squad size and voice communication

[Lordsethonan]

Re: squad size and voice communication

Wow Sethonan, thats....direct.

Your concerns are a lot like mine, but I see Roger's point as well. Some teamwork goes a long way and having a larger squad you can have a few goofs take off and still keep it going. It also allows you to have more friends together in the same squad instead of two different ones. Those are pretty valid reasons to have a larger squad. It does create a fun atmosphere and allows you to have more power in the squad with the possibility of two of each class.

As for ingame VoIP, yeah, there are third party aps, but VoIP in a game isnt new and it can be improved upon better. CoDecs today are far better then they have ever been. Heck, integrated TS3 into BF3 and that would be a great setup there.

We've tested it, as long as you are in a party you don't even have to be in the same server and you still get great voip comm; I think the party max size is 12 I only got to test with 6; so technically it's even easier to communicate between a larger number of people; th eonly thing "missing" is a hierarchy like in BF2 and this is a good thing in my eyes as I am not going in "blind" because the Commander doesn't talk to my SL or my SL doesn't talk to us.

And I think that's really what is bothering people, there is no number one guy anymore and SL are now more of a team member with a star next to their name *shrugs* doesn't bother me at all; three quarters of the time the SL blows, and 3/4 of the time the Squad member blow so for me in pubs is basically the same thing.

Like I said, the game mechanics are not hard, getting people to work together is hard but the tools are there to use them.

Sure, I can grant you all this: the contextual Q thing is much more limited than the Commrose and the Squad rose; but at anyrate, the Squadrose was only attack/defend/request stuff and for squad members it was only request order/dance in place.

But it's there, SL are again the only ones able to issue orders; if you see an order placed and you are a team player, well go and do stuff near the target; it gives points. When I pub I happily follow the orders until it is evident the guy in charge has no idea what he is doing or just put them somewhere as a token effort.

di you know you can issue orders while piloting planes/choppers now? You can! you can now totally be a piloting officer since your squaddies can spawn on themselves! In fact, the more I played the jet/chopper the more I realized now you need a whole squad to be EFFECTIVE while piloting. you can still get solo kills, but if your squaddies are spotting stuff on the ground for you, and you take care of the armor for them; they are also MORE effective! teamplay!

so for pubs, now when you find those mythical team players, there are enough tools to work together without voice communication; we still dont know how the comm rose is now; so I'd start complaining after we try that anyways.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: squad size and voice communication

no disrespect was intended captain. just improper word choice :)

Thanks Roger, Id hope not

[Roger Smith]

Re: squad size and voice communication

no disrespect was intended captain. just improper word choice :)

[CptainCrunch]

Re: squad size and voice communication

Wow Sethonan, thats....direct.

Your concerns are a lot like mine, but I see Roger's point as well. Some teamwork goes a long way and having a larger squad you can have a few goofs take off and still keep it going. It also allows you to have more friends together in the same squad instead of two different ones. Those are pretty valid reasons to have a larger squad. It does create a fun atmosphere and allows you to have more power in the squad with the possibility of two of each class.

As for ingame VoIP, yeah, there are third party aps, but VoIP in a game isnt new and it can be improved upon better. CoDecs today are far better then they have ever been. Heck, integrated TS3 into BF3 and that would be a great setup there.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: squad size and voice communication

I know I am not the only one out there that HATES locked squads. I also throughly DESPISE and ABHOR armchair generals that think the SL title translates to "do everything I want, when I want".

The current system is more chaotic for pubs, but when, IF, you find people that know this game mechanics are easy, you don't need to communicate verbally.

Here is the thing: I am not part of a clan, I mostly play with real life friends unless they are unable; and the game is NOT difficult. If you are assault you heal people, you revive people, you kill people; if you are support you give ammo and you kill people, if you are engineer you kill people, kill armor and repair armor; if Recon you kill people and lay down spawn points and hopefully, you'll spot what you don't kill.

