The Average Bad Experience in EUTW.

[esfumato]

After several years without playing Arma 3 I reinstalled the game.

Arma 3 still with no MP game modes to play so have come back and had a look to EUTW.

I join at Sunday in an almost full server with a Layout in the map Altis. The mission Ended and then, without vote layout the server rotation stablished a Layout in TANOA, Suddenly half of the server as they don't have "Apex expansion"
and neither have TANOA terrain disconnects, this happened at sunday at 21:00 pm, when it is supposed that the game should be with the full server.

This could be solved just using different Layout Rotations,

Server #1 with Malden, Stratis and Altis. So no one is disconected.
Server #2 with layouts with Tanoa, Livonia Layouts.

By the time EUTW had 4 Servers you could have done something like this

Server#1 Altis Stratis Malden
Server#2 Tanoa
Server#3 Livonia
Server#4 Custom Terrains.

But as EUTW have decided I don't know why this problem stills by now.

Ok So we start at a Huge Map with just 14 Bluefor vs 7 Opfor.

And the history repeats again... since several years now the same mistakes.

Bluefor don't know how to fast travel to friendly sectors. (Some stay in base waiting for the MHQs to move)
Bluefor Don't know how to buy vehicles at friendly sectors and move to next sector.
Bluefor Don't know that they must be inside the sectors to capture them or to defend them.
Bluefor Don't know that they need friendly sectors connected to capture so they waste time and get bored inside sectors they can't capture.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/781691645
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/781712233
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/781734800

This leads to boring matches and the reason EUTW is not popular. With many other issues that I will not repeat again.

Any progress about spawning system?
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f ... 6&start=25

[Feature] Regular Difficulty Automatic Mine Marking
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6304

Balance Between Launchers and Vehicles.
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6510

Vote Map. (Vote layout)
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5872

EUTW Tutorial or Mission Information.
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6324

Class / Role, Gear and Prices.
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6076

[Discussion] In game Team / Role Selection.
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5848

Poll for current rotation (Smaller Layouts to fill the server faster)
https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7920

[TheMasterofBlubb]

Its a pretty simple reason why the servers run synchronous, it when 1 of the servers crashes or is fucked up by a script kiddie(happens rarely) people can switch to the second servers, we as admins are normal people too, we have jobs and families, and sometimes it happens that we simply cant help right in the moment it is needed, so a backup solution is the easies way.

About Blufor not knowing how to play:
We have a How to play in game, we have a whole wiki about the gamemode with insights and deeper explenations. We cant force people to read those.

Detecting mines its as rewarding as it is fun with the mine detectors and doesnt defeat the gamemechanic of mines beeing a deadly way blocker.

Launchers were limited in amount per team as well as Vehicle getting a small discount according to their battle value (armor and weaponary).

Vote map/vote layout see what i wrote as a reply in the same thread (https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7920)

Eutw Tutorial : see ingame how to play and wiki(that is also mentioned in the game chat)

Classes/Gear/Roles: Besides the major Role update, there is a small update in the pipeline adding the missing stealth uniform. The issue before was that we are not sticking to the general Blufor faction but to Subfaction of Arma to have more homogeneuos uniform colors for each team and for some reason BI hadnt included 1 CTRG stealth suit at the beginning.

In game Team selection and Role selection got a huge change in how the medic and Engineer traits are assigned, what basically is a in game role selection, as you can decide what support role you want to get and play(with some non vanilla restrictions to prevent abuse of the medic perk)

The topic with more dynamic layout selection see the other layout topic above

[Mudokon]

Opfor pretty much wins 95% of the matches. I can't remember a single match in the near past in which Blufor had more XP than Opfor while also being equal on playercount. Opfor stackers like Darth, Maq, SOM, Nudol,.. only care about winning, nothing else. I sometimes wonder if they are even having fun playing match after match without a challenge. Well, if they aren't having fun then who is?
They are average players, having to rely on Opfor's OP equipment to get a decent K/D. As soon as someone is giving them a hard time it obviously must be a cheater. I can't blame them though, since they are only used to fighting worse players on Blufor. Claiming better players on the opposite team are destroying the community, which is totally hypocritical. When talking about balancing they are always the most silent, but only if they are the ones in the dominating team of course.

