I like online war games. BF1942, Enemy Territory, so on. But how "far" can online war games go (like how team-based or tactical?) Let's pretend the time is years later when 1000 or more players can go on one server and playing on a huge map...

First, is it possible for each online player to participate in a group tactical plan? When I mean "tactical" I am thinking of tactics other than going in big groups and defending. I'm thinking of one "platoon" talking with another "platoon" to plan to take over an enemy base. Or maybe setting up a diversion team to lure the enemy into a trap. But often in online games, many players tend to just go off and shoot down the next moving thing without a care of the team. Can players agree to follow a somewhat smart and elaborate plan?

Also, can players follow a leader (like a commander?) Many players (non-claned?) feel free over a game and do what they want. I guess many gamers are immature (little kids) or ignorant and don't feel the need to follow plans or commands. Maybe if the commander made a reputation for being wise and smart, people will join him. Dunno.

Also there other issues. Should it be a priority to keep the player character alive? Like if the player, if dead or isn't helped by medic, loses much more than a character (like XP points, custom qualities, or so on) thus "staying alive" is a must. Do online people have patience and good thinking skills?

I don't really need answer to the questions. Just thoughts, responses, expriences etc.

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If you do not have voice communication, you can not go very far. You cant create a plan unless you can all put forth everything. For instance, if Im playing starcraft of BF1942 with happydud, we could create some sort of a plan through chat, but it wouldnt go off very well. If we are in the same room, talking with each other, we can come up with some awesome diversionary tactics, and really start to clean up the enemy.

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One game i've found to have good tactics, well, relatively, is Savage. the commander, who works in an overhead RTS view, can give players waypoints and orders, and the players will gt money as they complete them, which can help for buying weapons and different warriors. I haven't been on in a long time, so i forget if you can use teamspeak, but i remeber the tactics being pretty good in that game.

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It can work and I've seen it in some instances, but I agree that voice com is the key. Without it, you can't communicate fast enough.

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In a war, the platoons don't decide amongst themselves what to do, because that would be pure chaos. The only way to make the battles realistic is to have no respawning and have ranks of people that take and give orders from and to those above and below them.

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As more players are able to play a single game, things should automatically settle into something enjoyable.

The problem at the moment is that just one player who wants to be moronic can ruin the game for everyone because half of the other players just think "screw this" and mess around too. As games get larger, each individual player has a reduced effect on the game (assuming team games here) so a cheater won't ruin the game automatically.

I haven't played Planetside myself, but I suspect that whilst each individual platoon is pretty much free to do whatever they want, the fact that everyone knows the overall objectives (except for a few newcomers) means that some kind of order should emerge overall (even if a few individual players decide to do something contrary to common sense).

The reason this wouldn't work in a real war is that people higher up the chain of command know more about what's going on than people lower down, so it would be dangerous for the "grunts" to be allowed to make decisions. Unless an online game becomes so complicated that no single person can understand what's going on, a chain of command probably wouldn't be needed.

I think it is quite possible with clans that practice working together, but casual public gamers usually just get on to have a few quick frags and don't follow the leader.

And I have to admit that voice comm helps immensly--sometimes with it you can even get the causual fraggers to stick together with someone respectfully giving orders.

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I find the only way I ever work well in a tactical shooter or a game like Battlefield or even CS for that matter, is when I'm working with friends.

For the most part we're always on teamspeak or another voice comm, making sure we're in communication with each other. Games almost REQUIRE it now. I rarely play Battlefield unless I'm at the local lan center because without sitting next to your teammate, its communication methods are nearly useless.

Games like Ghost Recon, RS:3, Operation Flashpoint, these games bring a need for voice. I couldn't storm in a door with some random kid who doesn't know how to clear a room properly -- they just play to shoot things that move, not think tactically.

For the most part, FPS games are becoming dominated by little kids and they just want to kill things. I miss going on a server and planning an attack with a teammate and having it work.

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America's Army is the most team oriented FPS I have played for a very long time. In the elite and Special Forces servers, people are often very cooperative and will work together to accomplish a goal. Usually it's only people who speak a different language that cause fissures in the team work.

I've done it quite a bit in BF1942. I come up with a plan of attack, annouce it a couple times and then when their tired of getting beat, they start to listen to me....then we start winning. There's some servers that I join now, where I can be there no longer then 2 min. and already have a plan in action with nearly everyone involved (even without TS).

With a theoritical game as described above, TS or something similier is needed. However, you really don't need a chain of command. You have one overall commander, and everybody reports any movement with approx. distances/direction of the enemy to him. The commander then makes a plan of attack and adjusts accordingly based on live feedback from everyone. I have found that all it takes is a little bit of good communication using a specific syntax to achieve victory...if the commander knows what he's doing (got to be a good chess player ).

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Battlefield 1942/Vietnam requires this HEAVILY. I know in Vietnam, I have to get 5 people together to play before it's any fun. We all go into vent, all hop into a helicopter, then tactically drop down on the enemy base. Good times

I heard WW2Online is decent...though buggy.

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I usually get to 2nd base, and the game slaps me.

That's the problem with ALL MMO games. RPGs aren't going to have ANY roleplaying, and if it is, no one can conform to one standard, and go off on spurts of killing randomly. In battle games, the exact same thing happens. No one has any self diciplin[sp?].

JediKirby

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Live on, Adam.

I know that when I played Planetside, there was the beginnings of coordination going on. Nothing really effective on a large scale, but beginnings. On the smaller scale, though, there were plenty of tactics. Me and my Outfit, the 316th Rapid Deployment Force, often lived up to our name, actually. We developed tactics for up to 2 squads in 2 carriers for taking towers and bases and the like. We used to define safe landing points for our galaxy dropships, and shuttle people back and forth between there and the towers on a contested continent (in front of whatever main force was fighting larger battles) and do high-speed drops right onto towers, clear them eout, and be back on the shuttle heading for the landing area before anyone knew what hit them.

The key is DEFINITELY voice communication. We used the in-game vocie chat for each squad and the teamspeak server we had to coordinate between squads. It worked incredibly well. It's all realiant on voice communication because it's the quickest and most effective way to communicate.

Yes, I think thousands of people could coordinate. All you have to do is find and weed out the non-morons who want that teamwork and willingly accept it, and there's no real limit to what you can set up. The problem is that no matter what you set up, 1000 coordinated people or 10, there's always going to be 10 times as many lone-ranger fools. But they make for good battle experience points.

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The Natural Selection mod for Half-Life has a commander, and the players are totally dependent on him for anything (human team). It kindov makes you realise that you've got to follow orders and work together if you want to have any chance of succeding.

A game would have to have special players who aren't actually on the battlefield, but who can look at the whole situation and give orders from there.

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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

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Savage! Why does noone else know of this game?

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
The Never Ending Story²[/i]

I NEED PlanetSide now...

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Tribes 2 also has a command menu thing, where you can issue waypoints and "request" that people destroy something. Its not limited to a "commander"... anyone in the game can hit the command menu button and use it.

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"Guns don't kill people, I kill people."

I'm with Hebedee, America's Army is extremely team-based. Sometimes, once in a while, you get a group of loners who are 1337 enough to handle things without cooperation, but most of the time you either work together or you fail. On Pipeline, if the Opfor takes the primary valve and all that's left is the main console and the secondary valve, the absolutely only way to survive at that point is teamwork. Voice-com works well, but it sometimes leads to cheating in the form of ghosting so there have to be limits to cooperation and communication.

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