I have played a total of around 8 to 10 hours of Extraction, solely Stop-Watch mode. Stop-Watch mode is the only available mode at the time of this posting. This match type has some serious possibilities, but I think it could be improved. It does have many positive features, however. Stop-Watch mode directs the players very well. The map design rarely has choke points, and any choke points are non-essential to objectives. In my experience, nothing is more frustrating than a map having one really well defended choke point that is the single way to access an objective. Most zones that have objectives in it seem to have several access points, and several lanes of fire into the objective. This makes the objective, however static, seem dynamic as the firefight scenarios are constantly evolving, Attackers are choosing new avenues of attack to attempt to outmaneuver the defenders. A map can make or break a first-person shooter experience and Extraction’s mini-map is informative enough for even new players to not feel lost in any given map.
Stop-Watch is an attacker driven game mode, as the attackers determine the pace of the game. The first-round defenders have to outpace the first-round attackers in order to defeat them. Being the first-round attacker (Hereafter referred to as FRA) has an inherent advantage: you get a full twenty minutes to complete both primary objectives. The first-round defenders (Here after referred to as FRD) on the other hand, do not get the full twenty minutes. The FRD only gets as much time as the FRA allows them. This gives the FRA an advantage as they set the pace in which the FRD gets adjust to the FRA’s defense, which I feel is a design flaw for this game structure. The FRD does not have any margin for error in this match setup, as in order to get a full twenty minutes to attack, they must push the FRA back for a full twenty minutes. Starting out as the FRD is a little daunting, as you know you cannot afford to lose even an inch of ground, especially as you adjust to new avatars, equipment, and maps. The FRA, on the other hand, can just throw bodies at the FRD until they tire, weaken, or otherwise break. Therein lays the weak point I mentioned earlier, the FRA doesn’t get to experience the same imposing feeling of the task ahead of them.
I feel that adding a “body count” to the attacker may help even out the playing field a little. The attacker will have a limited resource they have to consider when attacking defender. Can they afford charging the main entrance to the objective if they have only so many bodies they can throw at the entrance? This gives the defense an active goal, as opposed to a passive one. The defender can take solace in knowing that before they went down they cost the attacker not just precious time, (which they are saving for themselves) but they just cut into that resource. To implement this, have each player select a squad of three avatars for each game. As an Offense player dies with a specific squad member, they lose access to that squad member. This suggestion may be too far in the other direction, giving the defender an upper hand, as they only have to outlast the attack or the time limit.
Another suggestion is to give both teams 15 minutes to attack, but fill the map with objectives the defender can claim. At the end of both rounds, the team that has the highest “objective count” wins. No team inherently has a mechanical advantage in this suggestion, but the team with the most players will inherently have an advantage here. The primary difference here is the defender now gets to prioritize objectives, and choose when to forsake defense to reclaim an objective. The attacker now has to balance the ever-expanding territory it’s gaining with defending it. This will enforce a sense of back and forth that this game mode seems to want to give the player. While there are secondary objectives on each map, the secondary objectives make one teams life slightly easier, and do not count directly towards victory. This means they can sometimes even be completely ignored to guarantee victory.
This suggestion is slightly more complicated to implement, as each objective map is slightly different. I suggest ways of allowing the Defense to either cut the attack timer down or add time to the time limit. This level of control to the time allows the FRD to determine if they can take a chance to gain them more cushion time… Alternatively, it also gives a really weak FRA the chance to cut attack time down when they are the defender. This could be as simple as implementing “King of the Hill” style zones that when the defense holds them either accelerates or decelerates the clock. Now the Defense has a choice. Can they keep enough hold on the objectives to try to push these points, and does the defender think the attacker is lacking the focus or the ability to take one of these points away? This suggestion doesn’t change the format much, but would allow the FRD a little more agency in their fate.
My fast suggestion is a slight combination of the first two. You could give both teams the full time, but at the end of both rounds, time is added to each team’s score for each death the team suffered while it was the offense. This would penalize bad play decisions and further reinforce team work, forcing the team to conserve their collective lives and push objectives hard. This also rewards a team for making smart play decisions and smart tactical choices, as they would result in less time added to their score.
I want to close by stating that this game has potential. It can clearly be developed into a solid shooter experience. The game modes are simple enough to understand, the UI, while unique for modern shooters, isn’t out of place. The game maps are fairly detailed, and the avatars are interesting. Each has unique qualities that makes it hard to choose just which avatar is best. This game mode also has a huge capacity for more fun, and I wanted to address some of the concerns I had about it before the game got too far along in development. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Stop Watch First Impressions
There was a “Lives” rule set implemented in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory that was a server side option. You could have an X amount of lives at your disposal, and every time you get gibbed you lost a life. It was a really neat rule set but it promoted camping, spamming explosives, and a ton of medics (not necessarily a con, but it wouldn’t help promote balanced teams, which SD is trying to do). Plus having a limited number of lives is not a good definition of fun when you could easily run out in mere minutes against better players.
