I didn't play Ambush much in Ins2, but...

Even if it isn't a competitive mode, I just miss Ambush in general. It was great casual fun, and more fun than modes such as Firefight imo.

@tedeski Your understanding of firefight is confusing and apparently extremely limited. As someone who has a lot of experience with firefight (4000 hours in INS, played comp for 3-4 years played a lot of seasons and tournaments, shit tonnes of pugs, IGL'd teams etc).

First off if you only played pugs your experience of firefight will be solely dependent on how much you played and who you played with. Ambush is a simpler mode to understand I think, take X to Y. Firefight is Hold X Y or Z when the time runs out. If you have say a 3 minute round of firefight for the first say 1 minute, unless you are running a fast hit on an objective you are going to look to get kills before you make a move. Like in CS you would often probe a site, look for a pick somewhere in a default, this is the standard Firefight play. Wait for a pick.

You can do straight B pushes. Smoke/flash run on in and a lot of teams do, its effective you get early map control etc. Anyway,

You describe ambush like this

It's so much more inviting for tactical play than Firefight. It allows for tactical play on par with CS:GO, where clever use of utility and extensive map knowledge can make or break every round. If you learn set-nades (smokes for key choke points, frags for strong defensible locations, pop-flashes etc.), you can dominate a map against people who don't have as much knowledge. There are times when rushing can catch your opponents off-guard, and other times taking it slow and using your utility pays off. It makes sense to set up crossfires. It's just a tactically rounded and tactically balanced game mode (might need some minor tweaks for a true competitive mode, obviously).

Of which everything can still apply to firefight (FF).

Then you describe FF like this

Firefight, in contrast, feels like a CoD or Battlefield game mode. You sprint around trying to flick-shot everyone, or you camp in a corner and wait for the push. In the Ins2 competitive scene, it basically became team deathmatch. Everyone ignored the objectives, except to nade it if someone touched it or if a couple teammates died. Then, and ONLY then, would you complete a cap. That's literally the depth of the strategy. There's no reason for tactical setups or pushes; it's just a fragfest and teamwork is almost non-existent most of the time. There's some nuance with pre-nades and flashes etc., but that's only useful on a few maps. Almost nobody used set nades for pushing a site, because doing so was a waste of utility when a round might last through 5 or 6 captures.

First off you contradict your point in the same paragraph.

"You sprint around trying to flick-shot everyone, or you camp in a corner and wait for the push."

"There's no reason for tactical setups or pushes."

So if there is no reason for it. Why are you getting pushed? I digress.

Also, "There's no reason for tactical setups or pushes." Firstly Im so tired of the word tactical. Its the new literally. It has lost all meaning. Please tell me what the difference between a setup and a tactical setup is, cos I dont fucking know. "Literally" every round of firefight you will "setup" or "push." There will presumably be a tactic [an action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end - so its tactical dont worry its tactical!] behind me sitting behind some sandbags and watching an angle for, get this, a fucking push behind a flashbang or a frag grenade, tacticallllllly designed to push me off the angle or kill me.

This notion that you dont do "setups" or "pushes" is just ignorant and unfortunately seems spawned by the poeple that you have played pugs with. Let me say there are some idiots out there who played pugs (not talking about you :P). People who have a lot of hours in the game and just dont understand shit. Few people will actually IGL in pugs and try and coordinate things so you are generally left to your own devices. When there was a huge influx of new players the level of pugs got so bad I just stopped playing unless i recognised half the names as decent players. This sounds like what you encountered and Im sorry that it sounds like you only got into competitive on the tail end of competitive in Source.

"Everyone ignored the objectives."

No, everyone plays around the objectives waiting for the moment they can control it. In ambush does the VIP immediately run straight for point at the start of the round or does he hide in a corner for 4 minutes till 90% of players are dead? Its mostly the second one in my experience. Anywho, in firefight you win by either A) killing all the enemy or 😎 capping 2 points by the end of the time limit or C) full capping 3.

At the start of the round you either want to focus on getting kills to allow you to take map control (same as in ambush) or do a big concentrated push to take immediate map control (the B point or a rush onto either A/C, which ever one you dont control). You can do the same thing in ambush as well.

Everyone ignored the objectives, except to nade it if someone touched it or if a couple teammates died. Then, and ONLY then, would you complete a cap. That's literally the depth of the strategy.

Im gonna briefly break down a normal default involved in playing the objective in a firefight game.

So heres an "aggressive multi lane push into a B take."

Firstly people dont automatically run onto the point cos they are gonna get naded/shot as you addressed. Good. You say people dont use nades for pushing a site, thats because 90% of the time there is only 1 site worth using nades directly on, and that is B where the majority of contact will occur around. Smokes and flashes will always be used to block LOS around open areas, (look at market in source) Grenades (HE's/Flashes) will be used to secure outer lanes (this will involve a "push" into a "setup" all tactical of course) around B and thus provide support to the eventual B cap player. Every player will have an area of the map that they are playing around, in support of whatever objective take is being planned. Some will hold some will push to take more map control.

