Can someone explain the point of Domination to me?

Magdalina · July 2017

Either there's something I'm majorly missing here or the point of this mode is avoiding all PvP possible. The "win" strategy seem to involve running around from flag to flag as fast as possible, avoiding flags with actual people on them for faster captures, then leaving as soon as flag flips and before people show up. There's no point in defending, there's no point in fighting over it with other players, you're wasting your time PvPing rather than running to next player-less flag to flip it asap and move on. The victory literally seems to depend on how much you and your team wanna PvP. If you actually want to fight people, unless you're an op enough group to just rek everything in your way without slowing down, you will lose points and likely lose. If, however, you're content avoiding people as much as you can, skipping all the PvP and just running away from fights and onto next flag, it'll likely be an easy win for you. What on Earth is the point of a PvP mode that punishes players for PvPing?>.<

Sorry for the rant. It's just so frustrating. I want to fight and kill people but I also don't want to lose because I want to fight people in a PvP game

Sigtric · July 2017

Like most control point games, the idea is to fight others for the flags. I would think that 3 teams would make more fights around the flags but something is wonky here. Not sure why this happens.

casparian · July 2017

I don't intend to go back to BGs largely because of this. I don't enjoy Domination even when my team wins, simply because it doesn't put the focus on using abilities to fight and kill other players -- i.e., the activities I associate with the phrase "Player Versus Player"..

CTF and the new Chaosball (it seems) are slightly better than Domination, since they don't actively discourage fighting other players. But they're still not the sort of PVP I'm looking for -- fights in which fighting is the point.

If I could choose only to do Deathmatch and the occasional CTF game, I might consider playing BGs again

Mojomonkeyman · July 2017

I prefer fighting over running. Once I realized that staying & fighting in close proximity of a flag outnumbered and winning those fights will make your points skyrocket, despite flags being capped back and forth, I have huge fun in domination.

It´s actually very fight centric if you just decide for 2 flags to def and cycle between them for defensive purpose.

Azurya · July 2017

Domination = Dull
instead start to look at it from the bright side and have fun!

MurderMostFoul · July 2017

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Once I realized that staying & fighting in close proximity of a flag outnumbered and winning those fights will make your points skyrocket...

This is true for your personal score, but not for your team score or win conditions.

Maybe they should just remove the middle flag?

Mojomonkeyman · July 2017

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Once I realized that staying & fighting in close proximity of a flag outnumbered and winning those fights will make your points skyrocket...

This is true for your personal score, but not for your team score or win conditions.

Maybe they should just remove the middle flag?

Obviously, when you win those outnumbered flag fights, you will cap the flag back and score for your team. I`d even say that my high uptime home colored flag(s) are main contributors to my approx. 75% winrate soloQ.

Magdalina · July 2017

Sigtric wrote: »

Like most control point games, the idea is to fight others for the flags. I would think that 3 teams would make more fights around the flags but something is wonky here. Not sure why this happens.

If the idea were to fight for control then fighting should award more points. As it is, defending or capturing a point via fighting generally gives way less points than you'd earn simply running around PvFlagging...it's legit to the point where if I wanna win Domination and see a player finishing flipping the flag I'm next to, I wait 5 seconds for them to leave to PvFlag faster and gain more points>.< Likewise if there's an enemy player running to the flag I just flipped it's easier to avoid fighting and just skip by to your next flag. It's stupid.

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

I prefer fighting over running. Once I realized that staying & fighting in close proximity of a flag outnumbered and winning those fights will make your points skyrocket, despite flags being capped back and forth, I have huge fun in domination.

It´s actually very fight centric if you just decide for 2 flags to def and cycle between them for defensive purpose.

I don't know exact numbers but in my experience defending flags always results in a point loss. Was in a few nice groups with whom we'd defend a flag from most of both enemy teams successfully but soon as we started doing that instead of avoiding fighting and just running to flags we fell behind in points. We had fun because we actually PvP'd and did so successfully those times but we lost the game

HoloYoitsu · July 2017

The problem with this mode is there is no reward for continually holding a flag (like increasing point gains each tick). The second issue is how fast the flags can be capped. These two design flaws combine and result in a meta where the best way to win is just run around capping flags and never get bogged down defending anything.

