Full Holds Should Never Happen

(Apple) #1

I watched 7 hours of thebrink.tv’s tournament, but could only sit through the first match of the final game before I had to turn off the stream and go do something else. I just couldn’t stand to sit through any more games that consisted of 20 minutes of… nothing. No objectives being completed, no progression through the map, nothing. This is an Enemy Territory game, which means it’s going to be played competitively in Stopwatch mode, which means times have to be able to be set - but all we’re seeing is the first objective of multi-objective maps being camped for the round’s entire duration.

It got to the point where matches were being decided based on which team had the most progress hacking the first objective. If Team A got held for the full duration without planting a box on Terminal’s computer, and then team B got a box planted 10 minutes in, it was game over. Team A would “GG” and leave the server, team B didn’t even need to hack it. We never saw the safe, we never saw anyone run the key, and we certainly never saw a time set. We saw the same thing occur on every map.

It’s not fun for the players and it’s not fun for the viewers. Offense needs to be able to set a time, every time, and may the best time win.

-First and foremost, defense respawn needs to be substantially increased. Defense tends to spawn instantly right on top of the objective, where a death means very little. Defense should be punished harshly if offense puts together a good push, instead it’s just business as usual.

-Op hack objectives and Engineer repair objectives are balanced around 8v8 where you can have many more of each class, they need to have their hack and repair times reduced by half for 5v5.

Those are the two most important change that could be made, but I’d propose these further, more extreme changes if you really want to ensure that stopwatch mode means something.

-Make HE charges unable to be disarmed.

-Make escort objectives unable to be damaged.

Unfair to defense? Sure, but again the point is you want people setting times. thebrink.tv set a rule that you can’t remove hack boxes for this very reason, this is just an extension of that rule for the game’s other two objective types.

(Gradis) #2

i agree but saying that u lose out on epic disarms and the like, but watching a team push up to get a plant only for the defence to spawn right on top them made for very predictible viewing.

i did think in the final match when they were trying to plant on the piller why not let the attcking team spawn at any of the 2 command posts leading up to the obj. 2 points for attack in same distance as defence.

(prophett) #3

increase defensive spawn times :>

(matsy) #4

I think there is still a lot of variables from the players side that contribute to full holds. Like the defending team could just be better than the attacking team player for player and well organised.

I do agree that the attacking team should be given an advantage but I think spawn times are tricky to set, in terms of not being able to remove hack boxes ( although is there a delay in which engies are able to do this, e.g. they must have to wait 30 seconds first? if not i’d prefer this implementation as its more like hack objectives seen in etqw) I don’t agree with not being able to defuse a plant, although I like the idea of not being able to damage the escort.

(Vlane) #5

This.

Also make hacking go faster and dehacking slower.

(Ulua) #6

Spawns:
20 sec Offense
30 sec Defense

Fixed.

…and you guys want turrets buffed and ban adrenaline…think that through…

(Decayed) #7

maybe this is where an “overpowered” offensive ability like adrenaline serves a purpose?

(BMXer) #8

Besides the lame factor of adrenaline, adrenaline can actually make it MORE defensively biased.

Using adrenaline to get the plant down is nice, but you still have to defend it and adrenaline is useless for that.
Give the engie defusing adrenaline and its a free defuse guaranteed! No need to defend a defuse and the defuse takes nothing, way too quick.

(Redshft) #9

I agree. This needs to be fixed.

(Decayed) #10

[QUOTE=BMXer;317702]Besides the lame factor of adrenaline, adrenaline can actually make it MORE defensively biased.

Using adrenaline to get the plant down is nice, but you still have to defend it and adrenaline is useless for that.
Give the engie defusing adrenaline and its a free defuse guaranteed! No need to defend a defuse and the defuse takes nothing, way too quick.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I hear ya on that, but I dunno I feel like people can adapt to situations in the end, and it could provide some fun battles. Obviously not talking about hackboxes since that is annoying but like demo charges. Eventually you try to figure out who the medics are and they become priority targets. This should happen anyway since they can rez. The typical FPS mentality of kill anyone falls more along the line of an MMO where targets are prioritized. It’s a shift that people can get used to.
I do agree that the concept of 100% invincibility is sucky so hopefully it will be adjusted.