That's all there is to it. When I pub I prefer to NOT be a SL as I don't like to impose my will on others. When I play with freinds the SL is just there and we rotate the position when possible so we spread the "put an order THERE" requests.

so anytime I get some wannabe military mos t important person of the master sargeants persons I rage. I DONT CARE what you want to do, if they wanted teamplay they'd get friends or a clan in the first place, pubs are not there to pad stats that way. SURE, a SUGGESTION would be nice if we are losing and he's got a plan, but 90% of the time it is "YOU LOSERS WHY DONT YOU HEED ME YOU LOSERS WAAAA WAAAAAAA IM CARRYING THIS TEAM WAAAAA" and to be quite frank, I play for fun and I only enjoy the rage induced by the game itself, I don't have to tolerate the wannabe military guys.

Cos really; Half the time we are losing a flag, and military wannabe guy puts an order directly in the OTHER direction, while failing to notice the tank convoy that's heading our way and that we are the only guys in a position to distract/destroy. It happens when SL guy is AT and I'm support, so I instinctively drop an ammo crate/bag and he runs away WHY.

Or we are near an enemy flag, by ouselves; and we kill the enemy guys and then... dont capture the flag... WHY. Strategically important my behind, game is about capturing flags, if there is a flag to be captured, we should capture as soon as we can... oh COMMANDER said we should head over to the OTHER side of the map, yipee for military ranks wait are we going to do that instead of capturing this perfectly GOOD flag over here? WHY?

Tell you what son, if I wanted to simulate the nonsense that I'm told sometimes goes on in the military, I'd either join the military or I'd play milsim games like AA or ARMA; I wouldn't be in the "jump off a chopper, land on a tank then make it jump off a cliff" Battlefield.

Team speak should cover your needs for clans; in game you are supposed to be playing with friends. If you are playing with friends, you are all in the same platoon/party, so you can all communicate, so the system works.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: squad size and voice communication

i dont think we were playing the same battlefield, i cooperated with many many people that i had never met and probably would never see again. battlefield 2 had six man squads and i made full use of my 5 squadmates, telling them what to cover, where to flank, exc, and we worked as a squad. thats very hard to do with 4 players. [/QOUTE]

No, its the same game. I was able to do the same thing you just described as soon as I joined a clan. Then, and only then, was all that true. Telling 5 people where to go vs. 3 is not that different.

[QOUTE]i played battlefield 2 for years, always on 64 player servers with voice, never had any voice lag caused by it. while servers may have done ts or vent on there servers, it wasn't necessary. the in-game voice worked fine. and at the bottom of that paragraph i specified that it could be powered by battle-log, and use separate servers, and still have in-game functionality and controls. should we take away the weapons from the game because some people don't want to fight? voice is a tool and it should be an option and not forced.

Yes, and I agreed with you that Voip should be in the game. On my clan server VoIP caused a lot of lag and as a server administrator I had to shut it off because of it. Crappy GSP? Yeah, probably, but nothing we could do about it. Yeah, it worked great if it was a good GSP that gave proper bandwidth throttling for VoIP. Its unfortunate that that optional tool forced me to turn it off.

Not true. If you named your squad something like squadplay and then kicked a couple retards from it you'd usually end up with good 6 man squad working together. A larger squads would also make it easier to run learn teamplay squads with one or two of your clanmates and then 3-4 randoms. With squad size of 4 the maximum of random people will be 2 unless you intend to run 'learn squadplay' squad on your own, which I imagine would be very frustrating.

Exactly, so by the community figuring out how to force people into teamwork, it then happened, just like I said in my previous post. So it is true. As SL I could kick them, but I didnt always want to be SL and then I had to leave a squad to make my own and try to start the process and that takes time and then a map changes to something other thank Karkand and the server dies. Again, once I joined a clan, not an issue. And no, this wasnt every single game. Sometimes it worked out and I did get some good players that did teamwork, but that same happenstance also happened about the same in BC2.

thank god somebody is reasonable. in cal of duty black ops, there was native microphone support, but guess what, nobody used it, at least in the pubs. thats because the game isnt very stratiegic, its essentially an amped up counterstrike with prone. the levels are floating boxes so field tactics have no place in that relm. not to mention how many jackwagons play those sort of games.

