Thoughts and Suggestions on a New game Mechanic?

[Zekerage]

After reading this post (http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,8672.0.html) about why people play battle, and some people saying that it seems "bland", I saw 1 or 2 people suggest something that I found ingenious.

I propose either a change to the current battle mode, or a new game mode, wherein MotF comes up EVERY round at say, the 2 minute mark. Keep the spawn location of the flags at random, so that the "end" battlefield is always a new place in the map. This does a few things

1. It gives Battle a purpose beyond "You.... Go kill Them..". You now have a semi-consistant goal to achieve beyond murdering the other team.

2. It stops those assholes who like to Draw out rounds by either Running or Camping after someone dies, which makes MotF not spawn.

3. Having it spawn consistently at (again a suggested time) 2 minutes allows almost everyone a chance to GET to it, as opposed to it spawning off at a far away place that only someone riding a Horse could possibly get to.

4. It will make it more exciting to have a place to fight over after the initial clash of the teams. Some of my favorite moments in battle is me and one or two other guys fighting the last 2-4 people on the opposing team over the flag, trying to maneuver them away so Our flag goes the tiniest bit above theirs before the timer runs out.

5. Having the flag objective in battle mode may make it seem like the best of Siege and Battle combined (1 life, so it counts, but also having a goal to work towards).

6. ???

7. Profit

In theory, it should be easy to have this done, considering that it's already in the game. I feel that this is at least an option to consider. Again, I suggest it either be a seperate game mode, or implemented on certain battle servers (like melee weekends on tuna town), or on certain days like naked wednesdays used to be, or, if the feed back is overwhelmingly positive, add it to all of the battle servers.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

-Zylo

Edit - If this needs to be in the "suggestions" area of the forums, Please move it. I tried posting it in both places to get more thoughts on it, but it's counting it as a double post. Hopefully this isn't completely overlooked . Thanks in advance.

[Torben]

I like the idea and would suggest a random spawn time

[Zekerage]

What spawn time range would you suggest? It has to be early enough to let people get there, but late enough to encourage people to still engage each other in the normal "battle" way.

It was also brought to my attention by DL_Awesomeasaurus that we'd need to take a look at the rate at which the flag is raised. We'd need it so that 1 team doesn't win just by sheer luck that the flag spawned close to their surviving group of players, and the flag gets raised before the opposing team can get to it just because there was a group of 3+ vs 1. This is assuming that the flag mechanic would work like siege's, in that, the more people on the flag, the faster it's raised.

[Jarlek]

Just gonna pop in and say that MotF flags are not random. They can spawn in 3 different places which are set by the mapmaker. If the mapmaker forgot to add those 3 places then the map itself just makes 3 places (these will still always be the same but might end up in weird places as it is the computer who puts them there.)

[Zekerage]

By random, I meant randomly 1 of those 3 places. Also, if the mapmakers are willing, I'm sure they could quickly make MotF spawn points.

[PhantomZero]

By random, I meant randomly 1 of those 3 places. Also, if the mapmakers are willing, I'm sure they could quickly make MotF spawn points.

This isn't exactly true either, as the flags are placed at the start of the round, and if you are dead, you can actually see them under the map sometimes.

[tocki4]

It's extremly hard to make all the spawnpoints fair for both team's. I for one love  this gametype and would really enjoy seing it in Crpg but then maybe you have to make certain maps that the admins agree to being fair? I played this Alot on native and know for a fact that it's often pretty unbalanced on the native maps.Great idea tho

[Penitent]

This is a GREAT idea.

If we were to make the MofF timer random, I'd suggest it popping up between 3:30 and 1:30 left.

It would make battle so much more fun and purposeful. Flag spawn points can be made mostly fair by putting them near the center, or putting one on each side of the map and one in the center.  If the computer picks a random one, there is equal chance of it being closer to one team or the other.

We can experiment with a "MotF" server and see how it works out!

[Penitent]

mis-post

[jspook]

Why not just take this one step further and add a battle mode where the flags are in the very middle of the map at the BEGINNING of the round and both sides duke it out to raise their flag.

This keeps the entire battle centralized, and all of those leachers/runners can pretty much just be ignored.  Tactics and skill will rule the day every time.

It would be sorta like a siege with no respawns, and both teams running for the flag at the same time.  King of the Hill, I guess......