HeathenDeacon · July 2017

whoever playtested this mode should be fired.
i've been playing DOM modes in pvp games for over 20 years and this is hands down the worst designed one i've ver played.
it should have taken a playtester all of one game to say this needs to be tweaked.

MurderMostFoul · July 2017

HoloYoitsu wrote: »

The problem with this mode is there is no reward for continually holding a flag (like increasing point gains each tick). The second issue is how fast the flags can be capped. These two design flaws combine and result in a meta where the best way to win is just run around capping flags and never get bogged down defending anything.

Increasing flag cap time is an interesting solution. It would make running around, avoiding fights and capping everything harder, and it would make defending more viable.

Simple and perhaps very effective.

HiImRex · July 2017

That moment when you kept enemy players perma stuck in the respawn screen w a 15:1 solo KDR and the leaderboard try hard on your team hate tells you cause he couldn't 3v1 fast enough to win

#Domination

xSkullfox · July 2017

Yep circle around the outer flags is the best way to win.
The cap time is good now, increasing the cap time removes the pacing from the game, staying 1 min in the cap zone is boring since a match duration is about 8-12min.

#domination 23-1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUP9v_mcw4E

Thogard · July 2017

You do want to get in fights, but only when you have the most flags.

What I'd like to see is a longer respawn timer for domination. That would add a real penalty for death and prevent the guys who died from then going to immediately cap an unwatched flag next to their spawn while the rest of their team is still being killed. It would really disincentivize those solo NBs who run around capping while everyone else fights.

BNOC · July 2017

This issue has been mentioned about 200 times now.

There's no punishment to players who want to do what you've described - Run to whichever flag is unguarded and run it home/cap it uncontested, go back and see the other two teams are fighting on that flag now (Eww, actual PVP, I better run away to the other one), cap that one as well - rinse and repeat.

I've suggested these two things before but I'll say them again. (Added a third I think's an issue)

1. CTF and Dom aren't the problem, it's the 4v4v4 aspect -

You wouldn't be able to just run and cap a flag if in CTF both (just 2) teams only had one place to go or in DOM if they only had 3 places to be.
CTF Right now, If I'm at Flag C and someone has grabbed B to run to A, there's no way I'm getting there before he's capped.
Dom right now, two teams fight over middle (or any flag) - The rest are capped by combat avoiders.

4v4 solves all of these issues - But it's implemented now so it is what it is.

2. And my personal favourite solution (still implementable)

DON'T reward players with Leaderboard score, Ap, Exp, Rewards or anything else if they've not hit a damage/healing threshold for the match.

It's literally so easy to do ~250k damage, but too often am I seeing 1m+ on my stats and <100k on guys who are top with 4 caps and 0 kills.

3. Change leaderboard scoring. Noobs want gold items, they can currently get gold items by just capping points for a week - Sort out the scoring.

This stops CTF games ending in 1m 30s and it stops Domination teams just running around the map capping flags.

Yes this might stop bad players coming in to BGs, but they shouldn't be getting matched against me or other experienced player in the first place so that's a matchmaking issue.

Magdalina · July 2017

BNOC wrote: »

This issue has been mentioned about 200 times now.

There's no punishment to players who want to do what you've described - Run to whichever flag is unguarded and run it home/cap it uncontested, go back and see the other two teams are fighting on that flag now (Eww, actual PVP, I better run away to the other one), cap that one as well - rinse and repeat.

I've suggested these two things before but I'll say them again. (Added a third I think's an issue)

1. CTF and Dom aren't the problem, it's the 4v4v4 aspect -
You wouldn't be able to just run and cap a flag if in CTF both (just 2) teams only had one place to go or in DOM if they only had 3 places to be.

CTF Right now, If I'm at Flag C and someone has grabbed B to run to A, there's no way I'm getting there before he's capped.

