Author Topic: Capture Point Mechanics  (Read 10777 times)

Offline DJ Tipz N Trix

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Capture Point Mechanics
« on: July 12, 2015, 09:58:41 pm »
Capture Point maps have generally been left out of competitive play in most tournaments.  When Guns of Icarus was added to MLG, the only playable maps were Deathmatch maps, and the SCS, which is the only regular event at this time, is only Deathmatch.  The only big CP tournament, the Aerodrome, has since changed to its own custom type after its organizer expressed distaste with Muse's current CP direction.  Muse has made many changes to Capture Point in the last few patches.  There have been a lot of good things going on to improve CP in these patches, and I believe Muse is going in the right direction with this.  Capture Point is in a better state than it was before the patches, as it is easier to regain points after they have been initially captured (one of the initial complaints about capture the point), and games do not drag on forever. However, I believe there are still quite a few critical flaws that really keep CP maps out of the favor of many of the experienced and new players.  Most have been around since the beginning, but one in particular stands out as recently added by the new Muse patches.  These flaws are the long capture time, the small number of points in the win condition, the map rotations, the spawn advantages, and the load time advantage.

The long capture time was one of the main offenders as to why points could not be taken back from an enemy.  It would take a long time to get the capture moving, and enemy ships could come in and interrupt you during this time.  As a solo ship, one would have to spend about 15 seconds uncontested in order to capture a point, or 30 seconds if they needed to neutralize it and then capture.  This also means that teams who were anywhere between 50-75 points away from winning were almost ensured victory as long as they were alive.  The increase on the respawn timers helped the situation, but the issue remains that it still takes a very long time to capture a point alone.  This is alleviated by the fact that stacking ships on the point doubles/quadruples your capturing speed, but this also makes more ships more vulnerable in that small capture area.  One suggestion to handle this would be to make neutralizing a point faster, but to leave capturing the same speed.  This would allow teams to come back when they have to take a point back.  Another idea would be to make both faster, but this runs the risk of fast ships being too good on Crazy King maps where they can capture before the opponent can make it there.  A third idea is to give the first ship a bonus to capturing speed, so that you can capture points faster alone, but not affect the speed when there are multiple ships on the point.  For example, a 1v0 (or 2v1, 3v2, or 4v3) could capture the point at 1.25x their current speed, while any other capture rate could be at the same speed it currently is now.  A final idea is to make capturing much faster, like 2x the current speed, but not have it persist.  That is, if you have a 1v0 on the point and an enemy ship gets on the point to make it 1v1, the progress you made towards capturing or neutralizing is lost.  This last idea seems great for faster paced points that change hands more often, but may unfairly punish mobile ships that need to get off the point sometimes to evade fire.

The small point win condition is the one flaw that Muse introduced with the new patches.  While CP games were taking a very long time before, the 2v1 change on top of the point reduction means that there often is not enough time or opportunity for teams to come back once they lose the point, especially in King of the Hill.  This may be remedied by simply allowing the points to change hands more easily, but even that may not be enough and may warrant an increase in the point total required to win to pre-patch numbers to give teams that need to attack a captured point the chance to do so effectively.

The map rotation point requires much more work, but is fairly straightforward.  With the majority of all tournaments running as 2v2 tournaments, there is only one map available for CP: The Labyrinth.  Given the vast Deathmatch pool, organizers quickly see Deathmatch as the much preferred type to run their tournament.  One solution for this could be to run more 3v3 tournaments, where the CP map pool is more in depth and there is more variety.  The other solution is for Muse to develop more 2v2 and 4v4 CP maps for more variety in map choices.

The spawn and load time advantages are probably the biggest issues right now, and last is definitely not least in this post.  Currently, depending on which random point is selected in Crazy King, the spawns can be vastly imbalanced, giving one team essentially a free point for at least 30 seconds.  Usually, if the enemy team rushes over to contest, the first team is already stationed well and wins the fight, snowballing from there.  If the enemy team doesn't contest, that's a free 150+ points for one team.  This can be looked at to simply start form a neutral point instead of a random point.  The load issue involves people taking longer to load into the game, causing them to lag behind other ships going towards a point, also often costing their team the point.  One solution involves making points uncapturable for the first minute.  This would solve both of these problems, allowing the teams to fight on more even footing.  Another solution for Crazy King involves making the first point in a neutral location instead of random.

All in all, CP maps can easily replace the camping and timing out of the current Deathmatch format by forcing teams to go after an objective and fight over something.  CP maps provide a lot of life to the game and promise that ships are not running and hiding from each other.  However, a few flaws in what is otherwise a great mode keep a lot of the community skeptical.  Fixing these flaws will open up CP as a competitive mode that can stand up to both audience engagement and player participation.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2015, 11:42:55 pm »
With the disclaimer of me knowing little about the specifics of competitive i agree with most/all of that.

-If the wiki is up to date each map has its own capture time for points so map specific side effects from changes to capture speed could be reversed easily.

-Adding a delay to point activation would help labrynth and future maps but not desert scrap so much since the advantage is the position rather than having the point. Scrap needs some changes of its own.

-A neutral first point for crazy king is an important change and for anglean and refinery it could be any of 3, not sure about flayed hills. Starting at the same point risks introducing repetitiveness though.

-I'd support increasing the victory total only conditional on the other improvements being added too, currently it is as often a mercy as an annoyance that the point limit is so low.

