Here is a post from Sc1ence, a long time 2142 and other gaming title player and well respected TG member. It really sums up what the gen concept of this thread is and I believe it represents the entire TG community as a whole. It is long but well worth the read.

Originally Posted by sc1ence

<edit for context> This post is a response to a playtest on the conquest server of lowering player count. It goes further to address what I see as a conflict within TG that I think needs to be addressed. </edit>


I am going to state my personal opinion here. This opinion does not necessarily reflect that of the admin team.



Stated succinctly:
Lowering the player count does not increase the tactics, realism or fun of 2142. It should be moved back up to 50 or higher.

Now for the long winded justification for the above statement:

Tacticalgamer started with very low speed tactical shooters. The tactics involved in those games were very much a cat and mouse game. ArmA, ghost recon, project reality and other similar games are clear tactical shooters. They emphasize realism and team tactics over action and one-player-one-unit. The BF series of games seems to fall between traditional tactical shooters and arcady games like quake deathmatch that do not seem to require tactics or much thought.

Project Reality is an example of a modification to the BF2 engine that forces people into playing a more realistic game. It is slower and the tactics it uses are a more accurate simulation of real world tactics.

Clearly TG gravitates towards PR given the reality modifications and the stated goal of the TG primer of playing the game in a near simulation environment. This reasoning can be applied to 2142 as well. Lowering the player count was an attempt to make the tactics in the game more realistic and thereby increase the amount of fun that our members were having. It seems to have done neither. It did however change the kind of tactics that are effective.

I worry that people are equating “slow” with “more tactical” or “more realistic.”

Think of war over the ages, the speed of conflict has increased significantly. In the future, the speed of armed conflict will likely continue to increase. That 2142 is a very fast paced game does not mean its tactics are less realistic.

Vanilla 2142 has the basic elements needed for a tactical shooter. Success depends on teamwork and a good tactical plan. From the Commander on down to the 2 man squad the entire team is working to realize a tactical goal. While it does not have to be played this way (go to any random pub and experience the lack of tactics) - TG chooses to play it right. The teamwork required to play 2142 the TG way goes way beyond kill, revive the dead and try not to TK your buddies. It IS fast paced, and it should be. The 64 person maps are small compared to the 64 person maps in a game like PR or even vanilla BF2. Putting all those people in one place guarantees the pace of the battle will be frantic. Frankly, I like it like that. I enjoy the fast paced dynamics that require split second tactical decisions. This franticly paced battle does not reduce tactical gameplay, I think it increases it if you meet the challenges of maintaining the high situational awareness it demands.

Game winning or losing tactical calls are made every minute or so by commanders, squad leaders and squad members. The amount of situational awareness that goes into playing such a fast pitched battle is immense. I have to practically live in my minimap as a squad leader in 2142. I don’t make decisions before getting sitreps from the CO And my squadmates. As a commander, the min or so between radar scans seems like an eternity. Half the other team could move clear across the map in that time. I am studying the map for troop movements and deaths to assist my squads in accomplishing their goals. As a squad member, I know relaying accurate and useful sitreps can mean the difference between us losing or winning the battle. 2142 does not lack realism other than the fact that it is taking place in the future with some unique technology.

The relationship between map size and playercount does have an effect on gameplay. But the point where it becomes less tactical and realistic is at the extreme ends of the distribution. Running the 2142 conquest server with 64 players would not decrease the realism or increase it, nor would running it at 16 players. The same argument could apply to our PR server which runs at 64 players. Within those two anchors the game seems to have roughly the same amount of realism and tactics. The tactics change with the number of players, but they are just different tactics. If anything, I think that higher playercounts increase the total number of things you can accomplish tactically. You start fighting for control over choke points with a higher player count, where with smaller player counts you just position a sentry and engage if you notice movement. You can only watch a choke point in so many ways. But you can control it and stop an opposing force from taking it in a large number of ways if you have the troops. This variety makes for a more enjoyable game to most people.

Behind this thread is some minor internal TG conflict. TG is all about Teamwork, Maturity and respect. We love our tactics here. Perhaps we love them a bit too much? What I mean is some guys seem to get really attached to a certain style of gameplay and the tactics that go along with it. If the effective tactics change that person may loose interest in the game or blame all the “rocket whores” or “voss pray and spray morons” for ruining the game by taking tactics out of it. The truth is, they replaced the tactics he liked with ones he did not like. The passion that is stirring this thread is most likely an issue of what kind of tactics are being used rather than IF they are being used.

For example, a die hard PR fan plays 2142 and posts in the 2142 forums how the game is a fragfest that lacks tactics or makes a similar comment on teamspeak. The 2142 player responds in kind, stating that sitting in the grass for 15 minutes waiting for the right time to strike is not tactical - it’s like watching paint dry. Snipes like that have been lobbed back and forth enough times I don’t need to find the most recent post with it.

Solution you ask? Set player count to whatever makes the most TGers happy. I suspect that number is about 50. Some like myself would like to see more people. Other would like to see fewer. If a reality mod for 2142 comes along we should check it. Otherwise we should move to an unranked server and adjust server settings such as respawn time and damage if we don’t think 2142 is realistic enough. IMO, that would be a mistake right now. While that may increase realism slightly, it would be at the expense of new supporting members and perhaps fun. I dont think we need to increase reality to the point where the game is becoming less fun. I don’t think we have a large enough permanent player base to take 2142 unranked permanently. We would become stagnant and the game would die within TG.

The second server could host a rotation of small infantry maps, ns, titan or whatever other variations we wanted. We can have more internal scrims with higher or lower player counts. We can have unranked nights. But, I think the conquest server should remain a large ranked server to attract new players to TG. I am not against changing it for a day or so like we did this weekend in an attempt to improve gameplay. But for the most part, it should be our flagship server. A beacon of hope to all pubbies. This game has brought in a large number of supporting members and will continue to do that if we we work at keeping the server enjoyable enough that people will want to support it.