Testing in-game polls to challenge our game design

[ZEBBEEE 420]

During the coming days and weeks you will notice a series of questions Regarding game play oriented ideas. This is somehow new since past polls have mostly gathered opinions about changes or gathered general information.

Note that most of these questions are inspired from concerns shared on the forums and do no NOT necessarily come from official internal discussions/conclusions/priorities. I make the selection and write those up.

If the trial is concluding. , It could help CRS poll all players to confirm expected/needed changes and have a first clue about how to approach the problem. This single-shot initiative could then be used to further identify (relatively) easy & popular changes to improve your game play experience, and thus improve CRS2's proximity and reactivity even more!

Altough I can’t make any promise about it  being broadcasted, don’t hesitate to drop your own in-game poll question suggestions. I will however continue to monitor all player feedbacks to further inspire questions.

Questions must be:

• short
• focused
• maximum 8 answer options, giving a chance to any (extreme) opinion

Results will however be kept internally. It should still be considered as another recognition of your contribution to this community-driven project. The new CRS DOES care about your feedbacks. Let’s just work on it in the most constructive way.

Example of questions released today:

Quote

[LIVE]Flag capture should be available...
- Instantly at AO setup
- 5 minutes after AO setup
- 10 minutes after AO setup
- no opinion

[LIVE]Bunker radio should come up
- 5 minutes after contest start
- 10 minutes after contest start
- 15 minutes after contest start
- 20 minutes after contest start
- no opinion

[LIVE]Default flag capture timers should be decreased
- agree (60 seconds)
- agree (90 seconds)
- agree (120 seconds)
- agree (150 seconds)
- agree (180 seconds)
- disagree
- no opinion

[LIVE]Armored vehicles and CS tanks (ML) should deploy a LMS
- Agree (armored vehicles)
- Agree (CS tanks)
- Agree (both)
- Disagree
- No opinion

[LIVE]Deployed trucks should spawn light and medium ATG/AA

- Agree (light guns)

- Agree (light and medium guns)

- Disagree

- No opinion

 

 

[ian77 397]

Would help if we all knew or were told the flag default capture timers, and if the answers mean "decreased by x secs" or "decreased to x secs". Also the question about 1.36 I saw this morning needed a "no opinion" or "too early to tell" answer rather than nothing but "yes" or "no". 

 

Ian 

[GrAnit 321]

Err...  need to update the poll, lol.

[ZEBBEEE 420]

My bad, copy/pasted from a draft and English isn’t my first language. Saw it too late (can’t edit once published). 

 

Thanks for the notification @GrAnit

[ian77 397]

Suggested Poll;

Would you like to reduce the amount of lag kills/deaths in game by adjusting the "autodespawn sensitivity" (- well obviously CRS will use the correct name here! )

Yes Definitely

No Never

We should try

No opinion

 

Just a thought....

 

Ian 

 

 

[ZEBBEEE 420]

The first change based on an in-game audit has been released: capture timers have been significantly reduced!

Please log in more often as you will get a single poll question each time you log in, your opinion matters.

[tater 225]

It might be interesting to see the questions here, first. Some tend to have a sort of "push poll" feel, since I want to select an answer that doesn't exist, or want to pick an answer with a meaning that I know is different than the question (so I'd give the wrong impression by answering it).

[ZEBBEEE 420]

Yes this might be possible

[tater 225]

9 minutes ago, ZEBBEEE said:

Yes this might be possible

Some of the "push" feel of course might have to do with what is possible to achieve with the people at hand, obviously. It might be nice to see that explicitly in the questions (or have the explicit reason on the forum as background).

 

[ZEBBEEE 420]

This was one of the question. The list seems uncomplete. What would you add as option? 

Question:	What game play experience needs immediate improvement?
	Improve our situational awareness of enemy's presence
	Accelerate our deployment to the battle area
	Improve our squad/team cohesion
	Increase our survivability (mean TOM)
	Give us more freedom regarding AO placement
	Add more secondary objectives

[tater 225]

5 minutes ago, ZEBBEEE said:

 Improve our situational awareness of enemy's presence

Of decrease it, this game has zero fog of war where it needs it, and too much the rest of the time (ei homogeneously mixed with friends, everywhere).

7 minutes ago, ZEBBEEE said:

 Accelerate our deployment to the battle area

We already teleport, people want more? (it represents massed forces as long as it is on-sides, the second you spawn in a rear area, it's a Star Trek transporter, so I'd like to see:

"Constrain deployment to within areas our side controls." (better worded, perhpas)

 

How about something about the awful requirement that X players per town must stare at walls) where X= a(# of CPs) + b(# of bunkers)?    a and b are fudge factors >1 if the attack is serious.

