A lot of comments have been made recently about various modes being disliked or far less popular as a whole. Assault is one that is often on those lists but isn’t really talked about as much.
Personally, I think the potential for this mode to be really good is there, but in its current state, it simply is quite frustrating more than anything.
The Primary Issue:
Going back and forth repeatedly capturing (or retaking) objectives, or hoping that if you take control of one that your teammates are competent to deal with the other one. Often times these games will end on a TIMER rather than captures or loss of tickets.
Solution:
Rather than it being a full objective capture each time that it is fought for, give a partial PERMANENT completion each time, ultimately resulting in a permanent capture.
Example:
2 objectives, Point A and Point B.
Point A gets taken, and players go over to push point B.
If Point A is retaken by defenders, 12.5% of the point still remains as attacker owned. So the next time attackers fight to retake it, it requires a little less time than the first.
Each time that objective is captured by attackers, it adds another 12.5% to that capture.
Ultimately, it means that if the back and forth is too extreme, attackers will permanent capture after 8 times.
(One would HOPE that it wouldn’t come to that, but it would still be easier for attackers to capture without extreme amounts of coordination.
So what does this mean for defenders?
It means that choosing an objective to defend, rather than continuously running back and forth will be a much better option.
Personally I would still like to see defenders get the ability (in Assault, Destruction, Invasion, etc) be able to see the future objectives they are expected to defend on the map. Allowing for defenders to set up more effective defenses.
That said, I think this would be a good change to the Assault game mode to make it a bit more popular, and additionally reduce the number of players that just desert upon seeing it pop up.