I enjoy Rageball. It is suitably different from the mindless slaughter of siege and battle, and from the equally mindless Defend the virgin. It offers a team-based mode that forces teamwork. Not only that, but it has great potential. Should it get the attention it deserves, I believe it could be a great diversion to strategus. Maybe there could also be automated tournaments between cRPG clans. Anyway, I've rambled enough about potential. How do we get to that point?
It's not the fact that pressing f at any time, like picking up a weapon or using a voice command, causes you to throw or attempt an active catch. It's not that the dive key for goalies is hardbound to the alt weapon key, causing issues when I want to use my Langes Messer as a 1 handed weapon (and changing it back from 2h mode causes me to get another cooldown on diving). It's the way that spawning is handled.
In it's current state, steamrolling the other team is easy, especially with coordination over Teamspeak, Vent, or Mumble. When a goal is made, everyone keeps their current position, and plenty of people will sheath and draw their weapons to skip the victory animation. This allows them to quickly overhead nearby opponents, while they are stuck in their animation. My solution to this is to change the way spawning works.
At the start of a map...
1. There will be a 10 second timer.
2. All that have chosen a team and equipment will spawn.
This means that...
* Those wishing to pick equipment (I always switch out my default medium armor for cloth) and those that have longer loading times are able to spawn with everyone else
---> This means everyone can make a mad dash for the ball together, rather than staggered.
------> Hopefully this causes there to be a better initial battle.
Mid round respawns will be unchanged. However...
After a goal is scored:
1. The ball despawns
2. Victory animations play
3. After 5 seconds, everyone dies
4. Everyone spawns at the starting spawns, and the ball spawns inside the goalie zone.
This accomplishes the following:
* Teamswitched players will spawn with their team, and don't have to wait for a respawn timer
* The positions of the players are reset
---> As a direct result, the goal cannot be mobbed by opposing team members
-----> This means that he won't accidently toss the ball to an enemy player while trying to send it to a friendly.
* Consecutive scoring over and over again will result only from teamwork and skill, not due to the fact that there's a mob outside the goal
* It would be very, very, difficult for the goalie to toss the ball to the enemy.
What do you all think?