Removal of live Cap and impact on SL/Teamwork

[Brotherscompany]

This is going to be a long post, I beg you to stay with me and read it but Im not going to keep it short because this is a critical change that was made and needs to be discussed.
I have been waiting since the update came to make this post about the removal of the Live cap so l could give feedback based on experience (I have my good share of experience in regularly SL) instead of concerns on how it affected SL and Teamwork.

Before this update you could see the live cap if you were attacking which gave you critical Info and tactical depth as a SL. Not only did it gave you info about what correct decision to make next, but it was pretty much realistically speaking the only important intel that SLs had to share besides call-outs and insentivated communication.


What did we loose?

SL wise

Tactical depth and decision making, and l cant stress how much was it lost and how it just makes the experience even harder. When you go inside a flag now you cant see if you are capping or not until 25% has been caped so this means l cant make a wild guess on how enemies there are on the flag.

Are there 7 and we were capping and another dude came in (we stopped capping), am l facing a full cohesive SQ and the flag cap wouldn't move on the 1st place, did l loose 3 of my guys and we started loosing cap, so should l stress them to respawn to keep the pressure or should l tell them to wait since the flag is going back and forward? Is it worth the risk of going to a Defensive building since we are slightly capping or do l hunt for their FOB and risk loosing my flag since we took a long time? How do l control my dudes (especially if they are new players or just randoms, its now even more exhausting to SL randoms and resisting the urge to kick bad players for your mental well being) to sit on the flag and listen to orders instead of going ADHD and attacking since we dont know if the flag is going back and foward and we just see 25% of progression and nothing in between? Forest combat with Caps of 300m, ohoohoh have fun guessing what's going on, just having to move around and stumble upon enemies which at that point you are taking casualties. I could keep going but l truly hope lm getting my idea across, although you didn't totally loose this information its severely reduced it to a stupid dumbed downed basic level

Teamwork wise (more focused on SL aspect)

Just wow. Are we capping? Im not sure. And this is how it goes now.

Being able to tell how the cap was going was honestly the only reason/way to get randoms to speak besides call outs, the coms are lower and less accurate, you basically lowered the power of communication. How is this a good change in a team oriented game that boats about superior teamwork?

Before I could let my team know that we are easily capping so they should either defend since a heavy attack could be coming or going for the next uncappable flag, but now l dont have the live info to to let my team know how to act on a tactical gamble that might work out or just be catastrophic. Do l need to really call for another SQ reinforcement or am l fighting with another cohesive SQ + some randoms going in and out? 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 on a snowball effect and a lot of the time being able to outplay the enemies or prepare better, but guess what thats now gone why are you going to spout some unsure/inaccurate to other SLs and it leads to a decrease in coms.


What did we gain?

Now your average Joe that came from a 2015 graphic game can look at the new HUD and understand it better, or think it doesnt look outdated


SLs are the backbone of PR, and right now there is a absolute over abundance of them as well as wild non stop intense SL coms and SQs coordination, you basically removed critical info that fomented more teamwork and rewarded knowledge in favor of what? As a SL this is just another step that makes me want not to bother and makes things more difficult, and having to rely on my SQ members skills which translates in the long term a circle jerk of my group of friends instead of welcoming randoms since its just going to be harder.
The only argument l can think of is that the goal is to make it like the defence cap but lm sry to say it doesnt have a positive outcome at all and the offence has a lot more risk and a higher skill gap than defence

TL,DR This was a uncalled change, it made SL harder and more draining, decreased the skill gap and tactical depth as well as possible teamwork inter SL. l dont have any suggestion at all on how to improve the system, absolutely revert this change l dont want to get the typical give it sometime and get used to the new system, which in this case is objectively worse.

Right now you have the chance to make PR worse forever, I beg you listen to us for the love of God if more people agree with this post

[InfantryGamer42]

Compered to other changes in last few patches which "destroyed PR for 101 time", I can agree on this one. While HUD improvements are always nice, slider live cap was better system compered to current 4/4 cap. It offered you a lot more info (If you knew how to read it) and it did have positive impact on always lacking squad chat.

[SGT.CHRISTIAN]

Agreed.

The live cap count serves as a detrimental feedback for each and every squad leader (and player). Removing such intel only discourages teamwork as it limits the feeling of control and impact each and every player has on the result of the round.

The more tools and control that a squad leader has, the more it encourages squad leaders to use teamwork to their benefit. Removing any tools from their arsenal (and a pointless removal at that) only encourages free kitting as it takes away from the sense of impact that they have on the round.

I suspect that this change was introduced to give the HUD a new shine and that's great, but it has negatively affected gameplay and should be reverted.

[Rabidrider]

Agreed.

Any change that makes moments in the game unnecessarily vague (where you go "what? huh? whats going on?") need to be reevaluated imo

[peaveyyyy]

Agreed. If gameplay gained something by making the change I don't know what it is.

