Active Flag Capture Concept

Enodoc

Right now, the meta for flag capture is everyone pile on the flag!, because the more attackers you have standing around the capture zone, the faster the flag flips, and the more defenders you have in the capture zone, the slower the flag flips. This is ostensibly capped at a certain number of people, but the issue is that you don't have to do anything to flip the flag. It's just about having more numbers than the opposition. This is where Active Flag Capture comes in.

Concept

Instead of standing in the capture zone, and the flag automatically destroying itself just because you're standing next to it, attacking players should be required to actively burn the flag (like you do with a siege engine). This would bring a new dynamic into the mix because people flipping the flag would be taken out of the combat numbers. Those players would need to be defended by their allies while burning the flag so that they are not interrupted. The numbers benefit would remain (still with a cap); the more people burning the flag, up to 6, the faster the flag goes down, but that would be balanced by the fact that it would leave you with less people to fight the defenders. Defenders would have to kill the flag burners first, then douse the flames (like you do with a siege engine) to restore the flag. Dousing the flames would also take them out of the battle, so defenders would have to decide whether restoring the flag is more important than killing the attackers.

Once the initial flag is burned, it will enter a neutral state, as it does now. But there could be a cool-down period between "burning" the old flag and "raising" the new flag, during which time its state cannot change. This would help the defenders by giving them more time to regroup and try to destroy the attackers before they can complete the flip. The cooldown would be slightly shorter for the original owners of the keep.

Raising the new flag would be similar to burning the old one, and would require up to 6 players to actively raise the flag. If the flag raising is interrupted by defenders to the point where there are no attackers actively raising the flag, then it immediately falls back to neutral. At any time when the flag is neutral (after the initial cooldown period), defenders would also be able to re-raise their own flag, which would also fall back to neutral if they were all interrupted.

Mechanics Summary

• Burning: The aim here is to whittle down the flag over time. Players activate the flag to initiate burning. Burning continues until the flag is destroyed, unless cancelled by the player or the player is interrupted by an enemy attack (by "interrupt" I mean something like bash or Venom Arrow; something which stops channelling). It would take 45 seconds for 1 person to burn the flag, down to 10 seconds for 6 people (that's 45*3/4^(x-1) seconds for x people). I'm not sure what the current rate is, but it seems to be quite fast when there are a lot of people there. This formula aims to keep that general rate.
• Dousing: The aim here is to create enough leeway to quickly restore the flag. While a flag is not being actively burned, it remains on fire. This does not degrade it further, but it also does not automatically restore itself while the keep remains "under attack". To restore the flag, defenders must activate it to douse it. Each dousing takes 4 seconds and a flag requires up to 9 douses to be restored, depending on how much it has been burned. One dousing instance must be fully completed for it to count - if cancelled by the player or interrupted by an enemy, the douse must be restarted. Up to 6 people can be dousing at once. A flag cannot be doused while it is actively being burned.
• Neutral: The aim here is to focus on the opposition, not the flag. During the neutral phase, there would be a cooldown period during which the flag cannot be interacted with. This gives the two sides a chance to consider the state of the other flag(s) in the keep, and work on thinning each other's numbers. The neutral period would last for 20 seconds, or 15 seconds if your alliance was the original owner of the keep (the Home Alliance).
• Raising: The aim here is to always keep someone on the flag. Activate the flag to start raising the new banner. If at any point no player is raising the banner, the flag drops back to neutral. There is no cooldown here, so either alliance could immediately start raising their own banner. It would take 30/sqrt(x) seconds for x players (up to 6) to raise their flag.

Some More things for Flags

• Add a third flag to the courtyards of Medium and Large keeps to make the capture process more interesting.
• Add a fourth flag on the upper rear balcony of Large keeps, for the same reason.
• Move resource flags into the Tower so the Tower needs to be sieged to gain access, to increase capture time and defensive options.

Soulac

Zos:

OdinForge

Soulac wrote: »

Zos:

This made me chuckle.

But also sad, since this is likely true. So many great ideas from people who care about the game, to solve major issues that are left unchecked for many months.

LilyOra

Awesome ideas! Would definitely make things more interesting

Maulkin

I really like the premise and what it aims at achieving. So I gave it some thought and have a couple of suggestions to make, which will hopefully improve it. One of them I feel is kind of important to achieve your target.

Suggestion 1: This is the less important suggestion, which is to ditch the burning/dousing. It doesn't feel that intuitive that you have to "keep burning" the flag and if you are interrupted the flag burns but it doesn't somehow dwindle. You can replace that with a simple Lowering/Raising of the flag.

