Fallujah West Balance Issues

[Walmarx]

So, I have played quite a considerable amount of Fallujah since the 1.0 release and I, for one, do not recall an Insurgent victory in that time. I am having trouble pinpointing exactly what the issue is, and I fear it may be more a symptom of the further-handicapped Iraqi Insurgent faction than anything else. That said, this beloved map feels an awful lot like Blufor Co-op now. Perhaps the increased player counts are to blame, such that considerable infantry forces can now advance accompanied by a staggering number of extremely effective armored assets. This all while the number of available AT resources for Insurgents has declined (Arty-IEDs, place-and-forget Mines, RKG grenades), leaving most players left with at best a select-fire rifle (which are all conspicuously less effective than the M16 at any range now, but I digress).

Blufor can accomplish excellent combined-arms assaults without really officially coordinating anything now, simply because of the number of infantry and vehicles moving toward a single objective on a 1km map. It could also regretfully be said that the absence of unknown-sniffing is also a contributing factor to this effect.

I do believe that an excellent Insurgent team can win versus an impressively inept USMC, but such a disparity should not be necessary to win, or even to have fun in a losing round. So how could this be fixed? Reduce the armor available to blufor? Increase the cache count? I am really at a loss here, as it seems the map's only real problem is bringing two unbalanced factions into focus.

[SANGUE-RUIM]

reduce the tickets number?

[NO FUN ALLOWED]

Nice post, I'm glad someone is willing to start a discussion on one of the most popular maps to be in PR. I too have a hard time recalling when OPFOR has won, it's a rare occurrence for sure but not impossible.

Reduce the armor available to blufor?

This seems like one of the better balancing ideas, considering how little coordination the insurgent team has on this map and having multiple pieces of armor out just seems to overwhelm their side.

[saamohod]

This is the point I've been trying to raise in some other threads. Fallujah used to be my favourite map before 1.0. Now regretfully I try to avoid it because I mostly play as insurgents. The imbalance is too striking. There probably are several things that can help matters:
1. Decrease the number of APCs for US. Now they mostly roam around unpunished, picking plenty of long distance kills.
and/or
2. Change the manpower ratio from 50/50 to 40/60 (or something like that) in order to aid the Insurgents.
and/or
3. Spawn more OPFOR's scoped sniper/marksman weapons on the map to counter the huge long-distance advantage of BLUEFOR.
and/or
4. Bring back grenades and/or binoculars and/or ammo bags to Insurgents' kits.
and/or
5.Decrease the ticket count for BLUEFOR.
And so on and so forth.

[Bringerof_D]

4. Bring back grenades and/or binoculars and/or ammo bags to Insurgents' kits.
and/or

i feel like this would be the best solution, as it stands now the insurgents with bolt action rifles are terrible for anything less than long range engagements where they have a chance to aim and enough time to maybe get off a second shot to kill a guy so they'll almost never get close enough to use a grenade except in self defense when blufor are literally over running their position.

i also feel the speed of which a bolt action is cycled needs to be increased, it is far too slow now so much so that even for long range engagements, once you fire your first shot it'll be hard for you to get off a second. if you're extremely lucky you might get 3 shots off. it is far too slow now to the point of even being somewhat unrealistic.

sniper kits cycle rate can be kept as is as most shooters need to be careful of slamming the bolt handle into the scope, or otherwise ramming their hand into it. this is not something someone with iron sights needs to worry about.

[SterrUwe321]

Fallujah was one of my most favourite map.
Since 1.0 i hate it.
And started to teamswitch :O
but sorry i'm not gonna play as an idiotic BOT that can be easily shot down.

[brunoff]

I play insurgency like 70% of the times as insurgent and, after playing quite a lot of 1.0, I can say
that the strenght diference between the factions is waaay bigger than it was on 0.98.
Every Ins round I played in Fallujah I saw a huge team k/d diference.
Blufor and Ins k/d used to be like 1.5:1 ~ 2:1, which was fine, now I see 2:1 ~ 3.5:1 and this can frustrate
even the more teamplayer/non k/d oriented kind of player, its far worse on more open maps like Basrah.
The blufor on those occasions were just mildly organized and still beat the ins very easily.