Additions/other possibilities

-Having the point uncap slowly while ship numbers are even, possibly limited to 50% or 90% uncapped.

-Making the next crazy king point random with a bias towards the closest, against the furthest helping avoid having the same sequence each time and reduce the travel time. Alternatively have point A fixed to the neutral point and randomly assign B-E on map load, always starting A.

-As far as "new" maps go i posted a set of possible conversions from existing ones a few days ago most of which were capture point I'll email it to feedback@... and see what they think.

-"Sinking" the leviathan on scrap or raising the height limit to make the 2 (that i know of) side entrances difficult rather than 'silly gimmick buff-hydro-stamina' ways in.

-Moving point E of flayed hills to the center somewhere, from the map and from memory i don't think there is any reason for its location (no pretty rock, pile of loot etc) and flayed hills needs anything that will reduce time spent flying from point to point. Depending on the effort needed to shift the rock it marks D could also be moved towards the center a bit.

Offline DJ Tipz N Trix

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2015, 01:09:03 pm »
The capture times on the wiki seem very long.  I'm not sure whether they are for capping from neutral or they include neutralizing and then capturing.  If that is the capture time, 30+ seconds is even more than it seems like and that's already 30+ points you need to give up after killing the enemy.

Desert Scrap is OK, it's just about the ship you pick that determines whether or not you can fire at your opponents on your way in.  For example, a Pyramidion with its left side can fire at the opponent only if you're on the correct spawn, otherwise you need a ship that can fire off the right, like a junker or galleon.  I also like your suggestion of allowing more entrances into the scrap.

I agree that Flayed Hills is too big even for a 4v4.  There is so much time spent flying around from point to point, and it is often better to suicide and take the 13 point hit for an advantage at the next point due to closer spawn.

Random next point is interesting.  It would really force players to fight over the current point, but the problem is that slow ships would be extremely handicapped by this change, since they cannot set up early at the next point.

Offline Ashunera

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2015, 05:10:01 pm »
I agree with a lot of what you said, especially the long cap time vs small win conditions and the spawn advantage. I've seen pleany of times where spawn advantage gave one team nearly 200 free points. the small win is especially noticable in CP. in desert scrap for example, combine travel time, the fact that you have to clear the enemies to take it, the uncap time, and then the cap time, and almost always, the first team to take the point will win. beyond that though, even if you DO take it back, the other team will be very close to victory. Enough that, often, one kill will get them the points they need.

Offline Arturo Sanchez

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2015, 08:45:14 pm »
guess what? you're not even meant to use heavy ships like galleon or junker or spire on crazy king.

barring only vets that know how to race with these behemoths. Most players shouldn't fly slow ships in crazy king in the first place.

Noob galleon on any team=instant gg in crazy king for the opposing team that flies "proper" ships for crazy king.

Offline Daft Loon

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2015, 09:19:12 pm »
guess what? you're not even meant to use heavy ships like galleon or junker or spire on crazy king.

barring only vets that know how to race with these behemoths. Most players shouldn't fly slow ships in crazy king in the first place.

Noob galleon on any team=instant gg in crazy king for the opposing team that flies "proper" ships for crazy king.

This is more a problem with the mode than the players, no galleon, no junker, no mobula,no spire, thats only 3/7 ships available leaving the 2 most boring ships and the hardest and least noob friendly ship to chose from. To make it worse pyra is only viable with tedious longhaul kerosene burning.

Offline Ashunera

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2015, 10:33:44 pm »
guess what? you're not even meant to use heavy ships like galleon or junker or spire on crazy king.

barring only vets that know how to race with these behemoths. Most players shouldn't fly slow ships in crazy king in the first place.

Noob galleon on any team=instant gg in crazy king for the opposing team that flies "proper" ships for crazy king.

While I do agree with you mostly, that only people who know what they are doing are likely to win with em on CK (and even then it is iffy, I find the galleon best suited for blockading) I fail to see what that has to do with the topic at hand. It could be 6 squids on refinery and the issue would remain but it is worse on KOTH than it is on CK.

Also, I still wish you wouldn't be so quick to disparage new players... I've found many that are pretty damn good at the game, having picked it up quick, had good ideas, had good teachers, or just being good at teamwork. They'll surprise ya you know. That attitude of "should and shouldn't" gets kind of tiring. if somebody wants to try something, I say let em try it. if it works, great. If it doesn't, well, the fool is not he who tried, but he who failed to learn from the attempt.

Offline DJ Tipz N Trix

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2015, 11:39:33 pm »
I believe that we should give the slower ships a chance to do what they are good at on Crazy King and not make it only a fast ship's world.  Assuming everyone knows what they are doing, taking 3-4 speedsters is not the current best strategy on Crazy King in my opinion.  You need kill power against coordinated teams who will get to the point on time, regardless of the speed of their ship.  Changing it to "race to whichever point is randomly selected on the switch" will have even less combat and more running around.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2015, 11:47:36 pm by DJ Tipz N Trix »

Offline Lueosi

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2015, 12:16:38 am »
Capture times in the wiki are still up-to-date (at least I verified Labyrinth with 35sec from neutral to capped).

Offline DJ Tipz N Trix

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Re: Capture Point Mechanics
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2015, 02:17:05 am »
Capture times in the wiki are still up-to-date (at least I verified Labyrinth with 35sec from neutral to capped).

Yeah, I usually trust the wiki.  The times are even longer than I suspected then.  They should at least be as short as the respawn timer.