I understood the defence not knowing and thought that was a good change. This I dunno where it came from. No one asked for it and I don't see any benefit at all.

What was the idea of it?

[UTurista]

When you go inside a flag now you cant see if you are capping or not until 25% has been caped so this means l cant make a wild guess on how enemies there are on the flag.

That was one of the goals, to remove the magic of knowing how many players are defending.
How is acceptable in this game of team-play and somewhat realism, know exactly how many players are in a given region?

the coms are lower and less accurate, you basically lowered the power of communication.

Yes, coms are less accurate, which means the power/value has increased not decreased.
Now, each single infantry report helps in forming a better view of how many squads are inside the cap radius.

What did we gain?

• [-]Defenders now lose the magic radar (for a while), meaning the attacking squad can safely and quietly enter the flag radius, locate the enemy and kill them before they are even aware.[/-] I was wrong here, before defenders never had the magic radar. Then, this means the defenders do actually gain the magic radar, but delayed like the attackers - in a sense is more consistent.
• Attackers, now lose the magic radar (for a while), meaning the attacking squad now needs to locate the enemy and kill them instead of just knowing exactly how many they are fighting.

[Filamu]

That was one of the goals, to remove the magic of knowing how many players are defending.
How is acceptable in this game of team-play and somewhat realism, know exactly how many players are in a given region?


Yes, coms are less accurate, which means the power/value has increased not decreased.
Now, each single infantry report helps in forming a better view of how many squads are inside the cap radius.

• Attackers, now lose the magic radar (for a while), meaning the attacking squad now needs to locate the enemy and kill them instead of just knowing exactly how many they are fighting.

I dont know if it is how it is in RL ( ), but it has been acceptable for 15 years in PR.

You dont know how many they are though, but you get to know if you are more than them and can change strategies accordingly. That strategy change is something I at least appreciated. It means instead of searching the whole 300m radius of a flag, you can set up and prepare for a counter attack and actually offer good resistance. It means you can stop throwing away people on an underground if you are enough, which reduces their OP-ness and encourages team play. There is no way good coms can show you how many is underground. Now you just have to hope you can convince people to stack up and just hope that cap moves.

The coms will be weaker, because you have no hard info. Try to convince a pubbing team to wait a minute to see if the cap moves. They can be as many as they want underground, we just have to wait longer to see.

All it does is add a big question mark to every decision, which I think in many cases will lead to more passive "wait and see" plays. If that is the goal, sure, but I am not sure it will add good and fun gameplay. PR is after all somewhat of an arcade game. Being able to see what the objective is gives more action and fun. Waiting longer for that same info is less fun and more frustration.

[Deviro]

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.

[Chuva_RD]

Before this update you could see the live cap if you were attacking which gave you critical Info and tactical depth as a SL. Not only did it gave you info about what correct decision to make next, but it was pretty much realistically speaking the only important intel that SLs had to share besides call-outs and insentivated communication.

yes its same level of depth as watching points on mortars to see if you hit.

Tactical depth and decision making, and l cant stress how much was it lost and how it just makes the experience even harder. When you go inside a flag now you cant see if you are capping or not until 25% has been caped so this means l cant make a wild guess on how enemies there are on the flag.

Oh no, you cant see if you going to capture the flag instantly and can find out amount of enemies inside. Tactical depth lost! everyone run on machineguns with bayonets and stop thinking bc devs forbid that.

Just wow. Are we capping? Im not sure. And this is how it goes now.

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

Being able to tell how the cap was going was honestly the only reason/way to get randoms to speak besides call outs, the coms are lower and less accurate, you basically lowered the power of communication.

The Mumble is same, the people are same, microphones too. Where the power of communication was lost?

now l dont have the live info to to let my team know how to act on a tactical gamble that might work out or just be catastrophic

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.

If you as SL cant beat uncertainty with organization and planning then why you play SL. Take sniper kit.

and having to rely on my SQ members skills which translates in the long term a circle jerk of my group of friends instead of welcoming randoms since its just going to be harder.

SL having to rely on his squadmembers? LOL never did that

and before every clan was so welcome to noobis, meeting them with bread and salt, having small talk about weather, telling 10yo stories how you were playing PR after walking under the table. Now all this gone because SLs cant abuse cap status for intel. Now there are reason not to accept noobies: no capture status intel - no welcome

the offence has a lot more risk and a higher skill gap than defence

you cant take flags because cant tell how many defenders left? did you try to use left mouse button and shoot everyone?

TL,DR This was a uncalled change, it made SL harder and more draining, decreased the skill gap and tactical depth as well as possible teamwork inter SL. l dont have any suggestion at all on how to improve the system, absolutely revert this change l dont want to get the typical give it sometime and get used to the new system, which in this case is objectively worse.

