My week-late feedback
Black Ops:
Better establish the rules of each game mode and which maps/modes we'll be playing. If rule/map changes occur publish them so everybody knows. For example: vehicles- it was decided during C3 that we wouldn't use vehicles in BO because the player turnout was lower (and rush with vehicles was unbalanced), but then we played obliteration on Golmud and vehicles were back in all of a sudden. I don't disagree with any of the decisions made, but documentation/announcement of changes was lacking (though I see now the wiki page was updated several times to reflect changes).
NABO had weak turnout. Maybe it's time to poll the players and see what time works best for NABO? Move it earlier or later to get more people?
BO also runs longer than I'd like. 4-6hrs of BO on Tuesday is a lot of time. I know I don't have to stick around for all of it, but if I don't then my team is short on players. I think a long EUBO also detracts from people participating in NABO and Thursday practices. Maybe shorten BO's to 2 hours or a limited number of rounds (2?).
I never fully understood how Black Ops affects the campaign (re-reading the
Campaign System, I still don't). Maybe turnout would be better of us grunts understood what was at stake?
Server Settings:
Reduce the bleed rate. Matches are won too quickly because 1 team only needs the upper hand for a moment to get a strong advantage from bleed. We need to offer a little time to mount a counter-attack and try to take back flags. I'd prefer to win a game with skill and battle tactics rather than ticket bleed.
Campaign System:
I preferred the "Win 2 out of 3" method in BF4C2. A map could be over in 2 rounds or at most 3. Quick, simple and easy to understand. I know the divisions system allows more Risk strategy (troop movement/stacking gives everyone an idea of where attacks will occur) but that system was created for the dice-rolling tabletop strategy game, not the boots-on-the-ground FPS tactics game we play on Saturday.
Reducing the number of divisions might help or maybe find a different way to express the division stacking/advantage. For example: if you only have 1 division defending a territory, you don't get vehicles; the attacking army with 2 divisions gets vehicles.
The matter of spending an entire BD on the attack or on defense came up. I agree this gets a little tiring (especially if you're defending the same map for 5-6 rounds). Has GC ever tried attacking in turns on Battleday? So Team A attack 1 then Team B attack 1 then Team A attack 2 then Team B attack 2? I know this has some inherent issues/problems, but it would give both teams the satisfaction of being on the offensive/making progress every week instead of spending an entire day losing territory. Hopefully this would help slow down/draw out the campaign as well- right now if the defending teams is having a bad week they can lose 4-6 territories and that can crush a campaign.
Agree with
CrookedBarrel that some aspects of the campaign system are hard to understand (especially for newer players) and can detract from the experience on Battledays. Either simplify the system or do a better job of explaining it (better yet: both).
Maps Used for Battledays:
To continue beating the dead horse: We gotta find a way to switch this up and stop playing the same maps over and over. I know tying a BF map to the campaign map makes strategic sense, but maybe after a BF map has been played it gets rotated to another spot on the campaign map (off the front lines). Sure there's a balance & fairness issue with changing it up like that, but nobody cares about the campaign map balance when we're all pissed off about playing Guilin Peaks for the 10th time in 2 weeks.
As a matter of personal preference, I play Battlefield because there are vehicles. So playing 64i annoys me- I might as well be playing any other shooter out there. With more maps coming out, maybe we can reduce the number of 64i maps on the board.
Timing & General Running:
First of all - thanks to all the TA's, HC and others who make these campaigns happen. I know it's a lot of work to enable the rest of us play a game.
I'll repeat the issue of the poorly announced pre-campaign events. I missed the draft and first scrimmage because I didn't know when they happened or what was expected of players. I check the forum regularly and somehow missed the memo.
We should consult the calendar earlier for days we might not hold Battledays due to holidays and other conflicts. August 30th Battle Day wasn't cancelled until 1-2 days before, but that's a major US holiday that most of us knew long prior we wouldn't be able to play on. By the time BD was cancelled, it was too late to organize an alternate activity. As the campaign is starting, look at the upcoming weeks and determine which BD's will be skipped so that players know ahead of time and can plan accordingly.
Other Thoughts:
Player balance- especially regarding attendance and skill- is always going to be tough. The last 2 campaigns were scrapped when 1 team got the upper hand mostly through player skill dominance. Maybe we should consider finding a way to re-shuffle the deck when that happens rather than scrapping the campaign and all the work that goes into setting it up (seriously- over a month of setup & pre-campaign for a campaign that barely lasts a month is crummy).
Switching games (eg: BF3) isn't going to fix any issues or get more players. BF4 has its problems, sure, but the world player population is going to keep migrating to the latest game, not the older one. I see some people wanting to grow the community and some wanting to move to an older game- I think those 2 goals are opposed to each other.
TL;DR:
- Rotate maps on the front lines so that we don't play the same ones over and over.
- Go back to "best 2 out of 3" or reduced number of divisions (or find another alternative to this).
- Switch Attack/Defend turns on BD's so that nobody gets rolled all day long.
- Reduce bleed rate so rounds aren't won with a single flag cap.
- BO needs some timing fixes.
- Better announce campaign events & days off.