Is HTC trying to reduce GV play?

[bustr]

AH3 has been live about a year which has given players a chance to beat up Hitech and Waffle's assumptions about the construction of the three default  "16 tree\clutter" tile groups in the terrain editor with real time player results. Barring a major over haul, those tiles are what we have. The SpeedTree trees and clutter are supposed to be realistic since most games use them. The graphics engine allows for visual and light effects that are standard for the industry. For years this august body has screamed for realism and upgrading of the eye candy, so they finally got it. And it has forever changed the game, now AH3 is not AH2 and the grumbling boils down to wanting AH2 views and tree\clutter densities duplicated in AH3 so you can see the other guys.

I was part of the alpha\beta testing from day 1 to go live AH3 for two years. The assumption in the beginning for GV combat was the GVer's would love the realism. All of the GVer's who played around in the tank town on NDisles while we tested tree spacing and clutter loved being able to hide from each other. Sadly that was a very small number of players during those days. Approaching go live, there were some larger engagements, no one really had a handle on the new environment. From the feed back I listened to, many were over whelmed by the realistic nature of the new environment. Visual range was much shorter, shadows really made things murky, turning off your engine to blend in worked too perfectly. And no one setting up the GV combat areas had a clue to just how dense and claustrophobic the trees\clutter are. A common complaint was how long it took to drive short distances to get whacked by invisible tanks for your trouble.

When I built my first AH3 terrain I drove every single GV combat area I created to understand how GVer's felt about the tree\clutter. It is claustrophobic, very few places to see long distances, let alone snipe at long range like was so popular about ah2. Even with my setting up my first terrain with long range open spaces to see, now everyone hides in the deepest trees\clutter they can find along those open vistas and crawls afraid of being ambushed. My first terrain took me 6 months with very specific testing of all the ground combat areas to try and resolve some of these issues. My second terrain that I'm about to submit to Hitech for evaluation, once again I've spent months on it with extensive testing of the GV combat areas to try and alleviate some of the claustrophobic conditions. AH3 is different than AH2 and after almost a year, it appears the general GVing players have decided the AH3 trees\clutter requires sneaking around while paranoid about ambushes. I've been applying a grass tile to the farmland\village tile I'm using for GV spawns and combat around towns. Because when I drive these areas to test the spawns, even with the rice paddies and other crop feilds and fewer trees. There are too many places to hide behind bushes or bamboo thickets and it make me paranoid about driving tanks in the game.

In WW2 tanks often had some kind of scouting team or plane to spot for them, otherwise they got ambushed which happened a lot in western Europe. In AH2 the localized terrain for GV combat were setup a bit more like the open feilds and forests on the Russian front where you could see the enemy tanks a long way off. The AH3 tree and clutter realism is adding a level of paranoia and stress to the GV game I doubt existed in AH2 by the reactive amount of vitriol and anger in players forum responses.   

[icepac]

Maybe HTC is trying to reduce the 2 minute missions and making planning, stealth, and patience a bigger part of battle...........just like in real life.

[Slate]

  I miss the little hills that were every where in AH2 that would give some chance of cover from enemy gvs. Or hiding spots also I suppose. The tanktown in crater ma is sorely missed I think by GVers. There was some awesome fun there killing and getting killed with the various spawns and center town. 

[JunkyII]

Maybe HTC is trying to reduce the 2 minute missions and making planning, stealth, and patience a bigger part of battle...........just like in real life.

We got us a modern day Patton over here...


Everyone stop trying to compare what in game should be like because of real life...if that were the case resupply would be a nightmare and not as easy as 123 like it is now.

[Randy1]

As GV'ers know, the hidden hunted has the advantage over the moving hunter.  In typical terrain in ah3, the hunted has even more of an advantage than ah2.

Keep in mind the great tank battles in ah2 had two distinct features.  A short trip to the battle then instant action.

[JunkyII]

I like the tank fights in AH3...just wish we had small hills again

[bustr]

I've tried to create them, the underlying polymesh is 1\8x1\8mile squares. I can pull up the center of 4 of those due to how the polymesh wire frame  is laid out, which ends up creating a highlands instead of tiny berms. Highlands promotes players off the spawn hiding at a distance firing down on the town and not getting into combat at the town. This new generation of realistic terrain tiles is promoting that kind of GV combat now.

