[bf1942] How could DICE agree to this??

[Joe]

Yeah, limit the ranking to the official EA noobfest servers. That'll do a
lot of good.

If they lock down earning ranks to EA servers only, do they expect private
server admins to honor those ranks in their config files? Hell no!

They should require that the private servers register with them to provide
the ranking/stats connection. Register on EA, hell even a small monthly fee
for 'maintaince' of their ranking backend would be perfectly fine especially
with some of us larger gaming groups.

It's not even like the official EA servers are well moderated........I had
high hopes, but all of the news to late is souring that. :(
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Steven Hartland [mailto:killing at multiplay.co.uk]
  Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 10:32 AM
  To: bf1942 at icculus.org
  Subject: Re: [bf1942] How could DICE agree to this??


  I must say this is concerning. Ranked players is one thing, but
  only enabling rank building on official services is a sure fire way
  to kill the community very quickly.

  From reading this I would suggest the following changes:
  1. Ranking on all servers or at least "registered" servers.
  2. The ability to turn off racking totally in the server config.
  3. The ability to enable all weapons in the server config.
  4. The ability to limit the max rank in the server config.

  With the above all quality servers can gain people rank
  and things like public servers can be a level playing
  field, with experienced players only benefiting purely
  from better play and not also getting an unfair advantage
  making the game inaccessible to the new players.

      Steve / K
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Jon Wolberg

    Did anyone else see this interview?  A former customer of mine showed it
to me.

    http://www.realityfriends.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=573

     All this sounds great, but a few more details have come out that are of
concern:
    1. Higher ranks get access to exclusive 'unlock' weapons
    2. Higher ranks are the default choice for 'commander'
    3. Only EA servers (offical and those rented from EA) will be 'ranking'
servers (eg: players can only earn rank when playing on EA servers)
    4. Ranks will still be visible on unranked servers and therefore ranked
players can get access to the unlocked weapons on unranked servers (and
potentially a factor in determining who is commander)
    5. Unranked servers can 'turn off' unlockable weapons, but cant
universally unlock them for all players

    As you can imagine this creates a series of issues:
    1. Inbalance between players with access to unlocked weapons and those
without (especially for casual gamers or those late to the game)
    - plus will regular players on unranked (nonEA) servers get have to hand
over 'commander mode' to anyone who has a rank (which he carried over from
the EA servers)

    2. Inbalance between EA servers and private servers (such as the ECGN
public servers or those rented from ECGN)
    - Are the 'unranked' servers going to become 'ghost towns'?


    Personally I think giving ranks anything more than bragging rights is a
mistake (eg: special weapons). And I think only providing them on EA servers
and EA rented servers is blackmail.  They did this with Americas Army and it
didnt work out that well.

    thoughts?

    Jon

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