Game modes that heavily ecourage team work

[ray245]

In many games, where you are supposed to have teamwork, like the battlefield games, you will always end up with many players playing solo, and just want to score more kills, nevermind if the team lost.

There has been many type of games that is supposed to be team based, like capture the flag, conquest, missions like planting a bomb and so on. In the end, there is still too many people that decides to go solo, and want to score the highest point.

Personally, I feel that Base assault in call of duty heavily encourage teamwork. Reasons? This type of game mode force you to do several things. Firstly, you need to use heavy explosive from tanks, bazookas, calling in artillery strike ( if you gain enough rank in that map) to destroy 3 bunkers. After you destroy the outer layer of walls, you need to play a bomb inside the bunker to destroy the bunker completely.

As you take a long time to plant and destroy the bunkers completly, any person who played solo will be unable to complete anything useful, as the opposing team can rush down en mass to defend a bunker. Hence, players without a clan can form a tank convoy of sorts, to group all their force together in one spot, and overwhelm the enemy base one by one. And the only way to defeat 5-6 tanks grouped together is to defend as a team, in numbers.


On the other hand, when you are left with one bunker with walls destroyed, a lot of the time, the defending team can say screw you to one team, and bitterly defend the last base. Instead of wasting time and hunt for the enemy or use a futile attack against the enemy base, the team will all rush down to one last base, and defend it in huge numbers.

At times, you have 20 over players as the defenders defending the last base if they see there is no way to turn the tide within the time limit. You have machine gunners there to put down supressing fire in huge amount, many men carrying bazookas and blasting any tanks that move too close to the base, and infrantry hiding inside the inner layer of the base, waiting to defend the base if the outer defense team fell.

If given a choice, the losing team will not gain any points, even if the person on the losing point scored the most kills. Any points he earned will be taken away if he lost the game.

So, other than Base assault, is there any kind of game modes where actual teamwork is used often?

[Braedley]

The best example off the top of my head is Protect the VIP in CS. Admittedly, there never were very many servers that ran oilrig all that often. The CT team had to move forward as 3 or 4 groups, one with the VIP, and the other 2 or 3 as diversions and flanking groups. Going alone was the easiest way of being shot quickly and easily. It was only once you reached the top where you'd break off into 2 man teams due to the risk of snipers shooting into large groups.

[Mr Bean]

Forgotten Hope II Mod for Battlefield 2 is designed from start to finish with team play in mind.
They took the teamplay aspects of BF2 and went further with them. Say hello to squads, kit limiting, Officer kits for SL's, Battlefield commanders who can command(but not punish), multi-occupant tanks and the like.

It's not Red Orchestra bad on, "if you don't team-play, you will die alot" But it's still focused on forcing cooperation. A team with even a semplace of teamwork(Squad leaders calling out tanks almost on flags for bombing runs by planes who can't see shit, infantry poping smoke so AT teams can close with that Panzer. Engineering teams locking down bases with mines and digging up enemy mines. Commanders not wasting artillery strikes on mainbases but timing it to drop just before a attack hits) will not just wipe the floor with the other side, but annihilate them.

Common example, enemy tank it can be bombed, fought with another tank, an AT gun can be brought to bear on it, or infantry can sneak up and either drop a mine on it to disable it, or drop satchels to destroy it. Or you can call an Anti-tank rifle in to deal with it(Most early war tanks) but then be forced to distract it so the AT gun can fire on the weak-points.

It is not so much a mode, as the whole game forces team-play. One lone good player can not swing the map, not even a good squad could swing the map. If the other side has half it's people using team-work and the other half lone wolfing, you need at least 2/3's as many team-players or your going to get wiped.


But to mode's, in the same vein as Braedley's I'll mention the "Hunted" mode from Team Fortress Classic where the VIP must escape, medic's, heavies and soldiers try to keep him alive as enemy snipes try and kill him. Or Team Fortress Two's "Push little cart!" Gold-Rush which demands teamwork to win.