Can't trust players to balance on their own. This issue was addressed multiple times in the past, but nothing changed, which is why this server needs to force players to join a certain team if we want to have fair matches consistently.
A reason as to why they stack Opfor every game is unknown. I doubt they will have a reasonable reason anyway though.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

There are way more things we have in the states of "almost done" or "high up the wishlist", but it always comes down to lack of time on all sides. The admin staff got stacked up a bit but not every one can script in arma or manage the webserver running all the websites we have and so on. Admins in gaming communities like we are doing the stuff for free in our free time, while sometimes such things can take up a lot of time(ask my GF she is complaining sometimes).

There is a lot happening in the background to better the performance of the servers (thanks to Horus on discord) and also a switch to a better and cheaper server just some weeks ago that showed some new problems that needed fixing and like always new arma updates breaking things.

Just as a small nice-to-know i spend about 16 days in the last 4 weeks with about 5 to 6h each of those days just setting things up and fixing stuff that broke in the progress of those afore mentioned changes.

In my Job i would have gotten about 1200€ in salary for that.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

Can't trust players to balance on their own. This issue was addressed multiple times in the past, but nothing changed, which is why this server needs to force players to join a certain team if we want to have fair matches consistently.

It sounds way easier than it is, because XP isnt saying much about the players performance(there are way too many factors that can change the performance heavily, like playing in a group on TS instead of alone).
The issue in locking players in one side will definetly upset people that play in groups with friends or people like me playing in a small Clan each Sunday.

So no matter what you do it will suck hard for some, thats why we still look for a solution that is less intrusive in terms of forcing players onto a side, but rather handicap them by the gamemechanics, where we come back in a full circle that XP are pretty much useless when it comes to determine HOW unbalanced a side is to properly apply those measures without artificially handicapping a team into a fight they can never win just because they have a handfull of regulars(not even good ones, but just people with more freetime)

[Mudokon]

95% of the time Opfor wins and 95% of the time Opfor has more xp. There must be a correlation between XP and winning. I agree, that there are some exceptions. A player with lower xp might be performing better than one with more. But speaking from experience most lower xp players join Blufor and don't really do anything for the team, hence the high loss ratio of Blufor.
Giving out XP to individuals based on playtime isn't the best way to determine one's performance. It still gives you somewhat of an idea as to how the balancing situation looks like though imo.

Forcing players to join a certain team might be a harsh move. You gotta know which is more important: having better balanced games or being able to play in a group. I wouldn't want to sacrifice the latter just because a few elite players are huge Opfor fanatics.

Stackers are easily the biggest problem EUTW has right now. Without enforcing any new rules they will continue to behave like that unfortunately.

[esfumato]

Its a pretty simple reason why the servers run synchronous, it when 1 of the servers crashes or is fucked up by a script kiddie(happens rarely) people can switch to the second servers, we as admins are normal people too, we have jobs and families, and sometimes it happens that we simply cant help right in the moment it is needed, so a backup solution is the easies way.

With the low player base EUTW has and therefore it's financial situation that the servers can't be funded. This "hack" or lack of online admins, (this reason can be easily solved with more admins with just the minimum privileges to restart the server.) is unaceptable.

You have an easy solution to one bigger problem... half the few players that you have got disconnected just because of the Layouts Rotation and you still don't care, OK fine, just keep having 24 hours empty "syncronized" servers. You have lost 2 servers while people pointed this problem out, you dind't care before you still don't care now, so will end have the same results....loosing the last 2 servers.

