Project Reality Forums

illidur wrote:you can't have 6 on unknown and rest around it if there is another cache. you pretty much say 16 defending then. you really have no unknown at all at that point.


thats what it would require to win in that situation. the point is that doesn't usually happen. and if theres only 1 good squad on blufor it beats having only 1 good squad on opfor.

I've said almost half of the INS team, means you have 6 on the cache, other ten around in proximity and the remaining 16 on the other cache. Unknown means jack, defend it always, unless it's in some really well hidden place and even then are patrols essential.

then what if the blufor are just as good and send 32 to one cache, because your team gave it away? 32 vs 16.

dont think thats how the devs intended it to be played. its definitely not the most strategic plan.

i have already stated a better method. and it involves being nowhere near it because the lowest denominator blufor player goes where the insurgents are and so do the best. but the better cache killers go by the game mechanics too... and you quickly run out of spots to stage a fake one.

illidur wrote:then what if the blufor are just as good and send 32 to one cache, because your team gave it away? 32 vs 16.

dont think thats how the devs intended it to be played. its definitely not the most strategic plan.

i have already stated a better method. and it involves being nowhere near it because the lowest denominator blufor player goes where the insurgents are and so do the best. but the better cache killers go by the game mechanics too... and you quickly run out of spots to stage a fake one.

As said, in every organized match, we did it like that and we won, even against some of the best players. Insurgents have two huge advantages, quick reinforcement and no tickets.

Brainlaag wrote:As said, in every organized match, we did it like that and we won, even against some of the best players. Insurgents have two huge advantages, quick reinforcement and no tickets.

some of the best matches have been unorganized imo. however that is irrelevant as it doesn't happen in normal play.

think about it this way, you have 1 good squad defending 2 caches. i have 1 good squad attacking 2 caches. which has a higher chance of success? the logic doesn't add up to me.

illidur wrote:then what if the blufor are just as good and send 32 to one cache, because your team gave it away? 32 vs 16.

dont think thats how the devs intended it to be played. its definitely not the most strategic plan.

i have already stated a better method. and it involves being nowhere near it because the lowest denominator blufor player goes where the insurgents are and so do the best. but the better cache killers go by the game mechanics too... and you quickly run out of spots to stage a fake one.

My guess is thats exactly how they intended it to play. 32 against 16 entrentched insurgents fiering from cover. Also there is a good chance that the Blueforce team does not have squadleaders organizing themselves with each other so that they wont attack all at the same time.

talkinBEERmug wrote:Insurgents cant win

Yes they can.

PFunk wrote:This is the kind of complex strategy that pubby teams fail at and not just because they're brain dead but also because the value of a commander is so marginalized in this community.....

You've gotta realize that pubby teams are made up of random people of varying skill levels and commitment. If you expect most pub teams to pull off complex strategies, you'll always be disappointed.

You can blame the absence of a commander for public games being....public. But, the reason nobody plays commander for the most part, is due to the players not wanting to be commanded around while they're trying to relax and enjoy a video game. Even without a commander to order people around, a PRT or clan match will always be WAY above the level of most public games, not because of the commander, but because those people are there to play professionally, they're not just killing time.

Saying public PR players are brain dead is insulting to this community.

badmojo420 wrote:Saying public PR players are brain dead is insulting to this community.

Denying that some aren't isn't right either.

badmojo420 wrote:You've gotta realize that pubby teams are made up of random people of varying skill levels and commitment. If you expect most pub teams to pull off complex strategies, you'll always be disappointed.

You gotta realize that I know this. I reject it as an excuse for the lack of coordinated teamwork that is often exhibited. Organized PR community events are usually made up of just as many randoms as you find in pubs. The difference is that good leaders make them fall in line or get them kicked. There's an accepted format that people play together for proper teamwork. This was decently common when I started PR, but its not what it used to be. You ever watch a dbzao video? How does this guy seem to randomly pub and generate some kind of PR that you don't find on a normal night without db online? Is it a miracle or does he plan this somehow? As far as I can tell he just goes online with a bunch of good players and they actively work together. Usually if I see him online I try and get into the squad but there's usually too much demand.

One of my earliest experiences in PR was playing in fuzzhead's old WAC inf squads way back when. It was great cause the guy took it seriously but he also understood that his squaddies were frequently just completely green. It was exciting to have someone nudge you towards playing PR as a Dev saw it.

You don't need the average pubber to play a complex strategy. You just need the squad leaders to do what the commander tells them to do and as long as he has a vision it should work out fine. In a PRT match or an organized event you dont' need to know what the commander's strategy is for sending your squad here or there. Your SL might know but its not relevant entirely. I find that telling randoms what our goal is is a great way to motivate them but if they just want to have some action then a properly coordianted team with a CO or a group of smart SLs working on getting everyone together will for sure not only have action but plenty of success.