Or it increased skill gap bc you cant get free intel from math operations with bodycount. And made tactical depth bigger because you need to plan for more enemies. Playing as SL became harder, is it bad? it didnt become more difficult in technical aspects, deal with uncertainty

And pls donate to GreenSL foundation to keep SL gamer specimen from extinction. The delay from capturing the flag amounting to maybe 60s is destroying their inhabitat

[BigBigMonkeyMan]

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.

[UncleSmek]

Agreed. Should be reversed.

[Coalz101]

Guys, I have a better solution. Lets remove the entire cap display because clearly devs don't want us to know whats really going on. Doesn't even have a cap display in real life either, we know we captured when all the enemies are dead.

[WingWalker]

I like this "fog of war" improvement.

The change adds another element to PR making it less arcade.

It defiantly does not ruin PR just because its a little harder to tell if you are capping.

Its really getting lame constantly hearing from everyone on these forum that any change with PR at all... totally ruins their lives.

[lespyd]

I can see it from both sides. I think the question here is do we want to strive for realism versus "its a game". Or said another way, is it better to get feedback/intel in chunks, or streaming live.

As a SL and game mechanic, it's nice to have have the live feedback because I usually type "we're capping, or we need more people on the flag in chat". Having the live feedback means I can communicate that feedback to the team marginally faster. Having it in 25% chunks is fine too, just more uncertainty.

As a human, humans like certainty and higher resolution of information. So the question is will people have more enjoyment (as an SL or an objective oriented person) if they get the satisfaction of "what I am doing is moving a bar, literally, pixel by pixel). I think this is true. Maybe this is a good analogy: People get more satisfaction knowing that a car is 2 minutes away and watching a GPS tracker map of it approaching you, versus knowing a car is 2 minutes away, and it just showing up.

As an aside, Deviro brings up an interesting thought. Seeing a flag (and thus status on the map itself is interesting). I wonder if it will cause a natural behavior where opposing forces center around a point more, versus hunkering down in buildings at opposite ends of a cap radius, though thats a valid strategy to be fair. But this is probably out of scope for this feedback.

[mebel]

That was one of the goals, to remove the magic of knowing how many players are defending.
How is acceptable in this game of team-play and somewhat realism, know exactly how many players are in a given region?


Yes, coms are less accurate, which means the power/value has increased not decreased.
Now, each single infantry report helps in forming a better view of how many squads are inside the cap radius.

• [-]Defenders now lose the magic radar (for a while), meaning the attacking squad can safely and quietly enter the flag radius, locate the enemy and kill them before they are even aware.[/-] I was wrong here, before defenders never had the magic radar. Then, this means the defenders do actually gain the magic radar, but delayed like the attackers - in a sense is more consistent.
• Attackers, now lose the magic radar (for a while), meaning the attacking squad now needs to locate the enemy and kill them instead of just knowing exactly how many they are fighting.

I would love to see this attitude in other game development teams, I mean just not listen to players constantly complaining and trying drive everything towards being faster, stronger, an endless arms-race. Maybe I'm just old and tired.

[UncleSmek]

I would love to see this attitude in other game development teams, I mean just not listen to players constantly complaining and trying drive everything towards being faster, stronger, an endless arms-race. Maybe I'm just old and tired.

I think you are old and tired <3

[jenson]

The whole argument of it increasing the teamwork/communication required to cap the objective is a double edged sword. Per team, you have 1/2 good inf squads, at the best of times, the rest are just formed by leftovers. Clans tend to player together, OG players tend to fill their squads with players they recognize to make their experience more enjoyable.

This means, that the OG players of the community know that the majority of the players lack the teamwork/communication required to make the game fun and its not by changing the "magic radar" that this issue will be fixed. This is an issue thats in the core of the game, always was, and it seems it will always be.

PR is an hardcore "arcade" shooter, its in the perfect place between ARMA and the more mainstream arcade shooters. Its not as hard to learn/master as ARMA, and its not as simple as Battlefield/Insurgency, it strikes a good balance.

Adding features to make it more hardcore than it has to be is unnecessary. There are games that do it better than PR will ever be able to.

The game was in a good place a few updates ago, its had its identity and its integrity. Making changes for the sake of changing things around is redundant (If it ain't broken, don't fix it)

Its clear that the devs and the playerbase have different opinions of where this game needs to be and where its going in its future.

What i ask is, listen to the players, listen to their feedback, the people that bother coming into the forums and giving feedback and the ones that have been playing this game for a long time. Making changes to the game to appease the new influx of players that will be gone in a few months seems futile.

[Brotherscompany]

I was going to write a long multiple line angry response but I dont think its worth it, Filamu and Jenson for example gave excellent comments in a short on point way without being stolen from Spotline or being lost in the argument train that will lead to no change at the end of the day.


