Basically every map played out as expected.

First map, standard comms battle going back and forth but our team couldn't hide comms and the comms truck wouldn't move, whereas the other team's comms truck moved or they were able to hide it. Once that happened they won, of course.

Second map, I was able to take down comms once early, which let us push them back onto the last base. I camped the comms spawn and killed it when it spawned and we won.

Third map had a screwed up start location which let our team take most of the map. Doom took down comms and then we won easily.

Fourth map, we took down comms and got them down to the last base. I quit since frostbite takes forever to finish, as always.

Good to have some actual suggestions here for evolving Classic (i.e. single player quickmatch in multiplayer ) into an actual PvPvE mode.

So, Beerdrinkers got the capture mode already as single in order to keep players from both sides focused on fighting at roughly same spot, also avoiding the base rotation effect often coming from backdooring, great. I guess everyone agrees that this option is preferred?

Comms truck / radio tower appears to have too big meaning as well, being often the key to success and partly solving stalemates. It can be easily removed from the gamemode, of course. How about trying that next, like halp suggested?

This can be good, we'll have all players at the same spot as there's no incentive to go wandering around the place much. With balanced teams everyone just making the best use of their combat skills to win over a base might end up into another stalemate once again, though, but who knows, maybe not. (so.. is that then equal to team deathmatch + an objective to swarm a spot to score?)

My personal grudge with PvPvE like today is more related to the size of maps and the fact that there's so much room for "back and forth". E.g. in Keepsake Bay, we had already lost down to one base, I was hoping right there that please let us lose so that we can advance to the next map - but no, we captured another base, and seemed the match was going on again. Everyone got lucky there in the end tho, as we soon lost the comms truck and someone had the RP to spam paratroopers in the Ranch, whew!

I hardly think I'm supposed to think like that when playing PvPvE that after, I don't know 30-40 minutes of fun combat, I want us to lose in order to close the match. I'm not sure if anyone else sees it this way, might be just me.

If that's a common thought in Classic - what to do about it? I have to say my initial solution to it is go play minimodes. It's too bad of course that some of substages there have so frustrating situation for the other team, that they are probably thinking go play invasion

Is Power Junction or Vigil Island even in the Classic map rotation? Not sure if Beerdrinkers has a customized map rotation but vanilla at least doesn't include either of them.

There used to be a prepared KOTH-only gamemode for servers with those two maps, wonder what happened to that.

Yeah, those maps aren't in the rotation. The only time I played on power junction was when some randos set up a server with pvpve where they manually set the map to power junction.

Yes, definitely agree that single base capture is better than the alternative, where you basically run around racing to backdoor the other team while they do the same to you.

Something that's less extreme than removing comms would be to make it worth 0RP to spot and destroy. I dunno which is better. Maybe try both? There are multiple maps that are likely to get stalemated without comms. IMO, those maps should be taken out of the pvp rotation or fixed, but it's probably hard to fix the maps.

If you're taking suggestions, I'd also recommend disabling paras entirely. Mortars and arty are ok for taking out people who are camping behind cover, but it's way too easy to take a base with one or two para calls by psuedo-backdooring when all of your enemies are in your cap zone trying, letting you sneak around.

Yeah, I agree with the 30-40 minute thing. 2-3 hour matches are way too long for casual players. That's one thing that's nice about power junction. You're basically always fighting for the win. On any of the larger maps (especially the ones with forts for the last base, but also the others), you get to a point where one team is down to 1-2 bases and it's 90% sure they'll lose, but the game can easily go 2-3 hours even though the game is basically over.

So for now the major problem in PvPvE is the comms truck.

I had it also in mind a while back but I wouldn't want to get rid of the jamming ability which can be a nice tactic in PvP(vE), that's why we designed a "radar tank" which would defend himself as it has a strong dual anti infantry HMG. It would also be tagged as not being used by the AI but only humans.
Because of it's defensive power the players wouldn't be scared to approach it close to the front lines.
What do you think?



As for the KotH maps, I didn't even realize myself that they weren't in the classic map rotator. Though those might be the funniest to play (at least when the chess clock system of the timer would be implemented).
As for a map lasting almost 1h it's fine for me. "Moorland trenches" would probably last too long though but "Keepsake Bay" was just right to me at least.

Last session problem in the Bootleg Island was our team. 2-3 new guys were wondering around and that was half of our team.

Team balancing during round would be good but also not good for the plans or tactics(if there is any ).

Maybe next time we could play minimodes without king of the hill AND with tripled round times, if this kind of setup is possible.
Minimodes have more action as the maps are smaller. Also teddyhunt need some teamplaying and that is what I want.

I am planning to rework minimodes on map6 to also make KotH there interesting. In general I will also make the safe zones bigger.
About the round time, I was thinking of making players switch sides on the same sub-stage so that every side is played once. If it ends 1-1 then a third round would take place. This would also help a bit with balancing as some sides are less balanced than others, which is fine imo as long as you have the chance to play either side.
The third optional round might be chosen randomly. Pasik isn't too thrilled about this idea as playing eventually 3x the same substage in a row might become tedious. What do you guys think?

All interesting ideas. I'm a bit skeptical (and I'll explain why), but I think they're worth trying.

On the playing twice, it sounds like that's with the same teams, to balance out uneven maps, right? But that's going to be unpleasant if some team of noobs goes up against you, dio, modest, street, pasik, etc. We've had some games where there's only one or two vets going up a stacked team, and now that's setting up the same unbalanced matchup twice in a row.

If this game gets big enough that there's a league, then playing the same map 2x with teams reversed seems great, as long as the games aren't super long.

How strong is the radar APC/tank going to be? The reason I'm skeptical there is that it's usually pretty easy to ko an APC or tank as long as there isn't a human player driving. Ok, but what if there's a human player driving? As it is, losing comms is much more negative than blocking calls is positive, so it seems like too much risk to use the comms tank near a battle.

IMO, the two places you want to block comms are in a final base fort, so the other team can't arty you and then rush, and to stop pseudo-backdooring when all your troops are forward and the other team runs around the side and does a para call.

For the former, a comms tank seems ok, but for the latter, if you're there, you don't need the comms truck! I've tried dropping paras on top of street, dio, ram-kults, and other vets, and it's basically a free xp gift to them unless I get lucky and catch them off guard.

I suppose I sound kinda negative about this, but I think all the ideas that aren't hard to implement are worth trying because it's pretty difficult to guess about how good or bad something will be without trying it. Now that we've got the weekly game you can basically try out one thing a week and get feedback on it, so why not try stuff even if it only might be a good idea?

It's up to the veterans to even up the teams. You want people to play more PvP so better make the team even to make the noobs not leave after a few minutes as there is no way to even the teams automatically according to their skills.
As for the radar tank it is VERY strong, maybe even too strong actually (only against infantry) but that can be easily changed anyway. It hasn't been tested at all in a game situation yet. Making it too strong could lead to people using it too offensively which shouldn't happen but only tests will tell.

I have suggested team switching multiple times when I'm on a team that's getting reamed and the answer has usually been that the teams are fine, even when we've lost 3 in a row. If you expect people to even up the teams all of the time, you're going to be disappointed a lot.

I usually switch teams when we're winning a lot, but I can only think of two other people who regularly do the same thing. Most people just don't want to switch from a winning team to a losing team. I've seen people switch from losing teams to winning teams more often than I've seen the opposite.