The only round I saw the ins side win ended 1 cache remaining, a team k/d of 2.5:1 for the blufor, 100p on the server from start
and 1+ hour long round.

This imbalance is caused mainly by the changed deviation system making the defending position less advantageous than before,
the nerfed new insurgent kits and the added rally point system.
Those changes were positive/neutral so I think the balancing needs to be done on the asset side. A Bradley+AAV+LAV is overkill for
such a small map I guess.

[tankninja1]

+100000000000000 Burnoff. Insurgency is an endless kill fest for blufor and an endless die fest for insurgents. Really sucks on maps that last 2 hours long and the blufor wins by tons of tickets. Yesterday a Fallujah West had one of those rounds died 18 times for 8 kills (overall team had 100 kills for 350 deaths) and blufor won by over 300 tickets. I almost cried.

[007.SirBond]

There are many things in 1.0 that give a disadvantage to INS. The INS water container which replaced mines are not as effective in destroying enemy vehicles because friendlies keep running over them.

The lack of grenades available to INS riflemen with assault and battle rifles.

The more effective M4/M16 rifles for Blufor make Bluefor more deadly than ever.

Lack of scoped kits, ie: SVD, mosin, at main. There are double the number of players in the game and the same number of scoped kits for INS as in 0.98. Sniper threat to Blufor is not threatening.

INS needs a major buff on this map and other INS maps as well. Insurgency gamemode has become a walk in the park for Blufor.

[havoc1482]

I always play as the bolt action/semi ins kits simply because they have grenades... The lack of explosives makes ambushing BLUFOR squads more difficult. I resort to sitting on a roof and waiting for BLUEFOR guys to move in the alleys around me and throw grenades at them. The grenades add a sense of confusion for the BLUFOR, but the problem is that nobody seems to take the kit with grenades because the lack of automatic firepower.

I'm always dying and for me personally, that is not a problem, but I know a majority of players can't stand that and its a game-breaker for them. It always resorts to a war of attrition with the BLUFOR just grinding the INS slowly into the ground.

[Riflewizard]

Last game i played on Fallujah i was on INS. I thought we had an easy win- we destroyed 3 enemy apc's within the first several minutes. Clearly the enemy team was unorganized and haphazard. Instead we ended up losing by a large margin.

The maps changed to an AAS map. I was then teamswapped to the former BLUFOR team. We lost the fair-sided AAS battle within 30 minutes, being capped all the way to our first flag faster than we could effectively fall back.

and obviously the nerfed insurgent kits are a big problem and part of this. Pistols for the sappers, no ammo or grenades for the riflemen, sure the bolt actions are a good weapon, but they are not nearly as utilitarian and are nearly useless in CQB.

[Heavy Death]

One or two APCs less would be fine, i guess. Ramiel is nicely balanced, if not even more to the ARF side, but its really good in terms of that. Fallujah... not so good for the INS, as stated.

[Mikemonster]

We need to change the way we play Insurgency as Insurgents.

1.0 is so much better for Insurgents but it will require a paradigm shift in the community leading to new tactics and ways of operating.

At the moment we're still getting past the 'omgbbq' period and after this will be left with people that should be able to play a team-game well enough to work together on Ins side.

I think that 1.0 is a lot more realistic in that it emphasises true Blufor advantages. There should not be parity between a career soldier in his prime, wearing body armour and with 12 months of intense and thorough weapons training, and a rag-tag insurgent with perhaps 6-months of training in the army of his former country (at best).

There isn't supposed to be a balance!

Although insurgents should, in my opinion, be able to have a fun time delaying the Blufor team, as well as having a fighting chance of winning rounds if they play properly.

Although at the moment I don't think we do play properly - I think 0.97 made us lazy and we are continuing to play with 0.97 techniques rather than update to 1.0.