[TC Pilot]

Command and Conquer: Renegade multiplayer is pretty much the only one that comes to mind.

I routinely play on a 25 vs 25 server, and the team that works together (donates credits, designates tank leaders, repairers, and infantry) always crushes the team with lone wolves and Rambos. When player counts are lower (maybe 10 vs 10), a team can come back from behind (i.e. no base defenses, no barracks, no refinery, no power plant) and win after the other team gets cocky (spy sneaks in, destroys a building, a squad of infantry swoop in in an apc and rescue him, rinse and repeat). Sometimes the only way to win is with the whole team participating (mass 25 tanks and rush the unprepared enemy base) in truly epic scales.

Of course, it's often like herding cats, since there's a lot of noobs, idiots, and Rambos out there, but when it actually works, it's glorious.

[Jonen C]

Even regular old battlefield had the potential...

A few mods manage to rectify this to some extent, but it is largely dependent on who's playing.
Silent Heroes for Bf1942 went with the idea of relative realism - kits and vehicles as the armies being used, as close as can be emulated in game form.

On a lot of maps, distances between control points are long, so transports are readily supplied.
Grab a transport without passengers to get into the battle quick, and you will get into the battle quick and die alone.
Pick up a few fellows and you will have better odds at survival (assuming you don't run into a coordinated defense that kills all of you - coordinate your offenses so that unarmed transports are either escorted, or at least aren't the first thing that hits the enemy defenses).
Also - no parachutes.
Helicopters need to learn how to land to deliver their cargo, so no more cases of the pilot bailing out on his passengers.
There are also no jets, and most helicopters are unarmed transports.
EDIT: Add to this - health, repairs and ammo are relatively scarce.
Best place to restock ammo is in the back of the closest armored transport (unarmored transports have no ammo).
Best place to heal is to find a medic. Only way to repair a vehicle is to find an engineer./EDIT

The Assault kit is a good infantry kit, but it's not an all rounder. Against any form of armored vehicle it is useless, but it has more ammo and effective weapons for dealing with infantry (assault rifle/grenade launcher combo), plus smoke for concealment.

The AT kit has a single shot LAW (At-4 in this case), which can kill an Combat Vehicle with a single shot, if you are lucky.
Get three guys with AT kits and the CV is dead.
MBTs are a lot harder to kill, individual infantrymen can still be a threat to it, but are mostly an annoyance.
But if an MBT tries to rush into an enemy held control point, odds are it will be killed swiftly by a lot of small stings.
The at kit has only four mags for his AR, though. But the capability to kill vehicles means it is often the most popular kit.

In order to encourage use of medics, when one is wounded as infantry, the world starts going dark.
Medics don't get any points for healing, but they help their teammates fight better, and medics aren't very good at healing themselves.
There's still never enough medics, of course.
They have more ammo than the AT kit but less than assault, and their AR has a scope for increased accuracy.

Sniper and engineer classes are limited (2 snipers, 4 engineers).
Snipers can put down a mobile spawnpoint (Paraspawn - a flag that allows players to spawn with a parachute in the air - a quick way to turn the tide of battle and the one of the few ways of getting to use a parachute in game).
Snipers who don't use the flag when needed earn nothing but ire from their team, snipers who do sometimes gain negative points from suiciding in order to keep their flags in circulation (plant flag, suicide, spawn from flag, repeat) - these guys can be the heroes of their teams.

Engineers have both the best infantry weapons (Light machine-guns), land mines and portable ammo boxes. They can lock down an area from armored vehicles (and are a big threat to MBTs), provide mobile bases of fire on infantry maps and vital support on vehicle maps (since the only way to repair a vehicle is to find a friendly engineer).
EDIT: Engineers ammo packs can only supply small arms ammo (which means an engineer can carry at least 1500 rounds of 7.62 NATO, for himself, not counting any teammates who also reload from those ammo packs)./EDIT.

