Insurgents feel too weak with the new emplacement nerfs

[dcm]

Now that emplacements no longer spawn with ammo preinstalled. The nerf has negatively impacted the insurgent team the most. Because they do not have a requestable rifleman/ammobearer kit. I've been asking, pleading, no... begging, for over a decade now. Please, for the love of god and in game balance, give the insurgent team a requestable rifleman kit that can drop ammo. I dont care which one it is. Just some kit that can drop ammo bags on the emplacements to supply them. The ability to resupply from hideouts is nice. But it doesn't solve the problem.

[axytho]

I actually like the fact that you have to spawn in with the rifleman to be able to ressuply the emplacements. Ideally I would like some sort of way to actually have an SPG-9 "gun-crew" but the current system is a close enough approximation.

What really needs to be changed is the insurgents AA capabillity. The DShK is too weak against helicopters, especially CAS. It would be nice to have some ZPU-1, ZPU-2 or ZPU-4 emplacements that can be placed, or added to technicals. Right now everything hinges on AA and occasionally the ZU-23-2 when dealing with CAS. The devs even removed having multiple civis in the same location, so the CAS on Karbala for instance is just stupidly overpowered.

Maybe some sort of supply crate system for "heavy" insurgent emplacements like the ZPU, ZU-23, ZiS-3, and possible additions in the future such as the B-10? It would also be nice if MEC could get this on maps like Muttrah, where the Eryx has become the only reliable way to kill the Cobra (which IMO is stupid).

The effort required would balance the abillity to kill heavy assets.

[dcm]

Spawning in with rifleman is not the issue. Not being able to request one is. It's such a fundamentally stupid design issue to not have the ability at this point. That I think someone on the dev team is being a **** to the insurgents team on purpose. Same with most opfor factions in general. Feels like they are getting constantly nerfed for no reason. I know there's a lot of ex military who worked on PR. And maybe they got some unresolved issues and use this game to enact some form of revenge against digital counterparts to the taliban and insurgents.

[Nate.]

Spawning in with rifleman is not the issue. Not being able to request one is. It's such a fundamentally stupid design issue to not have the ability at this point. That I think someone on the dev team is being a **** to the insurgents team on purpose. Same with most opfor factions in general. Feels like they are getting constantly nerfed for no reason. I know there's a lot of ex military who worked on PR. And maybe they got some unresolved issues and use this game to enact some form of revenge against digital counterparts to the taliban and insurgents.

big brain theory.

You mean nerfs like being able to resupply from hideouts with infinite ammo?

[dcm]

big brain theory.

You mean nerfs like being able to resupply from hideouts with infinite ammo?

A small buff like that is naught but a drop in the ocean compared to the deluge of nerfs.

[Nate.]

A small buff like that is naught but a drop in the ocean compared to the deluge of nerfs.

Feel free to compile a list and I will investigate which devs are abusing the game to resolve their old grudges at the expense of insurgent players.

[labonte95]

Personally, I think the changes are awesome. It's not too difficult to get 2-3 people to set up MG's and an SPG next to a hideout, get them armed up in a couple minutes, and then have infinite ammo to resupply them with. I feel it was more unrealistic to have a fully loaded SPG pop out of the ground after a few clicks of the shovel, kill an APC, and then redeploy else where. All of that being done by a single SL. These changes heavily reinforce using teamwork to use assets, and isn't that what PR is all about?

[dcm]

Feel free to compile a list and I will investigate which devs are abusing the game to resolve their old grudges at the expense of insurgent players.

Ok. How far back should we go?

.2 and .3: I dont remember much from back then. I dont even remember if insurgents were in the minimod back then. Sadly at the time, Project Reality was derided as being nothing more than a BF2 hardcore mode. But I saw potential in the mod and kept coming back. I really loved the gun mechanics of PR compared to vanilla BF2. I hated the bf2 deviation and the recoil systems. PR's was so much better and more responsive. You were responsible for your weapons recoil. And the damage model was much more consistent.

