Gunship and One Sided Commander

QuantumRanger said:
Have you ever played as commander? On maps like Golmud Railway, the UAV hardly shows anything except right at the flag. The map is so big that you can flank with ease as long as you're not right ontop of the flag. The UAV spam on maps like Lockers is where it shows almost everything around a flag and prevents flanking.

And remember, the commander can't manually spot one person like you could in 2142. The only way a commander can spot is via the UAV.



Um, yes there is. Cap the points that provide the Gunship, INF scan, and VEH scans. That DOES handicap the commander in matches as all they'll have is a UAV and can only scan in one area and it lasts there for ~45 seconds with ~5-10 seconds of reload time.
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Snuggle has some really solid points on this, when he gets his lazy ass in here eventually he'll join the discussion. Until then...

As for large maps like Golmud; UAV spam is still an issue in the central area of the map at the Northern Village, albeit not as large a problem as UAV spam on the majority of maps. Still, it suffers from the gunship mechanic issue I mentioned before, no other vehicle in the game disregards a server's vehicle respawn delay timer.

Also, when I mentioned the handicap of one sided commander matches, I meant matches with only one commander.
 
SunshineTheGoat said:
lso, when I mentioned the handicap of one sided commander matches, I meant matches with only one commander.
Click to expand...

And that's what I was talking about. Tell your team to get off their lazy asses and take the points that give the enemy commander those tools if they want to piss him off. 9 out of 10 times, if the enemy commander doesn't have them, he'll just leave the game. I've seen it happen.
 
ANd like I mentioned before, I dont mind being up on the enemies mini-map....lets them know death is coming, or I get shot. It is a part of the game. As far as taking out flanking maneuvers, you can still flank, spotted or not.

What about being spotted with a red triangle through smoke?
 
SunshineTheGoat said:
... the fact that the gunship does not respect the server's vehicle re spawn delay timer setting (TBG all map conquest server has 100% respawn delay timer for vehicles for example), yet the gunship will re spawn instantly after being destroyed, regardless of every other vehicle in the game having that lengthy delay until reappearing.
.
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Your not accounting for the fact that the respawn timer on the Gunship starts the moment it spawns. just like the UAV and EMP and CM. It just has a shorter respawn. Also your not accounting for when CO gets a chance to do their own targeted fire of the Gunship. It appears to be a instant respawn but really its letting you target and get kills. I can definitely understand how it seems the way you describe. But if you sit and really play commander you'll learn that the Gunship can be just as challenging for commanders as players dealing with it on the ground. Especially if you have a team that doesn't respond to working with a commander. :-/
 
Snakebabies said:
ANd like I mentioned before, I dont mind being up on the enemies mini-map....lets them know death is coming, or I get shot. It is a part of the game. As far as taking out flanking maneuvers, you can still flank, spotted or not.

What about being spotted with a red triangle through smoke?
Click to expand...

Getting down to brass tax, commander mode as it currently stands takes away from team strategy and squad tactics, I always support a game mechanic that provides more depth to the players, not less.

Flanking maneuvers while being spotted or revealed on mini map are going to get denied the majority of the time.

Last few days since commander was disabled... each map's environmental, unique strategies came alive because finally we could use the terrain and a good camouflage to out maneuver the enemy squads without always being revealed. Gunships were no longer constantly spotting the whole map with their infrared scopes and aerial view, helicopters had to do the passenger drop offs, infantry and vehicles weren't being bombarded by a gunship that re spawned the moment it was destroyed.

And as for the point about smoke and spotting triangle being visible through it, snake you will be happy to know that CTE patch going live on vanilla in September-October fixes smoke so it is denser, thicker, and better stops spotting through it. :p
 
so when the next patch comes out, gunship wont be as bad as you make it out to be. +1 commander on allmaps!
 
Commander being disabled should probably be re evaluated as major balance passes happen throughout bf4's lifecycle. Next months patch from what I have seen on CTE does fix the respawn timer on the Gunship, but the UAV remains untouched, so that's still a huge game mechanic issue, and as you said in an earlier post, the UAV is possibly more OP than the gunship.

