Re: Name your 3 most wanted fixes in 1.3 patch
Agreed, you should send that to EA.
This isn't exactly 3, but (warning, very long post):
1. Overall server-client communication needs to be improved. I really, really don't wanna see any more threads about the red-blue tag bug, ghosting AT/TOW missiles, air-to-air missiles deciding to ignore the enemy plane at the last second and veer off somewhere else (like into a friendly aircraft/helo), sniper rifle scopes zooming-in and out spastically, C4 detonator not switching properly and instead switching back to C4 when right-clicking, and just in general, bullets not hitting their target when they should.
2. The in-game vote system is garbage. In my tenure playing this game, I've seen maybe 3 people get successfully mutinied or kicked out of the server, but many times has there been this one player who TKs his whole team winding up with -200 points and nobody, not even the server admin who should-be-but-never-is around, does anything about it. The fact that you can ignore the vote altogether without pressing PGDN for "NO" underscores the fact that this system needs retooling. My suggestion would be to base the outcome of the vote on the ratio of yes to no votes, and ignore the players who ignore the vote call, and perhaps somehow forcing all players to vote on the matter (maybe bigger, red text that covers the whole screen without disappearing until PGUP/PGDN is triggered will do the trick?
)
3. Something needs to be done with the ridiculous belly-flopping. You have this big heavy PKM with nice damage/accuracy, you see an enemy: what do you do? Insta-prone and click in his direction. Rinse and repeat for a gold medal guaranteed on 24/7 Karkand/Sharqi servers. As far as I can see, there is no benefit to NOT going prone at the onset of a firefight. If you're going to go prone to lower your profile, you should not also have the benefit of maximum accuracy the moment you hit the Z key. Yeah I know realism arguments don't sway many members of this community, but think about it this way. This game is about rock-paper-scissors balance, where one kit is good at A but lacks in B, and another kit is good at B but lacks in A. Right now standing and crouching are fine, because they offer you mobility at the cost of the gun's max accuracy, but proning has no essential weakness. You get that max accuracy right away, and as soon as the enemy is dead you're right up on your feet again running. A simple delay between hitting Z and your ability to fire your weapon is all that is needed here to make the use of prone a tactical decision, not a player's default stance that is used every time they see a red-tag. The very fact that this problem exists means that the support kit is not being used as intended: a suppressive fire base. If you had to stop, wait, and then be able to shoot, you would not see support players pretending to do the assault role, and perhaps, give some f'ing ammo when I ask the first 30 times
.
4. The god-awful commander point glitch. Yeah, the one that people keep posting new threads about every few days or so. Just remove it so that forums like these can be spared the clutter of the same thread about the same group of people repeated ad nauseum. I have also heard that some bad-mannered ranked server admins are purposely causing this glitch on unsuspected commanders so that they get caught by EA's padder script and auto-stats-wiped, so that might also be a good reason to eliminate this scourge. On another admin related note, a user-friendly in-game admin interface would be a very good addition.
5. Give some love to the engineers. It's one of the three main "teamwork" classes, but it receives repair points at a very discouraging rate when compared against medic heal and support resupply bags (which assist teammates INSTANTLY when compared to taking 30 seconds to "wrench" a damaged UAV trailer back to full). I know I'm not alone when I say that repairing a vehicle/asset should reward you with either more than 1 repair point, repair the vehicle faster, or perhaps even receive points for disarming claymores/c4/mines (a whole other can of worms btw).
6. Claymores/Mines need to be destructible again. DICE, have you seen the alleyways of Karkand lately? Or the flag area near the Square? Theres just nothing you can do to avoid them except have a teammate purposely trip them so that you can revive the guy and keep going. Doing so would also reduce the number of "ZOMG I HATE CLAYMORES" threads that these forums are plagued with. I never complained about the number of claymores snipers got or how many they could put down at one time or whether they have IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) systems, but seeing them used as indestructible/unavoidable offensive weapons is not my cup of tea. At the very least make them blow up with grenades, like in 1.12.