.4 and .5: Insurgents were as close to perfect as possible. Granted insurgency as an official game mode did not exist yet, but some of us did special missions by taking the blackhawk deep behind enemy lines to known caches and destroying them with m2 slams to deny the enemy resupply. Other than that insurgents could and did hold their own very well. Especially against the A-10, APC and Cobra. No kit limits back then. You could and would have entire squads made up solely of rpg gunners. There were times when the hovering apache was met with a volley of rpgs. The meat grinder that was facility was where men were made. The marines were still using the m16a2 iron sights, but they out ranged almost all insurgent firearms. I remember out dueling an svd gunner with the m16a2 on many occasions. Insurgents also had a tank. T-55 was it? That only mechanics could drive. But it was just cas bait in the grand scheme of things. We also had insurgent spawn cars and blufor could spawn from their apcs. I remember some players figured out that you could drive the spawn car into the multi story garage and at airport. Spawn with rockets and camp the cobra and a-10 on the runway. The marines did the same with their lavs. That was when the palace on the island was opfor main. I remember always going war vet for the ak101 and grenade launcher as insurgent. Or as special forces as blufor. P226 and M4A1 with red dot were my babies. Made so many fond memories and friends back then.

.6: Didn't play much .6. That was when server licensing was introduced right? Many servers that run custom rules like fast spawns were wiped out. This was devastating for broad swaths of the PR community. Especially those in asia and south america where it was really popular. Entire clans and communities were extinguished overnight. I kept trying to revive .5 by running a 24/7 basrah server. But people only wanted to play the newest thing. This is what I call the first dark age of PR.

I think that was also when civilians and insurgency as game mode were introduced? Civis looked like christmas trees with those ugly *** green sweaters. And they couldn't swim either without taking damage. Other than that, that was when the insurgents got nerfed hard. No longer having spawnable access to rockets and other good shit. But to be fair that was for all factions, because that was when it was only 4 spawnable kits? Rifleman, medic, automatic rifleman and I forget the fourth kit. But the kit nerfs hit insurgents hardest the most.

.7, .75,.8: Dont remember much as I didn't play it much. Only for the first week of the new patch to check things out(My cod2 and 4 custom map servers were booming and needing my attention). It was the second dark age of PR. So many servers and communities shut down. I think it was because .7 that completely fucked the deviation system? So many players quit including myself. You could stay still for minutes not touch your mouse, have fire rebound to a key on the keyboard and still not hit the broad side of the barn from the inside of the barn.

.9, .95, .973: This is when I got slowly back into PR. Originally I did not play much. Until I got back into my old spec-ops habits(This was also the era of MW2 and the 'no dedis no buy' boycott. Sadly many people did buy and I had to shut down my cod2/4 servers due to lack of players. Fortunately my friend had a PR server and I financed it's upkeep). I distinctly remember playing as insurgents on ramiel. Still felt very weak as a faction overall. By then almost every blufor faction had scopes and vehicles with thermals. And we insurgents were still fighting over limited scoped weapons and rockets that spawned at main/cache. That was when caches had random weapon spawns right? It was either a pkm, svd or rpg-7. Insurgent maps were shooting galleries for blufor. I remember this was also when insurgent kit piracy was at it's height. Entire insurgent squads were armed with blufor kits, solely because the blufor kits had scopes and were well furnished with grenades and other goodies that we lacked. By the same logic I would do the same as blufor. I'd grab an insurgent kit usually an ak with the red hijab and infili behind enemy lines to raise hell. It was extremely confusing for insurgents to see a blufor body with insurgent kit geometries. That hesitation and doubt gave me a critical few seconds to kill them. Hell I remember shadowing entire insurgent squads for miles, they would lead me straight to the cache. There were times when I'd grab a pkm and just camp the cache. It was so confusing that the insurgents publicly accused blufor of hacking in all chat. God I loved being a sneaky sunnovabitch. I think this is why kafr halab ins alt is my favorite map in the game today. Both faction look and sound similar and have similar weapons. Nothing more fun than attaching myself to an enemy squad until they get suspicious and open up on them with my ak.

