Removal of live Cap and impact on SL/Teamwork

[Mats391]

As others have pointed out this change was meant to remove some artificial information that you gained from the cap bar. Not for realism sakes (spoiler there are no flags in r/l ), but to change gameplay. Hiding the cap bar completely would be no option at all.
One common tactic that others already mentioned was to just peek into cap radius, check if you are capping and play passive if you are. We do not think that this is peek gameplay and wanted to force attackers to be more aggressive and seek out enemies. So the intend was never to make game slower or more passive.
From the games I played so far (on different servers with different amount of "veterancy" in team), the communications did not change with the reduced accuracy of capping status. Squads still report that they are capping, that they need help to push a flag or that they need help defending. Feeling when the enemy has advantage was something you already had to do before when defending as you would never see the bar move.

You also raised some valid concerns, that we are thinking about.

Regarding knowing when you outnumber tunnel rats: Getting a team to stop throwing themselves into the meat grinder was already nearly impossible with live updating cap bar as well. Tunnels or other hard to breach places are an issue on all game modes and will continue to be one. These are mostly map issues and fixing those through game mechanics is always difficult. We are looking into other ways to deal with this, but I think the cap bar plays little to no role in this.

Regarding getting feedback on your actions: The psychology is sound and players love to get instant rewards, but we break it already a lot in PR for sake of creating fog of war. For example only getting credited a kill after the victim respawned is in the same category. Additionally the defenders of a flag never had this instant reward mechanic either.

[UncleSmek]

As others have pointed out this change was meant to remove some artificial information that you gained from the cap bar. Not for realism sakes (spoiler there are no flags in r/l ), but to change gameplay. Hiding the cap bar completely would be no option at all.
One common tactic that others already mentioned was to just peek into cap radius, check if you are capping and play passive if you are. We do not think that this is peek gameplay and wanted to force attackers to be more aggressive and seek out enemies. So the intend was never to make game slower or more passive.

Yes and it wont change with this update, now its just not that apparent and you actually do wait to see movement in the cap so yes you have slowed down gameplay and made it even more passive.

[Mats391]

Yes and it wont change with this update, now its just not that apparent and you actually do wait to see movement in the cap so yes you have slowed down gameplay and made it even more passive.

If you want to sit idle for 1 minute, it is your decision. I stopped doing it and just assume you are not capping until it moves. In the mean time I try to reach positions I want to hold or try to get picture of capzone without relying on cap progress to update. As Chuva pointed out, there is lots to do other than stare at UI and wait for it to tell you what to do.

[InfantryGamer42]

As others have pointed out this change was meant to remove some artificial information that you gained from the cap bar. Not for realism sakes (spoiler there are no flags in r/l ), but to change gameplay. Hiding the cap bar completely would be no option at all.
One common tactic that others already mentioned was to just peek into cap radius, check if you are capping and play passive if you are. We do not think that this is peek gameplay and wanted to force attackers to be more aggressive and seek out enemies. So the intend was never to make game slower or more passive.

I have issue with this line of thought. Reason why most squad leaders opted for that common tactic is largely result of capability of players in there squads. There is large difference in capabilities of different infantry squads, depending on collective experience of individual members which impacts ability of that squad to actually perform attack. While squad full of experience players can just run in and pull out successful attack based on there individual experience and cooperation, that is not option for most infantry squads, which are usually formed up of squad leader of different experience level and bunch of random mostly low skilled guys.

For those squads, peeking into cap radius and securing relatively strong defensive position is only real attack option they can pull off, as in that situation they effectively role swap attacker and defender roles with defending side, which forces enemy to fight on there terms (as those squads perform better in defense compared to attack). In that tactic, live cap gave squad leaders needed feedback in X seconds, for which most squad leaders will now wait for X minutes. Lack of needed feedback leads to more passive gameplay and it goes against main reason for this change, making attacker side more aggressive.

If you want to sit idle for 1 minute, it is your decision.

Lack I said, reason why most squad leaders want to wait has more to do with real capabilities of there squad members.

I stopped doing it and just assume you are not capping until it moves. In the mean time I try to reach positions I want to hold or try to get picture of capzone without relying on cap progress to update. As Chuva pointed out, there is lots to do other than stare at UI and wait for it to tell you what to do.

Which are all way out of capabilities of most infantry squads.

