Commander Mode!

[Haze_of_dream]

Enable them for the BF4 servers, or atleast the conquest ones.

 

[Irish]

Been there and done that. Lol. It didn't work out so well.

 

[Zingaro1]

What about Members only usage? A good Commander can turn the tides of the Battle. It won't work if everyone's mission is to rack up kills only.

 

[Irish]

Unfortunately no. We tried Commander for many years. It just ended up being a major issue. Didn't always have 2 commanders so the match would be entirely 1 sided, or the commanders decided to team up, or too many people complaining that they weren't getting what they needed. So we just stopped it all together.

 

[Haze_of_dream]

Unfortunately no. We tried Commander for many years. It just ended up being a major issue. Didn't always have 2 commanders so the match would be entirely 1 sided, or the commanders decided to team up, or too many people complaining that they weren't getting what they needed. So we just stopped it all together.

A) Tell them to fill the commander slot if it bothers them that much. In my experience, Commander is an asset. If the team decides to not use him he will be useless. If a team is using him them It's a competent team and has more going for them then simply chalking it down to "The Commander"

B) Ban them, That's griefing with extra steps.

And people complain about Commander? The only time i heard complaints was when i cruise missle'd some guys tank 3 times in a row. Last comment before that was some guy remarking about how people still play commander.

 

[Haze_of_dream]

What about Members only usage? A good Commander can turn the tides of the Battle. It won't work if everyone's mission is to rack up kills only.

Even a good commander cannot do this, A commander simply provides assets for their team to use. The change is based on whether his team decides to utilize these to their full potential.

 

[Zingaro1]

I don't know how the Commander mode works now days but years ago it was good for Direction, strategic positioning of troops, resupply, prepping targets for assaults and so on. In a nutshell, Command and Control, which may or may not determine the outcome of the BF session. The Commander sees what others may not. I believe the Commander mode is a good tool. Just my two cents worth.

 

[razorbackx]

I miss calling in a 4 wheeler on lockers and running people over

 

[Statistic68]

I miss 2142 Commander mode

 

[Zingaro1]

Unfortunately no. We tried Commander for many years. It just ended up being a major issue. Didn't always have 2 commanders so the match would be entirely 1 sided, or the commanders decided to team up, or too many people complaining that they weren't getting what they needed. So we just stopped it all together.

Sounds like a personal problem if one side is lazier than the other. Amazing how individuals would rather bitch and moan all the time and take no action of their own accord.

 

[WifeBFFour]

bump because this is a damn good feature that has no good reason not to be enabled. There are people (absolutely including me) that join a server *because* a commander is on because on the chance that the commander is competent, it's way more fun to coordinate attacks and be given intel among other things, not to mention field upgrades fill up faster by following commander orders. There are also just a lot of times where you're literally just tired of infantry and want to be the omni-present supply-box dropping god that hopes to God there's a single squad that's listening - and it's objectively a lot of fun for those who enjoy being in a team support role.

A fair comparison is laser-designation; you CAN do it, and it CAN help your team but there's no guarantee it will. Taking a map like Golmud for instance, you can definitely get some targets marked but you're relying entirely on your team to fire on that target; you obviously cannot shoot on your own laze (unless you pop down a soflam and run to a tow launcher but that's an unlikely scenario) so you're supporting your team by making the targets fire-and-forget and make them take mobility-killing damage, leaving them susceptible to followups and death. In the same vein, a commander CAN help the team and certainly has the ability to, but again you're entirely reliant on your squads to actually take advantage of what you provide to them; a scan, missile, perhaps a gunship or supply drop, all of which can be destroyed or countered one way or another even if there is no enemy commander present. You can have a game of people who have never held down the button for the commo rose and don't know what "order received" even means, or you can have a game with one or two squads who actually request orders to get points for capturing objectives and ask for supplies/scans and thus end up the squads succeeding the most on the team. You can have a game full of people who don't know what that shiny orange diamond on that helicopter means, or you can have people who deliberately either squad up with you or equip laser-respondent guided weapons to take advantage of your help and ultimately perform better.

Commander mode in its purpose is identical to what laser designation can do; support your team while also being counterable. It's up to the two teams to decide on how to deal with the presence of lasers or a commander. Laser designation and lockons are allowed, so why not commander mode? The mode that can be countered literally by going to team setup mid-game and taking up command and becoming a commander yourself, or even by infantry itself; shooting down cruise missiles (doable with your conventional guns mind you), the gunship (jets or MAA), scan/emp drones (jets or MAA), and even supply supply drops can be destroyed.

TLDR: You're supporting your team not unlike the mechanic of laser designation; you're hoping at least some of your team takes advantage of it, and it has potential to be useful but ONLY when the team cooperates. Enabling commander mode would simply make matches better with negligible and counterable downsides.