It is small things...
Balance issues, really, rather than game modes or limitations, that encourage teamwork.
Don't overly punish those who don't want to play as a team, rather reward those who do.

Of course, it helps that SH has a small, relatively tight knit and mostly friendly community, most of whom use Teamspeak.

[wautd]

So, other than Base assault, is there any kind of game modes where actual teamwork is used often?

Well you have the co-op mode to play the single player campaigns. Something that seems to have become quite popular since the last console generation.

(hey, a 2-man team is still a team)


Rainbow six: Vegas 2 also has a nice multiplayer mode I havn't seen before (what's the name again, Team Leader Deathmatch?). Basicly, each time gets a team leader and you can either win by bringing your team leader to the other side of the map or by annilating the other team. You can still win when your team leader dies, but you wont be able to respawn anymore. This fact makes this type of deathmatches quite brutal at times

[ray245]

Hmm, I was thinking of you being in command of a AI squad like Rainbow six in a multiplayer mode. This way, you can have tons of squads, and a team commander can be more effective in deploying groups of people as compare to a single soldier.

Those who want to solo can always disperse their squads of course.

[2000AD]

World in Conflict is the only game I've seen where complete strangers will consistantly come together and work as a team, even when no one is using text or voice chat, just using the ingame points of interest markers.
Even with only 4 classes to pick from, each one needs help from another to be effective.

[weemadando]

Operation Flashpoint multiplayer often demanded very, very tight co-operation too.

Another one that took a lot of co-op work was AvP - especially playing as Marines. Back in the days of AvP1 I saw some *amazing* Marine clans that could just take apart everyone else due to having such brilliant coordination and weapon balance.

[Dark Hellion]

While the OP mentions modes of play, I think it overlooks a very important facet of why team play is so hard to encourage. Simply put, many people who those games have social interaction problems and difficulty working as a team. Some of this can be overcome as a learning curve of the game, but for some people they will never learn to work as a team, no matter how much a game requires it. For this, one must simply implement a competently designed system to kick or ban players from a game. Now, I do not have any great ideas on how to do this, as votekicking can allow people to simply kick good players off out of spite, and the necessity for an admin allows for both the admin's bias and requires specific players to be logged on quite often.

The ability to remove ineffectual players from the game allows for an overall increase in people who are actually playing the game mode as opposed to playing Rambo.

[Oskuro]

1) Reward teamplay: Many games often cater to the Rambo player by rewarding their behavior (for example, by making kills count more than healing), and thus many players just play for bragging rights when the scores come up. Rewarding players for assistance, healing, transportation and so on would be the key to correct that. Some games are trying, but most still value more the kill. I in fact was tempted to mod BF1942 so killing awarded no points, to get rid of Rambo players on LAN games.

2) Actions have consequences: Or, in other words, punish those that teamkill, needlessly waste resources, or simply hamper their own team. Games as World In Conflict have this already built in through the resource points. If you send your troops to die, you'll have to wait before you can field new ones. Squad-based shooters often have implemented this through credits or money to buy gear (As in CS or C&C:R).


With a well balanced reward/punishment system you don't really need an admin, or even teamkick votes, as disruptive players will be driven away, and more importantly, won't have the power to ruin the game for others (if you don't have the credits to call in an airstrike, you can't drop it on your advancing teammates, as I've seen done all too often in ET:RTCW).

Of course, such a game wouldn't attract the massive amounts of egostist jerks with delusions of grandeur that so much enjoy wrecking the game for everyone else, wich means less boxes sold. And we all know what that means.


By the way, I personally loathe how these kids (as they are more often kids) define their ability to jump around firing at everyone quake style as "skill". Way to go with your skills, smacktard, but your team is losing because you're busy spawncamping!