Once support lanes are clear, you have say 2 kills and one of your guys died. You push into B having cleared the initial area around the point. Maybe you get a nade in your direction. Now that you have B control the enemy is forced to make a play either onto B to stop the cap (grenades could be used here) or a flank to A or C (lets say A is your point) .Again grenades can be used here, not onto the point however as 95% of the time you will not defend from ON the point, thats just silly. Generally a smoke on a street or a flash bang to allow you to peek out. Defending players should be setup to control the area around the point, maybe a street that has to be crossed etc. Anyway the enemy team is now capping your home point and you need to get more map control. Time is running out so you decide to split half your team off to their home point (C) and half to defend B giving up the cap of your home point.

Here we are into mid round strategy where you want to control 2 points to win, not get kills. 2 points is the most important. By controlling the points the enemy is forced to come to you, so you can take much easier fights. Your control of the objectives gives you the initiative in a round. Anyway, you "tactically setup" in corners and overwatch to cover B and crossfire anyone coming onto the point or approaching it. Then your players going to C will do the same on the other point. One of them might setup to spawn camp/delay spawners who GET this, need to use their utility to get out of spawn, flashes ideally, smokes a close second. Then you just hold off against the push.

Theres a quick round. I could break down how individual lanes operate by themselves and with each other, the myriad of different strategies employed for each map etc but I wont, just let me assure you that they exist.

Also as with any competitive mode your games are only going to be as good as the players in them. When you play CS with silvers do you expect some wild shit, or is it just a lot of TDM? Same with firefight. Same with Ambush. You got shit players, you get shit games.

Honestly Ill give some props to Ambush it could be an alright game mode for competitive. Its got good elements take X to Y or Z, I dont like how 1 player is often just static in a corner for 2 minutes, thats the real killer for me. But firefight is the big mode. If you cant see all the strategies and tactics and how it all fits together then thats on you but I can explain a lot more if you want. If you just looked at a game of CS and thought, they just run everywhere headshoting each other would you say its not tacticaly deep? Its a similar thing.

Firefight is a product of the maps that it is played on and right now I think that is one of its weakest points in sandstorm. I personally dont really like a lot of them and a lot of work needs to go into refining the play areas.

Anyway, the whole conversation is a moot point because ambush is not in SS. It wont be the competitive mode at release and I doubt that even if it was brought back it would become the competitive mode. In my mind firefight is the competitive mode because of how big and active the community surrounding it is, primarily the competitive community and because it is the one supported by NWI. Back in the day if everyone had still played ambush instead of firefight maybe Ambush would be the main mode, but they didnt, and its not. Firefight is the big one so thats what you get. Instead of looking to change to a different mode that isnt currently support look at what you can suggest that you think would improve firefight 🙂

Say what you will about ambush, and I respect the mode, ive had fun in it and you can use strategies and tactics in it just as well as you can in firefight and other "tactical" games. But outside of 1 or 2 public servers, where can I play some Ambush? Are there pick up games? I want to get away from the levels of brain dead that exist in pub and play some games with good players who can really teach me some shit and show me what the best ambush players can do.

Ive done some quick searches looking for a dedicated ambush discord or teamspeak or something but I havnt turned up anything. The link on the 1 vip server is expired. Ive never really seen any advertisement anywhere about the mode other than complaints it wasn't in sandstorm when that was announced. And when it was announced that there was no ambush in sandstorm suddenly forums were filled with how important ambush was etc etc so much so that it really soured my opinion. I do recall there was a $5 payed entry competitive ambush tournament at the start of the year or late 2017. Me and 4 other comp firefight players signed up for this thinking itd be a bit of fun. However we were denied entry because we were competitive firefight players, too good at the game w/e. There was no good reason to exclude us other than the fact that between us we had about 15k hours in INS combined. I didnt personally receive the DMs regarding why we werent allowed to play in the tournament when we had already paid entry but that is the reason that was communicated to me (we were refunded and it wasnt really a big deal to me at the time, tho I had gotten up at like 5am for the games). I got a chuckle out of the idea our team was too good. So to me despite what some people have said about how ambush is so popular and integral to the insurgency community I find it hard to believe.

There are ~3 privately owned public servers running ambush. 1 of them is the VIP server which is frequently touted as being the most popular server in insurgency constantly ranked #1 etc. Well thats easy when its pretty much the only ambush server that ever gets populated consistently. I can go on the server browser and sort by game mode and at any time of day there will be ~10x more full push servers than there are ambush servers. Popular and integral. Yeah.