If I remember correctly,  someone told me the berms you guys lament over were a clutter tile with those built onto it as small objects. Wishlist for berm objects like the hills at the town and hope a terrain builder wants to invest an enormous amount of time and effort to place them into the terrain and test them for GV combat. Untill then, I'm using grass to radically thin out the farmland\village tile on the current terrain I'm finishing up so the long open spaces are reminiscent of AH2 tree\clutter tiles. By now having spent so much time testing the ground for GV usability, I have a good idea how to salt in berm objects if they were every given back to terrain builders.

Hitech might have decided that berm "objects" may have in AH2, and might contribute to FPS issues due to loading down a small area with objects. Right now I'm hoping all the single bridge objects I put into my new terrain will be OK from that perspective when Hitech reviews it for the Melee arena. He did not want me to simply ad-hoce drop in factory building objects to create my own custom factory complex on the center island of my new terrain. That is why I went with the Tank Town 2x2mile default object from the objects list which is sanctioned for all of it's objects to be in the game.

There can be more going on here than you think for why something is not in the game. And I still could be guessing about the berm objects and FPS.

[TDeacon]

It's a big combat avoindance mechanism, better than any we had before.

I can sit, engine running, in the strats taking them down. I don't even need to listen, I just watch the clipboard. The landing button goes red long before we both being in noise range. I can quickly dart away, either to land or, even better to go into hiding. When I do that under tree cover, even planes can hardly find me at all. And I know all the time if an enemy is still around or not.

In AH2, when I heard the enemy for the first time, he was already well inside my 'safe landing distance'

It's similar with capture of vehicle bases, once the enemy gets to approximetaly within landing range he will stop and  just check the detector. If red, he simply backs up a few hundred yard and tower out.

OK; I see what you're saying; makes sense.  I misinterpreted you to be concerned about the sound detection we have always had for GVs. 

MH

[715]

Re "berms":  AH3 actually has a feature much better than the old pyramidal berms.  You can see it in action in the tank town of CraterMA and actually in the hilly vehicle base.  These are "square objects" and the topography of the ground inside these objects is defined not by the underlying 1/8 mile x 1/8 mile grid, but by a separate object grid of arbitrarily fine resolution.  You can see this clearly by using the object editor to export the medium vehicle base (or is it the large vehicle base, anyway the one with hills) to AC3D and then viewing it in wireframe mode.  You can see very high resolution in some of the rock faces of some of the hills, particularly the one to the front & left of the spawn hanger. 

If someone wanted to they could create a "square object", say 4 mile x 4 mile, that exactly matches the old AH2 CraterMA  tank town area, complete with "berms".  Of course, you can't add custom square objects to MA terrains unless the object is officially approved by HTC and added to the standard construction set.

[715]

It's a big combat avoindance mechanism, better than any we had before.

I can sit, engine running, in the strats taking them down. I don't even need to listen, I just watch the clipboard. The landing button goes red long before we both being in noise range. I can quickly dart away, either to land or, even better to go into hiding. When I do that under tree cover, even planes can hardly find me at all. And I know all the time if an enemy is still around or not.

In AH2, when I heard the enemy for the first time, he was already well inside my 'safe landing distance'

It's similar with capture of vehicle bases, once the enemy gets to approximately within landing range he will stop and  just check the detector. If red, he simply backs up a few hundred yard and tower out.

I once made an even more gamey use of the Red/Green End Sortie feature.  Someone was making a base flash forever so I spawned a Jeep into the area and drove away from the base, stopping periodically, until the End Sortie went green.  I noted that position on the map, towered, and repeated again from a different spawn.  Now I had two points on the map and could draw two circles of radius equal to the "Warning distance" setting.  Those two circles intersect at two points on the map.  I drove my Jeep to the more likely point and there was the (probably AFK) base flasher.

Then again, this "exploit" requires so much tedious work that I doubt it is something to worry about.

The End Sortie thing does have a positive game helping use however.  On some maps enemy airbases can be within, or nearly within, the radar range of a vehicle base and action there can cause the vehicle base to flash forever.  I spawn a Jeep from the VH onto the grass and check the End Sortie to verify whether or not vehicles are inbound to attack the base or it's just aircraft elsewhere.  Without the feature you'd have to sit on the base forever waiting for enemy vehicles to show up.