FWIW I play Insurgent as much as I can, I prefer it as it's more relaxed. But 1.0 is a wake-up call.

I don't think we can really judge 1.0 insurgency whilst we still have our '0.97 Insurgency' heads on. When the Insurgent team works with the same level of tactics and teamwork as the Blufor team we'll be able to actually judge whether the game-mode is currently imbalanced.

[Pronck]

You are talking about a change of tactics, but what change do you mean? Give examples. You are just being vague and probably with that saying that the BLUFOR needs more love and the insurgents less.

[metal]

You are talking about a change of tactics, but what change do you mean? Give examples.

no tactics in the game...only kills rules like in BF3...
the whole 1.0 stinks ... I hope more and more players will leave pr ...
sad what the manufacturers have built and made with a single update broken ....
unfortunately can not or do not want to return to the previous date of 0.98 ...

pr for me in the state's history.'m looking forward to the 12th September - comes arma 3

I know that pr is free, but to make the game so crappy is just crappy. because you can play the same bf vanilla.

[Mikemonster]

You are talking about a change of tactics, but what change do you mean? Give examples. You are just being vague and probably with that saying that the BLUFOR needs more love and the insurgents less.

No I'm not, I just couldn't be arsed to write out some plan. People aren't stupid - It only takes a few seconds to think of some ways that Insurgents as played currently could improve their chances as a team. But people are lazy (I know I am, I like to play with little variation on tactics until I get a wake-up call).


Seeing as you specifically asked, I'll list some, but I'm not telling people how to play. There does need to be a change though to reflect the new environment for Insurgents.

1) Straight roads are deathtraps against Blufor firepower + scopes. Avoid them
1a) Use more Collaborators
1b) More ropes into compounds and onto medium roofs (no more of this running straight across wide roads, or going onto large, exposed roof areas with no quick escape).

2) Insurgents should fight as squads and revive as Blufor do. The collaborator can help despite lacking a gun. So many Insurgents have a 'spawn back in' mentality that caches are revealed very fast now with the increased player count.

3) Assets like the AA kit should stay with squads, not lonewolves, and be used to defend specific parts of the map. AA is currently either 'great' or 'absent'. A 'CACHE DEFENSE' squad dedicated to being very near the cache should have a dedicated member to use it.

4) Once the influx of new players learn to play PR we should be building more FOB's and in better locations - currently they are either lacking or in a poor place.

etc. etc.



You could argue til you are blue in the face about the above ways of playing, but one thing is certain - New ways of playing NEED to be taken on.

[matty1053]

If i am insurgent. I am a civi.
I love civilians. They got nice beautiful faces.

But I seen the us lose once on fallujah cause done dude drove a Gary into the us main. Lol. He got 42 kills

[KneeHiGh]

I played FW last night as insurgent and have to agree with most of the above arguments. There just isn't enough viable ways to take down armor anymore not to mention the lack of grenades on most kits.

I think insurgency was more balanced in 0.98. I think its most prevalent on Fallujah and Karbala and to a lesser extent Al Basrah. I do like the balance of Ramiel however now with the African forces, however I do know that that map is alot more closed in city fighting than the other maps.

[matty1053]

I played FW last night as insurgent and have to agree with most of the above arguments. There just isn't enough viable ways to take down armor anymore not to mention the lack of grenades on most kits.

I think insurgency was more balanced in 0.98. I think its most prevalent on Fallujah and Karbala and to a lesser extent Al Basrah. I do like the balance of Ramiel however now with the African forces, however I do know that that map is alot more closed in city fighting than the other maps.

Best. Post. Ever.


I thought that insurgenc was very imbalanced in .98, of course. But now the insurgents taek the shovel to the skull.


I was a INS in a bomb car, apperently we get only like 2 bomb cars, and 2 Gary's.

So it's nearly impopssible to take the enemy APC's out. Since they have like 5?

[DesmoLocke]

TG runs the layer without APCs. <3 TG