Also, every once in a while I ask people on the server how they like this change and there is a mixed bag of people loving no UAV or Gunship spam, and some wanting it. But when snuggle gets on here and provides me some much needed backup *cough* 3 on 1 :rolleyes: then this discussion could get some fresh ideas. He is really good at BF4 and can bring some solid feedback.
 
Also snake, you should give it a chance for a bit and see how you like what is pretty much a totally different game now (yes commander changes the game that much!), situational awareness has gone to a whole new level in BF4 without the UAV spam. You may find you actually like it, and you'll say damn sunshinethegoat, you were really onto something here with your crazy rantings and ravings. lol.

After hundreds of hours in the game I am just now finding new ways to approach objectives and do some brilliant flanking maneuvers that were impossible before with a UAV constantly buzzing overhead.

Even still, if a squad's ninja tactics gets out of hand, a recon can pull out the MAV and do some good old reconnaissance. That however is easily countered, unlike the relentless commander asset. It all comes down to the rock, paper, scissors balancing formula battlefield fans know, and commander assets just doesn't respect that formula in it's current state.
 
There are a number of pages, so some of this, most of this will be rehashed, but I will give a little background first. Commander mode is an example of Dice listening (it was one of the things people constantly bitched about BF3 lacking) but not implementing something properly. It is an idea that could be brilliant but instead detracts greatly from the game (I'll get into why in a moment). Overall BF4 was obviously rushed. Nothing was complete and nothing had polish. This isn't news, and there isn't really much I can add to the conversation. It was still fun broken. It has improved. It is still fun. It is still broken in many ways. They did not balance the maps (or really even complete them), the vehicles, perks, the new gadgets, or commander mode. The only reason people aren't bitching about specific guns being unbalanced more is due to the fact that dying to all of them feels the same, getting zapped by a time wizard. I also suspect the vast majority of EA DICE resources, as in almost all, are going to future game development. Hopefully they got enough egg on their face and lawsuits in their pants that the next release will be less broken. I am however very skeptical that major overhauls will be performed on vehicle or commander mechanics. There will be tweaks such as gunship respawn time, reload rate, repair rate, damage, which are totally necessary, but won't really address some of the underlying problems.

In BF3, if you took right reactive armor damage (reactive armor was on all sides on light armor, all sides except front on MBTS, and each one absorbed a rocket but could be repaired for those who don't know) on the RU light armor it appeared as rear and rear appeared as right, but only on certain maps and only on the little icon. Switching seats or getting out but back in would make your reactive armor appear to be in tact, but not really there, that's where this bug could become troublesome for someone who didn't know. MBTs (maybe just Abrams, I can't remember) took rear damage when moving with SHIFT, which could actually be used to your advantage if you had rear reactive. There were a ton of other weird things with each vehicle. It was like this from release day until I quit for BF4, I suspect it still is.

I am typically a conquest 64 player, so what I say pertains to conquest 64 and not other game modes.

What I look for when I try to find a server:
-People actually in the server, server doesn't die after one team gets bitch slapped once
-Team shuffle between rounds so that people can take turns bitch slapping/being bitch slapped
-Conquest
-Not instant spawn
-Not 3000 ticket
-Kick/ban for blatant griefing (including racism/homophobia)/glitching and of course cheating
-No kick/ban for killing people
-Low ping for me, not full of high pings (most places won't ping limit due to difficulty of seeding, but some places are just infested with 95% people who obviously live no where remotely close to the server location. I also work nights, so my options are often limited)
-A good rotation of maps, preferably adaptive maps (Metro plays wonderfully with 24-30, is loathed by the majority of 64 player conquest players who aren't stats driven)
-No commander mode

Again these are all personal preference that I could easily explain why I prefer them. I have noticed that most people who play lots of conquest 64 and do not play a single map or setting agree on most points. The reason I don't play non conquest often is not because the idea behind the game modes is bad, but because the mechanics are broken. Obliteration, parachutes and glowing SHOOOOOT ME as bomb carrier ruin it. Rush can be amazing, but asset allocation is often very bad. Many maps just don't work with certain player counts, often times objectives within the same map will favor far different player counts. In low ticket rush games, people don't attack with the balls necessary to make it, in high ticket rush games, things typically devolve into a brand of campfest that does not appeal to me personally.