If Extraction had lives implemented in the ranked ruleset, I feel like it would feel too much like the CS games. It would be long, tedious, frustrating, and have an inkling of fun compared to what it could have. Don’t forget that it would further promote passive play rather than active play, which would be more poking than pushing. Less risky tactics and actions to utilize.
The ruleset would also promote certain mercs to be used; explosives using and recon ones would be favored due to their gibbing potential.
“Lives” could be an awesome server side rule and has a lot of potential, but I don’t think it would be a wise method to balance stop watch with.
A very insightfull post there, well done!
Some suggestions are very good for an Objective mode, which you havent tryied yet. but to put it simple Objective mode is 1half of stop-watch. It has timelimit for objectives (like 5 minuts for 1st, if you dont make it you loose.) and it has Overtime rule. Bumping the time prbbly can work there.
As for SW-mode. this mode is 99% about balance. Attack/defence balance has to be brilliant, otherwise the expierience of the mode is not fun. You only played on public servers with those 3 maps i suppose?
If this is the case. then i strongly suggets you to join our community drafts, and try some other better maps there on VIP servers.
I garantee, you can get there a full view of what is a good Stopwatch match.
right now for me there 3 main problems (that are not connected with movement, shooting and net-code)
- the layout of the battlefiend has to be much more fluent.
- the defenders have to be in slight advantage, so that attackers need to use their tactical tricks, secondaryOBjectives etc.
- the spawn-times (of the respawn waves) need to be very well-considered and thought-out.
How is it an advantage?
Say both teams had 15 minutes to complete all the objectives, the first team takes 8 minutes to do so, and the second team takes 13 minutes. Now it’s clear that the first team wins, in-fact this was known at the 8 minute mark in the second round, making the next 5 minutes completely futile as no matter how fast the map was completed herein, they will still lose. Why would you want to play for 5 more futile minutes when you could be starting a new game from scratch in which you would actually have a chance of winning. This is the reason why the second attackers get less time, otherwise as soon as they knew they’d lost the smart players would just leave the server and find another game elsewhere. So it’s not an advantage (or disadvantage), it’s just saving time, and saving the server from dying.
What I will concede is that it’s not fun to always be the attacking team first, or always be the defending team first, so each map the teams should swap sides, and there should always be an odd number of maps in the rotation to ensure that each time a map is played a different team attacks first. But in terms of an advantage or not, I think you’re trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, in-fact many of the top teams prefer to play defense first.
Hell no, this is one of the main allures of SD games over those from other developers, I would ragequit right now if the game was tainted this atrocity, there are plenty other objective style games that have this if your heart so desires.
This is a decent enough idea, but it would have to be implemented as a completely separate gamemode to OBJ/SW as the point of these modes is to beat the clock by claiming objectives, not just to claim (the most) objectives. I wouldn’t find it as fun, but I’m sure there are people that would.
Why not do it the proper way and add more forward spawns and secondary objectives to the maps, this has to be more fun than, “We just stole another 10 seconds off your time, mwahaha”. Also my gut is telling me that messing with timey-wimey things when the point is to set a fast time is not a good idea, it just doesn’t appeal or seem like something that would benefit the game.
I mind adding (or removing) time at the end of the round less intrusive than removing time during the round, but for deaths… this is essentially the same as a body count, so no thanks.
At Mustang, I didn’t know most “top teams” prefer playing defense first. This may be just my experience; because I’m not a top tier player, nor even a very good player. It seemed to me the Offense had an advantage. If it isn’t an issue, than it isn’t.
I realize my suggestions may not be very high quality; I’m only a student of game design and all, I’m not a master, nor am I a professional. I simply noticed a lack of agency on the side of the defense. I was simply looking to add options to the defense if a given game of Stop-Watch so that it isn’t such a wait and see, sorta situation. I certainly wasn’t trying to attack the game in anyway. It is quite obvious you enjoy that game-mode as is, and that’s good.
To answer your first quote: As to how it is an advantage, the attacker currently sets the pace of the game. It isn’t necessarily a huge advantage in any given match up. Given that the players are apt to just charge the objective, if they push through on a particularly good charge, and get the first objective and the second objective inside 3 or 4 minutes, the next game round is only 3 or 4 minutes long. Meaning to have a chance of winning for the First Round Defense is almost nil, as each objective takes about 40~60 seconds to click away. That is an extreme example; I realize, but the point being is that the First Round Attacker really does set the stage, the defense may have little to say in the matter.
It may perhaps just be a perspective thing. I may view it from a different skill-level, or have different testing experiences than you. This is also only from 10 hours of play experience with solely that game mode; as I found it very interesting. I may not have as much playtime as you, that was just a first impressions. I will play more, and get more experience, and test it further.