[Battlegrounds] How to make objective modes more fun than Deathmatch ever was

Moonspawn · November 16

1- Leave 2 teams BGs for group vs group.
2- Bring back 3 teams BGs with the following changes:

Chaosball
PROBLEMS:
- Ball carrier could move around the map at high speed. Would be all but impossible to catch.
- Players could take the ball to cheesy places where they couldn't be damaged OR where you had to give up your life to damage them.
SOLUTION:
- Reduce ball carrier speed by 30%
- Fix cheesy places.

Capture the Relic
PROBLEMS:
- Standing around guarding a relic is boring.
- Pointlessly parsing a tank who is guarding a relic is boring.
- Having your relic stolen through the wall, or because the grabbing animation didn't play correctly is boring.
SOLUTION:
- Why don't we cut through the boredom and jump to the fun part right from the get go? What if a player from each team was randomly selected as the ''relic holder''? The goal of the match would be to kill the other team's relic holder while protecting your own. When the relic holder dies ''the light'' jumps to another player of the team after 30 seconds, the new relic holder. I wonder if there is some kind of problem with this format that I'm not seeing. It would, in a way, be similar to the current 8v8 chaosball.

Crazy King and Domination
PROBLEMS:
- While two teams fight, the third team flips the flags. This becomes a huge problem if the fight stalemates.
SOLUTION:
The objective would be a single flag, one that slowly moves around the map. It would essentially become ''Escort payload mode''. This would work better in ESO than in a lot of other games that already have the mode.

Deathmatch
PROBLEMS:
- Technically encourages two teams focusing the weakest one.
- High level matches devolve into a kind of ''no sandwich dance''.
SOLUTION:
- ??
- Why would you even play this if these solutions are implemented and every other mode becomes non-stop fighting where everyone can contribute to victory?

SkaraMinoc · November 16

4v4v4

Even with your suggested fixes..

Chaosball- Two teams end up deathmatching while one team turtles the ball
Capture the Relic- Two teams end up focusing the weaker team.
Crazy King and Domination- Two teams end up deathmatching while the dominant team has the flag
Deathmatch- I left BG because my 4-player team has two 19k health NBs and a 50k health DK block tank.

4v4 and 8v8

I get to deathmatch all day while automatically contributing towards the objectives.

NeoniKa · November 16

Or just bring back the good Battlegrounds and delete these new ones.

There was nothing wrong with the good old Battlegrounds. I always thought that these new bad Battlegrounds would be just an alternative and not a replacement for the good Battlegrounds. It should have been an upgrade and not this massive downgrade that completely ruined Battlegrounds.

Moonspawn · November 16

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

4v4v4

Even with your suggested fixes..

Chaosball- Two teams end up deathmatching while one team turtles the ball
Capture the Relic- Two teams end up focusing the weaker team.
Crazy King and Domination- Two teams end up deathmatching while the dominant team has the flag
Deathmatch- I left BG because my 4-player team has two 19k health NBs and a 50k health DK block tank.

So you think that even if every mode became about concentrated non-stop fighting, people would still choose ''DM away from the objective for 3 minutes while the objective gets done uncontested'' instead of ''DM close to the objective for up to 15 minutes''. I doubt that, but I suppose anything is possible. I can think of several different ways to... discourage this, but at the end of the day we'd only be forcing people to participate in something against their will, and that's just wrong. If it really became a problem we'd just have to add a separate DM queue, while the objective queue would still feature DM, of course.

Taril · November 16

Moonspawn wrote: »

So you think that even if every mode became about concentrated non-stop fighting, people would still choose ''DM away from the objective for 3 minutes while the objective gets done uncontested'' instead of ''DM close to the objective for up to 15 minutes''. I doubt that, but I suppose anything is possible.

The issue is with the inherent problems of having 3 teams.

Whereby, 2 teams can get caught up fighting each other while the 3rd team goes off and does all the objectives.

Or you have disparities where 2 teams just beat up the weakest team.

In a 2 team format, sure, all your suggestions could make the modes better. They just don't do anything to mitigate the core problem faced by the 3 team format.

Moonspawn · November 16

Taril wrote: »

The issue is with the inherent problems of having 3 teams.

Whereby, 2 teams can get caught up fighting each other while the 3rd team goes off and does all the objectives.

There would be no reason for that if every mode was about concentrated non-stop fighting. Your goal as an objective player would be to win the match. Your goal as a DM player would be to make the match last as long as possible.

