could diminish a lot if the player came to realize that "yep, I'm just fleshwounding them, they'll be ok in a few moments and back to fleshwounding my guys". If it was considered that the medics actually revive killed characters, it'd also be a big misstep towards the realm of Cutesy Feelgoodland with Unicorns and Rainbows. I'd much rather take the boring travel from spawnpoint than go there.

As for taking big risks, charging the enemy, assaulting and so forth, I don't think it should be seen as playing wrong or stupid. I think very passive playing, sitting behind a box and taking a few shots every now and then is well suited for the AI. It maintains a relative status quo, and the AI doesn't mind there's very little thrills in it. I think this is where the player should step in, with vastly superior capability in assessing the situation and coming up with a move that would likely allow the team to advance. Currently the AI isn't even capable of comparable aggression. It's even easy to check; if the player doesn't drive the attack, typically it doesn't really move anywhere (unless there's considerable advantage in numbers).

This probably is not the best place to raise another phenomenon I think is going on, but as it's not completely unrelated...

With 0.35, as various changes seem to have made the average fights bigger, it seems that the fighting is gravitating towards extreme ranges. And I'm talking about extreme extreme, as in killing people outside the screen or so that you just see a few pixels of them. This of course depends on the terrain and so on, but I think there are aspects in the game mechanics that tend to steer the gameplay this way; all weapons have a long range, they're accurate enough even at extreme distances even with sustained automatic fire, and actually the spread is at its most effective at extreme range, there's a good chance to take out several targets by just spraying and praying, whereas at shorter range you hit just the target you're aiming at. The weapons are also very powerful, so one shot kills are the norm. I'm not sure if the efficient long distance killing is the goal, but if it's not, there are many obvious things that could be done to discourage spraying the edge of the screen and favoring medium range engagements. Doing these things would also remove the "crap, I didn't get to fire a shot on that spawn as I got killed when travelling" issue.

I'd start to look at this tuning with things like making the bullet power diminish at the extreme ranges so that a single hit would never or very rarely kill (but at medium ranges bullets would be just as deadly as they're now), making the weapons less accurate (thus making extreme range hits more rare, while still maintaining high hit probability at medium and short range) and increasing the spread of sustained fire (this would have several other implications I'd like as well).

You're probably overestimating the intent of medic feature. There should be strict limits to it, so that it feels like having more lives (or only 1 extra life for that matter, it's not decided or balanced yet), than being invulnerable with small periods of recovering. It should not be available at all times, so you can't just repeatedly get healed. This would not completely remove the running part, but it would decrease it. There's no intention of removing the running part completely here, ok? That won't just happen. Period. You would have your second chance, but that's probably it. The same goes for AI. It could be e.g. that each team of over 5 soldiers leaving a friendly base gets one medikit with them, someone of the guys carries it, and it can be applied to two soldiers once, until you ran out of bandages. Just an example that might work.

Now this

and this

are not something that go well hand in hand. Taking big risks has to mean it, it's a risk, you either win or you don't, which means you can get killed. When taking an obvious risk you're relying on chance, randomness and probabilities that you will win there. If the game is about getting killed with a single shot, it tends to be so that taking risks results in getting killed. Taking big risks also belongs to the Hollywood category in my mind, that's the hero stuff. So, I think these things don't bond very well.

I can't really agree on this. As of 0.35, I find myself following the fellow AI more often than driving the attack myself. There's likely a difference in the playing style between the two of us, I'm usually quite patient and don't mind waiting for some time. Also the base in question has meaning, as if there's only a little cover, the AI is pretty clueless how to approach. That said, I've also seen them doing a full frontal attack on an open ground in 0.35, which I didn't expect. I know now what's the AI reasoning behind it, but initially I wasn't expecting something like that could come out of it.

I've seen this in a couple of places, e.g. West Farm which stands on a hill and there's no places of cover to attack that hill, but I wouldn't say it's a common thing in the game. I'm still getting into places where I can get to use the knife

So, all in all, you agree that going for solution A, closer bases, and B, less damage on distant shots, will have an effect for the better, right?

I understand you wouldn't like the medic feature C. I'm not specifically insisting on it either, but I wouldn't mind seeing a soldier being dragged to safety after getting wounded on the battlefield, it would definitely be one of those wow effects for the first time seeing it. It's obvious that it would need to be carefully balanced and restricted, so that it helps in continuing on the battlefield to SOME extent but doesn't ruin the game by making it always available. I think it would also help especially in cooperative to keep the team of players together as much as possible.

I didn't notice you saying anything about the alternative spawn point with coming down airborne, that's D.

You suggested to tweak the accuracy of weapons, I agree on that. It should get better when I implement the dynamic crosshair, so that you can actually see the accuracy behavior with sustained fire. Makes it a lot more easier to tweak.

They would go hand in hand excellently, if getting the short stick of the risk didn't mean being thrown out of the fight. Especially as the risk is currently fairly big compared to the potential gain, making a flanking assault is very close to suicide. I would very much like to be able to attempt the flanking assaults, and get a warning or two before being thrown out.

You'd still suffer the consequences of the risk you've decided to take even if you weren't thrown out; you'd have gotten people killed on your side and made it more difficult for your side to prevail.

