Removal of live Cap and impact on SL/Teamwork

[MOSES!!]

Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by Chuva_RD

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 bitch 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