Activity Announcements

(ailmanki) #21

It still said “dynamite planted”. Most mods made it wrong too, and add “PlayerX planted dynamite”. Instead of adding that piece of information when it has been destroyed or defused. “Dynamite planted”, “PlayerY defused PlayerX’s dynamite”

(Humate) #22

Until a big large announcement pops up shouting “THERE’S SOMEONE DOING SOMETHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT AT THIS LOCATION!”

Yes. The defence will collapse when they see the message.
From the perspective of the objective player, its annoying I get that.
From a team perspective it allows the larger group to break through when the defence collapses.

(Maca) #23

I don’t feel confident going against what Anti has said, but I would like to at least test having less information given. I’m not sure it would make the objective spammy and boring for the defender. They can still have high defense, it would be more high risk/reward, but now the risk is quite small. And just as a subjective thing, like DarkangelUK, I think it would maybe even make the game more fun in pubs (and in general?) if it was more concentrated.

(Anti) #24

Hey, you’re all welcome to have different opinions to me, feel confident! :slight_smile:

The whole point of the alpha is to test our own points of view in designing the game against those of the wider FPS community. We have our own goals and ideas, but we’d be daft to assume they’ll all please the audience and ultimately it’s the players we need to make happy.

(Dormamu) #25

I personally go with some kind of on/off Activity Announcement on primary obj.
Allow the attacking team to disable them first before repairing/planting. The Activity Announcement could be:

  • a box near the obj who need to be hacked by a cov-ops or disabled by an engi, soldier.
  • a mini radar station as a standalone fixed location, or deployed by an engie/fdops
  • a hovering uav deployed by soldier/covops.
    Allowing the cov-ops to hack the Activity Announcement on the primary obj. would be the same as steeling cloths and allow an engie to enter fueldump unnoticed. But this would require bigger maps, in a small map is faster to do the obj than disable the AA first
(Breo) #26

A lot of games have this, some have a blinking waypoint icon (less intrusive).

If you see the message when the secondary object is done, the defend team has a disadvantage (time to reach the object).

(DarkangelUK) #27

[QUOTE=Breo;418451]
If you see the message when the secondary object is done, the defend team has a disadvantage (time to reach the object).[/QUOTE]

That’s what the defence are meant to do… defend. Abandon the objective too far and go off for a jolly jont and you run that exact risk, they shouldn’t have an alarm system to fall back on for sloppy behaviour.

(Bloodbite) #28

I am also very much for removing names from the big announcements. “so and so Planted the C4”… sounds silly, but I think there’s a nice kick of satisfaction that comes from blowing the enemy up with your C4 and knowing that only in death will they realise who’s hand dealt the blow. Maybe it’s the sadist in me but it does rub me the wrong way having my sense of anonymity squandered with each pre-success announcement.

One thing I’d like to see is a timer for C4 plants for the planting team. Restrict it just to engineers or to all on that team so they know exactly when it’s going to go off… I could go either way, but I’d lean more towards everyone knowing. It fits with the concept of current and future tech.

A progress bar that also mentions the C4 location… if you bring back the quick map that was in W:ET, restrict it to coordinates as a locale description.

If there’s a timer for the defusing team, that I think should be restricted to engies, and ONLY when one of them actually gets near the plant. The game may be arcadey, the tactics should be as real as possible. I agree with others in that the “they’ve broken into the bank”… “they’ve repaired the truck” type announcements are enough. Any more about the progress of each plant, or each repair amounts to hand holding (hacks are do-able in this regard though). I think this is something that will define how willing the more casual players will be to properly learn the game or just rely on the aids. From what I’ve seen, less reliance has always been the key to shaping a server of regulars into very tactical and situational-ly aware players… and vice versa

(amazinglarry) #29

I can’t say I agree with having the progress of objectives being displayed to all players amounting to ‘hand-holding’. In some cases it can be the motivating factor that somebody needs to actually switch classes and help complete the objective, or know that maybe it’s time to fall back etc.

For example seeing a repair objective stalling at 85% or something would probably make me end up switching to an engineer to roll in and help facilitate finishing the job… or if I’m on the opposing team, it would help me determine whether its worth defending or falling back to the next objective and setting up some D.

(stealth6) #30

As long as it’s events in the past I’m ok with it.