1.0-1.2~: This was the era of hundred man servers. Most commercial games were stuck stuck at 64 players. Or worse they regressed to matchmaking with about a dozen and a half guys at most. Insurgent were always a bit weaker than conventional factions. But still doable. But slowly over time they kept taking away insurgents gear and kit. Like the AK74 and AKS-74U. Which were big nerfs in their own right, because 5.45 and 7.62 aks both killed in three shots to the chest. And the recoil system being heavily biased in favor of 5.56 type caliber weapons. I remember deviation still being a pain though. This was also when you could still use enemy rifleman kits. Sadly this was when my friend shut down the server I was financing. He just lost interest in PR overall and I quit too for a long while.

1.3-1.39: This was when modern insurgent kits were calcified. With little overall change save for primary weapons changes. This was the biggest nerf for the insurgents for a very long time. Tactics had to be reformulated and civi suicide tactics which were always an option became a necessity. I didn't like having to die in a game to combat my enemy. I know you do die in games. But forcing myself to go out and get shot just to slightly inconvenience my enemy felt boring. It wasn't until the penalties for civi kills were ramped up did things start looking brighter for insurgents. Sadly this was also when gamespy shutdown and bf2 officially died. Many people who might've played PR never had the chance. They never heard of it. Or they were like 'why play a mod for a dead game?' FH2 was also hurt badly around this time.

1.4: I cant remember much from this era. Because this was when I truly quit. Because bluedrake also quit PR. I didn't because of him. No it's just that he and his streamer friends were keeping PR alive. And without them promoting PR on youtube the game died. I never paid much attention to streamers. In fact I hated playing with them because they were horrible teammates who were only in it for the content. But now I understand that it's the content that kept PR alive for all these years. It kept the newbies coming in. It kept the servers alive. No streamers = no players. And no interest from the greater fps community either. There was such an extreme shortage of players interested in playing PR that many servers shut down. Squad was also on the up and up then. This was the third dark age of pr.

1.6~: Insurgents were still shit. So I avoided insurgent maps. Unless I could blufor whore or maps where I could grab an ammo techie and plant the fuck outta watercans. I usually played as taliban. Because you know alt rifleman with watercans. Made my **** rock hard.

1.7: This was when the emplacement nerfs hit. Again it affected all factions but insurgents were hardest hit because they do not have requestable ammo bags. Yes we got the ammo from hideout buff. It's nice and all. But still I do not see the logic or reason behind insurgents not getting a requestable rifleman kit with ammo. If you're worried about grenade spam. Then pull a taliban alt rifleman. Except give him a rifle with ammo bags. No frags or smokes either. It be a pain but atleast insurgents will have someway to request ammo bags for their emplacements off the cache. Hell I'd go one step further and allow kit request off the hideout too.


Wow what a trip down memory lane. I thought I forgotten most of it.

[Coalz101]

Ok. How far back should we go?

.2 and .3: I dont remember much from back then. I dont even remember if insurgents were in the minimod back then. Sadly at the time, Project Reality was derided as being nothing more than a BF2 hardcore mode. But I saw potential in the mod and kept coming back. I really loved the gun mechanics of PR compared to vanilla BF2. I hated the bf2 deviation and the recoil systems. PR's was so much better and more responsive. You were responsible for your weapons recoil. And the damage model was much more consistent.

.4 and .5: Insurgents were as close to perfect as possible. Granted insurgency as an official game mode did not exist yet, but some of us did special missions by taking the blackhawk deep behind enemy lines to known caches and destroying them with m2 slams to deny the enemy resupply. Other than that insurgents could and did hold their own very well. Especially against the A-10, APC and Cobra. No kit limits back then. You could and would have entire squads made up solely of rpg gunners. There were times when the hovering apache was met with a volley of rpgs. The meat grinder that was facility was where men were made. The marines were still using the m16a2 iron sights, but they out ranged almost all insurgent firearms. I remember out dueling an svd gunner with the m16a2 on many occasions. Insurgents also had a tank. T-55 was it? That only mechanics could drive. But it was just cas bait in the grand scheme of things. We also had insurgent spawn cars and blufor could spawn from their apcs. I remember some players figured out that you could drive the spawn car into the multi story garage and at airport. Spawn with rockets and camp the cobra and a-10 on the runway. The marines did the same with their lavs. That was when the palace on the island was opfor main. I remember always going war vet for the ak101 and grenade launcher as insurgent. Or as special forces as blufor. P226 and M4A1 with red dot were my babies. Made so many fond memories and friends back then.