[Chuva_RD]

If you tried stopping being a Big Brain Edge Lord in your commentary, yes there is a lost in tactical depth of being able to plan and adapt in the moment. Now its slightly translates a bit more into Kill enemy, the other options were already there before

Depth of activity is born from multitude of options and variability. Without instant intel on enemy bodycount you have a moment (which lasts for 45s max) of uncertainty what to do next. You might yolo into flag knowing that you will shoot everyone anyway sooner or later, or you will wait some time and get enemy bodycount intel. This is depth, and i argue it was gained. The game still have same mechanics, but the intel which was free before isnt free anymore. In absolute values the time price is quite small.

"From my experience once you got the communication going from shy call outs to these in depth tactics thats how the real communication started, it was one of the few ways to get the team speaking/working"

Try to prime communication with 1) respect 2) professionalism 3) calls to stack and move together stomping enemies.

The level of communication that exists due to flag capture bar is limited to some individual posting in chat that they started capping, yet you make it look like quite important thing starting communication.

Insane idea, cant believe I ever thought of that we usually walk on foot from main once we die. So basically this translates to Human waving and a higher incentive to randoms keep human waving since they lost real time information and the sense their presence is having a impact

your spherical randoms did the same with continuous flag capture bar

So to keep it short this falls a bit under what is discussed above where if you have good and experienced SQ members this isnt much of a issue, it becomes even a bigger issue than before with the lost of control from the SL. Nothing to do with Clans not being welcoming, it translates into wanting to keep higher skilled people in my SQ like Smek does (Sry Smek but you are the best example, nothing agaisnt you, you enjoy a more serious experience) nothing but experienced players, everyone else gets immediately kicked especially someone that messes up (new players/randoms)

if you have good and experienced SQ members nothing is an issue. If your squad of random dies thats not bc you didnt have a chance to abuse flag cap intel which might be 2-3 cases in one round, thats bc your gamers died on the battlefield to other gamers.

For me yes

time to learn how to SL then. Same as mortars learn to deliver crates instead of rebuilding them.

Thank you for your respect, please enjoy the game inside FreeKit SQs or inside the Asset SQs with the hypothesis that you have less willing SL since you made the SL role more exhausting/stressful than it was while playing a Video Game which the goal is to have fun

Stress from playing SL due to

1) huge flow of communications
2) need to make decisions every moment
3) need to track how everything is going locally and globally
4) need to plan fast, explain your plan clearly, adapt when plan never works

for me personally made playing as SL more interesting than just regular AR. After long rounds I felt exhausted sometimes, after 2-3 totally exhausted, had to sleep longer, but it was absolutely and definitively TOP GAMEPLAY which you can get from PR, better than "Tank minus&50inf minus&trans minus&lets wait for enemy tank to move (to minus)". Question to you why you play SL if you not getting jacked from same stuff.

[Coalz101]

Wait question because I never notice. (I'm generally not in defend flags since update becuz assetwhores, yes) Did you (DEVs) revert the "Defenders can't know when enemy is capping until its neutral" to put this? If so, isn't that contradicting what Mats said about:

this change was meant to remove some artificial information that you gained from the cap bar.

I honestly preferred the old way of capping where defenders won't know they are losing the flag till its lost. Makes you think harder on whether or not you should fall back or move out because you don't know how much people are in the capzone.

[Mats391]

I honestly preferred the old way of capping where defenders won't know they are losing the flag till its lost. Makes you think harder on whether or not you should fall back or move out because you don't know how much people are in the capzone.

This behaviour of flags was inconsistent and confusing to new players as well as veterans. I mean a couple of posts up you have a DEV that didnt know you could not see progress while defending

[Grump/Gump.45]

Regarding knowing when you outnumber tunnel rats: Getting a team to stop throwing themselves into the meat grinder was already nearly impossible with live updating cap bar as well. Tunnels or other hard to breach places are an issue on all game modes and will continue to be one. These are mostly map issues and fixing those through game mechanics is always difficult. We are looking into other ways to deal with this, but I think the cap bar plays little to no role in this.

Capping flags that enemy has the advantage of holding tunnels in is simple. You will lose guys you send inside the tunnels, don't send anybody in. Just play containment of the issue and don't let above ground defenders get you. You don't ever cross where they can shoot you from inside a tunnel, you only send in explosives and pre-fire off angle. DEVs themselves listing skills in the manual for player to practice would be helpful, instead of a lone player like me.

You wait till you have enough guys above ground to out cap the defenders below. Only when you actually cap the flag is when you need to clear them out inching up smoke grenades and frag grenades. Use the smoke grenades to make them paranoid to waste their explosives. IRL smoke them out, nade them out, pre-fire them out. Make some explosions going in, test for response of their explosive munitons (RPG, Grenades). 2nd step is to false push in there 1 or 2 guys a few steps of pre-fire then bail out to reset.

