Make dying matter

[topaz maple]

If this game wants to set itself aside from Battlefield, it needs to punish dying more. Maybe double or triple the re-spawn timer (especially for redeployment) or perhaps add a spawn ticket system? Many of us were drawn to this game because of increased realism and immersion. Too many players simply don't care about dying, which is the single biggest immersion/realism breaker in this game. While we're at it, this would make the medic relevant again by providing an incentive to pick downed players up. Maybe remove medic altogether and allow any role to pick up their own squad members - which would in turn, encourage squads to actually stick together rather than scatter.

[inner falcon]

Best comment ever. You want to encourage good communication? You want squads to stick together? You want to change the current gameplay mechanics of charge the next point (on the other side of the map) without having attacking garrisons up? You want to weed out the COD players who are only interested in DLC’s? MAKE. DYING. MATTER.

[bright laurel]

Based suggestion

[topaz maple]

TBH, I see more tactical movement and communication with randoms in DMZ and Warzone (even with super-human mechanics) because dying matters in those modes.

[primal blade]

[scenic tulip]

[near cave]

Yeah it’s a little too unpunishing rn, especially with the easy gunplay and the redeploy mechanic

[karmic sand]

Better idea make it to where all roles can revive dead people but can’t restore them to 100% health. As a result they would seek out the medics on their own. Obviously they should revive players slower than medics. And even then that’s not bound to change anything, you could add a ticket system which is the most logical thing to do but people are gonna complain about the game being like squad and ps. Only thing you can do is increase the amount of man power lost by soldiers dying to the point it actually affects the commander. Even then that’s not a guarantee to work

[compact breach]

[topaz maple]

How about increasing the re-spawn time incrementally with each death? That would thin out the herds of blueberries mindlessly running from the garrison to the point

[grizzled elk]

https://tenor.com/view/beating-dead-horse-beatingadeadhorse-reaction-gif-4547247

death doesn't matter, live doesn't matter... all that matters are 1st: positioning and 2nd ammunition.
In PS it often makes as less sense to wait for the medic as in HLL simply because you're in an unrevivable position. Btw yes anybody can rivive once but only medic can heal to 100%... but when I got revived, in 99% cases I dont care to get 100% because, I still cant move and have to fight my way out of the situation that got me killed in the first place, often enough ending with another death. Simply because the position is compromised and I cant count how many times the reviver, medic or not, got also killed, if he even made it this far.
The only true reason to wait is if you really want to preserve a ticket, what rarely pays of, unless you're already at the end of the game and in a ticket race.
In HLL death, even with a much increased downtime in the menue, rewards you with a better position or better options to evaluate your tactic, and also it rewards you with fresh ammo. Thas the second thing that would have to change, a squad-like, peristend ammo system.

[karmic sand]

The part I didn’t agree with was the fighting your way out if you get revived. More or likely if you die and get revived, it’s because the area is safe. For example I walk into a house and get killed, then people near me clear the house out and revive me. You don’t have to necessarily seek the medic out since more or likely they’ll come to you in their own since they are running the medic role. Every death In game wether it’s hll, ps or squad helps players get positioning, it’s nothing wrong either that. The real issue is people know when to and when not to. If you just lost or took an objective it’s normal for you to give up to get a better position to attack/defend. Same in HLL, at times they actually tell people to just redeploy before they get steam rolled.

[celest rose]

Dying is part of the meta. Just as redeploy is part of the meta.
IMHO it is very well done atm.
The medic however is clearly an issue. It is pointless to revive in this game, and this is fine.
Just make medic a standard rifleman with same fire power and make it an aoe unit: make squad member in the aoe auto restoring bandage overtime or make them bandaging faster. With bonus point for medic of course.
Stop thinking how to punish, but instead how to reward. You must reward player for playing together, not punishing them for not doing so

[sacred tangle]

I like that death timers are short, encourage people to move and try things. Keeps the game feeling alive. If the game slows down with increased timers it could become very boring. Remember this game is not a milsim like PS or Squad its supposed to give you awesome moments. It fills the void between games like battlefield and Squad/PS, it has arcade elements, but combines that with brutal TTK and teamwork oriented squad/logistics mechanics

[carmine sentinel]

↑This.