An attacker (to the keep) starts channeling the Lower The <Faction> Flag until he brings it to the neutral state by completely removing the flag. If he gets interrupted, the flag stays where it is. A defender can then channel the Raise The <Faction> Flag, to reinstate the flag fully.

If the flag goes past the Neutral State to a new flag being raised, the defender will have to interrupt, lower the opponent's and then raise his flag.

Suggestion 2: This is the important one. One person lowering/raising the flag is all fine and dandy, but the group he belongs to will still stand around him to protect him and to stop him getting interrupted. Pretty much all interrupts are single target (Deep Breath the only exception and that's melee range), so if he's surrounded by buddies he'll be untargettable and thus he can't be interrupted. So the whole incentive of making the group spread to clear the keep fails, because the most efficient way to flip it is to still hug the flag and not give a rats bum what goes on around.

So here's the alternative I'm proposing. You put the flag on a pedestal, similar to the ones the scrolls are put on. When you approach the pedestal you get the interaction "Climb Flag Pedestal". Like with picking up scrolls, the first person to click it climbs the pedestal and locks the others out. Only one person can be on the flag pedestal.

The pedestal is there to make you stand out and always be targetable. When you are up on the pedestal you can interact with the flag to lower or raise it accordingly. While up there, you are targettable but immune to damage and healing effects.

HOWEVER.... If someone interrupts you with bash or any interrupt skill, the knock-back effect knocks you off the pedestal.

Reasoning: If you can't be healed or protected by friends there is no point for them to stack on you. Their job will be to patrol the perimeter and guard the entrances to make sure no one gets in to interrupt you. And while there are enemies inside, their focus should be killing them first or they will forever be interrupting.

Enodoc

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

An attacker (to the keep) starts channeling the Lower The <Faction> Flag until he brings it to the neutral state by completely removing the flag. If he gets interrupted, the flag stays where it is. A defender can then channel the Raise The <Faction> Flag, to reinstate the flag fully.

Yeah that would work too. Keeps the same mechanics but changes the motions.

If the flag goes past the Neutral State to a new flag being raised, the defender will have to interrupt, lower the opponent's and then raise his flag.

The idea behind the flag dropping back to neutral once it was raised past that state is so that it has to be done in one motion rather than in stages. Allowing the "raising" process to lock in place as well would mean that it could be done incrementally over a long period, with just one second being needed for the final stage, which means that the keep could flip through incremental persistence even if there are still quite a few defenders around. The idea here though is that it should be quite hard to raise a flag if there are still enemies around, since one interrupt would have you starting again.

Suggestion 2: This is the important one. One person lowering/raising the flag is all fine and dandy, but the group he belongs to will still stand around him to protect him and to stop him getting interrupted. Pretty much all interrupts are single target (Deep Breath the only exception and that's melee range), so if he's surrounded by buddies he'll be untargettable and thus he can't be interrupted. So the whole incentive of making the group spread to clear the keep fails, because the most efficient way to flip it is to still hug the flag and not give a rats bum what goes on around.

So here's the alternative I'm proposing. You put the flag on a pedestal, similar to the ones the scrolls are put on. When you approach the pedestal you get the interaction "Climb Flag Pedestal". Like with picking up scrolls, the first person to click it climbs the pedestal and locks the others out. Only one person can be on the flag pedestal.

The pedestal is there to make you stand out and always be targetable. When you are up on the pedestal you can interact with the flag to lower or raise it accordingly. While up there, you are targettable but immune to damage and healing effects.

HOWEVER.... If someone interrupts you with bash or any interrupt skill, the knock-back effect knocks you off the pedestal.

Reasoning: If you can't be healed or protected by friends there is no point for them to stack on you. Their job will be to patrol the perimeter and guard the entrances to make sure no one gets in to interrupt you. And while there are enemies inside, their focus should be killing them first or they will forever be interrupting.

Yeah that's a good point on the stacking of defence, and putting the flag raisers on a different level would probably help that. I guess in this situation you could still allow up to 6 people to go on the pedestal to speed it up if you wanted to, otherwise you'd probably have to reduce the overall capture times.

Alternatively, maybe it wouldn't have to be a true "interrupt". Mobs can interrupt interactions with any attack, so if it worked like an interaction rather than a channelling, any attack would cancel it. That would make it more easy for the action to be cancelled, and could therefore make crowding around the flag less useful, as you would be defending against all attacks rather than just single targets and melee bashes.

