Return of Reckoning

So there are a few things that I encoutred during the last few weeks/months which I think should not happen in a scenario.

Issue One: Forced Passivity
At the moment scenarios like Khaine's Embrace or Phoenix Gate have a very simple strategy to win with minimal risk. Sit on your flag and defend it against the attacker. AFAIK you still get some points for killing an enemy. Thanks to the WC near by you will eventually pull ahead in kills and therefore in points. After 14 mins you get scaled up to 500 points and go home with your rewards.

If this is a constant fight then problably everyone would be happy and conclude that this was one of the better SCs. The issue arises when both teams do this. Then you sit around for 15 mins and do nothing. Because taking iniative as a single group (and probably getting killed) just validates this strategy for the opposing team. This actually happend to me a couple of times and is somewhat infuriating.

The problem I see here is that there is no mechanism that forces you take initative (With just defending your flag you have nothing to lose).
Proposal 1
One way to deal with this in all scenarios would be to introduce a check similar to the dominating one. Or rather two checks.

Was there a significant increase in points in the last X mins? (Check for doing the objectives)
If not then how many players have been in combat in the last X mins? If lower Y% end scenario without rewards.

The idea would be to force the people out of passivity. If they have to engage to avoid ending the scenario without rewards opportunities would arise even for single players to make an impact. At least that is my hypothesis.

Proposal 2
Dealing with each scenario mechanic individually so just waiting/defending is not a winning stratgey anymore.

Phoenix Gate:
I believe the simplest solution would be to put both flags into the middle (not too far away from each other). If the opponent doesn't try protect his flag you can just end the scenario quickly. However this would lead to a bit more zerging in the middle and reduce the impact of single players which currently can steal the flag while you keep the rest busy.

Khaine's Embrace:
To be honest I don't have a good solution here. Maybe someone who actually likes that scenario has some input.


Issue two: Siege weapons
There already was a feedback thread about siege weapons in scenarios. I can't find it atm. Anyway. I don't really have a problem with siege weapons in general but with a couple of these in particular.

Mourkain Temple:
The biggest problem I see here is that the, I think it's called, Bauble can be carried and dropped within the range of WC siege weapons. It's true that you don't get points if you're directly at your warcamp but the edge where you still get points is not that far away.

So what you can do is carry the Bauble to the edge where you still get points and use the siege weapons to turn an even scenario into a rather onesided affair once you get hold of it. Effectively denying your opponent every chance from recovering when they lost the first engagement.

What also happens quite frequently is that one team gets pushed back into the warcamp and drops the bauble directly beneath it. Now they can effectively deny the superior team from picking it up. I don't know if this is more of a bug where the object is supposed to reset after a certain amount of time. However I think it would be beneficial if the bauble resets immediately if it gets dropped within the 'no points' area

Proposal
Extend the 'no points' area to edge of the 'temple' (the grey stone area). So that you only get points when you're on the grey temple 'property'. Maybe this has to be combined with a reduced range of the siege weapons. So that there is a significant piece of land between getting points and being covered by a canon.
Additionally the bauble should reset rather quickly if dropped within a no points area.

Phoenix Gate
The purpose of siege weapons was, as far as I know, to create means to reduce spawn camping. Now the issue here is that you kind of need to get to the spwan of the opposing team to capture their flag. So having siege weapons that can actually reach the area of your own flag is well... ridiculous.
If you're only marginally better then the opposing team you will never be able to win any engagement near the scenario objective.

Proposal
Remove the siege weapon that protects the entrance through the main gate.

So this actually took quite long. It will probably take even longer to implement the things I suggested or the might hopefully turn up in the discussion. I hope this helps if not well at least I tried.

Regarding issue #1:

I love the idea of an sc forcibly ending if both teams just want to cheese it by sitting on their flag. I've also seen both sides doing this in Khaine's and it is super annoying.

As someone who loves that scen, a second option could be that each flag will have a timer that triggers the flag to erupt and kill everyone around it (in theory, all the ppl just sitting there trying to force the other team to come to them) x minutes after it's been captured to discourage endless flag-sitting AND create a sense of urgency when attempting to take an enemy's flag - which would also eliminate the less-common issue of the enemy team pushing you to back to the spawn and simply not capping your flag so that they can farm you. Perhaps as an added incentive to fight and not just sit on the flag, maybe when the single-flag eruption takes place any deaths of players of that flag's faction will count as kills for the other team? Or is that too mean?