I will try to keep it short and write my essential stuff let other people talk if more join the conversation.

Even though I truly understand whats your goal and where you guys are coming from I still have this to say:
You are crossing a line were you are tearing the personality of PR (which is a Arcade Realistic shooter), fun and enjoyment piece by piece of the game all in the name of Good old realism. Add a function that if you are shot in arm you cant shoot your gun for realism until healed by a Medic, add a function if you are shot in the leg you cant sprint until healed by a Medic so it only punishes lonewolfs and makes people more reliant on teamwork/medics, make it so any headshot make people go Dead Dead as well as Vehicle rounds, this since gameplay can be overlooked as long as it increases Realism and dependence on teamwork.


Please absolutely correct my words if Im wrong but it looks like you DEVs still think we are playing this game with the 2012 player base which as Jenson and Filamu is absolutely pointed out is not the reality anymore . You DEVs (for your own personal reasons) dont play the game all that much, and when you do you either play with each other or the old Veterans that you still know and have fun with, that and in Assets l legitimately cant recall when l saw you or other key developing players SL randoms or doing it multiple time to understand the concern that the lost of power and a reliance on randoms brings.

Here my core concern with this change. Its all fine and daddy if I got my full SQ of Veterans like IC/MERK/JWK etc... that know what to do and fight, were the enemies are coming and wont give up, and make like this change seem like it isnt a huge deal. Its a whole different story when you have your dude that speaks half broken English, the dude that picked up the game 3 weeks ago, the dude that isnt there to fully play the game seriously and wants to chill after work and probably drops essential kits mid game are in your SQ. Engagements realistically translate to a coin flip on who is going to win player to player, and as a SL the only thing you can do is gather as much intel and make tactical decisions to get your SQ in the best position and succeed, and now its taken before your feet in the name of Realism and trust your team we are playing PR in a period of high skill gap in all players (Especially with the increase of occurrence of CH/BR/ESP/RUS SQs that dont comunicate).

I really dont want to sound like Im a absolute Elitist and everyone else is garbage (I love just being able to take in some dudes and give them the PR experience) but this is a legitimate concern to raise and maybe a lot of casual SLs that SL randoms that dont come here in the foruns can surely share

EDIT: Deviro had a interesting idea

[Brotherscompany]

Oh no, you cant see if you going to capture the flag instantly and can find out amount of enemies inside. Tactical depth lost! everyone run on machineguns with bayonets and stop thinking bc devs forbid that.

If you tried stopping being a Big Brain Edge Lord in your commentary and you read the what I wrote, 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

The Mumble is same, the people are same, microphones too. Where the power of communication was lost?

"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"

(..) Building fobs for sustained inf flows.

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

SL having to rely on his squadmembers? LOL never did that

and before every clan was so welcome to noobis

you cant take flags (...) did you try to use left mouse button and shoot everyone?

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)

Playing as SL became harder, is it bad? it didnt become more difficult in technical aspects, deal with uncertainty

For me yes

And pls donate to GreenSL foundation to keep SL gamer specimen from extinction. The delay from capturing the flag amounting to maybe 60s is destroying their inhabitat

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

[Grump/Gump.45]

.

Before this update you could see the live cap if you were attacking which gave you critical Info and tactical depth as a SL. Not only did it gave you info about what correct decision to make next, but it was pretty much realistically speaking

This is not a big deal to me. You only need to know whose favor the flag is in, this falls back to the concept of players not having patience and discipline but in different situation. Ignore the feeling and adapt. Gain confidence over the bar status by learning what is needed to cap and methodically look at it based on flag territory size (50 meter or 300 meters). This complaint applies to big cap zones clearly, because you can tell if enemy is in your smaller cap zones.

I want the time it takes to go up or down 25% to reveal whose favor it is going in, especially if it slows somebody else decision making but not mine because I adapted around it. That is fair, because you can do the same mental adaptation. This separates squad leaders by skill a bit more by who can adapt.

Its better in intervals because it doesn't reveal much information, focus on the fight. The verbal status reports change, the gameplay doesn't. Get your behinds in the edge of the cap zone. In real life if you are securing an area you visually assess it in increments realistically applying "enemy has 25% of the zone" versus "enemy has 100% of the zone" due to how many they have heavier than you for longer.

The longer you hold the enemy out of something, the more the message that its yours it sends. That bar is just a visual representation of it, know what the bar needs to move and it will move, gain confidence.

You only need to know if its in enemy favor or your favor. I do not want people knowing if there is 1 extra guy or 2 extra in cap right away, due to the pace you could guess if it was 1 or 8 guys more than you have in cap.

This also got me thinking, how many of my guys distracted by the map get killed watching the cap status bar obsessively? I want eyes on target zones 100% of time, SL should worry about the map only because everyone should be in view of him in 1 man hurt per RPG spread.