Flag-Ticket Mechanics Change

[CAS_ual_TY]

So, when the enemy takes a flag your team owned, and fully caps it, you lose 30 tickets. This encourages you to attack enemy flags.

However, you could change this a tiny bit to also encourage both teams to not only take flags from the enemy, but also neutral flags in the beginning:

Currently:
- You lose 30 tickets when a flag you once owned goes neutral and is then capped by the enemy

Suggestion:
- You lose X tickets when you lose a flag that was yours.
- You gain X (or Y) tickets when you cap a flag that was neutral.

This change would only slightly change the Pub gameplay, but would have a huge impact on "competitive" (if it happens, hehe) play.

This change of getting additional tickets in the beginning would could also be adjusted by reducing the ticket amount in the beginning a tiny bit.

Thanks for reading!

[mectus11]

dead dead

[Web_cole]

Its an interesting idea. At the moment the only real deployment strategies are variations on the "land grab" where both teams rush to the safest point mid map that they can hold and then have a capping force grab the flags behind them. This is the default optimal play on deployment, but many pub teams don't understand this and deploy to the first or second flags, thus losing out to the team who has more space and momentum. So something that incentivises and standardises the land grab even in the pub meta can only be a good idea in my mind, and should in fact raise the level of pub play somewhat.

[Heavy Death]

15tx gain/loss per flag state is what i also thought about. Like in insurgency, you gain morale back when finishing an objective.

[PeppeJ]

Yes, yes and yes

[doop-de-doo]

The reason why flags exist in Project Reality is that without objective focus, teams become fragmented and chaotic.

The devs have run various experiments with flags in the past, eventually settling on a sequential system, then further expanding it to use randomized routes so maps would not be monotonous.

Personally, I prefer no flags.

[TheMerchantOfMenace]

So, when the enemy takes a flag your team owned, and fully caps it, you lose 30 tickets. This encourages you to attack enemy flags.

However, you could change this a tiny bit to also encourage both teams to not only take flags from the enemy, but also neutral flags in the beginning:

Currently:
- You lose 30 tickets when a flag you once owned goes neutral and is then capped by the enemy

Suggestion:
- You lose X tickets when you lose a flag that was yours.
- You gain X (or Y) tickets when you cap a flag that was neutral.

This change would only slightly change the Pub gameplay, but would have a huge impact on "competitive" (if it happens, hehe) play.

This change of getting additional tickets in the beginning would could also be adjusted by reducing the ticket amount in the beginning a tiny bit.

Thanks for reading!

Not certain what you are suggesting here.

As you've pointed out, currently, you lose 30 tickets when losing a flag that you "owned". Then you go on to suggest that you should "lose X tickets when you lose a flag that was yours."

You suggestion doesn't appear to be anything different than the current model, so perhaps you could clarify on this point.

As for the neutral flags, I believe that a ticket gain is in order, since as things are currently, there is absolutely no incentive to cap neutral flags, and there is a lot more incentive to allow the enemy to capture these neutral flags, due to the 30 tickets loss you will inflict on the enemy if you can re-take the flag from them, along with not risking a 30-ticket loss by capping these neutral flags yourself.

When I squad lead on Ia Drang, I always make certain to not cap the center flags at the beginning of the round, and most of the time, I manage to convince the team to not cap any of the three flags. Once these 3 flags have been capped by the enemy (ppl usually can't resist more than 10 mins), our team, most always, manages to re-capture these three initially-neutral flags, thereby robbing the enemy of 90 tickets fairly easily, a loss they normally cannot recover from.

The first time you lose control of a flag that you had capped when it was neutral from the beginning of the game, this first, initial loss of this flag should not lose you any more than 10 tickets, and perhaps, the initial cap of such neutral flags could gain your team maybe something like 5 tickets.

The reason I'm suggesting a 5-ticket cap gain for the initially-neutral flags (rather than a larger ticket gain) is that it might be rather tiresome to always, at the start this map, to have absolutely no choice but to make a mad dash for the flags for fear of a large, crippling ticket differential right at the very beginning of the round, should your idiotic Pub team not muster a proper, quick deployment, and right away, you find yourself at a 60-ticket disadvantage (assuming 20 tickets gain per neutral flag).

It would be pretty demoralizing to find yourself at a 60-ticket disadvantage at the beginning of the round if your team did not have proper Trans, or if some morons took off with 3/4 of the Trans vehicles being only 1/4 to 1/2 full (this would cause a lot of friction, no?).