That aside, if I wanted to play some competitive firefight its fkn easy. Theres discords advertised on the NWI forums and some posts, the subreddit etc for NA/EU/AU. Theres a bunch of private servers for use by teams and in pugs, the discords have hundreds, even thousands of members. If people wanted Ambush to be the competitive mode, they missed their chance to make it so unfortunately. So I do sympathise wit h ambush players who would like the mode in sandstorm but thats about as far as it goes for me.

Hope this has helped.

last edited by Solusvod

@solusvod said in I didn't play Ambush much in Ins2, but...:

First off if you only played pugs your experience of firefight will be solely dependent on how much you played and who you played with. Ambush is a simpler mode to understand I think, take X to Y. Firefight is Hold X Y or Z when the time runs out. If you have say a 3 minute round of firefight for the first say 1 minute, unless you are running a fast hit on an objective you are going to look to get kills before you make a move. Like in CS you would often probe a site, look for a pick somewhere in a default, this is the standard Firefight play. Wait for a pick.

That's fair, but I'm not sure more complexity necessarily means better (as far as goals/objectives). I'll keep using CS:GO as an example because CS is iconic and people know it. The objective in CS:GO hasn't changed in like... 20 years almost? I haven't looked up the release date of the original HL mod, so I could be wrong. I'd say a simple objective is ideal. Complex objectives can be good, but they kind of muddy the waters, so to speak, for competition.

Of which everything can still apply to firefight (FF).

I've never seen that to be the case, but I'll take your word for it since you're right, I only got into Insurgency about the end of 2016 or early 2017.

"You sprint around trying to flick-shot everyone, or you camp in a corner and wait for the push."

"There's no reason for tactical setups or pushes."

So if there is no reason for it. Why are you getting pushed? I digress.

You've misinterpreted what I said. Someone has to push at some point, so obviously there will be a push. That push won't be like, for example, a set smokes/flash/molotov hit on A site on de_train in CS:GO. That is a push, but the amount of thought that goes into which smokes and flashes you throw is what makes it tactical. I'm saying there's no real reason to try taking an objective in Firefight until someone on your team dies. Maybe that's a consequence of round length. The same is true of Ambush, I'll grant you. The rounds last way too long, and maybe that's because of bad map designs. Ideally, you want quick rounds that require decisive action. Otherwise it's kind of boring (both to play and watch). I think we could find some agreement there: the maps in Ins2 and Sandstorm are simply not made for competitive play.

Also, "There's no reason for tactical setups or pushes." Firstly Im so tired of the word tactical. Its the new literally. It has lost all meaning. Please tell me what the difference between a setup and a tactical setup is, cos I dont fucking know. "Literally" every round of firefight you will "setup" or "push." There will presumably be a tactic [an action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end - so its tactical dont worry its tactical!] behind me sitting behind some sandbags and watching an angle for, get this, a fucking push behind a flashbang or a frag grenade, tacticallllllly designed to push me off the angle or kill me.

So, there's a difference simply by definition. Is there a tactic to your setup? If yes, it's tactical lol. If no, it's not. So, if you play pubs on Ins2 in push or skirmish, there's no tactics, but there are definitely people setup in various positions that they think will be advantageous to themselves, but not necessarily the team. When I use tactical, I'm implying that your entire team is aware of what you are doing and why, and you understand what they're doing and why.

No, everyone plays around the objectives waiting for the moment they can control it. In ambush does the VIP immediately run straight for point at the start of the round or does he hide in a corner for 4 minutes till 90% of players are dead? Its mostly the second one in my experience. Anywho, in firefight you win by either A) killing all the enemy or 😎 capping 2 points by the end of the time limit or C) full capping 3.

That's a consequence of round length and map design, I think. If you look at the co-op maps, NWI has clearly proven they're willing to edit available paths for the benefit of a game mode. Even some night maps have differences in design to their daytime counterparts. So, I think if we had better map design, both Ambush and Firefight would benefit tremendously (and maybe weed out a lot of the problems with both modes). Some of the best Ambush rounds I've played are the rounds where it ends up being around 5v5 left after the initial cluster-fuck, with about 2 minutes to play, and some nades to still use. It's tense, and if the remaining people have sense (which is sorely lacking across the board in Ins2 and SS), a lot of communication and planning happens organically.

At the start of the round you either want to focus on getting kills to allow you to take map control (same as in ambush) or do a big concentrated push to take immediate map control (the B point or a rush onto either A/C, which ever one you dont control). You can do the same thing in ambush as well.

Yeah, but the problem is that map control isn't really that important in Firefight (possibly a map design flaw, again) because there's almost always several places you don't control and someone could slip by and ruin the round for you if you're only focused on one area, especially on respawns since the timings reset for the new players only, but not the players alive prior to the respawn. That problem is less pronounced in Ambush, since if you play intelligently on defense, it's very hard for people to slip by completely unnoticed, and if they do slip by, your team must instantly react correctly. In Firefight, someone kills your guy defending C on Station, and nobody needs to move until the little C starts to blink. There's no reason to hunt him down if you aren't close enough to trade, and if he's not taking C, he's not really worth worrying about beyond keeping an eye on angles he might kill you from. Nobody is ever really on defense or offense, which means everyone is always on defense or offense, until some major swing happens in the round (like a B capture or a few frags go one team's way). As a result, you don't really need to care about the objectives except as a respawn tool.