 

[SRQea]

Gotta love thread necromancy. Leadership has already spoken on this.

Been there and done that. Lol. It didn't work out so well.

Unfortunately no. We tried Commander for many years. It just ended up being a major issue. Didn't always have 2 commanders so the match would be entirely 1 sided, or the commanders decided to team up, or too many people complaining that they weren't getting what they needed. So we just stopped it all together.

If it wasn't changed 9 months ago. I'm pretty sure it won't be changed now.
Things are balanced ( more or less ) now and servers are constantly full. No reason to risk upsetting the majority of players with something we have already removed in the past.

 

[Keem5771]

people come in and sit in commander and be toxic, or tell the other team where we are, it would be treated like spectator mode.

 

[Haze_of_dream]

that's why spectator is still enabled, right?

 

[SRQea]

that's why spectator is still enabled, right?

Spectator mode is mainly used to record cheaters and for members to watch other players in the server. It is not to be used as a device to give out enemy locations or "Stream Snipe" Players for your friends.

 

[WifeBFFour]

Gotta love thread necromancy. Leadership has already spoken on this.




If it wasn't changed 9 months ago. I'm pretty sure it won't be changed now.
Things are balanced ( more or less ) now and servers are constantly full. No reason to risk upsetting the majority of players with something we have already removed in the past.

Then poll your playerbase and get opinions on re-enabling it from people who actually play your servers, not just because you think it'll cause a mass shift. There's no evidence that enabling it would hurt the playerbase, in fact there's evidence that it'll help it. As I said there are people who take into account the presence of a commander before they join servers. I would love to see an actual poll on this rather than just an assumption that the entirety of the playerbase will complain about its re-addition.

 

[SRQea]

Then poll your playerbase and get opinions on re-enabling it from people who actually play your servers, not just because you think it'll cause a mass shift. There's no evidence that enabling it would hurt the playerbase, in fact there's evidence that it'll help it. As I said there are people who take into account the presence of a commander before they join servers. I would love to see an actual poll on this rather than just an assumption that the entirety of the playerbase will complain about its re-addition.

Don't know if you saw Irish's post on February 24th. Commanders were tried for years and in the end they were a failure because of people complaining. Because it turned matches into 1 Sided or there was a useless commander. The player base was essentially polled back then. And adding it back into the server ( on a 9 year old game that is already slowly dying ) Isn't the best idea at this point. Don't try to fix what isn't broken.

 

[Alteredacer]

Commander mode brings out the WORST in players, it has been tried and ditched.

 

[WifeBFFour]

Because it turned matches into 1 Sided or there was a useless commander. The player base was essentially polled back then. And adding it back into the server ( on a 9 year old game that is already slowly dying ) Isn't the best idea at this point. Don't try to fix what isn't broken.

"One-sided" can be fixed by literally becoming a commander yourself. And we have a mutiny function built-in if the commander is truly being useless. The players can literally govern who their commander is through a built-in function if they so choose. The problems Irish outlined are either A: handled already through reports as there are always griefers, not just through commander mode but doing stupid shit like throwing C4 on your teammates or stealing vehicles, or B: handled through the ability the game literally offers you as vanilla if you're a squad leader.

Also when commander mode was referred to, I found only threads relating to Pearl Market temporarily having commander mode enabled and then disabled and apart from a couple of other people making random complains, these posts ranged all the way back to 2018, 2016 and 2014 even during CTE. From the forum history people even wanted it re-enabled. Nobody here is asking for it to be enabled on servers like 24/7 Metro, where it would have almost no usage besides literally spotting anyone on the map at all times, or Op. Locker which is literally the same case; constant UAVs where you're spotted 100% of the time on the radar. It's exclusively being requested for addition to the conquest servers that actually have vehicles and where commanders have a chance to make an impact if the team chooses to cooperate - even in the Naval Strike maps, the maps are so huge that the UAVs cover very little ground and thus are limited in use.

Once more the complaints Irish alludes to, I can see word-for-word the complaints about how one-sided the game is with a commander on one side. On 24/7 Pearl Market. Not conquest with vehicle based maps. It's not a fair assumption to say that the performance of Commander Mode being enabled on a largely infantry based map can judge for the entirety of the rest of Conquest which actually has vehicle based maps and where commander mode is actually intended to be on. From how Metro and Locker handles commanders and supply drops, those two maps are almost certainly not designed for it to be enabled, maps that nobody is asking for them to be enabled on.

 

[Alteredacer]

Not just about one sided, folks decide to spam orders every 20 seconds, continually drop crates on top of folks they don't like their play style, if you goto servers in the EU, it works really well.