[erik_t]

While the OP mentions modes of play, I think it overlooks a very important facet of why team play is so hard to encourage. Simply put, many people who those games have social interaction problems and difficulty working as a team. Some of this can be overcome as a learning curve of the game, but for some people they will never learn to work as a team, no matter how much a game requires it. For this, one must simply implement a competently designed system to kick or ban players from a game. Now, I do not have any great ideas on how to do this, as votekicking can allow people to simply kick good players off out of spite, and the necessity for an admin allows for both the admin's bias and requires specific players to be logged on quite often.

The ability to remove ineffectual players from the game allows for an overall increase in people who are actually playing the game mode as opposed to playing Rambo.

I think you're close, but I think the real problem is communication. Even with the increasing use of headsets and such, you don't get situational awareness as to who is saying what. Combined with the fact that you generally don't know any of your teammates, and I think solid teamwork is difficult to accomplish. Even if you took very team-oriented, sociable people, I think you'd have trouble getting them to be effective teams.

Back in my somewhat nerdier days, when I was doing LAN parties with a dozen friends every once in a while, we noticed that when we physically separated our computers into two rooms and organized teams along those lines, teamwork flourished. The ability to understand who was saying what, and the decoupling of gameplay and communication, allowed everyone to be much more functional as a group.

I don't see a way to solve this problem short of magical VR.

[BountyHunterSAx]

I think the MMORPG genre has done a somewhat good job at encouraging teamwork. I can't speak for all of them, but in Last Chaos, a party of 3 different lvl 25 characters is capable of taking on a far wider range of challenges than a single level 32 character. When fighting, trying to raid high level dungeons, power-levelling etc, the people that join guilds/teams and actually fight together and heal each other end up doing better overall and advancing faster than the loners who try to power-level alone.

-AHMAD

[wautd]

I think the MMORPG genre has done a somewhat good job at encouraging teamwork. I can't speak for all of them, but in Last Chaos, a party of 3 different lvl 25 characters is capable of taking on a far wider range of challenges than a single level 32 character. When fighting, trying to raid high level dungeons, power-levelling etc, the people that join guilds/teams and actually fight together and heal each other end up doing better overall and advancing faster than the loners who try to power-level alone.

-AHMAD

Indeed. Even more so with Eve-online. Not online with regards to combat (a good commander with a well trained fleet can win against a loose rabble twice their size) but also with regards to economics (getting the big stuff is virtually impossible doing alone)

[ray245]

While the OP mentions modes of play, I think it overlooks a very important facet of why team play is so hard to encourage. Simply put, many people who those games have social interaction problems and difficulty working as a team. Some of this can be overcome as a learning curve of the game, but for some people they will never learn to work as a team, no matter how much a game requires it. For this, one must simply implement a competently designed system to kick or ban players from a game. Now, I do not have any great ideas on how to do this, as votekicking can allow people to simply kick good players off out of spite, and the necessity for an admin allows for both the admin's bias and requires specific players to be logged on quite often.

The ability to remove ineffectual players from the game allows for an overall increase in people who are actually playing the game mode as opposed to playing Rambo.

Simple really, if the team lost the match, then all their scores that they have earned from the entire game is gone. Which means if there is ranking system, those rambos that always ensure their team lost the game will be unable to gain new unlocks and so on.

[Hawkwings]

2000AD mentioned WiC, which I must comment on. Sometimes you get amazing teams of random strangers that communicate well, work together, provide support for each other, and react to the battlefield. Other times you have idiots who walk their infantry across the map for the whole game, or order nothing but heavy artillery and never hit anything. It definitely depends on the players, but the multiplayer game is designed so that teamwork is required.

Also, I'd like to mention Supreme Commander multiplayer. On some 2v2 team games, my teammate would give me some builder units in his base, and I would take care of base defense for both of us. Meanwhile, I would give him my offensive units, and he would focus on trying to kill the enemy. It worked surprisingly well.

