Defense meta

[cloud moat]

There's currently a tendency for both teams to just stop attacking on RAAS (like 3/4 of my matches), which devolves in a stalemate where neither team pushes, this is especially prevalent on maps that are hard to attack such Skorpo, Sanxian, and Talil.
I don't know about you, but matches where both teams give up and just sit around are really boring.

I'm not sure what it is specifically but I reason its due to post ICO attacking requiring more skill, planning and coordination, which the blueberries of steam sales and poor onboarding just lack.

Like ICO was supposed to make coordination happen by making it practically required, but instead of learning how to coordinate, people just stopped playing the parts of the game that require the coordination.

So what can we do? I like the idea of attacking being hard and requiring planning and teamwork, so i don't think we should just make it easier to assault but what else could we really do other than that? Any other potential reasons for this?

[rancid prawn]

Bingo

Low ticket reward for flipping a cap and long distances between do not help

[spare shuttle]

Yeah, mostly just turns into a stalemate where both just using artillery on each other and the attacker struggling to set up an attack hab

[rancid prawn]

INV after 20 mins of backcapping

[short sentinel]

this has little to do with ICO at this point. Attacking is and always was more difficult and expansive than defending. The stalemate is the logical conclusion of situations in which both teams are capable at taking down attack spawns effectively. The issue is the gamemode itself, not gunplay.
To avoid this, AAS needs a new mechanic that forces people to attack. For example a ticket bleed that increases over time when the enemy cap is not contested.

[rancid prawn]

No ICO did slow down gunplay and make it less effective to move and shoot

I dont think thats disputed

Your players movement speed was reduced by 18 or 20%, that is going to affect gameplay

[short sentinel]

This has no relevant impact on this issue. It only made attacks take a little bit longer. Stalemates happen because either both teams are low on tickets, or because the both teams are too effective in preventing/taking down attack FOBs. This is done by proper defender distribution around the objective, fast reaction to enemy attacks and armor map control. Nothing of this is decisively influenced by gunplay or infantry moving slightly slower.
Map design or battlegroups may however amplify the issue at hand. Without good logistic assets, its more difficult to set up an attack. When you need to cross 500m desert and the enemy has vehicle superiority on the defense, its also gonna end in a stalemate.

[spare shuttle]

I would also argue its due to in experienced squad leaders

[cloud moat]

Even with experienced squad leaders, i've seen attacks fail, not due to poor command or planning but just becuase the actual infantry executing the plan just suck or don't listen

even if you are a good SL if you have a squad that dies to one guy and doesn't get any kills, then you just cant attack the entire match because your squad is incompetent

when i'm not playing SL i can work around this cause i can go sapper, use the squad as fodder, kill the radio, then clean up the defenders, but as a SL you cant do that and have to baby sit people who cant do anything by themselves

[short sentinel]

Yes sure. when all your attacking SLs take a logi the most obvious route to place a FOB at the most obvious position from the most obvious angle of attack, and the enemy team is better, the logies will be intercepted by vics or AT, and the enemy will probably kill the squad while setting up the radio, and all the attacks will be over before they started.

[rancid prawn]

Movement speed changes directly affects how powerful mortars are vs INF and how strong LAT and HAT kits are vs Armor. Changing movement speed has a direct and impactful affect on gameplay.

It is not a stretch to also make the same claim with INF movement speed and attacking an OBJ

[cloud moat]

it's not the root of the issue sure, but it definitely exacerbates it, when people don't work together the systems that ICO changes makes assaults much harder, this results in higher casualties, which results in the low tickets you mentioned.

A squad of suppressed blueberries running towards a OBJ with no stamina will lose out to the guy prone in a bush more often then not. Which again, is how it SHOULD be. but it still is a negative in the current climate

[cloud moat]

this is a issue though, SLs not being careful with radios is a big cause of loss of tickets

[full pewter]

Controversial opinion, but it’s way easier to take an enemies defensive point if they’re not pressuring your own defense

But also playing defense on low numbers is just a logical thought process at the end of the day

[short sentinel]

I think you are vastly overestimating the relevance of individual player movement and gunplay on game flow. Stalemantes also happen because the attackers cannot maintain their spawn points. This means they failed to DEFEND their attack spawns against the enemy which ATTACKED them and took them out btw. How well individual players can kill other individual players when it comes to a firefight is simply not that important. At the point where the individual actions of players make the difference, there is already a stalemate on the strategic and tactical level, otherwise one team would already have avoided the fight and outflanked the enemy spawn.

