Dear Epic

[Xyx]

But what is good vCTF play? You can make yourself useful (or useless) in too many different ways to easily weigh them all and pick the best. I find myself performing a variety of tasks in several roles at the same time. Here's a little list of the things I do:

1. Hunt down enemy flag carriers and recover my flag.
2. Shoot people that get close to my flag.
3. Support my team's flag carrier.
4. Spam various weapons (hand-held and vehicular) along the bridge in a general attempt to kill people and destroy incoming vehicles.
5. Tool up and try to steal the flag.
6. Fly around in the Raptor, sending missiles after Mantas, vandalizing parked vehicles and harassing people.
7. Camp the enemy's AVRiL bridge, shooting link/rockets at unoccupied tanks and Raptors, AVRiL at moving Raptors and Mantas, and shock/sniper at people. Try to get my hands on the Berserk powerup when my AVRiL runs empty.
8. Grab a Manta and go on a rampage.
9. Grab the sniper and the keg and snipe people on the bridge.
10. Grab the SPMA, park it behind the flag shed, spam the center of the bridge and skymine would-be flag stealers.

Of all these, only the first three have clear priority over the others. That means that whenever both flags are in their respective base (90% of the time), there is no clearly defined strategy. And if there is, I'd sure like to hear about it.

[woooo]

Pizza Boyyyyyyyyy !!

[D2F[Rob]]

I suggest not taking vCTF too seriously, Rob.

Honestly, it's not so much taking it seriously as opposed to a significant proportion of people missing out on the awesome gameplay that's possible. I really believe it's in epics interest to show what's possible to everyone instead of needing to hunt down strategy guides etc.

I understand almost all games are like this. Ons was in particular in 04. But for the time it would take to make sure the player knows how to use the hoverboard, grapple onto vehicles/know when people are grappled etc I would hope the 'general' gameplay standard could be lifted that little bit.

[SandRock]

A tutorial that starts like in BF. Explaining the hud etc. But you can skip it if you want. And it should activate when you get near vehicles or objects of importance like Planetside. But dont make it a frustrating popup that interfers with gameplay. Put it in a log or something and have a bleep come up "new data entry". Something like that?

[Moloko]

Tend to agree, ONS was awash with players asking how to do this and that. If WAR is more complicated-being some hybrid of Assault and ONS, it'll need either a very detailed booklet section or a separate menu option showing tutorial, gametype selectable mini movies.

[Mort_Q]

The single player game includes tutorials.

All we need is a way for server admins to block people that haven't finished the single player game from their servers.

[Sourpuss]

I suggest not taking vCTF too seriously, Rob. The real CTF game is no-vehicles regular weapons CTF--that's going to be fun and I sure hope that DW will give it a chance. I think vCTF could become a fun game type, but you'd need the right maps and the right number (perhaps few) vehicles. It's also possible that it might require allowing flag carriers to carry flags in vehicles on large maps.

[[TT]BrundleFly]

Best advice I can give you is try to play on small servers and lead by example.

And be sure to yell, abuse and swear at everyone else who is hanging around. That will get them onboard...

[Discord 2.0]

I see what you're saying there, but the best you could hope to get from a tut is game mechanics. The finer points of playing offense or defense and how to divide up your team could be argued 'til doomsday and back and there's certainly no one right answer. In fact, midfield seems to have gotten obsoleted or fallen into disuse in 2kX and it looks like maybe it's just sort of naturally making a comeback, at least on this map. And then there's the fact that with VCTF the roles sometimes get a bit blurred. But anyway...

There's no tutorial in the world that's going to organize beginners on a CTF pub. It's unfortunate, but I think that's where it's at. Best advice I can give you is try to play on small servers and lead by example. Announce whether you're on offense or defense and maybe ask for help if you feel you're stretched thin in that role.



Better Yet: Maybe you hardcore VCTF guys should consider writing up a strategy guide.

[Mr Evil]

All games should come with tutorials, but they shouldn't be required since that will just be annoying when you come to reinstall the game.

[Brutal]

lol you'll get that allot online

[D2F[Rob]]

Please include detailed interactive tutorials that are a requirement for online play. Capture the flag generally means the team works together to capture the opposing teams flag. Instead one, maybe two players make an attempt currently whilst the rest just hang around doing nothing other than wasting vehicles.

Making the game easy to pick up and play doesn't help online play in the slightest.

Yours truley, Fustrated gamer.