AvD Re-vamp

*Disclaimer: For the purpose of this idea, I am removing SG's from the game. This does not mean I actually want them removed, and this suggestion can work with sg's, it's just easier to outline my idea without them complicating things

Currently the way FF works, everything revolves around the sg, this includes pub-CTF, league-CTF, and any and all forms of AvD. But since this is a suggestion for AvD I'm ignoring the CTF topic.

Suggestions are as follows:

Elminate the need of the sg in AvD. Right now it just seems to be inbalancable. You make the SG strong enough to be effective in AvD, it'll rape the shit out of CTF games, or make it too weak, and it fails all over.

So what's the purpose of the sg in AvD and if we scrap it, how would defense hope to win a round? The purpose of the sg is to create choke points throughout the map, slow the enemy down and let your defense die once or twice before they move on to the next choke point.

Problem is, it is not effective in AvD maps, as already stated a billion times on the forums. It dies too quick, and since Offense is just too fast 95% of the time, you can't even fall back to minor choke points.

Gonna use dustbowl as examples since it's easiest.

When the sg's go down at the start of the first round, and offense blasts out of the gates, what does defense usually do? We fall all the way back to the cap area cause we know it's practically impossible to defend the minor choke points in between.

Also when the sg's go down at the start of stage1, all it takes is one super star to get the flag, jump past the heavier slower units, then race to the cap. Even an sg at the cap can be ignored by this super star.

So what i'm thinking is: how about built in turrets or other destructable units on the path to the cap.

These turrets could be designed many different ways to actually balance out that specific area in that specific map.

For example, you could have a couple turrets sitting outside the gates to stage1, these could be slightly more powerfull, with higher amounts of hp's and once they're dead they stay dead.

Then you could have a 1 or two turrets sitting at the grenade pack. Ideally (and even back in TFC) this was the next choke point for offense to break through, in FF no big deal to get by. But this is a minor choke point, you don't want these to defend like the main gates turrets, you just want them there to provide a little cover to possibley hold that choke point for longer than what's currently the average time of 5 seconds. Once these are destroyed they stay dead.

Then moving on to the buildings, you could have 1 or 2 turrets in key locations. They could be even a little weaker, but since they're closer to Red's base, we could have these one's even repairable by engineers, not instantly repairable, something an engineer would have to wack many times to get it back up. The turret wouldn't be repairable until it's actually dead (ie: the engineer can't keep it alive by whacking it, but can bring it back to life once it's dead). (This is just one example on designing one of these objects, there are too many variations to count when it comes to designing them)

Mini turrets like this laid out across the map in key locations, would completely eliminate the dependancy of an inbalancable item like the sg, they would still serve the purpose of the sg with none of the current draw backs. It would stop the 1 or 2 superstars who join offense blow past the initial line of defense, and cap on an undefended capture point because none of the D could fall back in time.



Another suggestion I have is to actually make use of the different classes in AvD. Right now on offense, an entire team of sollies could accomplish everything they want to do. All it takes is a single player to accomplish the goal of walking over top of a location (not that interesting really). Even those maps like fusion, or genesis is the same concept, just layed out differently, but essentially all we're doing is running over a location to win the game.

Design a map where instead of a capture point, it's a giant destroyable wall, that only a demo man can destroy. Offense's goal in that case would be to keep a demo man alive while he try's to lay a detpack down.

You could have a map where each cap point is defended by a tank, the tank might not need to be destroyed,or maybe it does, you could make it so the tank's are the actual objectives to destroy in each stage of the map. The tanks would offer their support in damage, it could track on and target incoming people, or it could just keep shooting at set intervals at a specific location, again all customizable for that specific situation.

Or a map that has say a giant shield protecting the final cap point, and the only way to lower the shields is to have your team's snipers shoot at targets to disable them, and only make it so snipers can do it, that would provide a function for the snipers, and a reason to defend your teammates.

Or objects in the game where only a spy can manipulate to get past it.

Things like this would also stop that one superstar from ignoring the entire defensive team and capping with his leet awesome skills, make him rely on his teammates just as much as they're going to rely on him in his function.

Really there's like an infinite list of possibilities to use interactive objects and objectives out there.

If map designs were more focused on that sort of stuff, you wouldn't need to spend all sorts of time, just coming up with simple map geometry that attempts to balance the map, cause seriously you guys could design a thousand maps make a million class specific tweaks, but it's still the same old objects every map. You could invest your time instead in designing interactive objects that utilize the classes and give them a purpose, as far as creativity goes I would think you'd be more interested in those kinds of implementations than map geometry.

If the maps were designed in this manner, class balance wouldn't be as big of an issue. You wouldn't need to to go "Well this is a great idea but because of <insertclasshere> it breaks the whole idea, so we either can't use the idea, or we have to make a million different tweaks to make it work, and risk breaking something else in a different map.

In Closing: It is my personal belief that the game is actually very close to being balanced as far as CTF goes. You take two equally skilled teams and the final results will be pretty even, and to me that means the game is very close to being balanced. It is a huge diversity in skill that makes CTF fail for the most part. Use this belief of a fairly balanced game and go into designing AvD maps to work for you, not design something finding out it fails because of a specific class, then go "Well this is inbalanced this class needs to be fixed".

Ps. Oh and as far as the use of the engy goes in AvD, I'm sure if stuff like this were implemented we could definately come up with ideas to keep the engy still fun to play in AvD (Not like continously wacking your sg until it inevitibley blows up in your face was really that fun to begin with)