[delems 729]

Might add an idk - i don't know; or some other neutral option - otherwise you are forced to pick an option you might not like..

 

[ZEBBEEE 420]

20 hours ago, delems said:

Might add an idk - i don't know; or some other neutral option - otherwise you are forced to pick an option you might not like..

 

@delems Actually there was an "other" option in the list. it got pretty much answers, hence my conclusion I am missing an important point regarding gameplay expectation. I was thinking maybe it's about more combined arms, more fear of death or more/different capture objectives.

 

@tater I see where you are trying to go, but the options already allow us to conclude that: If people don't want faster deployment to the battle but do want increased situational awareness as improved Teamplay, then indeed we could think about better team-based waves, limited to the FB sides. Both sides know the action will happen there, and expect grouped enemies, so their situational awareness is improved. 

[tater 225]

8 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

If people don't want faster deployment to the battle but do want increased situational awareness as improved Teamplay, then indeed we could think about better team-based waves, limited to the FB sides. Both sides know the action will happen there, and expect grouped enemies, so their situational awareness is improved. 

I just think it should be more explicit. Indeed, I would constrain such querstion narrowly to one aspect of play, with "Stay like it is" as a control. Maybe with examples (in brackets).

Ie:

FMS and FRUs should be able to deploy:

1. Anywhere on the map, but no closer to an enemy facility (CP) than 300m---what it is now. (current, right? If not whatever the current rules are)

2. Anywhere on the map, at any distance from any enemy facility all the time. (enemy can spawn inside your own AB if they like)

3. No farther from their parent facility (town/FB) than the nearest target town enemy facility minus a few hundred m (they can only set roughly on the same side of town as their FB).

4. All MSPs are terrible, should be removed, and we should commute to battle on trucks again. (Because that's fun. Not.)

 

Any other options I missed?

 

[ZEBBEEE 420]

List of suggested questions regarding mobile spawns:

 

Question:	What further improvement would you expect regarding mobile spawns?
Answers options (max8):
1	Mobile spawns are too easily spotted
2	Mobile spawns are too easily camped
3	Mobile spawns are too easily destroyed
4	There aren't enough mobile spawns available
5	Moving mobile spawns upon deployment should be eased
6	No opinion
7
8

Question:	What should mobile spawns mostly be about?
Answers options (max8):
1	Spawning at a location unknown by the enemy (stealth)
2	Spawning closer to my target (travel)
3	Spawning closer to my other mission members (team play)
4	Moving battles to strategic areas outside towns (variety)
5	No opinion
6
7
8

 

Question:	Mobile spawns should NOT deploy "behind the frontline"
Answers options (max8):
1	Strongly agree
2	Somehow agree
3	Somehow disagree
4	Strongly disagree
5	No opinion
6
7
8

 

Question:	Bring back the manned-truck MSP (no PPO, instant deployment)
Answers options (max8):
1	Yes
2	Yes, but only when their engine is ON (presence awareness)
3	No
4	No opinion
5
6
7
8

 

Question:	A "super FMS" deploying heavy AT/AA guns, 1.5 km away?
Answers options (max8):
1	Yes
2	Yes, but only on the main roads
3	Yes, but visible on map for enemies (similar to FBs)
4	No
5	No opinion
6
7
8

[tater 225]

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

What further improvement would you expect regarding mobile spawns? Answers options (max8):  

1 Mobile spawns are too easily spotted

Can you only pick on answer of all these choices? What if you think they're not easy enough to see?

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

2 Mobile spawns are too easily camped

They are front line, so if I think they are fine, I just don't select this? If they are behind the lines teleporters, OTOH, then they are not easy enough to camp, eliminate the FMS part that shelters them, lol.

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

3 Mobile spawns are too easily destroyed

They might be too easy to destroy if they are "on sides," but behind the lines? I think looking at an MSP with binos that's on the wrong side of town, or the wrong side of a river should kill it, frankly. It sort of depends on context. Clearly this means "as the game is now," so I'd want them easier to destroy, except on side they should not be...

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

4 There aren't enough mobile spawns available

Possibly, there are too many behind the lines, though

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

5 Moving mobile spawns upon deployment should be eased

I don't know what this question means at all.

