Do you miss tactics in cRPG?

[Joker86]

Concerning Berserk's statement:

Perhaps my IQ is that high (or at least was when I was a kid, I believe this changes), but I absolved my A-level with a grade of 3.2 (in a system from 1.0 to 6.0, where 1 is the best and everything below 4.0 is not passed), so indeed this very theoretical value says little about someone. That's my opinion, at least.


Concerning tactics:

I don't know who wrote it already, but he was right: my basic understanding of tactics is zerging. Outnumbering the enemy in a certain place and moment, weakening the enemy team and thus finishing off the rest more easily.

Usually a team wins by default if it's got more people with better skill. In this case tactics are not needed. The purpose of tactics is to counter skill (or at least certain concentrations of classes on the enemy team, e.g. 50% archers or cavalry), and in real life you have several options to do so: outnumbering, lowering the enemie's morale/cause disorder, defending a superior position, e.g. walls or fences and so on. But many of those tactics don't work in Warband. Morale and disorder do have an impact, but you will never have them run for their life like in real life. Also the advantages of holding higher ground or a small wall/fence are not that severe like in real life, let alone the shield wall which indeed does only little to help a team. (If I suggest a shield wall ingame it's only some kind of "bait" to attract as many players as possible to keep them together, as shield walls magically attract not only enemy missiles but also many players)

So basically all that's left is outnumbering the enemy in a certain spot. The correct use of bottlenecks is nothing else than this.

My understanding of tactics is limited on where to place the three branches infantry, cavalry and archers, and when to have them attack. (It's actually not so different to real medieval tactics for about 1000 years    )

Before the slot system was introduced I often took a siege ladder and two siege shields with me, next to my main weapon. Usually I rushed forward as fast as possible and placed the ladder on the biggest and highest roof with cover towards the enemy, and the siege shields on the ground below. Usually the ladder indeed tended to attract most of the archers, and a lot of infantry players somehow like siege shields and like to wait behind them until the enemy has approached. This is what I try to achieve, as the archers can support the infantry from above rather well, and all I can do is to pray to god that the cavalry will remain patient and wait with its attack until the melee has begun.

Usually this is my understanding of tactics, in fact it doesn't even deserve its name, in my eyes it's basic behaviour like taking cover in Counter Strike. And still I could connect to the server in any moment and record a team which will lose one round after another without need, never mind if skills are good or not. It's like some kind of team sport, e.g. Soccer. You could put all the best players of the world into one team, they will most likely lose against a team that knows each others and follows a certain plan. (I know this example has a few flaws, but I hope it shows what I want to say).

If everybody knows what he has to do, things go much better, and the game gains more depth and fun. And there is no reason people can't learn that "unwritten, gamespecific behaviour", I know many other games where most people do the right thing, not because the tutorial told them to do so but because they learned it this way by playing with others.

And even this "mindless charging and spamming" seems reasonable at the first glance, perhaps, but if you think properly you will probably have even more to spam if you stick to your teammates, as you won't die that fast. And yes, you will have to wait longer for your melee to begin, but on the other hand you will spend less time in spectator mode, being back in action much faster. So you actually pay the possibility to spam more during the entire map with a waiting a little longer in the first round of each map. To me this sounds like a good deal, in every way superior to the lemming-alternative, even if you want to have a "relaxed" game.

I fear this post again sounded like I wanted to teach you the truth, actually I really want to understand what makes people charge the enemy on their own. The will to win the map can't be it, the will to have fun in melee can't be it, so what is it?

[[ptx]]

I fear this post again sounded like I wanted to teach you the truth, actually I really want to understand what makes people charge the enemy on their own. The will to win the map can't be it, the will to have fun in melee can't be it, so what is it?

D'aww, you didn't read my post.

[Joker86]

D'aww, you didn't read my post.

I did.

but other times i just feel like charging into a mass of enemies and spam. Doesn't make me a moron, just a bored guy looking for a DIFFERENT kind of fun.

The point is: when do you do this?

If when the big melee has started: I am perfectly fine with people jumping between enemies and slashing left and right, considering the effort it's a very viable tactic, and often enough your enemies hurt each other as much as you do.

If before the melee started, as soon after spawning as possible: Do you say your different kind of fun is:

- Spawning
- Running for 30 sec.
- Fighting for 5 sec., killing one enemy at most
- spending 5 minutes in spectator mode
- spawning
?

