We need more game modes: a discussion
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I agree, Banana.
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@Ta5K Trying to blend formats is never a good idea, at this point HL, and 6s should be considered completely different entities. The only thing they share is existing within the same game.
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@Teapot said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
You could change the round timing rules to give teams ad or disad if a point hasn’t been traded in a certain amount of time, to discourage parking the bus at 4th point. Or the respawn timers could be tweaked to magnify advantages to encourage more aggressive play for teams pushing into a point.
This is not ruleset stuff, it is in the map logic and you would need to actually modify the map to do that.
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@luka said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
One of the benefits of adding even at least one more game mode is making it reasonable to rotate out Product or even Upward for a season.
I think this could just as easily be addressed by heavily encouraging new map development in payload and koth for HL or 5cp and koth for 6s, so that the whole map pool rotates out season to season. This is ideal imo. It sidesteps the problems of gamemodes being unfun and little continuity, while still keeping things fresh
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@Ta5K said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
you play PL as well
isn’t a major critique of payload in 6s that it forces the attacking team to slow their momentum down to keep cart pushers in mind
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@luka i’m not talking about finding unity between the modes what? i’m responding to your original point that more game modes would allow for product, etc. to be rotated out
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@vibeisveryo Oh wtf, I didn’t read that right lmao sorry haha I’m too tired.
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Ruleset stuff about 5CP would be like “match points are now calculated based on the rate of points capped per time unit” or “time limit per half is now 5 minutes, good luck lol” or “stalemated rounds cause match point deductions from both teams”.
None of these are actual suggestions, mind you, just examples of what a ruleset change would look like.
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After seeing the graph that gobitoe posted I just wanted to add here that many Invite players are open to new maps and new gamemodes, but they shut a lot of things down because they’re the ones playtesting the new maps in pickup games repeatedly before they make it to the EXP cups. For a new map to be considered in HL, it has to get to a viable phase where framerates, clipping, & general game-flow are at least OK for all 9 classes, and the mapmaker needs to be willing and devoted to providing updates if issues come up. The sad reality of it is that only one to two mapmakers fall into this category at any given time, so we’re banking on them #1: making a gem for us and #2: putting the effort in to update the map far beyond its release date, all for free. We don’t give them map stamps or anything like that, and for a map to be designed for HL, there’s relatively no payoff for a substantial amount of work. If those extremely talented individuals decided to make a serious HL CTF or PLR map, I guarantee you that Invite players would at least want to try the map for themselves.
As a separate point, some of the boomer-y Invite players have played 5CP in UGC before, and it was an absolute stalematey nightmare. Process is not a viable map for highlander - it can take up to 2 hours to play it through, and playoffs are up 3 maps in a single night. As someone who has played a 3+ hour long match without 5CP involved, I’m not really interested in playing a best of 3 that’s even longer. Gully had a lot of the same issues Process does, but arguably to a slightly smaller scale. Personally, if 5CP were to make a comeback in Highlander, I’d want a map that addresses the stalemate issues head-on rather than working around them with ruleset changes. With a change in rulesets to a map like process I’d predict that the same stalemates would still exist in each choke, but teams would attempt to feed in (and in turn lower the average quality of gameplay on the map) when they feel the time pressure is on. My ideal 5CP map for HL would be able to be softpushed and softheld on most points and would have nowhere near as many small chokes as Process & Gully, but I doubt that’ll happen any time soon. (also sunshine sucked ass s15 dont @ me)
Wanting new maps and new gamemodes in the rotation is absolutely fine, and I’d personally love something new to refresh the game with, especially since our most recent additions were Vigil and Cascade however long ago. The issue currently lies in scarcity of mapmaking talent (they can only work on so much at a time, and I’ve heard theatertechie is plugging along on the A/D map), so any realistic improvements are only going to come around if 1) these guys work fast and their projects are successful, or if 2) our community members take a genuine interest in mapmaking, learn from the people who have actually managed to get a map into the HL rotation, and design a map that works for all 9 players that they could continually update. Option 2 can be aided in part by mapmaking incentives (showcase?
medal? interview on cast?) brought in by RGL, but that would take a lot of planning and jumping through logistical hoops as well. -
@Wall said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
My ideal 5CP map for HL would be able to be softpushed and softheld on most points and would have nowhere near as many small chokes as Process & Gully, but I doubt that’ll happen any time soon. (also sunshine sucked ass s15 dont @ me)
sooooooo vanguard?
