WAR Win Condition Overhaul Thread

I think a general consensus has already been established about the current win conditions for WAR. Most of us agree that they are pretty bad.

Currently I think the rules are that once 80% of the enemy team is dead and if the living players on that team are pushed back to the very edge of their side of the map, you win. The problem with these conditions is that it can be easily exploited by entombing builders in the middle of the map and using them as livestock to keep your team from losing. In addition it's not as clear, predictable, or as interesting as it could be.

Monsteri, me, and I'm sure a few others have come up with the idea of bringing the concept of war bases to the updated mechanics of workshop-based gameplay. My version of the proposal is a single, simple, win condition where whichever team loses all of their barracks loses the game. To make barracks unspammable they would cost some gold to make. Once destroyed, you would get no gold back from the wreckage so that these barracks wouldn't just pop back up like weeds. It would be neat if you had the option to capture them like outposts so that aggressive teams could progress a little easier without spending precious gold on a forward barracks.
Addendum:
FBB came up with a few great ideas:

• One proposed a way to mitigate the loss of your last barracks, especially if it was accidentally lost near the start of the game due to griefing or grief-esque activities. He proposed a 1-2 minute countdown after your last barracks is destroyed. During that time, any surviving players can muster up the resources to build another barracks and turn the game around. If the timer hits 0, well, it's just game over for you (sorry :/ )
• The other idea he had would prevent barracks from being able to "hide" deep underwater where nobody can survive long enough to destroy it. The idea was to make flooded barracks cease to function and count them as dead. A modified version of the idea by me would be to make the barracks take damage over time if any amount of water is touching it. This would help discourage the construction of underground barracks, but maybe one day we'll have the ability to drain water and the disaster can be averted.

This win condition would be clear because you could have an indicator at the top left stating how many barracks are left on each team. It would be predictable because you know what you're supposed to defend and where your objective is most of the time. Also, you don't have to play cat and mouse with tunneling builders. Lastly, it would be more interesting because you get the opportunity to annihilate the enemy team's base before winning C:<

I realize that people will be tending toward building the barracks underground in order to hide them, but it could be fun tracking down the source of enemies coming out of the ground like ants. It would be comparable to going on zombie portal raids in zombie fortress. Most of the factories and shops would still be nice and vulnerable above-ground. If it ends up being to much of a problem though we could just make the barracks give off light, making them impossible to miss no matter where they are. Either way, the team has to come out to gather wood.

Anyway, share your thoughts on the current win condition in this thread.

 

I myself would prefer the ticket method. I always did like it, as it made you more cautious and required some form of skill besides throwing yourself at a person in hopes of killing them.

 

One flaw with the ticket method is that it heavily relies on KD ratios, which I think belong in the realm of TDM, not War. A few players can really screw up your entire team when it comes down to who has the most tickets.

 

So far in all of the games I've played of WAR, I haven't seen this tunneling in the middle tactic, but I can see how it would be a problem. I voted yes because in my experience the games I have played were fun.

As you pointed out in your idea, it would be fun to try to find that last barracks, but what if you flooded their tunnel? Water should probably damage them then, otherwise you would have the entire team constantly dying underwater and underground. (Which doesn't sound like fun).

I would suggest something like a flag, but then its just CTF not WAR. What specifically is it about WAR that makes it WAR and not just CTF?

 

A timelimit would be nice for those extremely long lasting games. Also, maybe you could limit the number of barracks built to a certain number?

 

I think the standard "take over control points" way would solve problems with camping at least to some extent.

 

New game modes like VIP, territory control, dark mode (e.g. Dark WAR, always night), castle defence, hostage rescue (migrant or someone in the castle you have to free)

 

Edited my original post to include ideas by FBB because they are pretty win (no pun intended).

 

I'm a fan of preset spawn control points, similar to Ej. a starting spawn area at the sides of the match, and in between that are a variable number of "neutral" barracks (say 5) that can't be destroyed. You can capture them (similar to classic outpost) but can't move them. Person who controls all the control points wins.

 

Maybe the problem is that WAR mode as is just sucks. We can define WAR mode as whatever we like it to be. Tbh I'd rather have the game be balanced and enjoyable than "get WAR mode right".

 

This needs to happen.

 

I actually like the whole "kill everything" win condition. It has a simple elegance to it that can be easily understood by everyone whereas more complicated goals can be difficult to understand or feel convoluted. Like in classic right now, I often see people confused by the whole flag thing and even among those who understand the flag is still really just a surrogate for "kill them so bad their flag is exposed".

I can definitely see the end game clean up being tedious to some (though I personally don't mind it) so I think that it could be supplemented with a "we surrender button". Although it produces the same mechanical result this is much different from Next Map as Next Map feels inconclusive, whereas with surrendering there's a clear winner and a clear loser and the winners can beat their chests and the losers can get salty (while I frame this negatively this is a vital component to the game).

 

Well, you could argue that the objective is currently not as simple as killing everything. It's technically "kill all players, AND make sure they're at the edge of the map" right now. The conditions were made with the edge of the map thing because attacking the enemy with everyone on your team meant you could lose the game should your raid fail. It really discouraged attacks and made games very random before that condition was added. It's in reality not a very simple set of win conditions because there is that artificial factor of 80% dead + edge of map kills. Think about how inflexible this makes the war gamemode. What if you wanted to have a king of the hill game situation with reds on both sides and blues in the middle? The win conditions would then be completely borked.

When the objective is to "kill all barracks" priorities don't matter as much. Killing structures will be far more detrimental than they are currently, and killing players is still just as important as ever. You can also take into account how war is IRL. You aren't necessarily trying to kill every member of the opposing party as much as you're trying to weaken their infrastructure until they can no longer stay organized. Those are my thoughts, anyway.

Also, no matter what the win conditions are, a "Surrender" button might not be a bad idea.

 

After playing 10-20 games last friday, yesterday and today.
The current WAR mode feels weird, and focuses on killing all enemies.[it takes time.]
WAR is somehow boring(sorry) , that's all.
So no.

I think everything is just right (except the fly glitch) but WAR mode is wrong.
People gets bored when the game takes too long, and they vote for next map.
I prefer Ej's idea Capture points. Also others thingies' ''Destroy the dock". "Destroy the main base".
modes like that. :)

 

Maybe at the edge of the map, you could have a "Headquarters" which could be a building or a ship in water. Everyone spawns at the HQ so you woudn't be able to block it up. When the HQ is destroyed the other team would win the game.

 

to be quite frank, in the current game mode, if you destroy all of your opponents barracks, and still can't manage to win, then you're doing it wrong. Builders are exceedingly useless in combat, absolutely useless if they're new to beta and don't understand the physics yet (well, as much as the physics CAN be understood, because what sense does a massive well supported tower falling down when a single block at the very top is broken make), so if you have knights in your opponents base destroying their barracks, you should be able to spawn kill them until you win; the one problem being the entombing builder that you mentioned.