If yes, then I still don't understand where the fun lies. You pay those 5 seconds of spamming with 5 minutes of waiting? And contributing to sticking on x1 multiplier?

Again, I don't want to offend anybody, it's just how it looks like when I see those guys who seem to have the [W]-key being stuck. All they do is running and respawning.    :

[[ptx]]

It is trying to pull off that sweet rambo killing-machine frag-streak. When you succeed at that, then it is super fun. Very different from killing a lot of peeps in a smart way.

[Jackelsano]

This is the golden advice. I remember the glory days when Fallens did our "Fallen tactic shit" almost every round under command from our glorious general Ramses. Extremely fun stuff.

I happily would if I could, but being in AUS severely limits my access to EU and NA Factions. And I'll be damned if I have to join AEF. I was thinking of joining your rabble of villains, Everkistus but lag problems will ensue on EU/NA servers. On a good day I get 210m/s on a EU server. Perhaps it might be the distance the data has to relay, or my laptop is stuck on Eco Mode, limiting my internet's capabilities. (If your asking, I dried out the thermal solution that cools the CPU. Or it could be lint in the fan) Either way, I'll try to see what happens.

Pro tip: Don't ever play games on laptops. EVAH.

[Reinhardt]

Acre used to do tactics on NA and EU quite often. Fun times they were.

[Tot.]

Doesn't make me a moron, just a bored guy looking for a DIFFERENT kind of fun.

Well, if there wasn't a team which you're part of and for which fate you're partially responsible I'd say it alright. But when you realize that most people play to win, and they're having most fun, if not only then, when they're winning then you surely can alter your plans of constant lemming-behavior.

Nothing - nothing - is more infuriating for me than seeing a nice bunch of teammates guarding ie. a gate switch room in an inpenetrable formation and then they all start running off to charge head-on 5, 6 or more enemies, simply one by one, and dying while trying to fight impossible odds. Then the rest gets overwhelmed, everyone lose their multi and the money. And all that could be to be honest avoided if Warband had voice communication system, positional Mumble-like would be just perfect.

That's what it all comes down to in my opinion, lack of communication. People will become less dumb when they're told what to do to succeed and play smart. The chat is absolutely not enough.

[Osiris]

"Acre used to do tactics on NA and EU quite often. Fun times they were. "

pfft please. All Acre ever used to do was find a spot and camp it with xbows untill everyone else on the team was dead. thats not tactics thats called being dicks. Many times ive seen entire servers raging at you guys because on maps like field by the river 5-7 acre guys would run off to a spot miles away from the combat to xbow camp thus losing us the round

Simple fact is if you want full scale tactics then the only place you will find that is clan vs clan battles or strat If you lust for tactics so much join a clan and get squad tactics going 4-5 guys moving in a unit can have a large impact if they help each other out

[Reinhardt]

"Acre used to do tactics on NA and EU quite often. Fun times they were. "

pfft please. All Acre ever used to do was find a spot and camp it with xbows untill everyone else on the team was dead. thats not tactics thats called being dicks. Many times ive seen entire servers raging at you guys because on maps like field by the river 5-7 acre guys would run off to a spot miles away from the combat to xbow camp thus losing us the round

Simple fact is if you want full scale tactics then the only place you will find that is clan vs clan battles or strat If you lust for tactics so much join a clan and get squad tactics going 4-5 guys moving in a unit can have a large impact if they help each other out

I remember that, too. That was the beginning of 2011 or so and prior. About January or February we started to move around the map as a group instead of hold a spot. So no, we didn't "find a spot and camp it with xbows" all the time. In fact, we ceased to do that a long time ago. I was simply reminiscing the teamwork that Acre displayed. From 2010's camping to 2011's running around as a group. In any case, we were at least utilizing teamwork.

EDIT: You remember when the Templars and Acre held that roof and camped the shit out of it one round? That was hilarious. heh

In any case, teamwork isn't displayed enough in cRPG anymore. Although, Occitan did flank one round on a map on NA like yesterday... sadly that's all the "tactics" I've seen in a long while.

[Murmillus_Prime]

Holding [W] and spamming is the most honourable method of combat. There is no deception in open combat just a life or death situation, if your team-mates are alert they can help keep you alive (from being back-stabbed) or by supporting you when you find yourself outnumbered, this is where the key to winning a charge lies, whether team-mates are alert enough to help one another, and whether they're careful enough to not team-kill each-other.