[awesomeasaurus]

I think this is an interesting idea that may be possible to implement given a few conditions/issues:

1. It is important that the flags raise very slowly imo
2. How will cavalry fare when defending or attack a flag? They may be hindered strongly because they can not stay in the melee and halt the raising of the flag. Archers may experience the same problem.

^It may force coordination with melee units

[Torp]

I like the idea and would suggest a random spawn time

this, and then it should be a new game mode.

You can end up with flags after 2 seconds or you can end up winning before they even show up.

[Zekerage]

If we were to make the MofF timer random, I'd suggest it popping up between 3:30 and 1:30 left.

 Flag spawn points can be made mostly fair by putting them near the center, or putting one on each side of the map and one in the center.

I like those times. Not TOO late, but not too early, either. also, about the center and then sides, are you referring to something like
             |                                           x          |
 x          |             x             or                        |
             |                                                       |                x

Where x would be the spawn points and the lines would be MotF spawns? First being all are equidistant from both spawns whereas the 2nd is 1 of 3 gives advantage to 1 team while the middle one is equal.

Why not just take this one step further and add a battle mode where the flags are in the very middle of the map at the BEGINNING of the round and both sides duke it out to raise their flag.

This keeps the entire battle centralized, and all of those leachers/runners can pretty much just be ignored.  Tactics and skill will rule the day every time.

It would be sorta like a siege with no respawns, and both teams running for the flag at the same time.  King of the Hill, I guess......

I think some people said that "siege" with no respawns was tried, and that it was terrible. I'm not certain though. Also, While I think King of the hill would be a very interesting game mode, I more or less wanted this addition to be additive to Battle, but not change it entirely. To me, at the moment, battle IS just about Killing the other team. That is what the Core of battle is, in my opinion. What I was hoping for the MotF spawning addition to do is give it a little more focus Eventually, not from the get go. That way the first 2-3 minutes IS just solely killing the enemy team, and thus, a chance that the MotF spawn wouldn't even play a role in the round.

1. It is important that the flags raise very slowly imo
2. How will cavalry fare when defending or attack a flag? They may be hindered strongly because they can not stay in the melee and halt the raising of the flag. Archers may experience the same problem.

^It may force coordination with melee units

I agree about the flag speed. Depending on how the MotF spawning would be handled (IE example 1 or example 2 above), if the flags raised too quickly based on the number of players on it, if it spawns closer to 1 team, they'd be able to cap it before the other team could even make a fight for it. I'm not sure if that particular aspect of flag raising can be tweaked.

On the second point, I could only assume that the only way Cavalry could prevent flag raising is just like in Siege. Either kill the people on it, or get off their horse (Which I also believe is the case with the current MotF). Archers would probably pick off as many as possible before they approached it, or just go in, attempt to manual block, and stall until their team arrived.

Lastly, Anything to encourage team work and tactics is a Plus to me

[Trikipum]

I would add a new game mode called "Skirmishes".
Very easy and would be fun. Sometimes the main problem of crpg is the amount of stallers and slow gameplay. So why dont create a mode based on quick and deadly skirmishes?. It would be a Subrounds based  gamemode. Each round has 3 subrounds of 1.20 mins. Each time a subround ends, the surviving players respawn. At the 3rd round, the team with more ppl alive wins. Surely, respawns would to be much closer in this gamemode. Salute.

[john_pullinger]

I would like to see a game mode where one person plays the horse and one person plays the rider. :-)

Or maybe have wolves to ride instead of horses, as per The Last Days (god when are they going to port that over...). Grab a few models from the Fantasy mod where you could ride hippos and, I think, crocodiles and stuff.

But anyway, a mode where one person plays the rider and another person plays the mount. This way you could give the mount a hoof attack or a body slam or head toss, so if the rider gets taken out the mighty armoured warhorse can still go ape on the puny little people in front of it. Warhorses were raised to be bad-tempered human-hating bastards, when they got onto the field you wanted them to be badasses who are quite prepared to smash into a group of intimidatingly well-armed soldiers.

I think this would be fun. :-) Even if it led to silly battles between pony herds because nobody spawned as a rider.

You might be able to have equipment for the horses, too, like spikey leg-guards and leather cladding. Maybe different saddles that give different protections for your rider.

-John