Riffing a bit... (Health mechanics in CTF)

So, I'm thinking about steak and instakills (can I get an ironic RIP). The whole reason that one hit kills existed was because any less damage left the person with time to steak, negating the damage. Now, enough hitting would render the person dead anyways, but with a less occupied flagroom or a less skilled defense, it's entirely possible for a person to escape 9 hearts true damage where a one hit would've... one hit them (Oh gee didn't see that coming did you!?). The entire problem was a the ability to escape anything less than that with one hotkey. Is quick healing this a mechanic we want? Great question. Let's pretend we do actually want to change something for the continuation of this threads' sake (although feel free to debate this in the comments). What if we slowed down or stopped quickly healing in entrain contexts?
2 ideas:
1. Assign a no opponent steak within 5 seconds of being hit to a class (probably elf because... it's elf and it needs all the usefulness it can get)
(if you use elf please forward all hate mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with all your other hate mail for annoying orange)
2. Program a mechanic (developers all heavy sigh on 3...) where a player getting hit by a certain number of opposing players in a timeframe, let's say 3 players within 5 seconds, can't steak for 5 seconds until no hit is registered for... let's say 3 seconds. Medic healing wouldn't be changed, so the player could still be theoretically healed, but this would allow for many more recoveries in situations where that would normally be very difficult. (Ex: 3 medics and an engineer guarding the flag holder) and would make flags ar easier to defend.

Thoughts? Minor tweak but it could be worth exploring.

 

It's matches and balanced play that I was referring to where teamwork is more prevalent. Obviously in a well defended flagroom nobody is going in solo and stealing and the steak delay would just decrease the chance of that occurring, well put. However, for more competitive play some sort of calculated or situational delay might balance the game.

Big words, much technicality.
tl;dr Steak slower when hit by many people.

 

Possible implementation on match servers then? Could we have competitive settings for CTF? If you look at other huge standalone games (madden, nba2k, halo, cod) they all have certain sliders and/or levels of play that change the tuning of certain things. Defensive backs in Madden, for example, can be tuned to either play ball and go for the pick or bat the ball down and play conservative. Maybe CTF would benefit from competitive settings?

 

I'm typically in favor of strong defensive mechanics due to the difficulty of recovering on some maps that aren't built for a strong defense. Furthermore, when you have a hard cap on how many goals wins a game as well as a timer, defense is a must. Because games are kept low scoring, defense must be overpowering compared to offense.

Look at hockey. The game is low scoring due to the small scoring area, goaltending being permitted, and prohibitively large equipment on goalies as well as many other players who take on the role of playing defense.

Now look at basketball. Defenses that are stifling (Spurs, Warriors, Jazz) typically allow 100 points per 100 possessions, whereas a porous defense (Nuggets) allows about 120-130. No matter how good your defense is your opponent will score due to no goaltending, a relatively elevated basket, and the un-guardable nature of certain scoring moves such as the skyhook when mastered.

So what's my point? Because CTF has a hard capture limit (often 3, as many as 5, as few as 2), the game is inherently low scoring and must favor defense for the game to be balanced.

Let's not forget one thing though: The lower the score, the more luck is a factor, not skill.

If you enjoy reading, read this. If you want the main point, skip this paragraph.
Hockey is, according to mathematical calculations, the least skill-based game. Football and baseball are in the middle, and basketball favors skill over luck. In a typical NHL game, about 3-6 goals are scored in total. In basketball, games typically feature 180 to 230 points scored or 90 to 115 goals scored. In baseball, scores fluctuate wildly based on pitching, but it's uncommon for teams to score above 10, so let's say at most 16 runs are scored and at least 3 are scored. Football also varies more widely, but the scores are often between 14 total points and 49 total points. That means teams are scoring a total of 2 to 7 times (For simplicity's sake, we'll call a field goal a half a score). This is on par with baseball.

So what I'm saying is: if we make CTF matches more defensive, it becomes more balanced, but luck plays an even larger role. Do we want that?