So you asked for thoughts and when they dont match your own, its unreasonable? Glad your statements are not biased by any means.

[Roger Smith]

Re: squad size and voice communication

thank god somebody is reasonable. in cal of duty black ops, there was native microphone support, but guess what, nobody used it, at least in the pubs. thats because the game isnt very stratiegic, its essentially an amped up counterstrike with prone. the levels are floating boxes so field tactics have no place in that relm. not to mention how many jackwagons play those sort of games.

[L-iNC]

Re: squad size and voice communication

It all depends on the spawn system imo. With the stupid all spawn system in place 4 is maximum as otherwise it would be near impossible to wipe a squad. With SL spawn only 6 would be optimal. With just 3 SM there's much less of an chance for the SL to get a revive. Then again in BF3 the SL can spawn on any SM so it's not as big of an issue.

--Kicks were very common and unless you just licked out, you could only get one or two working with you. A larger squad will only benefit clans that have the people to fill them.

Not true. If you named your squad something like squadplay and then kicked a couple retards from it you'd usually end up with good 6 man squad working together. A larger squads would also make it easier to run learn teamplay squads with one or two of your clanmates and then 3-4 randoms. With squad size of 4 the maximum of random people will be 2 unless you intend to run 'learn squadplay' squad on your own, which I imagine would be very frustrating.

As for squad VOIP, if a proper squad VOIP won't be patched in this game will suffer the same fate of BC2 and die in less than a year.

[Roger Smith]

Re: squad size and voice communication

i guess ive said my piece, no scene in arguing in circles.

[Scinto]

Re: squad size and voice communication

correct me if i am wrong but doesn't 4 x 8 = 32. Yes, but I chose not to include the 8 snipers being useless

i was speaking to the capacity of the squad, not limiting the total number of squads. how many people does it take to defend a cp inside your own lines when the rest of your team is fighting on the front line. the purpose of the squad size imo is voice communication primarily, a specific group of people that are on the same team and the same squad, regardless of who they are friends with outside of that specific game.

4 people could easily defend a CP. With the right squad composition.

Sorry but to have 8 people in a squad talking over one another at the same time when your trying to get some co-operation to take a CP or w/e, how is that better?

[Roger Smith]

Re: squad size and voice communication

Many times I played battlefield with empty or low squads. When I did have a full squad it ran every ejection regardless of the orders given. The community resorted to naming squads specific things just to try to get teamwork. Kicks were very common and unless you just licked out, you could only get one or two working with you. A larger squad will only benefit clans that have the people to fill them.

i dont think we were playing the same battlefield, i cooperated with many many people that i had never met and probably would never see again. battlefield 2 had six man squads and i made full use of my 5 squadmates, telling them what to cover, where to flank, exc, and we worked as a squad. thats very hard to do with 4 players.

Even in bf2 people rented re and vent servers because large slot servers lagged voice quality. By using battlelog you are seperating the traffic. I don't think I need to mention how many don't use it and how a lot of people were muted because they wanted to be an a griefer.

i played battlefield 2 for years, always on 64 player servers with voice, never had any voice lag caused by it. while servers may have done ts or vent on there servers, it wasn't necessary. the in-game voice worked fine. and at the bottom of that paragraph i specified that it could be powered by battle-log, and use separate servers, and still have in-game functionality and controls. should we take away the weapons from the game because some people don't want to fight? voice is a tool and it should be an option and not forced.

