[Gameplay] Flag locking. Broken or not?

Are you talking about the item that locks the flag?

Yes.

Sounds like a bug to me. I get the impression, from reading the item, that it just stops the enemy from taking the flag for a certain amount of time.

Yes. 5 minutes.

What sounds like a bug?

I think locks are fairly balanced. Without locks all you need is one guy who happens to be passing by middle after you cap it. Within 30 seconds its flipped to neutral and 30 more seconds and its completely flipped. I would even say that requiring two defeats the purpose too. Lets say you have 2 guys with invis scrolls or teleports and they keep running into your base. A) You have to babysit that part of your base or B ) you simply apply a lock and they have to wait before they can capture it again. I've played several games where both teams were making extensive use of locks and the flag still swapped hands every several times in the game. All it requires is getting to the flag around the 1 minute mark and preventing the opposing team from locking it for the next 1:30 seconds(2 for a full flip). That seems to me to be a fairly good challenge for the sake of flipping a flag.

How are locks balanced? You can permanantly lock portals.
They last 5 minutes, and can't be removed. (I originally thought maybe there should be a lock-removal item but i think making locks count as -1 enemy there would be better now.)

You can add another lock at the 4:30 mark to refresh the lock. The enemy can never ever cap then.

Not to mention you can teleport right to the friendly buildings by the lock so there is no way for the enemy to stop you from relocking it.

Have you even used them? You said you did, but you didn't abuse them right if flags swapped hands, and they ever captured your flags in the first place.

You have to protect the flag in advanced. If you are giving them the time to get close enough and lock it you are doing it wrong. You stand there with 3 heroes and they can't lock it because before they can you kill them. We would go in about 4:00 / 4:30 and try to relock the flag but with their whole team there they were able to fight us off a few times and cap the flag. If you can't cap the flag back its because you're not doing it right. You could say well then go in at 3:00 and relock it! But then you are relocking the flag every 3:00 and they could still show up to stop you if they noticed you were doing(not to mention you are using 5000 gold every 30 minutes to lock a single flag! thats over 15000 for all 3). Locks are good gameplay mechanic in my opinion because they give you time to do things other than flag camp.

My suggestion to slightly weaken locks is to add an item that unlocks them. However not fully! For instance you spend 1000 gold. Now you go use it on the flag and the lock's duration is decreased by 1 minute. If two of your teammates got this item and then rushed a flag at the 3:00 mark you could go and overtake it and suprise the other team because they still think they had 2 minutes more on the lock! I think it would be important to make the unlock item have a 1 minute cooldown to prevent someone from spamming them and taking a locked flag all by theirself.

lol 5k is nothing. Just get a non-Itemdependant hero - k we dont have so many Demigods right now, but torch would be one - and perma-lock it. They're really strong imo. Ok, i could just use it against AI, but still its kinda hard. We've to play + try out more, unless i used it against human players i cant really say it Op or not.

No, not even if i played against other players i can tell. This is just something that matters in team/organized play. So.. think we've to wait abit longer to argue about Item+Hero balances.

So long,

Aspartem

those locks are wicked i say keep them they play a big role in this game and they only stay about 1-2 minutes actually

Changing them to a -1 Demi sounds interesting to me. A 5 minute "you can't touch this flag, lawl" button seems a little silly.

Oh, and is there a visible graphic when a flag is locked?

No visible grahpic - this needs to be implied imo, but not the main problem. I think perhaps making the cost 400 and decreasing the capt. time to 3 is ok...

But sitll, best solution is making it have a -1 effect or make an unlocking item (cant lock flag for 5 minutes )

Quoting Brentmeisterr,

reply 7

You have to protect the flag in advanced.

No. You're wrong.

You can perma-lock your friendly flags so they never get capped.

Both teams can perma-lock their portal flags, and whoever gets the middle flag first can permalock it the whole game.

I'm sorry, but you don't understand the issue here.

Also they cost 500, not 5000. 30 minutes would be 3k not 5k. The cost is fine, they just need to not be broken. And i'm also sorry your team didn't know who to use scroll of teleportation.

