EUTW resurrection

[Deeelite]

I have been assisting the whole eutw process, from its birth to the actual desertion, didn't I ?
I deeply observed and experienced the whole amount of changements, one by one, and I too know every reaction we players have had.

One point is true for sure: communications in between developers and players have always been going rough in many occasions due the fact most of the players were expressing thier personal self-selvish thoughts while developers were trying to considerate the whole impact of every tweak among the whole community and the game engine. Here I will list the most critical tweaks that brought EUTW to a slow death.

1) Critical Hit: It was a very good idea at first sight in order to defenitely elimnate enemies in areas but it turned into a big pain in the arse after a while. Every teamplay attempt was constantly broken from the scratch pushing players to behave accordingly, re-considering the idea of starting a group action again as something useless. What is the point for incentivating players in teamplay when every group gets separated in five seconds by critical hits? EUTW needs everything but lonley wolves. EUTW needs new players that learn and enjoy the pleasure of working together. Put yourself in the shoes of a new player that comes to try EUTW: what do you think he feels like after being executed 10 times in a row in 10 minutes of game? Fun? Hard to belive it.
I'm still asking myself what brought you admins not to reconsider the removal of the critical hit. Did ever occur that the game step into stall when it was missing? Not at all, we only were used to pay more attention before stating that the area was clear.
If you don't want to remove it you can at least let a medic be the only capable to revive a critical hit victim, changing 'critical hit' feature into 'critical wound', maybe. This will defenitely incentivate medics to teamplay and to do their job as well.

2) Titans AT/AA payback and thermal imaging: this tweak brought to EUTW an even worse downgarde in terms of fun. I immedaitely understood what this changement was going to bring, on the very first ten minutes: no one will be able to move a veichle easily, now, MHQs expecially. And I was right. Every player was buying Titans to make money on the backs of the MHQ drivers, that's what I did that day, then I had money enough to buy a teammate a jet. Enemies did not reach a single flag with an MHQ almost the whole game duration. I immediately reported this on the forum but no one considered me. I can fully understand payback on Titan AA, not only, I strongly support this since some jets are impossible to hit (thank you BI) but Titans AT shouldn't be allowed to track anything but heavy tanks and TI should be removed from them, Titan AA included since you really don't need thermal imaging to track a jet.

You see, Nyles, you said you support war technology, we are in 2035 and so do I, but the implementing of the whole ArmA technology resources has made this pvp overpowered up to the point that fun has gone, and so seem the players.
You guys have made lots of modifications in order to make this pvp more and more sophisticated wanting this server to be vanilla and public opened but we need 20 skilled players at least on each side to have fun, now.

Matches seem to be still playable but 1 only shirka in the air, Alacazin piloted, is enough to totally unbalance and destroy the fun. We also have no more players saving their money to buy a Titan AT in case a Varsuk appears. We play good untill nothing unaxpected occurs: in case, we have to pray. Nothing to do with fun, what players are operating now is a desperate server survival.

EUTW still remains the best pvp warfare ever made but some modifications did not consider the matching with public players, and did not consider all the pros and cons.

Consider us, please.

Yours
DeeeLite.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

@Deelite i acknowledged the post. I dont know about Nyles, but Gippo is not available till earliest tomorrow.

[vicko]

Fun fact is that you Deelite abuse that critical hit more then anybody else hit with HE rockets on infantry and you do it all the time. It is really annoying.

That being said, I agree with your post. You pointed out some problems that affect our beloved mission.

It is very very sad to see those servers empty, pls Devs try to implement some changes, at least some minors like removing that critical hit.It could be a great start.

Don't let this great mission to die.

[Saddam Hussein Bolt]

I follow this, where's the people at?

[Cpt.JET]

Deeelite. I agree with you

"Don't let this great mission to die"

[Nyles]

I think one of the bigger issues here actually is the use of drones and how they are working - especially darters. These little buggers are what kills any attempts of being sneaky, taking detours, etc.