[Exonerate]

If your team has "rambos" that are tying up a disproportionate amount of the enemy team, but your team still loses, it seems to me that it's the rest of the team's fault for failing to capitalize on the advantage they've provided. If one person is spawncamping the enemy team for an entire minute, that's an entire minute he's buying the rest of the team to get shit done. Teamwork doesn't always mean traveling in one large blob - sometimes its about dividing up what needs to be done. Just because a player isn't constantly surrounded by a gaggle of other players doesn't mean they're not contributing to the team. It seems to me "rambos" are just being scapegoated.

[Oskuro]

^ Except when the "rambo" in question takes a valuable asset, like a transport vehicle, and wastes it, to then camp somewhere and increase its kill count without having a major impact on the match.

I agree that a competent spec-ops can be effective. I myself specialized in bombing the enemy artillery launchers and radar in BF2 (and killing the commander if he was around), but we're mainly referring to the all-too common players who simply care nothing for the match or the team. As the motto goes: "There's no I in team"

Obviously, the only playstyle that lends itself to this behaviour is the "rambo" playstyle, so it's not so much a matter of scapegoating, and more a matter of statistics.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I'll second Rainbow Six: Vegas 2's Team Leader mode. Being a tac shooter, it already encourages some level of teamwork. The TL mode adds to it a lot - you have to support your TL and escort him, and I've seen (and been in) a lot of really cool firefights that just wouldn't work well without a mode like TL. Battlefield 2 tried to create the same squad leader/spawn/centralized fighting dynamic, but didn't really succeed where Vegas 2 definitely has.

[Stark]

If your team has "rambos" that are tying up a disproportionate amount of the enemy team, but your team still loses, it seems to me that it's the rest of the team's fault for failing to capitalize on the advantage they've provided. If one person is spawncamping the enemy team for an entire minute, that's an entire minute he's buying the rest of the team to get shit done. Teamwork doesn't always mean traveling in one large blob - sometimes its about dividing up what needs to be done. Just because a player isn't constantly surrounded by a gaggle of other players doesn't mean they're not contributing to the team. It seems to me "rambos" are just being scapegoated.

lol itt we learn idiots who run off by themselves with classes/vehicles/etc and get killed to no benefit ('rambos') are unfairly scapegoated by an unloving world

It's frankly hilarious that someone can describe a situation where one person is doing what they want with probably no communication and everyone else has to follow along or lose as 'teamwork'. If everyone has a plan, but one idiot is doing their own thing, it's 'scapegoating' to stick to the actual team plan, somehow. These situations where the theoretical competent solo player is contributing and communicating this to everyone else clearly outweigh the suicidal/timewasting/loss of resources/endangering other teammembers that going off-mission like a dickhead entails.

On the other hand, it is fucking HILARIOUS when JSF and I are in the enemy's spawn, driving up and down wiping all their shit out, dropping 'move here' and 'need anti air' markers everywhere and the rest of our team just sits there doing nothing. Result: we hold down the entire other team by ourselves for a few minutes, then die; our decisive flanking move turns out to be worthless because nobody else could work out what 'take this point' means or why there are no units in front of them anymore. The difference is communication and competence, and the term 'rambo' certainly implies neither.

[Braedley]

Sometimes, constant scapegoating is what is required to win a match. Take a recent TF2 match that I played. The 3 pyros on the offensive team (on Badwater Basin), of which I was one, realized that the only chance of us winning was if we each sacrifice ourselves by jumping out the office window and touching the cart, while taking as many enemies down with us. We knew, as a close range class, we couldn't get near the cart otherwise, and that we'd be nearly useless using any other tactic, excepting an uber, which would be just as well spent on a heavy or soldier. Having demos blow the area around the cart was not a viable option, because they'd be easily taken out by snipers, and if they weren't, their sticky bombs would have been moved away. Coordinating with an uber was also not an option due to the amount of time left on the clock. In the end, self sacrifice was our only option. Although we didn't end up winning the match, if we had just one more pyro and one good uber, we probably would have. The pyros were trying to help the team, even though it wasted team resources (in the form of respawn time).

[Stark]

Are you sure you know what the word 'scapegoat' means? PROTIP, it doesn't mean 'suicide' or 'sacrifice'.