[cloud moat]

depends on where they are other than your defense and if you move your whole teams inf from defense to attack, if theres 50 guys defending and your one squad attacks, then you aint doing shit

[cloud moat]

i mean yeah but i'm mainly referring to when it happens SO much and with so many tickets (like it should be done at most 50 tickets, but i see it be done as high as 200) and where people are more so doing it because they cant be bothered attacking, eg skorpo where there's often not a reliable plan that doesn't take either a lot of coordination or time like yeah, you could walk over the mountain, put a rally down, and then attack, but good luck 9v50

[modest yacht]

This is caused by a multitude of factors + changes.

1: ICO (Specifically Mobility)
Due to the slightly overpunishing nature of trying to mobile and lower stamina, it means foot manuever warfare doesn't work very well.

2: Faction Reworks/Voting
Reworking the factions into sub-factions has led to having having less assets to work with generally. This doesn't pair well with reason 1 as you are punished for moving on foot but also have less to work with.
Consider that now Combined Arms has 2 logis, 1 heli, 2 IFVs and 3 transports plus a couple cars. Whereas before with set layers the standard RAAS Combined Arms composition was 3 logis, 3(?) transports, ~4 cars, 3 IFVs, 2 tanks, 2 helis. This problem has improved as of recently, in general we still need more assets across the board, for all sub-factions (please stop nerfing combined arms my guy).

3: FOB/HAB Changes
A decrease to the build radius + increase to exclusion radius, in combination with radio audio increase, in combination with radios costing 20 tickets (instead of 10), in combination with increased HAB proxy range makes placing attack FOBs (or usually even backup defense FOBs) too risky.

4: Removal of Ticket Bleed
There used to be tickets bleed, with -1/m with each cap advantage a team has over another.

5: Points on Maps
Some points on maps (like Gas Town on Talil, or Customs on Harju) are just not really feasible to attack.

It comes down the fact that usually attacking is a high risk low reward action. Radios are more valuable than objectives. Teams opt for attrition warfare + rallies (it's less risky and yields comparable if not higher rewards).

You can still attack but it requires either opportunity from enemy blunders or a heavily coordinated + competent command structure on your team (which very rarely happens in pubs). And even then it is still less risky yo just hunt radios and backline.

[rancid prawn]

Squad is healing, people are being rational in feedback threads

[worn kelp]

tbf this has been a thing pre-ico as well, so i kinda agree with der shredder that it isnt solely an ico thing but the issue has been exacerbated by said recent changes, though i'd feel that changes to promote more attacking-minded gameplay will prove to be more controversial than simply maintaining the status quo

[cloud moat]

I knew ticket bleeding was removed or something, I felt crazy as if i didn't play with it for years

https://tenor.com/view/i-knew-that-door-had-a-lock-on-it-rodrick-rules-diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-everybody-was-trying-to-make-me-feel-like-i-was-losing-my-mind-i-knew-it-gif-17179024920149209770

squad has had so many little changes here and there that I feel gaslit whenever someone brings up how it used to be

like a frog in a pot

[shell coral]

It's a combination of issues for sure. ICO doesn't help, but also various meta changes such as reducing flag capture bounties, increasing radio tix cost, removing RAAS bleed, reducing availability of logistics and fast transport vehicles... these all have moved the meta towards lethargic gameplay

[rugged maple]

This ☝️

Also no bleed / reduced bleed on layers - no incentive to push caps to make them bleed to because OWI nuked it.

