There are obviously tons of heated debates on both these forums and in-game chats over objective modes. This post will attempt to explain the crux of what is wrong with the objective modes by examining another objective based PvP game: Team Fortress 2.

In short, the objective modes are unbalanced (with the exception of chaosball for reasons that will hopefully be clear later) due to the fact that they do not encourage engagement and combat, and in many cases, actively discourage it. Many people that take issue with the objective modes cite the 3-team system as the main issue. In my opinion, this is something that only exacerbates the true issue: the number of objectives in each mode. For most of the game types, there are either an equal number of objectives or more objectives than the number of teams. What this means is that at any given point during the match, if two teams begin to fight over an objective, they are actively punished for it because the third team now has easy access to an empty objective elsewhere.

"But Camera! Why doesn't each team split up so that there are no empty objectives?" While this solution works in theory, in practice it falls short. Players are punished for splitting up in two ways. First, a solo or duo player in a flag mode caps much slower than a full team. Second, against players of equal or greater skill, a solo or duo of players will always lose outnumbered.

On to the comparison. Team Fortress 2 is an objective based shooter, most similar to something like Overwatch. It has been popular for years, and hosts a number of objective-based modes such as Payload, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and Capture Points (similar to King of the Hill, but with multiple points and only 1 active point at any given time). Shockingly, this game doesn't even have a Team Deathmatch, and yet, it is still a popular game that draws players of many skill levels. While some modes are certainly more popular (and balanced) than others, almost every mode is played and enjoyable. That is, every mode except 1: Territory Control.

Territorial Control was a mode introduced at launch and almost immediately dropped. There was only 1 map released. I'm going to dilute the rules here a little bit, as they get somewhat nuanced. The game mode features 2 teams and 3 control points, but what differentiates this mode from a regular control point map is that each point was active to be captured at the same time. To win, 1 team must capture the other points while also holding their own. The issue here is that if you go on the offensive, your own point is left to get captured. If you stay on the defensive, you never make any progress in winning the round. This mode was pretty disliked by the community, and sees very little play nowadays. The playstyle it encouraged was boring: either stay at your home point and extend the timer into sudden death, or play a really fast/stealthy class that could get behind enemy lines and cap the other points without ever seeing the enemy. Sound familiar?

Much like the TC gamemode, the objective modes in Battlegrounds encourage this style of gameplay. You either sit at 1 point and guard it, or you try to avoid conflict by running around the edge of the map and taking unguarded objectives. Like the TC mode, this stems from the fact that there are too many objectives. Because there are more objectives than teams, trying to attack/kill another team leaves the rest of the map open for the third team. A team can (arguably very easily) win the round without ever having to deal damage or fight an enemy player. This makes for really short, unfun rounds. For players that want to queue up to fight other players in a controlled environment, it's extremely frustrating to wait a long time for a round that's over in about 5 minutes because every enemy you see runs away from the fight to take an empty point/relic.

So, how do we solve this dilemma? The most straightforward answer is to simply reduce the number of flags/objectives in each mode. If you look at Chaosball, whether you enjoy the mode or not, it encourages combat. Barring cheesy strategies like stacking max speed and running around the map, or exploiting buggy areas of the map (strategies that could largely be mitigated by adding a snare to the ball), players are forced to fight each other to score points. This is because only one team can hold the ball at a time. For flag games, the number of points should never exceed the number of teams. If there's four points, that means that there will always be at least 1 poorly guarded or unguarded flag. If we reduce the number of flags to 3 (or even 2 potentially), teams will be forced to fight each other more often. Backcapping strategies will still exist; nightblades/speedy builds will still be able to sneak around and take flags, but this strategy will be reduced to a strategy and not THE strategy. Capture the Relic is somewhat tougher. The issue with this mode is that it can end in well under 5 minutes, or go to the time limit with almost no scores. The relic being right by the spawn point means that you need to take the majority of your team in order to kill the defenders quickly enough to take the relic without being interrupted during the respawn window. However, this leaves your own relic available to be taken with relatively little resistance. The alternative is having the majority of your team defending; but unless the player leaving to capture the relic is a turbo DM-er or gets lucky with an unguarded relic, they'll be smashing their head against a wall trying to fight through multiple defenders. The mode thus either ends immediately because one team decides to go on the offensive, or never ends because none of the teams want to leave their relic unguarded. What I would propose is a new version of the mode where a single relic spawns somewhere on the map (either a random or set location). To score, teams would have to take the relic back to their spawn and then hold it there for a set amount of time (much like capturing a flag) to encourage defensive counterplay and allow other teams to kill the relic carrier before they capture it. Obviously this is just a proposal and who knows how it would turn out, but I believe this version of CTR would be a lot more fun for most players and would definitely encourage more conflict.

To close, I didn't make this post to start any arguments over objective gamers vs DMers. At the end of the day, players want to have fun. I think these solutions would allow players less built/skilled for strictly killing to still contribute to their team, while also preventing the act of fighting from actively hurting your team's chances of winning.