No rally point feedback thread - PR .874b

[Mix0lydian]

I think I'll start locking more since I could afford less experienced players taking spot in my squad before the change, not I can simply not do that. Either be a good player or get kicked, which is really sad but at the end it's SL's fault for not having the right crew.

A lot of the good players you take into your squad could and should be squadleading their own squads.
Unless there are a ton of good players/regulars on, or the teams are heavily stacked in your favor.

With the changes, one "all-star" squad can't succeed without some sort of competancy and coordination from the other squad leaders.
Squad leaders, like IT peoplez, are in high demand.

[Celestial1]

Teach your players, not shun them.


So what if you get the short end of the stick and lose the game, not the most productive squad; teach those you lead, and they will pay us back with better gameplay over time.

[snooggums]

Are you trying to make it impossible for the US to get on the island period? They NEED those hueys for supplies and transport.

And there are only three, right?

There's four, but one is usually dead in the water

@MixOlydian:
Very good point. When the good players group up the team may not be as coordinated, although it is nice to not be the leader sometimes. Other people do need to step up sometimes.

I'm like Cr8z in that I want good leadership so I either join a squad leader I know is good or make a squad myself. I'd rather be my own squad for a few minutes until someone joins than join a mute no-teamwork squad.

[BigGaayAl]

One thing that I've definitely noticed about this change: It magnifies the stress level of the squad leaders by orders of magnitude. Rage quits, yelling at players, zero tolerance for dumb mistakes and incompetence, a much smaller desire to try to teach people the right way to do things or to use kits, friends turning on friends, etc. All of these I blame on the lack of rally points and the stress involved in trying to keep your squad together and alive. A lot more arguing and stupid things like that have been seen over the past week or two, and I blame it on the change. Each death is magnified in importance tenfold.

Personally, I'm mentally drained from having to SL round after round, and when I don't want to I watch the squad list sit empty as everyone waits for the same guys that always SL to start up a squad. Once they're up, they fill instantly. It's quite tiresome.

So, if there is anything that I don't like about this change, it is the tendency to reduce the number of squad leaders as players who would only do it casually now want nothing to do with the position at all. Sad, really, because the net result is going to be forcing those that always squad lead into insane asylums.

This is quite surprising to me, and I add that I haven't played more then a few rounds in the new system. I don't exactly see why there should be more or less stress, or why it would be more difficult now to make use of less experienced, or even stupid squadmembers.

From my incidental experience, I've seen SL's lacking in adaptation to the slower pace and the more deliberate choosing of one's action.
I was puzzled to see our squad spawn in one by one, and move to the SL that was the only one alive in a long tardrush line.
I was puzzled with the why people aren't moving in a more planned way, or at least not enough. There is a lot less danger of lone wolfs flanking you and nading your whole squad, so it seems to me we have more then enough time now to position that AR very well before sending your inf across an open road.

Still I fail to see what is the added stress? What makes your decisions more important? This seems a logical fallacy. Decisions shape the fight, therefore they are always as vital, no matter what the game mechanics. Someone please explain.

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On the suggested game changes: I would like to see the FOB spawn disabling reduced. It seems to me that defending the fob is nearly impossible now, since it is constantly unspawnable as soon as even an attempt to attack it was made. The one thing that would make the fights and defenses much cooler now, for me would be that a disabled FOB is made spawnable AS SOON AS the attackers leave the radius. That way you would have to properly defeat the FOB defenders in your attack, or face their reinforcements because you failed to get to the fob. Now after a failed attack just one survivor can impede reinforcing. This is just lame imo, and takes away a huge amount of fun that could be had in a fight over a strongpoint. Especially in city maps like muttrah2, this is a bore. You have your FOB, but its always unspawnable.

