I guess I don't understand why, if people's "idiotic" suggestions offend you so badly, you would even open up the suggestions forums? Still being stuck on the server strain problem is also pretty baffling to me. You don't design a game trying to conform to nebulous server constraints. You design a game to be fun, interesting, engaging, beautiful, thought provoking, or any other myriad reason. THEN you bend that idea to work within your constraints. Limiting yourself with preconceived notions is literally THE cardinal sin of working in a creative field. My squad suggestion is really an evolution of other MMOs pet systems. Your squad mates aren't ai controlled robots blindly following you and shooting when you do, they are additional characters outfitted and controlled by you. Making the tactical decision when to switch back and forth between characters during combat would be a core gameplay mechanic. Like I said in the post you skipped over, a generic reskinning of gears of war (or whatever your favorite third person shooter was) where the majority of gameplay is zerging 500v500 holds literally zero interest for me. Groups that big take every bit of impactful decision making and engaging gameplay out of the equation. I don't mean that across the entire battlefield there can't be hundreds of players, but if there aren't incentives to strike out on your own or with a small team and complete objectives or find enemies to fight then it isn't even a game. If smaller group combat is properly incentivized so that it is the de facto gameplay then I would argue that my squad system idea is vastly superior to running around as a single character.
Try and keep calm, this forum is for discussing the game - people are going to have different opinions from you on a whole mountain of subjects, please try and respect them even if you don't agree. Thank you
Is this the post skipped over? Your main points in this posts are: 1- You say that fights will be at mosts 5vs5 players. The game will take place in a single shard server ala EvE online and the devs are planning on having 500vs500 players per battle, not per map, but per battle. Your first point falls fat on it's place. 2- Having more than 20vs20 players in a single battle will make everything come down to zerg rushes. Nevermind that EvE online, ps2 and other miriad of games have shown and proven that large amounts of players can be properly organized into a coherent force, but they have also showned that they are systematically better than unorganized bigger masses of players. So no, biggest zerg doesn't mean instant win. You also say that individual action does not impact large scale battles. This is not completly true, in both EvE online and PS2 I've seen players singlehandedly do some really awesome stuff. That's the beauty of player-player interaction. I would also like to point out that some people prefer victory through teamwork than soloing. 3- You say that your squad system will mix the epicness of large scale fighting to skirmishes between reduced group of players. At this point I'm confused. You seem to think that the only thing to come out of large scale battles is zerg rushing. But then want to add the flavour of mass warfare to small conflicts. Idk... It seems to me like you want to add zerg rushes to 5vs5 matches. I don't know what to say to the last paragraph. Massive multiplayer matches are a misnomer to massive multiplayer games? Please explain. And to the last phrase, well, the devs have already said that the game will be a mix between Space marine and GoW... Not much that you can do there. Lets do this in a point by point system again. 1- "Limiting yourself with preconceived notions is literally THE cardinal sin of working in a creative field" If you aren't realistic with the resources you're going to have at hand you're gonna run into a serious problem further down the development line. This has happened to many games who where overenthutiastic with their promises. These games either end up underachieving, missing promised features, get delayed or become vaporware. 2- By the way you are describing the squad system on this post, you seem to likened it to CoH like squad where every single member is customized according to your own taste in tactics. This is an interesting concept. If this was your original suggestion then I apolagize for my previous outburst. As I understood your system I thought you meant maintaining the third player action, but just adding npcs. But the devs have already decided on the gameplay model and have shown images of it's prototype. 3- You once more say that large battles will make tactics and strategy obsolete. By personal experience I tell you that it's not true. In fact tactics and strategy become harder and more important in large groups, specially when you start adding combined arms to the system.
Ya maybe my initial post was unclear. The original squad system idea was vaguely Xcom esque except in real time. The player would be directly in charge of all their individual "characters" even if they're only directly controlling one of them at a time. as per the pre alpha gameplay teaser: View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuVeZ8n4CAQ#t=10 even their "epic" end battle that lasts 2 or 3 seconds only has ~15 players maybe? This is what I'm talking about. Of course its only pre alpha probably set up in house just to show off, but that's what we have at the moment. I absolutely love the one server idea and epic battles with hundreds of players , but I don't think you'll ever have more than twenty or thirty players on the screen at one time. Your experience with large group combat seems to have been very different than mine, I'm not really sure how to reconcile that.
