Wolfpack vs Uboat -- Differences ? ? Pro's/Cons

[Elphaba]

Originally Posted by FPSchazly

I generally agree with your sentiments regarding multiplayer, however, I would caveat it with the fact that that's true of multiplayer with random people. Multiplayer composed completely of a tight community/friends does not really suffer from the trolling/dumbass behavior. I feel you can also mitigate that kind of behavior largely with smart, team-oriented goals.

That was my point about tightly controlled and well designed gameplay loops, but that’s hard and needs to be one of the first thing worked out before the rest of the game is built around it. Very, very hard to go back and shoe-horn in well.

Originally Posted by FPSchazly

I've put a lot of thought into the "randomness" problem you've outlined here. We have the same issue in Dangerous Waters. Simply because we're all humans playing a multiplayer match, we 100% know enemy is out there and within reasonable range. That ruins all the mystery of true naval combat. A way to remedy this could be to have two or more convoys in a multiplayer match (or the number of convoys equals the number of U-boats plus some other number. So if you have two U-boats, you have at least three convoys.) Doing it this way, the human-controlled escorts cannot be certain there is a U-boat attacking their convoy. However, then you have the issue that some human escorts may not have anything to do. You could remedy that by having a time limit or some goal-line limit, i.e., escort the convoy safely to this point and you win.

Interesting solution. I like it, but considering the distances involved and real-time nature of a game like Wolfpack, more often than not you’d end up with a very boring (for some) experience whereby the destroyer players wouldn’t have their convoy attacked, and the sub players wouldn’t be playing against smarter non-ai destroyers.

The only way around that is to remove the tension and be explicit that you know you’re convoy is going to be attacked and roughly when.

I think, where most game designers fail, is that they spend too much time on pretty graphics and nowhere near enough time on making a smart AI/NPC enemy. I know from personal experience how hard that can be, but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be just as important as good graphics, and far more important than god-rays, bloom, lens flares and bow wave dynamics.

There’s no easy and complete answers. Some - like me - who could do a 4 hour mission, would love the chance to picking which convoy to target - or even as I suggested, having to intercept a sound contact only to find it’s not a valid target and have to find another, but in Wolfpack in real-time that’s a long long mission. With no saves (for some) that becomes a huge obstacle or a game killer.

I think when the real missions and campaign comes in then more variety especially carefully curated missions will help, but I still can’t see a good PVP gameloop that doesn’t destroy part of what makes Wolfpack so good and unique (the tension and slow build).

I accept your points about its who you play with, and for someone like you with exposure and a community of like minded people, it wouldn’t be hard to find some good players, but we’re not all as lucky as that and sometimes randoms are all we can get.

I know my fun with this game is proportional to how good of a Crew I have and how well we all behave, but that’s not easy to find.

After reading many ‘comments’ about Wolfpack and Uboat, it always seems to keep coming back to the fact that some people just want SH3 with co-op and PVP, modern graphics and nazi flags, and nothing will ever be accepted for what they can offer, unless they offer that.

Considering the long drought we’ve had for sub games and then we’ve had three in less than two years I’d say we’re doing pretty well.

Although I wouldn’t mind dangerous waters 2 lol I love me some Seawolf!