Now some might point to my above-mentioned strategy of not capping the flags and the associated ticket-loss inflicted on the enemy when you re-take the flags from them as being no different than the point I'm making in the paragraph just above... but when you choose to take flags, knowing full well that if you lose them you will be losing the tickets... now that's a whole different matter than what I'm mentioning in the above paragraph, since this round-start situation that I'm talking about just above here, and its consequences are pretty much beyond your team's squad leaders' control.

Which is why, as I was suggesting 3 and 4 paragraphs above, a small ticket gain for the initial cap of the neutrals, and a small ticket loss for the initial loss of said neutrals would make the loss of these initial flags not significantly devastating, and the capture of these flags not absolutely critical, but still very viable cap options.

The best of both worlds.

As it is now, the round-start neutral flags are poison.

[Frontliner]

As for the neutral flags, I believe that a ticket gain is in order, since as things are currently, there is absolutely no incentive to cap neutral flags, and there is a lot more incentive to allow the enemy to capture these neutral flags, due to the 30 tickets loss you will inflict on the enemy if you can re-take the flag from them, along with not risking a 30-ticket loss by capping these neutral flags yourself.

While I agree there is no game-mechanical incentive to capture flags, most flag captures alter the strategic options each team have in favour of the capturer. Take Muttrah for example: On the ALT-layer it's not possible to back-stab the enemy by attacking East CC, so the US always has to assault West CC first if they wish to progress in the cap chain. Forsaking WCC leaves the US stuck trying to cross the big highway between N City and WCC, so before you even can attempt to storm the T-Shapes you'll come under fire from an entrenched defender while your squad is stuck in the open*. You were talking as if the enemy is guaranteed to lose 30 tickets, but what if the enemy is not bad at the game and has a defensive FOB network, an advantageous position or both? Now you're wasting manpower on a flag that you best had attacked. And while you can quantify the POTENTIAL net ticket "gain" over the enemy, but you cannot quantify the potential costs that come with it in map control, momentum, intel and what a retake is going to end up costing you.

*I mean, you could always play defensively but the US has a hard time establishing control over the north because there are only a few places for FOBs and easily defensible positions. Also, if you're playing defensively you cannot make the argument of allowing an enemy to cap in order to recap for an easy 30-ticket-"gain".

[TheMerchantOfMenace]

While I agree there is no game-mechanical incentive to capture flags, most flag captures alter the strategic options each team have in favour of the capturer. Take Muttrah for example: On the ALT-layer it's not possible to back-stab the enemy by attacking East CC, so the US always has to assault West CC first if they wish to progress in the cap chain. Forsaking WCC leaves the US stuck trying to cross the big highway between N City and WCC, so before you even can attempt to storm the T-Shapes you'll come under fire from an entrenched defender while your squad is stuck in the open*. You were talking as if the enemy is guaranteed to lose 30 tickets, but what if the enemy is not bad at the game and has a defensive FOB network, an advantageous position or both? Now you're wasting manpower on a flag that you best had attacked. And while you can quantify the POTENTIAL net ticket "gain" over the enemy, but you cannot quantify the potential costs that come with it in map control, momentum, intel and what a retake is going to end up costing you.

*I mean, you could always play defensively but the US has a hard time establishing control over the north because there are only a few places for FOBs and easily defensible positions. Also, if you're playing defensively you cannot make the argument of allowing an enemy to cap in order to recap for an easy 30-ticket-"gain".

My post was mostly aimed at the Ia Drang map in particular, the same is probably not applicable for most other maps, due to the linear cap order, and consequently as you rightly point out, leaving your most forward expeditionary force sandwiched between an enemy force that might have the benefit of reinforcements (FOB), on the one side, and the enemy's full rear well-reinforced forces on the other, is a recipe for disaster.

I'd have to look at the map gallery... there must be at least one other map that has non-linear, lateral flag arrangement such as Ia Drang's? I remember Adak had this same arrangement, with the three beachhead flags (although these 3 flags were initially Chinese, and not neutral?).

Same as Ia Drang, in Pub matches, the defenders never seemed to be able to defend these flags successfully, and I find the same to be true of almost all Pub matches, when one allows the enemy to cap the three flags, they always seem to lose at least 2 of these, and so often, all three. I expect this would be different in the PRT, and that a proper strategy there would be to cap perhaps only 2 of the 3 flags.

[nardz123]

A bleed was added into Ia Drang for not capping the flags to address this issue, thankfully. If you do that now as VC, and let the Americans cap out, you start bleeding. Prior to this you are correct -- this was a sound strategy.


