I kinda understand where you going with that, but to be honest nobody asked for that, it ruined the comms among the factions, it makes the game a lot less enjoyable, people who used to lead are annoyed af and sincerely is the worst thing i've seen so far. if you're trying to force the outfit/platoon/squad gameplay, that update screwed things up.
Orders chat was pretty much useless. Regardless of what faction I came on all that happened was either a bunch of people screaming at eachother, people telling they need help without regards for the actual map situation or actually getting help by out-zerging enemies 6 to 1. The devs and the players in general need to learn: Teamplay isn't about squads, platoons or chats, especially not in PS2 where there's too many players around. Microphone chats and text chat is mostly useful for small player games, not large scale combat. Real teamwork is achieved by encouraging it. The game doesn't encourage it at all right now. In most situations your allies are more competitors that try to get kills than people you play with. Most "teamwork" consists out of multiple individuals who just do their own individual thing close to eachother. That's not teamwork! What we need is synergies and mechanics that are aimed at teamwork. If two players meet, any two players regardless of them being randoms, squadmates, in different squads or platoons or any combination you can make of it, they should be able to link up and do teamwork together. This is a requirement due to how PS2 works, in that you can't keep waiting around for fallen teammates to respawn and get back to you, so you have to be able to do teamwork with whoever is with you rather than only really with your squaddies. There should be as little communications required as possible. You see you ally, you see their class and perhaps their weapon, maaaybe ask what ability or tool they are carrying and you are good to go. No single teamwork relation should also be based on one being a supportive slave. Medics currently have to sacrifice their ability to defend themselves to revive people, as do engineers who want to repair. Medics should be able to look at a body, hold X or B and revive someone without putting their gun away, allowing them to continue fighting when necessary. You can easily make things like giving the Medic access to a deployable shield-cover that's easy to dump down. For example as a different option for their AOE heal. You can easily dump it down in a battle to support yourself for a firing position, to give yourself the safety to revive someone or to simply help keep your allies covered. Other classes might be able to do a scan in an arc in front of them to reveal the current positions of enemies with a wire-frame that doesn't follow. So all you know is where they were at the time of the scan but not if they moved. Some classes (infiltrator and LA most likely as they are the spotters and saboteurs) would be able to have allied weapons deal increased damage in certain circumstances etc etc. Each ability should be extremely simple, be helpful for the player himself and be useable by allies who are nearby.
Wasn't there a /faction chat command? If it's still there it could be used in the hopes somebody will see it.
I don't understand this decision. Global broadcast messages were the thing since PS1. I've seen how Orders messages have saved alerts on the last minutes, when enemy forces were about to cut off a huge chunk of territory.
Maybe. But now we have nothing so 100% useless. You do not need to be Steve Jobs to understand it would have been better to replace the orders chat with an alternative system instead of removing it, do you?
Now we have /sitrep, which gives a simple report of your situation. Compared to the crapshow that orders often was. /Sitrep isnt perfect but it is quick, easy and a squad/platoonlead might actually be capable of sending an appropriate number of players instead of zerging it as most leaders tend to ask for reinforcements but dont tell you how many they need.