32v32 = 3x 8 man squads on maps that generally have 5 flags. Depending on the system I don't think you will be able to assign multiple squad orders. Whereas, as they are now 4 man squads are able to have a flag each leaving 4 people in the Air vehicles (Caspian for instance). It's small enough for 4 people to travel around the map in a jeep as opposed to 2 jeeps following each other and sticking out.

correct me if i am wrong but doesn't 4 x 8 = 32. i was speaking to the capacity of the squad, not limiting the total number of squads. how many people does it take to defend a cp inside your own lines when the rest of your team is fighting on the front line. the purpose of the squad size imo is voice communication primarily, a specific group of people that are on the same team and the same squad, regardless of who they are friends with outside of that specific game.

[jimykx]

Re: squad size and voice communication

I remember creating ENGLISH VOIP or TEAMWORKING named squads like in pr would still get some people teamworking in your squad

[Scinto]

Re: squad size and voice communication

32v32 = 3x 8 man squads on maps that generally have 5 flags. Depending on the system I don't think you will be able to assign multiple squad orders. Whereas, as they are now 4 man squads are able to have a flag each leaving 4 people in the Air vehicles (Caspian for instance). It's small enough for 4 people to travel around the map in a jeep as opposed to 2 jeeps following each other and sticking out.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: squad size and voice communication

Yeah, that's all nice, but not entirely true.

Many times I played battlefield with empty or low squads. When I did have a full squad it ran every ejection regardless of the orders given. The community resorted to naming squads specific things just to try to get teamwork. Kicks were very common and unless you just licked out, you could only get one or two working with you. A larger squad will only benefit clans that have the people to fill them.

As for voip, I agree that it should be ingame, but understand why it is not. Even in bf2 people rented re and vent servers because large slot servers lagged voice quality. By using battlelog you are seperating the traffic. I don't think I need to mention how many don't use it and how a lot of people were muted because they wanted to be an a griefer.

[Roger Smith]

Simply put, base squad size on player count. With four and eight being numbers divisible by sixteen and thirty-two respectively; why not allow for larger squad sizes on larger servers. For 64 player rounds, eight player squads would be effective and for 32 player rounds, four player squads would work. The purpose of limiting squad size is to keep mobile spawning from being too accessible and promote staying alive at key points. Despite the rational for keeping squads small, there are a couple of reasons that having larger squads would be beneficial. First of all, its quite hard to coordinate with your team when you only have four members to coordinate with. Having larger squads on rounds with higher player counts would help promote cohesion. The other benefit of having larger squads on larger player count rounds would be integrating ground force cooperation with armored and aerial assets. To perform adequate support, vehicles need to coordinate with ground forces. The larger player count maps are also larger geographically, so there is less chance to abuse mobile spawning with larger squads, because the benefits of the squad size would be negated by the amount of objectives, on conquest at least.

Voice communication was perfect in battlefield 2 as an in game option. Obviously there cant be an exact copy of battlefield 2's voice communication without the commander. But implementing an in-game option has many benefits over the battle-log. Your friends can't always be on your team and they aren't always around. How are you going to make those friends if you can't communicate with them and find that you like playing with them. Obviously communication should be squad based as team based communication would create needless jumbled conflicting chatter that would not be beneficial as alerts to threats and orders would get lost in the mess of the team channel. Squad level communication is an essential tool to a squads success and a squad leaders ability to command. Having a squad leader channel would help the squad leaders communicate which part of the battlefield they will be covering, or if they need assistance from other squads. For instance, a squad that specializes in aerial assets could give direct support to other squads, be it fire support or insertion, extraction and even search and rescue downed pilots to get them back in the air faster and without the loss of a player spawn, which can help a team win the battle. There can even be a sound effect that plays before and after a squad leader speaks to the other squad leaders to distinguish between the channels. The player should have the option to toggle the in-game voice communication option so that lone wolves can work alone. Besides people can always use in-game communication in addition to battle-log let alone teamspeak and ventrillo exc. Battle-log can still be the method for these systems of communication to create the different channels using the data from the server that's currently being played on.

thoughts?