This mechanic is designed to avoid spawnraping. But the radius for it is simply too big for city maps. Ever since the new city maps, and the maps like barracuda, I have been waiting, hoping, craving some good cqb, defending and assaulting buildings and tunnelsystems. But it just never happened. There is simply no reason or good way to dig in in tunnels or buildings (worst for tunnels). And eventually you will always be wiped out because the attackers can spawn in and the defenders cannot because all their spawns are disabled. The whole thing with a radius to disable spawns and RP's.... It was always really flawed. Sure it stops spawnraping, but the way it is now, it also makes it impossible to have a good cqb fight.


************************************************** ******
*edit*An example as an attempt to prove my point of frustration in defending FOB's:

Say 1 full squad is defending an fob, taking position spread out in a 100m radius from the fob. Then say there is one full identical strength squad trying to attack this fob from their own fob 200m away. The next FOB for the defenders is 400m away.

So as soon as the attackers get in radius once, the spawn is disabled on the contested fob. Say three persons are left on each side at that point from the starting 6. The attackers will be reinforced in half the time of the defenders. Hence the attackers win in a very high percentage of the cases, unless they are very stupid and keep dying withut killing any of the defenders. Basically as soon as one defender goes down, in this scenario, the defense will lose after time. This is TOTALLY BACKWARDS. Attackers should need AT LEAST MORE boots than defenders. Military doctrine experience says you need 3 attackers for each defender. In PR you need 3 defenders for each attacker. Without RP's, this fault I see in the spawn mechanic is much worse. Something has to be done to stop the tardrushes, because tardrushes, be it coordinated ones with multiple squads, are still the way to go. I would like to see people forced to plan attacks and wait for the right time, use distractions etc. Now its just too easy to run in, block the spawn, and wait for the defenders to expire.

[d1sp0sabl3H3r0]

This is quite surprising to me, and I add that I haven't played more then a few rounds in the new system. I don't exactly see why there should be more or less stress, or why it would be more difficult now to make use of less experienced, or even stupid squadmembers.

From my incidental experience, I've seen SL's lacking in adaptation to the slower pace and the more deliberate choosing of one's action.
I was puzzled to see our squad spawn in one by one, and move to the SL that was the only one alive in a long tardrush line.
I was puzzled with the why people aren't moving in a more planned way, or at least not enough. There is a lot less danger of lone wolfs flanking you and nading your whole squad, so it seems to me we have more then enough time now to position that AR very well before sending your inf across an open road.

Still I fail to see what is the added stress? What makes your decisions more important? This seems a logical fallacy. Decisions shape the fight, therefore they are always as vital, no matter what the game mechanics. Someone please explain.

The thing I love the best is when I post something saying I've personally noticed/experienced - nothing to do with game mechanics - people can't wait to post contradicting it.

How in the world do you guys know different about this? Are you all psychic? Have any of you been in my squads?

Didn't think so.

Maybe you should play more than a few rounds, then you'll "get it".

[BigGaayAl]

Jeez dispo. You just totally misread my post man. I am ASKING you why you feel that way because I don't understand. I'm not contradicting you at all. So plz, answer my question and enlighten me.

Maybe I didn't phrase things too clearly, but the last paragraph you quoted is in its entirety that question.

I just contrasted your impression, and wrote down how it was different from my tiny experience with the new gameplay. This is the contrast I wished to resolve by asking more in depth information.

[d1sp0sabl3H3r0]

I think I explained it in my first post. I'll dig it up:

One thing that I've definitely noticed about this change: It magnifies the stress level of the squad leaders by orders of magnitude. Rage quits, yelling at players, zero tolerance for dumb mistakes and incompetence, a much smaller desire to try to teach people the right way to do things or to use kits, friends turning on friends, etc. All of these I blame on the lack of rally points and the stress involved in trying to keep your squad together and alive. A lot more arguing and stupid things like that have been seen over the past week or two, and I blame it on the change. Each death is magnified in importance tenfold.

Personally, I'm mentally drained from having to SL round after round, and when I don't want to I watch the squad list sit empty as everyone waits for the same guys that always SL to start up a squad. Once they're up, they fill instantly. It's quite tiresome.

