NOTE: This post is copied from a reddit post on a community concerning a webgame I sometimes play.

In this game, it is popular to divide playstyles into two types: attack/offense, and support/defense. This division is often attacked for its simplicity, but I'd argue that it's almost right. Here, I will offer what seems to me to be a more useful way of analyzing playstyles, based on the notion of freedom. Specifically, I will argue for a framework in which the notion of support/defense is replaced by increasing freedom for one's own team, and the notion of attack/offense is replaced by stressing the opposing team. I will call these two frameworks the offense/defense framework and the freedom/stress framework.

1. Freedom is the ability to act, stress the inability to act.

Suppose that you're in TDM, and the enemy has captured the center square, forming a stronghold around it; they are now defending against attacks from your side. (This will be the scenario we have in mind over the course of this post). Over time, the attacking side will find new ways to constrain the enemy side, clear and settle into posts where sniping and throwing grenades is easy, start to pick off stragglers and incoming defenders, start to heal injured players, and start to find spots to provide suppressive fire.

What this all corresponds to is expanding the space of possible actions your teammates can take:

• letting them use sniper posts,
• letting them get back into the battle when injured,
• letting them focus on the main body instead of stragglers,

and contracting the space of possible actions your enemies can take:

• forcing them into more vulnerable areas via gas grenades and (the threat of) explosive grenades,
• forcing them to keep tightly behind shelter via suppressive fire,
• forcing them to ward you off or kill you by attacking them directly.

By giving your team the ability to perform certain actions, you are giving them freedom; by removing the opposing team's ability to take certain actions, you are removing their freedom (or, stressing them).

2. Stress builds up, proving fatal to defenders.

The attacking team thus adapts in order to increase stress on the opposing team, while increasing its own freedom; the defending team, on the other hand, cannot effectively decrease the attacking team's freedom, so it must instead focus on increasing its own freedom — they must adapt to manage stress.

The survival of the opposing team depends on how well they can adapt to manage stress; if they cannot manage it well, it will build up, and eventually they will be too stressed to mount an effective resistance, at which point they will be routed and replaced.

I believe that, as a general rule, it is easier for the attacking team to increase stress than it is for the defending team to manage it. This may change when the defending team is composed of a few elite or highly upgraded players against a few weak players, but for large player counts the rule seems to hold.

3. Stress buildup is why TDM is cyclical in nature.

Because stress increases, we can chart the progression of a TDM match in a series of steps:

1. The defending team settles into the center square, and begins fortifying it and clearing out attackers.