Why didn't games like World in Conflict retain popularity?

[Jade Falcon]

Battlefield 2 really shone when you had good teamwork going. It was beautiful.

Of course, good teamwork tended to be non-existent.

Aye, that it did. I liked to go commander in BF2, and see the amount of "X player has initiated a mutiny vote against commander" when you've been commander for all of about 2 seconds. However, good teamwork was effective.

BF2142 never seemed to have the same teamwork though.

[Hawkwings]

oh god, arty noobs...

That being said, I did play on a team once with an incredible arty player. He had two US heavy arties, and I swear, for most of the entire match, you could see those rocket trails in the sky, just about to rain death perfectly on enemy positions. I think he had a single heavy AA and a bunch of humvees for repair too. Every single assault I pushed forward, there would be arty support already there, softening up the enemy right before I got there. When I needed smoke cover? Oh look, it's already there. Enemy heavy choppers incoming? Oh look, his arty has actually changed positions and they can't find him! I swear, that guy was amazing.

Also, speaking as an armor player, most other armor players are SO DUMB. Target priority 1 should in most cases be the enemy HAA, followed shortly by repair vehicles. The only time I ever engage other heavy armor with my heavy armor is when my air player is being an idiot and has a scout swarm or all medium choppers. And even then I'm better than most everyone I meet. I mean, I actually use buildings and smoke for cover! And spread out my armor to hit them from multiple angles! And even call in tankbusters!

[CaptHawkeye]

No teamwork means nobody will send choppers after you and noobs means they'll keep repawning every 45s to give you unlimited TA.

Well the stupidity doesn't end there either. It turns out most people can't even use TA PROPERLY. They ceaselessly beg everyone else on the team for "30 TA for tteh nukes"...FOR WHAT? Why have you been taking so fucking long to build up your TA when you could have dropped 3 Heavy Artillery Barrages 5 minutes ago and won us the match? Or Air Striked/Air Dropped a lonely point in the back for what would essentially be free points? Nope, people are fucking greedy. They want to hoard all of their TA so they can drop a nuke during the last 30sec of the match. SO IT CAN ACCOMPLISH NOTHING.

It's just the typical RTS wankhard bullshit.

[Stark]

But nukes are 'superweapons' which in other RTS games are game winners. Clearly if they scrabble for a nuke and drop it on the front line and wipe out all their teams' veteran units, they'll win somehow.

Learning is just too hard. In 1.010 they even made carpet bmbing EVEN BETTER.

[Commander 598]

I remember WiC was a great screensaver. Set up a game with AI vs AI and just watch.

[Stark]

Good replays are awesome to watch; sadly when my old WiC install exploded I lost all my good ones.

I think this crying about WiC players highlights one of the reasons the game failed; nobody could be fucked learning how to play. The forums were full of 'heavy tank too heavy' and 'running over infantry is IMBA' and shit. They nerfed HAA because choppers whinged, then when heavy choppers raped everyone they nerfed THEM, and kept going round in circles, even though it was pretty easy to kill HAA with choppers IN THE FIRST PLACE. It just required planning and awareness and the forums complained so they changed it, a perfect example of my points.

[Losonti Tokash]

Thanas, why should the story affect multi, which is the reason we play WiC anyway?

Because I don't play mult, something that should have been clear the minute I posted that the story was important to me.

Uh, okay. In the future I'll remember that anyone who likes a game's story don't like multiplayer.

[Chris OFarrell]

Ah WIC.

I remember some of the greatest fun I had was with Alyeska when we used to play as armor, pick a force of pure Brads/BMP's and APCs, and go charging into the enemies rear areas like maniacs.

"OH look, here are all their support players firing off their MRLS batteries, you die now. Oh look, their go's their SAM launchers, kill them all! Hey, they are sending choppers after us, pop smoke and fire every gun we have!" More often then not the cowards would run scared thinking 'THEY CAN'T SHOOT BACK! THATS NOT FAIR!' after we knock 2 choppers down with mass concentrated fire.

And then we would loop all the way around the map, come up behind the enemy tanks happily plinking back and forth over an objective with our tanks, and stagger fire God only knows how many ATGM's into their rear armor.

Seriously, WIC was great fun when you used mobility and agility. SOO many times the bad guys grabbed all armor and tried to mass rush the objectives, we'd just dance around them, hurting them, then sent in A-10's on their ass when they tried to take the place.

[Thanas]

Thanas, why should the story affect multi, which is the reason we play WiC anyway?

Because I don't play mult, something that should have been clear the minute I posted that the story was important to me.

Uh, okay. In the future I'll remember that anyone who likes a game's story don't like multiplayer.

Hey, child, screw your strawman. When someone posts that the story is important to him, how can you come to any other conclusion other than that he wants to play in a mode where the story matters?

