Request/Idea: Capture The Flag(Frontline: PvP)

[Marxam]

From what I remember, "basic" King of the hill is pretty much just:"Keep more members in the target area to accumulate points."

you just summed up seal rock. Which is still the best FL map atm. Would be nice to have a mode where each team has to kill an opposing party member, but here's the catch. That person is a "boss" that can't be healed but has a large health pool, ex cyclops or primal? Party members will need to protect the "boss" by making sure opposing players dont deal too much damage to it while killing theirs. Bosses can hurt opposing bosses.

In 72 mans there can be a total of 9 "bosses", one per party, that can join the fight and these will act as your flag. First one to kill a boss 3 times wins. The closer you are to loosing the greater your chance at getting a trial/raid boss. If you die as the boss someone else in your party will become the boss. This will repeat until the match ends.

[Zojha]

you just summed up seal rock.

Not exactly - In traditional King of the Hill as I know it from shooters etc, ownership is proximity based. If there are 3 people of Team 1 standing in the marked zone and 2 of Team 2, ownership goes to Team 1. WoW employed that in the bases of Eye of the Storm (And the bases ended up being the drop-off points for the flag in the middle).

In Seal Rock, ownership goes to whoever caps the node first and then stays that way until someone else caps. You can leave the node (hill) alone without it becoming neutral after you left, which isn't an option in classic King of the Hill as I know it. It also allows a single DRK in living dead to prevent capture against multiple enemies for a couple seconds if need be. It is very similar to Arathi basin, except with 3 teams and random nodes, rather than fixed ones.

I admit, it's nuanced and all similarsameish to a degree. But there are differences!

[Hitsuzen]

Aka warsong gulch from wow

[Magic-Mal]

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I don't really like Seal Rock's King Of The Hill because again, they added these extra mechanics to make it not really King Of The Hill..

Bases are done completely with RNG which can make it very unfair. One time a triple S rank spawned in the caves where Flames based. We lost of course. Or a in a close 750/800 to 750/800 game, all a team needs is to have a node spawn close to them by luck and they win. Happened so many times. I hate that.

DC Universe Online(not sure if anything has changed) did their PvP KotH matches really well. If an opposing member was on the base it was contested until they were gone. And stuff didn't spawn in favor of another team. Such as lucky spawns or lucky S ranks..

We may see CTF or some other 2 team modes in 4.0. Currently it wouldnt work but since the new modes in 4.0 were the reason of the gc restriction its highly possible.

1). Why does it not work with 3 teams?
2). What new 4.0 modes? :0

[NargaHuntress]

i like the idea but i can already see teams with 3 of each tanks and nothing else but healers but then again. the pve in pvp never mattered....

[Llus]

I love this game mode, seal rock is the closest you can get to it - but again, if you leave your flag it doesn't auto-neutral; someone has to disable it. GL Ninja! Proximity based objectives (like the bases in shatter) are good; but the whole PVE element of bursting ice leads to 3 distinct play styles - striking dummy practice, premade killer teams and base nabbing.

I'd like to see an inclusion of feast elements with party & alliance wide buffs for bursting a mini-boss (vs a neutral box that doesn't fight back - for those people that like to hit striking dummies in PvP; this would be your chance to really help your team). Along with the status ailments for picking up too many coins. For example if your team is all about killing, in order to get the points from the kill your team would have to nab a drop and potentially stack dmg up to the point an auto-attack would kill you (hello ninja hide!)

[Februs]

1). Why does it not work with 3 teams?

Because it's not viable with 3 teams.

A proper CTF game mode has one objective (ie: the flag). In a 2 team match, it basically works out that one team has the flag, while the other defends it until they can score. The status quo is always the same regardless of who has the flag. If there are 3 teams, however, than whoever has the objective is subject to a 2 v 1 gank. Assuming all 3 teams are equally invested in winning, then scoring would be nearly impossible. The only way it would work out would be if one team is pants-on-head stupid or, vice versa, leagues better than the other 2. This kind of team dynamic would also open the door to easier match fixing, as it would be possible for two full teams to team up against the 3rd. One team would throw the match, while their partner cinched the win.

2). What new 4.0 modes? :0

They haven't announced them yet; however, when they announced the removal of GC restrictions, they heavily implied that the upcoming 4.0 game modes were the reason behind their decision. To most of us, this implies 2-team game modes. The fact that we will still be able to queue up as a specific GC member also implies this, because it would seem that whatever they have planned has no GC v GC lore involved.

To be fair, it could mean a lot of things. They could be overhauling the GC system entirely, for all we know. They could also be simplifying the queue process for the sake of old or outdated rewards that are nearly impossible to achieve with the current GC match-ups. They could be considering a PvPvE MOBA styled game mode. Or, it could just be a simple matter of changing the current lore. They did announce that OMEGA WEAPON would be the next major raid. That particular bit of lore was first mentioned as the reason behind the GC Frontline conflicts in the first place, so if the lore of the main title is taking us back to that plot point, then they could be making the necessary PvP adjustments to suit the new direction of the story. Yoshi-P also hinted that they are considering some variety of open-world PvP later in the Stormblood life-cycle, as well more attention to PvP on the whole (I'll believe that when I see it). In any case, there's a lot in the air right now. We'll need to wait and see what happens when the dust settles.

[Magic-Mal]

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I see.. I can understand that way of thinking with factions teaming up on one for the flag. However in FFXIV it can be pretty hard to kill people lol.. Depending on how good your healers are. Sadly, I've already experienced getting KO'ed by one faction and then watching the other get KO'ed. Considering the fact that the flag would be planted down however, I think after the defending team falls, the other 2 factions will have to fight just to get the flag off xD.

With GC restrictions gone, wouldn't it be alot harder to do win-trading?? Unlike now?

[Chiramu]

This PVP mode could be a small PVP. 8 v 8 Capture the Flag would be perfect , it takes way too long looking for Frontlines. If all you want to do is PVP(and you don't like arena) in the morning quickly you just can't .

[Februs]

Considering the fact that the flag would be planted down however, I think after the defending team falls, the other 2 factions will have to fight just to get the flag off xD.

We've already seen a similar system in both Secure and Seize. It's very rare for all three teams to balance out. More often than not it turns into a 2v1 gank, or one team simply gets ignored while the other two duke it out. Secure was the closest to getting it right back when it was still 72 man because there was an even distribution of outlying camps, but even that could easily turn into a mess if one GC started allying themselves with another.

Bursting targets is also a non-issue. Limit breaks make short work of health bars, and focusing all the action into one spot, fixed or otherwise, guarantees a gank. There is no degree of healing that can beat the pure number supremacy of a 2v1 gank, unless the 2 are playing with only auto attacks or something equally stupid. Party compositions are also random and unrestricted in Frontlines, which makes it an uneven roll of the dice as to who will have the biggest gun or the largest sustain. SE could get around that by implementing forced party compositions (2 tank/2 heals/4 dps), but they'd be harming queues in the process and removing one of the biggest draw factors to the game mode.