Dom right now, two teams fight over middle (or any flag) - The rest are capped by combat avoiders.

4v4 solves all of these issues - But it's implemented now so it is what it is.

2. And my personal favourite solution (still implementable)
DON'T reward players with Leaderboard score, Ap, Exp, Rewards or anything else if they've not hit a damage/healing threshold for the match.

It's literally so easy to do ~250k damage, but too often am I seeing 1m+ on my stats and <100k on guys who are top with 4 caps and 0 kills.

3. Change leaderboard scoring. Noobs want gold items, they can currently get gold items by just capping points for a week - Sort out the scoring.

This stops CTF games ending in 1m 30s and it stops Domination teams just running around the map capping flags.

Yes this might stop bad players coming in to BGs, but they shouldn't be getting matched against me or other experienced player in the first place so that's a matchmaking issue.

Um...I think you're confusing modes here. Domination is where you capture one of the 4 flags for score, Capture the Flag(lol) is where you capture one of the opposing team's relics and bring them back to your home base for score. There're no/almost no issues with CTF(which should be called Capture the Relic because that's what it is) because it's impossible to capture a relic if your own is missing. If everyone's relics are on the move, no one can score at all. That mode would also be insanely boring with just 2 teams, would just be Deathmatch #2 with whoever wins cashes in a relic. 3 teams actually make it fun and add strategic thinking in there.

CTF only ends in 1.5 mins if 2 teams haven't the foggiest about how the mode works/consciously choose to treat it like Deathmatch.

BNOC · July 2017

Magdalina wrote: »

BNOC wrote: »

This issue has been mentioned about 200 times now.

There's no punishment to players who want to do what you've described - Run to whichever flag is unguarded and run it home/cap it uncontested, go back and see the other two teams are fighting on that flag now (Eww, actual PVP, I better run away to the other one), cap that one as well - rinse and repeat.

I've suggested these two things before but I'll say them again. (Added a third I think's an issue)

1. CTF and Dom aren't the problem, it's the 4v4v4 aspect -
You wouldn't be able to just run and cap a flag if in CTF both (just 2) teams only had one place to go or in DOM if they only had 3 places to be.

CTF Right now, If I'm at Flag C and someone has grabbed B to run to A, there's no way I'm getting there before he's capped.

Dom right now, two teams fight over middle (or any flag) - The rest are capped by combat avoiders.

4v4 solves all of these issues - But it's implemented now so it is what it is.

2. And my personal favourite solution (still implementable)
DON'T reward players with Leaderboard score, Ap, Exp, Rewards or anything else if they've not hit a damage/healing threshold for the match.

It's literally so easy to do ~250k damage, but too often am I seeing 1m+ on my stats and <100k on guys who are top with 4 caps and 0 kills.

3. Change leaderboard scoring. Noobs want gold items, they can currently get gold items by just capping points for a week - Sort out the scoring.

This stops CTF games ending in 1m 30s and it stops Domination teams just running around the map capping flags.

Yes this might stop bad players coming in to BGs, but they shouldn't be getting matched against me or other experienced player in the first place so that's a matchmaking issue.

Um...I think you're confusing modes here. Domination is where you capture one of the 4 flags for score, Capture the Flag(lol) is where you capture one of the opposing team's relics and bring them back to your home base for score. There're no/almost no issues with CTF(which should be called Capture the Relic because that's what it is) because it's impossible to capture a relic if your own is missing. If everyone's relics are on the move, no one can score at all. That mode would also be insanely boring with just 2 teams, would just be Deathmatch #2 with whoever wins cashes in a relic. 3 teams actually make it fun and add strategic thinking in there.

CTF only ends in 1.5 mins if 2 teams haven't the foggiest about how the mode works/consciously choose to treat it like Deathmatch.

I'm not confusing modes - I've highlighted references to both - the problem doesn't change.

Magdalina wrote: »

There're no/almost no issues with CTF(which should be called Capture the Relic because that's what it is) because it's impossible to capture a relic if your own is missing.

