There is also the curse of game knowledge. Frequent players develop an intimate familiarity with the maps and systems, which removes a lot of uncertainty. This in turn reduces the de facto decision space if players are playing to win. Making decisions that are not within the narrow band of best practice means giving up a huge advantage.
its why people enjoy modded content so much. theres a whole new level added when youre fighting and navigating through an area that you dont know. once youve played everon and arland enough, you can immediately figure out where you are by just glancing around, and the world doesnt feel so big anymore.
@@fluffysquirrel8385 There's a different curse on the modded side. You have the randoms that will come in and try to play the mod like its vanilla and destroy the entire team's gameplay.
To be fair this does actually mimic real life to an extent. Extensive local knowledge of terrain often gives local fighters a massive advantage over foreign opponents. If there has been fighting in an area before, people who have fought there before will utilize the best location to fight in. This is vastly different from what OP is describing, where the "curse of knowledge" comes in largely because of the fundamental difference of mortality between real life and video games, and how you can pass on your knowledge even when you die.
A variation of that could be to allow for the possibility of reducing your spawn time for the trade-off of spawning in wounded, thus needing medical attention to be fully combat effective. Or you can just wait the full time and be respawned with full health. This, like the distance based spawn time suggestion, gives some sort of choice to the player. Do I want to get back into action immediately? If so, is it worth the disadvantages of reducing the respawn time?
Hell let loose does this by making your original deployment zone the fastest deployment zone for the rest of the game regardless of how far away it gets due to pushing the line forward/backward. HQs, and Garrisons have higher spawn timers because they're closer to the front, and can be mobile.
Years ago I used to play on a GMod server called WW3RP which was sort of half tactical shooter and half RPG - you played a fixed character (or characters) and every so often you'd go out and get into firefights with the opposite team. What made it work was that once you died in the field you basically pretended you had never left the base, and indeed you were forced to stay there for about 15 minutes iirc. But what made it work was that there was always something to do *at* the base - hang out with fellow soldiers, pull guard duty, etc. And along the lines of the medical system idea in this video, if you were a trained medic you had responsibility for patching up anybody wounded that was brought back from the battlefield, so that gave you even more gameplay while waiting to be allowed back into the fight. It's not a solution that could be applied 1:1 to a "pure" tactical shooter but I think the idea of creating a separate area in the world where people can still carry out tasks and stay engaged between fights is a strong one. And there are probably ways to implement tasks other than healing - introduce minigames that get people involved in logistics, SIGINT, anything fun that people can do for a fixed amount of time before they get let back into battle.
There is Foxhole for it, not the greatest community but the game does just what you explained, you either can spawn in a combat area, a forward position close to the combat area or the home island where you can familiarize yourself with the game mechanics and whatnot, be recruited to a regiment, learn how to do logi, and so on As i did mention, community is not great cuz its usually unmoderated and people do everything from calling you slurs to doxxing you, it has been on a decline lately but still, it happens from time to time
Was going to post this comment alone, until i found that this comment also covers GMod as an example to the topic: The curse of knowledge is not limited to tactical shooters, it also exists in roleplaying games such as the Dark RP gamemode in Garry's mod in the form of a manually applied rule: New life rule (NLR). How it is moderated is that once a player who has been killed returns to where they died, they are punished with a warn, kick or ban from by the community staff as it otherwise breaks the immersion of roleplay. Some communities have been able to remove this manually enforced rule through the implementation of an unenterable bubble upon death which either prevents you from entering the area you died in or having you become a ghost once entering it - which cannot be killed, cannot interact within the bubble and cannot be seen. One issue to bear in mind here is that within these limitation, the player would still be able to relay information as a spectator - though could be restricted by not being able to see any players and entities too. Applying it to Arma Reforger, areas could be split into different sectors where if you die in them - you are unable to enter within a customizable time. One issue in this would be making transporting of squads janky, as you'd have to avoid entire roads with transports as one of your seated squad mates died in that area 10 minutes ago. A solution to this could be having players in the vehicle unable to exit the vehicle and restricted from using vehicle guns while seated.
I get around this by being incredibly dumb and forgetting there is a guy camping the road with a PKM. Having ADHD also helps. I'm in a constant state of day dream and unawareness.
Honestly the "curse of knowledge" is realistic to some degree, in real life machine gunners don't stay in one spot for a duration of time because they know eventually they will be discovered, same thing with snipers and armor, or literally any combat element.
Please watch the video first. He's not saying an individual should never be spotted but rather that it should happen organically. I think we can agree that immediately respawning and sprinting for 2mins to kill that sniper is not organic.
@@jermania766 The thing is in a real life engagement there's hundreds, if not thousands, of men fighting for each side on an engagement not a few dozen. The scenario he describes in the begining is unrealistic because there's no way a single guy would be alone in that situation. He would have his squad with him and they would very much report the snipers location. "The Curse of Knowledge" isn't that much of an issue because in a real battlefield as the sides face of against each other the many involved combat personal will constantly be passing information along the chain of command and informing other units of the going ons. This is why the scale of battles feel larger than they actually are in a well designed Tactical Shooter in the style of Reforger. Respawning and sprinting for 2 minutes isn't equivalent of a soldier coming back from the dead and going for revenge, it's the equivalent of a kill team being sent to smoke out the sniper that fucking up the operation because they'll run out of personel. It's perfectly organic if you don't forget it's an abstraction.
Guys, the point I was making is what happens when you are reengaged by the very same people you just killed, and how the battlefield devolves into revenge killings
The point of the video went right over your head. And the other guys doing mental gymnastics to wave the point away are dishonest. Just because you can imagine a scenario in which the curse of knowledge doesn't matter, doesn't mean it isn't a big factor in the meta of a game.
The problem is that even when you make the player wake up at the hospital they could just relay that information to their team mates via radio so the curse of knowledge still persist.
Wouldn't that be a problem? It would be an organic and realistic change. And then by the time he wakes up, it will give the sniper or machine gunner time to do his job or change location.
It's not as big of a problem as you'd think. The player that died will know exactly where the enemy is, where to look, and a vague idea of how to avoid him, but have you ever tried communicating that to another person? Whoever responds to the call will have much less information to work off of.
@@zhop951ive tried to guide someone through setting up TFAR via a vc when they have little experience with computers. It was HELL. I imagine a 3d worldspace would be worse. “He’s in that building, top left window.” “Which building? Theres like 3” “well one with a big red wall” “i dont see any red walls”
@@SirIronbeard this my issue with the solutions, is that if your enemies are using discord, even if when you die you and get disconnected from the server, if you have discord you can just relay what just happened to your teammates, putting you at a huge disadvantage if you are playing with randoms against a pre-made squad or team.
When playing Hell Let Loose, I just figure each squad represents a platoon, and each member a couple of soldiers. So if you get shot, your next respawn you’re now the buddy that was next to you, watching things happen. It makes the game feel bigger, and lifts the curse.
I have an idea for spawn system when the base under occupie, the respawn is cut off because the base’s communication with the rest of the bases has been interrupted , and the soldier must spawn in another base and go to the base under occupation, and the base under occupation extends the time period for the entire occupation in order to give the defender a chance but when enemy have more soldiers the time to occupy be faster. Thanks for videos ironbeard You are the best!
This would never work for many reasons but it’s fun to think about. What if, when you die, you automatically get shuffled over to another server, atleast for when your playing vanilla servers. It’s the same thing as a one life event pretty much except when you get moved to another server automatically, you get to keep you’re saved loadout and rank. Let’s say when the commanding roll comes out, only the commander gets to stay in the same server. Again, there’s sooo many cons that outweigh the pros, and not to mention its probably just not possible. However It would be a surreal feeling though if you when you die and hit respawn, in a matter of seconds you respawn in another server with completely random guys, fighting a completely different war and everything is new.
It’s the same thing as leaving the server and rejoining a new one, the only difference really is the time it takes in between loading into the new server as it would be seamless in my imagination of it. Maybe to make it work, Bohemia gives you a list of servers you can select that you would like to respawn into after death, almost like making a music playlist, like which songs you want to listen to, and in what order.
well one way to do it would be to have an ai game master, that creates engagements / gives tasks that generally lead to combat, like take the raio tower on the far left of the map, the map is furthermore filled with ai soldiers doing all possible tasks from logistics to marching to the objective. You are then spawned and take over one of those ai soldiers, possible right before combat starts, once you die, you get respawned somewhere else with a different mission, now originaly my idear for this was to have a tactical imersive shooter that i more casual fun, with short respawn times, so i would have allowed to possible spawn in another ai soldier that is near the objective.
the giant problem with this is playing with friends or having a fav server, not only that but having so much downtime in between will just result in people not playing.
I can't wait for ace medical to get better. It was amazing on arma 3. I once spent three hours recesitating an ai in antistasi. Obviously that's not how long you want it to be for online pvp, but reason to give the medic more purpose would be good. The way it is now I honestly think they should just increase unconscious time just a little bit longer. If someone was incapacitated in a fight then that's just it. They were incapacitated. They shouldn't get back up in 30 seconds. I've got more ideas but they are lengthy. Either way I'm hanging in there for this game.
There was this mod that needs to be included in vanilla. More knocked state. You wont die but you wont be able without medic. Forces more players to help. Because now 99% times you are dead nomatter where you are hit.
We have ace medical on the W.C.S. servers on reforger I don't know how it compares to ace in 3 because this is my first Arma I've got to play but we have to actually use med kits to heal injuries before we can push epinephrine to wake them up our pilot got hit when we landed once and we drug him out stabilized him but we didn't have a proper medic so we had to keep picking him up moving and setting him down to fight before he would wake up at one point he was laying there a tracer ripped right over top of his chest I put him on my shoulders and backed away just hip firing my M60e4 through the bushes put the whole belt through the trees while walking backwards with him on my shoulders they stopped chasing us after that
I agree they did make some tweaks to it in 1.2 that made some improvements but the base is there for something great. I know ACE is in big talks about expanding even further, we will see how it goes
I think the bigger curse is general game knowledge, the first 10 hours you play arma will likely be the most fun, and after hundreds, you come to a point where you can predict how things will turn out and where people will be, you know the spots and the strategies. Knowing how a situation will play out because you have been in so many like it takes away some of the unpredictability and adrenaline. Its like if you ever played lethal company. Playing it for the first time I was actually scared. When my friend stops replying and i turn the corner to see his corpse laying there ominously.
Absolutely, I have so many ARMA hours that I'm dead inside when I play the game. It also makes the game practically unplayable because 75% of your team is new and untrainable.
I used to take part in events hosted on an ww2 air milsim. No real information on what we will be facing, no death message, no position on a map. We were given out a mission and flight route. Death meant starting from 0 on our campain and ranking system. Sometimes you would fly alert and accomplish mission without contact. Other times, you would end up lost alone after a fight, calling for your teammates on the radio, not sure if they were down, limping home or else. We often saw superior forces fleeing because of their lack of knowledge.
The intro of this video makes ArmA Reforger sound like a horror game. The narration makes it feel almost like a Terrence Malick short or something. Great video.
War is horror.... You're right there. All these fine men, sent off to do the dying, when those bigwigs, those pen pushers, the guys who never ever see a single bullet whizz past their heads. We wanna get them down here. Those so called generals in their big fancy houses. Twenty miles behind enemy lines. Who are they to tell us? Who are they indeed? Look at that. What a sight.... The horror.... the horror....
This has been a mechanic that has bothered me for a while. I don't know how fighting goes in a big war, but I have deployed in COIN operations in OIF and OEF. I remember going into a hide-site as a part of a 3-man team in Baghdad. We entered a building with 2 squads to clear it and then we stayed behind when they left. We did this so no one thought we were still in the building. We were in charge of watching the flanks of a large clearing operation with the rest of the company. The concern I had was that once we fired our weapons, the people in the area would know where we were, even if we were able to get the fighters we were engaging, others would know where we were and move against us. There were only 3 of us, and so we were expecting that if we called on the radio, our other squads could come to help us if need be, but we had the conversation amongst ourselves, that if a major firefight breaks out and everyone gets bogged down, like had happened a week or two prior to that, we would engage and then pop smoke and run back to our friendly line which controlled the center street in the area we were clearing, about a quarter mile away or so. I made a comment previously, maybe have a shuttle system in the game where if a certain structure is built, then a helicopter, piloted by AI, would fly in and drop off people respawning.
Did you never do an ntc or jrtc/jtc simulating conventional warfare? All of the training events i partook in during my service as a big army paratrooper with the 173rd was simulating conventional warfare, one time, it was just our battalion of light infantry vs an entire armored division... we had no air or artillery support. This all took place smack dab in the middle of the gwot and before our deployment to wardak province afghanistan. We never really trained for asymmetric warfare or fighting an insurgency. So im just curious why you think you dont know how conventional warfare goes, you should know from your training. Of course its not a perfect exoerience as those big training events are racked with gamisms and issues in their own right, but you should know the general gist of it. Take care brother, and im not at all trying to be insulting or question your service, oftentimes we forget more than we know.