As a new player, I feel if the redeploy timer was double or tripled, I would have left and not come back after my first game. I'm simply too new to the game and need the ability to try new things and learn without being punished too hard.

Prime example, I started playing the game the other day by playing extra cautious. This lead to me being absolutely useless and never finding anyone. I was afraid to die, so I wasn't useful.

Fast forward to the next day, I decided to be cautious, but take slightly more risky paths. I died more, but I also killed more and even dismantled a few OPs. I felt I could do this because the redeploy time didn't take 3 minutes or something crazy.

I'm currently learning maps and trying to find a balance between risky plays and safe plays. Having a relatively long (compared to other games), but still manageable respawn timer allows me to try different methods and tactics out without feeling excessively punished for doing so.

I do know one thing: if the redeploy timer takes too long, you will lose many more new players. I probably would have been one of them. I know my brother would be one of them.

K thnx for coming to my TED Talk.

[cobalt lance]

No ticket system is perfect, don't change anything devs

[raw cobalt]

Exactly, don't change a thing about the current situation.
Applying the suggested change to the current playerbase would kill the game.

[scenic tulip]

There are several people on this discord that love to offer poison pill suggestions that would destroy this game. It's sad that they're taken seriously sometimes.

[mossy flume]

I dont know what you are thinking you are not a swat dying doesnt matter do you think that in huge battles that occured during the War like stalingrad where 30 000 people were killed per day through out the whole battle dying is part of hell let loose because TTK and TTD are super quick you cant have ticketing system like BF because dying there is much harder then here and you cant just destroy old hell let loose commander strategies because those are about building garrysons around the strongpoint so you can keep momentum and action going and it is coming from all sides in short sentence HLL is about overrunning enemies not about draining their tickets i think this suggestion is poison pill for this game

[flat cloak]

Or.. instead of whole ticket systems etc, simply make voluntary redeploy or 'giving up' quickly add a bit more time to deployment. So, death in combat is the quickest way to spawn back in. And, if the balance was right....

Shock horror.... Medics might actually.... Be useful!

[trim apex]

Let's just withdraw 5$ from your card/steam every time you die, should help al lot

[open nest]

Such a ticket system wouldn’t make any sense for the soviets

[ancient perch]

Yeah, no thank you.

[mossy flume]

good joke XD

[pseudo nest]

I personally find tickets working very well in games like WoR, PS and Sqaud. But Ideally this is added in the form of separate game modes, so people can choose whether or not to play with tickets.
In these games you get killed just as easily as HLL, and can spawn about as quickly. In WoR you can even carry around the spawn point as a flag.

Tickets are life points for the team basically, if you die you lose a ticket. If a medic patches you up you dont lose the ticket, making medics useful again. Offensive could give more tickets to the attacking side. The players do need to understand this and actually care about their team winning, which can pose a problem for some players who really don't care and just want action. If this happens tickets actually ruin the game, matches can be over far too quickly.

[spark roost]

IMHO it is very well done atm.
in response to players routinely killing themselves as a meta strategy. Absolute joke

@celest rose redeploying. Or having a teammate kill them, or jumping into the line of fire. Dying and respawning. The game actively rewards you for dying. Its a complete mess.

[celest rose]

What do you mean « killing themselves »? I don’t get it

[grizzled elk]

though, being fair, this redeploy meta you also see in PS to some degree, especially when a critical role is missing, like radioman or SL. This is simply the consequence of gameification - only the costs are higher. And stop telling yourself the lie that a ticket system makes the medic usefull... in PS I can count the situations I got revived and actually did something usefull afterwrads instead of (more or less instant) dying again on one hand. A ticket system could change the paste of the game drastically, because it makes offensive play so much more risky. Even the faction balance has to be taken into account if you want a fair fight, yet still the team quality gets even more important - I highly doubt that such a drastical change at this point would do the game any good.