[Darmalus]

I hadn't even heard of WiC until about 2 weeks ago on this board. I picked it up for 20$ on Steam and I am really regretting not getting it earlier. It looks pretty even with the settings turned down for my laptop. Unfortunately, playing Starcraft and Diablo online (all those years ago) has made me rather repulsed by the idea of trying to play online with anyone not close enough to physically punch in the face.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

See, this is what is nice about WiC - with a little though everyone can develop their own little strategies to follow. But they aren't fragile "win lists" like some stupid build-order, they can be adapted through experience - and the consequence for their failure is rarely worse than a short wait for more units.

But as pointed out this raises the problem that it requires actual strategic thought from the player - not just a wrote-learned list of actions from GameFAQs.

How could Massive have change WiC to encourage players to be inventive and think on the fly? I think for a start the singleplayer campaign could have helped by emphasising some of the effective ways of using all the various types of units. Unfortunately, despite the main campaigns pretty high production values for cutscenes, actors etc... the actual missions themselves were (as I recall) generally straightforward affairs where you started with a small force that gradually grew into a larger force until you won; they were mostly characterised by the need to use tactics that would actually be counter-productive in multiplayer - sitting all your tanks in a choke point for example. The simple fact that the enemy never used tactical aid in singleplayer made it a completely different game - not to mention the specific "roles" being almost entirely absent.

[MKSheppard]

The Single Player campaign was excellent in it's production values, actors, cutscenes, etc; but when I think back on it, it really was very subpar -- basically the AI consisted of endless waves of Soviet units trying to swarm you through obvious choke points etc; and the only way to defeat them all was to endlessly call in B-52 strikes, artillery, etc; and the Soviet AI would send another wave rolling over the wreckage of the first.

It looks awesome the first few scenarios -- "Hey this is awesome, I'm napalming the hell out of these guys and B-52ing them!" -- but by the end of the game, you'll be tired of endless spamming TA onto endless enemy hordes.

Multiplayer -- well it's a horrid mess.

If you want TA or to get more units; you must capture strategic nodes. The only problem is that when you attempt to capture a strategic node, the node's "loss status" is immediately relayed to the other side; who dumps TA onto it -- killing your guys.

The solution that STRAK espouses is to immediately leave the node after beginning capture to force other guy to waste TA on it; but this never works really; because the nodes "reset" way too fast, and capture ability is pretty slow; plus most WIC games have many players on all sides; so nobody on each team is at any one time, short on TA.

Let's not get into the absurdities of how infantry and anti-air are handled.

Infantry: You can only buy light trucks at cheap prices -- if you want a APC or helicopter you'll have to pay inflated amounts -- despite the armies of WW3 on the Central Front being the most heavily mechanized in history. Infantry is also easy to kill -- because they can't dig in; and the only case where you can dig in, like fortifying a building -- also instantly notifies everyone of it's status, like beginning a node capture -- so you can't fortify a building and wait for some tanks to come and missile them into oblivion -- the enemy will know the building is garrisoned -- so they always LGB it, which destroys the building near instantly; even if it's a really high-rise apartment complex.

Anti-Air: Okay I can understand light anti-air being able to only kill helicopters; but shouldn't heavy anti-air such as Roland, etc be capable of forcing TA F-16s, Su-27s, B-52s etc to abort their run ins or shoot them down? Otherwise whats the point of Anti-Air units?

Unit Blandness Say hi to "Everything is the same" in which a T-62 and M-60 are exactly the same except for their special abilities!

Overall, I'd say WiC's greatest innovation was the concept of no base building and calling in units from off map -- everything else was blah.

STRAK will be along to call me a hopeless fattynerd who complains that the shape of the commander's cupola on the T-80U is all wrong, the game is ruined in 3..2..1...

[CaptHawkeye]

Actually, the area of Shep's criticisms I agree with are generally, APC's and transport units should be infantry-specific. Since even if you have a team-oriented guy spawning transports for your infantry, it really does more to hurt both you. You can't control your infantry at all when they're in another dude's APC or chopper. Which means you have to rely on him releasing them when he feels like it. And he's just gimped himself running around with lots of APCs or totally useless transport choppers. It's not fair to other roles, and it's not very useful to infantry anyway.

Occasionally, I do cross cert some APCs down to me and put some infantry in them essentially creating a mechanized infantry unit. It's one of many useful strategies in WiC that are reliant upon context of use. Not like cunthole nerds who use the same tactics over and over again and wonder why they're on the bottom of the score list.

[Losonti Tokash]

So, essentially, you don't know how to play (evidenced by your claim that the points take too long to capture when it is actually instant, that fortifying a building notifies anybody unless their units can actually see it, and that somehow capturing points gives you more units), therefore the game sucks.

Thanas, it's pretty simple. Someone says 'I don't like the story therefore game is dumb,' I respond by saying no one cares about the story because the multiplayer is the fun part anyway.

Unfortunately I did not pluck the very thought from your mind that you don't want to play multiplayer so in he future I'll try to do that. Nevermind it's sort of the point of the game we're all talking about. It'd be a bit like me not buying Rome:TW because the family trees were wonky, even though it's completely irrelevant to the gameplay.

[Jade Falcon]

nobody could be fucked learning how to play. The forums were full of 'heavy tank too heavy' and 'running over infantry is IMBA' and shit.