@@ProfessorOfLogicAtUnvOfScience we had NTC OC's come to Fort Lewis in 2007 to get us ready for deployment to Iraq during the Surge. This was when I was an Infantryman. We were called up for the surge and didn't have time to go to Irwin. I went to JRTC in Polk in 2013 before going to Afghanistan and we went to NTC at Irwin in 2018. The only time we trained to fight near-peer threats was 2018. At this time I had already transitioned to 153M UH-60M pilot, so I don't know what they were teaching the Infantry at the time, but I noticed the same thing that I noticed in 2004 when I first joined the Army. They were teaching all the lessons that they learned from the last major conflict and it did not prepare us for the current threat. A lot of the changes to TTPs, technology, SOPs, etc, all come from experience that is paid for in blood. For example, look at how drone warfare has changed everything today. War gaming and training exercises that are monitored by observer controllers who have no idea how to train people for a conflict they have never been in themselves the same thing I saw decades ago during COIN. It wasn't until 2013 where I started to see realistic training that was being taught. Doctorine was typically slow to adapt, tactics would change rapidly. Sorry for rambling, but I guess my point is if you talk to anyone who has fought in both Iraq/Afghanistan and then went on to Volunteer in Ukraine (I only know 1 person myself) they will tell you that they are not even close. The training that is being done in JRTC and NTC, while it is better than nothing, it is not anything close to the preparation needed for conventional warfare. In every war, we will first have to pay for those lessons with blood. In chapter 9 of every aircraft manual is the emergency procedures, and we had a saying that they were all written in blood. Someone had to learn the hard way for the rest of us to know to prepare for it.
@@GeneralThe3rd no, no, no... youre telling me i ran into the mythical warrant officer???? You guys dont even exist! Lmao. I can only really speak on my experience with the light infantry, over in italy, but all of our training was geared towards conventional warfare, from 2009-2013 namely, (after that i spent the rest of my enlistment in the reserves, what a mistake...) perhaps its different for a "global response unit" like the 173rd or the 82nd. Yeah, the opfor units and OC's absolutely suck... the opfor guys in grafeonwoer and hohensfels were notorious for putting black electrical tape on their miles gear in order to be virtually immortal... we had one of those guys run out in front of our hmmvw and we almost ran him over as he was yelling safety kill... on our uparmored 1151... range oc said he had an s-vest and killed our entire truck. Had a similar instance when we took a point blank "shot" from a tank, the range oc's said we were all "dead" then he saw that i was a medic and started handing out injury cards, told me i just had a minor abrasion on my hand and to "get to work." Like fuck, if yall wont take this seriously, why should we? All that being said, it was still good training and i was still very confident that we'd run right through any conventional force in the event of the real thing. Im not convinced that the us military has any peer or near peer adversaries. As far as casualties go, thats just an unfortunate reality of warfare. I also dont think ukraine is a good example of peer to peer conflict... i mean, they blue on blued one of their own f16s with a patriot missile system. Its also impossible to get a good idea of whats going on there, as i can only really see what seems to be clearly propaganda footage. It just looks like a complete shit show. I dont mind the rambling, i enjoy learning about other service members' experience which is almost always wildly different in certain aspects and exactly the same in others! Thanks for the knowledge drop sir!
@@ProfessorOfLogicAtUnvOfScience Yea, it is funny because in the Infantry, I never saw a Warrant Officer except occasionally when I went by Brigade Headquarters. In aviation units, CW2's & CW3's are a dime a dozen. The only CW5's I saw was at the WOCS at Fort Rucker (Novosel now). I have seen all the training change for the near-peer threats and we started doing exercises and NTC rotations after 2014 that focused on that. I remember during one of the rotations how we would hop to a new base location and set up our comms. I tried to tell our battalion that we needed to move all of our OE-254 to a spot a distance away and run cables to them because new tech would allow a near-peer to lock onto our positions and wipe out all our aircraft and ourselves as we started to transmit. They didn't listen because it wasn't told to them from higher ups and because it wasn't part of doctrine. I remember thinking just how bad it would be then if we had to deploy against a near-peer. My original point was that I don't know how fighting goes in a big war. I have real world experience spending about 2 years of time deployed in combat zones, and a little bit more time deployed in different areas in support, like Kuwait, Latvia, etc. All of that experience was fighting insurgent forces and so it goes completely different then a conventional fight. No matter what people think about our troops, in the next conflict, many Americans are going to have to pay to learn very important lessons at the start. I spent some time in the medivac doctrine course at Rucker. We had several medical personnel who taught the course who had just returned from an advisory deployment over there in Ukraine (this was 2017 mind you). The biggest problem I already know will be an issue because we had to work through it in the course was understanding that aviation assets for medivac would not be a given like it had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hitting that golden hour for urgent surgical care would be difficult. We would have to rely on Forward Surgical Teams and ground transport out from the front lines in order to get people treated. This is exactly what we see going on today. This country doesn't have the stomach to stay with a war where we are having to bury so many of our sons and daughters.
Once upon a time...waaaaaay back in the day, things were different but you could see the growth of the "Curse of Knowledge", actually observe it and watch it grow over time. America's Army (Recon). Round based team elimination game. You only had one life per round. Also, if you were killed, you could spectate the remainder of the round. The idea was to keep "dead" players engaged in the rest of the round and not go in search of another game to join. Voice comms existed but not everyone had access to the programs yet (Roger Wilco, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, etc). Because you could spectate if killed a new phenomenon arose "ghosting". Dead players would spectate and warn still operational players (through comms) of where they were killed and tell them of unexpected danger if they saw them. While greatly frowned upon in the beginning...the practice of dead players still being "active", becoming the eyes and ears of surviving players, grew as multiplayer gaming grew. Now it's somewhat irrelevant with the practice of communicating with your team mates and giving them a heads up if something happens to you is a normalized part of playing.
Solutions: 1. Big, procedurally generated maps where the players can't "learn the map"; 2. Getting respawned at a distant location; 3. Not displaying player names (so players are not motivated by revenge kills); 4. Mechanics that reward players for exploring/assaulting new locations on the level (e.g. an XP reward for scouting, a game mode that focuses on capturing new points designated by the HQ) instead of going to old ones; 5. Mechanics that force players to move out of existing combat zones where they've been camping for a longer while (e.g. artillery bombardment); 6. Longer respawn times with a thematic wait (e.g. a paradrop where you can sit in the plane and chat with other paratroopers); 7. Short matches with permadeath and a quickmatch option, so right after dying on one map you get deployed on another.
I believe this is a really good list except for the long response timer. Even in real combat, it's only a matter of time before you have accurate information on enemy locations, so trying to create a system to lower the chance of a counterattack doesn't make any sense.
Thats why despite the games trying their best to slow down gameplay and emphasize communication, the most effective and important players are still the rambo gunslingers. I've played my fair share of tactical shooters and it's always the same.
The biggest issue with tactical shooters is the FPS call of duty war zone players who can’t play tactically as a team and always say “it’s just a game who cares”. I play arma because I like the tactical scene, I’m prior service so it’s fun to get with some fellow service members and vets but war zone battle royals players ruin it
I play squad and as a squad leader it is difficult to deal with people who do not listen, however the threat of kicking them works on Spanish servers, as they lose their entire team and within 5 minutes, if they are not part of a squad, they are expelled. In the English community this threat does not usually have as much effect.
Unfortunately with a little game knowledge those guys are usually pretty effective even. Tactical shooters like Squad boil down to the same concept as CoD. The team with more kills usually wins. At the end it really is just a game and the intended way to play is not always the best way.
@@schmid1.079 being objective, in games like Call of Duty you also die with one shot, so they are used to that, the problem lies, as you say, in reducing the objectives of the games into a kind of giant death match, the commanders should have the ability to impose missions.
@@publiocornelioescipion8803 You only die in one shot in hardcore modes, or with powerful weapons. Otherwise core modes make it more arcade like with longer TTK. Even in hardcore you still dont always die in one shot.
Spawn waves is another way. I also have been looking for a great solution with how spawning should work. I host a private Reforger server weekly for a game night with friends against the bots. We used to take a spawn radio and a supply truck to spawn from, but it just breaks the immersion of the game when 30 seconds later you are back into the fight. Or a single person is spawning at the nearest base and taking a vehicle to get back to battle. After a while the battle area looks like a used car dealers parking lot. Using a spawn wave system can force people to spawn together and take one vehicle back to battle. As for how and where... I like the medical tent spawn idea. Maybe have it that you can build a medical tent past 1km of the battlefield to spawn from. It's always been a tricky subject and finding the balance where it feels realistic, fair and fun. For me I would have it that a person's body would have to be transported back to a medical tent to have the bullets surgically removed and healed. 2 hours later, you are back in action... lol
I have thought about this a lot too. My idea is to really lean in to the realism (I got this idea from a battlefield 3 map). Have it so the only bases you can respawn at are costal bases. Make it so off the coast of each occupied coastal base is a big ship and that’s what you spawn on. From there of course you can be flown out by helicopters or boats. This way players will value their life much much more and logistics such as working together in transports and planning will be essential to make any gains in progression. The only exception here would be that when you first join a server you get spawned with your squad lead so you don’t just automatically grab a chopper or something else to get into battle ASAP. I also think that when you are put into an unconscious state that you shouldn’t be put on your back relating to every enemy that you’re still alive. I’d also lower the supply cost of everything by a LOT and make the only place you can get supplies the coastal bases as well. This would make FOB’s more important and stop the excessive risky use of highly valuable equipment. I think inconvenience is the best way to relay importance in a game like this.
I just had an idea, a mix of single life and constantly being thrown back in. How you ask? When you die, instead of being spawned back into the same battle you are shuffled into another battle. So at the end of a "game" you might have participated in multiple battles, both won and lost. Each life is treated as a separate soldier and added to the Memorial Wall when they die. This would solve the curse of knowledge as you will not be able to engage with that enemy again, (depending on number available battles) but you will never be placed back into the same match. It would also help bring that feeling of war is hell, especially if every time you start the game the first thing you see is the Memorial Wall (for the last faction/nation played) Very least it would be a interesting experience.
And many have their "Bodycam" running "Screen Recording" OBS,NVIDA and so on.... they can submit whatever information is necessary. I've already sent my brother a message via Whatsapp about where the opponents were with a picture :D and as far as I know there was no Whatsapp or power smartphones in 1989....
@@DJHazzard Yeah, but that's outside of the game itself and could be considered cheating. Besides your brother might not even be on the right map to make use of the information at the time.
The potential could be limitless with not just limited to battles but also certain periods of war. Imagine you start in a medieval battle fighting for your kingdom, all the way through potential WW3 fighting for your country.
@@eyen22buck Yeah, I guess but you are not affecting the same overall battle. Plus having a shift from Medieval all the way to future warfare would mean either basic loadouts only or way to much kit to organize. Think Enlisted if you had to create 4-5 squads then you had to create them again for every era you fight in. Even if it is just single soldiers it could get to much especially for new players as the game progresses.
I've thought about this a lot, but strangely only for single-player games. You kind of said at the start of the video that the first encounter is the "purest," and I cherish that a lot when I play video games with a campaign mode like Halo. I have a friend who loves a hard challenge for its own sake, and we play on Legendary with several skulls on. But every time it becomes the same process of figuring out the very specific actions that get us through an engagement the best, and running that set of actions over and over until we get to a new checkpoint. It always bothers me when I die, not because I failed, but because the second attempt-knowing what I'm up against, where my enemies are located-that's the moment the story becomes an arcade game, in a sense. Now I'll be thinking about it in multiplayer as well. Thank you for cursing me with this knowledge anyways, it's good food for thought :)
Imagine a battlefield that is divided in sections. Everytime you die, you get shuffled to a new portion of the battlefield. These sections are perhaps divided by minefields or such.
I've played a game for something like 5 years now that has defeated this videos titular curse. It's not a "tactical shooter" and it's not a real world milsim either, though it does share elements of both. In fact, it's not even played in 3D. The game in question is CM-SS13, also known as Colonial Marines - Space Station 13. You play as either one member of the United States Colonial Marines stationed aboard the USS Almayer, or an individual Xenomorph in the larger hivemind in 100-150 player rounds. The way it avoids the curse is by using somewhat of a one life system: you take more than 200 damage? You die, and a 5 minute timer begins. If another player heals you to under 200 health and hits you with a defibrillator, you can continue the round. If not, you're dead for good, and can only return to the round in another body as part of an event, or by joining the Xenomorph hivemind. There are more complexities involved that I won't get into involving specific strategies on both sides to either cause or prevent permanent death. This is enabled by a round based system designed and moderated to last about 1-2 hours. It's a system that encourages memorable drama like a heroic push to recover a downed squad leader or desperate retreat while carrying casualties on your back. Tying this to Arma and your proposed ideas for defeating the curse: implement a focused, round based game mode with death as more than a minor obstacle, and a robust medical system that rewards players with more than just saving your buddy from a light jog. Death could lead to 30 minutes in a spectator mode, but by sticking close to your squad the chances of permanently dying would be much lower, and could lead to really interesting and gutsy rescue operations. Obviously you can't just port one system to another, this variety of hardcore-lite may compromise the milsim realism elements players love (people getting revived after taking one to the head or a burst to the chest). It's truly a delicate balancing act between that incredible rush of dynamic conflict and crushing tedium of timers and dark screens. Thanks for reading!