I would love to see some brutal consequences for those who wish to circumvent the spirit of scenarios because those people make the game suck.

CegeePegee wrote:Regarding issue #1:

I love the idea of an sc forcibly ending if both teams just want to cheese it by sitting on their flag. I've also seen both sides doing this in Khaine's and it is super annoying.

As someone who loves that scen, a second option could be that each flag will have a timer that triggers the flag to erupt and kill everyone around it (in theory, all the ppl just sitting there trying to force the other team to come to them) x minutes after it's been captured to discourage endless flag-sitting AND create a sense of urgency when attempting to take an enemy's flag - which would also eliminate the less-common issue of the enemy team pushing you to back to the spawn and simply not capping your flag so that they can farm you. Perhaps as an added incentive to fight and not just sit on the flag, maybe when the single-flag eruption takes place any deaths of players of that flag's faction will count as kills for the other team? Or is that too mean?

I would love to see some brutal consequences for those who wish to circumvent the spirit of scenarios because those people make the game suck.

Best add a screen popup with a text like: Kain is dissapointed with you, now feel his wrath and die in fear.

Theseus wrote:
Best add a screen popup with a text like: Kain is dissapointed with you, now feel his wrath and die in fear.

I like it.

Would be cool to have EC as a permasc in rotation, as a lot of these scenarios require two groups working in tandem in order to succeed (LF and KE necessitate this) - but that is rarely ever the case, which leads to these drawn-out/spawn camping fights.

CegeePegee wrote:Regarding issue #1:

I love the idea of an sc forcibly ending if both teams just want to cheese it by sitting on their flag. I've also seen both sides doing this in Khaine's and it is super annoying.

As someone who loves that scen, a second option could be that each flag will have a timer that triggers the flag to erupt and kill everyone around it (in theory, all the ppl just sitting there trying to force the other team to come to them) x minutes after it's been captured to discourage endless flag-sitting AND create a sense of urgency when attempting to take an enemy's flag - which would also eliminate the less-common issue of the enemy team pushing you to back to the spawn and simply not capping your flag so that they can farm you. Perhaps as an added incentive to fight and not just sit on the flag, maybe when the single-flag eruption takes place any deaths of players of that flag's faction will count as kills for the other team? Or is that too mean?

I would love to see some brutal consequences for those who wish to circumvent the spirit of scenarios because those people make the game suck.

If the timer is announced/visible then such an eruption wouldn't kill anyone. Afterall most people who 'defend' the BO aren't afk they deliberately chose to stay on the flag. They just move back to spawn, wait it out and move back on. Since it's take 10 seconds to capture the flag there isn't really an window of opportunity here.
A shorter capture time with suprise eruptions would maybe help to some extend. But then this could ruin scenarios that are well balanced and one team is only able to slowly push. So you need some kind of check if there is any fighting/action going on anyway.

Regarding the spawn camping. Yeah that's also an issue but I think at some point the dominating stuff kicks in and ends it quickly.

For Mourkain temple:

A good solution would be that the Bauble (objective) is reset if the carrier leaves the temple platform (you know, the stone area) itself. That would force the fight to take place in the active area and would also compliment the design of the map more. It would also open the tactical option of simply knocking the carrier off the platform to reset the objective, if he'd happen to roam too close to the platform boundaries.

Achilleos wrote:For Mourkain temple:

A good solution would be that the Bauble (objective) is reset if the carrier leaves the temple platform (you know, the stone area) itself. That would force the fight to take place in the active area and would also compliment the design of the map more. It would also open the tactical option of simply knocking the carrier off the platform to reset the objective, if he'd happen to roam too close to the platform boundaries.

I like it. That would make this scenario maybe a bit more dynamic instead of a tank holds the objective until he dies.

Achilleos wrote:For Mourkain temple:

A good solution would be that the Bauble (objective) is reset if the carrier leaves the temple platform (you know, the stone area) itself. That would force the fight to take place in the active area and would also compliment the design of the map more. It would also open the tactical option of simply knocking the carrier off the platform to reset the objective, if he'd happen to roam too close to the platform boundaries.

Hm, the problem with this is, that the side with the artifact would just fortify the room and defend the 4 narrow entrances.

Theseus wrote:Hm, the problem with this is, that the side with the artifact would just fortify the room and defend the 4 narrow entrances.

True, but that's also possible and done with the current system. This change might encourage it a bit more but then again you don't have them zerging you at your WC.