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Some say war never changes, but I think we've come a long way.
Up until not too long ago we were playing online skirmishes at
best in our tactical shooters. Small bands of Reds, Blues, CTs, Tangos,
Charlies and Deltas, usually confined to the equivalent of a schoolyard
playground compared to the scope a real battlefield. The release of
Operation Flashpoint saw these skirmishes grow to scenarios that
finally created space for real maneuvres, involving dozens of troops
and vehicles at once. But it wasn't until the release of Armed Assault
that we could finally put this space to proper use and deploy up to
hundreds of soldiers in our scenarios, online and offline.
However, designing content on this scale brought in a whole new set of technical complications. We as developers hadn't established a main “full feature” MP framework for the community to build upon, leaving many with a trial-and-error approach to implementing variable scopes, join in progress, AI compatibility, interfaces, and 30+ player gameplay pacing. The resulting community-created content continues to amaze us to this day, but naturally hasn't always been catering to all aspects of the community. Especially the realm of Player vs Player has been turned into more of a niche game mode compared to its popularity prior to ArmA's release.
Now, about changing that war.
Instead of releasing a basic new team-based multiplayer mode and be done with it, we want to make use of this opportunity and involve you directly in giving shape to something that bridges a major gap. Not only the gap between co-op and team-based play, but also between action and tactical play, grunts and generals, leaders and lonewolfs, noobs and veterans. Instead of treating all these elements as mutually exclusive extremes, we want to bring them all together on one big battlefield where their strengths are combined to make use of ArmA's full potential.
Mike Melvin's Capture The Island (mfCTI) was one of the first OFP missions to try and create a multiplayer scenario able to span the entire island and use nearly every single gameplay asset available. But rather than directly porting his past work over to ArmA, he agreed to help us develop something far bigger instead. After many months of hard work, Bohemia Interactive is proud to present a new multiplayer mode: Warfare.
Warfare is a blend of a team-based multiplayer mission and realtime strategy. As a fully dynamic mission with random starting locations and opposition, every game is guaranteed to be unique. The goal is to capture towns, generate income, recruit subordinates, construct vehicles, build bases and defensive positions, and ultimately to destroy the opposing side's base. The mission contains fully capable and autonomous AI units, so you can play it on your own just as easily as with more than 30 others.
But that's just the start. We would like to invite you, the community, to use this mission as a sandbox for any and all features you'd like to add or change. Use your favourite addons, or a different island. Change the way players respawn, how they capture territory, what mission types are available, or who has access to the different pieces of equipment. We want to set up Warfare as a full Open Source project, allowing you to easily share your ideas not only with the community, but with us at BIS as well. Keep a close eye on the Dev Blog, because in my upcoming post I'll elaborate much more on this brand new effort, including a full editing guide to the Warfare mission.
So start packing those MREs and be sure to bring extra ammo. Whether you'll be dodging 5.45mm rounds on the streets of Paraiso, or looking to change the face of the battlefield with some M48A3s and Skyraiders, we're about to enter Warfare on a whole new level.
Readers have left 6 comments. No.6 The way Warfare is played...
Cool and detailed after action review from Warfare game over at Sim HQ: http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_106a.html No.5 Quick comment
You guys have really come far I must say. The mission does need some optimization though if I may constructively criticize.
1. 32 player servers often crash well into battles due to JIP unless the servers are all locked. RTS IV had much more chaos going on and remained stable with 50+ people for longer durations.
2. Releasing units is a big deal - AI aren't smart enough to walk outside of a structure, sometimes they manage to get out but other times they walk in circles forever - a 'release unit' option is very important.
Will this be supported by the person who made it? Will we see updates to this mission? Or will they be attached to future patches only? Thanks! No.4 Huge potential for the genre and variety for game owners
Well..i must say the concept backed up by BI has an incredible potential if managed right. Increase AI limit and allow team/soldier switch and it transforms into RTS. There's already a thread about this in the forums in which i'm sure you can find loads of ideas and bug reports. Its astonihing to see how a first person combat simulation turns into an RTS.
Great job No.3 I love Warfare!
I was sold to this game mode the moment I played it. I foresee many strategy articles being put together describing the countless amounts of strategies possible. Simply perfect! Thank you so much! No.2 tested and tasted
Well all this game needed on multiplayer is PvP CTI and when there is now it
even officially in working form that better. This game really needs to have one strong
MP mod that none of else similar games has to getting popularity keep going! No.1 Excellent
This gamemode really is great and I haven't even tested it fully yet :) ![[smiley=cool]](http://www.bistudio.com/components/com_jreactions/custom/templates/balloon/smileys/smiley_cool.gif) |
