Please Improve Satellite and Player Spawn Location

[Raptor]

Please give us the option to toggle the satellite revealing player location on and off.

Satellite raveling player location is a side effect of the objective system that was never fixed, Some have argued that it was intentional or later became an accepted feature but I disagree.

Please give us the option make players spawn from their recycler instead of a predetermined location. I have not seen a reason why this is a bad idea or that they did it intentionally.

[Seqan]

There is no ongoing official development for BZR. It's in the hands of the modders.

[Raptor]

Well if someone in the dev team lends some spare time to fix these two things would it be considered official development? What about someone outside the dev team fixes it, Would they potentially make it a standard in vanilla?

[DustRider]

Originally posted by Raptor:

Well if someone in the dev team lends some spare time to fix these two things would it be considered official development? What about someone outside the dev team fixes it, Would they potentially make it a standard in vanilla?

Nope, They're doneski. As Seqan said the only changes will come through the workshop.They're happy with their product and it functions. But dont freat, they made it easy to change dang near anything in BZR98.

[Seqan]

Originally posted by DustRider:

But dont freat, they made it easy to change dang near anything in BZR98.

Well the spawn from Recycler thing could be lua powered...not sure how, but it's doable. However the satellite thing is...not so easy... I know it's been messed with but HB has had no luck.

[Raptor]

How disappointing that no one thought to mention these two things that I honestly think are glaring flaws.

[Ded10c]

Both of these can be fixed with lua scripting, and whilst they seem glaring flaws in your point of view both are deliberate features of the game that nobody else has objected to in nearly 20 years. There is a reason for that.

These would make good changes to implement in your overhaul mod. I'm sure the members of the modding room on the Discord would be happy to help you to learn the lua you would need.

[ULTIMO GUERRERO MOSCOVITA]

I don't think the satellite is exactly a flaw... you need a lot of scrap and time to get one, and it's still one of the most vulnerable buildings you can get. It's not a game deciding factor to be honest.

[Ded10c]

More importantly, revealing the player's location when they use it is how the game discourages you from treating the game as a simple RTS.

This is not a case of "some argue that it was intentional or later became an intended feature", that is a fact; see this[battlezone1.org] forum post by one of the developers.

[Raptor]

“An aside: player unit was made an objective in satellite view to provide the player with a reference point while scrolling around the map. It was unintentionally made an objective to all other players since objective markers are global but we rolled with it and made it part of the fiction of the game and documented it in the manual. BZ2 later changed objective markers from global to per-team (i.e. "SetObjectiveTo" instead of "SetObjective").“

Gross.

I completely disagree with the notion that satellite view would allow players to treat the game as a simple RTS and you can't just keep saying this without explaining why, As it stands no one uses the satellite beyond split second commands because its more of a liability then a useful asset.

I'm not going to wasting my time learning lua so I can fix something no one realized was broken for almost 20 years despite it staring them in the face all this time. Even if I did fix it myself no one would use the mod because they never cared that player spawns and satellite were effectively broken in the first place

[Ded10c]

Originally posted by Raptor:

I completely disagree with the notion that satellite view would allow players to treat the game as a simple RTS and you can't just keep saying this without explaining why, As it stands no one uses the satellite beyond split second commands because its more of a liability then a useful asset.

Marking the player to everybody in the match makes them a target, and since killing the other players is the victory condition of strategy this adds a more significant risk/reward element to using it and thus more greatly discourages its use compared to normal play (the only other disadvantage being that it takes one off the field). As such it prevents players from hiding and using the satellite to play the entire game, which would allow them to manage their forces in a more orderly and detailed fashion than a player on the ground.

Battlezone is designed to be played from the first person, with the satellite used to perform brief operations which forces on the other side of the map. This is not an RTS game, it's an FPS/RTS hybrid. Don't expect it to play even remotely similarly to your RTS of choice.

I'm not going to wasting my time learning lua so I can fix something no one realized was broken for almost 20 years despite it staring them in the face all this time. Even if I did fix it myself no one would use the mod because they never cared that player spawns and satellite were effectively broken in the first place

I cannot think of any circumstance in which learning to program would be a waste of time.

Whether people realized it was broken or not is not the question, because you are not the arbiter of what is and is not broken. This is a simple matter of something you don't like, and one where you're in the minority at that. You don't get to claim something is broken over a matter of mere opinion.

Any modder here will tell you that if you make a mod, it should be because you want to. If you care as much as you seem to about whether people play it or not then I'm afraid you may have taken up the wrong hobby.

[Janne]

Originally posted by Raptor:

I'm not going to wasting my time learning lua so I can fix something

The time you've wasted making this thread you could have learnt enough lua to fix this yourself.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Ded10c:

since killing the other players is the victory condition of strategy

Player deaths being the victory condition only exists to stops suicidal tactics, At the end of the day the strategy part of strategy games are effectively concluded when the enemies recycler is destroyed.