Actually it should work like this:

Flag lock lvl 1(only shows up in 1vs1 games):

$250 cost
Counts as 1/2 of a Friendly Demigod at the flag (50% slower cap speed for the enemy.)
5 minute duration.

Flag lock lvl 2(only shows up in 2vs2 & 3vs3 games):

$500 cost
Counts as 1 Friendly Demigod at the flag
5 minute duration.

Flag lock lvl 3(only shows up in 4vs4 & 5vs5 games):

$500 cost
Counts as 2 Friendly Demigods at the flag
5 minute duration.

So it scales by the number of players. In 1vs1 it counting as a person would be permanantly locking.. In 4vs4 or 5vs5 it would be pretty worthless.

Hm i think -1 Demigod is already enough to give a well benefit. I'd say, change it but start with -1 Demigod per scroll and let them cost 800-1000gold

Why should they be cheaper than a mere potion >.<

no asp you miss the point..

In a 1vs1 game making it count as 1 friendly would make the flag locked just like it is now. .5 demigod would be 50% cap speed, basically.

In a 4vs4 or 5vs5 game I imagine just counting as 1 person wouldn't be worth the 500 gold.

Inno you are the one who doesn't understand. Its probably my fault for not being clear enough. To lock a flag you have to be nearby it. To be nearby it you need to be alive. You go to the flag(that is locked by the other team) before they relock it. You stand there. When they come to relock it you kill them. You take the flag after another minute. You lock the flag. Its that simple.

Here is a nice step-by-step to prove my point

A ) Flag is locked by light first in the game.

B ) 4 Minutes later the evil team gathers around the flag.

C ) 4:30 Light player comes to relock the flag

D ) He is killed by the opposing team before he can apply the lock.

E ) 5:30 flag is flipped by the dark team to neutral

F ) 6:00 flag is flipped by dark team to dark and locked

Process repeats with light team IF they are coordinated and strong enough to wrest the flag from the dark team 4:00 later.

If light team tries to lock sooner they might get it for another five minutes but then the dark team can be there earlier to defend next time.

What locks do for the gameplay is almost force a team battle with all the demigods to be fought out every 4-5 minutes for control of the flag.

P.S. Locks scaling for game types seems like a good idea but might not be necessary considering the fact that there might only be two flags in a 1v1 game.

Its that simple.

Not really. You're assuming you're only dealing with one demigod, otherwise you wouldn't be able to kill him that quickly. Teleportation scrolls are cheap. Send the whole team in and while everybody's chucking firey doom around, somebody slaps a lock scroll on the flag. It isn't balanced if the counter assumes a total lack of communication on the other side's part. Also, they could do a lot of damage while you camp by attacking in other places. Buy everybody a lock scroll and two teleportation scrolls. It's 600 for the teleportation scrolls, and you only need to use one of the lock scrolls. Not that pricey for a five minute lock.

P.S. Locks scaling for game types seems like a good idea but might not be necessary considering the fact that there might only be two flags in a 1v1 game.

That's why it's essential in 1v1. You simply cannot let half the map's flag's be locked for five minutes. That's an aeon in this game, and a lot of the map to go uncontested. Plus you can't say that you can camp the flag and not have a (better than) 50% chance of being killed instead of your enemy. He'll be prepared, you won't.

Again, I'm forced to support an idea by innociv because I didn't think of it first.

And, as noted on IRC, a TorchBearer could teleport in, use Frost Nova, relock the flag, and run away.

Yep.
Use the $100 scroll of teleportation(not that it's broken! I love those things! Just because somethings useful doenst' mean it's too good or needs higher cost. I HATEEEE when devs nerf things because people like them ;[) on the portal there, frost nova, lock flag, scroll of warping out.

It's broken. I don't know why I made the topic "Flag locking. Broken or not?" It should of just been "Flag locking. Broken." sorry..

