making CloD a success

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by David Hayward

I don't understand the complaints about no Coop. What can you do in coop style missions that you can't do with the current mission builder?

BTW, I never see anyone on the RoF coop servers.

The difference is huge. In one scenario people have to join a server to start at the same time, in the other scenario, the server makes you start at the same time.

What a deal breaker eh?

You'd think if 12 people wanted to play a coop they'd all be on coms and just say "everyone ready"? "Ok, lets go" and all go flying together. If the lack of the current GUI is the excuse for people not flying coops all I can do is laugh.

And as this thread pertains to HL, I've yet to see any big event COOP war EVER on HL. Every COOP I joined was a basic meet in the middle and shoot at each other with random people, none of which were probably on coms.

@carguy - I'm fully aware of SEOW and the likes, but those weren't hosted on HL (the point of this discussion in the 1st place) That is a completely different animal and one that vanilla IL2 could never do. The online Wars were all made 3rd party including the software to make it possible.

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Bliss

The difference is huge. In one scenario people have to join a server to start at the same time, in the other scenario, the server makes you start at the same time.

What a deal breaker eh?

Yes, that sounds like a terrible burden.

[Stublerone]

@bliss: but what you also have to see is, that approx. about 80% of former pilots are simply not playing clod until it is flyable. So the number of sufficient coop evenings will raise up later (hopefully). It sure was mainly provided by the comunity and third party in the past, but it will be great to have it easier at all. U must also think of the fact, that the source code was cracked or made available, so that the com had more possibilties. I do not see that in clod and it will be very difficult for any creator to max out the possibilities in this more complicated game.

What I want to say is, that everything is welcome, to do things easier directly from the original game. I would appreciate any ways to make the whole gui more handy and that there are no differences in mission types. Jist make every ingame plane flyable from the beginning in the gui, no matter what mission type.

It would be a good start..

[furbs]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Bliss

The difference is huge. In one scenario people have to join a server to start at the same time, in the other scenario, the server makes you start at the same time.

What a deal breaker eh?

You'd think if 12 people wanted to play a coop they'd all be on coms and just say "everyone ready"? "Ok, lets go" and all go flying together. If the lack of the current GUI is the excuse for people not flying coops all I can do is laugh.

And as this thread pertains to HL, I've yet to see any big event COOP war EVER on HL. Every COOP I joined was a basic meet in the middle and shoot at each other with random people, none of which were probably on coms.

@carguy - I'm fully aware of SEOW and the likes, but those weren't hosted on HL (the point of this discussion in the 1st place) That is a completely different animal and one that vanilla IL2 could never do. The online Wars were all made 3rd party including the software to make it possible.

Bliss, you just cant help yourself can you?

HL hosted over 4000 missions for VEF.

16 vs 16 people plus AI flights, ground targets, recon missions, CAP missions.

Im not going to start going over this again, Bliss i get it "you" dont like them or want to play them, but can you not understand other people prefer COOP's for certain situations?
These people, mostly squad members want them, so why cant you get it?
you dont have to fly them, but we want to.

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by furbs

Bliss, you just cant help yourself can you?

HL hosted over 4000 missions for VEF.

16 vs 16 people plus AI flights, ground targets, recon missions, CAP missions.

Im not going to start going over this again, Bliss i get it "you" dont like them or want to play them, but can you not understand other people prefer COOP's for certain situations?
These people, mostly squad members want them, so why cant you get it?
you dont have to fly them, but we want to.

Then fly them right now. If you really wanted to you would. I guarantee I could get 16 members of ATAG on coms and we could fly a COOP mission where we all started at the same time.

As I've already stated, if you can't fly a COOPerative mission RIGHT NOW. It's because you don't want to. Not because the game won't allow you to.

Would you care to wager $100 that I could make a mission where we all started at the same time and flew a COOP mission? Because I guarantee I could make it work. Put your money where your mouth is or you're simply arguing to argue as you don't have the 1st clue about anything in this game.

[csThor]

The difference is simple: Bliss sees a battlefield as a fluid environment with surprise developments and multiple time scales whereas the fans of the old Coop format essentially want a team-based "Meet in the middle and let's have it out there". That has a lot more similarities to a sports match with a level field and a defined starting point, though.

I doubt we will see a Coop format in the way people are used to it. For that the basic mission format of the current engine is too open and universal. It does no longer produce a self-containing "sandbox" for that one mission but provides the basic characteristics of a dedicated server for both offline and online. Changing that back to a "canned format" looks like a very tall order in my uninformed eyes.