ToRelax

Why didn't I see this before making my own thread... whatever.

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting. Being able to interrupt the channel isn't that much of an advantage when you can't channel yourself at the same time. So I really think a simple cap on how many players/NPCs from one faction can help turn the flag would be better, plus easier to implement.

Maulkin

ToRelax wrote: »

Why didn't I see this before making my own thread... whatever.

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting. Being able to interrupt the channel isn't that much of an advantage when you can't channel yourself at the same time. So I really think a simple cap on how many players/NPCs from one faction can help turn the flag would be better, plus easier to implement.

There already is a cap. 6 people.

ToRelax

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Why didn't I see this before making my own thread... whatever.

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting. Being able to interrupt the channel isn't that much of an advantage when you can't channel yourself at the same time. So I really think a simple cap on how many players/NPCs from one faction can help turn the flag would be better, plus easier to implement.

There already is a cap. 6 people.

As far as I know the cap is on by how many players you outnumber your opponent, not how many can actually contribute.
Read my thread for clarification.

Enodoc

ToRelax wrote: »

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting.

The primary reason is to prevent mass numbers being the all-out solution to flipping the flag, while also making the capture an active event rather than a passive one. Currently, flipping a flag requires standing in one place for a while, which is more productive if you have more people there because they can be flipping the flag and fighting at the same time. Larger groups should have a numbers advantage, but not one where you keep stacking more and more people in one spot. The numbers advantage should be about helping to defend the flag-flippers, not being a tug-of-war over how many people you can stack in one place.

ToRelax

Enodoc wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting.

The primary reason is to prevent mass numbers being the all-out solution to flipping the flag, while also making the capture an active event rather than a passive one. Currently, flipping a flag requires standing in one place for a while, which is more productive if you have more people there because they can be flipping the flag and fighting at the same time. Larger groups should have a numbers advantage, but not one where you keep stacking more and more people in one spot. The numbers advantage should be about helping to defend the flag-flippers, not being a tug-of-war over how many people you can stack in one place.

I understand that and agree with it - however wouldn't it help to make the fight even more if there was a reasonable cap on how many players being near the flag is beneficial, yet it doesn't require a channel? That way an outnumbered group that is able to stay on the flag could be fighting without focusing on interrupting enemies trying to turn their flag, enemies just can't turn the flag when you stand on it.
Additionally, I would have it so even one player/NPC was enough to prevent the flag flipping towards an opposing faction if his faction currently controls the objective - that would then be to help groups who can not meet the cap, especially emperors, as it is kind of silly to have your last emp keep turned while you are alive on the flag, killing enemies...
Don't get me wrong - I like your system and would take it any day over what we currently have. I just feel you're making it overcomplicated and not really focused on the reality of the situations the current system becomes a problem in: when you are outnumbered by an attacking force on the flag.

Enodoc

ToRelax wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

I don't really see the point in having to activate and channel something to turn the flag and certainly not to turn it back. This is giving the advantage for larger numbers, who can afford having some people not fighting.

The primary reason is to prevent mass numbers being the all-out solution to flipping the flag, while also making the capture an active event rather than a passive one. Currently, flipping a flag requires standing in one place for a while, which is more productive if you have more people there because they can be flipping the flag and fighting at the same time. Larger groups should have a numbers advantage, but not one where you keep stacking more and more people in one spot. The numbers advantage should be about helping to defend the flag-flippers, not being a tug-of-war over how many people you can stack in one place.

I understand that and agree with it - however wouldn't it help to make the fight even more if there was a reasonable cap on how many players being near the flag is beneficial, yet it doesn't require a channel? That way an outnumbered group that is able to stay on the flag could be fighting without focusing on interrupting enemies trying to turn their flag, enemies just can't turn the flag when you stand on it.
Additionally, I would have it so even one player/NPC was enough to prevent the flag flipping towards an opposing faction if his faction currently controls the objective - that would then be to help groups who can not meet the cap, especially emperors, as it is kind of silly to have your last emp keep turned while you are alive on the flag, killing enemies...
Don't get me wrong - I like your system and would take it any day over what we currently have. I just feel you're making it overcomplicated and not really focused on the reality of the situations the current system becomes a problem in: when you are outnumbered by an attacking force on the flag.

Yeah a reasonable and functional cap would be fine for the current system, I just wanted to explore a concept where flag capture was based on an active system rather than a passive one, as to me, that would be more interesting and better for the "immersionz" (a flag changing state just because someone happens to be standing next to it doesn't make much sense).