My argument for them has always been to remove thermal imaging, and restrict their up-time by making fuel consume a lot faster based on height, but that was not my decision to take.

the same increase in fuel consumption has been our goal for jets and aircraft in general actually. If you want to play safe, it costs you up-time as you cannot loiter that long before refueling is required. If you stay closer to the ground where weapons can reach you, you got more air time.

As for Titans, the launchers still need line of sight at least when used for scouting. Unfortunately, there was no way for us to implement Titans without lock-on or without the thermal imaging option, which would have been our preferred option back then.

Critical hit is a different topic, and you are right. The downside is that organized squads will dominate the game once you can reliably revive team-mates, making it super problematic to counter team-stacking and veteran-stacking without implementing completely different counter mechanics on top.

Again, all of these points (and more) will require first off time from GiPPO and secondly servers to be paid.

[Deeelite]

I got a plan to solve everything then:
1st - we secretly kidnap Gippo and hide him into a shelter pc/food/sex-equipped for 3 months (ok, a bathroom too)
2nd - we put a 30000 € ransom to set him free
3rd - we get the money and pay the servers up to 2035
4th - done

All jokes aside, 1st thing 1st, thx a lot for ur full explaination, that said, it seems we have here three tied points to work on, then:
1- time required
2- money
3- feasibility

I dare to express my guess

1- time required - unknown
2- money - if you admins can at least advance a forecast about the time required we community can be probably get easily sensitized and make donations
3- feasibility - You admins should launch a polling including all the available vocies/possibilities that easily could tweak the actual overpowered pvp state.

We members could give us a date for a discord/ts meeting to discuss what features, stuff and weapoery are we disposed to disclaim to better balance fun and warfare.

If none is against it or no better ideas come up, we can post an announcement to date the meeting.

Let me know.
Thanks again,
Deee.

[Cpt.JET]

when I'm driving a drones you won't hide your intentions. For many hours I hunt for large and small targets, snipers and just lonely vagrants. We easily cope with any danger, but if you ask me what to do? Turn off the thermal imaging , this is the right decision.
But I will miss my omnipotence .

[Deathicael]

Cpt Jet Drone Research program

https://youtu.be/jlYdP4A46Mo

[Deeelite]

Some reflections,

If I dont't get wrong...it was the eutw community to ask developers solutions to avoid endless battles, in 2015/16, right?

We all probably forgot one point: two equal in power and skill factions, fighting themselves, will always combat for a long time: whatever are the tweaks implemented they will work on both sides.

The rising of the prices has been an attempt to reduce the otherwise eternal available resources for all the players forcing each team to better eavluate how to invest the cash, applying less mercy to budget mistakes.
Critical Hit was implemented for the very same reason.
Same for paradrop denied on light choppers.

The real solution we need instead is to find the way to let the tactic be the difference. But it ain't easy at all.

The absence of 'flag under attack' pop-up warnings was a tactical support for attackers. I was not, but I remember Hazardous Mouse was happy when pop-up has been introduced but I still don't get why.
The possibility to steal a far away flag while faking
an assault elsewhere to cover the real one, was tactically amazing.
I consider this one the graviest tactical downgrade.

Second but not last the MHQs MRAP to TRUCK swap:
Yes, is true, we probably used to destroy too many 'probable MHQs' vehicles when they were MRAP but not as much as you may think. And things ain't changed now, anyway. Lots of not-MHQ vehicles get destroyed anyhow. Readability a part, we need to climb hills faster than a truck can do. Not all the covered trucks can hide in or enter the same structures and the latest sound patch is giving away their position from too far. We must solve this issue somehow, as well.
Van cargo is available for every faction and there are 10 possible skins for the civilian models plus 2 x 4 different skins for blufor, redfor, AAF and FIA. Is just another suggestion.

But again, let's consider this pvp is maybe suffering for leakage of tactical windows, as well.

[Cpt.JET]

Buddy. you serve in Comando operativo interforze delle forze speciali?