I think most people who play conquest 64 settings that span the maps (not niche map players) enjoy the same types of games I do, super close games that go back and forth win or lose, games with teams that both relentlessly push when needed, games where you hear the end music and contemplate coming back with pads if you could only save 2 people and not die. Win or lose, those games give me a BF boner.

Take a look at what commander mode brings to the table for both the person playing commander and the grunts on the ground (remembering how simplistic the interface is).
-Gunship
-Scan (inf/vehicle/emp <- lumping all that shit)
-Cruise
-Vehicle Drop
-HVT
-Ammo drop
-Communication with squads

I won't argue with someone who says being a commander is fun simply because why argue opinion. I happen to think it is entirely too simplistic for the power that it wields. I will argue that commander mode and the actions a commander seriously detract from the strategy of the game and the balance for those on the ground. It is simplistic but ultra powerful. Ideally commander mode would put 2 strategic minds against one another with constant back and forth communication with squad leaders. Momentum would shift. Squads would rally behind orders. People would have sex with each other's mothers. Tactical decisions from above would influence the game. Unfortunately the 2 biggest things a commander does to influence the game (from the super tactical screen where he taps a button and a location on the map, woooooo) are scans and gunships. These don't lead to tactical shifts, these lead to bottlenecks, and one sided supremacy. They also place an unnecessary weight on the gunship objectives.When there is one commander, it is such a ridiculously unfair advantage. It isn't impossible to win, but your team better be much better. I dislike things that unbalance games out of the gate. BF doesn't need help being unbalanced within an individual game. Even with 2 commanders, one team will start to win. The other team will have less and less room. This area will be lit by the gunship, and paratroopers, and no one can move out of it undetected. Flanks are killed before they begin. Armor coming out of base to alleviate this stress is bombarded by parachuting SRAWS, Javs on hills, multiple tanks, the gunship itself, and has 1 active protection and 1 set of rounds to navigate this. People who manage to make it out of spawn are greeted by a scan, gunship rounds, and a whole bunch of shit they can't fight. It becomes shooting fish in a barrel, and if you're an average player you're gonna be the fish half the time. I do not enjoy being on either side of this.

I personally think that if the gunship were just changed into a paradrop site, it would be the most important objective on most maps. When you add guns, a screwed up timer, the ability to see everything, the ability to shoot at the point that controls it, and an infinite flight time (I think it should be like bomber, there's a warning, it comes, you shoot shit, it passes), the game goes to hell. For people who say, it's just hit it with 5 of these, or kill it with AA, and it's down. It's easy to kill. You obviously aren't the people trying to retake the gunship checkpoint. At the very least the gunship completely ties up one of your major assets. The influence/ammo this person (typically it's gonna be AA or jet if the gunship is being popped constantly) is using on a gunship are no longer directed at helping his team. This assumes he doesn't have problems of his own.

-Gunship: favors winning team, terribly unbalanced in power, duration of activity, respawn, checkpoints that control gunship are generally in the open and completely covered by gunship (Wavebreaker being the exception)
-Scans: kills flanks, something crucial to a team coming from behind
-Cruise: Make what you want of it. it isn't game breaking, but I feel the best use for it is getting people from annoying buildings. The game is too vertical, I don't think the solution is to have a missile, but to prevent fuckers from getting up there in the place.
-Vehicle drop: ha
-HVT: needs some tweaking, a minor concern
-Ammo drop: I dislike finite ammo on vehicles, but that's another 10 pages of why, but I do like the tactical feel an ammo pack gives to armor in the area. I also like changing kits on it. Can't complain about this one.
-Communication with squads: really just doesn't happen on a large basis, but potentially a great benefit









________________________________________________________________
 
Snugglepotamus said:
There are a number of pages, so some of this, most of this will be rehashed, but I will give a little background first. Commander mode is an example of Dice listening (it was one of the things people constantly bitched about BF3 lacking) but not implementing something properly. It is an idea that could be brilliant but instead detracts greatly from the game (I'll get into why in a moment). Overall BF4 was obviously rushed. Nothing was complete and nothing had polish. This isn't news, and there isn't really much I can add to the conversation. It was still fun broken. It has improved. It is still fun. It is still broken in many ways. They did not balance the maps (or really even complete them), the vehicles, perks, the new gadgets, or commander mode. The only reason people aren't bitching about specific guns being unbalanced more is due to the fact that dying to all of them feels the same, getting zapped by a time wizard. I also suspect the vast majority of EA DICE resources, as in almost all, are going to future game development. Hopefully they got enough egg on their face and lawsuits in their pants that the next release will be less broken. I am however very skeptical that major overhauls will be performed on vehicle or commander mechanics. There will be tweaks such as gunship respawn time, reload rate, repair rate, damage, which are totally necessary, but won't really address some of the underlying problems.

