Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
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Posted - 2012.10.04 21:04:00 -
[1] - Quote
When infestation mode was being discussed on IRC, CCP Jian said something that got me thinking.
The quote was along the lines of "Being CCP, we wanted to do something a little cooler than just 'defend x location for y amount of time' so we came up with ways to make survival mode more interesting"
I think that's what needs to be done with Ambush. Making it a little more interesting than just "KILL ALL THE THINGS!!!"
Let's look at what ambush offers currently:
The Good:
- Fast paced, hectic action that skirmish cannot deliver usually
- Smaller maps for less travel and more pew pew
- Smaller clone count and match timer for quicker matches
That's not really a whole lot to go for making ambush fun. But wait... There's more!
The bad
- Smaller maps means condensed spawn areas. Less areas to spawn means the chances of dying as soon as you spawn are very high, and this is very common in ambush
- Drop uplinks and vehicle CRU's are the only way to join up with your team after you die. No choice whatsoever of a general area to spawn, further increasing the chances of dying as soon as or shortly after you spawn.
- Lack of installation availability (On most maps, until we can deploy them ourselves at least)
- Did I mention people die a lot as soon as they spawn?
- With current precision strike mechanics once one team starts to chain them, the other team has almost assuredly lost
- If the timer runs out and the clone count is even the round will never end until someone dies. This presents a whole host of potential iffy situations.
So.. Yeah. Ambush isn't really in a good place right now. But it could be, with some tweaks.
The thing is, fans of ambush don't really want it to become some super complicated mutant offspring of team deathmatch. I've been mulling over how to make Ambush awesome and address the things that make it unfun without ruining the spirit of team deathmatch. This is what I came up with.
Zone Control
With the upcoming addition of a grid to the overhead map.. I think that this could be used to great advantage to help make ambush awesome, and combat many of the problems with the mode in one fell swoop. Think of it like an optional 'king of the hill' mini-game embedded in ambush. Controlling zones would not affect who wins or loses directly. (Except maybe if the time runs out and the clone count is even?) Instead, Zone control allows someone to choose an area they can spawn in. A player could spawn on any zone on the grid his team controls, giving them a choice of the general area they spawn in but keeping it random.
Additionally, it could be made so that vehicles cannot be delivered in a hostile zone. This gives incentives to 'control the map' beyond denying a team spawn points.
Capturing zones would be fairly straightforward. At any time your team has more players on a certain map grid than the opposing team, the zone becomes contested and starts to change ownership. Each zone could have a 'control level' or something. (I suck at naming things) Having more players in a zone than the opposition starts shifting the control level from one team to the other, equivalent to a 30s timer or so.. Maybe even shorter to keep the action flowing as much as possible with less sitting around waiting for a zone capture. Killing enemies in a contested zone moves the control level more in favor of the team who scores the kill. So, fighting in contested zones would transfer control quicker, and capturing nearby zones would allow them to get back into the fight quickly if they die.
I thought about the possibility of passive bonuses (faster shield recharge, better sensors, etc) based on zone control, but after mulling that over I couldn't think of a way to make that balanced and goes against the whole point of making zones a secondary goal in Ambush.
Edit: Important to point out that if a team controlled 0 zones, they would be left with the random spawn point option again. Controlling a zone would not prevent a hostile from spawning there, it would prevent them from being able to -choose- to spawn there unless they had a drop uplink there. |