Team Recognition (identifying temamates).

I think that an icon over the head is unrealistic, but it sure would help to prevent friendly fire kills - but then friendly fire kills many soldiers.
Apart from that there are ways to make friend/for ID easier; one would be to set up the uniforms not green and gray(or black or whatever) but street and green or arctic and grey or so.

Snakeye

anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing

hmmm

In general I like this, particuarly as one guilty of many a ff incident. BUT a threatening looking darkened silhouette in a doorway, whether or not you KNOW the silhouette is STILL a dark, threatening silhouette. Standing in a doorway will reveal no mannerism, a silhouette no facial features, no camo color, and in a heated (as opposed to an air conditioned) fire fight there is little time for ta wave of the hand and a friendly exchange of pleasantries.

I have to agree however, that something must be done which will allow for the indentifcation of 'friendlies' especially now that it seems ALL the servers are running with camoflages that I can rarely differentiate side by side in full light, let alone dashing between alleys, and buildings in darkened sicily. As it is I currently hold my fire until a name comes up in the HUD, and then I shoot by color. A silly and life shortening way to fight, but its the ONLY way I have found to keep my TKs down, and until we get more distinctive yet fair (non-neon) camo's probably my best option.

Right now, even in full light (installation/ EP/cuban dawn) the woodlands and black camos are practically identical.

OVW

you can recognize by faces, because you can customize your character.

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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: bold; color: #EFB720; text-style: italic">Webmaster of <a href="http://roguescript.hypermart.net/" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8pt; font-weight: bold; color: #EFB720; text-style: italic; text-decoration: underline">Infiltration Tactics</a>.</span>

communication, folks

as opposed to this stupid icon crap, might i suggest, oh, a little communication?

pardon me while i rant a bit:

while playing online, one thing i keep hearing from other players is "stop typing! don't type while you're in game!"

this is one of the most painfully stupid things i've ever heard.

so many players seem to have the idea that the only purpose of in-game chat is so that the dead guys can amuse themselves while they wait for the live guys to finish up the round. (this, incidentally, is the main reason why i'm in favor of preventing dead people from talking to the living; if a few dead guys are having a conversation, it spams the screen and prevents my living teammates from hearing my messages.)

here's a few tips:

1) when you chat, don't do it while standing in the middle of a hallway. crouch down behind some cover before you take your hand off the mouse. guess what? IRL, when airsofting, i have to take my hand off my gun before i can activate my radio. rather than bitching about it, i've simply figured out how to use the radio in a safe manner.

2) at the beginning of a round, tell your teammates where you're going. if you don't know where you're going, don't just wander off randomly - pick one of your teammates and tell him that you're covering him.

3) periodically announce your location. you don't have to give constant running commentary, just every few minutes - "i'm in the house on the right, covering the bridge", or "i'm in the big house, on the third floor, covering the rear", or "i'm sniping from the warehouse".

4) when you're covering an area, and you see someone run across your field of view, and you don't know if they're friend or foe, ASK! something like "hey, who just started swimming across the river?" if none of your teammates answer, get ready to shoot the target as soon as you have a clean shot.

i realize that it's not practical to communicate as much with a keyboard as one would in real life. but your teammates will thank you if you make at least a small effort to communicate a bit more. what's more, you may find that your team tends to win more rounds.

-vecna_99

Love and darkness and my sidearm.