War of Rights, as it is mentioned, is a bad comparrison in my opinion. It plays to different, and yes, you carry the spawnpoint with you... but you can end up with spawntimes up to 2mins or even more and at the same time it is not as easy to kill someone/getting killed because of the weapon limitations - yes you die in one shot... but it is much more unlikely to get hit.

[carmine charm]

I’d say even quadruple the timer. And if you teamkill or redeploy, you lose class and overall XP.

[smoky lark]

👎🏼 would the game even make more slower than it is already. You win the game by creating space and dieing a lot.

[celest rose]

HLL is based on capture zones. It is not about killing or being killed. It is all about zone control.
If you do not want that, then you need to play another game (no offense here)

[spark roost]

Even from this perspective, which is just a poor attempt to defend this games terrible gunplay, your take falls short. "Its about capture zones" but there is no punishment for bad positioning and players can rapidly teleport to any zone with a garrison whenever they want. So if an infantry's positioning doesn't matter the act of controlling territory falls solely on garrison placement which is not the role of 75% of the team

Controlling territory is incredibly simple in HLL and it only seems otherwise because 90% of public matches are filled with players who dont care.

HLL's greatest achievement is making players delude themselves into thinking incredibly easy and simple tasks are "hardcore and tactical"

[celest rose]

« the act of controlling territory falls solely on garrison placement which is not the role of 75% of the team »

Exactly. Except for the 75% statement.
Garrisons and OP are the core of the game. You place them, defend them, and seak to destroy ennemi ones. That’s it.

killing and dying is just here to attack or defend Garri and OP

That’s litterally how HLL is meant to be played.

[stuck adder]

this is fax, there should also be a way that you can generate tickets via nodes or other structures. Maybe even the squad revive system from BF5 could be implemented, where squad members are able to revive one another to incentivize squads sticking together.

[spark roost]

You place them, defend them, and seak to destroy ennemi ones. That’s it.
and it takes no skill or strategy to do so. The only real decisions are being made by a small group of players, and the rest just throw themselves into a meatgrinder because their decisions dont matter. And their decisions don't matter because dying doesn't matter and killing doesn't matter beyond a general strength in numbers that created entirely by garrison placement. And when you can teleport across the map so quickly, your position in the wider game doesnt matter either. The only exception to this is AT or players who go completely rouge, ditch their squad, and solid snake their *ss to a garry.

"How its meant to be played" is irrelevant. Black Matter developers openly admitted to not playing their own game. It doesn't play as intended and never has played as intended. Do you honest to god think Max sat down and said "yes, we will make death irrelevant in this game where youre supposed to be tactical. We will then make an entire class designed to undo death"? What they wanted was for people to stay alive to preserve manpower, but manpower costs for respawning were never properly conveyed to players, nor is it important enough for players in the know to care

@celest rose What I describe is the original vision. The manpower cost mechanic still exists but like most mechanics it has been half *ssed. If you love the game for its garrison/OP meta, then you love a "tactical shooter" with no tactics, and for a vision of the game that does not exist in reality, filled with exploits and broken systems. That will be true regardless of if I leave

@grizzled elk "the reality of a foot-soldier" is not one of throwing your life away with reckless abandon and comitting mass suicide. You act as if there is no difference between occasionally redeploying and constantly redeploying. When the current meta means most players dont care, that meta needs to change, and it wount hurt the game

[celest rose]

I don’t know what BM wanted. I am speaking about the current state of the game. I love the game for this garrison/OP meta.

What you describe seems fine also. But it is basically a different game.

You don’t like the way the game is designed and it’s ok. Just play another game then

[grizzled elk]

and the rest just throw themselves into a meatgrinder because their decisions dont matter
welcome in the reality of a foot-soldier^^
In the end you'll never get rid of this "exploit" no matter how many systems are implemented (unless you enforce it in form of a one-live event)The question is: is it possible change the flow of the game now, when there is already a well established meta and community around that WITHOUT hurting the game? I dont think so, and for everyone else... there is Post Scriptum.