To give you another piece of the meta-game puzzle: The Curse of Knowledge is also seen in map layouts. Compare whatever scores you use to rate yourself, on a map you well know to one you don't. This can be seen most often within the first minute or so of any round, when the teams are rushing to lock down key spots as fast as possible. If you have played any map enough times, and it isn't designed with this in mind, you start to lob grenades or take 'pot shots' through walls at specific points while engaging. Not because you know the enemy is there, but because the probability of an enemy running past at that particular time... high enough you might get two with that grenade. I've had a few solutions for this problem, most favored being 'player chosen spawn points' within key designated locations. It becomes very difficult to get the timing of a game down pat, when you can't even be sure where the opponent is spawning this time. Coupled with some other ideas in this thread, such as a longer wait time closer you select to your death point, and it might be looking at an interesting solution to this problem. Add roles and equipment that effect these numbers, and you are starting to make classes.
I’m loving these game mechanics videos. It’s so rare to find stuff like this where people talk about mechanical ideas outside of how to make them just like it’s been done before.
My old arma 3 platoon handled this by just not allowing respawns in TvT matches, and doing wave respawns that had to travel from a distant point in PvE. Worked out great for years!
This is why I play DMZ! There’s no respawning and if you go down you can only be picked up at your body, not some magic buy station or game timers/waves. People say DMZ is just “warzone lite” but the way you die specifically allows for more strategic moves.
Very interesting topic and discussion, I noticed that this type of "problem" also happens in airsoft, where players can be cured with lifes/bandages, that make them come back to the fight after a critical hit (torso or head). Really interesting to see the connection.
Have multiple games of the same gamemode and map running at the same time. When someone dies in one instance, they get disconnected from that instance and connected to a different one. Then you'll even have different squad leads, squad mates, etc each time you die. Of course, it only works for as many instances you have running, but even switching between one and the other can give enough time for the game to change to forget small things like where that sniper was.
I think the addition of decors and AP Mines can help dissuade people from charging into a spot they were killed from or trick them into being more careful when they know that they could very well be dying for literally nothing.
Very good and valid points, at the same time, a game is still a game and it should be fun to play. Implementing mechanics that are too realistic will only increase the boredom. Mindless hours of walking and waiting. War is mostly boring
Ace Medical in Arma 3 has kind of added that extra consequence to getting downed. When playing with competent players in a milsim setting against AI. Once on of your buddies goes down, you have the rest of the team pull security, while the medic works hard on getting you back up. This isn't a 30 second ordeal. Depending on the severity of the injuries, it can take up to 10 minutes to get someone up before you can move out again. So you'll take more caution when playing to not go down as you'll be staring at a black screen for 10 minutes if you're unlucky.
In Red Orchestra, respawns consist of waves every certain number of minutes, making the dead return almost at the same time, a good system to simulate waves of reinforcements.
Rainbow Six 3 black arrow was my favorite shooter to play ever hands down, the one life concept with different voice channels for the players and spectators was tremendous fun, a great fit for the smaller maps and fast CQB combat. it also had a timer to pressure you not to try and drag the match out by a stalemate in the deathmatch modes because if it was 1v1 it was a tie match and would go to a rematch. For a larger game though i would be happy with having the option to spectate or return to lobby.
If anyone doesn't understand still, it's when you go back to where you died to kill the enemy player. It's what makes or breaks OP positions in games. The term for this is also called "revenge killing" or "revenge bombing/CAS" in War Thunder.
Dude you fit *A LOT* into a 8:30 min video without it feeling rushed! Very well done! I liked your idea (because it makes the game more engaging, and I usually play medic) but I don't think it solves the knowledge issue. Especially now that we are usually playing with buddies we are on a Discord call with. Discord feels like screen-peeking for this generation of games 😝
What we do at the moment is spawns are only at main base and only if theres at least one other person with you like a reinforcement. Or someone can drive/fly to pick you up from MOB
Thought this was gonna be a vid on the curse of becoming better at a game and thus, it turning into a video game, like in the situation you described its raw, its frantics, its governed by instinct and uncertainty, but the more you play, hours after hours, you no longer play the same, you play with knowledge, you meta game the situation, perhaps in tarkov knowing where scavs spawn, where missions are located, the exact layout of the map down to every item spawn, to the worse of all, leg meta, where youre better off shooting an armored chad in the legs rather then realistically where you'd wanna shoot Cuz those starting phases of every game is always the best when nobody knows what they're doing, or where they're going, before i'd get shot at and jump, frantically running into unknown ground, i didn't know where i was, or what it contained, it was just some random street, i was running for my life it didn't matter, but then once youre cursed you know exactly where you are, you know exactly where it leads, and what it contains, youre no longer running for your life, youre running for your in game loot to perserve the potential progression you hold or have to gain, its an unfortunate side effect of all games, the sweat doesn't ruin the game, he's just surcome to the curse quicker then you did Idk its something i think about, that state of the game that cant be preserved, similar to what was discussed tho, so satisfying video non the less
In our Arma 3 unit we had a way to run respawns to try and avoid this- if you were killed, you could not reinsert into the fight until your body was zipped up into a bodybag and returned to wherever we were deploying from for that mission. Considering the pain of trying to zip up a dead guy and then bring in a bird to safely fly said body out, it almost guaranteed that the engagement, at least as it existed when said player died, would be over or have changed dramatically. This doesn't really work in a public setting, of course, but it did increase the tension somewhat.
This is really interesting, as I’m trying to make a milsim-ish plus maybe a bit of a arcady game, but I want it to have features like what your describing. Thank you for making this video.
I think Insurgency is an example that has a decent solution to this problem, which is tying respawns to objective completion, forcing retreat on objective loss, and having VC only available between live players. This means that when you (or the enemy) do respawn, the objective and portion of the map in play is now different and resets both teams to square one in terms on enemy placement knowledge. I think it only really works for the mid-scale combat the game has, but It's something to draw ideas from. Maybe for larger scale games with multiple objectives, forcing players to respawn in map sectors a minimum distance from their death with general team VC having limited range?
As someone who plays medic a lot in games I really dig the idea of spawning in a med tent and having to wait to be treated, it means during mass cas events that resupplies would be slowed dramatically giving even more impact to those big fights for contexted points but just being randomly picked off still wouldn't feel like a slog to respawn from
Imagine a milsim game that disconnected you from the server and instead matchmakes you into another server, maybe in two tries you're back in the original server but by then it's a completely different situation
I think that the ideas you've provided would work very well. It also gives the ability for people who want to play medic roles more of a satisfying and impactful experience. I hope the developers see this and take a leaflet from your book. Great video
The question of expecting to respawn has to do with the scale of the conflict. When conducting a small group infiltration, you're not expecting reinforcements, so it makes perfect sense as a one life mode. In this case you must also consider dead player's ability to communicate with their teammates. If there's a radio system you obviously lose access to that equipment while dead, but failing that classic Ghost Recon games had a toggle for "dead talk" in the match settings. In a large scale conflict you have to consider the function of respawning. In a tactical shooter a single player respawning on their own can't make a meaningful difference. In Squad it's to rejoin your current squad from a rally, allowing the size of units on the frontline to remain consistent between engagements without the need to constantly RTB to pick up reinforcements. This can definitely cause information to spread in odd ways, such as an attacking force falling back and severely underestimating the size of remaining enemy units. In COD custom games there's an option for wave spawns that catch dead players in groups and return them together, allowing them to naturally reinforce all at once. This completely changes the function of respawning to giving dead players a new purpose alongside the currently spawning group rather than continuing their previous purpose. We could expand this to sort dead players into "chalks" made up of players from various units who must organize transportation back to the fight. Leaders can emerge and deliberate on the most important allocation of chalk members. Maybe someone serves a critical role to their squad and absolutely must be returned as soon as possible. Maybe most squads are consolidated on one objective and the chalk can walk to their squads from there. Maybe they decide to create a new squad to respond to an emminent threat. You can also combine this with a medical system by having logistical medevac vehicles responsible for returning dead players to base and creating new chalks. This also changes the flow of combat for surviving squad members because after taking casualties their squad becomes smaller and stays that way, creating dynamic situatuons where surviving squads may consider merging to supplement each other's strength. These are very similar to the considerations we take with one or few life modes, but in a way that supports consistent player engagement throughout the duration of the match
I will say, systematically; a game that makes you permadeath and browse social media sounds great for a realistic shooter. Put in practice however and you are asking for a: dead at launch, game.
What about a supply convoy system for respawning : an NPC controlled medical and resupply truck form convoys, they spawn at main base and the team leader can direct them over radio (using the map) to move into the field, where they act as mobile spawn points. during the respawn timer, player's body are still on the field, and a nearby teammate can act as a field medic, allowing them to get right back into action and not lose looted equipment. Otherwise, they can spawn at a convoy or at one of the fixed spawn points with there configured equipment, there they get healed overtime, grave injuries exponentially increasing healing time. The Idea is to encourage the option to retreat if things get too dicey, going back to heal faster than the time it would have taken if they had respawned with grave injuries. The convoys offer more flexibility and open new tactics as well as making maps less always the same, because it's less obvious where the ennemies might come from, but they are destructible, and respawn at main base, losing precious time and advantageous respawn points.
One thing I think about that could work in a Squad/Arma game is to have a realistic reinforcement system where "new" squads arrive from outside of the playable map. When you die, you can chose one of the squads that are coming and join them. This solves 2 of the problems stated in this video: 1 - Your life becomes more valuable since a stupid dead may private you from long minutes of gameplay. 2 - Since reinforcements are coming from outside of the map, when they get to the fight it has already changed a lot. And considering you will be in a totally new squad you may even go to a totally different place. It also brings a fun gimmick, where you will be triying new classes every life. Died as a morotized boi? Now you can spawn in the LAV squad and be a mechanized boi. Oh no they picked the LMG spot, guess you will have to be the AT. Or you can wait some extra minutes and join the next wave. As the battle evolves and one of the sides is pushed back, the spawn point may move a little ahead so you won't have to drive 20 minutes to the battle every time. I think a 5 - 10 minutes drive is probally enough. This is kind of what happened on PVE Arma 2 missions like Evolution Blue and also in some PVP Arma 3 missions like King of The Hill, and it worked great IMO. The biggest downside to this is that you won't be able to play with your friends after one of you dies. Also you will have a harder time bonding with your squadmates since you may not be together for long. And finally, constantly spawning new vehicles may completelly kill the importance of logistics.
"One idea that I've been thinking about is to tie medical gameplay in together with players dying." The United States Army beat you to that 9 years ago.
My personal approach to this, which I know most arma players wouldn't like, is similar to what Tarkov does a one life approach with a rotating server system that forces the player to join a new server when respawning. The catch is the player would be able to come back to their original server but only after a count down of lets say 30 minutes. A system of one life + server rotation + server timed lock, would allow for the game to flow better. Only issue is with the networking aspect, having to process so many requests on a network each time a player is killed (especially during mass cas events), could potentially impact the game badly, increasing loading times etc. It would be interesting to see this work. It would also force the player base to work harder together, as they need to adapt playing with new players each time they die. I could sit and talk for a while so I'll cut it short. A mixture of what you talked about, the medical system, mixed with what tarkov does and server locks. It could not only remove the curse of knowledge as you describe it, but also immerse the player, making them feel as if they woke up from a coma and the battle field has changed in the time they were knocked out. Mix in seasonal changes and boom you got a descent system in the making.
This was a very good, sharp essay. It’s the core design issue facing tactical shooters. I find your solutions align very well with my own thoughts and experiences from custom clan events played in Squad - as well as from other games like PUBG. If one life events are not feasible, there must be a barrier to respawning (ideally more than just a timer, with actual mechanics involved) and there must be a reinsertion process so that your removal from the immediate tactical situation has real consequences.
I think games with voip make medic feel very rewarding. Just saying "dont worry I wont let you die" makes them more likely to thank you, idk it just works Just the idea I stopped someone from going through the of getting back to that spot and gave us more of a chance of winning that small battle is rewarding enough personally
I think a game called Due Process had a cool answer and it was just procedural generation, even if the concept is a bit gimmicky. Each map was similar but entirely unique, which made game-feel consistent but tense and ever-changing, meaning your tactics and teamwork were more relevant than map-knowledge and counter-ops. I think more games should take the pieces of tactical shooters and make unique riveting games out of it, like DayZ.
this a great video man its something about for a few games im glad people are talking about it, i think a big and easy way to solve this would be to remove the map, however its not a practical or helpful fix, you'd fix the problem of knowledge but you make another 6 new problems
Maybe some sort of role switching upon death? If you die as a frontline soldier you'll be able to respawn as a medic behind lines and heal any injured, or be logistics and drive supplies, once most or all friendly combatants have died you are "promoted" to soldier and are able to join the fight, after your objective is complete, you voluntarily give up your role, or just body switch with another player continuing where you left off. Gives everyone a chance to be able to play as every role and possibly brings more importance to staying alive as eventually you will become a role you enjoy and thus actively try to preserve your own life, as well as protecting others. Has potential to get everyone involved and prep for another run based on what you and others learned, those on the frontlines communicate with those behind and send tank crews, airstrikes, mortars, with players who died and role switched commandeering, with the cycle constantly going as players die in the battlefield, do some logistics or medic stuff prepping what they need on next "respawn", then coming back with whatever role is available.