About Blufor not knowing how to play:
We have a How to play in game, we have a whole wiki about the gamemode with insights and deeper explenations. We cant force people to read those.

Again, Just because you have the "How To Play" doesn't mean that the reality is that nobody reads it.

This solution is not working and is killing the EUTW community. As it happened before, you will still have the same results, Boring Matches that kill the EUTW community.

The game mode needs a better HUD / GUI to reduce the learning curve, and to show to newcomers what is happening in the game on real time. OK it does it right now, but not as clear as it should.

The respawn System and Fast traveling should be changed to be more intuitive for the new comers too.

Detecting mines its as rewarding as it is fun with the mine detectors and doesnt defeat the gamemechanic of mines beeing a deadly way blocker.

The suggestion of mine automatic mine marking was for "friendly mines"... not for enemy mines...

Launchers were limited in amount per team as well as Vehicle getting a small discount according to their battle value (armor and weaponary).

Played recently, The prices and rewards are far away to be economically consistent. Buying MIPCs, Transport Hellicopters wrong decitions for the players and not worth to be used.

Vote map/vote layout see what i wrote as a reply in the same thread (https://forums.eutw.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7920)

If a propper vote map is not possible for whatever reason, the solution is already mentioned, just stablish

Server #1 with Stratis, Altis, Malden. ----- Full Server almost all the time.
Server #2 with Tanoa, Livonia. ---- Empty Server almost all the time.

EUTW have few players anyway.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

Just as a note to not confuse things, those 2 servers are just 2 instances of Arma running on 1 dedicated server, the 2 former ones were running on a seperate server, thats why its adding/removing in Pairs.

What we use to mitigate the issue with people not having specific DLCs is to limit the usage of the maps in the rotation(we basically have a chart of how many % of layouts are what type of Map and type). When you make the servers like you propose there is a way simpler method, we could just eliminate all DLC maps in general as no one would be playing them (see same comment on the layout thread). So we still would have the synced servers AND fixed the issue of DLC maps.
Now we got people crying because they want DLC maps to play on (like seriously people want Livonia maps like hell and we cant figure out any sort of non Lite layouts to work there properly).

What is possible though, when you have a dynamic map selection as proposed by me in the other thread, is to check what DLCs the players have and make decisions based on that. Its not impossible in terms of general possibility but there is a huge task to do before in transforming the öayouts into something that is actually functioning in a highly dynamic enviroment (without introducing any major issues or bugs along the way).

Regarding the HUD/GUI, do you have any ideas or specific feedback we could try to implement. (I did that for my fuel script, via having the option to begin with and Gippo made a nice UI for it).



As a complete side note, "Restarting" servers in cases of crashes means giving access to the OS level of the server (we have things like the dashboard for banning people and stuff). I have a Project ongoing(not EUTW related) for something of use in that scenario but its neither finished nor is there an adequate solution that doesnt cost money (and runs on windows, yeah arma 3 server management suck on linux since release, its getting better though)

[esfumato]

Regarding the HUD/GUI, do you have any ideas or specific feedback we could try to implement. (I did that for my fuel script, via having the option to begin with and Gippo made a nice UI for it).

If you assure me that someone can do it in game I can design all the info for newbies to understand the game flow better.

I will have to take a look at what "Visual Stuff Arma have" to avoid to create new images or icons.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

you could try a sketch first to simply show what you mean

[Elvis_FIN]

I think experienced players should have enough sense to make game better balanced and more fun to all. But as we know for some reason some seems to want just an easy win and ego boosting experience and chooses stronge team. As long as there is no game mechanic or EUTW rule to prevent this, these people can continue to do this. If these people like to play here, I do not understand doesn't they get it that intentional unbalancing the game will make playing experience here worse for all and will make player count smaller and in worst case shutting down whole EUTW. Should EUTW make an quick and dirty fix to make rule about intentional unbalancing?