Its not that complicated anyway. A CO says "Nobody attack this cache, I will coordinate all actions around the other one." and if you're on a good server that makes sure the CO can have the admins keep the SLs doing what he wants then its not rocket surgery for the average kill seeking nublet to just do as he's told. Even the SLs don't need to think too hard. And if they're working by council in the SL chat then it just needs a couple smart personalities to make suggestions.

You see its not that complicated, its just complex by comparison to the flustercluck you usually find when people cop out and say "I don't feel like trying very hard in this game designed to be an elevated form of first person teamwork".

...the reason nobody plays commander for the most part, is due to the players not wanting to be commanded around while they're trying to relax and enjoy a video game.

Since when is that attitude something that is conducive to the kind of teamwork that really defined this community? I know plenty of PR players that when they feel like they want that kind of gaming release they just play CoD or TF2 or BF3. They always come back to PR though because they're looking for something more. This is the kind of attitude that kills the fun of this mod and I will not politely tolorate it just cause our culture tells us these days to validate everything people feel like.

If people still want to wank about and play PR there's a server for that and its just gotten its license back. Go, mingle and be merry. I'll be somewhere else taking things far too severely.

Saying public PR players are brain dead is insulting to this community.

There was a bit of playful disdain in the language but by large the human race is mostly made up of idiots anyway. PR somewhat attracts smarter people who want something a bit more intellectually satisfying than twich shooter deathmatch. When they act like numpties it does nobody any favors. Whats wrong with pushing people to be more? Define the culture you live in through your own actions, not just by standing back and saying 'it is what it is'.

I could go on all day but I'll wait for the next scathing retort before I launch into another satisfying anecdote.

Everything you've said is pretty much spot on. I too have played with db, fuzzhead and other devs, and had some of the best times playing PR.(and some of the worst) But, there still isn't a great deal of team coordination on most public servers.

It's easy for us to sit here and lay out a perfect strategy for the insurgents, but then why isn't someone going commander and carrying it out every round? I've tried and failed. It's an especially hard task on insurgency because people don't always squad up to work together, and everyone has their own opinion on tactics.

You might say kick them from the server if they don't listen. But, the thing is people have fun just playing with their own squad or alone. It's a game at the end of the day, if it works for 32 people with common goals, to form random groups and do their own thing, that's what people will do in most cases. We're all here to have fun.

I'm not saying all this because I love that PR gets played this way, I hate it in fact. But, I've accepted it's a reality. I still have fun, I just have to ignore the blue dots on the map, and find a good squad. I still encourage teamwork with lots of team chat spam. Or suggesting to SL that we tag along with another squad. I just don't expect it from the average player.

Going back to what this threads about, I don't think we should put so much emphasis on insurgents defending caches. They should be a base of attack and supply, not the flag in a game of capture the flag. The emphasis should be put on the blufor taking as few casualties as possible while routinely taking out caches. Essentially we need to make the caches easier to take & less punishing to lose. The game should be won or lost because of the fighting that goes on, not the stupid known/unknown chess game that decides it now.

badmojo420 wrote:But, there still isn't a great deal of team coordination on most public servers.

That is really the crux of the problem I think. Server culture is really where this game is made. Devs give us the raw material but the Servers and their admin set the tone and are really the core of how the game becomes a culture.

I think that there are too many servers that just let bad play slide. PRTA has been really good at pushing things in some ways by promoting teamwork through mumble, turning off VOIP so that you had no choice on the matter. I think every server ought to do that. Other things that other servers do work nicely like mandatory squadding up so that lone wolves can't just steal a kit and roam freely. Other things can be done that aren't totally fascist but basically guide the server experience in the right direction by effectively making it inhospitable to be a selfish player in a team game.

The problem is that there are too many servers that are just lazy about promoting teamwork and instead care about getting lots of players even if the standard of play is utter shite. I could name a few but I don't want to get into a pissing match. Suffice to say that the worst servers act like a lowest common denominator and drag the whole quality of things down and you end up with people like yourself giving in, accepting the mess, and just searching for one good squad of 6 on a server of 64.

Honestly anybody who thinks we shouldn't enforce more progressing standards of teamwork are out of their minds. Something about the internet breeds the most lazy and selfish mindsets in social activities. Kids playing T-ball have more rules and teamwork forced on them than we do on many servers. PR is also populated by a lot of teens and we all know that they're boring idiotic uninspired lunatics who reject all kinds of intelligent stuff. There are plenty of wonderful exceptions and some of my favourite PR friends aren't even old enough to drive. But by and large you can't just have lax rules and expect a bunch of teens to not ruin everything. Whats more is that the way you present things to people on initial exposure defines how they grow into it so if we never ask them to be particularly good or effective team players then they'll never grow unless they have the natural inclination in themselves.

