Push Defense Is REALLY Easy

I'd be willing to bet money that the defending team wins 85% or more of all push rounds where the teams are of somewhat equal skill. That's definitely been my experience. This would seem logical, since defending is generally easier than attacking, but for the sake of gameplay, it makes playing offense a little less fun when the expectation is that you're probably going to lose unless you make some crazy plays or the other team sucks.

One balance change that could make a difference (maybe) is to increase the spawn time for defenders, so they reinforce less often. What the actual times should be, I don't know, but maybe adding 5-10 seconds could give offense the edge it needs to have an equal chance.

Just some thoughts ^_^

It will get worse too. as people learn the flanks and tricks the defenders will get set up in strategic positions and just cut down on advancing players. Adding time to the defense spawn is one option indeed.
The perfect solution would be dynamic maps where you can destroy walls to make a pass through to a different lane or even randomly created maps! LOL.. a man can dream..

Yes they definately need to work on that. I was quite surprised that the defending team has more waves than the attacking team.
I think the attacking team should have more waves.

Also I really dont get the restricted area design on so many maps for the attacking team. There are so many choke points for the attacking team due to the restricted areas so the defeding team can easily camp it down.

Playing as defender gets boring really quickly since all you need to do is heavy camping and just focus on the choke points. Due to its hardcore nature the game is really camper friendly but the design choices just make it worse.

last edited by d0nkeyt0m

You all are making good points, and I am sure NWI will make tweaks over the coming years to balance out the maps and offense/defense.

A couple of additional thoughts:

  • The attacking and defending team have the same number of waves, just not to start. The attacking team earns their waves as they take an objective, similar to the Day of Infamy Invasion mode

  • Tweaking aside, this was also a reality in Insurgency 2014 and DOI. There is something to be said for learning tactical approaches for dealing with campers, for clearing out rooms, for using smoke & explosives correctly, and for moving in a coordinated way as a team.

  • I rarely see a game where no attacking team member reaches their objective and holds it for some period -- and often I do see that the rest of the attacking team hangs back or otherwise does not take tactical advantage to use smoke or move up and keep the pressure up.

@aslan14 said in Push Defense Is REALLY Easy:

You all are making good points, and I am sure NWI will make tweaks over the coming years to balance out the maps and offense/defense.

A couple of additional thoughts:

  • The attacking and defending team have the same number of waves, just not to start. The attacking team earns their waves as they take an objective, similar to the Day of Infamy Invasion mode

I was going to say this--beat me to it! It's a common misconception (differing wave numbers) that I can only assume comes from lack of experience. They're obviously the same amount; it's even explained in the opening text of the load screen lol.

  • Tweaking aside, this was also a reality in Insurgency 2014 and DOI. There is something to be said for learning tactical approaches for dealing with campers, for clearing out rooms, for using smoke & explosives correctly, and for moving in a coordinated way as a team.

So, I've heard this argument before, and I agree with it to a point. In DOI and Ins2, it was very different, however. The maps in SS are so much larger that there are literally hundreds of corners where someone could camp and it be an effective position. It's simply not feasible to nade/RPG every corner where a defender might be camping. I regularly see people nade/RPG the common camping spots, but then there's one or two people in weird, seemingly random corners that clean up 2-3 attackers before they're shut down.

The community in pubs seems to be adapting to smoke use pretty well--I see them thrown rather liberally and it makes for a much more interesting push. But defense simply has too much of an advantage with the current map designs.

  • I rarely see a game where no attacking team member reaches their objective and holds it for some period -- and often I do see that the rest of the attacking team hangs back or otherwise does not take tactical advantage to use smoke or move up and keep the pressure up.

I agree that one man shouldn't be able to just storm in and single handedly take the point, which is why I would propose only minor tweaks that don't drastically alter the gameplay. The issue isn't reaching the point, that's pretty simple. But once on it, it can be challenging to feel like your efforts matter. For example, I often get to an objective and kill 3-4 people (shotgun in CQB). But because I missed a corner, or didn't have time to check it, I get shot, and within 15 seconds, the fresh defender wave is back and all or most of our progress gets negated.

@snakelegionnaire or having 2 checkpoints from whitch only one needs to be secured to progress .. that would spread defending team ..

last edited by N4thani3l

I have to disagree for the most part. I find it pretty equal in my experience sometimes your on good teams with good communication and cooperation and sometimes your on teams that are shit and your gonna lose wether attacking or defending. I find more often then not the only time the attackers can’t at the very least make a very formidable push is if the commanders and or team do not make proper use of smoke and push as team with communication or you have no commander (which I play often and always carry smoke). But once again in my experience with proper timing of smoke and team advancement you can be quite unstoppable regardless of map size.. Number of corners.. Etc... Just my $.02 (shrugs shoulders).

@planetcanada I have to assume you either aren't attempting to accurately record your gameplay, or you're extremely lucky. I played about 20 push games today and all but 3 were a tie (the ones that weren't the obviously worse team lost, with a few waves to spare).

When teams are of equal skill, the game almost invariably favors defenders.

@tedeski I would look at my stats but they aren’t accurate and my claim was a guess but I would bet money my claim is also not far off but either way a tie? Those exist? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tie to be completely honest..? Lol. Being a good commander can be the difference just as much as not being the commander at all.. Not saying I’m the best at it but I find I’m usually quite successful unless my Observers/team are completely uncooperative. Like I said pretty equal win some lose some.. 🤷♂

@planetcanada You're talking about push, right? Not skirmish?

Either way, you aren't really addressing what I'm saying. I'm saying that if we assume equal average skill level between offense and defense on the push game mode, the defending team almost always wins. The defending team won 37/40 rounds just today in my games (20 games, 2 rounds per game). I find that one team either gets steamrolled both rounds because it's significantly worse or both teams successfully defend. Very seldom is there a competitive, measured push game that eats up almost every wave of both sides and comes down to the last few kills in the round. I would think the goal of balancing the game mode would be that each side has an equal chance of winning, not that one side will almost always win.

I think it makes sense that defense has the advantage. Defenders have the ability to camp and watch corners. Attackers need to communicate in order to clear a path to the the objective. Once you open up a path your waves can roll in for close quarter fights. Assuming you don't have 12 people on your team using a 4x scope, dreaming of being Chris Kyle, while letting you die on point.

@mlb7 said in Push Defense Is REALLY Easy:

Assuming you don't have 12 people on your team using a 4x scope, dreaming of being Chris Kyle, while letting you die on point.

I think we found the problem, y'all haha