7. The F-35B JSF, Eurofighter Typhoon, Euro Tiger attack helicopter, and in general air-to-air missiles need improvements. I will admit that I have not flown in this game for very long, but I have read many different threads from people who do like flying and will try to relay their suggestions here. The first issue, the JSF, is that when put up against virtually any equally-skilled fighter pilot in another jet such as the J-10, the JSF will get the crap kicked out of it. A popular idea here to give it an edge would be to give it a reliable and decent airbrake. The Eurofighter Typhoon needs something done about the fact that it has a tendency to fly to the right (something to do with the rudder) and not fly straight. The Euro attack helo apparently has very sluggish handling that results in many unnecessary crashes where the USMC Super Cobra would not crash, given its handling. I'm sure someone with more experience with the Euro attack helo would be able to elaborate in that area. And lastly, many, many players have grievances with the air-to-air dogfighting in this game. Aside from glitches and latency interfering, many feel (myself included) that the moment someone has locked-on and fired, you might as well bail out because unless you're flying the J-10, you can't outturn/outmaneuver the missiles. A popular idea here is to retain the 1.22 ground-to-air missile AI, but revert the air-to-air missile AI to 1.12 levels. Again, someone with more flight time than my 8 hours will be able to elaborate more on that area.
8. Beef up the Assault class. This is a huge topic that covers many areas of the kit, but this thread here covers it all very nicely. http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67203
Basically, they should have more smoke grenades, the same amount of sprint that the medics/engineers/snipers/specops get, revert the GL back to 1.12 (which means no firing delay, bigger splash radius, less deviation, but keep the arming distance/bounce effect in), and possibly lower the deviation on assault rifles.
9. Who likes riding in the Blackhawk/SkyCow/FlyingBrick? I know I sure don't. The transport helos in this game certainly got the shaft when DICE nerfed them not once, not twice, not thrice, but FOUR times. Now back in the days of pre-1.03, all 6 players in the BH/SC/FB were creditted with flag cap points and all affected the rate of flag capture. Yeah, it made sense to have it so only the pilot could get points and the rest of the crew had to hop out and cap from the ground. I had no problem with that. Then the case was made that engineers, even just one, repaired it so fast that nobody could shoot it down. This resulted in reduced efficiency of engineer repair mid-flight, which I was also OK with. Then some patch or two later, ALL aircraft armor was reduced significantly to the point where the only "safe" travel in a transport helo was 400-500m up where they are barely visible from the ground and most jet fighters would overlook you in favor of bombing runs. This is, as we know, currently the only real way for the USMC to reach the mainland of Wake Island by parachuting over the airfield or some undefended point. With these first 3 nerfs the transport helo class has effectively become the flying coffin class, but DICE and the whiners still weren't satisfied. Somehow, with logic that defies reality, the M134 BH miniguns were deemed unworthy and subjected to nerfdom. I just don't get that one. The fact that you couldn't repair fast enough to keep up with .50 cal damage from a FAV and reduced armor meant that even with the original splash and damage of the M134s, the BH crew would not be doing any infantry killing at all. So now, what is the point of even keeping them in the game? My suggestion for this one, is to undo the M134 nerf and for the sake of the other transport helos, give them equally powerful side-mounted guns to tear up infantry. Maybe even more speed to offset the extreme vulnerability to tank/apc/.50 cal fire? All in all, I would really like to see these hulking death traps actually USED on the battlefield instead of collecting dust on the helipads/runways.
10. I think its time to be able to pick up mines/claymores/c4. I'll submit that this change isn't so necessary that its absence completely renders the game obsolete, but it would be nice to be able to do with the appropriate kits.
11. Fix the broken SF awards, possibly readjust some of the other ribbons/badges/medals and the ranks. Many players have pointed out that the Tactical Support Weaponry veteran/expert badges, the Zipline veteran/expert badges and the Grappling Hook veteran/expert badges are glitched and have the global requirement in the place of the IAR requirement. I don’t think even with the most vigilant stat padding will allow you to throw 6000 grapple hooks in one round before the time is up/tickets fall to zero.
Now other than those broken awards, there are certain criteria for other awards that are, by many accounts, not properly reflecting a player’s skill. For example, the War College Ribbon: it’s a ribbon that in theory is given to players who excel at commanding, even beyond the requirements of the staff officers’ ribbon. But then there is a requirement listed on the WCR that says that the player must have a Global win:loss ratio of 3. What does your W:L ratio have to do with being a commander? What does it even have to do with your skill as a player? Whether or not your team wins the round has nothing to do with your skills, it has to do with the team itself. I could fly a jet all round, grab the gold medal with a score of 200 and not die once, but still have my team lose because all of our flags were capped. Many players have suggested replacing this “requirement” with something more reflecting of an individual player’s skill at commanding, such as a global requirement of 1000 (or more) wins as a commander, and even a commander score of 15000 (or more).
