Post by X on Oct 20, 2013 11:41:03 GMT -5
So I'll start of with the positives and move on to the criticisms later. First, off I'd like to say the tan guys that I played with were a great group of guys. Everyone was following instructions. I don't know if I've met he leader of Squad 3 before, but whoever that was he was a great SL and seemed like cool a guy. Also, Squad 5 had their shit together too. I appreciate Squad 1, 3, and later 7 taking castle defense. I realize it's a boring job at times, but no one complained. For the guys on green that I did run into I didn't have any issues with overkill (outside of what's to be expected at a night op) and everyone was being courteous. The ODA guys were a major thorn throughout the op. I know you guys are experienced and the added benefit of your NVGs made you guys a serious threat throughout the game. I had a lot of fun throughout the first half of the game, but after the dinner break things kinda of went downhill.
As I understand it the SK role players ate the second dozen donuts that I brought to the game. Those were bought and paid for by me, so that's kinda lame. The idea was to use those for bartering and then I turn around and they're just gone. Later at the green FOB someone from the doctors group said yeah I had one of those. Believe it or not those are like $10 for a dozen so that kinda pisses me off.
The fact that we had essentially two mercenary groups at a night op was a recipe for confusion which basically ruined the game for me. I don't really know why the RFA guys turned on us in the second half. We were paying them and making exchanges and they just stabbed us in the back (a recurring theme last night). I mean I realize this is something that can happen, but if mercs are supposed to be soldiers for hire and we're the ones paying for them, then I don't really understand why they would turn on us unless green gave them a better deal. I'm not really sure what green had to barter with since we had the C4 bomb.
Then there's the doctors. In theory I can see how it may have seemed like a cool idea to have a bunch of doctors and no one knows who the real guy is, but in practice it was horrible. So we captured the first doctor and he soon tells us that he isn't the real doctor and he has C4. OK I kinda figured that was too easy. Then later we're told that Helmet is the real doctor. OK the manhunt for helmet in-sues. Eventually we find out that helmet isn't the real doctor and it's Yankee (I think) who is the real doctor. Yankee says he'll give us the location of the trigger if we bring helmet back to him, because apparently he defected or something. So I'm out running all over the field trying to find this doctor. At no point did anyone ever make it clear where any objective was (except the one meeting with the doctors group), so we spent the majority of our time just looking for objectives.
Eventually I just say fuck it and I take a squad of guys to green FOB to just find the trigger ourselves. After about 15 minutes of looking all around green FOB we are told that unless someone points it out to us we're not going to find it. OK great. So we hang around waiting for either the Reverend, or someone (it wasn't really clear to me at the time) to come over and help us find the trigger. Eventually the doctors group shows up. We're all having a friendly conversation about how apparently they are on our side now and they want to help us find the trigger. Well no more than 5 minutes after that some guy pulls out a smoke grenade, lights it, and places it in a coffee can. "You all have been Sarin gassed. Your dead for the next 10 minutes." Then the doctors proceed to argue about whether or not we actually had to be in the smoke or not in order to be gassed. I have a question. Why are the doctors immune to sarin gas? Now I was basically standing in the middle of the cloud so I just sit down and tell my guys to shoot them. Some guy gets shot in the dick, everyone laughs (except him) and it's over. At this point I'm basically done. I've had enough of chasing down fake doctors and triggers that may or not be anywhere.
I talk to DeathDealer after the game and he explains that after the doctors and our squad left he walked back to green FOB by himself. He continued the search for the trigger. When the final whistle blew some guy makes his way from the brush. Apparently he was so far in that DeathDealer had to call to him so he could hear his voice. Later he says that he is the Reverend and he has the trigger. DeathDealer said that he was looking for the glow in the dark bio hazard sign, but it was difficult with the moonlight reflecting off of the wet grass. The Reverend then says that well he covered up the trigger with a poncho so no one could possibly find it.
I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same thing, but that fucking sucks. The part that bothers me is that we didn't really lose because we were ineffective in combat, we basically lost because every time we completed some objective we would be told, oh well no you have to do this now. Oh sorry I don't have the trigger Doctor #10 has the trigger. It was all incredibly frustrating.
So here's what I would do differently in the future.
The sort of objectives that could work in the day may not work as well at night when the general confusion of the dark sets in. So I would have kept the objectives simpler and not brought as much intentional misdirection into to the game.
Merc groups haven't really worked well in any game that I've played. There's too much confusion over whether they are or are not on your side. Generally it devolves into the mercs being their own team and everyone just shoots them and in hind sight I should have directed our guys to do just that.
Role players should just be non-combatants. Otherwise, how are they different from another merc group? Also, the role players in this game I guess were supposed to be refs too and I don't think that's a good idea. Generally they are all in one area at a time so they're not very effective refs. For example in the second half, all of them were at green fob where there aren't more than 5 players.