I really like your thoughts and ideas. With my schedule, it is impossible to join a mil-sim group and consistently be active, but ARMA Reforger is trying hard to give that feel to Vanilla servers, which I enjoy. Since I don't know how to mod I thought I would share some ideas and see what people think. 1. All respawns have to be at the main base, vehicles, and players, that way it forces you to push deeper into the enemy territory, and makes you recon and scope out more because it will suck to have to die when you are on the other side of the map. Emphasizing base building so you have a good spot to fall back, on and planning operations more because if you run out of supplies or ammo you don't want to go all the way back to the main base (which emphasized forward base building again) 2. As you build further and further from your main base, there should be a step-wise decrease in supply generation speed at each subsequent base, making supply running that much more important. This will simulate how difficult it is for armies to push up too quickly and will emphasize supply running. Hopefully, this will lead to more ambushes and spontaneous convoys to help with supply running. 3. I think your injury idea is great, that will possibly create Helicopter and Vehicle medical evac squads that are dedicated to transporting wounded players out and non-wounded players back in. With increased spawn time and having to spawn at the main base, it will incentivize players to evacuate to the nearest base to receive care instead of just respawning. I saw @civilianoperationsgroup3663 mention the closer you spawn to your dead location the longer the timer which is a great idea. 4. I think there should be a vehicle limit per server, abandoned vehicles do add to the realism but the amount of times I've died in a vehicle because someone just drives, dies, goes to base, and respawns a new one is crazy. I think every player should get one or two per game, forcing you to be careful with your vehicle. 5. As it stands it seems people will run supplies once or twice to get themselves in position, if there were some premade squads with assigned tasks that needed to be filled that might help give people a sense of direction and task completion. This is getting long so I will stop it here but these are just ideas I have. Being able to get that partial mil-sim feel in a vanilla server would be amazing but I also understand a lot of it is a player commitment as well. Let me know your thoughts folks.
Yeah, A lot of dnd one shots end the same way for me due to me playing them as a real person who wants to live. We get hit with overwhelming odds i get dropped to basically nothing and then run
I like the medical idea, it could even be tied into the idea that you didn't die you were just medevaced. The potential problem I see with sending people back to the main base though is an increase in vehicle usage just as taxis.
I think the curse of knowledge in a game like ArmA can be solved by zoning off the map, and if you die you can respawn right away however if you re enter the zone you were killed in before a timer runs down (or some other method of decision) you hit a kill trigger. This way, people dug into advantageous positions can fight an organic fight rather than get taken down by grenade launcher spam. This would allow the front lines to realistically shift as factions have to either re route troops or wait for peoples timer's to run down before reinforcing that zone. By the time the players are able to re enter the zone in which they perished, they now have to decide whether the conditions have changed or not, fogging the curse of knowledge and also giving the victors in combat some breathing room in knowing that their position is always uncertain to their enemy.
I enjoy the system that is used for insurgency sandstorm in which respawns are done in waves, so a lot the time the flow of gameplay means people reposition naturally. In particular, I really like the mode Firefight because respawns only happen when that team takes a capture point
It would be interesting if in the future where full dive VR is common, when you die in a tactacial shooter, the memories of that life is (temporarily) deleted and you respawn as if it's your first life in the match. And after the match or if you leave the game early, the memories of your previous lives are reinstalled in your brain.
I used to exploit this knowledge when I played the original Modern Warfare trilogy and CoD Ghosts. I used to snipe from a corner of the map. I killed players that were distracted or focused in the action. Most matches were relatively chill, and I provided a safe spawn for my team. But sometimes, by the end of the match, I had killed enough players enough times that they started to retaliate. I had very good map awareness and most of the time knew they were coming. One man army, mines, C4, fallen enemy weapons, kill streaks... They just kept dying over and over...
I think one the easiest fixes, but one not everyone would like since a lot of people tend to fixate, is to have a larger battlespace and push respawns to participate in a different battle or front within the overall battlespace. That plus transit times and medical systems would definitely create enough time for the situation to change before those players are able to return to their previous battle.
Another idea would be to forbid respawns near your death location, so upon death you have to fight enemies in another location.. but this would of course only work in games with wide open maps and lots of different areas of fighting. But it would also make you value your life more, since if you died too much you wouldn't have anywhere to spawn and would have to wait.
I played a game called operation Harsh doorstop, it really depends on the map, mods, players, and skill, everyone moves quickly, and makes strategies to overwhelm the other team, so no one got any knowledge of where they could be, all you could do is predict or know that a team will flank and attack this checkpoint. like this one time when I played in a server where the other team had green uniforms and armor and were able to blend in with the forest and thick bushes, I understood their strategy while playing, but neither could me or my team counter them, It went like this. 30 percent of the enemy team would go left, 20 percent would go right, and the rest attack front. this confused me and my team as we couldn't attack since they blended in so well and sometimes even respawn because they went behind us and started base killing us.
my first thought was a server shuffle when you die you are moved to another server another engagement another scenario. the issue is that if you want to play with your friends specifically that wouldnt necesserily be possible. its a tricky problem
Really good comentary and explanation of a core problem of the Arma Series. There is only a small number of really good positions on a location...if respawn happens winners are forced to move and leave a strong position due to the Curse of Knowledge...I remember leaving mines on dead enemies and doing a double kill on Arma Wasteland, exploiting the Curse of Knowledge.
Great video, I always find playing 1 life events so much fun as you have to give a crap about your characters life. That on Post Scriptum or Squad, heck even Arma 2 and 3 in the older days were some of my fondest tactical memories.
Get killed, spawn into a different scenario/ place of combat, not too close and not million miles away either. Getting killed again could let you back into the scenario/place 1, if enough time has been spent elsewhere, in other combat situations. Living lives of a couple of soldiers in a couple of different places could fix the need to spawn back and avoid the curse, all without sacrificing 3 minutes on respawn screen or spawning million miles away…
Squad has a system like that, at least the respawn timer. The further the quicker you respawn but it’ll take forever to get back to the area you died if you respawn closer there could be a two minute timer or longer to respawn. Usually the engagement ends by then
An idea I had was what if when you die you will be unable to respawn near the place you died at all, forcing you to pick a new place at a different area in the battle, that way by the time you get back there the battle has changed quite a bit already.
I like the system in Foxhole in which there are people who have to take on medic roles in order to retain that tactical knowledge by recovering and/or healing critically wounded players in time and getting them back in the fight faster than they would otherwise respawn at a further back position. They also have a system where the further back you spawn the faster the timer is for the folks who would rather be in transit in that time rather than just wait to respawn on the front lines.
I think the map can be divided into sectors. Once you day a specific sectors around your death location will be spawn-locked for limited time. forcing you to either wait for a medic or spawn in new area.
An idea that I had in regards to this was to split the battlefield into sections which each have specific units operating in them. Then, each time a player dies, they'd get rotated into a different unit, thus simultaneously solving the curse of knowledge and simulating the arrival of actual fresh reinforcements. However, the issue with this system is that you'd basically be playing on three different matches at the same time, unless you'd find some way to make these units affet each other. Perhaps they could be called to assist by the commander or something?
I’d like to see something where you form a squad in a out of server lobby and have to spawn with your squad at the same time. So basically you’re spectating until your squad is wiped or some other necessary condition is met to allow a mass respawn. That way it would delay the time before you renter combat in a way that allows the battlefield to change. It would also partially prevent squad drift and lone wolfing that tends to eventually start happening in games like squad.
Another solution that may or may not be applicable to arma is to have respawns be semi- randomized (for example between any one of three bases that are a certain distance for eachother) and also to just make the maps bigger, so that when you do respawn by the time you get back to where you died things very well could have changed without any particular punishment on the dying players end. For example, maybe instead of picking a precise point or base to respawn into you would get a circle on the map and when you click once your respawn timer has finished, you'll respawn randomly in any one of those bases that are in the circle (if thier are none you can't spawn there) Again, you would need big maps for this but at the same time at least this way if you died defending a base you can respawn close enough to said base more times than not to still be able to help defend it without giving you a knowledge of where everyone and everything is by the time you get back. in this case it also helps the angle of where you are in relation to the base you attacked will vary depending on the base you spawned into. meaning enemies that killed may simply not be able to get to you and enemies that you didn't even know were there at first may be the first people you've got to worry about.
Great work. Arma 3 Ace medical mod had it so you would black out and require treatment periodically opening your eyes as you drift in and out of consciousness. Giving medical staff a key role.
Your solution describes Gray Zone Warfare perfectly. I never went back to my "previous body" and found the same situation that I left. So much so that going back with nothing but a knife to retrieve your loadout might be the most risky thing in the game.
This is my biggest gripe with Gray Zone Warfare actually. The fact that you have the LZs so close to the POI take all the intensity and 'immersion' out of it - the gameloop or whatever you want to call it is stale and boring: spawn -> wait for a heli for 30-60s -> fly for 4 minutes -> bam, you're in the same spot you were 5 minutes ago. Limiting the LZs to be closer to the main base/further away from POI forces the player to not only think about fire fights and maneuvering but also about medical supplies and sustainment which was said to be a big part of the gameplay. There is pretty much no point in taking food and water because you can get to the POI in around 5 minutes, win the gunfight and leave or lose the gunfight, spawn back in the base and repeat the cycle...
ny idea would be tying the amount of time it takes to respawn to the distance of the respawn point from the point of death. a spawnpoint right next to where the player just died might take several minutes, whereas one across the map could be nearly instantaneous.
Maybe when you die for a little while you are dead but can control some utilities your team has or when someone in your team points out an enemy location you can broadcast it to your sniper before your "timer runs out just a thought
I feel like ready or not does a good job with this. Sure, you can replay a map multiple times. But different areas will be trapped, bad guys will be in different spots, who need to arrest can be in different spots. It makes it so you have to approach each replayed mission nearly as carefully as before.
I used to make films for cinema and TV. The number one idea of idea of most _stories_ is that there is a protagonist, and that he has to overcome some obstacles to achieve some kind of metamorphosis, enlightenment or - indeed - chatharsis (rebirth). This is why survival games are so interesting, because you can never know how far you'll get, and the whole environment is against you. Put enough time and space between you and that sniper, and the curse of knowledge is diminished. Moreover, a new chapter is started.
"Curse of knowledge" is why some plays the "One life events" in Squad.
Reforger needs this as well
@@dann10000Try ArmA 3 Friday Night Fight PVP event. One life objective based gamemodes
@@dann10000 Reforger lobby mod exist almost a year
There have been "one life" events with the reforger lobby mod for quite some time now
Those events are so cool i only played one once it was by far my favorite match ever in squad.
Enforced amnesia upon the player through electrical shock from their computer.
Holy, you're a genius.
oddly enough i was just thinking about that
The design is very human
Make it so if you die in game, you die irl. Keep the stakes high
How could it go wrong?? 😂
There is also the curse of game knowledge. Frequent players develop an intimate familiarity with the maps and systems, which removes a lot of uncertainty. This in turn reduces the de facto decision space if players are playing to win. Making decisions that are not within the narrow band of best practice means giving up a huge advantage.
I've experienced this myself, fighting tends to gravitate to certain areas and you know where the enemy is coming from
its why people enjoy modded content so much. theres a whole new level added when youre fighting and navigating through an area that you dont know. once youve played everon and arland enough, you can immediately figure out where you are by just glancing around, and the world doesnt feel so big anymore.
@@fluffysquirrel8385 There's a different curse on the modded side. You have the randoms that will come in and try to play the mod like its vanilla and destroy the entire team's gameplay.
Its simply stalling of gameplay, I play different maps from time to time, but tbh I only play singleplayer and the AI doesnt tend to stay in one place
To be fair this does actually mimic real life to an extent. Extensive local knowledge of terrain often gives local fighters a massive advantage over foreign opponents. If there has been fighting in an area before, people who have fought there before will utilize the best location to fight in. This is vastly different from what OP is describing, where the "curse of knowledge" comes in largely because of the fundamental difference of mortality between real life and video games, and how you can pass on your knowledge even when you die.
Idea! The closer you decide to spawn from your death location the longer the spawn timer. The further away the shorter the timer.
That is pretty good
A variation of that could be to allow for the possibility of reducing your spawn time for the trade-off of spawning in wounded, thus needing medical attention to be fully combat effective. Or you can just wait the full time and be respawned with full health.
This, like the distance based spawn time suggestion, gives some sort of choice to the player. Do I want to get back into action immediately? If so, is it worth the disadvantages of reducing the respawn time?
