Character

Submitted by Antoine on

Hello everyone.
Let's admit it. Call of Combat did have a few quirks and (very) minor shortcomings. We do not want to necessarily talk about those that were really ruining the experience, however we are curious about those that gave a certain character to the game. You know, these imperfection that creates its identity, that makes it more cute, more likable somehow. What are, in your opinion, the elements of the first game that did just that? There are some we want to get rid of, there are some we might want to keep in, in some form anyway. We were just curious to hear everyone's opinion about that.
Gentlemen, fire away!

Comments

MonkeybombV2's picture

Submitted by MonkeybombV2 on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 16:37.

The grenade spam! :D

Submitted by Monkey Bullet on Tue, 08/12/2014 - 18:00.

In order of Favourites (1. being best)

1. The Chain of Command!!! This can be considered a quirk in the sense that the commanding officers could pass down weapons to all his friends, while some people (mostly the newcomers) got zip.
I actually rather enjoyed this aspect because it gave me an idea of who's ass I needed to kiss until I guaranteed myself mp40/mg42/bar/thompson every game! Plus from a game dev point of view, it makes people want to keep playing until they are respected enough as a skilled player to be given said weapons.
Plus in an AG game, it's great when you or your CO gives the mg42 based on what location they are sending someone. Dem Superior Tactics!!!!

2.The Window Trap (Lying under window) - Absolutely hilarious when you do it to someone else, and facepalm when it happens to you. BUT, whilst being unrealistic, it was a 50-50 whether it would work. I did a 2v2 with HEAT against RFA I think. I remember 2v2ing with HEAT who bollocked me for not nading the window before going to it (which was common sense considering I'd JUST seen them running past it)

3.NADING! This is like the signature of CoC when we played. I've seen how there is a grenade radius being implemented and I can't say I'm that keen on the prospect. I preferred it when you could throw a nade, turn and run, and not see, or have any idea whether you hit them or not. It adds a need for more experience and skill to win a nade war.


Costas's picture

Submitted by Costas on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 07:39.

Nading especially through weird angles, either through windows or around walls was perhaps where most skills that didn't have to do with speed developed. There were certain buildings on certain maps that the passage was so narrow inside the buildings with windows on both sides that you could hassle the enemy to make him nade you at the window and come for the kill, only having another soldier behind that part of the building that could throw the nade through both windows and stun the attacker (i.e basement windows). Also you had to rotate to a certain angle to get a nade through some windows. That required a better understanding of the game and made you play a bit smarter if you like.
Another thing was ambushing. Laying down behind a wall/window would make you invisible until the enemy would literally come and stand above you. If you don't believe me ask warboss. No wall was ever safe on any map against him LOL
And for the older members, nade sliding and dead cows :)
Rocky's picture

Submitted by Rocky on Wed, 08/13/2014 - 17:31.

First of all, this is a super fun game and I very much look forward to it and I'm very thankful the work you are doing.

A few thoughts about gameplay, good and bad with suggestions for solutions:

My favorite maps were those where there were multiple options for advancement which allow for different strategies. Do we attempt to flank on the right? Push up the middle? And then of course this forces you to adjust to the opponents strategies when you find them behind or flanking you. There was a map with one option to go up the middle and the bravest would slug it out and die while the slackers would sit back and hide which doesn't make for an interesting battle. Tough battles are fun, but I would like to see options for movement on all the maps. If one bridge is heavily defended, lets have another bridge we can try to cross.

Friendly fire suppression seemed a bit high in open range areas. Fire coming from your own troops it seems should not suppress as much as enemy. Since suppression is said to raise risk of successful enemy shot, your own troops are helping your demise, but I do like suppression as it adds realism.

My least favorite thing was players splayed out on the ground near walls and inside buildings. Not actively participating and just racking up kills from ambush to help their rankings without taking as much risk. One solution might be to award points based on stress factor. If you are putting your troops into the battle, you get more points. If you lay around in a building you get very few (if any) points. This may discourage the practice of lazy and uninteresting game play, while rewarding the bold players who take chances to help their side win. Another solution to this would be a timer added based on capturing enemy VP area. With this, the game will end in a countdown of a short time instead of having to hunt through all of the buildings for the lazy ambushers laying around, and this means the lazy player will get no kills.... we can simply ignore them.

Rather than keying on stress factor.... keying on shots fired for scoring might be another idea to encourage active participation.

I would like to suggest strategic objectives that are not Victory Point areas but key to winning battles... ammo dump for each side where players can retreat to get more ammo, but opponent can capture or destroy it, so it must be defended. If each side has 2 of these, losing one will not be catastrophic, but losing 2nd will spell disaster. So I like the idea of more things to defend as well as capture.

Rocky

Submitted by Heineken on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 17:58.

Nade warping. The best intentional glitch in the game which made involved a bit of skill
Rapidkiller's picture

Submitted by Rapidkiller on Thu, 08/14/2014 - 20:54.

For me, nading was always the bulk of the fun. Getting randomly shot from halfway across the map and losing a guy for no reason was annoying. If you hit a 0.01% shot you just didn't feel like you earned it, whereas killernading meant you at least hit the guy on purpose.

The "Fire at" button seemed useless. Perhaps if stressing a target meant your shots would have higher % of hitting the "fire at" button would be more tactical, and players would get the sense of "oh their soldier died because I stressed them and made them easier to kill".

The screenshots look promising, keep it up!
Alex's picture

Submitted by Alex on Fri, 08/15/2014 - 15:32.

The 0.01% was interesting as in a 15v15 game you had 120 soldiers shooting potentially 50 shots each a game, so 6000 shots an open game. The 0.01% probably happened once a day yet the bulk of shots were under 20% due to distance and that's probably the main thing misunderstood. Simply by players holding troops at a distance even when 1 was nading, the 1% snipes had a higher probability of appearing simply due to distance, unless someone's ever hit a 80% from 18sq.

Avoiding snipes is in itself a skill, that's why those that blindly ran out of cover to stack nade a private got sniped to death as that was high risk.
Personally I think this game needs to be easy to play but hard to master and the less of the under the hood mechanics shown to the players the better, crucially the hit % should never be shown at all in any screen.