Argument For Ammo 2.0

Battlefield 1 General Discussion
1

The Argument for Ammo 2.0 (and why it can HELP Teamplay)
https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield_live/comments/60gxo5/the_argument_for_ammo_20_and_why_it_can_help/

Teamwork is not a set of checkboxes, it is when several individuals with complementary roles work together to enhance their effectiveness.

One of the first things we must consider when implementing any sort of change to the Ammo or Health system is the incompetent Support or Medic who always seems to wind up in your squad.

We know from experience that no number of hints, tutorials, guides, videos, and no amount of advice and handholding will fix these players. They will be completely incompetent from now to the end of time.

This is fine.

Some people, you see, do not play this game seriously. They do it because it’s a good way to around and unwind after a day of doing whatever it is they do the rest of the day. This sort of player accounts for the vast majority of the playerbase. I am sure that none of them deliberately raise our blood pressure. But it remains that there are some Support players who will never figure out how to resupply other players, because they’re just not interested in doing so. They turn their brains off when playing, because damnit, they already have to use them enough at work or at school or whichever.

So, disabling health regeneration is not an answer to anything. What’s the problem there, anyway? Medic is fantastic as-is. A Medic is a huge benefit to the squad composition. Medic is great at anti-infantry for the ability to regenerate up to 24 health/second personally or for anyone around. If any one of you would like to contest this, I recommend checking yourself into the nearest insane asylum.

We can look to Medic, which is a fantastic example of effective potential teamplay (it even has the perfect weapons for staying a bit behind the squad!), and see what can be brought over from it to make Support relevant.

Let’s be honest, here: Support is pretty pointless. Either you don’t need him at all, or you desperately need him. Considering that the average player lifespan is in the sub-45 second range, the vast majority of players will never, ever, need a Support.

In BF4 Competitive, Support was even more memey than Recon. At least Recon could use the Motion Balls. Support got, um, C4 and another explosive. Because, if we’re being honest, Ammo was irrelevant in competitive play. The only situation it ever could have possibly been useful is in resupplying rockets, but due to the anti-spam changes, it was faster to redeploy to get your rockets back than actually having a wasted team slot as Support.

Currently, it is much more effective to brute-force an infantry push with a mob of Medics, just as it is more effective to brute-force a tank with a mob of Assaults. Support is the third wheel here; no one cares about him while they’re actually in the fight. It’s only after the fight has been finished that he becomes relevant, because no one can perform their function even marginally if they don’t have ammo.

So that’s the lesson we can learn from how well Medic works. What if Support was actually extremely helpful during an engagement? What if Support enhanced an Assault’s ability to perform against armor, making the optimum AT composition two Assaults and one Support rather than three Assaults? What if Support enhanced Medic’s ability to clear Infantry, making the best Anti-Infantry composition two Medics and one Support rather than two Medics and one Assault?

The binary nature of Support—either he’s useless or he’s a prerequisite for play—is ultimately a boring, shallow way of implementing Teamplay and leads to frustration as competent players are brought to the level of uselessness of the incompetent teammate. All classes can function successfully without a Medic—health regen exists—but a single Medic provides incredible enhancements to performance.

Support spends most of its time being pointless. I think it’s time we changed that. It’s already clear that health regen does not decrease Medic’s relevance, so why the obsession over a similar system for Support?

I swear to god, if anyone mentions “immersion” or “realism”…

2

Its an interesting post but not sure if I agree with it. Saying that there is no need for support when a player’s lifespan is 45 secs is crazy. If that were the case why have any classes at all?

To me DICE have made the whole thing over complicated.

Would love to see regen of grenades rolled back and just put a 60 sec timer on when grenades can be resupplied by an ammo crate.

3

My god dude. We get it - you want the changes and are fighting like hell to get them. Does this really necessitate a new thread rather than just adding to the one you already have?

4

I felt this was thread for my own. The other one was a discussion and more of a news thread really. This one is for discussion of for cause there are so many against.

5

Chicken and egg, surely.

People already aren’t cautious and die in 45 seconds. This is partly because they get health back automatically. If people had to rely on bandages, they would be more cautious, live longer and need re-supply and bandages.

All removing the need for re-supply (and I don’t think people should regain health automatically either) would do is speed up the pace of the game further. They would be less cautious and spray bullets willy-nilly. It’s better when people are more tactical and thoughtful, not running around like headless chickens not caring if they get hit or use up all their bullets.

Since grenades automatically resupply I throw them much more freely.