I think a similar system is implemented in Planetside 2
brilliant idea
Hell let loose does this by making your original deployment zone the fastest deployment zone for the rest of the game regardless of how far away it gets due to pushing the line forward/backward. HQs, and Garrisons have higher spawn timers because they're closer to the front, and can be mobile.
Years ago I used to play on a GMod server called WW3RP which was sort of half tactical shooter and half RPG - you played a fixed character (or characters) and every so often you'd go out and get into firefights with the opposite team.
What made it work was that once you died in the field you basically pretended you had never left the base, and indeed you were forced to stay there for about 15 minutes iirc. But what made it work was that there was always something to do *at* the base - hang out with fellow soldiers, pull guard duty, etc. And along the lines of the medical system idea in this video, if you were a trained medic you had responsibility for patching up anybody wounded that was brought back from the battlefield, so that gave you even more gameplay while waiting to be allowed back into the fight.
It's not a solution that could be applied 1:1 to a "pure" tactical shooter but I think the idea of creating a separate area in the world where people can still carry out tasks and stay engaged between fights is a strong one. And there are probably ways to implement tasks other than healing - introduce minigames that get people involved in logistics, SIGINT, anything fun that people can do for a fixed amount of time before they get let back into battle.
Was it lemonpunch? I played it a bit back then
There is Foxhole for it, not the greatest community but the game does just what you explained, you either can spawn in a combat area, a forward position close to the combat area or the home island where you can familiarize yourself with the game mechanics and whatnot, be recruited to a regiment, learn how to do logi, and so on
As i did mention, community is not great cuz its usually unmoderated and people do everything from calling you slurs to doxxing you, it has been on a decline lately but still, it happens from time to time
RP is one of the solutions to this curse, I thought about it during the video.
C18.MPF.HELIX-i4-0074 iykyk
Some of that gmod rp from back in the day was so great. Miss that stuff sometimes
Was going to post this comment alone, until i found that this comment also covers GMod as an example to the topic:
The curse of knowledge is not limited to tactical shooters, it also exists in roleplaying games such as the Dark RP gamemode in Garry's mod in the form of a manually applied rule: New life rule (NLR). How it is moderated is that once a player who has been killed returns to where they died, they are punished with a warn, kick or ban from by the community staff as it otherwise breaks the immersion of roleplay.
Some communities have been able to remove this manually enforced rule through the implementation of an unenterable bubble upon death which either prevents you from entering the area you died in or having you become a ghost once entering it - which cannot be killed, cannot interact within the bubble and cannot be seen. One issue to bear in mind here is that within these limitation, the player would still be able to relay information as a spectator - though could be restricted by not being able to see any players and entities too.
Applying it to Arma Reforger, areas could be split into different sectors where if you die in them - you are unable to enter within a customizable time. One issue in this would be making transporting of squads janky, as you'd have to avoid entire roads with transports as one of your seated squad mates died in that area 10 minutes ago. A solution to this could be having players in the vehicle unable to exit the vehicle and restricted from using vehicle guns while seated.
I get around this by being incredibly dumb and forgetting there is a guy camping the road with a PKM.
Having ADHD also helps.
I'm in a constant state of day dream and unawareness.
CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!
@@slovencleta arma when the meds hit is something else though man
Same dude 🤣
Gotta get yer meds going. Before I got diagnosed, I was barely able to play EFT due to anxiety and brain fog but now I'm almost 500 hours deep.
Playing Arma while sleep deprived with ADHD can seriously blur the line between game and reality.
Edit: 0/10 I do NOT recommend.
Honestly the "curse of knowledge" is realistic to some degree, in real life machine gunners don't stay in one spot for a duration of time because they know eventually they will be discovered, same thing with snipers and armor, or literally any combat element.
Please watch the video first.
He's not saying an individual should never be spotted but rather that it should happen organically.
I think we can agree that immediately respawning and sprinting for 2mins to kill that sniper is not organic.
@@jermania766 The thing is in a real life engagement there's hundreds, if not thousands, of men fighting for each side on an engagement not a few dozen. The scenario he describes in the begining is unrealistic because there's no way a single guy would be alone in that situation. He would have his squad with him and they would very much report the snipers location.
"The Curse of Knowledge" isn't that much of an issue because in a real battlefield as the sides face of against each other the many involved combat personal will constantly be passing information along the chain of command and informing other units of the going ons. This is why the scale of battles feel larger than they actually are in a well designed Tactical Shooter in the style of Reforger.
Respawning and sprinting for 2 minutes isn't equivalent of a soldier coming back from the dead and going for revenge, it's the equivalent of a kill team being sent to smoke out the sniper that fucking up the operation because they'll run out of personel. It's perfectly organic if you don't forget it's an abstraction.
Guys, the point I was making is what happens when you are reengaged by the very same people you just killed, and how the battlefield devolves into revenge killings
The point of the video went right over your head. And the other guys doing mental gymnastics to wave the point away are dishonest. Just because you can imagine a scenario in which the curse of knowledge doesn't matter, doesn't mean it isn't a big factor in the meta of a game.
Infantry work is " shoot *move* communicate " for a reason
The problem is that even when you make the player wake up at the hospital they could just relay that information to their team mates via radio so the curse of knowledge still persist.
Very true unfortunately, and they can also use Discord
Wouldn't that be a problem? It would be an organic and realistic change. And then by the time he wakes up, it will give the sniper or machine gunner time to do his job or change location.
It's not as big of a problem as you'd think. The player that died will know exactly where the enemy is, where to look, and a vague idea of how to avoid him, but have you ever tried communicating that to another person? Whoever responds to the call will have much less information to work off of.
@@zhop951ive tried to guide someone through setting up TFAR via a vc when they have little experience with computers. It was HELL. I imagine a 3d worldspace would be worse. “He’s in that building, top left window.” “Which building? Theres like 3” “well one with a big red wall” “i dont see any red walls”
@@SirIronbeard this my issue with the solutions, is that if your enemies are using discord, even if when you die you and get disconnected from the server, if you have discord you can just relay what just happened to your teammates, putting you at a huge disadvantage if you are playing with randoms against a pre-made squad or team.
When playing Hell Let Loose, I just figure each squad represents a platoon, and each member a couple of soldiers. So if you get shot, your next respawn you’re now the buddy that was next to you, watching things happen. It makes the game feel bigger, and lifts the curse.
That's Enlisted
I have an idea for spawn system
when the base under occupie, the respawn is cut off because the base’s communication with the rest of the bases has been interrupted , and the soldier must spawn in another base and go to the base under occupation, and the base under occupation extends the time period for the entire occupation in order to give the defender a chance but when enemy have more soldiers the time to occupy be faster.
Thanks for videos ironbeard
You are the best!
this could work
Sounds like Squad
sounds like battlefield
Scale that up to hundreds of players fighting for the base and you get Planetside 2.
have you ever played fps before?
This would never work for many reasons but it’s fun to think about. What if, when you die, you automatically get shuffled over to another server, atleast for when your playing vanilla servers. It’s the same thing as a one life event pretty much except when you get moved to another server automatically, you get to keep you’re saved loadout and rank. Let’s say when the commanding roll comes out, only the commander gets to stay in the same server.
Again, there’s sooo many cons that outweigh the pros, and not to mention its probably just not possible. However It would be a surreal feeling though if you when you die and hit respawn, in a matter of seconds you respawn in another server with completely random guys, fighting a completely different war and everything is new.
It’s the same thing as leaving the server and rejoining a new one, the only difference really is the time it takes in between loading into the new server as it would be seamless in my imagination of it. Maybe to make it work, Bohemia gives you a list of servers you can select that you would like to respawn into after death, almost like making a music playlist, like which songs you want to listen to, and in what order.
Haha, I thought of something similar. Maybe when you die you get kicked back to the menu and the server opens up another spot for someone else
well one way to do it would be to have an ai game master, that creates engagements / gives tasks that generally lead to combat, like take the raio tower on the far left of the map, the map is furthermore filled with ai soldiers doing all possible tasks from logistics to marching to the objective. You are then spawned and take over one of those ai soldiers, possible right before combat starts, once you die, you get respawned somewhere else with a different mission, now originaly my idear for this was to have a tactical imersive shooter that i more casual fun, with short respawn times, so i would have allowed to possible spawn in another ai soldier that is near the objective.
the giant problem with this is playing with friends or having a fav server, not only that but having so much downtime in between will just result in people not playing.
@@Arbitertacoit’s true, that’s why I said this would never really work. Check out my second comment that I replied to myself with. I
I seriously thought of the same thing with medical tents. I think a bigger push into medical would make the game much more dynamic.
I can't wait for ace medical to get better. It was amazing on arma 3. I once spent three hours recesitating an ai in antistasi. Obviously that's not how long you want it to be for online pvp, but reason to give the medic more purpose would be good. The way it is now I honestly think they should just increase unconscious time just a little bit longer. If someone was incapacitated in a fight then that's just it. They were incapacitated. They shouldn't get back up in 30 seconds. I've got more ideas but they are lengthy. Either way I'm hanging in there for this game.
There was this mod that needs to be included in vanilla. More knocked state. You wont die but you wont be able without medic. Forces more players to help. Because now 99% times you are dead nomatter where you are hit.
We have ace medical on the W.C.S. servers on reforger I don't know how it compares to ace in 3 because this is my first Arma I've got to play but we have to actually use med kits to heal injuries before we can push epinephrine to wake them up our pilot got hit when we landed once and we drug him out stabilized him but we didn't have a proper medic so we had to keep picking him up moving and setting him down to fight before he would wake up at one point he was laying there a tracer ripped right over top of his chest I put him on my shoulders and backed away just hip firing my M60e4 through the bushes put the whole belt through the trees while walking backwards with him on my shoulders they stopped chasing us after that
I agree they did make some tweaks to it in 1.2 that made some improvements but the base is there for something great. I know ACE is in big talks about expanding even further, we will see how it goes
@@BiggestHoss1232it is extremely rudimentary compared to Arma 3 ACE but a start for sure
I think the bigger curse is general game knowledge, the first 10 hours you play arma will likely be the most fun, and after hundreds, you come to a point where you can predict how things will turn out and where people will be, you know the spots and the strategies. Knowing how a situation will play out because you have been in so many like it takes away some of the unpredictability and adrenaline. Its like if you ever played lethal company. Playing it for the first time I was actually scared. When my friend stops replying and i turn the corner to see his corpse laying there ominously.
Well veterans learn from time too
it won't be a problem in a fullrp project, where maps, events, people, general information, factions are not the same
Absolutely, I have so many ARMA hours that I'm dead inside when I play the game. It also makes the game practically unplayable because 75% of your team is new and untrainable.
I used to take part in events hosted on an ww2 air milsim. No real information on what we will be facing, no death message, no position on a map. We were given out a mission and flight route. Death meant starting from 0 on our campain and ranking system.
Sometimes you would fly alert and accomplish mission without contact. Other times, you would end up lost alone after a fight, calling for your teammates on the radio, not sure if they were down, limping home or else. We often saw superior forces fleeing because of their lack of knowledge.
whats the game?
The intro of this video makes ArmA Reforger sound like a horror game. The narration makes it feel almost like a Terrence Malick short or something. Great video.
And it has blood on the environment like Arma 3 but Reforger don't have it.
War is horror....
You're right there. All these fine men, sent off to do the dying, when those bigwigs, those pen pushers, the guys who never ever see a single bullet whizz past their heads. We wanna get them down here. Those so called generals in their big fancy houses. Twenty miles behind enemy lines. Who are they to tell us? Who are they indeed? Look at that. What a sight....
The horror.... the horror....
As long as Patterson doesn't fire a warning shot, it can be whatever we want it to be ;)
This has been a mechanic that has bothered me for a while. I don't know how fighting goes in a big war, but I have deployed in COIN operations in OIF and OEF. I remember going into a hide-site as a part of a 3-man team in Baghdad. We entered a building with 2 squads to clear it and then we stayed behind when they left. We did this so no one thought we were still in the building. We were in charge of watching the flanks of a large clearing operation with the rest of the company. The concern I had was that once we fired our weapons, the people in the area would know where we were, even if we were able to get the fighters we were engaging, others would know where we were and move against us. There were only 3 of us, and so we were expecting that if we called on the radio, our other squads could come to help us if need be, but we had the conversation amongst ourselves, that if a major firefight breaks out and everyone gets bogged down, like had happened a week or two prior to that, we would engage and then pop smoke and run back to our friendly line which controlled the center street in the area we were clearing, about a quarter mile away or so. I made a comment previously, maybe have a shuttle system in the game where if a certain structure is built, then a helicopter, piloted by AI, would fly in and drop off people respawning.
Did you never do an ntc or jrtc/jtc simulating conventional warfare? All of the training events i partook in during my service as a big army paratrooper with the 173rd was simulating conventional warfare, one time, it was just our battalion of light infantry vs an entire armored division... we had no air or artillery support. This all took place smack dab in the middle of the gwot and before our deployment to wardak province afghanistan.
We never really trained for asymmetric warfare or fighting an insurgency.