Im gonna briefly break down a normal default involved in playing the objective in a firefight game.

I read your breakdown, and frankly it's over-analytical. Every round of Firefight on Station (for example) I've ever played boils down to 1-2 people throwing pre-nades at spawns, and the remainder of the teams simply ignoring objectives for kills. If someone goes to B, they're usually killed pretty quickly because it's a fairly open and predictable site to hold. Which means people are either fighting each other in mid, around A, or on the hill between C and Security spawn. The only time the rounds ever deviate from that layout is if some of the pre-nades miss and some people push up a little farther/faster. But again, it's just sprinting around like in CoD4 (which was a great game, but the competitive mode was hardly as tactical as CS).

Theres a quick round. I could break down how individual lanes operate by themselves and with each other, the myriad of different strategies employed for each map etc but I wont, just let me assure you that they exist.

Just because there exists strategies doesn't mean the game mode is inherently good. There's strategies on Push and Skirmish, and they're far more popular game modes. That doesn't make a game mode more competitive.

Also as with any competitive mode your games are only going to be as good as the players in them. When you play CS with silvers do you expect some wild shit, or is it just a lot of TDM? Same with firefight. Same with Ambush. You got shit players, you get shit games.

Agreed 100%. And the Insurgency community is... lacking, unfortunately. A lot of people just don't know what they're doing and can't think beyond the barrel of their gun.

Honestly Ill give some props to Ambush it could be an alright game mode for competitive. Its got good elements take X to Y or Z, I dont like how 1 player is often just static in a corner for 2 minutes, thats the real killer for me. But firefight is the big mode. If you cant see all the strategies and tactics and how it all fits together then thats on you but I can explain a lot more if you want. If you just looked at a game of CS and thought, they just run everywhere headshoting each other would you say its not tacticaly deep? Its a similar thing.

The round length really is a big issue. In the VIP server, for example, the VIP almost always gets yelled at if he's not hiding in a corner for 4 minutes waiting for the bodies to drop. It's really frustrating and not fun. But an easy fix is simply to shorten the rounds by a large margin and force some engagements. In CS:GO, for example, If the rounds were 6 minutes long, we'd see a LOT more downtime and it would not be fun to play/watch.

As for seeing the tactics, I'll grant you I have never played in an actual ladder match or something in Ins2 with a dedicated team. But I have won money playing other shooters, so I understand tactics and teamwork. As many tactics as there are or could be in Firefight, as you've laid them out, I'm saying most of them are unnecessary when fragging is the most important thing in the game mode. Objectives are secondary in Firefight. They're an afterthought for when you need a respawn. In Ambush, the best chance at winning the round is to go for the objectives, because there's no guarantee you'll win every duel and when you're dead you're dead. You have to play the objective and try creating an advantage somewhere, even before a single bullet is fired. The same is not true in Firefight until some bodies have dropped. Then suddenly there are some mind games that can be had.

Firefight is a product of the maps that it is played on and right now I think that is one of its weakest points in sandstorm. I personally dont really like a lot of them and a lot of work needs to go into refining the play areas.

That's absolutely true. The maps are pretty fun for the other game modes, but they just don't work in their current state. Would love some play area restrictions for competitive, even if it is Firefight.

Anyway, the whole conversation is a moot point because ambush is not in SS. It wont be the competitive mode at release and I doubt that even if it was brought back it would become the competitive mode. In my mind firefight is the competitive mode because of how big and active the community surrounding it is, primarily the competitive community and because it is the one supported by NWI. Back in the day if everyone had still played ambush instead of firefight maybe Ambush would be the main mode, but they didnt, and its not. Firefight is the big one so thats what you get. Instead of looking to change to a different mode that isnt currently support look at what you can suggest that you think would improve firefight 🙂

More players are playing Push and Skirmish. NWI chose Firefight, that's pretty apparent based on server populations now. Look at CS:GO again; there are like half a dozen game modes now (not counting custom servers), but the best competitive mode is still by far the most popular. By that logic, NWI should've made Push the competitive game mode. Thank goodness they didn't. Push is fun, but it's just not a competitive concept.

Say what you will about ambush, and I respect the mode, ive had fun in it and you can use strategies and tactics in it just as well as you can in firefight and other "tactical" games. But outside of 1 or 2 public servers, where can I play some Ambush? Are there pick up games? I want to get away from the levels of brain dead that exist in pub and play some games with good players who can really teach me some shit and show me what the best ambush players can do.

