Idea Some anti stalemate ideas.

hek, all great ideas

i really like #2 cuz it like, speeds of the game pace and intensity as if mimicking a faster pacing heart beat
and, itd put bit greater attention on non-medic support classes (that are already squishy and easier to kill than anything else) by offering no-cooldown regen for other flag cappers or themselves

but #3 is also very nice bc unlike #1, it's more fair since u know how weak u are at every moment in time, where as getting hit once by a ninja and then killed by 5 hearts of poison isnt too fun or fair, like "oh ya i died only bc of the unlucky timing of poison, not bc of a well coordinated lucky hit or anything psh, also steak lag, psh trash game" xxxStevePvP123_YT has left the server

 

+1, might want to play around with the time but this works better than the other suggestions and is overall the most fair alternative for everyone.

 

+1 for this ^.

I do think that the ideas of increase the flag poison are not the best solution for stalemates. Those ideas punished only the flag carrier, but it's a game based on team work, so I think it would be more frustrating for the flag carrier than anything else. For example, 2 ninjas could wait invisible and when the flag carrier takes 5 hearts by the flag poison, right after the ninjas can combo the flag carrier to the death. I think every flag carrier would be frustrated to be killed like that and in that example the flag carrier can't do anything, because no time to eat steak. In the ideas of increase the flag poison, it sounds like we put the fault of the stalemates into the flag carrier, but if there is a stalemate, it's not the fault of the flag carrier, it's the fault of both teams. That's why I don't want to see the flag carrier be punished for stalemates.

For me, the best solution is to end the stalemate by returning both flags automatically after 5-7 minutes. In that way, that is fair for both teams. Both teams have the chance to try to recover the flag, and it is a solution to not have too long stalemates. It is not punishing the flag carrier, and it's a solution based on team work, because the team will have to work together to try to recover the flag in 5-7 minutes.

 

Any one of these ideas would help stalemates on maps like blackout end faster. Personal favorite is #2 +1

 

My problem with decreasing the maximum health of the flag carrier is that it does limit a lot the classes that can hold the flag. It could work for a soldier or a heavy, but I don't think it would work for all other classes. For example, if it's a medic or an elf who is holding the flag, that person can be so easily comboed by 2 ninjas if the maximum health is low. Even if there is good support, they would not be able to do anything because the ninja is already a powerful class, so now we are giving to ninjas all the power. That is limiting a lot of classes to hold the flag. I'm not saying that this idea is all bad, we could maybe test both of those ideas (reseting both flags and decreasing the maximum health of the flag carrier) to see what the comminuty thinks about it.

And for new players we can say the same about decreasing the maximum health. They could be confused to see their maximum health decreased when they are holding the flag. So if we do make an anti stalemates changement in the game, that changement should be explain properly to new players, by for example a message in the chat, no matter what this changement is.

 

We can adjust this slightly by scaling the health cap to 6 hearts for weaker classes (classes that have a higher chance of dying with the flag/in general), such as chemist, ninja, mage, elf, assassin and etc. We would keep the health cap for stronger classes, such as heavy, soldier, necro and etc to 5 hearts. If this is not enough after testing, we can adjust the numbers to 6 hearts for stronger classes and then 7 for weaker classes.

Agreed. Adding a tooltip is possible for this I believe.

 

I agree with that, it makes the idea much better and more fair for everyone.

 

@Swit2427, i still kinda feel like if the flags get auto reset, itd be a huge disappointment for everyone and the flagcarrier as well, just as much as if dying from recov – like, all of their hardwork from staying alive would have been for nothing, and any valiant possible attempt to stay alive, despite extreme difficulty (like from increased poison or decreased health), would be nulled by an inevitable auto-restore when time runs out, which altho theres less blame on the flagcarrier, i still dont think it's a positive action in the game and would be better if recov can still take the initiative and one if not both flagcarriers die trying
(while also keeping in mind that it's harder to recov than to defend, so helping recov in any way i think would be the way to go - even if it places more blame on the support & flagcarrier for dying)

 

I think that stalemates should be reduced in frequency and effect, though as to the correct way of doing that, I must agree with @MerryCoolmas21 that it would be, in my opinion, better to just remove flags after 5 minutes or so.