There are many other awards that have been pointed out as being too biased toward time and not on skill, for example the expert armor badge forces you to sit in a tank for 400 hours. Most players who enjoy tank combat learn the ins and outs of the tank within their first 20 hours of sitting in a tank, I can’t imagine what skill could possibly be gained between the 100th (veteran) and 400th (expert) hour. Granted, I still think that some time should still be a requirement for badges like this, but I also think they should reflect player skill. One requirement completely absent from these and other likeminded badges is kill:death ratio. IMHO, I would consider a 2:1 ratio in a tank to be “average”, 5:1 to be “good”, and anything above that to be “skilled”. The exact numbers aren’t that important, but their absence from the requirements list means that only people who idle in the vehicles at the dispense of the team (I’ve seen many commanders sit in transports/stationary TOW/AA just to wrack up time in them) will be poised to receive these awards.
Lastly, I think something needs to be done with regards to the ranking system, specifically the general ranks. Brigadier General requirements include a large global score (as all ranks do), but also requires expert vehicle badges. The rank following this requires expert kit/knife/pistol badges, which are significantly easier to achieve than the expert vehicle ones. Since the ranks are supposed to be progressively harder, the expert kit/knife/pistol badge requirements should precede the expert vehicle ones. Also, others and I have noticed that the global point gaps between ranks are very uneven, thus making some upper ranks easier to get in terms of time required to get the points than some of the lower ones. For example, the gap between FSgt and SgtMaj is 30000 points, but the gap between SgtMaj and 2nd Lt is 10000. It took me over two months of playing casually to get SgtMaj but I achieved 2nd Lt in just over a week; how easy. Again, the ranks should be progressively harder to achieve, so these gaps should be evened out. And for the hell of it, the veteran vehicle/kit/knife/pistol badges should become ranking requirements as the basic/expert versions already are.
There, done.
1. Overall server-client communication needs to be improved. I really, really don't wanna see any more threads about the red-blue tag bug, ghosting AT/TOW missiles, air-to-air missiles deciding to ignore the enemy plane at the last second and veer off somewhere else (like into a friendly aircraft/helo), sniper rifle scopes zooming-in and out spastically, C4 detonator not switching properly and instead switching back to C4 when right-clicking, and just in general, bullets not hitting their target when they should.
2. The in-game vote system is garbage. In my tenure playing this game, I've seen maybe 3 people get successfully mutinied or kicked out of the server, but many times has there been this one player who TKs his whole team winding up with -200 points and nobody, not even the server admin who should-be-but-never-is around, does anything about it. The fact that you can ignore the vote altogether without pressing PGDN for "NO" underscores the fact that this system needs retooling. My suggestion would be to base the outcome of the vote on the ratio of yes to no votes, and ignore the players who ignore the vote call, and perhaps somehow forcing all players to vote on the matter (maybe bigger, red text that covers the whole screen without disappearing until PGUP/PGDN is triggered will do the trick?
)3. Something needs to be done with the ridiculous belly-flopping. You have this big heavy PKM with nice damage/accuracy, you see an enemy: what do you do? Insta-prone and click in his direction. Rinse and repeat for a gold medal guaranteed on 24/7 Karkand/Sharqi servers. As far as I can see, there is no benefit to NOT going prone at the onset of a firefight. If you're going to go prone to lower your profile, you should not also have the benefit of maximum accuracy the moment you hit the Z key. Yeah I know realism arguments don't sway many members of this community, but think about it this way. This game is about rock-paper-scissors balance, where one kit is good at A but lacks in B, and another kit is good at B but lacks in A. Right now standing and crouching are fine, because they offer you mobility at the cost of the gun's max accuracy, but proning has no essential weakness. You get that max accuracy right away, and as soon as the enemy is dead you're right up on your feet again running. A simple delay between hitting Z and your ability to fire your weapon is all that is needed here to make the use of prone a tactical decision, not a player's default stance that is used every time they see a red-tag. The very fact that this problem exists means that the support kit is not being used as intended: a suppressive fire base. If you had to stop, wait, and then be able to shoot, you would not see support players pretending to do the assault role, and perhaps, give some f'ing ammo when I ask the first 30 times
.4. The god-awful commander point glitch. Yeah, the one that people keep posting new threads about every few days or so. Just remove it so that forums like these can be spared the clutter of the same thread about the same group of people repeated ad nauseum. I have also heard that some bad-mannered ranked server admins are purposely causing this glitch on unsuspected commanders so that they get caught by EA's padder script and auto-stats-wiped, so that might also be a good reason to eliminate this scourge. On another admin related note, a user-friendly in-game admin interface would be a very good addition.