6

But that’s exactly what that thread has morphed into - people debating about why it’s good or bad. It appears there are more people against this change than for it. Trying to beat it into someone more than likely isn’t going to change their minds. Even after reading Marbleduck’s arrogant argument, I still think it’s a bad idea.

7

What I don’t get is if support is so useless, why do so many people play it?

8

Just because it seems like there are more people against a change, doesn’t mean that most are against the change or that the change is for the best. Vocal minorities are a thing and so are uneducated masses.

Just because you drive a car, you cannot say in good faith that you are an expert car designer. Likewise, just because you play a game, doesn’t mean you are an expert game dev.

9

These changes would completely kill the Support’s role. You said it yourself: having a Medic is nice and all to speed up the healing process, but it’s not really necessary. You sit behind cover for a while and then you can get back to the fight.
Without bullets, though, you can’t just wait for them to resupply. Here the Support is important, and that is his role.

Now, your argument is that the changes will make the Support a helpful teammate during engagements… but that’s just naive for several reasons.
During the fight (which is a very short time) you will never see any Medics or Supports throwing heals nor ammo. Nothing. Because they want to get kills just like you, and that is the reason why most of them play, to shoot other people. In the middle of combat NONE of them think: “hey, this guy here may need ammo, I’ll stop shooting and resupply him”.
You have to keep in mind that most players are headless chickens that run around shooting like crazy, no thoughts involved.
So this mechanic, auto resupplying ammo, is going to make players to shoot even more like crazy (because they will get those bullets back in a while anyway) and definetely kill any role the Support has left.
Not to mention the gadget spam.

We will see it on the CTE, but for me, this is going to create more issues than anything.

10

And that argument is just as valid for people advocating for these changes.

11

The 45-second life duration can be even shorter when everyone is throwing themselves against a chokepoint. I’m not a fan of grenade auto-regen, but if it still kept ticking AFTER A DEATH that would be cool (kinda like mortars). Say they increase the timer to 60-90 seconds and if you go through multiple lives in that period you STILL have to wait and don’t just get a new nade every spawn. That would be cool, cut way down on spam, and make Support more important.

There’s also the issue of regular ammo almost never running out over the course of an average life (except for very specific guns like the Hellreigel). If people spawned with way less ammo, enough that it would usually run out during a normal firefight, that would make Support more important too. It would also make very slow auto-resupply not seem so silly.

And finally with gadgets, specifically Assault AT gadgets, it’s very annoying to only have ~1/3 of a tank’s HP worth of damage every life. If Support could quickly resupply or even overcharge an Assault’s AT ammo that could really make infantry-tank combat more interesting than a bunch of Assaults going on suicide runs. Granted, this would also require AT nades get a big infantry damage nerf (something I’ve been wanting for a while anyway).

12

It won’t affect teamwork. You still are going to be quite a bit more effective if there is a Support resupplying troops. All because you’ll get your ammo back so much quicker.

I hope it doesn’t discourage picking up kits off the ground. To me that was the way to get more ammo when you were low. They should make the kits on the ground more visible because right now they are hard to spot most of the time. They blend in too well. This would enourage players to pick up kits.

Overall I think ammo 2.0 should be fine and even great. It makes a lot of sense actually. The nade thing is working out well. It’s nice to use nades more than 1 and done every life. And I remember plenty of times where I stay alive for awhile and am hunting a tank and have no rockets or mines left and then have nothing to do basically. I might as well redeploy.

13

Did regenerating health kill the medic class? No.

Does no one use the medic class currently? No.

Then why should ammo 2.0 kill the support class?

Your argument has been proven wrong already.

14

This is just one step closer to oversimplification for the agenda of appealing to the new less experienced casual player. It’s sad really because I do so miss seeing people blossom into good players. Now this game requires people to be mediocre and they usually stay mediocre. There is no challenge anymore it’s like dice started giving out their own participation medals.

15

I don’t like it one bit, no sir… I don’t like it!

16

Just implement the BF2-system again: no ammo nor health regeneration if the player doesn’t have acces to a pouch/crate. Players will learn the need for medics and supports the hard way.

There were no problems in BF2. Maybe they should even add stationary ammo and health dumps like in BF1942 and BFV.

17

If people want to come home and not use their brain they should play TDM or Dom. Otherwise they’re just dragging down other players’ experiences.

18

They should make it like the beginning of the game in the Hunger Games.

19

That’s a big reason hardcore was so good until they decided to flush it down the toilet with the damage model.

20

Dear God this. Yet people claim BF4 support was so amazing. If BF4 support was popular then this will not have a problem.