Test reaction with this. Hold security above ground. 3rd step is buddy team breaching clearing every new angle with grenades. 2 men up front, rest in rear with 1 man hurt per RPG spread. Through door way, 2nd man through goes opposite way of 1st man, if 1st man goes left 2nd man goes right. Every other man alternates, left/right/left/right. For wide opening, 1st man holds corner, 2nd man slams against the far wall while pre-firing. If area attack comes in everyone fast breach and clear inside.

We need physical smoke effects in game messing with vision, plus overpressure effects from explosives. Put some cigarette smoke in your eye at distance or get Enola Gaye smoke grenades, make your eyes teary or go to a big event paintball game and have some enemies do it to you.

Can you confirm rounds ricochet or not in game? It could help with hard wall tunnel breaching so I can bounce some rounds at them. I see .50 cal rounds ricochet sometimes I think, but when I use small arms and I hit wall at a bounce angle it makes the ricochet noise but I need to know if the round actually ricochets the contour of the wall for impact.

[chupachupp]

As a non-SL player, I prefer the old level of information. Having a rough idea of the level of resistance I was expecting to meet and adjusting my alertness and feeling the squad's tension change was more fun to me. The game play distinction between being within reach of your current objective and being between objectives was more pronounced. The age-old 'are we capping?' question, the pregnant pause, the affirmative answer after taking out a defending squad was satisfying to me.
Similarly, not knowing the way the wind was blowing as the defending squad was better too. Having the element of surprise against me made it difficult to keep my alertness up for longer periods of time - making me curse myself all the more when it does finally go down. Defending is just more boring when I know I don't really have to because I'll probably get confirmation there's enemy in the area before visual contact.
The UI graphic is a bit nicer than before. If I was allowed to make adjustments, I'd keep it but adapt to the old system information-wise.

[Brotherscompany]

@ Chuva l basically didn't want to get inside this discussion because it will just eventually become a **** comparison contest and loose the objective of this discussion.

Im just legit just going to leave at this after my response so it doesn't get personal and the typical PR "drama discussion". Im just making arguments that can mostly benefit my point. I SL almost every time l play this game and lm aware of everything you are saying, you don't need to tell me l have to learn how to SL l mostly succeed when l do SL, l have to Admin and pay attention to balance and constantly see how people perform and if they deserved to be switched by skill or their plan failed cause bad luck (l think l have good awarenesses its what lm trying to say) and we usually get a mix of competent/fun gameplay.

I SL because in short if l don't other people won't and you either get Freekit or randoms will do so and the experience won't be as fun if they aren't all competent since they got "forced to do so" because no one else did, thats not the PR experience why people play the game. I have a lots of fun doing SL, l really enjoy it being able to be nice and provide the semi serious PR experience and have fun and provide fun, l dont cry about it all that often if lm not in burn out.

Issue is that like you said, do it 3 times and it already slightly hits you, do it 1-3 times every time, a couple days a and you happen to do the same through months even years and it starts taking a toll on you, you already know that it will take a bit of you doing the same process especially with randoms. You realize you can base yourself in tactics and experience to make this process easier and this is why l dislike the idea of making it harder and more draining to the backbone of this game.

[MOSES!!]

As others have pointed out this change was meant to remove some artificial information that you gained from the cap bar. Not for realism sakes (spoiler there are no flags in r/l ), but to change gameplay. Hiding the cap bar completely would be no option at all.
One common tactic that others already mentioned was to just peek into cap radius, check if you are capping and play passive if you are. We do not think that this is peek gameplay and wanted to force attackers to be more aggressive and seek out enemies. So the intend was never to make game slower or more passive.
From the games I played so far (on different servers with different amount of "veterancy" in team), the communications did not change with the reduced accuracy of capping status. Squads still report that they are capping, that they need help to push a flag or that they need help defending. Feeling when the enemy has advantage was something you already had to do before when defending as you would never see the bar move.

You also raised some valid concerns, that we are thinking about.

Regarding knowing when you outnumber tunnel rats: Getting a team to stop throwing themselves into the meat grinder was already nearly impossible with live updating cap bar as well. Tunnels or other hard to breach places are an issue on all game modes and will continue to be one. These are mostly map issues and fixing those through game mechanics is always difficult. We are looking into other ways to deal with this, but I think the cap bar plays little to no role in this.