Ive done some quick searches looking for a dedicated ambush discord or teamspeak or something but I havnt turned up anything. The link on the 1 vip server is expired. Ive never really seen any advertisement anywhere about the mode other than complaints it wasn't in sandstorm when that was announced. And when it was announced that there was no ambush in sandstorm suddenly forums were filled with how important ambush was etc etc so much so that it really soured my opinion. I do recall there was a $5 payed entry competitive ambush tournament at the start of the year or late 2017. Me and 4 other comp firefight players signed up for this thinking itd be a bit of fun. However we were denied entry because we were competitive firefight players, too good at the game w/e. There was no good reason to exclude us other than the fact that between us we had about 15k hours in INS combined. I didnt personally receive the DMs regarding why we werent allowed to play in the tournament when we had already paid entry but that is the reason that was communicated to me (we were refunded and it wasnt really a big deal to me at the time, tho I had gotten up at like 5am for the games). I got a chuckle out of the idea our team was too good. So to me despite what some people have said about how ambush is so popular and integral to the insurgency community I find it hard to believe.

There are ~3 privately owned public servers running ambush. 1 of them is the VIP server which is frequently touted as being the most popular server in insurgency constantly ranked #1 etc. Well thats easy when its pretty much the only ambush server that ever gets populated consistently. I can go on the server browser and sort by game mode and at any time of day there will be ~10x more full push servers than there are ambush servers. Popular and integral. Yeah.

Again, it's pretty clear NWI chose Firefight. Maybe they thought it was more fun and easier for people to understand than Ambush? Maybe they didn't want people raging in Ambush because it's more unforgiving for new players? Maybe they just didn't think people would like to play it? I don't know why, but they picked Firefight. They're welcome to do that, but you can't pretend like it was some divine intervention or player-pick that made Firefight the competitive game mode without some kind of information to back that up.

That aside, if I wanted to play some competitive firefight its fkn easy. Theres discords advertised on the NWI forums and some posts, the subreddit etc for NA/EU/AU. Theres a bunch of private servers for use by teams and in pugs, the discords have hundreds, even thousands of members. If people wanted Ambush to be the competitive mode, they missed their chance to make it so unfortunately. So I do sympathise wit h ambush players who would like the mode in sandstorm but thats about as far as it goes for me.

I can't disagree here: more people in the competitive scene are looking for Firefight. But is that because it's the more competitive game mode? Or is it because that's what NWI made it the competitive game mode and the players have all been playing it already? If NWI made an announcement tomorrow that Ambush was the new competitive mode, there would be an uproar. However, if Ambush had been the competitive mode from the beginning and they announced they were switching to Firefight there would also be an uproar. The fact that it's just 'how it has been done so far' doesn't really defend the merits of either game mode.

NWI isn't going to make ambush the competitive game mode, that's pretty obvious. I'm just hoping, for now, that it at least comes back into the game (besides custom servers building it) and at least receives some TLC from the devs to make it a more viable game mode than it was in source.

Also, thanks for taking the time to explain your position as someone with experience in the competitive scene. It's easy for people to have an opinion, but harder to have an informed opinion.

Edited for typos.

last edited by tedeski

@tedeski

but the amount of thought that goes into which smokes and flashes you throw is what makes it tactical. I'm saying there's no real reason to try taking an objective in Firefight until someone on your team dies. Maybe that's a consequence of round length.

Ill address a couple of things here. Firstly getting onto the point quick is entirely dependent on the strategy a team is employing, also it is heavily influenced by what map you are playing. Some maps it is really really important to get onto B as quick as you can. For example Siege, where the T side has a massive timing advantage onto B, it is critical that Ts get onto B before Sec as retaking the point is a nightmare. Market is a map where both teams have equal timings and there is a lot of cover on B. Control needs to be established early so usually you will have 1 guy hiding on the point and 1-2 guys covering him. Also smokes need to be used to get on teh point or you will just lose every round. Ministry is another map where you need to get on B early to get map control. B is massive so controlling B gives you a lot of map control. District is a map where getting on B early is a big risk but if your team covers it well and lays down good prefires/holds the right angles and can prevent your B player dying will give you alot of control into the round.

Also remember that you do not have to cap the point. Getting it up to 90% then sitting off it and holding out is an important strategy and requires team communication and awareness from the B players of when to cap. If your whole team is still up then you dont want to cap.

Regarding nade usage a lot of this is limited by the amount of utility that players can carry. In source I would normally run 2 grenades. Usually a flash and smoke or flash and HE because of how OP flashes are. That is actually quite a lot as I would say the majority of players would only be running one nade, some dont run any because they want more gear. There are plenty of nades thrown etc to get map control tho, again it is very map dependent. District doesnt really require nades unless you want to use them. For map like market or siege if you are not throwing smokes at the start of every round half your team could get picked in the first 30 seconds.