Let's face it, the faster we all die the quicker the multiplier changes, if for benefit then great, instead of waiting 6 minutes to get x3 you now only had to wait 2, and I have to admit unless I'm on my HA alt, I find long drawn out rounds, ending with 2-3 scattered archers/inf extremely irritating.

[RandomDude]

For me I generally like field battles (random plains maps).

Why? For a few reasons. Tactics are usually used a lot more on these maps than any other. There's no roof camping to worry about and whilst cav are going to be a force of annoyance they can be hopefully neutralised as part of the plan/tactics.

I agree that most shield walls are silly and ppl will stand in them until death.

Also the amount of tactics that can be used are very limited.

Im sure someone wrote a guide about tactics in crpg (phaz maybe?) and he mentioned that you need to give very simple orders like "go right" "go left" "hold hill" etc.

With flags it can be a bit easier if ppl follow the flag carrier but quite often when they move, the archers are left behind (bcos they have tunnel vision and cant read/see?)

[Dezilagel]

Quote battle between me and Joker86, probably uninteresting for everyone else and derailing the topic anyway:

(click to show/hide)

You are just bringing up some weird, very philosophical explanation of what is smart and what not. 

Well yeah, how can you talk about something without defining it at least to some degree?

Well, then let's assume a professor and a sparrow jump out of a destroyed plane, who will survive? Both DO want to survive, so the sparrow is smarter because... he was born as a sparrow?

I'm sorry, but I thought this was obvious:

It's a matter of free will. And while I for the sake of the argument would assume that animals don't have it since the thought of animals on equal footing with humans is emotionally disturbing to most and as such will just make it easier to sway away from the actual point the matter of fact is that the sparrow has spent his life learning how to fly (equal footing, remember!), while the professor, I assume, hasn't. Free will implies endless possibilities so the "well humans can't fly!" argument doesn't apply. (In most metaphysical discussions, it is assumed that anything one can conceive of is logically possible).

If you want to make it easier for yourself, in this situation just think of two humans, one which always carries a parachute and one who doesn't . The one with the parachute you could probably call an idiot in most situations since he's making it very hard on himself, except for this one where he is probably the smartest guy on the planet.

My main point is, which I still doesn't seem to have convinced you of, that stupidity is a malleable, situational concept. A very simple and straight forward example would be a guy who can't tie his shoelaces or conduct normal conversation but who can solve advanced calculus in a matter of seconds. Is he a genius or an idiot?

It of course depends on the situation, and that's why one should refrain from calling people stupid since that is just very narrow-minded and ignorant. If at any time the situation was different, the tables might just be turned, and that is a very important lesson not only for your personal understanding but also one in respect. Here in Sweden in the early 20th century, we used to lock up and basically forcefully sterilize people deemed "slow-thinking" - in order to "save the gene-pool".

The professor would actually try to avoid the fist fight against the hooligan, and by simply having the try to do so he would prove to be the smarter one (as remaining unscratched after a fist fight that didn't even happen is more likely than remaining unscratched after any other possible fist fight with whatever chances for everybody).

Now this is just sidestepping the problem and assuming something that DEFINITIVELY isn't necessarily true. I just said they were in a fistfight, not how they got there. There's nothing saying that the professor wasn't the one who started it. Maybe he got really pissed at the hooligan for messing with his girlfriend for example? It doesn't matter, point is this is not a valid response since you're not actually solving the problem.

Isn't it most beneficial to NOT run into a bunch of enemies, as you say you do, but to stick to your teammates? How many enemies can a good player kill when being outnumbered, and how many can he kill when being supported?

But here again you assume that the ultimate goal is winning. As I said earlier, my *ultimate goal* is fun, but since that doesn't seem to bite I can tell you one thing I value higher then winning and that would be personal progress.

Rushing into a bunch of enemies, challenging myself, putting myself in situations that require me to play with utmost skill and efficiency, those kinds of things advance my unnderstanding of the game however useless it might be for the team. Call me a douche if you want, but I won't learn much just hanging back with a pike (which would probably be the most "beneficial" thing to do for your team as a polearmer), that I do in strategus and clanbattles.

But please, don't hook yourself up on any further philosophical discussion about the word "stupid". People have different intelligence, and in general higher intelligence is always better than lesser. Period. There is nothing to discuss about.

As I explained earlier, this is a VERY ignorant position and strongly advise you to revise/think through it throughoutly.

I was speaking of infantry. Although, to be honest, I think on most maps a good two handed infantryman is leading the scoreboard... but that's only my personal impression.