[rvflyer]

It is obvious that HT is his own worst enemy in this game. Catering to a few players whines is what is driving the majority of players away, but this is the way it has always been and will be till the games ends.

I remember that Bruv. CraterMA was originally designed with three airbases on the inner raised step of the crater but before I finished it HTC said they didn't want any "fighter town" MA maps so I took them out.

[Lusche]

It is obvious that HT is his own worst enemy in this game. Catering to a few players whines is what is driving the majority of players away games ends.

Which whines had he recently catered to?
For if this really works, I would like to get very vocal again about a thing or two... 

[JunkyII]

I've tried to create them, the underlying polymesh is 1\8x1\8mile squares. I can pull up the center of 4 of those due to how the polymesh wire frame  is laid out, which ends up creating a highlands instead of tiny berms. Highlands promotes players off the spawn hiding at a distance firing down on the town and not getting into combat at the town. This new generation of realistic terrain tiles is promoting that kind of GV combat now.

If I remember correctly,  someone told me the berms you guys lament over were a clutter tile with those built onto it as small objects. Wishlist for berm objects like the hills at the town and hope a terrain builder wants to invest an enormous amount of time and effort to place them into the terrain and test them for GV combat. Untill then, I'm using grass to radically thin out the farmland\village tile on the current terrain I'm finishing up so the long open spaces are reminiscent of AH2 tree\clutter tiles. By now having spent so much time testing the ground for GV usability, I have a good idea how to salt in berm objects if they were every given back to terrain builders.

Hitech might have decided that berm "objects" may have in AH2, and might contribute to FPS issues due to loading down a small area with objects. Right now I'm hoping all the single bridge objects I put into my new terrain will be OK from that perspective when Hitech reviews it for the Melee arena. He did not want me to simply ad-hoce drop in factory building objects to create my own custom factory complex on the center island of my new terrain. That is why I went with the Tank Town 2x2mile default object from the objects list which is sanctioned for all of it's objects to be in the game.

There can be more going on here than you think for why something is not in the game. And I still could be guessing about the berm objects and FPS.

The center area of Greebo's crater MA has some nice terraform in it...issue is you have to drive an hour to get to it which defeats the purpose of a tank town. Was awesome when you could up and shoot at another tank that just upped from their spawn but still had some stand off that it wasn't quite a spawn camp.

[bustr]

Unless Waffle creates a tile or a berm object, I have no berms I can place into the terrain in AH3. Other than the factory facility I replaced with a 200ft tree covered mound, no one uses the tank pit crater in the center of BowlMA anymore. Hitech had the AH2 factory facility object removed from the terrain editor and he would not let me manually duplicate it for AH3 on the new terrain I'm building.

So with the AH3 tank town object and bridge objects, here is the center of my new terrain. Each country has 4 GV spawns to get into the center and 1 PT spawn to play in the canal shooting at tanks on the bridges. The 4th GV spawn is from a nearby base to give you the chance to take back your airfield or keep GV fighting when the bish mini hoard decides to take all the feilds in that crater because they won't be defended.

The one certain thing about terrain design, you have zero idea how players will really respond to it's features, it's always one giant Guess that you give months of your life to. I really wish you experts would build terrains since you seem to know the secret to getting past this fact of terrain building so I can see how to do it. Hindsight is easy after the community plays on a terrain for a few years. I also thinned out the village tile I'm using for GV spawns and the area surrounding towns, to just about AH2 standards so you guys can see each other. That thinness helped spawn campers and made everyone scream in these forums for something to stop spawn camping. Makes me wonder if the new thick clutter tiles were Hitech hearing your demands to do something about spawn camping. I left the 1\2 mile area of the spawn circle AH3 standard thick clutter or even added trees to fill empty spots.

At this point I'm thinking I've done everything I can to catch boo boo's and other issues on this terrain, so I'm getting ready to ask if I can submit it for evaluation. Just like the new saying on the title page for the game goes, math I wish you would solve your own problems. I wish you guys would build terrains and show the rest of us how it's done right.

[TDeacon]

The center area of Greebo's crater MA has some nice terraform in it...issue is you have to drive an hour to get to it which defeats the purpose of a tank town. Was awesome when you could up and shoot at another tank that just upped from their spawn but still had some stand off that it wasn't quite a spawn camp.

I agree with this.  Would be nice if the spawns could be moved further into that area to allow more immediate action.