In BF3, if you took right reactive armor damage (reactive armor was on all sides on light armor, all sides except front on MBTS, and each one absorbed a rocket but could be repaired for those who don't know) on the RU light armor it appeared as rear and rear appeared as right, but only on certain maps and only on the little icon. Switching seats or getting out but back in would make your reactive armor appear to be in tact, but not really there, that's where this bug could become troublesome for someone who didn't know. MBTs (maybe just Abrams, I can't remember) took rear damage when moving with SHIFT, which could actually be used to your advantage if you had rear reactive. There were a ton of other weird things with each vehicle. It was like this from release day until I quit for BF4, I suspect it still is.

I am typically a conquest 64 player, so what I say pertains to conquest 64 and not other game modes.

What I look for when I try to find a server:
-People actually in the server, server doesn't die after one team gets bitch slapped once
-Team shuffle between rounds so that people can take turns bitch slapping/being bitch slapped
-Conquest
-Not instant spawn
-Not 3000 ticket
-Kick/ban for blatant griefing (including racism/homophobia)/glitching and of course cheating
-No kick/ban for killing people
-Low ping for me, not full of high pings (most places won't ping limit due to difficulty of seeding, but some places are just infested with 95% people who obviously live no where remotely close to the server location. I also work nights, so my options are often limited)
-A good rotation of maps, preferably adaptive maps (Metro plays wonderfully with 24-30, is loathed by the majority of 64 player conquest players who aren't stats driven)
-No commander mode

Again these are all personal preference that I could easily explain why I prefer them. I have noticed that most people who play lots of conquest 64 and do not play a single map or setting agree on most points. The reason I don't play non conquest often is not because the idea behind the game modes is bad, but because the mechanics are broken. Obliteration, parachutes and glowing SHOOOOOT ME as bomb carrier ruin it. Rush can be amazing, but asset allocation is often very bad. Many maps just don't work with certain player counts, often times objectives within the same map will favor far different player counts. In low ticket rush games, people don't attack with the balls necessary to make it, in high ticket rush games, things typically devolve into a brand of campfest that does not appeal to me personally.

I think most people who play conquest 64 settings that span the maps (not niche map players) enjoy the same types of games I do, super close games that go back and forth win or lose, games with teams that both relentlessly push when needed, games where you hear the end music and contemplate coming back with pads if you could only save 2 people and not die. Win or lose, those games give me a BF boner.

Take a look at what commander mode brings to the table for both the person playing commander and the grunts on the ground (remembering how simplistic the interface is).
-Gunship
-Scan (inf/vehicle/emp <- lumping all that shit)
-Cruise
-Vehicle Drop
-HVT
-Ammo drop
-Communication with squads

I won't argue with someone who says being a commander is fun simply because why argue opinion. I happen to think it is entirely too simplistic for the power that it wields. I will argue that commander mode and the actions a commander seriously detract from the strategy of the game and the balance for those on the ground. It is simplistic but ultra powerful. Ideally commander mode would put 2 strategic minds against one another with constant back and forth communication with squad leaders. Momentum would shift. Squads would rally behind orders. People would have sex with each other's mothers. Tactical decisions from above would influence the game. Unfortunately the 2 biggest things a commander does to influence the game (from the super tactical screen where he taps a button and a location on the map, woooooo) are scans and gunships. These don't lead to tactical shifts, these lead to bottlenecks, and one sided supremacy. They also place an unnecessary weight on the gunship objectives.When there is one commander, it is such a ridiculously unfair advantage. It isn't impossible to win, but your team better be much better. I dislike things that unbalance games out of the gate. BF doesn't need help being unbalanced within an individual game. Even with 2 commanders, one team will start to win. The other team will have less and less room. This area will be lit by the gunship, and paratroopers, and no one can move out of it undetected. Flanks are killed before they begin. Armor coming out of base to alleviate this stress is bombarded by parachuting SRAWS, Javs on hills, multiple tanks, the gunship itself, and has 1 active protection and 1 set of rounds to navigate this. People who manage to make it out of spawn are greeted by a scan, gunship rounds, and a whole bunch of shit they can't fight. It becomes shooting fish in a barrel, and if you're an average player you're gonna be the fish half the time. I do not enjoy being on either side of this.

