Most desired patch upgrade?

[Dunblas]

I wanna know my rank!!

[palehorse864]

I would like hotkeys. I made a post about things such as select next unit within fleet hotkeys and hotkeys for each mode so you could select, choose mrbm, target, select, choose mrbm, target much more quickly using a combination of your mouse for targeting and your keyboard for changing units. That and several other hotkey ideas we desperately need.

This game is wonderful and well worth what I payed already, however, we do need better human interface controls. Limited waypointing would not be bad either as well as feedback on combat range and radar range when we are placing our buildings, that way we can place them more accurately to have crossover ranges and the like, or to cover the most area.

[Armchair General]

Yup, hotkeys for unit control would be great - a bit like some of the available hotkeys in Total Annihilation perhaps.
ctrl+ 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 0.

- assign units to a group
- select all units of that type (maybe?)
- zoom to selected unit location
- fire submarine balistic missiles in a single slavo from a fleet ie. pre program (just prior to launch) missiles, surface all subs in the group then launch simultaneously.
- the same as above for land based silos.
- limited waypoint system (shift + left click etc) for air and sea patrols
- warning alarm when a unit or land based installation is under attack.
- 'H' key zooms to your home city/capitol.

Controls like some of these would make an already good game, fantastic.

[TheDan]

Am I the only person surprised by such a big desire for a ranking system? Defcon has a fairly quick learning curve and so inexperienced players can quickly learn some clever tricks/tactics of their own. I fear that if players had rankings, then higher ranked players will become the most common targets and/or rarely trusted in a game. I'd prefer to make those sort of decisions based on the feel I get for a player, not just going for them because they have a high ranking (I would do that out of paranoia, it's pretty unavoidable).

And I'm not going to name any particular threads on this forum, but I foresee a lot of "OMG THE TOP PLAYERS HAVE ALLIED AGAINST US, THEY ARE CHEATING!"

I voted for AI, since Defcon may be a multiplayer experience, but I've yet to play a game where at least 2 of the players haven't dropped out and been replaced by AI. I'd like to see some more involvement with the AI and the alliance-system, AI players that can backstab and contribute to join/kick votes would be nice. Currently AI players seem to ignore vote requests and so it's very hard to get votes passed on teams that have an AI player.

[almo]

1) Playback
2) Ranking
3) AI

I'm not interested in mod support, since I think the game needs to get established first. If the community fragments into groups that will only play this-or-that mod, it can be harder for new players to join in.

[Rosti]

While I see your point about fragmentation, almo, I'm curious to see what this community can do when exposed to further Mod functionality. Mind you, replays would be well worth it.

<edit> Forgot to say - thanks for taking an interest in the general forum opinion! I for one have sort of been taking the Introversion staff's involvement a little bit for granted, so, err... thanks!</edit>

[yop]

I voted for replays
but I would like to see some imporvements like
lobby, server browser
cpu usage
memory leak

[Mas Tnega]

Considering "An organised Tournament" is not really a patch, and "Recording and Playback of games" exists largely for "An organised Tournament", can we have both?

[Lekdevil.NL]

Am I the only person surprised by such a big desire for a ranking system?

The only one being surprised? Maybe. But not the only one being against such a system.

I think that introducing a ranking system to this game will lead to an influx of players who will do anything to get on that leader board. Is that a bad thing? Well, I think so. Take a look at another game with a ranking system: Battlefield 2. There is a huge difference in playing experience between the "ranked" and the "unranked" servers, the former being characterized by the ubiquitous "stat whores", whose prime reason for being there seems to be to increase their rank at the cost of everything else (i.e. teamplay, common decency, having a good time). By contrast, the "unranked" servers generally (this being the key word) offer a more mature level of play.

I also think that a ranking system will bring out (or greatly stimulate) the drive in said stat whores to seek out and exploit every last hack and cheat that will lead them to even higher rankings. This, in turn, would set up the need for Introversion to police the ranking system, taking away valuable time from more productive tasks, such as improving the game and writing new ones.

So, if you want to attract the people from the "OMFG I 0WNZ j00 WITH MY D3FC0N RANKZ!!!!!111oneone" crowd, create a ranking system by all means. Otherwise, I'd say there are better ways to improve on this (already excellent) game.

Just my E0.02.

[DrFreedom]

the ranking system in bf2 was the icing on a utterly shitty thing that ea did to that entire game. the 'pay us for servers' was the begining, the ranking was the end. played bf1942, desert combat and forgotten hope for about 3 years straight. bf2 is a fucking arcade game. ea completly shit the bed with that unplayable piece of shit. i dont care about ranking for this game at all.

consider me a vocal supporter of 'playback' however, that would be tits.

[flatrick]

There's already about 75% less servers than at launch...by this rate, it'll become hard to get a 6/6 game going in a reasonable time.

Maybe time to put that ranking system online?

[scholt]

I totally agree with Lekdevil.NL

Ad beside that I think there would be many problems like: How to score?

- At the end of a round? so if you see you are going to loose or have heavy losses you just disconnect...

- So take the score at the disconnect point? that would also be crap, if you get disconnected because of network problems, power blackout or something you get perhaps bad score.

[dutch_camel_NL]

I would like to see an option, where you can kick players ingame (by the host only of course). I still have not seen any cheats, but i fear that time will come someday unfortunately. In my opinion you can better be prepared.

Now I decided to vote for recording/playback. You can learn so much from other ppl's tactics. Besides, it is nice to replay a nice ass-kicking win!

[xander]

I would like to see an option, where you can kick players ingame (by the host only of course). I still have not seen any cheats, but i fear that time will come someday unfortunately. In my opinion you can better be prepared.

Now I decided to vote for recording/playback. You can learn so much from other ppl's tactics. Besides, it is nice to replay a nice ass-kicking win!

To repeat a post from another thread:

Right now, we have a system where anyone can choose any speed (assuming that the server is set up that way). This system can be abused by people who leave it on realtime. The suggested solution is to create a kicking mechanism. This system would also be abused to kick people. So, in my mind, the question is this: would we rather see abuse of the timing mechanism, or a kicking mechanism?

Here are my two cents on the topic: I would rather see abuse of the timing mechanism. If someone chooses to set the time to realtime, you are still able to play. You may not finish your game as quickly as you would like, but, if that is a problem, you still have the choice to stay or go. If a kicking system is abused, you can be out of the game, just like that, without any appeal or recourse. However, an /ignore command in the chat window would be nice :)


xander

[dutch_camel_NL]

Xander, I do not mean any kick vote system, like e.g Battlefield 2, where you need x numbder of votes to kick a player. What I do like to see, is that the host is able to kick players. For example when (note: i was trying to put IF there, but every game has it cheats, and I am realistic enough to know that even this great game will have its cheaters in time (for once I hope that I am completely wrong here!)) there is a cheater, or a player goes AFK too long, or floods the chat with bad language.

All these suggestions are things that could happen, and when I create a game, I would like to have a mean to remove players from that game. Not only when joining, but also ingame.