So, if there is anything that I don't like about this change, it is the tendency to reduce the number of squad leaders as players who would only do it casually now want nothing to do with the position at all. Sad, really, because the net result is going to be forcing those that always squad lead into insane asylums.

[Catraphact]

A lot has been said. I haven't played any games in about...8 months.

When I came back to play PR the other day, and I discovered that there were no rally points; I simply didn't want to play. I will not play on the TG sever, or any server that has this setting in place, till after this is over.

If the DEVS decide to make this permanent, then I'm afraid PR is over for me.

Its simply too hard. Too bloody hard. I want a game. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want COD: Modern Warfare 2 or something. However, I still want a game. PR without rally points feels like work.

Simple as that.

[ZaBoo]

A lot has been said. I haven't played any games in about...8 months.

When I came back to play PR the other day, and I discovered that there were no rally points; I simply didn't want to play. I will not play on the TG sever, or any server that has this setting in place, till after this is over.

If the DEVS decide to make this permanent, then I'm afraid PR is over for me.

Its simply too hard. Too bloody hard. I want a game. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want COD: Modern Warfare 2 or something. However, I still want a game. PR without rally points feels like work.

Simple as that.

I dropped my fruit loops in shock when I read the removal of rally points. I then threw a hissy-fit and got locked in my room for 15 minutes. When my mom finally let me out, I tried it and it wasn't so bad after all. I actually like it very much now.

True story, same thing happened with broccoli.

Disclaimer: Please don't misconstrue this in any form, I am not calling anyone a child or baby. Just my sick sense of humour shining I guess. What I am trying to put across here, is maybe you should try it out.

[Ferris Bueller]

See, I'll agree with Disposable from a slightly altered viewpoint since I dont SL nearly as much as he does.

Now, from an SL viewpoint, it gets frustrating for several reasons, and I'll give you examples:
-You are at the forward edge of your team's blob advance (considering thats really the only way to play now without getting capped out in a matter of minutes). Your squad gets wrecked by an APC firing heat rounds. Since you were the farthest forward, you now have the longest way to run to get back to the fight.
-Instead of having to do nothing more than coordinate with the commander about your own movements, you now have to coordinate with the whole team. Why? Because without the freedom for squads to independently function and effectively survive a few deaths via RP, the only way to move is in a blob. So if one squad isnt doing their job and you're the closest guys to them (which could be several hundred meters away, as Google's squad on Qwai the other day found out), YOU get to pick up their slack to keep an enemy advance from pushing through the hole!
-You get to scrutinize every single squad member and what roles they can play effectively now and have to micromanage constantly. With RPs it wasnt a problem. You got a guy who sucks with LAT? He dies and someone else takes the kit and he comes back rifleman, problem solved. Now, you have to question whether the available people are competent with the weapon, are their current roles more important than the LAT, how many LATs are already on the field, can another squad come get it, are we really going to need it, etc, ad nauseam.
-As disposable pointed out, if you have a single person stray from the squad (god forbid its your medic), you can be crippled by it. Every SM who gets dead-dead (read: non-revivable) means you get to sit and wait for them to truck it over to your squad from the nearest FOB, which could be hundreds of meters away.
-You get to worry about everyones comms now, not just your own squads. God help your team if they're missing SLs on mumble.

Now, from a SM standpoint, I'll give you a very specific example in pseudo-AAR from of how stressful it can be. To set the scene, the map is Qwai. I'm the medic for google's squad. We've been sitting on the small hill just below the massive ridge at mine picking people off and getting picked off for the last twenty minutes while another squad repeatedly tard rushes the front gate of mine instead of backing a push into the hills to avoid stryker fire.