You're talking about kids that walk around and cap points, avoiding combat. What's happening, as I explained it two teams will be fighting at a relic (Greens are fighting at reds base) Purple will go to the green base and take their relic and cap it uncontested. It's the same problem as DOM.

Magdalina wrote: »

That mode would also be insanely boring with just 2 teams, would just be Deathmatch #2 with whoever wins cashes in a relic.

Ok, so you would always have to actually win a fight to cap the relic, how insanely boring. (Eww PvP)

Magdalina wrote: »

CTF only ends in 1.5 mins if 2 teams haven't the foggiest about how the mode works/consciously choose to treat it like Deathmatch.

I'm Red, we jump down and go to Green and meet halfway - We start fighting. In the meantime Purple have ran to Red, grabbed the relic and ran back, uncontested - How do you solve that? Because I can't get from halway between Green and Red to Purples base before they do, no chance.

Magdalina · July 2017

BNOC wrote: »

You're talking about kids that walk around and cap points, avoiding combat. What's happening, as I explained it two teams will be fighting at a relic (Greens are fighting at reds base) Purple will go to the green base and take their relic and cap it uncontested. It's the same problem as DOM.

It's not a problem because it's green's fault if this happens more than once. Either leave people home defending your relic(2 go, 2 stay) or send your own sneaky scout to take purple's relic(in which case they won't be able to cash in your relic even if they do capture it).

Also, why are you actually spending time fighting at relic base while your relic is home? You don't need to win and you don't need to be out of combat to take it, grab the relic and go. It does feature fighting if all the teams understand the rules but it's fighting at the right time and place. You fight to defend your relic, defend your relic carrier and defeat enemy's relic carrier, you lose the match by fighting on top of their relic for 5 minutes when you can just grab it and go(due to how insanely easy it is to take it's nigh impossible to stop actually taking it but is possible to kill the person afterwards).

Ok, so you would always have to actually win a fight to cap the relic, how insanely boring. (Eww PvP)

It'd be same mindless fight to kill that Deathmatch is. Now don't get me wrong, I love Deathmatch(even tho I suck at it

) but we already have it, we don't need Deathmatch #2. As it is, CTF has both fighting and some strat/teamwork involved beyond "kill them all". With just 2 teams, it'd be just running back and forth between 2 bases, with it being super obvious where everyone goes next.

I'm Red, we jump down and go to Green and meet halfway - We start fighting. In the meantime Purple have ran to Red, grabbed the relic and ran back, uncontested - How do you solve that? Because I can't get from halway between Green and Red to Purples base before they do, no chance.

Why are you - all of you - fighting halfway? It's like objective based PvP. Think of it like Cyrodiil: you're EP, a large enough group to make a difference and you're in the open field near Arrius(which belongs to EP, like it should) which has AD's scroll. You run into a large-ish AD zerg and have a heroic fight there in the field. In the meanwhile, DC caps Arrius and gets the scroll. Did DC cheese something out? Not really, it was you and AD that didn't pay attention to the objective getting captured(and specifically you as EP that didn't even leave any scouts at Arrius to know what's going on). DC were just playing the objective.

I used to think of it the same as you until I realized you can't give relic in without having your own and had some great 3-team PvP once all the relics were taken. I'm not very good at BGs but I've won CTF with getting 300 points behind in the first few minutes of the match - I just didn't let the winning team have their relic at all. And yes, it featured a whole lot of PvP because all of the winning team tried to blast me down and my team tried to defend me. It was great:)

That's just the thing though, the "no score until you relic is home" restriction encourages PvP in CTF and offers opportunity to prevent PvRelic only scoring. But there's no such mechanic in Domination as far as I can tell. You always can cap the flags and you always get points for it, and you never have any incentive to actually hold your flags once they're capped so it's PvFlag all over.

BNOC · July 2017

Magdalina wrote: »

What on Earth is the point of a PvP mode that punishes players for PvPing?>.<
I want to fight and kill people but I also don't want to lose because I want to fight people in a PvP game

You said that.