With current small amount of players at EUTW I do not support idea for splitting servers to lite and standard layouts. Some like lite and some not. Then even already small number of players might split to two servers. Mixing layouts very likely keep player count higher per server. Also if people do not buy couple of beers one time, they have money to buy Apex DLC, life is choices.

For new players. Anything that help them to get more easily into EUTW is good. But still I wonder doesn't people these day read anything anymore? Lot of good info for EUTW available if people can read. Arma itself isn't simplest game to master and EUTW mechanics adds its own complexcity on it. Maybe combination of this isn't for all. Maybe something simpler is better for some players.

Opfor has clearly an advantage of infantry combat. There are things EUTW could make to weaken it, but for some reason that is not wanted? Like many times I have said changing current opfor uniform to officer uniform might make big difference. Change EOD vest to 25000cr price. For blufor At guys add spar-16 option, since MX is useless. Add blufor always possibility to buy stealth uniform. Maybe drop blufor & greenfor envg price to 35000cr to make those factions more attractive. Add greenfor sniper stealth balaclava with goggles. Infantry stuff is very much what matters in the end.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

We have some changes to the current buyable items we like to push out (as they are basically ready, btw then having Stealth uniform for all blufor subfactions), then we go into modifying other stuff.

As a side note many dont know, for some extra weight and no extra protection ,you can grab a CBRN suit, it has about 50% IR signature reduction, if hiding in bushes or so can help hide from thermals.

[Mudokon]

Opfor has clearly an advantage of infantry combat. I have said changing current opfor uniform to officer uniform might make big difference. Change EOD vest to 25000cr price. Infantry stuff is very much what matters in the end.

Opfor's officer uniform has only protection around the legs and changing it to that would destroy Opfor in the beginning. You would pretty much always one tap them until they get to buy the EOD vest.
I think the best answer would be to remove the EOD vest completely. I don't know what kind of purpose it has in that team anyway. People already complained about Opfor's strong protection before that vest was introduced. Yes, it has the disadvantage of having almost no room for items, but by getting a backpack you can easily avoid it. Keep in mind, that EOD vest actually has lighter weight than Blufor's light carrier rig also. Opfor without EOD vest is fair to fight against. Having little disadvantages and advantages in certain teams compared to others is fine, but that is too much. More stamina overall, 5x better armor and better guns (less recoil, more damage, higher firerate).. no way to counter that in a 1v1.
If Opfor buys the tier 1 tactical vest, which they can currently get for 9k, they have about the same protection around the torso area as Blufor with tier 4 Carrier Rig, but just a little weaker. That is completely fair. Opfor shouldn't get a better vest than that.

[esfumato]

you could try a sketch first to simply show what you mean

I had one early sketch that approached to have all the options in the same menu, posted it in other thread. I will do one more in detail.

But I need to know if

is it possible to change the "Composition of the Main Bases"?

Can I change The information of the Map?
[ The Sectors,
the conection lines between sectors,
the number of points of each sector (100/100),
the number of points that the defenders increase while inside the sector,
the number of points that the attackers decrease while inside the sector.]

Can I change the Menus of the Gear Shop and Vehicle Shop?

Opfor has clearly an advantage of infantry combat. I have said changing current opfor uniform to officer uniform might make big difference. Change EOD vest to 25000cr price. Infantry stuff is very much what matters in the end.

Opfor's officer uniform has only protection around the legs and changing it to that would destroy Opfor in the beginning. You would pretty much always one tap them until they get to buy the EOD vest.
I think the best answer would be to remove the EOD vest completely. I don't know what kind of purpose it has in that team anyway. People already complained about Opfor's strong protection before that vest was introduced. Yes, it has the disadvantage of having almost no room for items, but by getting a backpack you can easily avoid it. Keep in mind, that EOD vest actually has lighter weight than Blufor's light carrier rig also. Opfor without EOD vest is fair to fight against. Having little disadvantages and advantages in certain teams compared to others is fine, but that is too much. More stamina overall, 5x better armor and better guns (less recoil, more damage, higher firerate).. no way to counter that in a 1v1.
If Opfor buys the tier 1 tactical vest, which they can currently get for 9k, they have about the same protection around the torso area as Blufor with tier 4 Carrier Rig, but just a little weaker. That is completely fair. Opfor shouldn't get a better vest than that.