[bold swan]

I've explained this several times, but I'll do it again. ICO has no effect on a camper lying in the bushes. There are two reasons why it has a significant advantage:

1. evolutionary reason - people (and other animals) notice movement very well, unlike static objects. A lying camper in the bushes, if it does not glow or does not contrast strongly with the surroundings, cannot be seen with peripheral vision, only with a direct look and from the right angle (for example, our brain is very good at distinguishing faces from the surroundings, but not as good as movement).

2. The way your squad moves - the camper's FOV is also limited, so if you move in a wide formation, as part of a squad (and not as a lone wolf), then the position will be compromised after the first shot (with which he can injure 1 person from the detachment) and knocked out of it (or destroyed).

This is why defenders (most often static) have a significant advantage over attackers (most often dynamic). And this is why militaries (in real life) spend so much time on different types of formations.

[rugged maple]

Defensive metas got buffed in v2.12 with globally enforced shadows then a couple patches later when they introduced camonets into the game

[bold swan]

And on the subject of this topic.

It would be nice if OWI made a more complex system of earning and losing tickets. I have a few ideas of what it could look like, but this is not a ready-made mechanic for implementation (it will clearly have problems). For example:

1. Enter a coefficient for additional tickets for receiving a trigger. We have a base value, which is currently 50 tickets, you can enter a coefficient from 0.5 to 2. The coefficient will depend on the effort spent on obtaining a point. For example, if we simply receive a point that has not yet been captured by anyone (usually happens at the beginning of the game), then we will receive a coefficient of 0.5, which will give 25 tickets for this capture (now it is 20). At the same time, if the attacking team has spent significant efforts on capturing (you can count the number of deaths on both sides, within a certain radius around the trigger), then this coefficient will increase, and let's say when losing 150 tickets on this trigger it will become equal to 2, which will double the tickets that the team will receive for capturing (100 tickets instead of 50 as now). The coefficient values are also possible, for example 1.25 (which will give 50*1.25=62 tickets).

2. Additional tickets for holding the point, let's say +15 tickets for every 10 minutes of holding the current point. This seems counterintuitive, since we want to force players to attack, not sit on the defense, so why give the defense additional tickets? There are two reasons for this: - sitting in a blind defense no longer leads to a win, because both sides receive additional tickets, and you have to wait for the time to run out (currently it is 1 hour 55 minutes); - if no one remains on the defense at all (because the attack is more economically profitable), then those with faster equipment will always win (for example, helicopters quickly cover all points while the other side prepares an attack on tracked equipment).

3. You can introduce a system of orders from the CMD, which will be limited in time and will give additional tickets for execution. For example, destroy an enemy fob (+10 tickets), reduce an enemy tank using hat's (+10 tickets), order a counterattack (the enemy has already hit the trigger, but do not capture it, according to this order, if the team can prevent the enemy from getting the trigger and intercept it, they will receive an additional 20 tickets), order an attack, order a defense, order a fire support, order to resupply resources (for example, equip a fob for 5 thousand resources and get +5 tickets), etc.

[modest yacht]

Interesting part is that AAS still has ticket bleed

(Team AAS just keeps on winning)

[short sentinel]

The ticked bleed never was a decisive motivation to not turtle. You turtle because you are either low on tickets, or assume that an attack will be not possible or too expansive. Loosing one ticket per minute or not is irrelevant for making those decisions. Even when a team ends up on their second or third cap early on, the maximum loss due to ticket bleed is maybe 30-40 tickets. This losses are easily compensated by not loosing any tickets in the attack.
I also never ever heard "guys we need to attack we have ticket bleed" in command channel before it was removed.
People attack when they can attack and affort it. People dont voluntarily turtle when attacking is possible.

[silver abyss]

That's an interesting observation, but I'd like to question how widespread it is.
If we talk about competitive, there's no winning teams who only defend.
If we talk about public, in my experience 90% of players prefer to attack and will do it disregarding pretty much everything.
Anyone of us or we both could be in a bubble of local traditions, but it's close to impossible to conclude anything specific about "everyone" without a proper statistics

Looking at competitive is your best case study to eliminate the negative specifics of public games, and it displays that attack is very necessary in pretty much every case, as lacking the potential to attack just makes you an easy target.

