I like this idea. And it's fun really working with people in intense co-op objective based gameplay.
But it may need some tweaks. These are only suggestions for current first available "Final Battle" map.
I'd like to encourage anyone interested to post their suggestions and as always try to keep it within reason and the currently existing game mechanics. Thanks.

Suggestions for the Current "Final Map" (as of post .98.4 Oct-14)

More cover:
It's a neat map. Just needs a bit more cover in wide open surroundings and buildings in town with more alleys and ways to brake contact. Plus some more vertical options ( ladders, ledges, and ...stuff.)

Default Weapons:
Perhaps just defaulting everyone with the MP5SD for the map, just this map or map-type. There is a tremendous issue with new and unfamiliar players dropping in and not realizing the effort people are putting into "stealth". Although we all inform the new people the best we can they can't use the SD weapons and become nothing but a liability. (At least with the current AI settings) Almost all efforts and spent RP go to waste over and over again because of this issue. Of course the extra loot drops help a lot.

The Last Tower:
The Far East Tower seems to be the real issue of the map. Over-all the first towers go well, no problems usually just tough. But the far east tower, near the intersection is a major stall point. Most people, myself included at this point end up dropping out after about an hour+ of failed attempts. Plus I have seen a number of new people hopping online only to end up in a map they can't really help in, with other players getting annoyed with their "noise", and spending a bunch of time doing very little as we all try to get that damn "Last Tower".

It may be just a matter of moving it in town a little more. Or toning down the AI response, or accuracy. It just turns into a Hornets Nest when it is all that left. Even long slow crawls from the open field far east back towards town almost always end in a single AI seeing you, shooting, then 10+ more swarm over. And you have no cover.
As it is now, the last tower (Eastern Most) is extremely difficult. And when all players, unsilenced and silenced alike converge it makes it damn near impossible. Then if you try to break contact the AI seem to follow you way back into town in an infinite supply of troops.

I don't know if it's location, or a "Final Base Boost" with increased AI spawn count, or just because it's everyone attacking the same spot. But it bogs way down and causes the map rotation to come to a complete stall. I write all this after just dropping out of that map, after spending multiple times over the last few days of trying to get the last tower. This is a really good co-op mission and I think brings great invested co-op play into the game. I've had some awesome team action like no other map. Lot's of really coordinated stuff.

Don't get rid of the map, or other intended final battles or whatever they are; Special Ops Maps? But the first one needs some serious tweaking. New player noise and The Final Tower East are the biggest issues.
Thanks guys.

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Thanks Opt_0 for the comments.

First of all I designed this map having only single player campaign in mind. I think it works pretty well as a single soldier.
Adding this map to the invasion map rotation was not a sure thing but hey we thought it might be fun to do some stealth action with more dudes. We never tested it with more than 2 people and didn't make any balancing changes in that regard, yet.

It's not the eastern tower which is a problem but the last tower in general as you will have a lot of spawns there, especially with the player compensation which might be too high in this map. If you go straight to that eastern tower after map start it will be relatively easy to get it down. I would even encourage people to not do the outer towers at the end, also because they have the less cover.

à propos cover, it was intended to not have much cover in general. If you go stealth you usually don't need to stay behind the same cover for too long.

I see the biggest issue as having noobs to not understand that being loud might just end up having everyone killed. I personally like it that you have to communicate with noobs to tell them what to do and especially what to NOT do.

My suggestion would be to lower the player ai compensation value as the more people hop in, the harder it gets. I am personally not a fan to add more cover on this map. If you need cover, you are free to build some sandbags or to cooperate with a shield carrier. Also modifying the elite troops to not drop rares on dead as this is just a loot fest.

One point to note is that the script handling has had some issues on Windows based servers (includes SAS Invasion), issues that tend to start happening in the last regular map or in the first final battle map.