CASualty has a good idea. 15 ticks for capturing a neutral flag at round start is a good incentive to get the hustle on and fight for it even.


What if a ticket addition of 10 or 15 tickets was added on for capturing a flag at all at ANY point in the match? Too OP? Certainly adds even more incentive for people to a) flag cap at start and b) push the objective.

The enemy would still lose 30 tickets, assuming the capped the flag first, plus you'd gain 10 or 15. At round start, for capping neutral flags, you'd simply get the 10 or 15.

[CAS_ual_TY]

Didnt read all these life stories
Still. Bump

[Outlawz7]

You gain X (or Y) tickets when you cap a flag that was neutral.

Rush enemy first flag, get X times number of neutral flags worth of tickets, win round with more tickets than you started.

[PeppeJ]

Rush enemy first flag, get X times number of neutral flags worth of tickets, win round with more tickets than you started.

What difference does a game ending in 20 mins with 340-0 or 460-0 really do? A stomp is a stomp and most of the server will rage quit anyways.

[Outlawz7]

My point is why would you incentivize rushing/capping neutral flags even more by adding this. Even if you rush 3rd flag on a 5-flag route, that means you just got one flag worth of extra tickets to spend on 4th and 5th while the enemy didn't.

The point of the ticket system is loss not gain, you win by losing them slower than the other team.

[Danesh_italiano]

What about NOT bleeding when you lose last flag BUT has a "white" flag?

[CAS_ual_TY]

My point is why would you incentivize rushing/capping neutral flags even more by adding this. Even if you rush 3rd flag on a 5-flag route, that means you just got one flag worth of extra tickets to spend on 4th and 5th while the enemy didn't.

The point of the ticket system is loss not gain, you win by losing them slower than the other team.

Whats the point of flags then?

[Frontliner]

Flags provide a gameplay focus. If we didn't have flags gameplay would probably center around either team camping the other's main base exit because that's the easiest way to get kills.

Like I said before, the idea is that you're not only getting a small ticket advantage over your opponent but also often times an advantage in map control. This is very hard to quantify but it does exist, proof of that being team with lower flag counts not winning nearly as often.

I'm having a very hard to grasp your argumentation of "neutral flags not giving tickets = no incentive to capture them" whilst every veteran(and you're very much one of us by now) in this game knows that the easiest way to win the game is to deny control of a flag in the enemy's half of the capture progression as early as possible, and win the game while being in control of the map before other factors can come in ruin your day. I don't think the team with the advantage needs to be aided even more.

[AlonTavor]

Still think taking neutral flag should give like 5 tickets.

[CAS_ual_TY]

Flags dont/barely give you map controll. And flags also dont determine who is winning. They can, but need not.

The AAS system (and the flags) serves (or tries to do) 2 things:
- Give players something to do (objectives)
- Represent the current frontline (= represent the map control)

From the manual:

CPs can only be captured in a linear order to simulate a shifting front line and focus engagements.

You can completely control a flag without capping it. The main reason you cap flags right now is to try and get to the enemy bleed flag (and stop the enemy from getting to yours). But the 30 tickets punishment does not punish the winner, it punishes the loser, as only the loser gets punished by those 30 tickets.
In other words: Instead of punishing a flag loss, you should reward a flag take.

If you play skirmish (properly, 8v8, no retards) you often do not even cap the flags or middle flag, which shows how flawed they are.

TL;DR:
- If any situation can occure, where it is better to wait and let the enemy take an objective in order to then retake it, rather than taking it immediately in the first place, the objective or the system behind it is flawed. What does the objective do, what is it for, if you want your enemy to take it?

[Frontliner]

Flags dont/barely give you map controll.

So when I'm rushing Muttrah's North City flag(s) as MEC I'm not getting map control because.....?

If you play skirmish (properly, 8v8, no retards) you often do not even cap the flags or middle flag, which shows how flawed they are.

Skirmish 8v8 is an entirely different mode from your standard AAS in every imagineable facet. The fact that you feel the need to add that >flawed flags< supposedly only occur when both teams also feature "gud players" to me is telling what mistake you're making. This is called a "false equivalency"(apples-and-oranges-comparison), you project what happens under starkly different circumstances(only good players vs. a regular mixture of casuals and vets) in a different game mode with far less players involved on either side, no vehicles, no vehicles, no FOBs, onto the flags in the AAS game mode because that's the only thing Skirmish and AAS have in common(at least in the argumentation).
In short: Your argument is not applicable to AAS in any way.