(xdc) #11

increasing defense spawn time is a cheesy way to balance things, most of the unbalancing comes in the map design

(fearlessfox) #12

It’s a fix for the current map design, and it would work.

Defense should need to plan their tactics just as much as Offense, and not rely being able to jump back into battle so quickly that their deaths mean little.

It would make games more fun for both sides.

(silver1) #13

I disagree. In a game like RtCW, the defense spawned very close to objectives most of the time, however the longer defensive spawn time greatly increased the balance of the game. Making the defense ride out a longer spawn would buy much more time for the offense in this game and make a huge difference without having to mod any maps.

(gooey79) #14

Not convinced anything is ‘broken’ and needing fixed.

Full holds can and will happen where the defending team is performing better than the attacking team.

On the games I’ve seen, the team that full holds goes on to set a quick time when they’re on assault. If there were something unbalanced, surely that would mean the very same team should not be able to assault…

It’s very early in the game for the competitive scene to have worked out all their tactics etc. Give it a little time to settle in before claiming it’s not working.

(Jamieson) #15

Having just watched Huberis vs BGL on Terminal and reactor and Huberis vs l4s in the final I can say I also agree with the OP. The maps are very defensive sided, today I managed to win my first ever game of Resort as Resistance, after well over 40hours played, and that was with 3 other clanmates on the same team in a 8 man team. The Defense needs to have its spawn time increased by around 5 or 7 seconds.

(Cynix) #16

Full holds can and will happen where the defending team is performing better than the attacking team.

Actually yes, there is nothing wrong with full holds. The OP means double full holds though. A double full hold should never happen. If the teams are equal in skill, then the attacking team should win so that they can set a time. This should happen because the maps should be offensively biased by a good amount. If one team is better than the other team, then the better team should win because they set a faster time. Defensively biased maps screw up the whole stopwatch equation by essentially equalizing teams of unequal skill.

Not convinced anything is ‘broken’ and needing fixed.

You must have not watched the thebrink.tv tournament. The casted semi-finals and finals matches consisted of four consecutive double full holds on four different maps involving three different teams, and nearly all of the holds were done on the first objective regardless of which team was attacking and which team was defending. I’m honestly not sure how anyone could not consider that broken; it was boring as hell to watch, boring to shoutcast, and I’m sure it was unbelievable frustrating and annoying to the players who were actually playing.

increasing defense spawn time is a cheesy way to balance things, most of the unbalancing comes in the map design

Changing the defensive spawn time consists of changing some numbers in a configuration file. It might take a couple hours at most to implement a patch. Redesigning the maps would take a massive level of effort and days at least to implement. I would much prefer the faster solution.

(Jswizzy84) #17

While I agree that double full holds are boring and bad for competition, I would just like to state that just because a game leads to draw doesn’t mean anything concerning balance. You have games like chess that almost always in result in draws at the highest levels and no one is complaining about it being an unbalanced game. For the sake of fun and entertainment value though more games should come down to the last objective. There is nothing more discouraging and boring than being camped or getting stuck on the first objective.

(Vlane) #18

Thing is, Brink has the mechanics to not have double full holds, but they ban them (stupid).
Chess is… well chess.

(prophett) #19

Traditional times of 20/30 (20 for attack, 30 for defense) worked very well so raising the defensive spawn times should be the obvious choice here, rather than removing, restricting, or modifying game features to make it more attacker friendly.

(Rave) #20

I think you can achieve most of the balance by editing spawn times. I’m also not keen on the fact that servers can change spawn times - we need them to be consistent across servers (and the game needs to be competitive out the box).

I like the fact that some objectives can be reversed and some can’t. Rather than saying hack objectives cannot be reversed, the balance can be controlled by dramatically reducing the reverse speed.