So what do I really mean with all this touchy feely palaver? Well it all goes back to my first PR experiences in the school of fuzzhead. I decided to play PR because I found this video of Fuzz leading a squad with 2 fireteams on Fool's Road back when it was a bloody new map and I literally sat there watching this 5 part video getting a tactiboner. I wasn't a leader when I started playing PR but watching that and playing with him made me work to become one, if only so that I could be a good squad leader (see good, not great) enough to make good squads out of random people. If everyone just lets it slide and even discourages the good players of the community then who's gonna make new players want to be more than just a bunch of parasites using the numbers of the community as target practice?

It's easy for us to sit here and lay out a perfect strategy for the insurgents, but then why isn't someone going commander and carrying it out every round? I've tried and failed. It's an especially hard task on insurgency because people don't always squad up to work together, and everyone has their own opinion on tactics.

Well this goes back to server culture. If you make it a rule that you have to group up then you can't bloody well not. Beyond that the right server culture means that when you do come to insurgency people will be in the mindset cause thats the mindest you adopt when you get on the server. If I joined... some of the more retarded servers I instantly enter a "Im not really taking this seriously" mindset, and thats the culture of that server. If I join a community event then I adopt the "Lets make this freaking rock!" mindset. There's no reason in my opinion that you can't do that in a server culture, I feel like it was closer to the latter in previous years and there's no reason it can't be that way and even better.

But as far as agreeing on tactics is concerned, thats really not relevant. See the Commander or the Council of On-the-Ball Squad Leaders can set the Strategy, but as far as executing that strategy SLs and players can adopt whatever tactics they see fit. Thats the beauty of a proper organized team. It channels everybody into one effort but it ought to allow the small unit leaders to adopt their own tactics. This is what they call mission based tactics, something the Germans really promoted in WW2. The idea that you get a job and the guy given the job accomplishes it in his own way and takes his own initiative as the situation changes. No reason why under that system you couldn't get the team working together and let everyone do their own thing in that context.

BTW if anybody doesn't want to participate in something like the above then who really cares if they leave the server? They're not contributing anything anyway. If the game is suffering for them then why bother courting them at all? Plenty of other games out there designed to cater to the casual lone wolfer. This one is special cause its meant to be a proper team game. No need to give the lamers any quarter.

Now I really must stop typing or else this will go on for pages.

I guess I'm too much of a realist to accept the idea that all public PR servers can and should be run the same way private servers are run. I don't believe that all server moderators would want that, or that all PR players are looking for that.

My point in my previous post wasn't that team coordination is too much to ask of public players. Because as you said, those same players make up the organized matches. My point was that the game plays fine and is still lots of fun without the complex team strategy. Squads work closely together, so you get your teamplay factor, something that most of us love in PR, and you're part of a larger fight towards a common goal. The game isn't broken on even the worst servers. There is always room for improvement, but for all intents and purposes, the game is being played according to the requirements set by the devs.

derailed much? this can't be about player strategy or skill, saying that all 32 wont attack 16 scales to not all 16 would defend it either. hence my problem still exists.

the fact is insurgency is failing due to the mode itself. the developers of the gamemode didn't intend for insurgents to defend 2 constant objectives. if insurgents could defend a cache with half their force then the insurgents are too powerful and the cache mechanics still need altering.

korengal and gaza don't count... it funnels the blufor into a 300 Sparta like assault. where in gaza's case they literally get pushed into the sea haha. im talking about normal maps like karbala, ramiel, al basrah, archer, fallujah and kokan.

That's why I think a system of more caches on the map and more caches required to win would benefit the game mode the most. It would force the insurgents to drastically split up their numbers over more caches, and still allow the blufor to operate as they already do.

Caches would work better if they were just bait for blufor. It shouldn't be the end of the world when a cache gets destroyed. Similar to the attitude people take with FOBs in AAS, we should just pickup and move to the next cache. Eventually of course when they've gotten 20/25 caches, things might need to get serious in terms of defense, but defense shouldn't be such a huge part of the opfor efforts. The main focus should be hurting the blufor teams tickets. The caches are just there to keep the blufor coming back for more punishment.

The problem is that many caches are in really bad positions to defend. A properly defensible positioin ought to make it very possible for 16 to defend against 32. You usually need 2-1 or 3-1 to attack a properly defended position. The issue is you often end up with caches in positions that are only safe as long as they're not known to the blufor. I'm personally curious to see how Sangin works out when it finally gets released. If they've sorted the issue of poorly placed caches then I don't see why defense can't easily dove tail with harassing attack and ambush.