[JG5_emil]

Oh yes I can just see it...The Luftwaffe take off to fly to their pre designated target and then decide to split up and fly 50 ft off the deck over the enemy airfield until they are all shot down. That's pretty much what happens on a DF server because people generally join them for a quick combat fix.

This is a ludicrous argument. Just because you can fly as you would on a coop in a DF server doesn't make it a coop. More functionality is going to attract more people in from IL2 and other sims. If people want COOPS (and they do) then give it to them. The more people that are playing CLOD the more everyone benefits. What do you think people do when they aren't waiting for a COOP? Yes they join a DF server.

Don't get me wrong as DF servers go ATAG is great (not great ping for me in the UK) but it isn't a COOP and I can't see it as more realistic either. On numerous occasions I fly around at 6k looking for targets and in the end just like everyone else I get bored and go and hover over Hawkinge where I know nearly everyone else is. Sometimes I escort a bomber formation and if I am lucky I see a single RAF aircraft come to intercept. The reason for this is because a DF server has the freedom to do what you want so that is what people do. I am yet to see coordinated battles at altitude over a 20-30 bomber formation in fact I am yet to see more than 2 RAF aircraft flying together at altitude (the same applies to the LW).

The point of a COOP is to simulate an aerial battle using the limited resources of everyones CPU and the limited number of people that can join. This way you get the feeling of being part of the big battle and you guarantee that everyone gets to feel like they were a part of it. The map is way too big for 50 people to be scattered to the winds.

P.S RE the Banks COOP Lobby. You can't have everyone chose their own load outs unfortunately. We tested it and it does work pretty well but the loadout issue is a problem especially for the RAF pilots. Hoping to get some time off work to spend some more time on it.

[ATAG_Bliss]

@ Emil - But the problems you are describing is because of the game. Twins couldn't fly in formation until a week ago - that eliminates coordinated bomber attacks. If fighters even flew in close proximity to a Ju88 for instance you had a 90% chance of a CTD.

The bombsights were bugged so people flew on the deck. The flak has no difficulty setting to hinder people flying that low as well.

This is all slowly changing as the game gets fixed. If you haven't seen multiple people all escorted up in the past week then we haven't been on. We've had 12 all in formation since the hotfix. And we regularly fly together in a group (not 1's and 2's) as you describe.

But again, people wanted a quick fix because they knew they'd crash. Things will drastically change when the game gets there and IMO it's already starting to.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by JG5_emil

P.S RE the Banks COOP Lobby. You can't have everyone chose their own load outs unfortunately. We tested it and it does work pretty well but the loadout issue is a problem especially for the RAF pilots. Hoping to get some time off work to spend some more time on it.

Loadouts are defined in a mission by a mission maker. This is current game feature that prevents using not-historic loadouts in singleplayer and coops. Mission maker has to include the most popular loadout or historic one. Even when the devs make COOP GUI loadouts may stay unchangable for aircraft which you do not spawn at a spawnpoint. I do not remember if there is even a bugtracker issue open for this.

Originally Posted by JG5_emil

On numerous occasions I fly around at 6k looking for targets and in the end just like everyone else I get bored and go and hover over Hawkinge where I know nearly everyone else is. Sometimes I escort a bomber formation and if I am lucky I see a single RAF aircraft come to intercept. The reason for this is because a DF server has the freedom to do what you want so that is what people do. I am yet to see coordinated battles at altitude over a 20-30 bomber formation in fact I am yet to see more than 2 RAF aircraft flying together at altitude (the same applies to the LW).

I put down some ideas on how to avoid these problems on ATAG forums here http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.co...or-ATAG-server
I think this also needs more time or C# programmers to be involved.

[ATAG_Doc]

Originally Posted by csThor

I doubt we will see a Coop format in the way people are used to it. For that the basic mission format of the current engine is too open and universal. It does no longer produce a self-containing "sandbox" for that one mission but provides the basic characteristics of a dedicated server for both offline and online. Changing that back to a "canned format" looks like a very tall order in my uninformed eyes.

I think you hit the nail square on the head.

As I said in a previous post I have a feeling we'll see people - like today that design skins and give them away - missions built to extreme detail and very accurate sold and licensed for use on multi-player host. I may be wrong but I can see it happening. Remember no one saw the iPad 5-6 years ago either.