Ending Prolonged Stalemate/Attrition Battles

How to put an end to those annoying, prolonged stalemate battles:
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IDEA 1 -- Increase Spawn Time Penalty:

- If attacking team takes the opposing team's flag (whether they successfully return it to base or not), the opposing team will have 2 seconds added to their respawn time. In other words, the more the attacking team successfully breaches the enemy defenses and manages to reach the tent, the longer the opposing team will have to wait to respawn. I think this is a fair penalty/reward mechanic that could easily end stalemates by itself.

- In addition to this, I suggest making tents destroyable, like outposts are. Say a knight manages to throw a bomb to the opponents tent and it explodes, this would incur a +5 sec penalty to the enemy respawn time. (Note, the tent would still function as the main spawn point and holder of the flag, destroyed or not.) Maybe a destroyed tent would cut a spawned player's resources in half?

IDEA 2 -- Flag Remains in Play:

- When the flag is taken by the attacking team and the flag-carrier is killed, the flag should be dropped and remain in play (ie. not returned automatically). The stipulation to this however is that it will only remain in play if the flag is dropped close by the opposing team's tent (let's say one-screen's distance). If the flag-carrier is killed past this point, it will be returned automatically.

What this would do is force the opposing team to try and pick up and return the flag back to base, meaning they have to create a route back through their defenses that may or may not be exploitable by the attacking team in getting to the objective. Or it could be that the opposing team is unable to reach the dropped flag in time, thus making it easier for the next wave of the attacking team to take the flag. Perhaps there could also be a timer (say 30 seconds) after which the flag will return by itself.


Other unrelated ideas I've had:
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- I've seen a lot of people push for fire-arrows, and I think it's a good idea. If the opposing team doesn't set up a roof over their outposts or catapults, they are vulnerable to a volley of fire arrows. How I imagine it working is, like the knight, the archer will press 'F 'to equip/unequip a fire-arrow as his next shot. He then fires like normal. He gets one fire-arrow per spawn and can resupply by returning to base/ an outpost. When a fire-arrow hits a target, it will slowly burn and can be put out by builders if they stand by it. Visually, I imagine, say, 4 columns of fire slowly appearing at the ground as time goes on. This way you can see how long before it collapses or is put out. One builder can put out one fire-arrow. So if you fire two or more, he won't be able to keep up unless other builders help and the structure will eventually collapse.

In addition to structural damage, the fire-arrow will have an area-of-effect (lighting the ground or wall it hits on fire for a moment, let's say, 2 seconds). If an enemy archer, builder or knight get hit by a fire-arrow, or touch the ground/wall that is on fire, they will catch fire. When on fire, they will slowly lose hearts until they die -- however, if the victim shakes his mouse back-and-forth, he can put out the fire. (Alternatively, he could jump into some water, when water is added to the game.)

- Catapults should LAUNCH players as well as rocks. This is a game afterall, and players don't die from long drops, so why not, it'd be fun and I think it would be an effective way to get past those mid-game stalemates, where the land is all torn up and it becomes difficult to get anywhere. The condition to this I think should be that it won't launch the player that far, so it would only be effective at a certain ranged to get over an enemy defense or a big valley. Oh, and you will need one person to operate it while the player being launched jumps up into the catapult. Knights, being heavy, will not fly very far. Archers, probably being the lightest of all classes, will fly the farthest.

- Rockpots, supply outposts, and crossbow turrets have all been mentioned, and I'd like to just encourage the inclusion of these.

- Finally, I'd like to suggest a re-enforced block. (This may already be in the process of being implemented, idk.) Basically, how I imagine working is, it would cost 2 gold and 30 stone. It would be then 4x tougher than a regular stone block, take 2 bomb blasts and/or a long barrage of catapult stones to be destroyed. (This should definitely be added if there's going to be siege rams and demolition kegs.)


Anyway, fun-ass game, hope some of these are considered and please let me know what you all think of these ideas :)

 

Most of your other suggestions encourage stalemates.

Fire on the ground: stops movement, makes people wait.

More reason to use catapults: more area of denial spam making uncrossable locations.

Launching players: uncontrolled arrival, ability affects survival less, more attrition.

Rockpots: like worker stone drops, ie. infinite wall defense

Crossbow turrets: stationary defended spam

Reinforces block: harder to penetrate defenses

 

Increase respawn penalty: Something nobody wants play through. Being able to raid is one thing, making it entirely too easy is another.

And let's not start with the people sitting through extended respawn. Ugh, I was on a server with a 10 second base respawn, it was awful.

 

Might have been my server. I'm running a 10 second wave respawn. I think it works great for small games like 6 on 6. Not everyone is always on the battlefield.

 

Fire on ground doesn't mean you have to wait. I imagine the flames are short and the area-of-effect is only 3 or 4 blocks wide, so you can easily jump it. Only unsuspecting or less nimble players will fall prey to this. And again, like mentioned, even if you catch fire, you may lose half a heart, but still be able to "shake" it off and recover.

I don't like interrupting the flow of the game either, so this should be workable as described.