Magdalina wrote: »

It's not a problem because it's green's fault if this happens more than once. Either leave people home defending your relic(2 go, 2 stay) or send your own sneaky scout to take purple's relic(in which case they won't be able to cash in your relic even if they do capture it).

Then you said that, which is it?

Also, you can leave people defending your relic in a 4v4, in a 4v4v4 the combat avoiders will just go somewhere else and your team will be less effective.

To me the problem to me lies in both CTF and DOM.

Magdalina wrote: »

Also, why are you actually spending time fighting at relic base while your relic is home? You don't need to win and you don't need to be out of combat to take it, grab the relic and go. It does feature fighting if all the teams understand the rules but it's fighting at the right time and place. You fight to defend your relic, defend your relic carrier and defeat enemy's relic carrier, you lose the match by fighting on top of their relic for 5 minutes when you can just grab it and go(due to how insanely easy it is to take it's nigh impossible to stop actually taking it but is possible to kill the person afterwards).

Because I don't want to just turn up, grab the objective and get out of there.
You're not inspiring PvP, you're inspiring scaredy cats who want to sit and hug their base.

Magdalina wrote: »

It'd be same mindless fight to kill that Deathmatch is. Now don't get me wrong, I love Deathmatch(even tho I suck at it ) but we already have it, we don't need Deathmatch #2. As it is, CTF has both fighting and some strat/teamwork involved beyond "kill them all". With just 2 teams, it'd be just running back and forth between 2 bases, with it being super obvious where everyone goes next.

IMHO, there's no strategy with PUGS.
With Premades it literally already turns into a deathmatch (Which is fine, honestly) The best PVP team caps, there's no BS to it.

It's all redundant really isn't it, because if they could drive enough players in to BGs and give people the choice of gamemode, I'd never PUG either DOM or CTF as they are.

Magdalina wrote: »

Why are you - all of you - fighting halfway? It's like objective based PvP. Think of it like Cyrodiil: you're EP, a large enough group to make a difference and you're in the open field near Arrius(which belongs to EP, like it should) which has AD's scroll. You run into a large-ish AD zerg and have a heroic fight there in the field. In the meanwhile, DC caps Arrius and gets the scroll. Did DC cheese something out? Not really, it was you and AD that didn't pay attention to the objective getting captured(and specifically you as EP that didn't even leave any scouts at Arrius to know what's going on). DC were just playing the objective.

We've just wiped, it's the start of the game, we've just capped and are going back as a team - Few options.

The problem is EP and AD are fighting at arrius for a scroll, DC can see that and go and take a scroll on the other side of the map instead, completely uncontested (maybe there's a couple AD there)

So you're saying, let a 4 man pile on your 4 man whilst you run to the objective (that you're never now going to reach with the constant speed debuffs and snares) - You ultimately wipe in that situation and are now completely out of it, just because you tried to chase some combat avoiders down.

Or I can leave my 3 man to get wiped by 4 whilst I try recover a relic from the other 4 and then escort it back myself - They're not good options to me.

I don't know, I don't like anything that caters to noobs, and at the minute, it does just that.

Magdalina wrote: »

I used to think of it the same as you until I realized you can't give relic in without having your own and had some great 3-team PvP once all the relics were taken. I'm not very good at BGs but I've won CTF with getting 300 points behind in the first few minutes of the match - I just didn't let the winning team have their relic at all. And yes, it featured a whole lot of PvP because all of the winning team tried to blast me down and my team tried to defend me. It was great:)

Hey, I'm not knocking the games I've played, I've had some great games and never do badly. I'm not even saying it's a problem every time, but too often am I seeing cowards that are in there for something other than PvP and it shouldn't be that way.

Magdalina wrote: »

That's just the thing though, the "no score until you relic is home" restriction encourages PvP in CTF and offers opportunity to prevent PvRelic only scoring. But there's no such mechanic in Domination as far as I can tell. You always can cap the flags and you always get points for it, and you never have any incentive to actually hold your flags once they're capped so it's PvFlag all over.