This sort of situation always amuses me in multiplayer games. Oh noes, the situation means pyros aren't very useful - SO LET'S ALL REPEATEDLY COMMIT SUICIDE INSTEAD OF CHANGING TO A MORE USEFUL CLASS. It happens in all kinds of games, but in fast-paced games where the tactical situation can change quickly, sticking with once class all the time is just retarded. Nothing better than half your team being support idiots and wondering why nobody will capture a point!

[Braedley]

Forgive me, I was running off previous posts. I do realize that there is a difference between being a scapegoat and a kamikaze. The simple fact is that if we had changed classes, say to heavy, demo, or soldier, we would have not made any difference in the outcome. Those three classes are not able to perform the kind of self sacrifice that was necessary in order to win. The heavy is too slow to get close to the cart, the demo can't do close in damage, and the soldier would only be able to effectively take out one person at the close in range before blowing himself up. Our team relied on doing small pushes while a last second large final push was being organized, and only three classes are capable of those small pushes: scouts, who can't simultaneously push the cart and defend themselves in close quarters, spies, who are extremely vulnerable after they backstab the group around the cart, and pyros, who show the best combination of offence and defence in the close quarters that the final push entails. In this case, the three of us sticking with pyro was the best chance we had, unless one of us was an extremely good spy. Somehow, I doubt that's the case, because you typically go with what you're good at, and what the team needs. Since the team needed a really good spy, I think if one of the pyros was a really good spy, they would have switched.0

[Exonerate]

lol itt we learn idiots who run off by themselves with classes/vehicles/etc and get killed to no benefit ('rambos') are unfairly scapegoated by an unloving world

I made it perfectly obvious that I was talking about players that were achieving something useful, so stop strawmanning. My point was that running off alone doesn't automatically make a player useless, since many posters seemed to be equating the two.

It's frankly hilarious that someone can describe a situation where one person is doing what they want with probably no communication and everyone else has to follow along or lose as 'teamwork'.

I described a situation where a player is suppressing a portion of the enemy team by himself. Let's say that one player is keeping two other players occupied while the rest of the team is pushing somewhere else - that means while the team with the "rambo" is down one person that could be pushing, the other team is down two. Maybe if your definition of "follow along" is "doing what they should be doing anyways".

If everyone has a plan, but one idiot is doing their own thing, it's 'scapegoating' to stick to the actual team plan, somehow.

By the way, I personally loathe how these kids (as they are more often kids) define their ability to jump around firing at everyone quake style as "skill". Way to go with your skills, smacktard, but your team is losing because you're busy spawncamping!

Looks like scapegoating to me.

These situations where the theoretical competent solo player is contributing and communicating this to everyone else clearly outweigh the suicidal/timewasting/loss of resources/endangering other teammembers that going off-mission like a dickhead entails.

Because most solo players running around are bad, we should condemn all solo players? Great logic.

On the other hand, it is fucking HILARIOUS when JSF and I are in the enemy's spawn, driving up and down wiping all their shit out, dropping 'move here' and 'need anti air' markers everywhere and the rest of our team just sits there doing nothing. Result: we hold down the entire other team by ourselves for a few minutes, then die; our decisive flanking move turns out to be worthless because nobody else could work out what 'take this point' means or why there are no units in front of them anymore.

You're obviously not a being a team player, since everyone else had to "follow along or lose" and you weren't sticking to the "actual team plan".

I like how you railed against my example where one player is alone but still producing a net benefit for their team, then described the type of situation I had in mind one paragraph later. Only difference being you had a partner so you weren't solo and you were letting the rest of the team know what they should've been able to figure out for themselves anyways.

The difference is communication and competence, and the term 'rambo' certainly implies neither.

Yes, because Rambo totally wasn't a one-man army, slaughtering everything that got in his path.

[Oskuro]

Looks like scapegoating to me.

Looks like you might be taking this personally to me.