And actually TBO thought of the basic idea. And the problem was brought up during a chat on IRC. Something about "WE'RE NEVER GOING TO FIND NEW EXPLOITS IF YOU KEEP ABUSING THE SAME ONES"

I think that it should be an early-game item only (somehow ). Maybe high level Demigods can cap the flag regardless of lock?

The thing is that early in the game, you can easily kill the extra creeps for more XP, it only really becomes important later in the game when you can't just wtfown the extra creeps with an AoE attack for free extra XP, whereas early game the AoE can easily handle 1x Minotaur. I don't see why you should get bonus XP for it though.

I honestly say remove it. Its not necessary imo. It ruins smaller brackets (1v1/2v2) and is still broken in bigger brackets. Right now, i think the most competitive forms will be 4v4/5v5 (bigger team, bigger maps and so more room for strategy) and then -1 Demigod would be cool, but it would be an overkill for 1on1.

Until anyone gets a good idea, we should remove the thing. Or if not, make it more expensive. Since its very strong let it cost 2000-3000. I mean the big Scroll of Teleportation, where you can port anywhere on the map costs 2.2k which is useful, but not as strong as the Lock. +reduce the timer to 2-3.

Ah, now i got an idea. What if, we set a cooldown for buying these things, and the Cooldown is higher than the duration. Say: One of your team buys the Lock, so no Locks are available in the shop anymore and a 5min cooldown starts. Now we reduce the locks duration to 2-3 min. So you can lock a flag for 3mins but the cooldown for the next flag is 2min mean, you give the opponent time to react.

Dont argue about numbers, numbers can change, argue about the mechanic.

So long, Aspartem

"WE'RE NEVER GOING TO FIND NEW EXPLOITS IF YOU KEEP ABUSING THE SAME ONES"

lol, QFT.

I think that the best implementation may to slow captures by 50%. Scales nicely, not exploitable.

Quoting innociv,

reply 19

"WE'RE NEVER GOING TO FIND NEW EXPLOITS IF YOU KEEP ABUSING THE SAME ONES"

Ah yeah. That was me

"I think that the best implementation may to slow captures by 50%. Scales nicely, not exploitable."

Would be nice as well.

Without locks people can just abuse blink/teleports/invisible to capture portals which is gay. I think locks are necessary but are a little powerful right now. One of these three solutions should fix the problem.

1) Halve the time it locks the flag to 2:30.

2) Double the cost of the item to 1000

3)Add an unlock item for 1500 gold.

If one takes place, you just need to defend a flag for 2:30 minutes. If people keep suiciding to cap it they are going to lose a lot of money real quick and you're going to get a huge advantage.

If two takes place its going to cost a lot of money to lock all the flags all the time. Therefore adding strategy to which ones you lock. If you spend 3k every five minutes, the other guys is just going to straight up own you.

If three takes place, it won't be as invincible, but still require a lot of strategy of when to use it and which character buys it.

I think the larger the map the longer the lock should last because on larger maps 2:30 wouldn't matter. Yet on the current map I think it would be about right. Taking locks out of the map really just make the game more about chasing than forcing team fights which are more fun than just running around capping all the time.

If we were just going to make it slow the cap it should be more like slow it by 200%. Instead of taking 1 minute to cap the flag it would take a full 3 minutes.

Innociv I love how you make this comment "Just because somethings useful doenst' mean it's too good or needs higher cost. I HATEEEE when devs nerf things because people like them ;[) on the portal there, frost nova, lock flag, scroll of warping out."

So you can apply it to scrolls of teleport but not to flag locks? Just because flag locks are useful doesn't mean it needs to be nerfed. I agree it probably does need some adjustment, but the idea behind it is necessary.

-BlueFire

P.S: Portal flags should take a lot longer to cap regardless of lock because they are much more integral.

määäääh.. nobody reads my suggestion

Partly agree with Bluefire, make it more expensive and reduce the duration. Add a cooldown at the shop after buying the scroll and/or add a unlock item.. tada, everything is fine.

If it's still broken afterwards.. remove it from the game. Maybe GPG can introduce it again in the future.

So long, Aspartem

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[Gameplay] Flag locking. Broken or not?