“Pump has been repaired”
“Dynamite has been planted”

(Bloodbite) #31

[QUOTE=amazinglarry;418462]I can’t say I agree with having the progress of objectives being displayed to all players amounting to ‘hand-holding’. In some cases it can be the motivating factor that somebody needs to actually switch classes and help complete the objective, or know that maybe it’s time to fall back etc.
…[/QUOTE]

Not in a big way, but I think it’s enough to hold some people back from learning the classes properly during their initial exposure to the game.

This is just my theory, but I think many people learned alot more when there was some degree of trial and error in figuring out how to apply each class in a battle. The mechanics really stick inside your head then. It’s a subtle thing that doesn’t necessarily give it a steep learning curve like ETQW “appeared” to have, and W:ET kinda did have for anyone not coming from RTCW. But I think this fits in with the Battlesense aspect of the game. It puts the onus on everyone to pay attention, and not rely on what their HUD tells them.

I liked running around in the day pushing the frontline then running back to see why the tank wasn’t moving forward. That element of paranoia because you had to cover as many angles as possible even if most or all of your team knew exactly what to do on that map… it was part of the excitement in a good battle.

(SockDog) #32

Defence should have to allocate a head count to defending the objective, if the rest of the team want to push out to a choke point or multiple chokes that’s awesome. The split they make between defending the objective locally and via forward routes should be part of what make or breaks the team. If the defenders choose to have nobody at the objective then I don’t really see why they should also be notified when that objective comes under attack. I guess to flip it on it’s head should you also announce to the attackers whenever the objective is free of defending players?

(INF3RN0) #33

I think it makes sense to have them in pubs, but possibly disabling them in a competitive mode would be fine- since there’s going to be open comms among all the players.

(Violator) #34

My £0.02 as a pub-only player:

‘X is planting the Y’ - disagree with this for the reasons DA mentions. IMHO might as well plant a big target on the planters back, and sneaky back-plants should be blamed on holes in the defense. Plants require a continual period of time and I believe a sneak planter is undergoing enough risks already.
‘Y is being planted’ - this isn’t so bad, but I believe this will still cause the problems above.
‘Y planted by X’ - this is needed (or at least ‘Y planted’).
‘X is hacking the Y’ - this is needed as its a drip-feed objective which requires a more immediate response from the defender. For plants the defuser has a fair period of time to attempt the disarm so ‘Y planted’ should be sufficient.

(Hyperg) #35

I’m all for a cvar to disable/enable the messages, in pubs they will prolly be a good thing to have, as for wars, despite strategies taking shape, reaction and comms are kinda adamant anyway.

A long shot here, but to twist SockDog’s post, what if the announcement is triggered by the defending team (or not at all)? You look at the objective and if u hit a button or smth (contextual interaction, etc) AND the objective is indeed hot (being repaired, w/e), you yell the announcement server wide. Ofc, if the action is halfway into completion when it’s being detected, all the better for the attacking team (and the stealth argument), but the defending team gets a “roundup” call. Something along the lines of enemy spotting.

(tokamak) #36

[QUOTE=stealth6;418463]As long as it’s events in the past I’m ok with it.

“Pump has been repaired”
“Dynamite has been planted”[/QUOTE]

“MCP has left the map”

(amazinglarry) #37

We all do know there is currently no “X is planting” right now, right? Okay, just making sure.

(iwound) #38

[QUOTE=iwound;418413]
… is hacking" or … is fixing with PDA" or … is repairing objective (not eva) good because of time needed to stop this. and once its done its done and time for next objective.[/QUOTE]

post patch, these have been removed. on the eva theres an issue with silent pliers, i was repairing it with 3 defenders stood near me facing away. never knew i was there. ratchet sound would help.
re the pda objective waterloo ive not been able to see how this affects the game as most were 3v3 4v4 no-one actually defending the objective. naybe a pda use sound but not sure what that would be or whether it would help. as i said earlier announcement should be on that but will be interesting to see how it plays out.

the barriers is ok but it needs that ratchet sound. et had ghost image of fully built objective. i think local hints to the build are ok.

also have the data core announcements gone because i was at the side entrance when they opened, by the time i got to them they were gone but no indication.

(Maca) #39

Local visual and sound indicators would be good to have, but the terminal is shown in the progression bar (I swear I had this in but for some reason it was dropped when I first posted this). I am happy with having most of the global announcements gone though

(.Chris.) #40

You can still see if someone is repairing or whatever by watching the progress bars, I can’t remember if this is true for all progressive objectives (repair/hack) but on EV the icon has a health bar underneath the main icon.