5. Give some love to the engineers. It's one of the three main "teamwork" classes, but it receives repair points at a very discouraging rate when compared against medic heal and support resupply bags (which assist teammates INSTANTLY when compared to taking 30 seconds to "wrench" a damaged UAV trailer back to full). I know I'm not alone when I say that repairing a vehicle/asset should reward you with either more than 1 repair point, repair the vehicle faster, or perhaps even receive points for disarming claymores/c4/mines (a whole other can of worms btw).
6. Claymores/Mines need to be destructible again. DICE, have you seen the alleyways of Karkand lately? Or the flag area near the Square? Theres just nothing you can do to avoid them except have a teammate purposely trip them so that you can revive the guy and keep going. Doing so would also reduce the number of "ZOMG I HATE CLAYMORES" threads that these forums are plagued with. I never complained about the number of claymores snipers got or how many they could put down at one time or whether they have IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) systems, but seeing them used as indestructible/unavoidable offensive weapons is not my cup of tea. At the very least make them blow up with grenades, like in 1.12.
7. The F-35B JSF, Eurofighter Typhoon, Euro Tiger attack helicopter, and in general air-to-air missiles need improvements. I will admit that I have not flown in this game for very long, but I have read many different threads from people who do like flying and will try to relay their suggestions here. The first issue, the JSF, is that when put up against virtually any equally-skilled fighter pilot in another jet such as the J-10, the JSF will get the crap kicked out of it. A popular idea here to give it an edge would be to give it a reliable and decent airbrake. The Eurofighter Typhoon needs something done about the fact that it has a tendency to fly to the right (something to do with the rudder) and not fly straight. The Euro attack helo apparently has very sluggish handling that results in many unnecessary crashes where the USMC Super Cobra would not crash, given its handling. I'm sure someone with more experience with the Euro attack helo would be able to elaborate in that area. And lastly, many, many players have grievances with the air-to-air dogfighting in this game. Aside from glitches and latency interfering, many feel (myself included) that the moment someone has locked-on and fired, you might as well bail out because unless you're flying the J-10, you can't outturn/outmaneuver the missiles. A popular idea here is to retain the 1.22 ground-to-air missile AI, but revert the air-to-air missile AI to 1.12 levels. Again, someone with more flight time than my 8 hours will be able to elaborate more on that area.
8. Beef up the Assault class. This is a huge topic that covers many areas of the kit, but this thread here covers it all very nicely. http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67203
Basically, they should have more smoke grenades, the same amount of sprint that the medics/engineers/snipers/specops get, revert the GL back to 1.12 (which means no firing delay, bigger splash radius, less deviation, but keep the arming distance/bounce effect in), and possibly lower the deviation on assault rifles.
