I like Conquest a lot, but it is true that it often becomes a bit of a merry-go-round where the teams just cycle between taking different objectives and then immediately moving on. This can sometimes feel a bit meaningless. I think it would be nice to incentivize defending flags more.
One idea is for the rate at which you get tickets from a flag to increase the longer you’ve held the flag. That way, you’d often be really incentivized to defend a flag your team has held for a while. You’d also be incentivized not to immediately leave flags defenseless after you take them, because getting flags and losing them soon thereafter would not be the best way to rack up tickets. The optimal strategy would be to get and hold a manageable number of flags, rather than to just constantly attack a new flag. I think this would also make some battles for certain flags feel super meaningful (i.e. a battle to take a flag the opponent has held for quite a while could have huge consequences).
Functionally, how long your team has had the flag (and therefore how important it is to defend) could be easily shown to players by simply putting a number in the objective sign. So let’s say your team has held flag A for 2 minutes and flag B for 10 minutes. The blue circles for those flags could say “A-2” and “B-10.” You could get more points for taking a flag the enemy has held for a long time, and conversely you could get more points for defending that flag.
But both teams would pretty easily hold their own base, so neither would have an advantage from this. I don’t see how that’s a problem with the idea. The only difference is that, once you’ve held that point a long time, you’ll need to really defend it, because a quick backcap by the enemy would be devastating.
Thing is conquest currently works fine because people like the fact that rounds are relatively long and theres lots of exchanging of objectives. The vast quantity of randy players don’t play like experienced battlefield players they just run aimlessly to objectives to shoot things and players. So putting anymore strategy into conquest that means tickets would fall faster would ruin the overall dynamic of it.
Just because the rate at which you get tickets increases the longer you’ve held a point doesn’t mean that rounds would last less long. The initial rate you gain tickets when you first capture a flag could be set lower than the rate is now. There’s no reason that the ticket-gain-increase formula couldn’t be adjusted to end up with similar-length matches.
As for people liking to run around aimlessly to objectives without much strategy, I’m not sure that’s true. I think people want a game type that doesn’t lend itself to aimlessness. If they really wanted to run around aimlessly, they’d play Team Deathmatch (or maybe just a different FPS that doesn’t focus on objective-based gameplay). To the extent that you’re right that there are people playing Conquest who just want to run around aimlessly, there’s no reason they couldn’t still do that under my idea. They’d just probably be less helpful to their team while they did it but not even realize it or care. The rest of us would have a game mode with more strategy and more meaning to fights for particular objectives.
And, to be clear, I agree that Conquest works fine as it is. I just think it could be even better.
IT’s a decent idea. It could help. But it actually might encourage flag chasing as much as flag defending because your team will be just as incentivized to attack back flags due to their high value as defending your own.
I think if you want to win you’re already incentivized to protect flags you own. You get recognized for flags defended. That’s a big stat. You get points for defending flags. I think it’s the killing of enemies in flag zones that is recognized.
It’s smart to weed out enemies around flag zones and kill them. You get points for spotting them and killing them and indirectly that stuff leads to wins which gives you more points (alot more I think) than losing albeit your teammates get to ride your coattails.
I find spotting enemies is a decent way to focus your team on not leaving flag zones right away. It’s a good way to focus your team on enemies that are flanking. I don’t play sniper much but if you got the flare gun then launching that after taking a flag in order to show enemies outside flag zones will help focus the team on not leaving tso quickly.
I also think the more you play the more you recognize the futility in moving from flag to flag losing the flag behind you as you take the flag ahead of you. At least you should.
The idea of this game mode is to push and conquer, not sit back and do nothing
Also - any idea that includes rewarding players with points for sitting around and doing nothing, is a bad one; that would just lead to things like boosting, and really bland gameplay where people just wouldn’t move.
I think there’s ways to provide incentives to defend flags that aren’t tied to rewarding defenders with points over time, but I’m just not sure what it is.
I also don’t really think there needs to be any massive changes - this is still fundamentally the same Conquest mode that we’ve been playing for many, many years in the franchise.
To clarify, I didn’t mean you’d get individual points for just sitting on the flag. When I said you’d get more points for defending a flag that your team had held for a long time, I meant that you’d get more points for killing an enemy at that flag. It’d just be a multiplier on things you already get points for, not a new source of points.
I like the idea of gaining increasingly more tickets for holding objectives and I agree I’m not a big fan of the lemming style CQ we often get with teams just circling the map attacking non-stop while getting back-capped non-stop. Also it is nigh impossible to manage a come back right now even with a behemoth unless you literally push the enemy back to their home base. Once you have somewhat of a lead in tickets the enemy can hold more than half of the flags for the rest of the match and it still doesn’t matter. Like 100-200 tickets ahead at half time and it’s game over more often than not unless you manage to hold all but one flag till the end of the game.
I like the timer idea. However, I’m afraid a random number next to a flag indicator would overcomplicate things too much. The UI portion for that would have to be absolutely straight forward. And the change needed to be explained in the intro at the very least as It’s a fundamental change to the gamemode. I could also imagine a quick tipp pop up next to a flag that you couldn’t disable until you’ve surpassed a certain CQ playtime to help people understand. Granted this could be a bit annoying, but too many people don’t bother trying to understand the fundamentals of a gamemode. So overall it would be for the better to have it right in their faces.
Edit: there shouldn’t be any more individual rewards for defending than there currently are though. more tickets is already a huge reward and incentive imo
I actually like defending more than attacking. As soon as i move to the new objective and see the one behind me that i just captured being attacked i immediately turn back.
I think you might be on to something, I like the sound of it. But more so for myself, because it would give more meaning to strategy.
However, I don’t think it will work for those people who aren’t really playing Conquest as it should. I get the idea more and more that certain people don’t even look at the tickets, I think they just want to see +500 capture points as much as possible. Best example is Fao Fortress: I’ve had multiple games in a row on that map where we have B, C, D and A/G (depending which side we play) and the tickets are pretty close, all we have to do is defend those 4 flags and we win. But still the majority of the players completely abandon every flag to push the fortress. People will always leave flags if there isn’t any action for >30 seconds.
Your idea could work, but if defending a high point flag doesn’t give individual players a ton of points, I am afraid people still won’t care.
Bump. Just want to note that, three years later, DICE basically implemented this idea with the Outpost game mode in BFV. It’s not exactly what I outlined in the OP—didn’t envision having players have to blow up an objective once it’s controlled by the enemy, and I was envisioning deaths still affecting tickets—but it’s basically the same concept, especially in the new iteration where you have to wait to upgrade the radio towers. The core point was to create a conquest-like game mode with multiple objectives where you get more points if you’ve held an objective for a while, in order to incentivize defending objectives. Outpost does that.
Sure. Well done. I hope your chest is swelling with pride. Good of you to let us know that DICE had an idea that was different, but close enough that you would try to take some credit. Excellent work on the necro.