So im just curious why you think you dont know how conventional warfare goes, you should know from your training. Of course its not a perfect exoerience as those big training events are racked with gamisms and issues in their own right, but you should know the general gist of it.
Take care brother, and im not at all trying to be insulting or question your service, oftentimes we forget more than we know.
Adding this reply because youtube hides my comments, you might need to sort comments by newest in order to see my first comment.
@@ProfessorOfLogicAtUnvOfScience we had NTC OC's come to Fort Lewis in 2007 to get us ready for deployment to Iraq during the Surge. This was when I was an Infantryman. We were called up for the surge and didn't have time to go to Irwin. I went to JRTC in Polk in 2013 before going to Afghanistan and we went to NTC at Irwin in 2018. The only time we trained to fight near-peer threats was 2018. At this time I had already transitioned to 153M UH-60M pilot, so I don't know what they were teaching the Infantry at the time, but I noticed the same thing that I noticed in 2004 when I first joined the Army. They were teaching all the lessons that they learned from the last major conflict and it did not prepare us for the current threat. A lot of the changes to TTPs, technology, SOPs, etc, all come from experience that is paid for in blood. For example, look at how drone warfare has changed everything today. War gaming and training exercises that are monitored by observer controllers who have no idea how to train people for a conflict they have never been in themselves the same thing I saw decades ago during COIN. It wasn't until 2013 where I started to see realistic training that was being taught. Doctorine was typically slow to adapt, tactics would change rapidly.
Sorry for rambling, but I guess my point is if you talk to anyone who has fought in both Iraq/Afghanistan and then went on to Volunteer in Ukraine (I only know 1 person myself) they will tell you that they are not even close. The training that is being done in JRTC and NTC, while it is better than nothing, it is not anything close to the preparation needed for conventional warfare. In every war, we will first have to pay for those lessons with blood. In chapter 9 of every aircraft manual is the emergency procedures, and we had a saying that they were all written in blood. Someone had to learn the hard way for the rest of us to know to prepare for it.
@@GeneralThe3rd no, no, no... youre telling me i ran into the mythical warrant officer???? You guys dont even exist! Lmao.
I can only really speak on my experience with the light infantry, over in italy, but all of our training was geared towards conventional warfare, from 2009-2013 namely, (after that i spent the rest of my enlistment in the reserves, what a mistake...) perhaps its different for a "global response unit" like the 173rd or the 82nd.
Yeah, the opfor units and OC's absolutely suck... the opfor guys in grafeonwoer and hohensfels were notorious for putting black electrical tape on their miles gear in order to be virtually immortal... we had one of those guys run out in front of our hmmvw and we almost ran him over as he was yelling safety kill... on our uparmored 1151... range oc said he had an s-vest and killed our entire truck. Had a similar instance when we took a point blank "shot" from a tank, the range oc's said we were all "dead" then he saw that i was a medic and started handing out injury cards, told me i just had a minor abrasion on my hand and to "get to work." Like fuck, if yall wont take this seriously, why should we?
All that being said, it was still good training and i was still very confident that we'd run right through any conventional force in the event of the real thing. Im not convinced that the us military has any peer or near peer adversaries. As far as casualties go, thats just an unfortunate reality of warfare.
I also dont think ukraine is a good example of peer to peer conflict... i mean, they blue on blued one of their own f16s with a patriot missile system. Its also impossible to get a good idea of whats going on there, as i can only really see what seems to be clearly propaganda footage. It just looks like a complete shit show.
I dont mind the rambling, i enjoy learning about other service members' experience which is almost always wildly different in certain aspects and exactly the same in others! Thanks for the knowledge drop sir!
@@ProfessorOfLogicAtUnvOfScience Yea, it is funny because in the Infantry, I never saw a Warrant Officer except occasionally when I went by Brigade Headquarters. In aviation units, CW2's & CW3's are a dime a dozen. The only CW5's I saw was at the WOCS at Fort Rucker (Novosel now).
I have seen all the training change for the near-peer threats and we started doing exercises and NTC rotations after 2014 that focused on that. I remember during one of the rotations how we would hop to a new base location and set up our comms. I tried to tell our battalion that we needed to move all of our OE-254 to a spot a distance away and run cables to them because new tech would allow a near-peer to lock onto our positions and wipe out all our aircraft and ourselves as we started to transmit. They didn't listen because it wasn't told to them from higher ups and because it wasn't part of doctrine. I remember thinking just how bad it would be then if we had to deploy against a near-peer.
My original point was that I don't know how fighting goes in a big war. I have real world experience spending about 2 years of time deployed in combat zones, and a little bit more time deployed in different areas in support, like Kuwait, Latvia, etc. All of that experience was fighting insurgent forces and so it goes completely different then a conventional fight. No matter what people think about our troops, in the next conflict, many Americans are going to have to pay to learn very important lessons at the start. I spent some time in the medivac doctrine course at Rucker. We had several medical personnel who taught the course who had just returned from an advisory deployment over there in Ukraine (this was 2017 mind you). The biggest problem I already know will be an issue because we had to work through it in the course was understanding that aviation assets for medivac would not be a given like it had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hitting that golden hour for urgent surgical care would be difficult. We would have to rely on Forward Surgical Teams and ground transport out from the front lines in order to get people treated. This is exactly what we see going on today. This country doesn't have the stomach to stay with a war where we are having to bury so many of our sons and daughters.
Once upon a time...waaaaaay back in the day, things were different but you could see the growth of the "Curse of Knowledge", actually observe it and watch it grow over time.
America's Army (Recon). Round based team elimination game. You only had one life per round. Also, if you were killed, you could spectate the remainder of the round. The idea was to keep "dead" players engaged in the rest of the round and not go in search of another game to join.
Voice comms existed but not everyone had access to the programs yet (Roger Wilco, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, etc).
Because you could spectate if killed a new phenomenon arose "ghosting".
Dead players would spectate and warn still operational players (through comms) of where they were killed and tell them of unexpected danger if they saw them.
While greatly frowned upon in the beginning...the practice of dead players still being "active", becoming the eyes and ears of surviving players, grew as multiplayer gaming grew.
Now it's somewhat irrelevant with the practice of communicating with your team mates and giving them a heads up if something happens to you is a normalized part of playing.
Solutions:
1. Big, procedurally generated maps where the players can't "learn the map";
2. Getting respawned at a distant location;
3. Not displaying player names (so players are not motivated by revenge kills);
4. Mechanics that reward players for exploring/assaulting new locations on the level (e.g. an XP reward for scouting, a game mode that focuses on capturing new points designated by the HQ) instead of going to old ones;
5. Mechanics that force players to move out of existing combat zones where they've been camping for a longer while (e.g. artillery bombardment);
6. Longer respawn times with a thematic wait (e.g. a paradrop where you can sit in the plane and chat with other paratroopers);
7. Short matches with permadeath and a quickmatch option, so right after dying on one map you get deployed on another.
I believe this is a really good list except for the long response timer. Even in real combat, it's only a matter of time before you have accurate information on enemy locations, so trying to create a system to lower the chance of a counterattack doesn't make any sense.
Thats why despite the games trying their best to slow down gameplay and emphasize communication, the most effective and important players are still the rambo gunslingers.
I've played my fair share of tactical shooters and it's always the same.
Thats true, you can beat experience with inexperience. They would never expect someone to try something so stupid, so they never consider to counter.
violence of action
The biggest issue with tactical shooters is the FPS call of duty war zone players who can’t play tactically as a team and always say “it’s just a game who cares”. I play arma because I like the tactical scene, I’m prior service so it’s fun to get with some fellow service members and vets but war zone battle royals players ruin it
I play squad and as a squad leader it is difficult to deal with people who do not listen, however the threat of kicking them works on Spanish servers, as they lose their entire team and within 5 minutes, if they are not part of a squad, they are expelled. In the English community this threat does not usually have as much effect.
Unfortunately with a little game knowledge those guys are usually pretty effective even. Tactical shooters like Squad boil down to the same concept as CoD. The team with more kills usually wins. At the end it really is just a game and the intended way to play is not always the best way.
@@schmid1.079 being objective, in games like Call of Duty you also die with one shot, so they are used to that, the problem lies, as you say, in reducing the objectives of the games into a kind of giant death match, the commanders should have the ability to impose missions.
They will say "it's just a game" to then start crying when someone starts camping with shotguns
@@publiocornelioescipion8803 You only die in one shot in hardcore modes, or with powerful weapons. Otherwise core modes make it more arcade like with longer TTK.
Even in hardcore you still dont always die in one shot.
Spawn waves is another way. I also have been looking for a great solution with how spawning should work. I host a private Reforger server weekly for a game night with friends against the bots. We used to take a spawn radio and a supply truck to spawn from, but it just breaks the immersion of the game when 30 seconds later you are back into the fight. Or a single person is spawning at the nearest base and taking a vehicle to get back to battle. After a while the battle area looks like a used car dealers parking lot.
Using a spawn wave system can force people to spawn together and take one vehicle back to battle.
As for how and where... I like the medical tent spawn idea. Maybe have it that you can build a medical tent past 1km of the battlefield to spawn from.
It's always been a tricky subject and finding the balance where it feels realistic, fair and fun. For me I would have it that a person's body would have to be transported back to a medical tent to have the bullets surgically removed and healed. 2 hours later, you are back in action... lol
MAG on PS3 had spawn waves of maximum 30 seconds and it was really cool spawning with your team and trying another push
I have thought about this a lot too. My idea is to really lean in to the realism (I got this idea from a battlefield 3 map). Have it so the only bases you can respawn at are costal bases. Make it so off the coast of each occupied coastal base is a big ship and that’s what you spawn on. From there of course you can be flown out by helicopters or boats. This way players will value their life much much more and logistics such as working together in transports and planning will be essential to make any gains in progression. The only exception here would be that when you first join a server you get spawned with your squad lead so you don’t just automatically grab a chopper or something else to get into battle ASAP. I also think that when you are put into an unconscious state that you shouldn’t be put on your back relating to every enemy that you’re still alive. I’d also lower the supply cost of everything by a LOT and make the only place you can get supplies the coastal bases as well. This would make FOB’s more important and stop the excessive risky use of highly valuable equipment. I think inconvenience is the best way to relay importance in a game like this.
I just had an idea, a mix of single life and constantly being thrown back in. How you ask?
When you die, instead of being spawned back into the same battle you are shuffled into another battle.
So at the end of a "game" you might have participated in multiple battles, both won and lost.
Each life is treated as a separate soldier and added to the Memorial Wall when they die.
This would solve the curse of knowledge as you will not be able to engage with that enemy again, (depending on number available battles) but you will never be placed back into the same match.
It would also help bring that feeling of war is hell, especially if every time you start the game the first thing you see is the Memorial Wall (for the last faction/nation played)
Very least it would be a interesting experience.
Only one way to find out!
And many have their "Bodycam" running "Screen Recording" OBS,NVIDA and so on.... they can submit whatever information is necessary. I've already sent my brother a message via Whatsapp about where the opponents were with a picture :D and as far as I know there was no Whatsapp or power smartphones in 1989....
@@DJHazzard Yeah, but that's outside of the game itself and could be considered cheating.
Besides your brother might not even be on the right map to make use of the information at the time.
The potential could be limitless with not just limited to battles but also certain periods of war.
Imagine you start in a medieval battle fighting for your kingdom, all the way through potential WW3 fighting for your country.
@@eyen22buck Yeah, I guess but you are not affecting the same overall battle.
Plus having a shift from Medieval all the way to future warfare would mean either basic loadouts only or way to much kit to organize. Think Enlisted if you had to create 4-5 squads then you had to create them again for every era you fight in.
Even if it is just single soldiers it could get to much especially for new players as the game progresses.
2:00 - ARMA Reforger has moments like this dialed in. It’s the perfect onion ready to be enjoyed over and over and over again.
I've thought about this a lot, but strangely only for single-player games. You kind of said at the start of the video that the first encounter is the "purest," and I cherish that a lot when I play video games with a campaign mode like Halo. I have a friend who loves a hard challenge for its own sake, and we play on Legendary with several skulls on. But every time it becomes the same process of figuring out the very specific actions that get us through an engagement the best, and running that set of actions over and over until we get to a new checkpoint. It always bothers me when I die, not because I failed, but because the second attempt-knowing what I'm up against, where my enemies are located-that's the moment the story becomes an arcade game, in a sense. Now I'll be thinking about it in multiplayer as well. Thank you for cursing me with this knowledge anyways, it's good food for thought :)
2:44 "Without arbitrary balancing" Take notes Arrowhead Studios
Imagine a battlefield that is divided in sections. Everytime you die, you get shuffled to a new portion of the battlefield. These sections are perhaps divided by minefields or such.
I've played a game for something like 5 years now that has defeated this videos titular curse. It's not a "tactical shooter" and it's not a real world milsim either, though it does share elements of both. In fact, it's not even played in 3D.
The game in question is CM-SS13, also known as Colonial Marines - Space Station 13.
