EC IS NOT A SHOOTER, IT'S AN ACTION GAME WITH MELEE AND SHOOTING EQUALLY IMPORTANT + RPG AND STRATEGY ELEMENTS, how many times do I have to repeat that? CS is a shooter. There is nothing like fundamental mechanics when you are creating a new genre of game entirely, in order to make it balanced you must look at your goals and the given environment you want to create\deliver and only then adapt those mechanisms that will function properly in this given environment - that's much different from creating another regular cliche shooter for noobs.
But this is exactly what you are asking for with your proposed FF mechanic. A noob friendly way to not have to worry about killing friendlies. Your way would lead to abuses. The majority recognise that and want a fair and evenly applied FF mechanic. Again I encourage you to try out one of the few large scale shooters with FF just so you have some basis to argue from.
Says the guy trying to base his arguments on 10v10 arenas. As far as fundamental combat mechanics are concerned, it's a shooter: you have a crosshair that you aim manually, you left-click to fire and you right-click to either zoom or alt-fire. Your weapon then projects a ray/hitbox in the given direction for a defined distance, or launches a projectile that arcs and probably explodes on impact and inflicts a certain amount of damage to whatever it hits. I also guarantee that if you want the "Strategy" part to be any more than yelling "EVERYONE ON THE A POINT NOW" over VOIP, you're going to need FF. (we'll need player-constructed spawns and a logistics system too, but that's a different topic)
http://www.eternalcrusade.com/faq Yes it is an action game, and even the FAQ states that the action starts at range. Which means shooting. I suppose one could hurl insults, but they are far less effective than actual projectiles. So, again, people that play massive shooters, and good shooters in general, are used to the FF mechanic and tend to not have an issue with it. The above is just an FYI, to anyone interested.
And still, the majority voted -yes- If the game offers good balancing of friendly fire, I think most of those, who voted "yes" would agree that it can only benefit the gameplay Battlefield with FF is a great example Raszak has a very good point
Honestly, I don't care which it ends up being. I mean...if there isn't friendly fire how else will Alpha Legionnaires take advantage of the game?
That moment when you realize the words RPG take precedent and everything turns into templates and dice rolls. It doesn't matter if there is friendly fire anymore because we are all going to get screwed by the dice and bad template placement.
Ok, if you don't like FF killing teammates, there is option 2. If a person makes an attack that would have been called FF, that attacker's attack is effectively nullified (no dmg, effects, etc, but still uses any ammo, cooldowns etc (ie not benefit)). That attack also gets a 6 second debuff that slows him to 25% movement and attack speed. See, I really am not sure it is about avoiding tking as much as "we secretly love the exploiting the lack of FF!".
What happens if I'm using a ranged AoE attack and the splash damage hits an ally - is the whole attack negated? Likewise, if there is a cleave mechanic and I clip the ear of someone next to me, is the whole attack negated? Because that would very swiftly move me away from AoE abilities and weapons, if I'm going to risk get screwed over during combat in a way that I wouldn't with single target attacks. The real issue is melee. The poor sods have to get up close and personal, and that will tend to put them between ranged guys and the enemy more often than not. Striking the right balance between FF to protect them from indiscriminate bombardment from ranged enemies (a point in FF's favour I accept) versus the bloodthirst of their melee teammates and ranged allies who prefer to take the riskier shots at that stage will be tricky. WoT has the FF punishment apply to ranged attackers, and it's led to odd situations with a minority of players being happy to block your field of fire at point blank range to get a better shot, or close to ramming distance with wounded enemies, because it secures them kills and pushes all the consequences onto other players shooting. It's just something that's going to need a fair bit of testing and design work to get right.