[glad marten]

[rustic goblet]

absolutely, make the medic useful and make people communicate

[swift flicker]

Medic shouldn’t even be a class. Squads in WW2, as a general rule, didn’t have medics in them. There would normally be one medic assigned to each platoon.

If absolutely necessary, it could remain in the game as a 1 man unit, just like the commander, with a max of 1 per team.

[normal falcon]

Terrible idea, good luck having a chance as U.S. on Omaha Beach. There is simply not enough players in a server for this to make sense. The whole idea behind quick respawns is to make the games feel more populated than they are. Trust me, I don't think COD kids are playing this game.. use your head.

[carmine charm]

I look at the units in this game and put it one tier up. So a “squad” in game is actually more like a platoon because you’re coming back as another dude. Every time you die, you come back as somebody new. So by the end of the match, your “squad” was more like a platoon that was like 90 % KIA. Battles like in HLL feel more like company vs. company or even battalion vs. battalion than platoon vs. platoon.

[swift flicker]

That is an incredibly flawed way of looking at it. If you’re giving your squad a platoon’s complement of medics, then by the time a match is over, your “platoon” has lost 30 medics. Do you understand how the maths don’t add up?

Tell me, on what grounds do you feel justified in giving your squad a platoon’s level of medics, machineguns, rockets, and so on? It is incredibly historically inaccurate to a laughable degree and serves only to ruin game balance and oversaturate the game with specialist weapons/roles.

[spark roost]

god youre autistic

[fair scarab]

How about we just get rid of outposts. That way it encourages you to stay alive for longer, gives medic a purpose, and gets teamplay back in the forefront of the game

[light shard]

Allowing anyone in the squad to revive squadmates encourages squads to stick together already, you don't need to increase the spawn timers. As others have stated, the game needs people respawning fast for it to feel like a battle with lots going on. What to do with medic? I would make their revive speed much faster and make it possible for them to revive anyone on the team, keep the stash of bandages and give them the same ammo as a rifleman; they become another flavor of rifleman.

What's far more immersion breaking than people running in the open is the redeploy meta. Fired all your rockets and the tank isn't dead yet? Redeploy. The team needs flares? Shoot flare, redeploy, repeat. You finished clearing enemies and the front moves to another point? Redeploy. Your positioning is bad? Redeploy.

Constantly going to the menu to get more resources or fix my position by killing my character is what's ruining the immersion for intermediate players and beyond. The redeploy meta is what you ought to be fixing if you want to improve immersion.

[carmine charm]

Not if the medic is good and waits until point soaks up the rounds, the rest of the squad smokes the threat, and you all survive to see another 100 meters.

If you are saying that infantry squads rarely find themselves without access to medical personnel nearby, this is incorrect.

And even if medics are more of a platoon-sized asset, how many squads do you see in game running with an active medic role? Maybe 1 in four? Less? (platoon level)

[narrow harbor]

Well the idea of it would be to root players like you out

[carmine sentinel]

Well that's a very shortsighted comment.

[solemn sundial]

Redeploy is really easy and useful and the game rewards you for it. Yeah its kinda of a problem. You don't even need to fight the enemy. Got a good garrison? Redeploy and march in.

[drowsy fog]

based

[candid juniper]

redeploy meta should be somewhat changed. it just feels terrible, even if the result is the same as resupplying somewhere.

[narrow harbor]

Hell let loose is a nightmare for new players making the respawn timer a bit longer wouldnt make it any different , players that can’t wait to respawn should stay on COD

[spark roost]

man I really wish people would stop confusing hardcore with "making things as unfun as possible"
No, a 80 second respawn timer doesnt make this a hardcore game it just makes it boring. Youre not filtering out casuals, youre filtering out anyone who isnt too prideful to leave a "hardcore game" Theres better solutions to redeploy meta.

[carmine sentinel]

I have no idea what was wrong with this statement. I'm posting as a picture. Probably just a glitch or something.

[drowsy fog]

the main point is to make dying matter. Those suggestions were just suggestions.