[Nyles]

I am not sure, if I agree with the use of the term "tactics" here. Don't limit tactics to a small group of veterans being able to do whatever they want, dominating other, less-organized players (keep in mind this is a public server!)

Tactics can be limited in scale of small units, and that is fine, but they can also be on a team level, involving combined arms and units and roles with different pros and cons. Effective play comes from joint efforts, where the strengths of one, compensate for the weakness of another. Most of the changes you mention, enabled the latter, giving teams a stronger focus to develop tactics on a faction-basis rather than individually or for small groups of players.

Endless battles was mostly a problem due to chokepoint-heavy community layouts like Anthrakia, which heavily disrupted the flow of the game.

Critical Hit was implemented foremost to break apart the dominance of team-stacked veteran groups that dominated the servers for a long time and usually steamrolled over the other team (back then mostly poor Blufor) in ignorance. The second reason was to enable artillery tactics, which were pretty much pointless as long as as single guy of the shelled force survived to pick everybody else up.

Paradrop changes were made for a different reason: Increase diversity of aircraft by giving heavy choppers a role of their own for paradrops and forcing landings with light choppers.

Flag warnings were introduced to improve readability for less organized teams, giving them awareness of important changes on the battlefield.

Focusing the action on a few sectors at a time by preventing to attack any sector had the same effect, additionally making sure there are only so many hot spots active at the same time, funneling players into fewer, but more intense battles. Of course, the chokepoint heavy layouts that were so popular and always got selected by the players first when on any of the servers worked against that idea. People kinda brought that stagnation on themselves that way, regardless of what we could have done.

MHQs are a controversial topic. Arguably, it's still too annoying to drive them and it's usually down to the same few people who are willing to spend their time.

The same would still be true, if it were MRAPs however, and the only way they could have stayed as unarmed MRAPs would have been, if those vehicles wouldn't be available to purchase separately for readability purposes. In addition, flag rush would have become much more of an issue, requiring us to drastically cheapen AT weapons to counter MRAP MHQ charges - again with a likely consequence that tanks would be even easier targets. While I am not totally against the idea of vans, they actually perform worse cross country than the trucks and usually are a pain to keep from bursting tires on the way. Not a good solution, I am afraid. The better answer is to improve concealment (i.e. taking away scouting options. looking at you thermal!) as well as rewards for successful/efficient placement to reward drivers.

[Deeelite]

Yeah Niles,
all you posted makes sense and is pretty correct. The truth is that whatever further changement would have brought almost the same current consequence. We all learned to play eutw blinded-eyes among the first two years, it become a too predectable evirioment for all of us so that we asked for more. But maybe tweaks has been made heading the wrong direction, as I tried to express above. I'm not pointing fingers at all, just attempting to find the unloking key together with you admins, let's be clear.
By 'tactics' I was rather meaning 'whole team tactics', my fault.

The following will be just an invented example to give a clue about what we should start seeking for:

imagine teams have the possibility to teleport the entire HQ to one or two layout-predetermined different positions (Every 30 mins? Twice per game? I don't know, I'm just figurating it out). This would be a team tactic capable to turn the fate or exit a stall state. But, once again this could even reveal itself another stall or debate source.

What I clearly see so far, in my mind, are two distinguished fight styles. One where troups are travelling one truck to the attack area being ambushed by enemies unable to blast the whole vehicle in one shot but armed enough to stop it and face the disembarking crew with rifles, creating a challenging episode for both team units which may even bring few minutes of fun and adrenaline.
Imagine now the ambush fails but truck needs now a missing engeneer which is 2 clicks away at base. He cannot teleport to the truck but we introduced a new teleport function: three or four teammates put togheter within a radius of 1 meter and away enough from an attackable flags, create a teleport position for a whatever engeneer in base. Or maybe the crew requires a medic as well? No problem, another unit will be allowed to teleport there not before a minute has passed after the engeneer spawned. No critical hit is working so far. Ambusher/s must be effective not allowing the crew capable to form a teleport point to get reinforcements. After the game has been running this way, where no rpgs or high esplosives are still available for players, for a certain period, eutw switches to the second style: the one we do have now. Tanks, light armored vehicles, attack choppers and so on, will be available. Critical hit will work again.