I personally think that if the gunship were just changed into a paradrop site, it would be the most important objective on most maps. When you add guns, a screwed up timer, the ability to see everything, the ability to shoot at the point that controls it, and an infinite flight time (I think it should be like bomber, there's a warning, it comes, you shoot shit, it passes), the game goes to hell. For people who say, it's just hit it with 5 of these, or kill it with AA, and it's down. It's easy to kill. You obviously aren't the people trying to retake the gunship checkpoint. At the very least the gunship completely ties up one of your major assets. The influence/ammo this person (typically it's gonna be AA or jet if the gunship is being popped constantly) is using on a gunship are no longer directed at helping his team. This assumes he doesn't have problems of his own.

-Gunship: favors winning team, terribly unbalanced in power, duration of activity, respawn, checkpoints that control gunship are generally in the open and completely covered by gunship (Wavebreaker being the exception)
-Scans: kills flanks, something crucial to a team coming from behind
-Cruise: Make what you want of it. it isn't game breaking, but I feel the best use for it is getting people from annoying buildings. The game is too vertical, I don't think the solution is to have a missile, but to prevent fuckers from getting up there in the place.
-Vehicle drop: ha
-HVT: needs some tweaking, a minor concern
-Ammo drop: I dislike finite ammo on vehicles, but that's another 10 pages of why, but I do like the tactical feel an ammo pack gives to armor in the area. I also like changing kits on it. Can't complain about this one.
-Communication with squads: really just doesn't happen on a large basis, but potentially a great benefit









________________________________________________________________
Click to expand...

Reinforcements arrived. Haha.

Thanks for your input Snuggle.

BTW guys I ask at least a couple times a day for TBG 24/7 all map conquest server's regular players' opinion on this change and while I have not been keeping an "offical" tab, the majority seems to be in favor of this. Fast, I hope the server traffic slowly ups as more people find out there is a rare gem of a server that has cmmdr disabled to boot.
 
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I was just saying the only difference between commanding then and now....is Commander assets, or lack there of. A lot of the bigger maps are unaffected by UAV...think Golmud is the exception to A/B flags.

I will play there either way, whether we have CO on/off...I like to debate :)
That server has been like top 15 since release, with CO on the whole time. Why now is this just being brought up? ;)
 
Snakebabies said:
I was just saying the only difference between commanding then and now....is Commander assets, or lack there of. A lot of the bigger maps are unaffected by UAV...think Golmud is the exception to A/B flags.

I will play there either way, whether we have CO on/off...I like to debate :)
That server has been like top 15 since release, with CO on the whole time. Why now is this just being brought up? ;)
Click to expand...

Top 15 since release?! In all bf4 servers in the world?! Damn you guys must be proud. I am extremely interested how the traffic is affected by this change, Fast, please let us know in a week or two if there was any affect, then again school is starting for a lot of people so that might have to be taken into account right?
 
All conquest is 5th atm....not sure if you see the list of our servers on the main page if you scroll all the way down?
 
Snakebabies said:
Is this a rhetorrical question?
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edit:

oh shit wait...when i was looking at http://tbgclan.gameme.com/ I thought that was top bf4 servers globally... so I was thinking wow TBG holds the top positions all throughout.

no sleep for several days does drop the IQ for a time. lol

Yeah I kept thinking when Fast said this was the most popular server that he meant globally on all bf4 servers, but he meant within the TBG family of servers right?
 
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Snakebabies said:
no...no rewards...Not top server TBG servers..You were right in your thinking. Fast did mean globally on bf4.
Click to expand...

I think it was that dev tripwire that used to promote top Red Orchestra servers who had the best community and admin quality with free server hosting for a period of time in an effort to promote community involvement and awesome environments for players, was pretty cool actually.
 
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