16 hours ago, ZEBBEEE said:

6 No opinion

7  

8  

 

[major0noob 246]

the line is wherever players go, if they're behind the town; the defenders let it happen

honestly, the front lines not developing at all is more serious than any stealth or camping.

 

in the past week all the town movement i've seen is due to nobody spawning in. not fighting or sneakyness.

[ZEBBEEE 420]

Thanks, good feedback. changes:

Question:	What further improvement would you expect regarding mobile spawns?
Answers options (max8):
1	Mobile spawns should be more easily spotted
2	Mobile spawns should be less easily spotted
3	Mobile spawns should be less easily camped
4	Mobile spawns should be less easily destroyed
5	Mobile spawns should be harder to destroy
6	There should be more mobile spawns available for battles
7	Mobile spawns placement/displacement should be eased
8	No opinion/It's fine

 

Other questions allows to know if players expect anything regarding frontline placement.

       @major0noob Summer holidays always bring numbers down. That being said, I am convinced that if the game play gets improved, more would play. Working on it as you see. Just trying to give leadership a clear view of the situation with factual data. But to be effective the poll questions and answers must be well thought.

[major0noob 246]

17 minutes ago, ZEBBEEE said:

 @major0noob Summer holidays always bring numbers down. That being said, I am convinced that if the game play gets improved, more would play. Working on it as you see. Just trying to give leadership a clear view of the situation with factual data. But to be effective the poll questions and answers must be well thought.

if ya'll let me make threads again, i can get some pretty concise data

i told them so, the FMS needed to be built faster. it wasn't even my idea, just collective thought from my squad and side hopping experience.

 

based on their moves and attitudes in the "hardest campaign ever", it's clear they have a serious disconnect with their customers, my plan was to interview nearly everyone in-game. no 123 score this and that, total talk about the game.

[tater 225]

4 hours ago, major0noob said:

the line is wherever players go, if they're behind the town; the defenders let it happen

The real defenders would already be there.

If you are the first responder to  EWS or an AO, or if you were to spawn in an hour before some major attack in game, and you could take every single unit in the Garrison (say it's just a garrison) and had place them, would you hand place them in the extant depots and AB, or would you place ALL the ATGs covering avenues of approach from the enemy FBs, and have the troops dropped along some frontage---with a good reserve and some troops in town? If there was a hill that would allow the enemy to pout fire into your motor pool and supplies, would you say, "we'll wait until the enemy is there, then take that hill back." or would you instead place your forces on that hill.

The entire spawning paradigm of the game is an abstraction. The troops should be someplace they are not, they are stored in a few points, and they should be stored out where they would be.

In a perfect version of this game, they would ALL be AI. They'd be AI that acted (and died) like player units, and they would be deployed where players deploy them. Their default would be to hold ground, and if really pressed (say armor vs inf), they would fall back, and possibly break. Then, when players spawned in, they would literally take over these (basically fixed) AI units, and they become the free to move about units we play now. This would place all the spawn list out in the world to be destroyed, and we'd serially play 1 of them at a time. Instead, we still serially play them one at a time, but they spawn in the middle of town, and have to fight their way out to the defensive positions any sane CO would have put them in yesterday.

[tater 225]

2 hours ago, major0noob said:

if ya'll let me make threads again, i can get some pretty concise data

i told them so, the FMS needed to be built faster. it wasn't even my idea, just collective thought from my squad and side hopping experience.

I actually don't have a problem with this, assuming they are built ON SIDES. When a mobile spawn is built in territory you control, it is not a magical teleporter, it merely represents where the command had pre-placed forces.

When any MSP is placed behind the lines, OTOH, it is a magical teleporter. Whatever speed it takes to build, the FMS and FRU models when deployed behind lines should change to this:

 

Quote

based on their moves and attitudes in the "hardest campaign ever", it's clear they have a serious disconnect with their customers, my plan was to interview nearly everyone in-game. no 123 score this and that, total talk about the game.

Interviewing people is fine to a point, but people only know the game from what they have experienced in the game. Some things have literally never been tried, and trying things, THEN asking what people think is a better idea, in areas of the game where that is possible with minimal effort.

If the MSP rules are such that even the broadest sense of "on sides" could be added with minimal effort, it would be worth trying, IMO. If one-sdes was in effect, then I'd be all for trucks being MSPs, the heavy MSPs for large ATGs, all the things. What I don't like is those things turning every single fight into a 360 affair. It would be nice to know a DFMS to our nominal rear is safe from units that didn't teleport behind us.

Edited July 5 by tater

[ZEBBEEE 420]

5 New in-game polls live!