You identify the potential reason yourself as lack of coordination, did you consider a possibility that the average player is not interested to be invested into coordination on that level?

[rancid prawn]

Lol if we can use comp as a example.

After ico dropped the first tournament was just turtling.

Next tournament they changed it to 120 ticket reward for flag flip

[silver abyss]

Changing mechanics introduces the best practice vacuum, now the things are settled, do you know any game in last Rivals where team didn't have an attacking force with standard ticket reward?

[rancid prawn]

No, i didnt follow that closely other than people yapping about the ruleset on my server and seeing some clips

[ionic prawn]

On top of mentioned issues one important issue is just UE5 and it's increased overall blurriness and lighting to where you have to see every bush, every window and see if a slimmer of shadow moves and you every time even get in general direction of fire you get your entire screen blurred so you have to stop, regain vision and then push. It's a heavy defenders advantage.

[cloud moat]

Naw disagree, you're encouraged to not move and to be prone because they both allow the best platform to shoot, a guy fresh out a sprint standing up will get beaten by the guy with full stamina prone most of the time especially since the guy sitting still will probably see the other person first.

You also overstate the average players ability to be in a formation and to react to contact, a whole squad of blue berries can and will get wiped out by one guy in a bush, even if its not all of the squad, still losing 4 guys is extremely detrimental, especially because there will be 6 other guys in bushes behind the one you just killed.

Pre ICO you would get people to push more because it was more viable and fun, now you cant run and gun so you get more people in bushes.
You could also react to people sitting in bushes way easier cause you could run and gun, so it was less of a problem.

[cloud moat]

idk, is completive even representative of the general games? its a minority and can play a lot differently than how most people experience the game. I mean hell beyond a few events here and there, i barely hear about comp anymore (I used to hear it pre ico but it fell off), beyond clans, people don't even know there even IS a comp side of squad.

With public matches though, yeah, i would say often the blue berry horde will attack, but more and more they aren't. the see a point 3km away and give up and don't even bother to go. or if the point is closer they give it one shot then give up and turtle. this isn't even taking into account their squad leaders and command chat choosing to turtle. if cmd chat is active most of the time they agree to turtle in my experience at least.

[naive dirge]

Its all to do with ticket count and nothing to do with ico, thats just ppl crowing about the same issue again and again like a bunch of salties.

What really changes on RAAS was when they lowered the total ticket count, and started adding bigger ticket loss penalties for losing vehicles, While reducing the respawn times for vehicles.

This was because quite a few players demenaded faster games rather then High ticket games as they ended up in stalemates, not because the game forced them to, but because they had no tactics to defeat the oppoisistion.

So OWI reduced total tickets dramatically, and also increased the ticket costs for vehicle losses to create "faster" games. Other then seeding you will never see a match end due to hittin the 2 hour mark anymore, The game will end due to ticket loss.

This means that when tickets are <100, Nobody in their right mind is going to risk building an attack hab, then attacking a point with infantry and armor, they will lose the game for their team

So ironically, to avoid statelemates, OWI mandatated stalesmates become part of the game

[cloud moat]

I liked ICO and didn't put emphasis on tickets cause i felt I've seen it happen even with high ticket counts, but thinking back to the different ticket changes it does have a higher impact than ICO, but i still think ICO has a role to play because it makes it more cumbersome to attack with blue berries among other things.

like even with the current ticket system accounted for, pre ico you would see people push as low as 20 tickets because they could get away with being risky through sheer FPS skill, now that that's not the case, it's harder to push and requires more ticket buffer

[naive dirge]

Im not going to moan if 360 no scoping is not the solution to the problem

[cloud moat]

I would hope it's not

I like the idea of attacking being hard and requiring planning and teamwork, so i don't think we should just make it easier to assault but what else could we really do other than that

[naive dirge]

However i do think ticket counts should be higher. There is 0 point in making a huge 4km2/8km2 map if you have so few tickets

[shell coral]

What really changes on RAAS was when they lowered the total ticket count

The reason they lowered ticket count was specifically because game times were longer than they wanted post-ICO, and ticket burn rates from infantry deaths were the main reason rounds took longer

So there is a direct cause & effect there

They didn't reduce RAAS starting tickets for no reason

[modest yacht]

I wouldn't say there is one single factor. Multiple changes all played a role which formed the current meta.