The issue in the final battle map can lead to areas not becoming captured by neutral when destroying the towers which can make the map play out in an unintended way, making it very hard to advance as the enemy continues to control such a large area and also continue to have larger capacity thanks to controlling that area. This makes it hard to make adjustments in the map as the opinions about difficulty might not be entirely reliable.

There's another bug related to neutral faction and them owning areas which have military targets, which causes neutral to have some soldier capacity, which in turn ends up spawning Brownpants look-alikes charging around without weapons. That one's hilarious and I can't say how large groups they spawn in Invasion, in single player they wouldn't be more than a few soldiers anyway.

Anyhow, still without much experience of playing the map in Invasion myself, my gut feeling is that the AI compensation value (x8 per player) is too much in general for this particular map which is intended to have the enemy mostly not respawn soldiers after the beginning. AI compensation directly affects soldier capacity increasing spawners. The next version is going in with x5 compensation and efforts have been made to fix the bugs, we'll see how it goes then.

The intention of having the enemy not respawn, and instead only boost their numbers in the beginning, is that the map would eventually end no matter what - at some point you'd run out of enemies to kill, and I think that's needed in such a map where you don't have the bots yourself. It just doesn't happen right now in online because of the high compensation figure.


I think the point is that you'd be able to sneak closer to the enemies instead of having to stay as far as you do as there would be more hiding spots. Crawling around to a stabbing distance would allow some great feels. Some decoration vehicles on the streets, flat roofs with some obstacles on roofs, more corners to buildings, just a little bit more of that stuff.

Some good points. As always glad to know you guys are working on stuff.

So just an update tonight (10-5-14 v0.98.4 SASInvasion Server) there were some really good player numbers for my time frame of US West evenings. Lots of new people actually which is good and bad due to the map stall.

The "Final Battle" went for hours. I hopped on after all the initial towers already were destroyed leaving (as almost always in public online version of this map) the far Eastern Tower with 10+ players and more joining as we went on.

I spent 2+ hours trying to help on this last tower. And finally had to leave and it was looking that it would keep going on that last tower for hours more. You guys have good map rotation at this point. I know some of the numbers are tricky to balance. But this "last spot" is an issue in flow.

Those that know tried to spread the word that it was being "tested" and the intended proper approach to the mission. Yet with that many people playing, and so many new people it was impossible to stay silenced.
I don't think tonight there was any issues with AI spawning to far out from their controlled area, or it not properly switching to neutral. But they sure our damn aggressive, there were LOTS near the last tower and it is fun. It's just the heavy stall-up on the last Eastern Tower. They are so super saturated it's almost impossible to gain ground as 10+ people try to squeeze in. I know at a certain player number there is a tipping point, which you guys seem to always be balancing around.

Anyway. I know you will figure something out. Sounds like some of the points pasik brought up about future updates will help with AI numbers and spawning. Attrition on the enemy would be nice for this map. Even if it's a really high number.

All that said. YES: the effects this type of gameplay has on players is great! Myself and many others have had some really great co-op battles. It's forced so heavily upon you all it's trial by fire. However I do strongly support a little more cover and at least some vertical spots. The AI is so accretive on this map, even a good fortification on a rooftop wouldn't last long. And yes some more alleys and ways to sneak around would be nice. Getting those knife kills and all the heavy sneaking would be good. Seriously the style is fun, and does work with larger numbers. Don't remove it, just tweak it.

Plus FNG's learn really fast how to sneak and what getting shot in the face is like over and over in this map. It's great.

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I spent around 3,5 hours on this map, same night Opt_0's talking about (Note to Opt_0: Keep rolling the DRUM's, my friend). By the time I quit it was around 6AM here and we'd been playing on this map for hours now, all without success. We bled XP and equipment. It always ended up like this:

http://i.cubeupload.com/TVSTzu.png

I'd love it if there were some rooftops on this map. The way the AI was on this particular match, some rooftop is the only thing that can provide any decent cover at all. In the quickest escalation we got swarmed by the AI, in overwhelming numbers. At the same time we had the FNG's blasting up an AK mag while we were trying to crawl, but like you guys pointed it out, that's something we need to figure out with teamplay.