This is the point I've been trying to make. A proper defense in a proper position should easily allow Insurgents to attack and defend at the same time. With that said an unconventional force needs to let the enemy make mistakes, not just go hunting for them like they're blufor. Insurgents are at a tactical disadvantage while on the move, in the open, and at range. You must use the advantage of the AK irons and IEDs and grenade traps to lure BLUFOR into a situation thats bad for them. At range that will never be true. One thing thats always fun is to create phontom caches. Get some people with RPGs to start blatantly firing from a compoound, put a hideout or two around it and lure the BLUFOR in. They can attack, you can ambush, and they will lose tickets. This works better though when you have the defenders on the real cache(s) play really quiet.

Bad cache placement? Devs are working to fix that according to many of their posts and threads.

And with more caches like I suggested, a couple poorly placed caches wouldn't be so punishing for the insurgent team. Just do your best and move on to something better.

Edit: I had very little time when I posted this earlier, I'll try to elaborate a bit more.

When you say 16 should be able to defend against 32, I agree. Of course there are exceptions to this, specifically in this case when a cache isn't in a great defensible position. I would even be so bold as to say 6 could defend against 32 in some cases. The thing is, insurgency isn't attack and defend mode. We shouldn't put be putting that burden onto the already weaker team. Caches should be what they originally were, something to get the blufor outside their wire and vulnerable.

It should be a given that blufor will clear the area of caches. What should be the variable is weather or not the opfor can inflict X amount of damage on them before they can clear all the caches. Currently we have this game where if the opfor let caches go too easily, they'll lose. The game rests on their shoulders. Blufor can play the worst possible game, but as long as they get caches, they win. But, that doesn't mean we should have super secure caches either. Despite a few caches spawning in open fields, I don't think there is anything wrong with the cache attack/defend gameplay in PR. The fault lies with the value we put on these piles of ammo and the amount of lives we think they're worth.

I can't say I remember the specific details about how insurgency used to be, but from what I recall all the caches were on the map at the round start. Playing as an insurgent wasn't so much about defending every pile of guns, rather it was about keeping the blufor on their toes and inflicting as much pain as possible. I understand that game engine restrictions prevent us from keeping that form of insurgency, but the spirit of insurgency is being lost with all these changes.

badmojo420 wrote:I guess I'm too much of a realist to accept the idea that all public PR servers can and should be run the same way private servers are run. I don't believe that all server moderators would want that, or that all PR players are looking for that.

My point in my previous post wasn't that team coordination is too much to ask of public players. Because as you said, those same players make up the organized matches. My point was that the game plays fine and is still lots of fun without the complex team strategy. Squads work closely together, so you get your teamplay factor, something that most of us love in PR, and you're part of a larger fight towards a common goal. The game isn't broken on even the worst servers. There is always room for improvement, but for all intents and purposes, the game is being played according to the requirements set by the devs.

All servers are one point when I began playing nearly 5-6 years ago were practically the same. Everyone worked together, everyone would only really use assets if they knew what they were doing, almost everything was coordinated even if we had no commander.

PFunk wrote: Now I really must stop typing or else this will go on for pages.

Or perhaps you realized your wall of text wasn't of any value at all?

I've played a lot as Insurgents. A lot of people quit or switch teams when they get placed on the Insurgent side now, because it's either boring to play or a hopeless battle. I've been noticing more recently that Insurgents have been having less and less success defending caches, though. Even when the cache is placed in a good location and people are coordinating traps and defense, BLUFOR can still easily destroy the cache with a single good assault, and that's a blow Insurgents can never recover from.

I remember one game in Lashkar Valley with almost all bad caches. The insurgents ended up winning after fighting for over an hour by harassing any assault by BLUFOR to the point of retreat. The problem is that this harassment is now difficult to pull off. Insurgents are becoming less and less coordinated, as others have said, and although it might be difficult to stop a few skilled players from pushing through and blowing up the cache quickly or with C4, the Insurgents really do need to harass. The easiest victories while playing in Insurgent were from consistent harassment, not from coordinated defense.

=LK= A.H. wrote:Or perhaps you realized your wall of text wasn't of any value at all?

What's wrong with you? The man's telling the truth, and you're like: "Shut up."

PFunk, you're absolutely right about server culture.
Offtopic: I think it's because PR isn't like any other game where you shoot at random gray mass and nothing ever changes (basically the whole game is a one event consisting of smaller drills, even if it's multiplayer). In PR there are no gray mass, everyone counts, everyone is a person(ality), you socialize. Things are less predictable. And therefore it's required for some additional, rational rules to be made mainly because this game "can't predict" everyone (as here the subject of prediction isn't the gray mass, but a person, lots of them). And here comes the subcommunities (communties, servers) to help by enforcing those logical (logical - corresponding with the ideas of this game, mainly teamwork) rules that, for example, forbids an exploitable gameplay mechanic to be used. Even encouraging Mumble is an action that shapes PRs society, and it's also one of these community/server "rules".