PMC Multiplayer conclusions

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Snake Man
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PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Post by Snake Man » 2009-05-24 11:58:36

PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Last night I played in the PMC Saturday Night VTE Special event, I played bit over 12 hours straight. My initial conclusions are as follows.

- People are really impatient (lobby, briefing etc).
- They all want to play different mission (style, one likes coop, one pvp etc).
- They do not want to be stuck in seagull mode, at all.
- If you need to have mission edited, its too late when you are already playing.
- Do not add large sound etc files into missions. Mission over 1mb, is bad.
- Human pilot in helicopter (vehicle?) and human cargo cannot eject his AI's.
- You can never have detailed enough briefing, someone always asks something stupid.
- Nobody reads those briefings (see teh dilemma? hehe).
- People assume that every mission has respawn.
- People assume that every mission has helicopters or similar "features".
- People dont seem to like AI squad members, they prefer all human missions.
- Mission without respawn is very short and leaves many people as seagulls early on.
- Mission without instant action or something "to do", leads to many people get bored.
- Best mission seems to be COOP with respawn, mission which can run for hours.
- Make sure you have missions with available slots if many players join.

My overall conclusion, you never ever cannot please everyone in your server, there is always someone who says "this suckz!!1" and disconnects. Server admin in a way needs to be brutal dictator, its his server, his rules and the missions he selects which people must obey and play. Of course server admin should be a nice and ask what stuff players prefer and try to accommodate them, but in the end of the day, his word is the law and many times hes left with decisions to make when he has half of the group wanting PvP and other half COOP.

The above conclusions are of course not just only 12hrs played last night, I actually spent the best part of this week to prepare missions and test them on our server with usually 5-10 people every night on the server. But yeah, you could say that this summary overview is with one week experience, just heavily relying on last nights 12 hours. Everyone is more than willing to correct me on some fact issues.

There were also some mission design and editing stuff I wanted to mention, but I'll post those on the editing forum where they suit more better.
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Re: PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Post by Vigilante » 2009-05-24 15:09:03

I call those game-scavengers... :P i am one sometimes too, so dont complain me calling them that ...
You just want to have some entertaining round of 'fun' so you 'scavenge' all kinds of servers till you find some place to go nuts or whatever you think of 'entertaining fun' ...
I have it myself, after many hours of editing i just want to go somewhere and shoot stuff, mainly AI because they are easier prey and you dont get agitated because you sometimes have to think that some 11-12yr old kiddy just pawned you bigtime, even if it wasnt the case, but you never know.

Basically i see a big difference in public and private server gaming, really big... the MP Event Night was the prime example for a public server, although it was somehow moderated and all was 'sparkleing new' for many, it showed the points you just mentioned. I said that before too, PvP == 'action' else 'suckz' ... many cant be bothered to wait or hold on, it seems, also due to JIP (Join In Progress).
Since in OFP times in MP games you HAD to wait if you wanted or not and if you left after waiting 15min then the chance to wait AGAIN the same time or more was quite big since all servers had no JIP. It was a bit different public gameing community feeling back then, everybody said hi when connecting and even some replies, since its chatmsg wasnt lost in all kinds of killmsg or such. This kinda made even strangers some kind of 'clan buddies' and if it was for just the next 2h!

The other side would be private server gaming and then you have the trouble of organizing it or someone organizing it, in advance and properly! Especially if you plan a night with 'mission Y on map X' the mission should be fault proof! otherwise its a big bummer for all, except if you tag the event as 'beta' or such ... i could write more but im still tired ;)

tacticalgamer.com does a nice variant, they have one public and one 'TS-required' server running and i think some private too. And even with the public ones i had quite a lot of nice teamwork going on... check them out!
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Re: PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Post by GrunT » 2009-06-04 00:35:14

missions like Dak Seang Tigers are realy fun to play, player has option to grab ai or not, also Warfare i like very much but its buggy in vte we cant use jeeps and the camps/outposts are to close to the citys/villages the ai supply trucks are getting stuck, the camps should be clear from villages but yet close enough..? missions like domination are fun but the one one pmc server is not using the vte islands...other then that fuckin awsome work on mod guys and mission maker for great missions.. :D



GrunT

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Re: PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Post by DMarkwick » 2009-06-05 16:52:30

Hah :D I rarely play online anymore, but when we played a lot of OFP we liked it tough. That is, single life ONLY, one guy gives the orders. Worked pretty well for us (at Frugals) and I enjoyed this mode the best.

I say - set the server as you like it, in order to attract the players you'll get on with :)

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Re: PMC Multiplayer conclusions

Post by Macross580 » 2009-06-07 00:55:54

I have both VTE, and Unsung installed. If you cant find a server for VTE (which I love just as much as unsung),
Filter "screaming eagles". They have an Unsung server going too. Both MP's good to me as long as I get a shot off at charlie :D I'll be on Unsung tonite (at that server above) if you want to duke it out.

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