.6: Didn't play much .6. That was when server licensing was introduced right? Many servers that run custom rules like fast spawns were wiped out. This was devastating for broad swaths of the PR community. Especially those in asia and south america where it was really popular. Entire clans and communities were extinguished overnight. I kept trying to revive .5 by running a 24/7 basrah server. But people only wanted to play the newest thing. This is what I call the first dark age of PR.

I think that was also when civilians and insurgency as game mode were introduced? Civis looked like christmas trees with those ugly *** green sweaters. And they couldn't swim either without taking damage. Other than that, that was when the insurgents got nerfed hard. No longer having spawnable access to rockets and other good shit. But to be fair that was for all factions, because that was when it was only 4 spawnable kits? Rifleman, medic, automatic rifleman and I forget the fourth kit. But the kit nerfs hit insurgents hardest the most.

.7, .75,.8: Dont remember much as I didn't play it much. Only for the first week of the new patch to check things out(My cod2 and 4 custom map servers were booming and needing my attention). It was the second dark age of PR. So many servers and communities shut down. I think it was because .7 that completely fucked the deviation system? So many players quit including myself. You could stay still for minutes not touch your mouse, have fire rebound to a key on the keyboard and still not hit the broad side of the barn from the inside of the barn.

.9, .95, .973: This is when I got slowly back into PR. Originally I did not play much. Until I got back into my old spec-ops habits(This was also the era of MW2 and the 'no dedis no buy' boycott. Sadly many people did buy and I had to shut down my cod2/4 servers due to lack of players. Fortunately my friend had a PR server and I financed it's upkeep). I distinctly remember playing as insurgents on ramiel. Still felt very weak as a faction overall. By then almost every blufor faction had scopes and vehicles with thermals. And we insurgents were still fighting over limited scoped weapons and rockets that spawned at main/cache. That was when caches had random weapon spawns right? It was either a pkm, svd or rpg-7. Insurgent maps were shooting galleries for blufor. I remember this was also when insurgent kit piracy was at it's height. Entire insurgent squads were armed with blufor kits, solely because the blufor kits had scopes and were well furnished with grenades and other goodies that we lacked. By the same logic I would do the same as blufor. I'd grab an insurgent kit usually an ak with the red hijab and infili behind enemy lines to raise hell. It was extremely confusing for insurgents to see a blufor body with insurgent kit geometries. That hesitation and doubt gave me a critical few seconds to kill them. Hell I remember shadowing entire insurgent squads for miles, they would lead me straight to the cache. There were times when I'd grab a pkm and just camp the cache. It was so confusing that the insurgents publicly accused blufor of hacking in all chat. God I loved being a sneaky sunnovabitch. I think this is why kafr halab ins alt is my favorite map in the game today. Both faction look and sound similar and have similar weapons. Nothing more fun than attaching myself to an enemy squad until they get suspicious and open up on them with my ak.

1.0-1.2~: This was the era of hundred man servers. Most commercial games were stuck stuck at 64 players. Or worse they regressed to matchmaking with about a dozen and a half guys at most. Insurgent were always a bit weaker than conventional factions. But still doable. But slowly over time they kept taking away insurgents gear and kit. Like the AK74 and AKS-74U. Which were big nerfs in their own right, because 5.45 and 7.62 aks both killed in three shots to the chest. And the recoil system being heavily biased in favor of 5.56 type caliber weapons. I remember deviation still being a pain though. This was also when you could still use enemy rifleman kits. Sadly this was when my friend shut down the server I was financing. He just lost interest in PR overall and I quit too for a long while.