[silk vortex]

If winning was based on caps and not tickets this would likely not be an issue.

[shell coral]

You don't wanna swing the pendulum the other way, or you get Hell Let Loose gameplay where people just form a human wave and spam respawn all round

I think Squad's system of balancing tickets versus flags works well for symmetrical gamemodes, unless the balance isn't right which is partially the case now.

[radiant gale]

Devs gave us ICO so moving puts you at a severe disadvantage. Thank OWI for stale gameplay where player agency is nearly nonexistant.

Also doesnt help they reduce vehicle availability and make cap flips worth less and less

[stray marsh]

Skill issue

[radiant gale]

rage baiters back 🤣

[naive dirge]

They always come back to see if ICO has gone

[ionic prawn]

ICO defenders when having 0.5 kd every match but my immersion

[hollow trench]

Staring at a respawn screen and shooting with noodle arms is definitely my type of fun

[bold swan]

1. You may agree or not, but this is a fact that does not apply specifically to the squad, but is also manifested in other shooter games, since these effects were formed by nature itself. I do not know what your education is and how erudite you are, but I recommend watching some programs the national geographic - where predatory animals hunt. You will see that in most cases (if not all), that both the predator and the prey, at the first stage, try not to move so as not to be noticed. You can transfer this analogy to a player lying in the bushes, waiting for his prey.

2. For example, let's take Battlefield, how does this game fight campers? In the bushes - no way, although there is no ICO there, you can be killed from any bush, depression or corner near which you run. The only campers the game fights with are the sniper kit - his optics shine on the entire map.

3. No one forces you to lie in the bushes the entire game, you simply have the opportunity. And the game also provides you with effective ways to counter it - to have a suitable formation, play together with comrades, conduct reconnaissance from a drone, conduct reconnaissance in battle, use fire support, etc.

4. You are not the first person I have discussed this with, but you all have one single argument - "it's not fun". But then why do you give the example of "lying in the bushes" and "advantage on the defensive side"? This has no relevance to ICO!

5. Okay, most players cannot be part of the formation, due to their lack of experience, and what do you suggest? Maybe devs should completely remove the bushes, grass, trees and other shelters through which inexperienced players can be shot by a camper?

6. Pre ICO is a copy of the Battlefield style of play with a strange spawn system. And it's not fun at all. Mindlessly running around solo and shooting, killing a few enemies and dying yourself and repeating it in a circle is not very fun.

[cloud moat]

1You're going to deep into it and missing the main issue that in other games like battlefield camping happens but its not a issue
2 the issue isn't that camping happens, it obviously happened before ICO, but that it's more beneficial, encouraged and harder to counter.
if someone kills me in battlefield i respawn, rush and jump shot them. because there's a near instant and non punishing respawn system unlike squad.

3 yeah i COULD just stand in the open, but it's encouraged by the game to do so. people are going to play what's best, and if the best thing is to just sit and abuse ICO systems, then they will do that, because the alternatives have become less effective and fun because of ICO.
The whole issue with ICO is that there's counters to it, but people don't cooperate with you to do these counters. like i said earlier

Like ICO was supposed to make coordination happen by making it practically required, but instead of learning how to coordinate, people just stopped playing the parts of the game that require the coordination.

4 would you say turtling with no one attacking you "fun"?
ICO is directly relevant, i laid this out in the first post,

I reason its due to post ICO attacking requiring more skill, planning and coordination, which the blueberries of steam sales and poor onboarding just lack.
ICO has made assaulting harder and less viable, this raises the bar needed to attack, many just cant and so don't this leads to neither side attacking.
it's harder to run into a bunker and gun everyone down, when you cant run and gun 1v5 because of suppression, reduced speed, stamina, weapon sway, ect ect.
Attacking often requires speed and violence of action, a update that slows down the game directly hurts this.
inb4 "just cooperate" mfw I have a squad that doesn't listen, sucks at the game, and are 2k away
again refer to the quote in #3

5 Really you're slippery sloping me?
obviously it isn't remove the foliage, sitting in bushes wasn't even my main point, you're trying to be argumentative about ico just to be argumentative
(it should be mentioned that YOU are the one who brought up bush campers, no one else, everyone else was talking more generally about assaulting being harder due to different systems)
i literally said i like the direction of ICO in my original message and saying i don't want to revert it that much, but am unsure what to do.

