Arma Tac2 Arsenal Restrictions Discussion Thread

[Zlobin.N]

Would you mind giving me examples of things that have occurred?

It enables people to form their own independent groups, which disturbs AI allocation by fragmenting player groups*. It also enables people to play roles they are not slotted as, which disturbs players when they slot in for that role, but find it is already being fulfilled. We saw a similar thing happen all the time when we had vehicle restrictions disabled, essentially someone would fly transport without being in the slot, and then someone would slot in as buffalo only to find someone already flying. These are things that several zeus's and other people in S3 have observed occurring often.

*essentially the server can support a finite amount of AI, and it only takes a single person to activate a spawn zone, so people going out and doing their own thing spreads the AI unacceptably thin

 

[Sorrow.R]

That is a reasonable cause. However, I do not think restricting weapons will prevent splinter groups from happening. From what I can gather, you want people to work together. Restricting their weapons is not likely to do that for the simple reason that, even if they play as one single team, people have no objective in the first place. There is no goal in Tac 2, so it's no surprise people go out on their own, because it is not any different than going with anybody else. The only thing players can do on Tac 2 is kill enemies.

I suggested this before, and will suggest this again. Bring back the vanilla missions and tactical missions. At most you will have two groups on the map at any time because there is nothing to do elsewhere. The vanilla missions are a single goal that has a global marker so anybody at any time can join in. Doing this, with the exception of MCCs, would basically make it impossible to have more than two groups at a time.

 

[Zlobin.N]

That is a reasonable cause. However, I do not think restricting weapons will prevent splinter groups from happening. From what I can gather, you want people to work together. Restricting their weapons is not likely to do that for the simple reason that, even if they play as one single team, people have no objective in the first place. There is no goal in Tac 2, so it's no surprise people go out on their own, because it is not any different than going with anybody else. The only thing players can do on Tac 2 is kill enemies.

I suggested this before, and will suggest this again. Bring back the vanilla missions and tactical missions. At most you will have two groups on the map at any time because there is nothing to do elsewhere. The vanilla missions are a single goal that has a global marker so anybody at any time can join in. Doing this, with the exception of MCCs, would basically make it impossible to have more than two groups at a time.

Focusing players on a single objective and providing a greater variety of objectives is something we are currently working on.

 

[Chapman.K]

Focusing players on a single objective and providing a greater variety of objectives is something we are currently working on.

I feel like few numbers of objectives will lead to better teamwork. and again addressing the attitudes and some people's inability to anything but their way.

 

[Sorrow.R]

Focusing players on a single objective and providing a greater variety of objectives is something we are currently working on.

Well I would suggest exploring that avenue before forcing players into cooperation in the ways you are doing it.

At this point, there is nothing more I can do or add to this. I've said my piece. Thank you for at least hearing me out. Though I believe this is a serious mistake on S3's part, through and through.

 

[Morrow.J]

just let them have their fun. One persons idea of fun may be different t from yours and that’s okay as long as they are not being assholes or disrespectful

 

[Whitsel.M]

As gunslinger 4 is from what I can tell gonna be known as the heavy weapons squad so what they are able to get from the box. Also I get having like the support slots more restrictive tho will the whole squad of gunslinger 1-3 have the same access to weapons as I feel going from a AR- rifleman and restrict would be a bit far. Would it also be a push to readd the MK11 or at least maybe add to gunslinger 4.

Already on it. The Mk11 and some other semi-auto sniper were restricted to the sniper/spotter role but are being put back with infantry as well. We are also putting thermal optics back into the sniper/spotter role as well as maybe putting them back into the infantry slots as well. These were in the original proposal but were removed after a number of requests.

Arsenal adjustments · Issue #25 · 7Cav/7Cav-Insurgency

Add DMRs to infantry role Add thermal optics to sniper role

github.com

give us back the vanilla missions and tactical missions

Could you explain what you mean by this? You mention this again later in your post and I'm not quite sure what you mean by vanilla missions. Are you referring to warlord or endgame or some other BI MP coop mode? We're working on ways to improve the mission file in terms of mission flow and introduce more variety in missions but that all requires a lot of work scripting-wise and takes time and has technical limitations.

However, limiting what people can and cannot use is absolutely not the way to go, especially with the way it has currently been implemented (being that your access to weapons is restricted by role selection screen).

How would you propose addressing these issues then? People grabbing any equipment and any vehicle they wanted way the biggest issue being brought to S3 on a daily basis. There are many people on both extreme ends of the spectrum (full restrictions vs no restrictions) and what we have now is a middle ground between the two. We actually have a greater total variety of weapons available now than we did before, they are just filtered by your role. The main two weapons requested that aren't already available are the MG42 and M1 Garand.