1.3-1.39: This was when modern insurgent kits were calcified. With little overall change save for primary weapons changes. This was the biggest nerf for the insurgents for a very long time. Tactics had to be reformulated and civi suicide tactics which were always an option became a necessity. I didn't like having to die in a game to combat my enemy. I know you do die in games. But forcing myself to go out and get shot just to slightly inconvenience my enemy felt boring. It wasn't until the penalties for civi kills were ramped up did things start looking brighter for insurgents. Sadly this was also when gamespy shutdown and bf2 officially died. Many people who might've played PR never had the chance. They never heard of it. Or they were like 'why play a mod for a dead game?' FH2 was also hurt badly around this time.

1.4: I cant remember much from this era. Because this was when I truly quit. Because bluedrake also quit PR. I didn't because of him. No it's just that he and his streamer friends were keeping PR alive. And without them promoting PR on youtube the game died. I never paid much attention to streamers. In fact I hated playing with them because they were horrible teammates who were only in it for the content. But now I understand that it's the content that kept PR alive for all these years. It kept the newbies coming in. It kept the servers alive. No streamers = no players. And no interest from the greater fps community either. There was such an extreme shortage of players interested in playing PR that many servers shut down. Squad was also on the up and up then. This was the third dark age of pr.

1.6~: Insurgents were still shit. So I avoided insurgent maps. Unless I could blufor whore or maps where I could grab an ammo techie and plant the fuck outta watercans. I usually played as taliban. Because you know alt rifleman with watercans. Made my **** rock hard.

1.7: This was when the emplacement nerfs hit. Again it affected all factions but insurgents were hardest hit because they do not have requestable ammo bags. Yes we got the ammo from hideout buff. It's nice and all. But still I do not see the logic or reason behind insurgents not getting a requestable rifleman kit with ammo. If you're worried about grenade spam. Then pull a taliban alt rifleman. Except give him a rifle with ammo bags. No frags or smokes either. It be a pain but atleast insurgents will have someway to request ammo bags for their emplacements off the cache. Hell I'd go one step further and allow kit request off the hideout too.


Wow what a trip down memory lane. I thought I forgotten most of it.

I thought it was grump posting for a second, lol, anyways most real issues, from what I'm reading came around 1.5ish. Insurgency maps still feel "Bland" there's nothing interesting to do on those maps other than camp tunnels or stare at walls. It's impossible to do actual fighting away from the cache other than on Gaza maybe. I don't like gaza but lets be honest its pretty much the Muttrah of Ins maps (Fallujah is boring).

[SemlerPDX]

I thought it was grump posting for a second, lol...

Nah, Grump's dissertations read at a high school freshman or sophomore level - the above diatribe reads clearly at more of a high school junior or senior level, and far more sentences per paragraph. I genuinely felt the authors disdain for the evolution of this free game, it was riveting. The thinly veiled insinuations were quite suspenseful and kept me at the edge of my PC chair.

[dcm]

I thought it was grump posting for a second, lol, anyways most real issues, from what I'm reading came around 1.5ish. Insurgency maps still feel "Bland" there's nothing interesting to do on those maps other than camp tunnels or stare at walls. It's impossible to do actual fighting away from the cache other than on Gaza maybe. I don't like gaza but lets be honest its pretty much the Muttrah of Ins maps (Fallujah is boring).

Well unlike professor grump who writes long theses about how to theoretically play PR. I'm in the shit and know how to actually play PR. No offense to the professor.