You can't say you've won a game through strategy when you've lost every unit but you managed to play cat and mouse well enough to snipe your opponent to death enough, At that point you've beaten strategy skills with DM skills.

Not having the player spawn follow the recycler is a game flaw.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

As such it prevents players from hiding and using the satellite to play the entire game, which would allow them to manage their forces in a more orderly and detailed fashion than a player on the ground.

First there is ZERO possibility that a player who purely uses the satellite to play to beat a player who uses just the fist person view, Even if satellite didn't expose you the AI in battlezone isn't good enough to eliminate the need for the player on the battlefield.

Second all players have access to satellite should they chose to build it, Therefore it isn't something that benefits some players while excluding or at the cost of others. It would just increase the RTS element of BZ to beyond what is happening right in front of the player.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

Battlezone is designed to be played from the first person, with the satellite used to perform brief operations which forces on the other side of the map.

Do you think the satellite exposing the players location is why its used to perform brief operations?
It's used for brief operations there isn't a need or a reason in game to sit in satellite view for any extended period of time, Satellite exposing you is unnecessary to discourage players from using too much.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

This is not an RTS game, it's an FPS/RTS hybrid.

I agree, I just think the RTS element of BZ has been unintentionally limited to the determinant of the game.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

Don't expect it to play even remotely similarly to your RTS of choice.

Screw you, I'm not trying to make BZ conform to my imagination I just see two flaws that hold the game back from being that it's already trying to be. BZ is supposed to be an Fps RTS hybrid, Right now because of the static player spawns and the liable satellite de-emphasizes the RTS element over the FPS element in strategy games.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

Whether people realized it was broken or not is not the question, because you are not the arbiter of what is and is not broken. This is a simple matter of something you don't like, and one where you're in the minority at that. You don't get to claim something is broken over a matter of mere opinion.

So I can't use logic, reasoning, deduction, experience, and good old fashioned argument to give my “opinion” any credibility or credence? Just because they chose to leave the satellite bug in and didn't make spawns follow recycler doesn't mean its not a bug, that it was always intended to be that way, or its the best way.

[Ded10c]

Originally posted by Raptor:

Player deaths being the victory condition only exists to stops suicidal tactics, At the end of the day the strategy part of strategy games are effectively concluded when the enemies recycler is destroyed.

Players with no Recycler have clawed their way to victory more than once.

Originally posted by Raptor:

You can't say you've won a game through strategy when you've lost every unit but you managed to play cat and mouse well enough to snipe your opponent to death enough, At that point you've beaten strategy skills with DM skills.

And yet, you have won a strategy game. If your opponent's strategy skills couldn't stop you, then who is to say that win is not deserved?

Originally posted by Raptor:

Not having the player spawn follow the recycler is a game flaw.

There's a case to be made here. That said the counter-argument is that if respawn follows the Recycler, then a respawning player will just get spawnkilled if they're killed in an attack on their Recycler. BZ2 had that problem and it was a real pain in the ass.

Originally posted by Raptor:

First there is ZERO possibility that a player who purely uses the satellite to play to beat a player who uses just the fist person view, Even if satellite didn't expose you the AI in battlezone isn't good enough to eliminate the need for the player on the battlefield.

Not zero, because it's happened before, but I don't have enough data to qualify that beyond saying that it's non-zero. Since you're not supposed to play the game solely from the satellite, this is supposed to be incredibly difficult. (You slightly missed my point, by the way, which was that a bunker player would have an order advantage over a strict ground player. I'm arguing the middle ground here, not one over the other.)

Originally posted by Raptor:

Do you think the satellite exposing the players location is why its used to perform brief operations?
It's used for brief operations there isn't a need or a reason in game to sit in satellite view for any extended period of time, Satellite exposing you is unnecessary to discourage players from using too much.

I'm not saying that exposure is the reason players do do that, I'm saying it's part of the reason they don't do a great deal more than that.

Originally posted by Raptor:

I agree, I just think the RTS element of BZ has been unintentionally limited to the determinant of the game.

This is a game that was created at the dawn of the genre. Expecting it to be perfect is folly and given that BZR set out to be as mechanically similar as possible, expecting it to fix a percieved design flaw that's been an integral part of the game for twenty years is much the same.

Originally posted by Raptor:

Screw you, I'm not trying to make BZ conform to my imagination I just see two flaws that hold the game back from being that it's already trying to be. BZ is supposed to be an Fps RTS hybrid, Right now because of the static player spawns and the liable satellite de-emphasizes the RTS element over the FPS element in strategy games.