Regarding getting feedback on your actions: The psychology is sound and players love to get instant rewards, but we break it already a lot in PR for sake of creating fog of war. For example only getting credited a kill after the victim respawned is in the same category. Additionally the defenders of a flag never had this instant reward mechanic either.

Just increase it to 8 blips instead of 4. Or at least something between the old system and new, if you, the devs really think this is a good change.

New or old system, the problem of staring at the map remains a problem, in order to determine whether progress is being made or not.

You could also bring back the flags from underground and have a physical way to tell where the cap status is. I think PR has a lot of neat mechanics that insetivise teamwork and realism, but removing the physical flags was always a decision that made me scratch my head.

Capturing an arbitrary area on the map is an abstraction in itself, having a flag on it is arcadey but also makes more sense and makes people pay attention the 3D world around them instead of staring at UI.

With this comes more cans of worms unfortunately. Whoever has the better eye on the flag can better tell whether it's being capped. It's not always the best idea to be in the center of a flag. Though being closer and that increasing the speed of cap has always been on my mind as a mechanic as well. It wouldn't work with all current maps and flags unfortunately.

Bringing back physical flags would change the game fundamentally, namely in terms of level design and who gets an advantage on the info gained by staring at a flag pole. Should it positioned for the defenders' sake? Do the common attack vectors give the aggressors a fair deal in terms of flag pole intel?

There're so many ways to think about it.

I personally like the new 4 blips system, though I'm not an SL. I think it makes the flag capping proccess more ambiguous, which insetivises clearing of areas and having a more complete picture of the physical space and not staring at UI.

If I was a dev I would take these complaints seriously though, SLs ARE the backbone of this game - a role that is difficult enough and many new players' first real break or make moment where they might like their SL or hate them and delete the game forever.

The old system was too transparent though, I think most people can agree with that, especially non-SLs like me.


TLDR - Why read anyway?

8 blips.

I for one am happy with the change and it has not changed my experience that much. We will all just have to play the game a little bit slower. Before, there was this constant need to check progress, if cap moved even a little bit people would send their squads off of defense to speed up the progress. Then if the squads in cap lose some firefights, over half the team is out of position.


I think this change increases the necessity of good intel, assessing enemy strength, and consideration of the allocation of troops to the attack. This might make the commander position more useful and important as well. But that is just my style.


I like longer matches, slower pace of play, less arcade like gamey mechanics, which it seems the Devs are content with removing. Fire control systems slowed the flow of asset combat down a little bit, needing ammo after emplacements are built ends exploitation of mechanic for mortars and TOWs, and this will lessen our reliance on watching the upper right corner of the screen as our metric for progress in battle. The amount of ground we gain and strategic positions in a flag radius we hold should be our main metric, with the cap progress bar there to eliminate excessive ambiguity about team progress.

And then you cap 25% eventually and turns out you doing your job. Also killing enemies and fobs might help to judge if you will capture the flag. But its lost tactical depth, nothing to see here

consider acting conservatively when lacking intel. Doing things like supporting teammates, massing numbers, building fobs for sustained inf flows. And not doing solo yolo when you not sure it will work. You say that the game loses in teamwork from the change, but if squads would prefer to play safe after flag capture and reinforce new defense there will be more teamwork.

I dont have a problem with the cap If there is a middle ground on the caping issue 8 blips is good enough.

[WingWalker]

Not having any problems with the cap.

Normally when I moved my SQ onto a flag I would order everyone to hide and not move at all unless the flag stopped moving. I would call other SQDs and ***** at people on chat that we just need bodies on the flag.

I would only take my squad out if the flag stopped capping.

Now...

I don't sit and watch the cap progress anymore, my eyes are in the game not on the progress bar.

Since I am unsure of how fast the 4 bars move I think more about tactics to secure the area and kill more enemy.

Simply put:
I'm more active on a flag now than before.

[Coalz101]

4+ Months later, I got over it. I spend less time on capable flags (Primarily because I do assets) and more time finding ways to stop the enemy from advancing onto the flag in the first place, considering that destroying the FOB they keep spawning on to attack is more psychologically rewarding than waiting for 4 bars to go to 0 and back to 4 again.

[Brotherscompany]

Got used to it as well. I can't deny my previous points knowing if the cap was moving or not was extremely useful but this one works as well

Its slightly more rewarding to see one bar going down as you know you did hood for example after a firefight and you only have 3 dudes alive and you still capping