Well, you're contradicting yourself from the beginning. First you say that benefit = helping your team win and now benefit = good K:D?

I said many people are too stupid to think about tactics, you said they perhaps only want to have fun and relax, and then I said that having fun and relaxing doesn't exclude thinking about using tactics. If I attack three times and fail every time, I don't even need to think about changing my behaviour, I do this by default, it's not tiresome or anything else. If I cross open fields and I am constantly "afraid" of missiles or cavalry, I instinctively get the idea that crossing that field (at that moment) could be a bad idea, so I won't repeat it. I don't say I am super smart, but I really worry about people who don't understand such things within the blink of an eye. It's not like I would want people to watch the map from above in spectator mode and to think hard about the most beneficial maneuvers. The things I am talking about are on the level of "If you are walking, and a cliff is approaching you, stop walking." Whoever is not capable or too lazy (which means it would be an effort for him) to think that far is nothing else than a lemming. And NOT smart.

Still, they might be playing just for shits and giggles and don't really give a fuck whether they die or not. You spperently see something wrong with that - I do not.

You can play this game with whatever situation comes into your mind. Basically you are saying: "there is not THE stupidity, it always depends on the situation", and I can't really disagree on that (although I think all Johnny Knoxville and the other retards deserve are doubled health insurance contributions and not shitloads of money  ), I think you will also agree to me that there IS stupidity concerning certain situations and possible behaviour. And I say one of those cases is: cRPG battle, charging alone against a bunch of enemies.

Yes, and I disagree with that since there are things to be gained that are beyond "winning the round", which are, as outlined earlier, fun and personal (skill) progression.

Problem is: the professor did not prepare for the fist fight, as he didn't know he will get into one. That's what I said before, being smart has nothing to do how "suitable" you are to get over certain, special situations. The example you created has nothing to do with being smart, it's a fist fight. It's not like the hooligan decided to NOT go to the university to study maths but rather hang out with those semi-skinheads. And it's not like the professor knew he would get into this fist fight and still thought he would do better with maths.

Yeah, but such is the nature of life.

Just as you can get through life without ever getting into a fistfight, you can also manage well without ever having the need for higher-level math. And yet you seem to blindly idealize the math professor.

This also boils down to very deep questions about causation and whether existence is predestined and so on which I can't really be bothered to discuss (yet). Fact is, you're going to find yourself in all manner of situations, and blindly thinking that higher academic education is the way through life seems, well, not too smart.

If you want to compare them, the only way to do so is to give them the same task and then let them accomplish it their way. This way you can find out who is the smarter one.

Nope, you could never compare them. This is the kind of cut-corner, full throttle, lowest-common-denominator thinking that is WAY to prevalent. What task? Different tasks are of course going to produce different outcomes.

You can't say that one person is "smarter" than another, unless you define smart in a very shallow, narrow way like IQ or something; which I think would just be sad.

But if you think that being smart is equal to "If you have the upper hand in a situation you have been the smarter one" I remember you to my example with the sparrow and the professor. If this is being smart, then what is having luck?

If you "have the upper hand" then yes, you have obviously been smarter in preparation for that certain situation.

- old cRPG: getting rewards for each player killed. New cRPG: getting rewards for winning rounds.
- it's always a team vs. a team. Otherwise it could have been created just deathmatch free for all. The one with the best k/d wins.
- winning means you (or your team) killed more enemies, killing more enemies doesn't (neccesarily) mean you'll win.
- Upkeep is independant of your K/D-ratio

As said earlier, gold, xp and such are not rewards in themselves to me at least.

You just slandered me to not be thinking before posting. 

Yes, that's because I think that's what you need to do. I always enjoy a debate, but just crushing obviously faulty statements is no fun

The important part there was that that is just my personal opinion, it has nothing to do with the argument. Feel free to ignore.

(Hurr-Durr)
 

I hope this time my answer is meeting your high standards, and I would appreciate very much if you wouldn't make fun of my lingual mistakes, as English is not my mother language, it's German, which is one of the most difficult languages on earth. Just to inform you. All I have is what I learned at school, I never was even travelling through an English speaking country, let alone having spoken more than a few words to someone with English as mother language.

Of course, as a non-native speaker myself, I am well aware that language can be a hindrance. If you think I was making fun of any of your lingual mishaps then you must have misunderstood me.