I still wouldn't say I'm great, but I've improved over what I was at first, I like to rotate through different roles rather than stick with one.

BTW, would you explain your 'IMBA' acronym?

[MKSheppard]

So, essentially, you don't know how to play (evidenced by your claim that the points take too long to capture when it is actually instant, that fortifying a building notifies anybody unless their units can actually see it, and that somehow capturing points gives you more units), therefore the game sucks.

It's been many moons since I played the game, and I played it only for a brief period in Fall '08; so it's possible many of my criticisms were addressed in patches since then; like buildings' status being visible to all.

[Temjin]

BTW, would you explain your 'IMBA' acronym?

Imbalanced. I've seen it mostly used on the WoW forums, so use non-sarcastically at your own risk.

[Thanas]

Unfortunately I did not pluck the very thought from your mind that you don't want to play multiplayer so in he future I'll try to do that.

Funny how everybody else got that from my post but you are the only one who needed clarification on that?

Nevermind it's sort of the point of the game we're all talking about. It'd be a bit like me not buying Rome:TW because the family trees were wonky, even though it's completely irrelevant to the gameplay.

Because clearly family trees are of the same importance to gameplay as the story is to the single player mode? So, here it is once more in small words so that even you may understand.

a) The story is an important aspect of the single player mode
b) as I do not have the time nor care for multiplayer in computer games, the single player mode is the only mode I will play.
c) As the single player campaign reeks of stupidity, I won't play the game.

There. I guess this should be the end of this.

[Jade Falcon]

BTW, would you explain your 'IMBA' acronym?

Imbalanced. I've seen it mostly used on the WoW forums, so use non-sarcastically at your own risk.

Ah thanks. So running over infantry is unbalanced? Wow, that makes a lot of sense.

[Hawkwings]

Apparently the infantry should dive out of the way or something... I'd just be happy with a "dig in" button that gave the infantry little foxholes to sit in. Incidentally making them immune to being run over.

Capping points: get units close to all circles, then rush them in at the same time. Point is yours. If you're armor, spend 18 TA and get 3 light tanks to sit on the points and fortify them, or if you're support get 3 humvees, then advance at the enemy with your other units.

As far as I've ever seen, infantry in buildings don't get revealed until they open fire or enemy units get really close.

Heavy AA shooting down TA would be awesome. A great counter to tankbusters and carpet bombing especially. Though Heavy Air Support should still completely wipe out the area.

Speaking of heavy air support... it's my favorite TA but it needs something to take out enemy infantry!

[CaptHawkeye]

Apparently the infantry should dive out of the way or something... I'd just be happy with a "dig in" button that gave the infantry little foxholes to sit in. Incidentally making them immune to being run over.

That's been brought up 100 times in the WiC forums, and every time it's shot down for the same reasons. It doesn't fit in the context of the game. What they really need to do is just make inf's path finding better. As it is they stand very close to each other and when moving from location to location tend to group as closely as possible. Stationary they're just fine, you can just drag out the formation to make it less viable for some idiot in a repair to run them all over.

Also, their's like a 5 ft "zone of death" that extends around all of the vehicles in the game and kills infantry when they just come close to it, I never liked that.

[MKSheppard]

Capping points: get units close to all circles, then rush them in at the same time. Point is yours. If you're armor, spend 18 TA and get 3 light tanks to sit on the points and fortify them, or if you're support get 3 humvees, then advance at the enemy with your other units.

Oh god, I remember it now.

The fucking stupid three circles needed to seize a point.

Seizing one or two of them was easy enough; it was always the third that was the hardest; because by that point, your force was split up, due to the need to position "keepers" near the last two circles, to prevent the enemy from easily grabbing them.

[Ace Pace]

Capping points: get units close to all circles, then rush them in at the same time. Point is yours. If you're armor, spend 18 TA and get 3 light tanks to sit on the points and fortify them, or if you're support get 3 humvees, then advance at the enemy with your other units.

Oh god, I remember it now.

The fucking stupid three circles needed to seize a point.

Seizing one or two of them was easy enough; it was always the third that was the hardest; because by that point, your force was split up, due to the need to position "keepers" near the last two circles, to prevent the enemy from easily grabbing them.

I have no idea why you call that hard, even if I work in my smaller case of 3 heavies/2 heavies teams, I can leave one in each point and catch the third reliably, then retreat from one of them and hold the other two. An alternate strat is plan ahead and airdrop a light to one of the nodes.

[MKSheppard]

I have no idea why you call that hard, even if I work in my smaller case of 3 heavies/2 heavies teams, I can leave one in each point and catch the third reliably, then retreat from one of them and hold the other two. An alternate strat is plan ahead and airdrop a light to one of the nodes.

And enemy counterattacks on your points don't happen? With the speed of destruction in WiC, sending your units out in dribs and drabs is only asking for their annihilation.

This is where having a "fortify" command would have worked wonders; but no, we need to spend time on flashy graphics to appease STRAK.

[Losonti Tokash]

What are you talking about? They're barely separated except on some of the exceptionally huge control points, which you shouldn't be taking by yourself anyway.