I''ve played CounterStrike for quite some time, and while I''m not a top "professional" player, I''m a pretty good amateur. Now my problem with CS is that I''ve almost never seen successful team tactics, although the game should be the perfect ground for them. Clan members can most likely practice such tactics closer to their potential, but for a team of random players bunching together is the highest form of organization. What can be done? Some of my thoughts: - A better predefined radio messages system: - enforcing a common vocabulary. The map should be divided in areas and the name of each area should appear on the screen of each player. - all radio messages should automatically include the area of the broadcasting player. So instead of "I need backup", the message would be "I need backup at base A". - automatic radio messages. As soon as an enemy enters the viewing range of a player, a "Enemy spotted in area ***" message can be broadcast. Other messages like "Multiple enemy spotted", "Enemy down", "Bomb lost in area ***". Position report messages (periodic and when a player moves into another area). - local radio messages: the "Fire in the hole" grenade warning should only reach the players near the broadcaster. The message should also come before the grenade is thrown (mouse down arms the grenade and sends the warning, mouse up throws the grenade). - different messages for explosive grenades and flash-bang grenades. No message for smoke grenades. - A _very_ simple AI guiding the players. The best player of the last round chooses the strategy at the start of the next round (or he can change the strategy during the round too). Then the AI groups players into teams, according to their statistics (a player armed with a sniper rifle will get a sniper mission, etc.) and gives them some general objectives, which come as advice and are not enforced in any way.

Very good ideas Diodor, I wonder how hard it would be to make map tags that make that implementable

Can you think of more ideas that don''t relate to the radio messages system?

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

Just thought I''d mention that Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer does do the map area thing, and radio calls to map areas, works quite well for medics to get to downed men.

*remembers CS Beta 4 - 5.1*

You could get people to cooperate on random servers. It was good. After Beta 7.x, it was chaos and people started calling each other fagorts and cheaters. I left.

There is little to no way to get the majority of people to work together or follow an objective on a public server. Many of the players will be newbies who don''t understand the game yet, or are stuck in the frag/be fragged mentality. If you want to see players use team tactics, you may want to check private, reserved slot servers.

The key to getting people to work together is through a powerful interface. Having voice communication 1 button away does wonders. When I give a general order/request I will seldom get support, but when I address people by name they actually follow my directions. Instead of throwing everybody in the game into a wild pistol round in the beginning, the server should wait 30 seconds or so so a team can come up with a strategy that can be used for the first and future rounds.

I also agree with you on a common vocabulary needed. The maps should have naming conventions using signs so that everybody can refer to locations using the same name. A good example of this is de_survivor in which theres a sign in the T''s spawn giving names to each path they have to the CT''s base. Also some new maps label each bomb site prominently with A or B, so teams can quickly give status reports.

Voice Communication is great because it doesn''t prevent you from using your hands, which keeps me from communicating in combat. You can never get the whole team communicating effectively on a public server because you''ll always get a good chunk of people that just want to kill people. Having a good interface, and a few good players on the server however will allow good 1-way communication, which is better then nothing.

- Kevin "BaShildy" King
Game Programmer: DigiPen
www.mpogd.com

While voice communication could help promote teamwork, it must be implemented well. The voice communication that VALVe added to Half-life sucks. It is very, very low quality and doesn''t work on many machines. I''ve tried using it and every time I enable it for any mod it crashes the game. An example of it being done correctly is the program named Roger Wilco. I''ve used it before in-game and the sound quality is very good but it doesnt add too much lag either. I was able to play counter-strike with roger wilco on a 56k modem fine, it only added 20 or 30 to my ping. Now that I have cable and a better box, I can use it on the higher quality settings with no performance hit at all.

I beleive the only way to get teamwork on pubs is to reward it with more than just a slight advantage. There need to be places that a player by himself/herself cant get to, but maybe with the help of 1 or 2 other people can. A good example is the old italy map before they added the noclip brushes. With the help of 1 or 2 teammates you could get onto the roofs and wreck havok on the other team if they didnt work together to do the same. Another possibility is to make doors with switches that open them and place the door and switch far enough away that the door closes before you can get to it after pressing the switch.