What I do think is quite *funny* is that you seem to idealize education yet you boast one of (in my opinion) the most uneducated opinions there are.

Sorry for the late reply, I've only had sporadic computer access.

[Joker86]

(click to show/hide)

I will try to shorten this up, as again I felt tempted to pick certain sentences of your post and "falsificate" them (in my opinion). But I think this will lead nowhere. In the end we most likely will have to agree that we disagree, anyway. 

I like to stick to the "classical" definition that someone with sub-par intelligence is stupid, and thus he won't solve many problems as good as someone with more intelligence, which leads to the simple conclusion that higher intelligence is favourable in general.

What you are doing here, seems to me to be an attempt to stop people of "looking down" towards others, by assuming they are stupid. I can't say anything against this, as it is a very honorable act, but in my eyes it doesn't help the discussion much.

It is a proven fact that the average concentration span and similar things among modern children is LOWER than is past times, you can blame the internet, TV, bad education or whatever, but this is something you have to count with.

The most successful multiplayer-shooter these days is Call of Duty, I would say. A shooter where you don't need anything else but reflexes for. Not a single bit of character building, tactics or anything else.

I can't enjoy my free time without using my brain, the only exception is sex. (I know, it takes place in the brain, but still it's not "thinking"  ) I think this mere fact, combined with the small addition that constant use of the brain increases its efectiveness, could lead to the conclusion, that the chances, that I am more intelligent than a person for who using the brain in his/her free time is "uncomfortable", "tiresome" or something else, are quite good. That's why I assume that I am more intelligent than those persons, and thus smarter, as I use those terms almost simultaneously. OF COURSE there can be exceptions, but in general the statement should be correct. It's like "Chinese don't drink milk.", you can't shout "you dirty racist", because for the majority of the Chinese this is simply true. I tend to keep my life in generalized statements (black people from Africa are the best runners, Asians can't stomach alcohol that well, Mormons have several wifes, Germans cherish punctuality), but I also always keep in mind that there can be exceptions and I have no problem to accept them, so that I think in general I don't do anything wrong.

To finally end this topic by directing it back to the initial topic again: I was assuming, that many players, if not most, play cRPG out of two reasons: 1.: killing as many people as possible without dying, and therefore 2.: XP, gold (= winning rounds) and personal skill, as all those things help to achieve point 1. Of course there can be exceptions of this, but I am quite confident that if you made a poll about the motivation in the game, something similar would be the result.

In my eyes playing in a team is most beneficial to those goal, and I already gave a few reasons for this, and I think they are difficult to deny (you survive longer, etc...). So if someone is having the same goals like me, but does NOT play in a team, instead charges righaway into the first bunch of enemies he sees, I ask myself what makes him do that? And my conclusion was: if he wants the same like me, but tries to achieve this by having himself outnumbered, dying early and weakening the team, he either didn't think about what he does properly, or he didn't think about it yet, at all. But as to me sticking to teammates and using the advantages of the map are so incredibly obvious, that you can't say it's a big act of thinking and formulating a big conclusion, I call them stupid (again it's a generalisation for this moment). Because they do the wrong in this moment, so even with your definition they wouldn't be smart in this moment. (Remember: given that they have the same goals like me!)

That's all I wanted to say. I generalized my statements, so that I can keep them shorter, because my posts are already too long anyway, I can't afford to cover all possibilities to stay as politically correct as possible 

[Dezilagel]

Okay, to "generalize" my statements then:

You're acting like a fucking idiot thinking yourself better/smarter/more intelligent then anyone else on the premise that you "use your brainpower" in your free time, in fact, in a game where in most situations people don't even WANT to use it but where there are situations (strat, clan battles) where it is displayed quite extensively through the use of advanced tactics. Add to that the irony in the fact that you don't seem to be smart/educated enough to realize the blatant idiocy in calling someone "sub-par intelligent" WITHOUT EVEN DEFINING INTELLIGENCE and not thinking about, to continue your example, how today's children have improved in other areas of knowledge, such as language, the use of technology and awareness of global and ethical issues. Which might just be more RELEVANT then your narrow, ignorant, dated definition of what it means to be intelligent (oh sorry, I had to assume that since you weren't able to come up with a proper definition).

I can understand that you cba to reply to my entire post, but just answer my one question about the guy who couldn't tie his shoes nor conduct a normal conversation, but who was a math genius and I'll be satisfied. Idiot or genius?

[Teeth]

Discussions are a wonderful thing