Insurgents suck because they're too weak offensively and can only reliably rely on suicide tactics. Whether it be civis or bombcars. Insurgents are stuck playing defense 99% of the time. I know it's insurgency but sometimes you gotta bring the fight to the enemy's doorstep. Other opfor factions are much more flexible and dynamic and can be both on the offense or the defense. Hamas, ARF, Chechen rebels, etc. That's what makes them all much more fun than the insurgents. Even on layers with little to no vehicles. Insurgents as a faction need highly clustered urban maps with broken up sight lines and lots of cover and shelter to be competitive. As soon as they leave that comfort zone, they're as good as dead. It's a pain in the *** to defend caches outside of the city center on basrah, karbala, and shadadah. Fallujah is 50/50 because it's so small. And because it's so small, armor can shoot across half the map with near impunity. It's a real ***** to root out americans camping the hospital on fallujah. Worse yet is if a cache spawns there. Bomb cars will not make it to the hospital without getting discovered and lit up. SPG techies are rare but too valuable to waste on fob assault unless there's armor nearby which almost always takes priority. SPG emplacements which was my number one way of rooting out entrenched americans, take way too long to set up and can be discovered very easily. With the ammo nerf it's so much worse now. And insurgents dont always have access to area attacks on all maps.

[dcm]

Nah, Grump's dissertations read at a high school freshman or sophomore level - the above diatribe reads clearly at more of a high school junior or senior level, and far more sentences per paragraph. I genuinely felt the authors disdain for the evolution of this free game, it was riveting. The thinly veiled insinuations were quite suspenseful and kept me at the edge of my PC chair.

Well I would love to see PR release a commercial product. Because squad is mediocre. Squad takes the worst aspects of the milsim genre and doubles down on all of them(Why the fuck do I gotta beg permission from my squadlead to get a fucking car?). PR is free. Not just in cost, but in spirit too. It's less restrictive gameplay wise too. And that's what I love about PR. The freedom.

[SemlerPDX]

Well I would love to see PR release a commercial product. ...

Yeah, because that worked out so well for SQUAD.

I quite prefer the fact that you are not a paying customer who is always right. The Dev's have the leeway to take or leave any feedback such as yours. They have the option to completely ignore your baseless accusations and insinuations, and can focus on their passion without being bothered by the opinions of a rare few individuals such as yourself who spend more time complaining about the way things have evolved than learning how to "git gud" like everyone else.

[Nate.]

Stay on topic please.

[dcm]

Is too much to ask to be able to request a rifleman kit with ammo for a single team? The dev teams obstinacy in this regard is puzzling, nonsensical and at times enraging.

[Suchar]

What obstinacy? Nobody from the team even addressed your main point in this thread. Nobody said we wouldn't do it.

A separate kit request menu for factions which need it is on the TODO list. We have very, very few people working on UI. If you want it to be implemented sooner, consider learning UI coding. HUD code is simple, it is open source and can be found in

Code: Select all

Project Reality BF2/mods/pr/content/menu_server.zip\hud\hudsetup

You may begin with the 'HudElementsServerMessages.con' since it contains some new commands that might be very useful.

A list of HUD commands in the engine for reference.

[bad_nade]

I kept trying to revive .5 by running a 24/7 basrah server.

I remember playing on a 24/7 basrah server! And I played a lot. Can't remeber server name or which version it was running but it was around that time. Was it your server? It was THE Best Thing Ever! Always full, always fun. I still remember insurgent spawn points all over the map, molotovs, stealing enemy sniper and hat kits, etc., etc. Good times

[dcm]

I remember playing on a 24/7 basrah server! And I played a lot. Can't remeber server name or which version it was running but it was around that time. Was it your server? It was THE Best Thing Ever! Always full, always fun. I still remember insurgent spawn points all over the map, molotovs, stealing enemy sniper and hat kits, etc., etc. Good times

Was it .508 24/7 Al Basrah on the Devfile server run by desertfox? That existed in 2007 from about valentines day to around the 4th of july? No that was not my server. But my friends and I were regulars. Later on we did try to bring back a Project Reality .5 server many many times. Up until bf2 patch 1.5 which broke something that made it impossible to run anything but contemporary PR. But the problem mostly lay with the players themselves. They only wanted to play the newest thing. The newest version of PR. Nobody had any time or interest for what they perceived as old PR. We were able to get a few games going on retro nights. But it wasn't worth the hassle. Sad really.