I can't disagree more with you google.
google wrote:In my opinion, the reason that fun has taken a hit is the extreme focus on teamwork as opposed to squadwork or tactics. In the older versions, as long as you had a good squad, you could still have a really good round. However, now, one is forced to rely on their team in order to have any large scale success.
And this is a problem how? Squads are squads, at most they comprise of less than 1/5th a team and 1/10th of the whole battle. This isn't a collection of 1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1 squad battles its a collection of 1v1
teams. If the
team doesn't work well together then the team is a
bad team.
Win or lose I can have fun in the right squad. Being a CAS spotter, a pilot, or a squad leader all has their rewards for me. Sure total victory would be sweeter and sure it sucks when your held back by what the rest of your team can do but that is the nature of a
team game. No one six man squad should have a monopoly on the outcome of the round it should be a combined effort of 32 people.
And beyond that: (Not directed at you Google, just those certain players)
If you can't have fun working as a team then why are you playing an Army game? Not everyone in the army can have a H-AT or a Sniper Rifle or a Tank or a Helicopter. The Armed Forces of any nation needs teamwork to achieve a specific goal, and they also need diversity to overcome the shortcomings of any specific part.
We all can't be James Bond. Someone needs to be Q! And hell I'd love to be Q!
Tanks alone can't win a war, nor can Jets or infantry. What is needed is an Economy of Force. Every person must have a role that gets victory closer. A team can't opperate with six snipers, better off to have six infantry men.
Take, for example, the ticket cost of vehicles. So much pressure is put on those who use assets as if they lose them, the team gets extremely pissed off due to the loss of tickets. If anything, most assets (especially small-scale support ones such as trans helis and APCs) have become liabilities on most maps.
I think it is justified for a team to be upset that an unskilled pilot crashed a Jet on Kashan runway just because he got in the CAS squad before someone else more qualified was. Also beyond the ticket loss is the idea of "Well the other team has Air Superiority for the next 20 odd minutes. Great."
As PR is a team game I'd wish for the better pilot to be flying, the better tanker to be tanking, and the better spotter/sniper to be calling in hell fire and fury. Its the way you win.
Sure I love to fly Helos and Jets but I know I'm better serving the team as a SL, especially when better pilots are in the mix.
This brings me to my second point, which is that the game is soley about ticket count now.The game really doesn't give substantial incentive for capturing objectives and flags. Kill to Death ratios and the minimization of the loss of assets are the only important thing anymore. It is much easier to just sit on your firebase, with the extremely powerful TOWs and HMGs, than attack. That being said, the new focus on supply lines and Firebases has also limited assaulting options to a degree.
I agree that the game devolves into a ticket battle every 7 of 10 times and maybe thats not right. (On the converse an organized team should be allowed to pull back to another defensible location if they find it better suited to victory, this is what Wars of Attrition are)
HMGs are easily beat and are only powerful against Infantry, they serve their purpose well.
TOWs are over powered, though.
So to do well, a team really needs to work fluidly together extremely well. I'm positive that the introduction of mumble has had a serious effect on these afore-mentioned gameplay changes. This new stress on having a perfect team, is to me, the root cause of team-stacking. People know that when they load in, if their team isn't doing that well, they're likely going to have a crappy game and maybe ultimately lose.
Team Stacking is good and bad. On one hand it shows what can be done with a good team, and should by that teach other players that they need to be more organized and smart. On the other hand people just like to complain and say its because of everyone else on the other team they are losing, rather than collectively fix the issue.
I do not stack. I stick on my team and I teach others what and when I can. Now if I start paying money to play on TG server, by hell I will stack because what other benefit is their than having an IHS and playing with them? I mean the BR is broken >_>.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the game has become un-necessarily hard on players. There are simply too many weaknesses to a team which forces the players act in a defensive and almost boring way. Sometimes I feel as if PR is a job as opposed to a game. If I wanted that kind of experience, I'd go play an MMORPG (lol). PR (for me and my friends at least) certainly exhibits more stalemates and rage-quits than it did in previous versions.
Its hard to work as a team? Well in that case I agree. PR does not cater well to lone wolves or tunnel visioned squads. PR isn't COD or Vanilla where chaos is more powerful than organization.
PR is in a way a job. Its a fun job for me. But I can see it as a job.
More or less its a hobby, an escapist adventure where I can have the organization and cooperation of an Army without actually being in an Army or risking my life. And to top it off I find it fun.
I love it when I like my job.