You may be right about the catapult launching players, but I think you'd have to play test it first to confirm that. Like I said, it wouldn't be that easy to do because 1) the limited range (you'd have to be near their defense and probably at higher ground) and 2) if fire-arrows are available the catapults can be countered easily. So it wouldn't work all the time, and obviously there's greater risk because you're landing in enemy territory, but it could give a stronger team the edge to break a stalemate situation.

Rockpots are not exactly infinite wall defense because you still have to dig stone and bring it to it. Plus, the proposed siege rams that may be coming have cover to safely bring team mates to an enemy wall that is protected by a rockpot.

Crossbow turrets have weakness though, so they can't be spammed. The required line-of-sight means they are vulnerable to archers, catapult stone, fire-arrows (if implemented). Plus they need to be supplied with arrows, which should have a maximum capacity. So it's no more spammable than a regular archer, just a tougher defense and can be used potentially by any class.

Re-enforced blocks are not indesctructable but would prevent knights from easily bombing the crap out of a wall in a matter of a couple minutes. Plus, at 2 gold and 30 stone, it'd be expensive enough that you'd have to use them carefully and sparingly, ie. not all over the place.

 

Yeah, I agree, long waits are a pain.. So let's say, never mind the 2 secs added from grabbing the flag, 'cause that might be a bit much, but just have 5 secs added to spawn time if your tent is bombed. I think that's fair.

Consider the alternative, as it stands: You push back the enemy, right to there doorstep, and yet, you have these on-going battles, when, ideally by that point, the enemy should be at a clear disadvantage. Yet, they're not because, they've bombed the crap out of bedrock and underlying terrain, placing them high up and difficult to reach, and they just keep re-spawning. If there was a 5 sec spawn penalty for having the tent bombed then that may give the attacking team enough time to build ladders, etc. to reach the flag.

It's usually at around that point, late in the game, that votes are being called to end the game 'cause it get tedious. Having the to spawn time increased will help the team who's clearly already won, end the game.

Or another idea is have a "white flag" check box beside everyone's name in the TAB screen. If enough people click that, then the opposing team is the winner by default. It's better than just voting the game to end without a clear victor.

 

Right, you reduce the number of enemies to deal with and it forces them to be more careful. Rather than having a constant wave of knights spamming bombs and swinging swords wildy.

All I'm saying is that, if you team is able to reach the opposing team's flag or destroy their base, then there should be some kind of reward that gives them the edge to win decisively.

 

Stalemates are caused by:
-holes in the ground made by bombs.
-respawn times being too short.

The bomb problem is going to be fixed soon I think. And the respawn time should be at least 15 seconds no matter how far you are from the outpost. Really, 3 second respawn is ridiculous.

 

15 seconds is also ridiculous. 10 is better.

 

15 seconds is nothing, I play L4D2 a lot and the respawn times in there go up to 20 seconds

If this were a super fast game like unreal 15 secs would be too long, but KAG is a slow game with big maps that are hard to navigate so its fine.

 

L4D2 is a completely different game.. you can't compare that. It's not just about the tempo.

 

Stalemates occur before players ever get the opponents flag. Typically once the flag has been grabbed, it's game over (that time or shortly thereafter).

Instead of just jacking up the spawn time indiscriminate, I'd increase it based on the last time you died. If you have only died once in the last minute, 3 seconds is fine, if you have died five times in the last minute, 10 seconds, etc.

This would also have the benefit that players who spawn farther from the battle have a shorter respawn time (because the time it takes to run to the front is time they are alive) and players who spawn closer to the battle end up with longer respawn times (because they return to the battle immediately upon respawn).

A separate idea would be to have spawn time dictated by how far away the enemy (2 or 3 of them) are from your spawn point. The closer they are, the longer the spawn time. In addition to this, players would be able to choose their spawn point in a spawn menu. This would prevent spawn-defense spam.

 

As far as I know, it works this way already.

 

I think that each spawn point should have a limit for how many bodies it outputs per unit of time. For example 1 unit every 5 seconds or whatever. Then you have a nice steady uniform trickle of bodies, and if you are ahead and you really need the extra pushing power you can build a second outpost. When you die I think you should be able to look at the available outposts, their ready state, and their waiting list. You can pick a spawn and if its busy you just get in line.

I think something that would help the tediousness of long spawns would be to make so that you aren't just staring at blank sky for 20 seconds.

 

How about this: if you destroy an enemy outpost, +1 sec to enemy respawn time, and +3 sec for destroying the main tent.

And, like mentioned, to make it less boring during the respawn wait, there could be a spectate mode where you can fly around or follow a player, and you can pick which outpost you'd like to spawn from too.

 

"- Catapults should LAUNCH players..." That would really be funny... xD

 

Yeah :) ..and like I say, it wouldn't launch that far (maybe half a screen's distance) and knights would be heavy, so they wouldn't go far.

 

The solution I'd use is to make it so, after set periods of time, the win condition becomes easier. There'd be a counter in the corner of the screen that everyone can see. So after a "long period of time" (I don't know if this'd be 20, 30, 50 minutes or what) a new win condition comes into play, such as:

- Simply touch the enemy flag, without having to bring it back to base.
- Kill a certain amount of enemy units
- Have more outposts than enemy

Or something like that.