You play as either one member of the United States Colonial Marines stationed aboard the USS Almayer, or an individual Xenomorph in the larger hivemind in 100-150 player rounds. The way it avoids the curse is by using somewhat of a one life system: you take more than 200 damage? You die, and a 5 minute timer begins. If another player heals you to under 200 health and hits you with a defibrillator, you can continue the round. If not, you're dead for good, and can only return to the round in another body as part of an event, or by joining the Xenomorph hivemind. There are more complexities involved that I won't get into involving specific strategies on both sides to either cause or prevent permanent death. This is enabled by a round based system designed and moderated to last about 1-2 hours. It's a system that encourages memorable drama like a heroic push to recover a downed squad leader or desperate retreat while carrying casualties on your back.
Tying this to Arma and your proposed ideas for defeating the curse: implement a focused, round based game mode with death as more than a minor obstacle, and a robust medical system that rewards players with more than just saving your buddy from a light jog. Death could lead to 30 minutes in a spectator mode, but by sticking close to your squad the chances of permanently dying would be much lower, and could lead to really interesting and gutsy rescue operations. Obviously you can't just port one system to another, this variety of hardcore-lite may compromise the milsim realism elements players love (people getting revived after taking one to the head or a burst to the chest). It's truly a delicate balancing act between that incredible rush of dynamic conflict and crushing tedium of timers and dark screens.
Thanks for reading!
SS13 is such a special game
To give you another piece of the meta-game puzzle:
The Curse of Knowledge is also seen in map layouts.
Compare whatever scores you use to rate yourself, on a map you well know to one you don't.
This can be seen most often within the first minute or so of any round, when the teams are rushing to lock down key spots as fast as possible. If you have played any map enough times, and it isn't designed with this in mind, you start to lob grenades or take 'pot shots' through walls at specific points while engaging. Not because you know the enemy is there, but because the probability of an enemy running past at that particular time... high enough you might get two with that grenade.
I've had a few solutions for this problem, most favored being 'player chosen spawn points' within key designated locations. It becomes very difficult to get the timing of a game down pat, when you can't even be sure where the opponent is spawning this time. Coupled with some other ideas in this thread, such as a longer wait time closer you select to your death point, and it might be looking at an interesting solution to this problem.
Add roles and equipment that effect these numbers, and you are starting to make classes.
I’m loving these game mechanics videos. It’s so rare to find stuff like this where people talk about mechanical ideas outside of how to make them just like it’s been done before.
My old arma 3 platoon handled this by just not allowing respawns in TvT matches, and doing wave respawns that had to travel from a distant point in PvE. Worked out great for years!
This is why I play DMZ! There’s no respawning and if you go down you can only be picked up at your body, not some magic buy station or game timers/waves. People say DMZ is just “warzone lite” but the way you die specifically allows for more strategic moves.
Very interesting topic and discussion, I noticed that this type of "problem" also happens in airsoft, where players can be cured with lifes/bandages, that make them come back to the fight after a critical hit (torso or head). Really interesting to see the connection.
Have multiple games of the same gamemode and map running at the same time. When someone dies in one instance, they get disconnected from that instance and connected to a different one. Then you'll even have different squad leads, squad mates, etc each time you die. Of course, it only works for as many instances you have running, but even switching between one and the other can give enough time for the game to change to forget small things like where that sniper was.
I think the addition of decors and AP Mines can help dissuade people from charging into a spot they were killed from or trick them into being more careful when they know that they could very well be dying for literally nothing.
Decoys not decors
Very good and valid points, at the same time, a game is still a game and it should be fun to play. Implementing mechanics that are too realistic will only increase the boredom. Mindless hours of walking and waiting. War is mostly boring
Ace Medical in Arma 3 has kind of added that extra consequence to getting downed. When playing with competent players in a milsim setting against AI.
Once on of your buddies goes down, you have the rest of the team pull security, while the medic works hard on getting you back up.
This isn't a 30 second ordeal. Depending on the severity of the injuries, it can take up to 10 minutes to get someone up before you can move out again.
So you'll take more caution when playing to not go down as you'll be staring at a black screen for 10 minutes if you're unlucky.
not spawning on attacked bases at all is easy solution and adds more play to any attackers that need to prep for a counterattack
In Red Orchestra, respawns consist of waves every certain number of minutes, making the dead return almost at the same time, a good system to simulate waves of reinforcements.
@@publiocornelioescipion8803 yeah, this system is awesome even tho sometimes you have to wait some time lol
Rainbow Six 3 black arrow was my favorite shooter to play ever hands down, the one life concept with different voice channels for the players and spectators was tremendous fun, a great fit for the smaller maps and fast CQB combat. it also had a timer to pressure you not to try and drag the match out by a stalemate in the deathmatch modes because if it was 1v1 it was a tie match and would go to a rematch. For a larger game though i would be happy with having the option to spectate or return to lobby.
If anyone doesn't understand still, it's when you go back to where you died to kill the enemy player. It's what makes or breaks OP positions in games. The term for this is also called "revenge killing" or "revenge bombing/CAS" in War Thunder.
Foxhole is the best example of what you are explaining with medics or closest I can think of
Dude you fit *A LOT* into a 8:30 min video without it feeling rushed! Very well done!
I liked your idea (because it makes the game more engaging, and I usually play medic) but I don't think it solves the knowledge issue.
Especially now that we are usually playing with buddies we are on a Discord call with.
Discord feels like screen-peeking for this generation of games 😝
What we do at the moment is spawns are only at main base and only if theres at least one other person with you like a reinforcement. Or someone can drive/fly to pick you up from MOB
Thought this was gonna be a vid on the curse of becoming better at a game and thus, it turning into a video game, like in the situation you described its raw, its frantics, its governed by instinct and uncertainty, but the more you play, hours after hours, you no longer play the same, you play with knowledge, you meta game the situation, perhaps in tarkov knowing where scavs spawn, where missions are located, the exact layout of the map down to every item spawn, to the worse of all, leg meta, where youre better off shooting an armored chad in the legs rather then realistically where you'd wanna shoot
Cuz those starting phases of every game is always the best when nobody knows what they're doing, or where they're going, before i'd get shot at and jump, frantically running into unknown ground, i didn't know where i was, or what it contained, it was just some random street, i was running for my life it didn't matter, but then once youre cursed you know exactly where you are, you know exactly where it leads, and what it contains, youre no longer running for your life, youre running for your in game loot to perserve the potential progression you hold or have to gain, its an unfortunate side effect of all games, the sweat doesn't ruin the game, he's just surcome to the curse quicker then you did
Idk its something i think about, that state of the game that cant be preserved, similar to what was discussed tho, so satisfying video non the less
In our Arma 3 unit we had a way to run respawns to try and avoid this- if you were killed, you could not reinsert into the fight until your body was zipped up into a bodybag and returned to wherever we were deploying from for that mission. Considering the pain of trying to zip up a dead guy and then bring in a bird to safely fly said body out, it almost guaranteed that the engagement, at least as it existed when said player died, would be over or have changed dramatically. This doesn't really work in a public setting, of course, but it did increase the tension somewhat.
This is really interesting, as I’m trying to make a milsim-ish plus maybe a bit of a arcady game, but I want it to have features like what your describing. Thank you for making this video.
I think Insurgency is an example that has a decent solution to this problem, which is tying respawns to objective completion, forcing retreat on objective loss, and having VC only available between live players. This means that when you (or the enemy) do respawn, the objective and portion of the map in play is now different and resets both teams to square one in terms on enemy placement knowledge. I think it only really works for the mid-scale combat the game has, but It's something to draw ideas from.
Maybe for larger scale games with multiple objectives, forcing players to respawn in map sectors a minimum distance from their death with general team VC having limited range?
i like that you are trying to solve this problem
As someone who plays medic a lot in games I really dig the idea of spawning in a med tent and having to wait to be treated, it means during mass cas events that resupplies would be slowed dramatically giving even more impact to those big fights for contexted points but just being randomly picked off still wouldn't feel like a slog to respawn from
Bro gives me chills, could watch your videos all day bro
Imagine a milsim game that disconnected you from the server and instead matchmakes you into another server, maybe in two tries you're back in the original server but by then it's a completely different situation
I think that the ideas you've provided would work very well. It also gives the ability for people who want to play medic roles more of a satisfying and impactful experience. I hope the developers see this and take a leaflet from your book. Great video
Yeah the medic role is really undermined right now. Would love to see what happens!
The question of expecting to respawn has to do with the scale of the conflict. When conducting a small group infiltration, you're not expecting reinforcements, so it makes perfect sense as a one life mode. In this case you must also consider dead player's ability to communicate with their teammates. If there's a radio system you obviously lose access to that equipment while dead, but failing that classic Ghost Recon games had a toggle for "dead talk" in the match settings. In a large scale conflict you have to consider the function of respawning. In a tactical shooter a single player respawning on their own can't make a meaningful difference. In Squad it's to rejoin your current squad from a rally, allowing the size of units on the frontline to remain consistent between engagements without the need to constantly RTB to pick up reinforcements. This can definitely cause information to spread in odd ways, such as an attacking force falling back and severely underestimating the size of remaining enemy units. In COD custom games there's an option for wave spawns that catch dead players in groups and return them together, allowing them to naturally reinforce all at once. This completely changes the function of respawning to giving dead players a new purpose alongside the currently spawning group rather than continuing their previous purpose. We could expand this to sort dead players into "chalks" made up of players from various units who must organize transportation back to the fight. Leaders can emerge and deliberate on the most important allocation of chalk members. Maybe someone serves a critical role to their squad and absolutely must be returned as soon as possible. Maybe most squads are consolidated on one objective and the chalk can walk to their squads from there. Maybe they decide to create a new squad to respond to an emminent threat. You can also combine this with a medical system by having logistical medevac vehicles responsible for returning dead players to base and creating new chalks. This also changes the flow of combat for surviving squad members because after taking casualties their squad becomes smaller and stays that way, creating dynamic situatuons where surviving squads may consider merging to supplement each other's strength. These are very similar to the considerations we take with one or few life modes, but in a way that supports consistent player engagement throughout the duration of the match
I will say, systematically; a game that makes you permadeath and browse social media sounds great for a realistic shooter.
Put in practice however and you are asking for a: dead at launch, game.
What about a supply convoy system for respawning :
an NPC controlled medical and resupply truck form convoys, they spawn at main base and the team leader can direct them over radio (using the map) to move into the field, where they act as mobile spawn points.
during the respawn timer, player's body are still on the field, and a nearby teammate can act as a field medic, allowing them to get right back into action and not lose looted equipment.
Otherwise, they can spawn at a convoy or at one of the fixed spawn points with there configured equipment, there they get healed overtime, grave injuries exponentially increasing healing time.
The Idea is to encourage the option to retreat if things get too dicey, going back to heal faster than the time it would have taken if they had respawned with grave injuries.
The convoys offer more flexibility and open new tactics as well as making maps less always the same, because it's less obvious where the ennemies might come from, but they are destructible, and respawn at main base, losing precious time and advantageous respawn points.
One thing I think about that could work in a Squad/Arma game is to have a realistic reinforcement system where "new" squads arrive from outside of the playable map. When you die, you can chose one of the squads that are coming and join them. This solves 2 of the problems stated in this video:
1 - Your life becomes more valuable since a stupid dead may private you from long minutes of gameplay.
2 - Since reinforcements are coming from outside of the map, when they get to the fight it has already changed a lot. And considering you will be in a totally new squad you may even go to a totally different place.
It also brings a fun gimmick, where you will be triying new classes every life. Died as a morotized boi? Now you can spawn in the LAV squad and be a mechanized boi. Oh no they picked the LMG spot, guess you will have to be the AT. Or you can wait some extra minutes and join the next wave.
As the battle evolves and one of the sides is pushed back, the spawn point may move a little ahead so you won't have to drive 20 minutes to the battle every time. I think a 5 - 10 minutes drive is probally enough.
This is kind of what happened on PVE Arma 2 missions like Evolution Blue and also in some PVP Arma 3 missions like King of The Hill, and it worked great IMO.
The biggest downside to this is that you won't be able to play with your friends after one of you dies. Also you will have a harder time bonding with your squadmates since you may not be together for long. And finally, constantly spawning new vehicles may completelly kill the importance of logistics.
"One idea that I've been thinking about is to tie medical gameplay in together with players dying." The United States Army beat you to that 9 years ago.
My personal approach to this, which I know most arma players wouldn't like, is similar to what Tarkov does a one life approach with a rotating server system that forces the player to join a new server when respawning. The catch is the player would be able to come back to their original server but only after a count down of lets say 30 minutes. A system of one life + server rotation + server timed lock, would allow for the game to flow better. Only issue is with the networking aspect, having to process so many requests on a network each time a player is killed (especially during mass cas events), could potentially impact the game badly, increasing loading times etc. It would be interesting to see this work. It would also force the player base to work harder together, as they need to adapt playing with new players each time they die. I could sit and talk for a while so I'll cut it short. A mixture of what you talked about, the medical system, mixed with what tarkov does and server locks. It could not only remove the curse of knowledge as you describe it, but also immerse the player, making them feel as if they woke up from a coma and the battle field has changed in the time they were knocked out. Mix in seasonal changes and boom you got a descent system in the making.
