Arma Reforger and WCS. Mod Suggested
Hello Worst Case Scenario, and fellows.
After scouting around a bit for the best servers it seems WCS is the best "real" sim servers that I can find. After a condensed amount of play over the last month at BTGG, RBR, OLD guys, and other servers I've noticed a large and complex list of setting tweaks and mods that give each server its particular playstyle and features. The main list of notes on WCS MODs are:
1.First Person Infantry
-Good because its the only bearable play for people that enjoy combat sims. 3rd person peaking out windows and over ledges gives defensive camping too much power and leads to a silly environment.
- First Person Vehicles
-Great for a challenge flying. 3rd person vehicles gave you easier perception of surroundings along multiple axis' simulating peripheral vision, so I found it more tolerable, since few players here are on VR with IR head movement.
- Restricted Classes for Dumb fires with reload, stingers, Javelins, Silencers, BFG.
-Keeps the fast spawn cheese down. These things are still in the game, but under a rank restriction, and you have to find time to move to the arsenal and kit up, which can offer the enemy easy kills if not under constructed safety and cover from teammates. I like the feature, but would suggest a second save on each class. Alpha class for spawn in, and Beta Class for attempting everything you would have intended there for a non-restricted server.
- High rank restriction on the Javelin
-A direct buff to MBT and armor
- Grass settings >Medium
-Keeps the cover of grass fields usable vs setting exploits.
- NPCs guard the bases at game start
-I don't particularly want to see NPC's, or player coded AI, ever on a multiplayer server, that's what the single player and co-op is for. They frequently shoot accurately through grass or bushes, or behave finicky and too easy. Its nearly impossible to approach an NPC over a grass covered hill as they see through it perfectly and always score suppression and headshot.
So far this is the best table I can find for Reforger servers, coming from Arma 3 King of the Hill, I think it gets the most out of the game from that style's perspective. The main dink I have on this and all other Reforger servers with mods is the atrocious rate of AFK slot leeching. Many servers have 50-60% afk inactive players who do not even spawn into main and stand around, they just connect to the server and then nudge the afk message and move the map some, and then resume afk-ing.
I know there's some fluff involved with keeping these servers "warm" so they seem populated during pacific Islands prime time, however, the problem consistently persists during prime time EU and US time zone happy hours. There's a ton of frustration already with having your client bug out and needing to restart your PC or client to fix a problem, and this a bit of a buggy and "early access but it released already" sensation title. This shouldn't be compounded by sitting through 30 minute 25 person que waits, only to find that both teams have 40-55% full-on afk rates and you were waiting in line behind that.
It is possible for a modder to code some behavior analysis that could add-on to the AFK kick sequence, and provide more intricate warnings and phases involved with behavior approaching afk. I considered a few of the back and fourths involved the math and metrics here and concluded the following:
-Score is an easy way to tell if someone is making an attempt to actually play the game instead of slot denial.
*Score is not always easy to get and there are both ways people can play correctly and still miss scoring, and ways people can score and still be abusing their player slot.
*If you compile the entire list of rates of scores, and just kick he lowest it would correct the problem, but still would have problems, eg: Players attempting attacks over and over, and dying without getting kills with honest effort, and never getting capture XP
*Defending XP and Squad cohesion XP and Squad leader Proximity XP could be abused to cheat a mod detection.
-Assigning objectives is possible, however not all players would respond well to being told where to go or else.
-Arma is a big role-playing community meaning people are out there to have fun and emulate skits they watch on YouTube and feel part of a hype cycle, which still goes on on realism / competition focused servers. A mod of this type could just be stronger or weaker coded depending on the way the server wants to differentiate itself within the player base.
-A populated 64 man server with a 20% support role rate (truck driving, helicopter transport, personal transport) has exactly 12.8 players spread across 4 lanes of advance. If you don't see this behavior, and don't participate in moving yourself to fur fill this image, than you are considered low skilled. At the start of the game most people still pile into one Heavy truck, and deny its intended use of having supplies move to early lattice bases, transporting a large group of vulnerable infantry slowly towards NPC's that have rocket launchers and can kill the entire crew. These players need to be grabbing light vehicles and moving in groupings of 1-4 to independent positions and leap frogging to 2nd lattice lines.
*The Squad system could incorporate leadership and direction of movement. You could keep the freedom on squads, but pre-suggest 4 attack squads of \~10 people and assign their objective strictly against the mod manager (Left, Center Left, Center Right, and Right Flanks). That gives the players 4 expected contact squads with clear movement and cohesion, and if they want to loosen up and go to personal squads they still can.
*Most of the successful gameplay involves defensive holdings of bases near contact lattices, and patiently waiting for assaults, then juggling people forward with partial manpower. There's a ton of indecision regarding attacking or defending, meaning is it fair for someone defending for a long period who wants to advance, but isn't to win the game, to be cut in line by a fresh spawn who has no defense time? Some of this could be addressed by a system of some kind.
*Most teams could find a single faction commander out of the active players to handle a requests, and transport guidance, some simple leadership sim.
Basically the internet is infested with trolls and no matter what is attempted here, there will be line splitters who will make additional problems against the intended function of a player behavior mod, but the problem here is so vast that not attempting one is crude. Coming from competitive sim FPS like Counter Strike Go, Valorant, Rainbow 6 Siege, and others people work on the elo ladder with certain expectations, and there's room for something like that on WCS and other Reforger servers that could emulate a novel mod.
Other Notes:
-Losing a player slot is annoying during crashes and performance restarts. I've seen reconnection work once or twice, but a reconnection request with player slot held for you for some time period would please most of us.
-Teambalance could use a simple elo system: 10 elo slots 500-1500 +/- 100 per match won or lost. Would also be nice to get a simple player stats attached to that like K/D, score per game, and total score. Player cards could display in player list and after dying to someone.
-I frequently wait in the que the full period, and then the server just says "Server Full." This needs to be addressed.