All in all, though, even with the AI going Skynet on us, this map is incredibly fun. Perhaps after putting millions of rounds into this game we all became masochists.

This is the feeling which this map gives me:

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no one's left, everything is gone. kharak is burning.

This pretty much sums my feelings as well. Sometimes, and surprisingly often even, becoming frustrated at something in the game actually ends up being.. fun.

You must be very proud of yourself, though. Watching someone you made from scratch grow and evolve into something people not only pay for, but also love. Just don't sell this game to a damn publisher. I know that you'll make millions and probably be set for life, but your lovechild will be screwed. They sold Ace of Spades to Jagex and it turned into shit so utterly that almost all the original players stopped playing it. If you keep nurturing this game I think you could damn be the next Michal Marcinkowski.

Anyone remember Soldat? I do.

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no one's left, everything is gone. kharak is burning.

@Bishop you pic link picture is pretty accurate. It does end up in a swarm.

I think a lot of this map just comes down to the issue of the far east tower ending up as the last.
We can try to get it sooner but when you have lots of new and other people on you run the risk of being the a-hole spamming the chat trying tell everyone what to do. And the more you do it the less people listen.

So maybe just a little adjustment to AI spawn conditions for the last base, or areas of spawn, or aggression level, or a few more buildings in that area. Just a minor tweak to that location seems like the easiest way. Something to do with that Eastern Tower being the last battle.

It is not a matter of being entirely impossible to co-ordinate the first attack effort on that side. It's just the low likelihood of pulling it off in Online Invasion. Honestly most of the time, we aren't even able to get everyone in the first truck to go to the barn/first base.

A lot of the rest of the field goes faster with good heavy firefights, the naturally occurring "flock mentality" of players is to naturally attack from West to East because that is the initial spawn location and so the natural flow of the battle.

Maybe just put the start point and HQ base location for players in the NE instead of the NW where it currently is, so we attack East to West? Then that way we'd be attacking the road-block and East tower first. Then fighting into heavier building cover, and even creating a situation where the "last tower" could be different as there are a couple towers near each other on West side of map. And just by random chance alone due to the towers' general proximity to each other, players could end up with either tower as the last. As opposed to now where we almost unavoidably end up fighing the Eastern Tower in the end. By going East to West we'd have the chance to allow for more variability in where the final tower fight is played out. (I'll try to make a diagram picture to help show potential flow of battle)

Okay...now I put my support behind this idea of Shifting initial start point from NW to NE. It seems like this might be the easiest actual Map Adjustment instead of trying to redesign whole portions of the village itself to provide variability to the last location of attack. As it is now 100% of the time we end up fighting the last fight on the Eastern Tower and it bogs way down.

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In the meantime, I'm going to consult with a local friend of mine named Osama, who has amassed experience dealing with multiple towers.

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no one's left, everything is gone. kharak is burning.

Here's my diagram. I am a visual person so this works for me. Also I was just starting to have fun. Now I think I may need to start work on a Field Flow Strategy Guide.... hmmm.

Anyway, dev's, I know you guys already probably understand what I have been describing, but I said I'd try to make a diagram, so I did. I'm board, it's my day off. Lol. But I do think this would help maybe. Plus, I feel given the "shape" of the area of attack, that this adjustment may allow for more variability in the resulting "last tower".
There is a natural "flock mentality" to large group play, and I don't think it's a matter of trying to get the "flock" to adhere to the ideal intended flow, but to simply alter the flow. Use the "flock mentality" to your advantage.(I'm referring here to players flocking, human nature.)
No matter what people attack from East to West as it is now. I dropped out of SASInvasion again today because it was stuck on the East Tower again. Too many new people with loud guns and not enough influence and equipment to really help everyone get quite. So I made this instead. Now I'll go check the map again.

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