So at this point in the game, we've lost 100 tickets. The game has been going on for over an hour. I already have 34 revives chalked up (yes, I count them sometimes) and am #3 on the scoreboard (go me). Google really wants to push up the hill. Nardini and Wick are both in our squad and both have massive KDRs for the round so far (think in the 20-2 range), so we're pretty confident we can do it. But theres more than half the US team waiting for us on the ridgeline and we've got a lot of open ground to do it. 6 guys aint gonna cut the mustard. Google is begging Soccer (who is CO for us) to call squad 5 (the tard-rushing squad i mentioned) to come back us up so we can get in and take the flag. Meanwhile, I'm running all over hell to revive people that are being plinked off one at a time whenever they peek up to take a look. After about 20 more minutes of this, all ammo bags from the squad are expended and I'm out of epi-juice. Google calls for an APC to bring us ammo just as he gets picked off. The clock starts now.

The APC rolls in ever-so-slowly and drops ammo...150m away. I get up and run over there, across open ground, taking fire the whole way. At the crate, i self-heal while getting ammo, and just as I'm about to leave, LAT smashes into the back of the APC, putting me down. Clock is still running. Two, then three friendly medics run by without helping, even though I'm calling for a revive every 6 seconds. Finally, someone does revive me. I check the stopwatch I have set up for emergency situations like this and realize that Google has less than 60 seconds left for a revive, and in the duration I was gone, 2 other squad members have gone down, the remaining 2 are pinned by suppressing fire.

So I say "what the hell" and charge in, throwing smoke as I get close. I get to google and he pops alive right as my counter hits zero. I revive the other two, but am again completely tapped for epi and have to run back to the ammo crates. I run back, and on the way get TKed by a friendly medic, who then says sorry as he proceeds to run past my body and on up the road to tard rush the gate yet again. I get revived after about 90 seconds and get back on my ammo-grabbing mission. Keep in mind, this whole time, we're still in the SAME SPOT because the rest of the team is so concerned with tard rushing the front gate or trying to swim across the river, despite CO orders, that we STILL cant make a coordinate push on the less-defended hills. I get to the crates, rearm, check to see who in the squad is dead and head back. Along the way, 3 dead bodies get pulled back to life. 2 squadmates up as I get back. As I'm retreating through smoke to cover, HAT slams into my feet and I'm dead. In the open. No medics for 250m and my squad is pinned with one member bleeding out behind the hill.

Did I mention that the nearest FOB is 400m away at north bridge? Yeah, forgot about mentioning the 3 minute run back if someone actually dies. Oh wait, I just did. Awesome. So I'm about 50m away from where the squad is and an enemy saw who walked all the way up from main on our six mows everyone down and spots me. I dive for a ditch, but theres nothing my peashooter can do against a scoped sniper-laserbeam at 200m. So google tells me to wait there. We lose more tickets because everyone else in the squad has to respawn. Hi, I'm still pinned down here. Wickens sneaks around behind the guy and waxes him. We resume out old position before trying to make a push on the hill on our own...after over an hour of waiting for support. I now have 58 revives. But it doesnt matter for much because all the smoke in the world cant stop people playing on low resolution from gunning you down while in the thick of it. Needless to say, our try ends in disaster, all 6 dead.

45 minutes later, the rest of the team is in the same exact spot we spent an hour in. Google has had enough and loads us up in a clown car and we charge the front gate, nardini driving like a banshee. We roll the clowncar, but all bail alive and well. We then charge up the side of the hill, obscured from the stryker's field of view and within 2 minutes have not only cleared the whole hill, but taken out the enemy FOB and the stryker. In the process, I miraculously kill my first three people of the game and revive 4. After we give the "all clear", the team comes pouring in. The round would last for almost another hour, and we never lost the hill. But we didnt really shoot at anything either.

Playing medic didnt used to be like that. You didnt have to revive every single person or risk getting yelled at. You didnt have to worry about watching the clock because you didnt have to worry about running 400m to get back to your squad. If 10 medics passed over you without reviving you, no big deal because the spawn wasnt too far away. You also didnt want to yank your f$#%^ing hair out because everyone and their mother is screaming for revives on THREE DIFFERENT COMMS SYSTEMS at the same time for THREE FREAKING HOURS PER MAP.