Maybe double or triple the re-spawn timer (especially for redeployment) or perhaps add a spawn ticket system?
"perhaps" and "maybe"

[covert spade]

HLL is HLL but it struggles to have systems that create immersive and tactical play. BM wanted a game that worked but never finished any of those other systems. they finished all the systems that mattered most to gameplay before selling the game. We need to move the game forward based on the systems that works. I fear team17 cant do that properly. If your life is meaningless then why communicate and be a team player.

[fair scarab]

people need to understand this is a video game if you want realism go bomb pearl harbor again or something idk

[real mason]

This mindset is what killed off the red orchestra servers. People wanted dying to "matter" by forcing people to wait longer to deply. Deployment got as high as 2 minutes. People started to leave because nobody but the most dedicated people want to spawn just to get killed out of nowheres 5 seconds later and then stuck waiting 2 minutes to spawn again.
The dedicated group of people weren't a sufficient number to sustain the idea.
When RS came out they made the death timer an server option, and no successful server set their timers above 45 seconds. The ones who did never had many people in them.
H&G also had 2 minute spawn delays for dying at one point, that didn't last long.

[eternal jackal]

Some of you here have never requested a “tactical redeploy” from a team mate here and it shows. 😉

[pale remnant]

I agree. Soooo when people start back capping us and we have to respawn we just what, let them win because we can’t spawn fast enough? Wow, sounds like a great idea

[carmine charm]

Maybe don’t be so far out of position and away from the fight trying to be billy bad*** that this happens to you?

EDIT: RESPONSE TO FOYENJOYER
I know what back caps are. Maybe instead of 50 dudes respawning in a field 130 meters away behind the objective like magic, I’d like to see more actual lines develop and see actual breakthroughs.

I’d like to see actual firefights instead of squads just running around each other trying to encircle each other.

Dudes just running through to get as far behind the obj as they can without engaging the enemy, real fun!!!

[pale remnant]

Tell me you don’t play the game without telling you don’t play them game ROFL

Okay. Let me stay at the point we just capped the whole game instead of going to the fighting (next cap over). In fact by your logic have everyone do that. What a fun game!!

Do you know what back caps are bro

Like, what tf is your logic here because it just doesn’t make any sense with this game.

[light shard]

You'd fix trainwreck back caps as part of fixing the redeploy meta, of course.
Maybe you'd even be able to spawn transport vehicles closer to the front so the relocation of people to the new one would be more exciting for everyone.

Try thinking laterally.

[grizzled elk]

I’d like to see actual firefights instead of squads just running around each other trying to encircle each other.
Ever heared of Find->fix->flank->finish them? Thats literally how this game should work...
Dudes just running through to get as far behind the obj as they can without engaging the enemy, real fun!!!
And thats another complete missinterpretation of the game: its not about shooting and killing as much as possible. Its about finding and destroying or defending spawn locations to win a fight. I really recommend reading Sun Tzu!

In the end you just have 50 people on the field... you just cant call "reserves" out of nowhere to fix a hole in the line, like it would be in reality. The simple fact, that this is a game where you can respawn creates this option, no matter where you spawn (people would even mass redeploy into the HQ, if thats the only option - and then complain about haveing to walk to much)
You prevent back-caps only by a good defence... and sometimes that is simply not enough! In reality you would fall back, establish a new line of defense with backline troops, until the offensive overextendes and a opportunity for a counter attack flank emerges... in HLL you'd hit the map-border long before that. The redeployed players however are literally THIS reserve coming in to fix the breach.

I said it before, you'll never get rid of this, simply because its a game. You can only make it unattractive to exploit it or at least certain aspects of it. I would imediatly agree that the ammo-exploit for AT, satchels and grenades has to go - what could be achieved by a persistent ammo mechanic, where you would still have to resupply after respawning.
Changing the redeploy itself would only hurt the gameplay or its flow. Thogh up the ticket/manpower-system... may be a way, but not making it a full-style ticket system where you loose/cant spawn when it reaches 0. Also arises the question of ressorece balance.

[drowsy fog]

what's a backcap?

[solid jolt]

No 🙂