VonBruinwald, on 21 May 2020 - 06:58 AM, said:
Thanks for the feedback. Just realised I didn't specify that both teams would have a drop-off point for intel. The idea was for the game to play symmetrically. To avoid the issue you picked up on.
To be clear, I was saying that the current scouting mode gives incentive to fight. I think this is a good thing. A symmetric mode would be more focused on capping.
VonBruinwald, on 21 May 2020 - 07:19 AM, said:
Given that mechs now have to run back and forth between the drop-zone to capture intel individually instead of chaining nodes it would make a straight cap rush risky. Sure, 4 locusts rushing caps could probably turn the game faster than anticipated but by the time they've ran back and forth a few times those assaults could be in a position waiting for them.
Optimal strategy would be for the lights to to rush the nodes furthest away first and capture the ones closest to their base last as their main force is duking it out. But then you end up with lights fighting lights all over the place. Most games will probably end with the usual death-ball but if there's mechs capping you can't afford to ignore them.
So if I understand what your suggesting, it's basically a mix between incursion and scouting mechanics. My apologies, I didn't read the OP carefully enough. The problem I have with this (an incursion) is that it leads to a lot of running back and forth with little to no fighting. Shuttle power in incursion isn't fun, at least not for most players.
Any game mode needs to have a focus on combat to keep players interested. Conquest does this well by forcing players to hold caps. Get to a location, obtain local superiority, cap point, move to the next spot. It's dynamic and doesn't have a lot of wasted movement (most times). Running back to your base isn't fun because you are moving away from the enemy. The mode needs to encourage multiple fights, not just splitting up.
It's not as bad of an idea as some people in this thread are making it out to be, but I also don't think it would be particularly fun or popular with the community. I play lights quite a bit and I certainly don't want to shuttle nodes all match, just because that's the best way to win the game mode. 1v1'ing someone over a cap point is fun. Running nodes for 5 minutes is boring.
I'd rather have something like triple domination where there are multiple circles and you need to try and control the majority of them in some fashion (e.g. cap 2 of 3 or get more total time on all of them). Could be even better in something like FP. It gives the players clear locations to go, it requires tactical decisions to split up forces, and it forces players to hold ground to maintain the caps rather than just cap and run. If you deathball to one circle you lose on caps, but if you split forces you risk getting overwhelmed and losing on kills.
PGI has conquest mode and domination modes already, so from a technical standpoint I think this should be possible?