Taril wrote: »

Or you have disparities where 2 teams just beat up the weakest team.

In all of my hundreds of thousands of battlegrounds, I'd say that this rarely happened. People do get bored of fighting the weakest team. Lopsided matches are boring for everyone. Its the reason I don't see the new bgs working no matter how hard I try.

silky_soft · November 16

Delete this castle map. 9/10 games in 8v8 are this 4v4 castle map.

karthrag_inak · November 17

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

4v4v4

Even with your suggested fixes..

Chaosball- Two teams end up deathmatching while one team turtles the ball
Capture the Relic- Two teams end up focusing the weaker team.
Crazy King and Domination- Two teams end up deathmatching while the dominant team has the flag
Deathmatch- I left BG because my 4-player team has two 19k health NBs and a 50k health DK block tank.

...and they still were way better than 2 team bgs.

darvaria · November 17

Just give players the option to CHOOSE Death Match or Capture Games. LET PLAYERS select DM.

Taril · November 17

Moonspawn wrote: »

There would be no reason for that if every mode was about concentrated non-stop fighting. Your goal as an objective player would be to win the match. Your goal as a DM player would be to make the match last as long as possible.

Except it would be the same reason as now.

You can't just ignore a team fighting you while you do objectives, ergo you defend yourself and while your team is engaged with the other team. Team 3 is free to go and grab objectives.

Moonspawn wrote: »

In all of my hundreds of thousands of battlegrounds, I'd say that this rarely happened. People do get bored of fighting the weakest team. Lopsided matches are boring for everyone. Its the reason I don't see the new bgs working no matter how hard I try.

I've seen it plenty.

PvP isn't always about having fun. It's about maximizing gains. So whatever provides the most efficient AP is what becomes popular even if it's not fun (Just the same as in other games... WoW for example had their most fun BG, Alterac Valley, devolve into the most boring simply because people figured out the best rewards for time is to completely ignore any and all PvP and simply rush down the enemy boss turning the mode into a giant PvE zerg fest)

This is also the reason why Cyrodil is suffering. Since people are doing the boring, but efficient method of utilizing ballgroups to zerg objectives and actively avoiding PvP (I.e. Few ballgroup vs ballgroup mass battles, instead just focus on 2 ballgroups zerging objectives from the weakest faction)

Moonspawn · November 17

Taril wrote: »

Except it would be the same reason as now.
You can't just ignore a team fighting you while you do objectives, ergo you defend yourself and while your team is engaged with the other team. Team 3 is free to go and grab objectives.

People ignore the objective because they discourage fighting. My suggestions fix that. If you think they'll keep ignoring the objective no matter what, because they CAN. Well, we CAN just throw down our weapons and dance in the middle of the map, wouldn't that be nice?

Taril wrote: »

I've seen it plenty.
PvP isn't always about having fun. It's about maximizing gains. So whatever provides the most efficient AP is what becomes popular even if it's not fun

As for 2 teams focusing the weakest one. Was rare for a reason. Most players just aren't griefers. New bgs force us to be.

Moonspawn · November 22

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

4v4v4

Even with your suggested fixes..

Chaosball- Two teams end up deathmatching while one team turtles the ball
Capture the Relic- Two teams end up focusing the weaker team.
Crazy King and Domination- Two teams end up deathmatching while the dominant team has the flag
Deathmatch- I left BG because my 4-player team has two 19k health NBs and a 50k health DK block tank.

4v4 and 8v8

I get to deathmatch all day while automatically contributing towards the objectives.

If ZOS really wants to be heavy handed with the objectives they could add a Stagnate effect with the following features:
- Can't use any abilities.
- Can't be damaged or have the hp restored in any way. (lava, fall, and enviromental damage should probably still apply)
- No regeneration.

Chaosball- You would be affected if you move more than 40m away from the objective.
Crazy King and Domination (NEW escort payload)- Same as chaosball.
Deathmatch- The effect could be added around the bases to prevent spawn camping.
Capture the Relic- The relic holders would still have the healing debuff that grows over time. It would make no sense to continuously gang up on the softer team when there is a target that can't heal right beside them.

RomanRex · November 23

i love new 4vs4 solo competitive cue! i would really hate to turn back to old bg’s.

i have been playing bg’s non-stop since patch. i love all modes but 3 flag domination is my favorite.

Moonspawn · November 23

Sadly I get the sense that we're still at the stage where they're trying to fix the cartoonish bugs plaguing current battlegrounds... which won't fix how grossly lopsided most matches are.