Find me a harder and more mentally taxing class in the game than CO, SL or Medic in this current vestige of PR and I'll call you a damn liar to your face. I used to love playing medic, but the keyword, as cataphract so ingeniously pointed out, is PLAYING. Now, it feels like a job. Nothing more than getting yelled at for revives or yelling at people to shut up so you can hear who is screaming for revives. Oh, and not ever getting to shoot your gun because you're far too valuable of an asset to the squad to actually have the privilege of playing the game and risking death.

[KoopaTroopa]

Once-upon-a-time-PR-player here...

What Ferris described in the post above does not sound particularly fun. I'm getting what the PR devs are attempting to do, but to have a truly great play experience on a battlefield that gets as large as PR's does (in both numbers and size) you have to really have a dedicated community. I have no doubt that the TG group of players is up to the task, but the random pub players...?

[Diligent_BF2]

Being the devil's advocate a bit here, but...

Gotta say, with all due respect (and it's considerable, fwiw), that any stress you find before, during or after this beta test comes **from within**.

(The same can be said about a lot of things, PR or non-PR. The in-your-head experience (impatience, boredom, anger, selfishness, pride, satisfaction, etc.) is largely of your own making, and all is fleeting and subject to change.)

I've enjoyed the change, and enjoyed playing medic, and even SLing more since the test began. Medic is not that bad. I've had great times being medic in a squad, even seeing blue medics help each other, work together, or help other downed teammates. I had a fantastic time being medic on Muttrah with a great squad tonight.

You who feel stressed might be putting too much of the wrong pressures on yourselves. Try to find why you enjoy this this game, why you got into it, OR take a step back, take a breather. Try playing without Mumble, on another server, in another role, some other game for a while, whatever, read a book, phone a friend (seriously). In the end of it all, I don't think +RPs or -RPs make much difference to the typical player on a good server.

Zaboo - glad to hear you joined the broccoli eaters - it's good for you. Try spinach, too. Froot Loops might kill you, though.

Ferris - didn't read your whole post (it's p. damn long), but weren't you the one touting the fact that many of the highest scoring players, (yet unsung heroes) were medics, who happened to get no kills?

Dispo - looks like you misread Al.

All is just adjustment to change. Not easy for most.

[Startrekern]

If you ragequit, it's probably more due to having too high expectations for your team. Not every round is going to be 'perfect'. :P


I don't rage-quit, just embarrass-quit .. like if I dive a chopper into a hillside because I didn't pull out in time :P

[sapientiea]

A lot has been said. I haven't played any games in about...8 months.

When I came back to play PR the other day, and I discovered that there were no rally points; I simply didn't want to play. I will not play on the TG sever, or any server that has this setting in place, till after this is over.

If the DEVS decide to make this permanent, then I'm afraid PR is over for me.

Its simply too hard. Too bloody hard. I want a game. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want COD: Modern Warfare 2 or something. However, I still want a game. PR without rally points feels like work.

Simple as that.

Well if playing PR makes you feel you are working, you either have a very bad job or a very good one. Looking over your post it must be the first one

[orpal]

A lot of the good players you take into your squad could and should be squadleading their own squads.
Unless there are a ton of good players/regulars on, or the teams are heavily stacked in your favor.

With the changes, one "all-star" squad can't succeed without some sort of competancy and coordination from the other squad leaders.
Squad leaders, like IT peoplez, are in high demand.

But why does it fall on squad leader if we doesn't succeed ? Why ?

Quote from one of my previous posts :

I will try to explain that now : I do lock the squad EVERY round, because I do want to get 2 people in that I know are familiar with PR, then I unlock it and let everybody join. From my experience I do not want to lead a squad full of unknown,untested people. It does not work, I want to get at least one guy that I know so we together can teach them tricks and tips of the game. I find that most effective, and it usually is.

I went from that to not locking the squad, until recently. I think I'll get back to my old method. So that's another impact of the change.