Graduated Bleed

[blud]

My suggestion is that there should be a graduated bleed in PR maps. Here is my reasoning and my explanation of the bleed that I think should happen.


Tonight I was playing Jabal 64 on a pretty full server. Fairly soon during the round, USMC captured 4 flags in addition to their main, and MEC captured 2 flags in addition to their main. Then, for almost all of the remainder of the map, USMC held at least one of City or Factory (in addition to their 5 other flags). In terms of territory capture (which is what I thought this game was about) USMC was kicking MEC's ***. But in terms of Kills, MEC was beating USMC by a slowly widening margin. Near the end (after MEC had clearly already won the round because there was no way for USMC to close the ticket gap) MEC managed to get Dam, but USMC easily recaptured it and would have been on their way back to take Factory again I'm sure, had the tickets not ran out.

So MEC won the round by at least 60 points or something.

What is up with this? The reason why MEC won is because in order to capture so much territory, USMC has to go way far from their home base, so redeployment takes a lot longer than it does for MEC, who's main is much closer to the front line that USMC had forced to be so deep into MEC's territory. Also, USMC kept attacking to gain more territory, when in reality they should have just stayed back and camped out for a stalemate instead of trying to get Factory or City. They would have been better off. Is that the kind of gameplay you want to promote? Because imo the current bleed system promotes it. This aspect of the game says: if you want to win, camp and get lots of kills. (This is why people camp enemy mains, because they know kills are more important than flags, so they don't care if there are enemies behind them capping the flags.)

I think that when USMC has more than half the flags (that means, when they have Bridge) they should get a "Slow" Bleed (meaning that the MEC's tickets will bleed). And when USMC gets City or Factory, the bleed should speed up a bit. And when USMC gets both City and Factory, the bleed should be at its maximum speed, which would basically be a speed that gives the MEC a couple chances to recapture City or Factory, and if they can't then by then it would be too late for them to win. So USMC goes in, kicks a lot of ***, captures most of the territory, and they win because of it, instead of losing because of it.

That's my suggestion. That if you own most of the map, for most of the round you should generally win for your efforts.

[Teek]

bleed is messed up on a lot of maps, esp in the Tourny.
Op Pheonix, both teams had 600 tickets, but USMC had bleed until they capped 2 flags.
qwai river, bleed sets in when your have all but main.
wtf.

[Doom721]

Lmao I was in that round... we were behind 20 tickets, and I ended up leading the game 52-17 with rifleman kit... and about 2 sniper kills from a US kit

We totally should of lost that match, it really was just a 64 player game crammed into those flags, we just held onto them so gritty and it cost USMC too many tickets.... but even then... we wouldn't be bleeding until we lost them both.

Think I've heard the suggestion for bleeding throughout a game based on flags owned...

[DrMcCleod]

It is my fondest dream that one day PR will be objective based, rather than ticket based.

[Long Bow]

I played the sam scenario last night. US dominated on that map, we spent the last 20 minutes of the round trying to catch up to the US, we would manage to get close to a flag to cap it and then they would cap the next flag. We ran around to get in a defensive position and they would grey the next flag. I didn't look at the score but thought we were screwed. We won by 200 tickets! With only two flags under our control.

The Devs have commented on the bleed system before, I forget what they said But I think it had something to do with game speed and tactics. If you start implementing more aggressive bleeds the game speed is increased, something they are trying to avoid. If the bleeds are aggressive the team bleeding will run and gun more trying to stop the bleed. They can't afford to take the time to play out a more tactical counter-attack but rather rush the flag in hopes of greying it.

Perhaps a Dev can comment a little on this?

[eggman]

Generally for symmetrical maps we don't want the round ending because of ticket bleed. More often than not it forces ticket situations that are unrecoverable prematurely.

Most of the maps are set up to initiate bleed when one team is down to their last CP. That's mostly because, aside from Kashan, most maps don't really allow a comeback from that situation.

Jabal is, to some extent, an asymmetrical map by nature of the beach assault. Rather than give the map bleed that can cause other difficulties, I've given the US a ticket bonus over the MEC. Should be in next update.