I would also take something that Mosin did in his night game. Instead of one break in the middle Mosin had three breaks. At each break all of the players would go back to the spawn and the ref would brief everyone on their performance in the last section. Based on that they would be assigned new objectives (or given the same one if they failed) and the game would start again. This time allows for the staff to make sure that both teams are clear on what they should be doing.
Honestly, I may be off on some of these points and that's because I really had no idea what the fuck was going on at the end of the game. So if I got something wrong feel free to correct me.
As I understand it the SK role players ate the second dozen donuts that I brought to the game. Those were bought and paid for by me, so that's kinda lame. The idea was to use those for bartering and then I turn around and they're just gone. Later at the green FOB someone from the doctors group said yeah I had one of those. Believe it or not those are like $10 for a dozen so that kinda pisses me off.
The fact that we had essentially two mercenary groups at a night op was a recipe for confusion which basically ruined the game for me. I don't really know why the RFA guys turned on us in the second half. We were paying them and making exchanges and they just stabbed us in the back (a recurring theme last night). I mean I realize this is something that can happen, but if mercs are supposed to be soldiers for hire and we're the ones paying for them, then I don't really understand why they would turn on us unless green gave them a better deal. I'm not really sure what green had to barter with since we had the C4 bomb.
Then there's the doctors. In theory I can see how it may have seemed like a cool idea to have a bunch of doctors and no one knows who the real guy is, but in practice it was horrible. So we captured the first doctor and he soon tells us that he isn't the real doctor and he has C4. OK I kinda figured that was too easy. Then later we're told that Helmet is the real doctor. OK the manhunt for helmet in-sues. Eventually we find out that helmet isn't the real doctor and it's Yankee (I think) who is the real doctor. Yankee says he'll give us the location of the trigger if we bring helmet back to him, because apparently he defected or something. So I'm out running all over the field trying to find this doctor. At no point did anyone ever make it clear where any objective was (except the one meeting with the doctors group), so we spent the majority of our time just looking for objectives.
Eventually I just say fuck it and I take a squad of guys to green FOB to just find the trigger ourselves. After about 15 minutes of looking all around green FOB we are told that unless someone points it out to us we're not going to find it. OK great. So we hang around waiting for either the Reverend, or someone (it wasn't really clear to me at the time) to come over and help us find the trigger. Eventually the doctors group shows up. We're all having a friendly conversation about how apparently they are on our side now and they want to help us find the trigger. Well no more than 5 minutes after that some guy pulls out a smoke grenade, lights it, and places it in a coffee can. "You all have been Sarin gassed. Your dead for the next 10 minutes." Then the doctors proceed to argue about whether or not we actually had to be in the smoke or not in order to be gassed. I have a question. Why are the doctors immune to sarin gas? Now I was basically standing in the middle of the cloud so I just sit down and tell my guys to shoot them. Some guy gets shot in the dick, everyone laughs (except him) and it's over. At this point I'm basically done. I've had enough of chasing down fake doctors and triggers that may or not be anywhere.
I talk to DeathDealer after the game and he explains that after the doctors and our squad left he walked back to green FOB by himself. He continued the search for the trigger. When the final whistle blew some guy makes his way from the brush. Apparently he was so far in that DeathDealer had to call to him so he could hear his voice. Later he says that he is the Reverend and he has the trigger. DeathDealer said that he was looking for the glow in the dark bio hazard sign, but it was difficult with the moonlight reflecting off of the wet grass. The Reverend then says that well he covered up the trigger with a poncho so no one could possibly find it.
I'm not saying I wouldn't do the same thing, but that fucking sucks. The part that bothers me is that we didn't really lose because we were ineffective in combat, we basically lost because every time we completed some objective we would be told, oh well no you have to do this now. Oh sorry I don't have the trigger Doctor #10 has the trigger. It was all incredibly frustrating.
So here's what I would do differently in the future.
The sort of objectives that could work in the day may not work as well at night when the general confusion of the dark sets in. So I would have kept the objectives simpler and not brought as much intentional misdirection into to the game.
Merc groups haven't really worked well in any game that I've played. There's too much confusion over whether they are or are not on your side. Generally it devolves into the mercs being their own team and everyone just shoots them and in hind sight I should have directed our guys to do just that.
Role players should just be non-combatants. Otherwise, how are they different from another merc group? Also, the role players in this game I guess were supposed to be refs too and I don't think that's a good idea. Generally they are all in one area at a time so they're not very effective refs. For example in the second half, all of them were at green fob where there aren't more than 5 players.
I would also take something that Mosin did in his night game. Instead of one break in the middle Mosin had three breaks. At each break all of the players would go back to the spawn and the ref would brief everyone on their performance in the last section. Based on that they would be assigned new objectives (or given the same one if they failed) and the game would start again. This time allows for the staff to make sure that both teams are clear on what they should be doing.
Honestly, I may be off on some of these points and that's because I really had no idea what the fuck was going on at the end of the game. So if I got something wrong feel free to correct me.