 

While I feel like all 3 of those ideas are good on paper, I feel like all it does is place more weight on support and just makes holding the flag less fun than it already is. Evading recovery will turn from being based on the capturer's positioning, evasion skills and situational awareness (with support as well) to an all out support fest, taking pretty much all control out of the capturer's hands. I know its a team game but I don't want my ENTIRE chance of survival to be based on if I have a medic near me 24/7 as opposed to only needing one when flag poison starts to rack up or when there's a significant amount of recovery coming.

SoCool's suggestion to me sounds better but maybe you could implement like a treaty feature or something where if both flag holders have had enough, both flags can be returned (something I see happen every so often in actual games except the first person to throw the flag ends up getting tricked). Perhaps when you pick up the flag, a piece of red wool appears and if you click on it, it turns green and alerts the other carrier that you'd be willing to "make a truce" and have both flags returned. If both sides have their wool green then the flags go back. This solution isn't perfect either but at the very least, if both sides aren't confident in their recovery they can agree to return the flag to keep the pace of the game moving. On the other hand, if one side is sustaining a lot better pressure then that side would probably deny a truce knowing their recovery will break through sooner or later. For me personally, often times I'd rather just pass the flag off and leave than waiting for 20 minutes doing absolutely nothing if I know the recovery isn't going anywhere. From a game perspective its kinda lame, but from a player enjoyment perspective you probably see where I'm coming from. This type of feature would definitely increase my enjoyment of the game.

As for the actual fix, if you ask me its all in how medic is set up. Without any support a capturer is usually dead meat due to non-renewable nature of most classes, but with just one medic they become 10x harder to kill. If there was a middle ground ideally this would make stalemates a lot more fair. Maybe if you stand completely still for a couple seconds you'll slowly start regaining some health as any class so flag carriers won't be as dependent on medic support, thus allowing for a more balanced medic rework. Maybe get rid of steak altogether and just give each class the amount of hearts they'd normally have and have medic healing be a lot slower or something or cap how many hearts are recovered at once (in addition to bringing back key non-renewable items like ninja invis). I'm just throwing ideas out here so don't take this last part as some sort of definitive solution.

TL;DR: All 3 are fine on paper, but they would make the game less fun. Treaty option to return both flags if both carriers agree aka modified version of SoCool's idea. Medic is the real issue in all this.

 

I wonder, if the decreased health maximum were to go into effect would the former flag carrier stay at the reduced health level if they pass the flag to a new carrier that instantly reduces down to the limited max health that fits their class, or would they "heal back" up to the same % of max health that they were at in relation to their old flag carrying max health level? In other words, if a class normally has its 10 hearts but they held a flag long enough to reduce to a max health of 5 and they took 2 hearts of damage, would they stay at 3 hearts after passing the flag to a teammate, or would it bump up to 6 hearts (since 3 out of 5 is the same as 6 out of 10)?

I ask this because if a teammate player is by a flag carrier but is unwilling to carry the flag, a "mean humored" flag carrier could drop the flag onto them as a joke, and it would cut their health way down if it was held long enough prior. Even if the new flag carrier dropped it immediately, it could still be a mess for some classes since it'd be no different than taking 5 true hearts of damage from a teammate. A troll player's dream.

I do like the mechanic for serious matches, but in my experience most of the games that any new players are involved in (no "official match" games that is) are way less than serious...which actually adds to the fun of the game most of the time.

I also like the idea for the truce offer. There would have to be a way for it to be clear that clicking the wool would mean losing the flag (but gaining your own flag back of course) and it would have to be completely non-intrusive so the timing on when it's asked doesn't give any advantage because of a distraction. I do wonder though, if a truce is possible as an option would it be available as an option immediately after the 2nd flag is grabbed, or would it only be available after a certain amount of time has passed with both flags being away from their base?