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@Wall I agree that map makers should get some sort of return, maybe contributor medals. I don’t see why we can’t add a medal as the main model maybe, with “RGL.gg contributor” and give it to map makers who stick with us through seasons. One other thing is that I would be curious to see how many people wouldn’t mind playing maps with dev textures and such, as long as the map is functional. Who cares if it looks pretty for now?
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Like Wall said, the notion that invite players don’t want new maps because they “know what’s best of the game” isn’t true. Invite players are the ones playtesting new maps before any other group. For example, koth_synthetic even prior to the experimental cup was pretty much shut down because the map was just not enjoyable to play. There were too many flanks on the map and there were no “comfortable” holds.
Every time I see an argument for bringing back 5CP, it just makes me cringe. The only 5CP map I could accept coming back is vanguard because it was specifically designed for highlander. Maps like gullywash and process were atrocious to play. Sitting outside a choke for minutes on end waiting for your spy or soldier to be able to get a miraculous pick against a team that is only looking for them save for the demo spamming the choke is terrible. Last pushes are always so hard to complete due to the nature of the last points on those maps allowing for significant kiting and easy control of the last point for the defense. Without 3+ picks prior to exchanging ubers, I would honestly put last push success rate at like 20%. 5CP is an incredibly slow gamemode that doesn’t reward proactive aggression or strategy.
PLR and CTF could be interesting to try, but there’s just so much mapmakers would have to learn about these gamemodes that it’s not feasible to try to play catch-up to koth and pl anymore. It would probably be at least a year’s worth of seasons (and this is being generous) before a not only playable, but also good PLR/CTF map was created. At that point, how many players that played PLR and CTF when it was terrible are going to want to even try it again?
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@pajaro said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
Every time I see an argument for bringing back 5CP, it just makes me cringe. The only 5CP map I could accept coming back is vanguard because it was specifically designed for highlander. Maps like gullywash and process were atrocious to play. Sitting outside a choke for minutes on end waiting for your spy or soldier to be able to get a miraculous pick against a team that is only looking for them save for the demo spamming the choke is terrible. Last pushes are always so hard to complete due to the nature of the last points on those maps allowing for significant kiting and easy control of the last point for the defense. Without 3+ picks prior to exchanging ubers, I would honestly put last push success rate at like 20%. 5CP is an incredibly slow gamemode that doesn’t reward proactive aggression or strategy.
I could not agree with this more.
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TL;DR: 5cp should never be played in HL again.
5cp just isn’t suited towards the way highlander plays and how many classes exist. As Wall already stated earlier, its just a stalemate mess regardless of what map you are playing on. I have played on Gullywash, Process, Glassworks, Vanguard, and Sunshine and can tell you with certainty that we are far better off without those maps.
I would highly suggest that people first try to scrim on 5cp before trying to push the idea that we should relearn lessons that we have already suffered through. Take some time and effort to learn why things are the way they are before trying to assert that its a good idea to revert. Unless you take the effort to learn why we don’t play 5cp anymore, your argument is as good as arguing that we should all go back to UGC.
This is not to say that a cp map could be viable for HL. However I am against us trying to force variety by forcing maps and gamemodes we already know are bad. You need to solve the fundamental issues with 5cp before you could even attempt to play it again in HL.
@pajaro said in We need more game modes: a discussion:
Every time I see an argument for bringing back 5CP, it just makes me cringe. The only 5CP map I could accept coming back is vanguard because it was specifically designed for highlander. Maps like gullywash and process were atrocious to play. Sitting outside a choke for minutes on end waiting for your spy or soldier to be able to get a miraculous pick against a team that is only looking for them save for the demo spamming the choke is terrible. Last pushes are always so hard to complete due to the nature of the last points on those maps allowing for significant kiting and easy control of the last point for the defense. Without 3+ picks prior to exchanging ubers, I would honestly put last push success rate at like 20%. 5CP is an incredibly slow gamemode that doesn’t reward proactive aggression or strategy.