9. Who likes riding in the Blackhawk/SkyCow/FlyingBrick? I know I sure don't. The transport helos in this game certainly got the shaft when DICE nerfed them not once, not twice, not thrice, but FOUR times. Now back in the days of pre-1.03, all 6 players in the BH/SC/FB were creditted with flag cap points and all affected the rate of flag capture. Yeah, it made sense to have it so only the pilot could get points and the rest of the crew had to hop out and cap from the ground. I had no problem with that. Then the case was made that engineers, even just one, repaired it so fast that nobody could shoot it down. This resulted in reduced efficiency of engineer repair mid-flight, which I was also OK with. Then some patch or two later, ALL aircraft armor was reduced significantly to the point where the only "safe" travel in a transport helo was 400-500m up where they are barely visible from the ground and most jet fighters would overlook you in favor of bombing runs. This is, as we know, currently the only real way for the USMC to reach the mainland of Wake Island by parachuting over the airfield or some undefended point. With these first 3 nerfs the transport helo class has effectively become the flying coffin class, but DICE and the whiners still weren't satisfied. Somehow, with logic that defies reality, the M134 BH miniguns were deemed unworthy and subjected to nerfdom. I just don't get that one. The fact that you couldn't repair fast enough to keep up with .50 cal damage from a FAV and reduced armor meant that even with the original splash and damage of the M134s, the BH crew would not be doing any infantry killing at all. So now, what is the point of even keeping them in the game? My suggestion for this one, is to undo the M134 nerf and for the sake of the other transport helos, give them equally powerful side-mounted guns to tear up infantry. Maybe even more speed to offset the extreme vulnerability to tank/apc/.50 cal fire? All in all, I would really like to see these hulking death traps actually USED on the battlefield instead of collecting dust on the helipads/runways.
10. I think its time to be able to pick up mines/claymores/c4. I'll submit that this change isn't so necessary that its absence completely renders the game obsolete, but it would be nice to be able to do with the appropriate kits.
11. Fix the broken SF awards, possibly readjust some of the other ribbons/badges/medals and the ranks. Many players have pointed out that the Tactical Support Weaponry veteran/expert badges, the Zipline veteran/expert badges and the Grappling Hook veteran/expert badges are glitched and have the global requirement in the place of the IAR requirement. I don’t think even with the most vigilant stat padding will allow you to throw 6000 grapple hooks in one round before the time is up/tickets fall to zero.
Now other than those broken awards, there are certain criteria for other awards that are, by many accounts, not properly reflecting a player’s skill. For example, the War College Ribbon: it’s a ribbon that in theory is given to players who excel at commanding, even beyond the requirements of the staff officers’ ribbon. But then there is a requirement listed on the WCR that says that the player must have a Global win:loss ratio of 3. What does your W:L ratio have to do with being a commander? What does it even have to do with your skill as a player? Whether or not your team wins the round has nothing to do with your skills, it has to do with the team itself. I could fly a jet all round, grab the gold medal with a score of 200 and not die once, but still have my team lose because all of our flags were capped. Many players have suggested replacing this “requirement” with something more reflecting of an individual player’s skill at commanding, such as a global requirement of 1000 (or more) wins as a commander, and even a commander score of 15000 (or more).
There are many other awards that have been pointed out as being too biased toward time and not on skill, for example the expert armor badge forces you to sit in a tank for 400 hours. Most players who enjoy tank combat learn the ins and outs of the tank within their first 20 hours of sitting in a tank, I can’t imagine what skill could possibly be gained between the 100th (veteran) and 400th (expert) hour. Granted, I still think that some time should still be a requirement for badges like this, but I also think they should reflect player skill. One requirement completely absent from these and other likeminded badges is kill:death ratio. IMHO, I would consider a 2:1 ratio in a tank to be “average”, 5:1 to be “good”, and anything above that to be “skilled”. The exact numbers aren’t that important, but their absence from the requirements list means that only people who idle in the vehicles at the dispense of the team (I’ve seen many commanders sit in transports/stationary TOW/AA just to wrack up time in them) will be poised to receive these awards.
Lastly, I think something needs to be done with regards to the ranking system, specifically the general ranks. Brigadier General requirements include a large global score (as all ranks do), but also requires expert vehicle badges. The rank following this requires expert kit/knife/pistol badges, which are significantly easier to achieve than the expert vehicle ones. Since the ranks are supposed to be progressively harder, the expert kit/knife/pistol badge requirements should precede the expert vehicle ones. Also, others and I have noticed that the global point gaps between ranks are very uneven, thus making some upper ranks easier to get in terms of time required to get the points than some of the lower ones. For example, the gap between FSgt and SgtMaj is 30000 points, but the gap between SgtMaj and 2nd Lt is 10000. It took me over two months of playing casually to get SgtMaj but I achieved 2nd Lt in just over a week; how easy. Again, the ranks should be progressively harder to achieve, so these gaps should be evened out. And for the hell of it, the veteran vehicle/kit/knife/pistol badges should become ranking requirements as the basic/expert versions already are.
There, done.
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