I like games with asymmetrical design, Starcraft, Natural Selection 2, DUNE II, Command and Conquer, Rising Storm Vietnam... It is not needed that every team have the same gear. Even more, I enjoy to have different types of equipment with different ways of playing.

This type of games are more about the coordination with the teammates than the performance of each individual.

For me the Opfor / Bluefor equipment debate is irrelevant.

[esfumato]

Delete This

[TheMasterofBlubb]

But I need to know if

is it possible to change the "Composition of the Main Bases"?

Can I change The information of the Map?
[ The Sectors,
the conection lines between sectors,
the number of points of each sector (100/100),
the number of points that the defenders increase while inside the sector,
the number of points that the attackers decrease while inside the sector.]

Can I change the Menus of the Gear Shop and Vehicle Shop?

I dont understand what you mean, could yoou clarify

[Nyles]

For next update, EOD vest will be removed again from CSAT arsenal. Let's see how that goes.

[Mudokon]

For next update, EOD vest will be removed again from CSAT arsenal. Let's see how that goes.

Good decision. I don't see how that could go wrong.

[esfumato]

I dont understand what you mean, could yoou clarify

This Post is from other Thread from some years ago.

Most of the questions that people do and most of the mistakes that people make are:

Questions:
Why can't I buy some piece of gear?
Meanin that they don't know that there are several roles with specific gear Riflemen, Medic, Engineer, Sniper.

This should be explained with mission start up. That's why I placed this image at the begining.


How can I buy equipment and vehicles?
Again people most of the times needs to be explained that they have to scroll their mouse wheel to access the game menu. They don't know that they can also buy at the friendly sectors flags.



Also there should be some image explaining that they can do that at Base HQ and at friendly sectors.

How can I fast travel?

These is the most important thing, because no matter if you have equipment or vehicles you must be on the right place at the right time.



The Warning message about firendly sectors under attaack have done a good explaination in this regard and have been really helpfull for newbies.

How does the attacking / defense sectors works?

People must know how the capture of sectors works. The HUD or GUI must so that the dropping speed depends on the number of both teams inside the sectors.



Also it have to be evident that sectors must be linked. On this matter, should be helpful to have some animations at the map circles. Making the attackable, defendeable sectors circles to have some animation and a different shape on map. to make the information more visual.



Sudden Death.




And one last thing.

To make the mission more user friendly... allow 3rd person camera for driving...

[Elvis_FIN]

For next update, EOD vest will be removed again from CSAT arsenal. Let's see how that goes.

Thank you.

[TheMasterofBlubb]

@esfumato so how do you force the players to read that?

Because we have that in the Wiki for the exact purpose.
The How to Play has the info too.


PS: we dont show the playercounts inside points so people dont feel to safe when capping points.

PPS: when someone tries to cap a non connected Zone they get a popup stating that the sector needs to be connected. Animating the point markers could make more trouble than good, due to it beeing simple map markers, there is no animation function for that.

Edit: here is the wiki btw https://wiki.eutw.net/

[esfumato]

@esfumato so how do you force the players to read that?

Because we have that in the Wiki for the exact purpose.
The How to Play has the info too.

I have played EUTW since several years... never knew the wiki existed even less I read it. This Wiki provides almost zero knowledge to new players. And is not a usefull tool to solve the main problem of EUTW, few players, poor quality matches.

Same applies for the How To Play.

PS: we dont show the playercounts inside points so people dont feel to safe when capping points.