So, there's a difference simply by definition. Is there a tactic to your setup? If yes, it's tactical lol. If no, it's not. So, if you play pubs on Ins2 in push or skirmish, there's no tactics, but there are definitely people setup in various positions that they think will be advantageous to themselves, but not necessarily the team. When I use tactical, I'm implying that your entire team is aware of what you are doing and why, and you understand what they're doing and why.

I mean, there is always a reason behind someones actions, thus it is a tactic. Whether it is a good tactic or not, thats debatable. In pub tho everyones actions have a tactic, a reason behind them, but yes its not a team wide tactic. Even in pugs you arnt gonna get full team wide tactics, only in real comp teams is that gonna be fully viable so it doesnt really matter what game mode you are playing. I still despise the word tactical as it really has no meaning to me anymore haha 😛 But I get what you mean.

That's a consequence of round length and map design, I think. If you look at the co-op maps, NWI has clearly proven they're willing to edit available paths for the benefit of a game mode. Even some night maps have differences in design to their daytime counterparts. So, I think if we had better map design, both Ambush and Firefight would benefit tremendously (and maybe weed out a lot of the problems with both modes).

Round time in firefight in source (at least what I played on) is ~150sec I think, and consisdering it generally takes ~20 seconds to get out of spawn and setup "real" round time is ~130sec. Pub ambush is something ridiculous like 5min. It just annoys me. I can push up and kill 5 people within the first ~30-40 seconds. If I had the boys and VIP behind me we could all just monster onto one of the sites and win but I gotta wait another 3 minutes 😛 Its just pub tho.

Yeah, but the problem is that map control isn't really that important in Firefight (possibly a map design flaw, again) because there's almost always several places you don't control and someone could slip by and ruin the round for you if you're only focused on one area, especially on respawns since the timings reset for the new players only, but not the players alive prior to the respawn.

So map control is incredibly important in firefight or you just lose. While there are a lot of routes that people can take they all inevitably lead to a single area where everyone is. This is where game sense and map knowledge come in. Both in your positioning and a teams callouts. Yes. You will get flanked. You gotta play to avoid that however. Players will be positioned to cover angles where enemies could come and to hold flanks or at least get info on those flanks. Ministry is probably a good example of a map with the most routes you can take. There are 2 low lanes, 3 middle lanes and 1 upper lane and you have 5 people.

A normal setup on ministry on SEC side goes like this. 1 guy holding A. Ideally he will have a flash and a frag grenade. 2 guys B. 1 to hold and cap and 1 to push. Smokes flashes and HE will be employed to prevent T pushes out through B and to kill enemies hiding in the corners by the big pot plants. From B you can control or at least get info on 4 of the lanes throughout the map. All 3 middle lanes and one of the lower lanes, which leads onto B. Finally another player will probably go to C. This will either force the enemy to come and block you on C, or you get a free cap, great. Your last player will generally look to get control over the balcony either go through the low A lane or through A itself with flash support from the A player.

With this setup the only lane that you do not have direct info on is the second lower lane. But its B exits are covered and if the player goes to C he forfeits the B cap and SEC still have the advantage. Something to remember is that although you may be able to flank along way around the enemy and get behind them, you do this by sacrificing players for your frontline and support of your players on objectives. If you take 40-50 seconds to flank, which is about how long it takes for a T player to flank all the way behind Sec on ministry, you could have already have lost half your team and a good deal of the map.

If your team is on point and calling where they are and are not getting contact then you can deduce that someone has flanked. Also if he ran the whole way there is a good chance someone heard him and called him out. So all that happens is you run out a door way and are immediately killed. Thus while useful, flanking is not an immediate guarantee of success.

I read your breakdown, and frankly it's over-analytical. Every round of Firefight on Station (for example) I've ever played boils down to 1-2 people throwing pre-nades at spawns, and the remainder of the teams simply ignoring objectives for kills. If someone goes to B, they're usually killed pretty quickly because it's a fairly open and predictable site to hold. Which means people are either fighting each other in mid, around A, or on the hill between C and Security spawn. The only time the rounds ever deviate from that layout is if some of the pre-nades miss and some people push up a little farther/faster. But again, it's just sprinting around like in CoD4 (which was a great game, but the competitive mode was hardly as tactical as CS).

First off I thought I was quite restrained in my analysis 😛 Anywho so you picked station which has literally the worst, most retarded, cancerous meta on any fucking map lol. I fucking hate station. I agree. Prenades on that map are so fucking dumb and whoever designed the skybox of that map is going on the same list as the guy who made sinjar. Its cancerous and its stupid. I apologise that it sounds like you had to play that map a lot. Its the Dust 2 of NA/EU. Station has its own unique (read as braindead) meta that is not really comparable to other maps. I have had the joy of playing against teams who 5 stack nades onto our spawn paths, then resupply their nades and throw it again. Becuase the map is small on station and Security have advantage onto B T side have to focus on capping A and getting picks around B. If a team doesnt realise this well.... it gets shit pretty quick.