Another problem is cheaters. Those people that cheat dont need the help of teammates because they can kill the enemy all by themselves because of ''better'' (programmed, usually by somebody else) reaction times and aim.

Diodor: I think automatic radio messages would be a very bad idea. They would spam the screen a lot, especially with 10 people on a team running around the map looking for the enemy team (before initial contact) and then trying to ambush them after their location is known. AI guiding players is also a bad idea. Adding a whiteboad with the map as a background might not be a bad idea, and maybe give the person with the best ratio and over a certain number of kills the ability to draw plans for the first 15-30 seconds(of course, server configurable down to 0 for not enabled) of each round. The problem is that not many people would follow the strategy. Also, clans dont need to practice tactics to be able to use them, at least the clan I''m in doesn''t. We know eachother well enough to assist without too much communication, the little we use is usually things like "rush left", or "delay right", "slow center" at the beggining of the round and the common "Enemy Spotted". We often have fun on pubs using simple strategies and getting to be the top on the team. We often got(past tense cuz we dont play now due to 1.4) called cheaters.


"I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception
"The Requested Information Is Unknown Or Classified" -Anonymous

quote:
Original post by Symphonic

Can you think of more ideas that don''t relate to the radio messages system?

Not much. It''s all about sending information between team members so they don''t end-up running around the level like headless chickens.

A detailed fullscreen level map (shows with a keypress, just like scores), showing friendly players, enemy player contacts (with time since last spotting), map coverage (this degrades in time), perhaps weapons and HP for both friends and foes could help though.

Another thinking direction can be filling up the dead time (with instruction: key bindings, map tips and tricks, etc. or with some form of strategy choices for the next round).

quote:
Original post by hpox

You could get people to cooperate on random servers. It was good. After Beta 7.x, it was chaos and people started calling each other fagorts and cheaters. I left.

Yes, I''ve played online a few days earlier after a big pause, and the cheating was quite disgusting. The LAN play was as good as ever though.

quote:
Original post by BaShildy

When I give a general order/request I will seldom get support, but when I address people by name they actually follow my directions. Instead of throwing everybody in the game into a wild pistol round in the beginning, the server should wait 30 seconds or so so a team can come up with a strategy that can be used for the first and future rounds.

This proves the potential for cooperation is there. I''m weary about adding the 30 seconds delay though.

quote:
Voice Communication is great because it doesn''t prevent you from using your hands, which keeps me from communicating in combat. You can never get the whole team communicating effectively on a public server because you''ll always get a good chunk of people that just want to kill people. Having a good interface, and a few good players on the server however will allow good 1-way communication, which is better then nothing.

Yup, but there are downsides to VC too. It''s often not available or not allowed (LAN games) and the recorded professional military voices improve the atmosphere somewhat.

quote:
Original post by Extrarius

I think automatic radio messages would be a very bad idea. They would spam the screen a lot, especially with 10 people on a team running around the map looking for the enemy team (before initial contact) and then trying to ambush them after their location is known.

A system for filtering messages can work I think. Simple rules: delay or just don''t send messages if the player is fighting himself or is already receiving messages. Also, don''t send multiple "enemy sighted" messages for the same enemy player or for the same area. Combining two "enemy sighted" messages into a "enemies sighted" clears another extra message. A precedence level can ensure the most important messages get there first.

quote:
AI guiding players is also a bad idea. Adding a whiteboard with the map as a background might not be a bad idea, and maybe give the person with the best ratio and over a certain number of kills the ability to draw plans for the first 15-30 seconds(of course, server configurable down to 0 for not enabled) of each round. The problem is that not many people would follow the strategy.

I didn''t mean a strict AI control. The team leader (best player from last game - voting can work too tho) chooses a general strategy (like you said, something simple like "rush left", "heavy rush left", "delay right" - predefined but scriptable level specific strategies). Then the AI will tell people what sub-team they''re in and what objectives they have, making sure the best players with the correct weapons are in the proper team.

Could this be done with the overview map that just came out with version 1.4?

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

How about a 1.4 -> 1.3 patch and call it 1.5

then cs would be fun again!!

I don''t think I''ve played the 1.4 version... If I did I didn''t notice anything unusual (maybe except for some online cheaters). What''s so wrong about it anyway?