No need for hostility. These issues you take are entirely subjective and you should avoid framing them as objective faults, because if they are such then you're the first person to spot them in two decades. This game has had some seasoned designers come through.

Originally posted by Raptor:

So I can't use logic, reasoning, deduction, experience, and good old fashioned argument to give my “opinion” any credibility or credence? Just because they chose to leave the satellite bug in and didn't make spawns follow recycler doesn't mean its not a bug, that it was always intended to be that way, or its the best way.

Seems to me that's precisely what we're doing, bar the fact that "it's broken" is not a matter of opinion. I must point out that none of us said it was always supposed to be that way; we said the developers adopted what was initially a bug and promoted it to a feature, and it would seem the testers did not object.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Ded10c:

Players with no Recycler have clawed their way to victory more than once.

Through utilizing the few reaming units at their disposal to continue fighting?
Or through hoping in and out of a vehicle to replenish your sniper rifle?

Originally posted by Ded10c:

And yet, you have won a strategy game. If your opponent's strategy skills couldn't stop you, then who is to say that win is not deserved?

If you blow up your recycler and use your tank as nothing but a ammo refill for your sniper rifle and manage to win, Can you really say you won in the spirit of the strategy game? I'm not arguing that the win wasn't deserved, But that it's the type of “strategy” that is destructive to the greater meta of the game.
When starcraft became “perfectly balanced” the strategy in the game died and it became purely about how you execute the strategy, The game became less interesting to the majority of people and SC's popularity declined until they “unbalanced” the game. This is where BZ strategy and DM meta is.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

There's a case to be made here. That said the counter-argument is that if respawn follows the Recycler, then a respawning player will just get spawnkilled if they're killed in an attack on their Recycler. BZ2 had that problem and it was a real pain in the♥♥♥♥♥

It's still more control then a fixed spawn location, You could solve it permanently by allowing players to respawn then they choose instead of immediately.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

ot zero, because it's happened before, but I don't have enough data to qualify that beyond saying that it's non-zero. Since you're not supposed to play the game solely from the satellite, this is supposed to be incredibly difficult. (You slightly missed my point, by the way, which was that a bunker player would have an order advantage over a strict ground player. I'm arguing the middle ground here, not one over the other.)

I didn't miss your point I just expected you to assume that by me claiming it's impossible for someone to win purely from the satellite view, That I was also claiming the satellite didn't offer a significant advantage even if it didn't reveal your location. For the record satellite in BZ98 isn't the same as BZR satellite, In BZ98 the satellite operates under fog of war dictated by radar coverage.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

I'm not saying that exposure is the reason players do do that, I'm saying it's part of the reason they don't do a great deal more than that

You certainly seemed to be inferring that if satellite didn't reveal your location then people would begin to sit in rts view all the time.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

This is a game that was created at the dawn of the genre. Expecting it to be perfect is folly and given that BZR set out to be as mechanically similar as possible, expecting it to fix a percieved design flaw that's been an integral part of the game for twenty years is much the same

Well it turns out that BZR isn't mechanically the same to BZ98 with regards to the satellite because BZ98 had fog of war on the satellite while it still revealed your location. So it isn't so far fetched to think other things were or could be changed, fixed, or left broken.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

No need for hostility. These issues you take are entirely subjective and you should avoid framing them as objective faults, because if they are such then you're the first person to spot them in two decades. This game has had some seasoned designers come through.

OK maybe the flaws I see are not blindly obvious, But I will argue that no one actually cared about the balance and meta of battlezone for an incredibly long time. I could be the first to point them out but if I'm not its long been forgotten who did.

Originally posted by Ded10c:

Seems to me that's precisely what we're doing, bar the fact that "it's broken" is not a matter of opinion. I must point out that none of us said it was always supposed to be that way; we said the developers adopted what was initially a bug and promoted it to a feature, and it would seem the testers did not object.

We don't know if balance testers ever played a version where the satellite didn't expose your location let alone how much testing they did, The best we can go on is personal and collective experiences and anecdotes. I haven't seen or heard of anyone claiming they played the game before satellite exposed your location.

[Novus Ordo Seclorum]

Losing your recycler isn't too big of a deal if you've still got 5+ scavengers, a factory, an amory, a constructor, etc. You can still fight indefinitely without a recycler. I won several strategy games back in the day after losing recycler, and without necessarily sniping or relying solely on "DM skills". I simply was able to keep fighting since I could still use silos as a scrap drop point for scavengers, and make barracks when I needed more pilots.

The single player campaign actually gives you a tutorial on how to fight without a recycler. This tutorial is known as NSDF mission 8: "Wrangling the Fleeing Herd". In this mission, you build forces and fight without a recycler, using only your factory, armory, constructor, and 3 scavengers.