Anyway whether you wait around for picks or push early is entirely dependent on the team you are playing on and in pugs generally you will be playing a "default" and waiting for picks. Other maps have much better metas that dont involve your whole team getting naded in the first 10 seconds of a round (which has happened to me). I am glad we are united in our disdain for station.

Just because there exists strategies doesn't mean the game mode is inherently good. There's strategies on Push and Skirmish, and they're far more popular game modes. That doesn't make a game mode more competitive.

Is this just a general statement or a criticism of firefight? If its a general statement sure I agree. I only lay out a round explanation to show a normal default strategy and a little bit of the thought that goes on behind it, not to validate the game mode.

Agreed 100%. And the Insurgency community is... lacking, unfortunately. A lot of people just don't know what they're doing and can't think beyond the barrel of their gun.

In pub yes, you gotta use pub to find the ones who are good and can show some deep thinking. I have recruited so many players out of pub. Hell I was brought into comp cos someone asked if I wanted to pug. I can still remember it. I was playing pistol only on peak back when that map wasnt trash lol 😛 To meMM is just a way to get peoples foot in door. I dont expect some huge scene to develop, but I think it will get some more players in which will be cool. And if people have fun all the better. Itl still take time for general strategies and tactics to filter down into the MM/Pub level but its always been like that and Im excited to see it happen.

The round length really is a big issue.

Literally just a theatre issue. Changing 1 line on the server config to mp_roundtime 180 fixes it. But I doubt they would do that now. If ambush does come to SS I would like to see a lower round time, similar to that of firefight.

As for seeing the tactics, I'll grant you I have never played in an actual ladder match or something in Ins2 with a dedicated team. But I have won money playing other shooters, so I understand tactics and teamwork. As many tactics as there are or could be in Firefight, as you've laid them out, I'm saying most of them are unnecessary when fragging is the most important thing in the game mode. Objectives are secondary in Firefight.

Ok so I would agree that getting kills is the primary way that rounds will be won in Firefight. If there were no objectives and it was straight DM I would agree with you, firefight is trash, but there are objectives. Playing the objectives is how you get your kills, its how you take map control, its how you take the initiative in a round and how you dictate the tempo of a round. If you have control of an objective, it forces the enemies into making a move.

If you play a round with no consideration for the objective and only think of getting kills you will lose every round against a team that plays objectives well. If I have 2 guys set up covering B, and one of my players steps onto a B point what do you do. Do you let me cap? Do you peek B? Do you push B? If you peek B I force you to move, my team gets the opportunity to get kills on an angle they are holding. Do you push B? Same thing. What if you push B and my B player only touched it and ran off it. You run into the open and die for nothing. Do you nade it? If you dont know where my guy is there isnt a high chance you will get him. All these decisions are forced onto your team. If you let me cap if you let me get to 90% im just gonna back off and hold angles for 1 minute till I can win. Dont need kills if at 30 seconds I touch B, cap it, and now your whole team has 30 seconds to run out into a 3 person crossfire.

More players are playing Push and Skirmish. NWI chose Firefight, that's pretty apparent based on server populations now. Look at CS:GO again; there are like half a dozen game modes now (not counting custom servers), but the best competitive mode is still by far the most popular. By that logic, NWI should've made Push the competitive game mode. Thank goodness they didn't. Push is fun, but it's just not a competitive concept.

So funnily enough, back in INS 1, MIC push was the competitive gamemode for the comp scene haha. My first teams IGL was a guy who used to play it too and he thought firefight was much better.

Again, it's pretty clear NWI chose Firefight. Maybe they thought it was more fun and easier for people to understand than Ambush? Maybe they didn't want people raging in Ambush because it's more unforgiving for new players? Maybe they just didn't think people would like to play it? I don't know why, but they picked Firefight. They're welcome to do that, but you can't pretend like it was some divine intervention or player-pick that made Firefight the competitive game mode without some kind of information to back that up.

I mean as I said, if the comp scene back in 2014/15 had said fuck that we are gonna do ambush and played ambush a shit tonne and just done that then ambush would probably be in sandstorm instead of firefight. If there was no competitive scene for firefight and it was all ambush I reckon there is a good chance ambush would have been in ss. Maybe 60-40. But I dont know what the situation was back in 2014/15 that caused the transition. So going back that far no it would be an NWI decision. However If I go @Link (I hope this is the right link :P) maybe he can elucidate on the situation back then as I know he was involved running shit back then.

Anywho I would welcome any new game modes, if at least so old ambush threads can stop get necro'd back to life haha. As long as occupy doesnt come back ill be a happy boi cos that game mode is the fucking worst lol.