This was a very good, sharp essay. It’s the core design issue facing tactical shooters. I find your solutions align very well with my own thoughts and experiences from custom clan events played in Squad - as well as from other games like PUBG. If one life events are not feasible, there must be a barrier to respawning (ideally more than just a timer, with actual mechanics involved) and there must be a reinsertion process so that your removal from the immediate tactical situation has real consequences.
Couldn't have said it better!
7:33 being a medic also has to be and feel rewarding otherwise a lot less people will be willing to become a medic
I think games with voip make medic feel very rewarding. Just saying "dont worry I wont let you die" makes them more likely to thank you, idk it just works
Just the idea I stopped someone from going through the of getting back to that spot and gave us more of a chance of winning that small battle is rewarding enough personally
awesome vid. i like the idea about the "close to lore" medical involvment to slow the pace of the game and naturally mitigate this curse
Damn, thats a good ass video. Subbed, and heavily considering getting into tactical shooters
Amazing quality, seriously. Also, the curse is so real its eating your snacks in the fridge right now.
I think a game called Due Process had a cool answer and it was just procedural generation, even if the concept is a bit gimmicky. Each map was similar but entirely unique, which made game-feel consistent but tense and ever-changing, meaning your tactics and teamwork were more relevant than map-knowledge and counter-ops. I think more games should take the pieces of tactical shooters and make unique riveting games out of it, like DayZ.
this a great video man its something about for a few games im glad people are talking about it, i think a big and easy way to solve this would be to remove the map, however its not a practical or helpful fix, you'd fix the problem of knowledge but you make another 6 new problems
Ive had this exact train of thought on Arma. I'm glad you articulated it so well
Maybe some sort of role switching upon death? If you die as a frontline soldier you'll be able to respawn as a medic behind lines and heal any injured, or be logistics and drive supplies, once most or all friendly combatants have died you are "promoted" to soldier and are able to join the fight, after your objective is complete, you voluntarily give up your role, or just body switch with another player continuing where you left off. Gives everyone a chance to be able to play as every role and possibly brings more importance to staying alive as eventually you will become a role you enjoy and thus actively try to preserve your own life, as well as protecting others.
Has potential to get everyone involved and prep for another run based on what you and others learned, those on the frontlines communicate with those behind and send tank crews, airstrikes, mortars, with players who died and role switched commandeering, with the cycle constantly going as players die in the battlefield, do some logistics or medic stuff prepping what they need on next "respawn", then coming back with whatever role is available.
I really like your thoughts and ideas. With my schedule, it is impossible to join a mil-sim group and consistently be active, but ARMA Reforger is trying hard to give that feel to Vanilla servers, which I enjoy.
Since I don't know how to mod I thought I would share some ideas and see what people think.
1. All respawns have to be at the main base, vehicles, and players, that way it forces you to push deeper into the enemy territory, and makes you recon and scope out more because it will suck to have to die when you are on the other side of the map. Emphasizing base building so you have a good spot to fall back, on and planning operations more because if you run out of supplies or ammo you don't want to go all the way back to the main base (which emphasized forward base building again)
2. As you build further and further from your main base, there should be a step-wise decrease in supply generation speed at each subsequent base, making supply running that much more important. This will simulate how difficult it is for armies to push up too quickly and will emphasize supply running. Hopefully, this will lead to more ambushes and spontaneous convoys to help with supply running.
3. I think your injury idea is great, that will possibly create Helicopter and Vehicle medical evac squads that are dedicated to transporting wounded players out and non-wounded players back in. With increased spawn time and having to spawn at the main base, it will incentivize players to evacuate to the nearest base to receive care instead of just respawning. I saw @civilianoperationsgroup3663 mention the closer you spawn to your dead location the longer the timer which is a great idea.
4. I think there should be a vehicle limit per server, abandoned vehicles do add to the realism but the amount of times I've died in a vehicle because someone just drives, dies, goes to base, and respawns a new one is crazy. I think every player should get one or two per game, forcing you to be careful with your vehicle.
5. As it stands it seems people will run supplies once or twice to get themselves in position, if there were some premade squads with assigned tasks that needed to be filled that might help give people a sense of direction and task completion.
This is getting long so I will stop it here but these are just ideas I have. Being able to get that partial mil-sim feel in a vanilla server would be amazing but I also understand a lot of it is a player commitment as well. Let me know your thoughts folks.
Yeah, A lot of dnd one shots end the same way for me due to me playing them as a real person who wants to live. We get hit with overwhelming odds i get dropped to basically nothing and then run
Thought-provoking ramble! Keep 'em coming. Please.
This is the first I've seen anybody cover this. Well done
I like the medical idea, it could even be tied into the idea that you didn't die you were just medevaced. The potential problem I see with sending people back to the main base though is an increase in vehicle usage just as taxis.
That's why I love games like Tarkov. And it's also why I love single life Milsim events. Everyone should try them.
No
@@tango5thetargeted73 fym no?
I think the curse of knowledge in a game like ArmA can be solved by zoning off the map, and if you die you can respawn right away however if you re enter the zone you were killed in before a timer runs down (or some other method of decision) you hit a kill trigger. This way, people dug into advantageous positions can fight an organic fight rather than get taken down by grenade launcher spam. This would allow the front lines to realistically shift as factions have to either re route troops or wait for peoples timer's to run down before reinforcing that zone. By the time the players are able to re enter the zone in which they perished, they now have to decide whether the conditions have changed or not, fogging the curse of knowledge and also giving the victors in combat some breathing room in knowing that their position is always uncertain to their enemy.
Nice work, I approve!
I enjoy the system that is used for insurgency sandstorm in which respawns are done in waves, so a lot the time the flow of gameplay means people reposition naturally. In particular, I really like the mode Firefight because respawns only happen when that team takes a capture point
It would be interesting if in the future where full dive VR is common, when you die in a tactacial shooter, the memories of that life is (temporarily) deleted and you respawn as if it's your first life in the match. And after the match or if you leave the game early, the memories of your previous lives are reinstalled in your brain.
I used to exploit this knowledge when I played the original Modern Warfare trilogy and CoD Ghosts.
I used to snipe from a corner of the map. I killed players that were distracted or focused in the action. Most matches were relatively chill, and I provided a safe spawn for my team. But sometimes, by the end of the match, I had killed enough players enough times that they started to retaliate. I had very good map awareness and most of the time knew they were coming. One man army, mines, C4, fallen enemy weapons, kill streaks... They just kept dying over and over...
I think one the easiest fixes, but one not everyone would like since a lot of people tend to fixate, is to have a larger battlespace and push respawns to participate in a different battle or front within the overall battlespace. That plus transit times and medical systems would definitely create enough time for the situation to change before those players are able to return to their previous battle.
Another idea would be to forbid respawns near your death location, so upon death you have to fight enemies in another location.. but this would of course only work in games with wide open maps and lots of different areas of fighting. But it would also make you value your life more, since if you died too much you wouldn't have anywhere to spawn and would have to wait.
I played a game called operation Harsh doorstop, it really depends on the map, mods, players, and skill, everyone moves quickly, and makes strategies to overwhelm the other team, so no one got any knowledge of where they could be, all you could do is predict or know that a team will flank and attack this checkpoint. like this one time when I played in a server where the other team had green uniforms and armor and were able to blend in with the forest and thick bushes, I understood their strategy while playing, but neither could me or my team counter them, It went like this. 30 percent of the enemy team would go left, 20 percent would go right, and the rest attack front. this confused me and my team as we couldn't attack since they blended in so well and sometimes even respawn because they went behind us and started base killing us.
my first thought was a server shuffle when you die you are moved to another server another engagement another scenario. the issue is that if you want to play with your friends specifically that wouldnt necesserily be possible. its a tricky problem
Really good comentary and explanation of a core problem of the Arma Series. There is only a small number of really good positions on a location...if respawn happens winners are forced to move and leave a strong position due to the Curse of Knowledge...I remember leaving mines on dead enemies and doing a double kill on Arma Wasteland, exploiting the Curse of Knowledge.
Great video, I always find playing 1 life events so much fun as you have to give a crap about your characters life. That on Post Scriptum or Squad, heck even Arma 2 and 3 in the older days were some of my fondest tactical memories.
Get killed, spawn into a different scenario/ place of combat, not too close and not million miles away either. Getting killed again could let you back into the scenario/place 1, if enough time has been spent elsewhere, in other combat situations. Living lives of a couple of soldiers in a couple of different places could fix the need to spawn back and avoid the curse, all without sacrificing 3 minutes on respawn screen or spawning million miles away…
Squad has a system like that, at least the respawn timer. The further the quicker you respawn but it’ll take forever to get back to the area you died if you respawn closer there could be a two minute timer or longer to respawn. Usually the engagement ends by then
An idea I had was what if when you die you will be unable to respawn near the place you died at all, forcing you to pick a new place at a different area in the battle, that way by the time you get back there the battle has changed quite a bit already.
I like the system in Foxhole in which there are people who have to take on medic roles in order to retain that tactical knowledge by recovering and/or healing critically wounded players in time and getting them back in the fight faster than they would otherwise respawn at a further back position. They also have a system where the further back you spawn the faster the timer is for the folks who would rather be in transit in that time rather than just wait to respawn on the front lines.
Great video ironbeard!
Thank you, Milky!
I think the map can be divided into sectors. Once you day a specific sectors around your death location will be spawn-locked for limited time. forcing you to either wait for a medic or spawn in new area.
An idea that I had in regards to this was to split the battlefield into sections which each have specific units operating in them. Then, each time a player dies, they'd get rotated into a different unit, thus simultaneously solving the curse of knowledge and simulating the arrival of actual fresh reinforcements. However, the issue with this system is that you'd basically be playing on three different matches at the same time, unless you'd find some way to make these units affet each other. Perhaps they could be called to assist by the commander or something?
I’d like to see something where you form a squad in a out of server lobby and have to spawn with your squad at the same time. So basically you’re spectating until your squad is wiped or some other necessary condition is met to allow a mass respawn. That way it would delay the time before you renter combat in a way that allows the battlefield to change. It would also partially prevent squad drift and lone wolfing that tends to eventually start happening in games like squad.
Another solution that may or may not be applicable to arma is to have respawns be semi- randomized (for example between any one of three bases that are a certain distance for eachother) and also to just make the maps bigger, so that when you do respawn by the time you get back to where you died things very well could have changed without any particular punishment on the dying players end.
For example, maybe instead of picking a precise point or base to respawn into you would get a circle on the map and when you click once your respawn timer has finished, you'll respawn randomly in any one of those bases that are in the circle (if thier are none you can't spawn there)
Again, you would need big maps for this but at the same time at least this way if you died defending a base you can respawn close enough to said base more times than not to still be able to help defend it without giving you a knowledge of where everyone and everything is by the time you get back. in this case it also helps the angle of where you are in relation to the base you attacked will vary depending on the base you spawned into. meaning enemies that killed may simply not be able to get to you and enemies that you didn't even know were there at first may be the first people you've got to worry about.
Great work. Arma 3 Ace medical mod had it so you would black out and require treatment periodically opening your eyes as you drift in and out of consciousness. Giving medical staff a key role.
Your solution describes Gray Zone Warfare perfectly. I never went back to my "previous body" and found the same situation that I left. So much so that going back with nothing but a knife to retrieve your loadout might be the most risky thing in the game.
This is my biggest gripe with Gray Zone Warfare actually. The fact that you have the LZs so close to the POI take all the intensity and 'immersion' out of it - the gameloop or whatever you want to call it is stale and boring: spawn -> wait for a heli for 30-60s -> fly for 4 minutes -> bam, you're in the same spot you were 5 minutes ago.
Limiting the LZs to be closer to the main base/further away from POI forces the player to not only think about fire fights and maneuvering but also about medical supplies and sustainment which was said to be a big part of the gameplay. There is pretty much no point in taking food and water because you can get to the POI in around 5 minutes, win the gunfight and leave or lose the gunfight, spawn back in the base and repeat the cycle...
ny idea would be tying the amount of time it takes to respawn to the distance of the respawn point from the point of death. a spawnpoint right next to where the player just died might take several minutes, whereas one across the map could be nearly instantaneous.
Maybe when you die for a little while you are dead but can control some utilities your team has or when someone in your team points out an enemy location you can broadcast it to your sniper before your "timer runs out just a thought
I feel like ready or not does a good job with this. Sure, you can replay a map multiple times. But different areas will be trapped, bad guys will be in different spots, who need to arrest can be in different spots. It makes it so you have to approach each replayed mission nearly as carefully as before.
I used to make films for cinema and TV. The number one idea of idea of most _stories_ is that there is a protagonist, and that he has to overcome some obstacles to achieve some kind of metamorphosis, enlightenment or - indeed - chatharsis (rebirth). This is why survival games are so interesting, because you can never know how far you'll get, and the whole environment is against you. Put enough time and space between you and that sniper, and the curse of knowledge is diminished. Moreover, a new chapter is started.