This^
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I agree with a lot of what y’all are saying about 5CP in Highlander - but remember that’s not what OP was about in the first place. It was just about more variety in maps and gamemodes available, not necessarily ones proven to not work
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i had half an essay typed up but i’m not even going to bother because it’s not anything that hasn’t been said. if there’s one thing that the comp community has been good at, it’s determining what they don’t like. in terms of average quality, the map rotation is as high as its ever been (especially once new cascade gets put in). what, exactly, should we change? what should we change it to? there’s progress (slow, but still progress) on a new steel-type map made by the same person who made vigil. cascade’s still getting changes, and synthetic’s developer is (at least was) ridiculously invested in improving the map. too bad everyone just took a shit on the map because the majority of the comp community is about as flexible as a brick when it comes to maps that might potentially promote a different style of play.
it’s actually a small miracle anyone even still makes maps for the community considering how absolutely disinterested people are in putting the necessary effort to test and refine a map to their own standards, which are inevitably fucked because they just take whatever 7-9 maps were ‘meta’ when they started playing and hold them as gospel rather than making critical thoughts and judgments about what good gameplay should be.
valve maps are good because they’re made by a professional company who pays its employees and had ample time to refine those maps in a highly knowledgeable community where people who were devoted to quality were consistently giving good feedback. they clearly struck out on a couple of maps, but in general valve can produce products much higher in quality than community mapmakers, so in a lot of ways it makes sense we’re still playing some of their maps especially after a meta’s developed and people are incapable of changing their playstyles.
as for new gamemodes, CTF/5CP/PLR have all been tested and repeatedly proven to be varying levels of dogshit. i’m personally of the belief that the issues with 5cp are overblown but even I don’t have trouble admitting that my love child vanguard has the same core fundamental issues that all 5cp maps have, even if it does everything else better for HL. you can stick bandaids on the maps by nerfing sightlines and changing round timers (which sig and I agreed would be a good idea to make it work), but the mode is fundamentally flawed and enough of the community thinks those flaws are enough to warrant it not being played.
as for other modes, re-read your post. a 3v3 mode in HL??? either there’s something i’m missing or you’re dumb. a TDM mode where you’re just aiming for X kills sounds simple enough to potentially work, but that’s all i’m getting.
I very much appreciate the effort you put into proside and think that the community’s relationship with maps is beyond fucked, but none of the points in this post are really that good, imo.
also, we 4s pugged ctf like a week ago and it sucked rancid monkey
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I unfortunately had to play ctf in HL before it was phased out and it was widely ruled as something unfit for competitive for a reason. If you think the stalemates in 5cp were bad, I’m sure you can imagine why 7 classes running around a map as the pyro and engie try to entertain themselves around a sentry nest is objectively bad too. There are many individual maps that were tested during the ugc era that simply could not find its way into the classic rotation, but this isn’t a bad thing. Having a narrow criteria of what’s deemed balanced enough for competitive protects the integrity of the game mode, and unfortunately with shorter seasons there’s hardly an incentive to beta test gamemodes that are drastically different than what people are accustomed to in meta. Pretty much the only way to get new maps in nowadays is through an elaborate pug test cycle, but even then, its just a hard category to breach.
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"How many of you guys have actually played CTF? "
I actually did play ctf in UGC and it was…fine but prone to stalemating.
More recently I tried to organize some prolander exp pugs that played CTF. What I found: there’s a dearth of good maps for the format that are competitive friendly. There are maps that do some interesting things (like only one flag) but it’s hard to find maps that don’t have issues of massive sniper sightlines or other issues.
The games themselves either ended quickly or stalemated. You could say that is because of pugs, which fair, but I think this is a broader issue.
The other issue was that the community did not want CTF, for the cross section of people who play pugs at least.
I can dm you my survey results though.
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dom_canalzone