This way we can have two different stages in one match, were all the tastes get satidfied.

I'm just writing down all the material i have in my mind.
Use or interpretate it if it may help to give a new fresh shape to our beloved pvp.

[Deathicael]

If they need inspiration on how to change warfare they should take inspiration from here

https://www.moddb.com/mods/gossamers-warfare

My ideal warfare would be like this

[scratch]

Would like to say thanks to all eutw team and players. The things i learned here flying a jets saves my life not a single time while driving a car. Thanks to all efforts involved, some of them were tasty, some not really ;P , and that's how a development goes when you really like what you do.

I can't describe how i was amazed one day when Gippo presented to me a specially marked version of neo. That's made a lot of happy hardcore flying hours, with precision aiming, low-passing and a danger inside. (it had single missile launching instead of two) And i really appreciate to all who tried to kills me, with ground-AA and other jets, or v22, that's, what makes my heart beating so fast! especially when there was dogs, allur, mouse, snake, pixel, steve or monne and sets my eyes on fire every time i take off! <3

btw someone killed me with a pawnee one day xD
Playing here was not always easy but was always a joy,
with <3 scratch ;P

[Steve0]

Would like to say thanks to all eutw team and players.

Absolutely agree with this.

I had some incredible times on EUTW over the years, but now I think it's nearly 9 months since I played (a baby can do that).

You guys rock!

(Also - I really hope to see more of you all again when ARMA 4 is released and GiPPO rebuilds the mission from scratch )

[Skate]

Beyond specific gameplay issues with the mission itself (namely the early game being unbearable, and the whole drone meta), I think a big factor is also rigidity to any sort of change. There hasn't been any change in the mission (beyond layouts and small optimisations/fixes) for quite a while; this combined with factors which make the game unfun just leads to it being stale. Every match is almost the same, and after a while that gets boring, especially when the current iteration of the game heavily favours veterans knowing exactly what to do because the mission hasn't changed in a long time - leading to even less people playing.

I feel that breathing some life into the gamemode by making some larger changes to just shake things up. Especially on hot topics such as the critical hits and my personal favourite - thermals on darters. I think the focus on keeping the game explicitly vanilla with balance being done via economy changes may not be the right choice for this kind of gameplay format.

Although you may be right - it is summer and that could lead to a lower playerbase, but then again it won't hurt to try out new things on an empty-ish server. Who knows what sort of things can be found out to potentially improve the gamemodes format. No use in keeping a rigid idea of a gamemode if none plays it.

That being said EUTW is the best PvP mission hands down if you ask me, and it has been great fun in its previous and current iterations. But sometimes things need to he shaken up from time to time.


Thank for you coming to my TED Talk
- goober/Skate

[Cpt.JET]

Great speech

[durak_ivan]

I guess community died because people evolve in they life, and the top of the pyramid is a closed circuit, no new high ranking recruits/admins except for few, with limited powers. 3Hugger pointed out the difficulties of willing to revive the community by doing many things and not being able to take forward the work he was willing to do freely.
So for sure I agree with almost all points pointed here by Deeelite and others.
But the main problem for me, is that we need fresh blood, in the admins departement.
How funny is that told by a guy who went missing/cycling camping in Siberia for the whole summer and did not click a single mouse button in months.
I still care a lot about this community, even if in summer time I'm out.
Is it to late to revive arma3 on EUTW?
Arma 4 still faraway.
We need fresh blood.
Trustworthy people with enough power, to revive the community and the game.

That means for the high ranking officers here you keep your house, you just relegate more.

PS: I just checked while I was away the server on https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/a ... erCount=7D
Blin...