Also, thanks for taking the time to explain your position as someone with experience in the competitive scene. It's easy for people to have an opinion, but harder to have an informed opinion.

No worries haha, as you might be able to tell, I fucking love INS and I love firefight. I spent a lot of time creating strategies and setups, maybe a hundred or so hours just solo in servers practicing nades/prefires, finding new spots just theory crafting shit, so I love to explain the depth of some strategies and how and why things play out the way they do. unfortunately as you have noted you certainly came in on the tailend of the lifespan of Comp INS and it died in the AU region before that as well too unfortunately so Ive spent a lot of time playing on with NA/EU folks. Anyway I hope ive shed some more light on things especially the importance of objectives in firefight.

On a final note I dont think you are going to see much high level firefight play until we get dedicated servers which I believe were mentioned to be coming soon. The MM system is still not fully implemented and has some bugs and pub firefight will always be a fucking mess when there are ~24 people on the server, it just becomes an unmitigated shit show and a frag fest. But when you get a 5 people who know wtf they are doing and understand shit thats when you are cooking with gas. I would recommend that if you wanted to get into comp when SS releases hitting up either GYM or DGL, tho I think there might be another one for EU coming. Starting out is always tough as there will be scrubs everywhere but I wish you luck and I hope that when NWI brings out some more game modes they are ballin, and we get some more maps in the vein of Source like district, market, heights and ministry. (though elements of those maps are in SS I would like them to be more prevalent).

last edited by Solusvod

@solusvod said in I didn't play Ambush much in Ins2, but...:

Again, it's pretty clear NWI chose Firefight. Maybe they thought it was more fun and easier for people to understand than Ambush? Maybe they didn't want people raging in Ambush because it's more unforgiving for new players? Maybe they just didn't think people would like to play it? I don't know why, but they picked Firefight. They're welcome to do that, but you can't pretend like it was some divine intervention or player-pick that made Firefight the competitive game mode without some kind of information to back that up.

I mean as I said, if the comp scene back in 2014/15 had said fuck that we are gonna do ambush and played ambush a shit tonne and just done that then ambush would probably be in sandstorm instead of firefight. If there was no competitive scene for firefight and it was all ambush I reckon there is a good chance ambush would have been in ss. Maybe 60-40. But I dont know what the situation was back in 2014/15 that caused the transition. So going back that far no it would be an NWI decision. However If I go @Link (I hope this is the right link :P) maybe he can elucidate on the situation back then as I know he was involved running shit back then.

Argyll wanted firefight in the Alpha and EA of Insurgency in 2013. I wasn't too keen on it at the beginning. Jihad (IGN) and myself pushed heavily for Ambush (called VIP Escort back then) to be brought to the game. We spent a lot of time posting about the game mode and how it works etc. We cited America's Army 2.0 as proof of concept. We got VIP/Ambush added into the game and I hit the ground running. I ran a lot of PUG events for Ambush. There were a lot of maps for Ambush that worked well back in Q4 2013 and Q1 2014.

Siege, Market, Ministry and Heights were good VIP/Ambush maps back then in 2014. They had different layouts than they do now. In Q2 2014, the maps were updated for VIP/Ambush and changed. The maps that many people liked were changed and VIP/Ambush was killed off essentially. I hate the current Siege Ambush layout, Siege used to be the de_dust 2 of Ambush maps and I still have the layout saved on mediafire along with many other ambush maps. I even recreated Dusk from Americas Army (one of the best VIP Escort maps).

It was in Q2/Q3 that I transitioned to firefight. It took me awhile, but I fell in love.

I think Ambush is great but because the rounds can end so quickly it is very frustrating for a lot of people in public servers - myself included. If you get a random player as the VIP and they run out first, the runs are usually super quick and frustrating. You could implement a feature where people who don't have X amount of hours in VIP cannot be the VIP unless there is no one with greater than X amount of hours. VIP is just not a casual game mode and that is why it fails. VIP needs a hardcore fan base - which will be the minority OR it needs to be almost the only game mode to thrive. You could have like... coop, push, and VIP. That would probably let VIP flourish... err Ambush. I interchange VIP and Ambush a lot still sorry 😛

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@solusvod I'll just sort of blanket-reply to your post: I get where you're coming from, and it's clear you get where I'm coming from. I think for me it boils down to one simple thing, and it's probably just preference, but here it is anyways lol.

I don't think Firefight is incapable of being a competitively balanced game mode, I just think the game play elements of VIP/Ambush lend themselves more to a competitive balance than Firefight does. And again, that just may be a consequence of my experience with the two modes not being in the ideal competitive environment.

@link I'd have liked to have been around playing at that time, I just hadn't heard of the game. It's a shame, because I truly enjoy the game play elements in Source (a little less so in SS, but I'm not crazy about the Unreal Engine). I think regardless, I'll play the game as competitively as I'm able. I'm in the gym discord, but there's not much action these days it seems.