So what can we do? I like the idea of attacking being hard and requiring planning and teamwork, so i don't think we should just make it easier to assault but what else could we really do other than that? Any other potential reasons for this?
I have some ideas, but most have already been suggested before, from slight reductions to ICO such as stamina changes (which i think we got with the last playtest) to better onboarding, tutorials, certain bug fixes (such as bipods), ect ect.
This post was suppose to ask people THEIR ideas, and they have given them, primarily changes to the ticket system

6 "fun" in how you specifically use it is subjective, i found it fun, and i find post ICO fun, however the change in what specific play styles are viable and therefore fun have changed, that's what i was getting at. You wont have people assault if its harder and therefore less viable then defending, and if its less viable then it's most likely less fun, because people don't like sitting on the respawn screen.

[cloud moat]

This is the most simple way to put how ICO makes attacking harder.

ICO makes it so moving puts you at a severe disadvantage, attacking requires movement, therefore, attacking is at a severe disadvantage
also inb4 "thats the nature of attacking" yeah, but it was this way even pre ICO, ICO makes it even much more so

[radiant gale]

xdddd

[old oasis]

Free rallies again = less useless attack fobs

[stray marsh]

Maybe you're not supposed to be running towards the enemy and shooting at the same time. Attacking does not require movement necessarily.

You wouldn't believe how helpful it is to get into a position before initiating an attack. The best approach is two have 1-2 squad(s) laying down fire from a stationary position while the others approach the objective.

Additionally, APCs exists, giving them way more relevance this way.

[stray marsh]

10 or more k/d more often than not. The game isn't that difficult, you're just playing it wrong.

[cloud moat]

my god why didn't i think of that! naw but really if you're not even bothering to read what i type, why even talk in this thread?

perfect example of what i mean right now is that my team currently has 370 tickets

AND THEY STILL WANT TO DEFEND

not even defend current point that we're defending but the last obj

so when they have nearly 400 tickets, it's no longer a matter of tickets being low, it's just cumbersom to attack

thats why i put emphasis on ICO over tickets in my original message, cause i see it with high ticket count all the time, though this only relates to the actual ticket count, not ticket bleed or anything else

[little chasm]

Honestly just your team being stupid

ICO or no ICO that’s on them

[cloud moat]

maybe in this case they are especially so, but this is a consistent pattern that happens regularly enough for me to make this post, and most of the time it boils down to the things I've mentioned.

[stray marsh]

The issue is leadership, not ICO then lol. Damn you're catty

[cloud moat]

naw but really if you're not even bothering to read what i type, why even talk in this thread?

[stray marsh]

Because its the internet and I can do what I want

[short sentinel]

Someone tell him

[analog plank]

Having been around since 2017, I don't necessarily think this meta is related to the ICO. It may contribute and make it even worse though, as you mentioned. The ICO certainly further gave the advantage to the player who is laying in a bush aiming down sight rather than the player who is sprinting towards an objective.

I think the buggy nature and poor off-road mobility of the tracked vehicles that are meant to spearhead these assaults further exacerbates the issue.

However, the single largest contributing factor is without a doubt is the fact that tickets are generally too low in your average game of RAAS. By the time you've secured the middle flag, you are likely down to about 150ish tickets at best. There simply isn't enough reward to justify the risk of mounting another attack on the next flag, especially when all you have to do is hold the middle flag to win the game by ticket bleed.

That's been my experience at least 🤷‍♂️

[iron estuary]

RAAS does not have ticket bleed outside of mercy.

[radiant gale]

He’s rage baiter, just best to ignore. Was banned from playtest disc