 

@Dequoy good point with flag passing/pick up after the hearts have already been reduced. Not sure if this had already been taken into consideration or what would be the best answer. Here are my thoughts on the matter–

In regards to the previous flag carrier, for the sake of simplicity, id keep their current health at whatever heart it's at, but just increase the total available hearts immediately after the flag is passed off. So 4/5 hearts becomes 4/10 for example.

If a previous flag carrier passes it or even dies and another teammate picks it up, tbh the simpliest, reasonable action would be that this new flag carrier would have their total available hearts instantly drop followed by a 5 second lingering sub-title pop up (below the center of the screen but above the hot bar perhaps) saying: "Anti-Stalemate heart reduction applied." or something like that, so they could have some explanation if that person bothered to read.
***Unless, maybe better yet, the new flag carrier's hearts reduced at a much faster rate until it matches the total hearts lost of the previous flag carrier (like 10-15 second reduction rate instead of 1 minute) - then it'd return to default 1 minute reduction rate. So, the cost-benefit ratio of passing the flag is still fairly balanced in every regard: no spiked loss of health, eventually the same loss of health, and the inherent risk for the flag to get recov'd/picked up by stealthy enemy ninjas.

Looking at the extreme contrary... (imo undesirable)
If the new flag carrier who picked up the flag didn't receive any heart reduction, then it'd defeat the purpose of the "anti-stalemate". It'd be hard and a bit annoying having to keep an invis ninja around the enemy flagcarrier in sole anticipation for when they would pass the flag - even though doing so with ninja 24/7 is near impossible, especially with chemist poison checking and instant flag pickup time. If a team does successfully pass the flag under these conditions, then that'd place the other team at an extreme, pretty unfair disadvantage.

 

I love the ideas for changing stalemates but honestly Im totally against decreasing the max heart rate for many reasons. I just dont like the idea of a class holding the flag at 6 hearts. This is just really confusing for the supporting medic and it limits the amount of classes that can be used during a stalemate. The real only other classes I could see holding the flag at 6 hearts is heavy or necro, all other classes are too squishy. I think you also forgot about elf's pure element during this idea.. elf can 1 hit the flag carrier at any range with one arrow. Im not complaining as it sort of makes elf more effective for PPMs/Officials. The thing that should happen in my opinion is #2. #2 makes the most sense and limits the least amount of classes that can hold during a stalemate.

 

I agree with northern, as well.

 

I figured this was the case, so that players would actually suffer the risk of holding onto a flag for a long period of time...and have that risk remain regardless.

This part is the complicated part, lol. I bet there are exploits in all cases. If the new flag carrier is instantly dropped to the reduced max health, teammates can troll them with flag passes. If the new flag carrier gets a warning, or a gradual loss of hearts, then it can be exploited as more time to have a new flag carrier at full health...and then once the fight is over, the "new" flag carrier can just return the flag to the one who ran away and got healed up to full normal hearts -- or a few players can just play "check for ninjas and pass the stalemate flag" back and forth, receiving full heals from medics, mages, etc. and the same stalemate headache would persist...only with a lot more processing for the server to do to keep track of stuff.

Perhaps there could be an option for players to opt in or out of being a potential "PASSED flag grabber". This way, flags dropped onto them wouldn't be automatically grabbed, and it could be a "no trolling" way to have the instant persistent health reduction flag effect remain. Only problem then would be not knowing who is set to be a potential flag carrier or not, and if it should be set to opting in or opting out by default. Any player would grab the enemy flag directly off the enemy flag base though, or from a flag that drops from a killed flag carrier, so that new players aren't confused if they happen to be in the right place at the right time (but also happen to have the flag pass grabbing toggled OFF by mistake or by default).

No easy answer really, heh. Just a bit of brainstorming I guess. :-/