The only "proof" you've consistently cited is Bullet Run. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Run Decided to google it up since I had never heard of that game before. And, surprise surprise, it's a POS arena shooter with a cap of 20 players. From the link: The game was then shut down less than a year after launch. This fits perfectly with the trend I highlighted: FF is more of an issue when you have less players, and less of an issue when you have more. In this case, a single TKer comprises 10% of your team (20 players is 10 per team, which I put in the "probably shouldn't have friendly fire unless they really need it for some reason" category) and thus can do fairly significant damage. Therefore, your example actually lends evidence to my theory rather than yours. During nearly the exact same time frame the exact same company, SOE, was able to run Planetside 2 with friendly fire and minimal issues (other than, of course, their utter incompetence at balancing in general *cough*Liberators*cough*). The difference? Weapon lock and larger teams. When each side can have roughly 600 players on a map (continent), a TKer makes up only 0.17% of your team. Chances are you won't even notice him. Try as he might, the larger game rolls on unimpeded due to the sheer weight of players who actually want to play (and the fact that he'll get weapon locked long before he does significant damage). One of my friends tried PS2, later left because he didn't like how OP Liberators and ESFs were, but he didn't even know the game had friendly fire until I told him. Friendly fire incidents were so rare that he simply had not encountered any during the time he was playing. Therefore, I conclude that if the trained monkeys at SOE can make friendly fire work in a large scale game, then Behavior can too. And well, if Behavior can't then that means they failed harder than SOE and the game will likely have much worse problems than just friendly fire... Additionally, it also lends credence to a statement I made earlier where if any game has serious problems with friendly fire, there are much worse problems (fundamentally broken game design, toxic community) at the root of it. To put it bluntly, you played a shitty game and had a bad experience, so now you're acting all traumatized. Did Slaanesh touch you in a bad place? Well, I've already stated a system I believe will be effective: weapon lock combined with a per-TK spawn time penalty. Considering the artistic style of 40k I doubt IFF will be a problem ("Oh sorry, seven foot tall dude with huge spiky shoulders, I thought you were a Tau."), but even so there should probably be a warning sound to let you know you're shooting a friendly and should stop. It's simple, it makes its presence felt early, and it scales naturally with the size of the offense. It also gives people who screw up majorly some time to sit in the corner and think about what they've done.
I like this and I think it would work just fine. I think that the indicator could also be just a graphic in the HUD. For example a glowy outline.. friendlies glow green, bad guys glow red. If you are shooting a friendly the green outline intensifies. Making it a secure visual that you probably should stop since it is distracting you away. I love the time-out reference and i think it will work great for the 12-35 year old trolls
This isnt the single player space marine campaign. And all those people that are playing with you need a shot to kill you as well. FF will allow melee combat to happen wiithout a lot of aoe spam.
In this case referring to melee weapons, i believe that melee FF can easily be solved by a target lock system for melee only. You can still target lock a friendly but at least you cant swing wildly. my 2 cents on that. Over all i think FF is not the greatest of things to be honest and it's more of an annoyance in the end but can be tolerated with good balance/mechanics implemented for trolls and what not. Rasczak posted a well rounded mechanic for such things. I like it.
Rasczaks post assumes that FF will not be accidental and doesnt take into account that some times people will make mistakes...
Agreed but a space marine would be able to pray and spray much like an ork will be able to charge and swing, and eldar would be able to pew pew and stab at their hearts content. There is a certain level of fun that needs to be there even if the game is going to take a "tactical" approach.