Player counts don't have to be shown, but players must understand that they must be inside the sector to both defend or attack, not knowing this basic element of the game flow of the mission goes in detriment of the health of this community I said this 3 years ago and I repeat it again.

PPS: when someone tries to cap a non connected Zone they get a popup stating that the sector needs to be connected.

Yes right, But newbies just stay there and wait and wait... what is the option of the newbie to figure out that their only option available is to.... "RESPAWN" by their selfs. To Kill themselfs something that is the most counter intuitive option in a video game.

Animating the point markers could make more trouble than good, due to it beeing simple map markers, there is no animation function for that.

BIS introduced animated markers in the recent years. I suppose you can update those markers to highlight the "Battlefield Situation". https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Fil ... Screen.jpg

https://youtu.be/aSYxrhX-WaA

This sector is being attacked
Your team is attacking this Sector.
Fast Travel is available to this Sectors, and this sectors can't be fast traveled.

PPS: when someone tries to cap a non connected Zone they get a popup stating that the sector needs to be connected.

This can be solved with some fake artyllery that kills the players that are in a none connected sector. I remeber the game Red Orchestra did that, while one Area was conquered by the attackers, it removed that way the remaining defenders and spawn them in the next objective automatically.

Another Thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fast traveling should move the players inside the friendly sectors.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TheMasterofBlubb]

I have played EUTW since several years... never knew the wiki existed even less I read it. This Wiki provides almost zero knowledge to new players. And is not a usefull tool to solve the main problem of EUTW, few players, poor quality matches.

...

PPS: when someone tries to cap a non connected Zone they get a popup stating that the sector needs to be connected.

Yes right, But newbies just stay there and wait and wait... what is the option of the newbie to figure out that their only option available is to.... "RESPAWN" by their selfs. To Kill themselfs something that is the most counter intuitive option in a video game.

so you never read the chat? and people never read popups making a popup sound every like 5sec?
By your own admission, your changes will have almost no impact because noone reads stuff anyway.

I would argue with the quality of the content of the wiki, simply due to the fact that it was initiated and approved by someone that creates wikis (including gamewikis) as a profession for years, but thats a different strory.

Player counts don't have to be shown, but players must understand that they must be inside the sector to both defend or attack, not knowing this basic element of the game flow of the mission goes in detriment of the health of this community I said this 3 years ago and I repeat it again.

I would argue its basically common sense. If the player has played any game like CoD BF, you name it, that has any Capture the point, its always get INTO cap zone.

BIS introduced animated markers in the recent years. I suppose you can update those markers to highlight the "Battlefield Situation". https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Fil ... Screen.jpg

https://youtu.be/aSYxrhX-WaA

This sector is being attacked
Your team is attacking this Sector.
Fast Travel is available to this Sectors, and this sectors can't be fast traveled.

That is actually an idea that might help a bit, because it can help selecting the destination due to the animated markers beeing bigger, but what i meant is animate custom markers. Amlost everything you see on the map are layered markers of different types to make the symbols we like.

This can be solved with some fake artyllery that kills the players that are in a none connected sector. I remeber the game Red Orchestra did that, while one Area was conquered by the attackers, it removed that way the remaining defenders and spawn them in the next objective automatically.

This is genuenly dumb, as we have a lot of situatuations where the whole tactics revolves around beeing where you shouldnt be.
You can hide inside enemy points to prevent reinforcements or hunt air vehicles as the enemies dont get a notification when you are in the zone, while its uncappable.

Fast traveling should move the players inside the friendly sectors.

No, because than you can throw away any layout that has any sort of containers, rocks, non-enterable buildings etc in the Zone as that calls for people get stuck in there. We already watch out when we have layouts with such stuff aroundd the point to not get issues with spawning inside stuff, there are systems to detect that, but also the spawn area is much much bigger compared to what is inside a circle. Thats would end in so much additional frustration of spawnkilling than it has now, due to most of the points having like 3 to 5 viable spawn areas.