Secondly, weapon restrictions both inhibit and restrict the creativity and functionality of MCCs.

As has already been mentioned several times in this thread, if a Zeus wants to run an MCC using weapons or equipment that is not in the default arsenals they are more than capable of adding them in. The whole point is that in such situations everybody will already by playing with an understanding that players are using alternate uniforms or weapons.

If these changes are put in place in order to promote organization, I guarantee they will not. Most people I see on Tac 2 run rifleman regardless, so any limit to that won't affect the majority of players, but rather the minority who prefer a specialized role/weapon. What's worse if this is the case, there is NO INCENTIVE WHATSOEVER to organize in the first place. There are NO real objectives on Tac 2. The best we have currently is killing bad guys to find intel which leads us to more bad guys who are guarding intel which leads to more bad guys. It's boring and monotonous.

As stated above we are working on mission flow but that is easier said than done. Unfortunately, Arma scripting does not simply bend to one's will. Regarding your first point that none of the changes have promoted organization - we have gotten almost unanimous feedback that the very opposite is the case. How would you propose we better encourage organized team play?

Not allowing players access to weapons and gear from the arsenal is, in and of itself, inventory policing.

Inventory policing specifically refers to the process by which items not allowed to a class are removed from one's inventory when they are grabbed. We specifically did not go for this because it creates the issue that if you pick up a restricted weapon it simply vanishes. This was before your time but that is something that was very much alive and well no Tac2 for a long time. It was really only fairly recently in the history of Tac2 that arsenals were opened up at all. It was only a few short years ago you could only use an M4 or M249 and a cav uniform. I'd love it if I could link you to the old feedback threads where people were begging just to get access to an Mk18.

unlikely, as it is; most infantry roles have the same restrictions between SL-GREN-RIFL-CLS

The expand upon this for the benefit of everyone in this thread, all players in a "role" share access to the same inventory. All infantry have access to the same equipment. All heli pilots have access to the same equipment. Sniper and spotter have access to the same equipment. All medics have access to the same equipment. There is no distinction made between a grenadier and an automatic rifleman for instance.

You cannot say that the risk of it happening due to the number of players who come in and out of the server in and of itself justifies this. And any restriction without a proper reason is extreme.

Risk in and of itself, in this situation, does not justify restrictions. If this were an issue that occurred repeatedly and consistently disturbed players then I would agree. However, risk in and of itself does not justify this kind of action.

If that were the case, friendly fire should be disabled due to the risk of blue on blue.

The point is that even if a minority of players exhibit the behavior being addressed, it does affect the majority of players. It was a literally daily complaint already which is why the restrictions were put in place. Friendly fire due to opfor uniforms was one part of the issue, another was players not playing their role upsetting both the people relying on them to play their role and those trying to play the role someone has effectively changed to. The best example of this is the number of players that might take an infantry slot to play as a sniper that would limit the capacity of the infantry squad to operate and make the person actually in the longshot slot redundant.

The made up issues here are ones by S3, and from what Zlobin has told me have been decided over risk, rather than an issue that exists (unless I have misinterpreted what he said, but I believe I understood him well enough).

This is simply not the case. S3 has already specifically shut down any changes to theoretical issues and sought to address the issues that have actively been brought forth and complained about.

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I want to add my piece to this, not in reply to any specific comment. We try to cater to a large, diverse player base. Inevitably, everybody wants something a little different, and often opinions collide. Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one, and they all stink a little. Ultimately, the primary guiding principals behind the design of Tac2 is a recruitment platform that is as reasonably representative of the way we play as possible while still maintaining access to a variety of fun opportunities. We currently have an amalgamation of many many players' feedback and an attempt to find a middle ground between them. We have worked to specifically address issues that infringe on other players' experiences adversely.

I spent a long time fighting to get more freedom on Tac2 and still do. I still am getting requests to limit more stuff and to open things up. For every request I've seen to add a weapon (that isn't already there), I've seen one limit AR's to only automatic riflemen or something similar. We've already been making adjustments to feedback and will continue to do so. Players are very caught up in the arsenals (probably due to the thread name), but there is work put into every aspect of Tac2, including vehicles, base features, mission flow, etc.

This all said, I'd like to redirect this discussion to the Arma 3 Tactical Realism 2 Feedback Thread. This thread's original intent was a preliminary discussion on the details of what would be in the proposed arsenals, but we are long past that. This thread will be locked as the conversation is beginning to degrade. I encourage you all to continue the discussion in a productive manner there.