I'm with you on the DOM thing obviously and maybe the CTF issues resolve themselves with better matchmaking, punishments to players who don't do X and whatever else.

But as they are right now, they're not always enjoyable and whilst running away from people more powerful than you in Cyrodil might be a good strat, I don't think it should be rewarded in BGs and that's what I feel like they're doing on both of these game modes.

Magdalina · July 2017

BNOC wrote: »

<many things> (to avoid gigantic wall of text lol)

I am against purely PvFlag encouraging mode which Dom currently seems to be. I'm in favor(though that is a matter of taste, I understand people preferring strictly Deathmatch) of objective based PvP such as CTF. Being objective based means that fighting for the sake of fighting is no longer the goal though so yes, sometimes you need to stop/avoid fighting and focus on the objective instead. Similar situations often arise in Cyrodiil for example, when EP and AD need to stop the bridge death farm and go defend their keeps/scrolls. It is possible they will get more ap/kills on the bridge but they will likely lose some objectives by doing so. However, there will be epic fighting at the attacked keeps if they get there in time.

You say AD and EP were fighting at the keep and DC got the keep on the other side of the map, but you were not fighting at the keep. You were in the field, carried way by the fighting, and they used the front door, you just let them get away with it. I actually hate sneaky playstyles but I don't view it as such in CTF, it's simply playing the objective. And once you notice this, you can react to it, even if they sneak capture your relic once that's only 100 points. Go take THEIR relic. Even if you don't succeed this should get them off your relic for sure. If they're actually moving as a whole 4 man they're leaving their relic a sitting duck. Go grab it. If there's just one sneaky runner grabbing your relic time after time, either kill him or if he's too fast get their relic and don't give it in(or give it in then instantly go after it again; it will take some time to respawn, but they also probably won't be guarding the empty stand in anticipation of the respawn...). They won't be able to add anything to their score until you die in this case. There can be different strategies involved! It's actually a mode that caters to noobs the least in a way because it has some mechanics ^^ Now obviously that's imho, you totally don't have to like it, but CTF does have mechanics encouraging PvP and therefore makes sense as a PvP game mode.

I kind of like CTF NOT being about straight face to face "who hits harder" contest. There are issues with it(like insane speeds at which stamina builds can run, whereas my streak is disabled with relic, I feel speed should be reduced so it's more possible to catch a stamina relic runner), but overall it's pretty fun. It definitely depends on the team a lot, but imo it's actually easier to win CTF than Deathmatch in a way. Deathmatch is like...if you're losing, you're losing. If it's 400-100, you aren't winning this and there's nothing you can do. CTF you can very much flip around. My favourite win so far was against a team who had 400 points and enemy's(not ours) relic sitting at their homebase waiting for their relic to respawn...and then I ran in, Meteor'd them and got their relic before the other relic they had got cashed in

And my team(a pug, but they learnt) actually came out and defended me so I was able to get it home, then that other relic's carrier got careless and died so we got that relic home too and won

CTF can get unbearably frustrating when people just treat it like Deathmatch though, so many times I'd bring enemy relic home and be 2 steps from cashing it in then the enemy would grab our relic right under my nose(while the whole team was elsewhere fighting because reasons instead of defending our relic or me with the other relic) >.< But that's puglife for you lol.

Waffennacht · July 2017

I wish it said on the screen our relic has to be home to score, it's frustrating watching everyone standing at base and I the runner have to go get ours back just to score lol

Thogard · August 2017

CTF is a great mode. Magdalena gets it.

If a team beats you in one min, you deserve to be beaten. The best defense is grabbing their relic so they can't cap.

FloppyTouch · August 2017

Every game in bgs is death match to me Idc about winning just getting as many kills as possible. My team mates hate me but it's how I have fun lol

leepalmer95 · August 2017

Flag simulator where if you actually stand and fight players you usually lose.

Fantastic pvp gamemode for people who are actually bad a pvp but want to feel like they've won.

Betsararie · August 2017

most likely to make you not enjoy yourself and wish you were playing deathmatch.