As you said yourself, there must be some variety in gameplay. I think the varieties you now have are 1) fighting the basic fight, trying to be safe, and 2) running back to the action from spawnbase (which to me isn't variety at all, it's just a dead moment of nothingness). Giving some slack to the player would enable at least the 3) somewhat risky assault. Another way to look at this is that 1) is the basic gameplay, 2) is the kind of variety that feels worse than basic play and 3) would be the variety that feels better than the basic play.

As for paratroopers... When I see paratroopers, I think special forces. I don't expect special forces to goof around and get mowed down en masse as the guys in RWR frequently are. So if paratroopers are ever added, I'd do something else with them (for example create a temporary spawnpoint / one spawn wave where it normally wouldn't be possible, for example to some other location than a base, probably in the rear of the enemy).

Overall I don't think the travelling issue is such that it requires nearly as "big" or rich solutions as adding medics or paratroopers. Like you said, a lot can be achieved by level design alone (not the widening of gameplay options though, that's why I'd look into the direction I've been suggesting), and weapon stats tweaking will add to that. It might be good to see how those work and get back to this if necessary.

Having said that, I don't necessarily want to keep medics or paratroopers from added to the game. I just wouldn't even consider adding them as a fix for the issues discussed. For wow factors or enabling new gameplay, sure. (medic disclaimer: I would still hate almost any kind of reviving and generally I don't quite see medics fitting in the game. first aid and evacuation take a relatively long time compared to the pace of combat in RWR, so I think there'd be a big risk of either making the medics irrelevant, implausibly quick at bandaging and/or moving the wounded. I do have ideas where the medics might be cool, but that would require another bit of structural change/emphasizing that I don't see as going to happen. I might throw it out there in another thread)

Somehow I again disagree with this. I'm frequently trying flanking and I succeed in it too sometimes. You might have to take a few steps back behind the cover you already were to gain distance / elevation to protect you, and then start running to get to enemy's side. If you've driven yourself too close to the enemy, it's a heroic effort to try any tricks there and the outcome usually shows. Use suppressing fire and grenades to buy time.


If by 3) you mean the soldier control change, I told you it doesn't fit the game. We are through this already. It's a cheat or a different game, I don't know who's developing that if you ask me. Try Cannon Fodder 3, it might be the game you're looking for You can play by cheating if you want to, but don't force it on the actual game.



It should be pretty obvious without saying, that such features would not be added for tackling this issue only, the mechanics they provide would have various other uses as well. The first thing that comes into mind is that medic means practically pulling lying soldiers, it would be a great thing if you'd have to do that to killed enemies while doing stealth, move them out from the streets to a nearby bush to take them out of sight from guarding soldiers (not yet implemented, will be for sure) to prevent an alarm. Don't start now raging about the stealth that it sucks in the alpha, as it does. For the stealth to be perfect, it'll need climbing on things, rooftop action, something you can do with a bunch of guys or just by yourself to significantly harm an enemy base if staying unnoticed, possibly by planting explosives around it or something that allows you to capture their spawn point without an alarm (epic logic fail? Nay, you're releasing prisoners!), it's not decided yet how it's going to work.

Paratroopers would add to the variety of stuff happening in the game, and would allow "infinite war" and allow you to come back to the battlefield after you've lost all your bases. Paratroopers as such would not be a big feature even after that, and implementing it should be almost on the same level of easiness as the mortar fire. Just think of them as soldiers with parachutes, that's it, they aren't special forces. The game doesn't have classes. Sure, they could carry suppressed weapons, but I wouldn't necessarily even go there.

What I meant by 3) is anything that enables a little more risk taking, the way it's enabled is ultimately secondary (though fantastically bad methods are very possible).

To me the main charm in having lots and lots of soldiers on both sides is that it makes it possible to see very brave stuff done, but also to see what's the downside of bravery and why a large proportion of medals for bravery are awarded posthumously. By definition bravery is taking a substantial risk to be killed, so of course brave guys tend to die. Maybe not on their first or second burst of bravery (although it's just peotic when it happens on the very second someone decides to try something brave), but the odds will catch up eventually.

This is the problem with pretty much all shooters. There's nothing but bravery, all the time, through a dozen huge battles, and still we're somehow supposed to believe it all (when in fact we know that quicksave was the one and only reason we ever got to the end of the game, thus the heroics of the character are just an illusion of massive editing out of the failed attempts).

Now, in a game like RWR, it'd be perfectly possible to depict this in another way, in a way that might even have something to do with reality. Bravery is needed, it greatly helps in winning the fights, but it does indeed get the individuals carrying out the brave acts killed fairly reliably. That's why there are no superheroes like in other games, there are just dead heroes, a few alive heroes and a lot of guys who might end up as heroes. Up to this point, everything is great as it is. It all goes bad when the player realizes that he's taken away from the action, sometimes even quite far, the consequences of his attempt are hidden (except for some pixels changing color on the map, or not) and there's nothing entertaining to do for a while. It's a huge discouragement to play anything but safe or super safe (that is, fairly monotonous or very monotonous).

I agree there's no reason to go on about this any longer, it must be detracting from development much more than it does any good, especially as our viewpoints about fundamentals differ a lot. I really don't want to come across as raging, it's not my intention. I also don't want to be seen as trying to force anything, and surely I couldn't even if I tried. I'll try to limit any observations to minor tweaks and/or wait until these grander suggestions become topics of wider discussion (as opposed to one-on-one dialogue), as to me it'd be interesting to hear what other fans think.