well im going to still play till the nerf the lib furthing into the ground...main problems on nc for emerald is leaders get high smelling there own farts. they have no idea how to lead themselves out of a wet paper sack, it seems like they just like telling people what to do. it seems like every other day nc is double teamed to warpgate and half of nc fight the tr and half fight the vs, so its usually around 50% Continent pop fighting the 33% of nc(most of our leaders think its mathematically possible to defend) i used to put out orders like we all need to zerg the vs(mainly bc they had more territory). 1 min later and order would come out saying we all need to fight the tr. 10 mins later our pop was still split defending against and undefended force on both sides most alerts vanu starts with 41% territory and half of nc and tr pop will fight each other the whole alert.(vs usally wins) i try to educate the leaders on what ive seen and what i know will happen(not that im always right). basically nc will do the oppisite of orders chat, with that freedom mindset. another scenery that i remeber, vs starting the Continent with about 43% and they had xelas bio and NE warpgate and nc was battleing for 10 mins in at 48-96 about equal pop. i tried to explain to the leaders that the biolab fight was gonna last for the next hour n 20 mins if we didnt zerg it, and the guy leading a platoon on the tr front told me that would be stupid... and the fight ended up lasting the whole alert we almost got the gen to blow up one time in that hour...... Anyways i stop caring i started getting tells like stop telling people what to do, no one cares, and shut up....ect.(ive even had players tell me this game is not about teamwork)and the only orders i putout were ones that i thought would help us win or the best decision at the time. most people i guess come on for 30 mins and just want to shoot people they could care less that this game has anything to do with teamwork or planing or w/e i think during prime time about maybe 35-45% of pop is running in platoons. i Suspect that many players dont run in squad bc of leaders they have ran with b4, anyone with a little common sence listen to what these guys tell them to do sounds off. but yeah i think they should bring orders chat back and each player could select if he wanted to hear or see it. mabey an decent xp bouns for cohesion and squadplay as well and no 5-15 % wouldnt encourage it. i dont play vs on emerald but when they wanted to take a heavaly defended biolab or 3 point base about 85% of thier faction shows up, and they usally cap it in 6-8 mins. ONe more thing i bet you could ask 20 leaders on nc what the best move is for the whole faction and have 60 different ideas of what to do next because leader chat was a bunch of people couldnt agree on anything. A house divided against itself can not stand... or something like that. i remember one of the last arguments i heard on leader chat was one guy said no one should be attacking tr right now(which he was right imo) and this other guys said stop telling me what to do..... 30 mins later i still here these two arguing. I remember i was running a small squad capping quartz ridge had 3 sundies up and about 3 3.5 mins to cap...all 3 points held no resistence a platoon leader with about 48 guys was pushed out of indar x i told him to come to ridge, he gave no reply. around min n a half later about 12-24 show up and wiped us out.... anywho i said thanks for the help at quart ridge we coulda cut off 5-6 vs teritories,, in a very sarcastic voice....he said why does it sound like my mom is talking to me? i said because your mom knows ur a moron with no common sence she just doenst have the heart to tell you, thats why she sounds like that. but anywho needed to rant n be heard ", i feel better already
FROM TODAY HALF OF NC FIGHTING TR WITH AN ALERT IN THEIR GRASP http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=16556368725327158807
I don't see why we can't have both features. As you said, sitrep is good for quickly telling people the situation of that base. It cuts down on perusing the map for a few minutes to just seconds of reading. But it falls short on getting an assessment on enemy strength. Orders was nice as you could request something specific like just one squad's worth or platoon worth of troops while also saying what the enemy has. Orders also was nice by keeping people informed about ghost caps and directing the casual crowd (zerg) to do something productive. Even if someone doesn't make a specific request in orders it was always up to squad/platoon leads to decide whether the threat was worth their time anyways. If anything orders was best for keeping people generally informed on the state of things continent wide. When it comes to the alleged "abuse" of /orders I cant speak for all servers but VS Emerald have been using it properly for quite sometime. The only real cases of abuse I've seen were back in the Matherson days when the game was young before Emerald was even a server.
Because if we don't remove Orders chat, everyone keeps using orders and ignores /sitrep. It's better to (temporarily) remove Orders and put it back in later, so people have actually used /sitrep and see it's value rather than go "well I don't need it I'll just scream for reinforcements like I've always done".
I agree, the Orders Chat was useless... 75% of the time. Now players lack a basic tool to coordinate even that 25% of situations. /sitrep is not a valid alternative. I still believe we should insist for a Supreme Commander mode: 1 player per faction at a given time taking the role of leader, tactician and coordinator. It should not be that hard, there wouldn't be much to code.
