Seal Rock needs a slight tweak

[Nikoto]

I made an account just to express how much I fucking hate Seal Rock.

It's a lot.

[Cidel]

Your reasoning regarding pushing the other teams from the base is not incorrect, but after playing the map dozens of times over the last week I noticed that this is not what happens. When a team is significantly ahead and the other two teams decide to focus it, there is nothing anyone can do. We are talking about a situation where everyone in two teams is sitting just a few seconds' walk outside the spawn. The 15 sec invulnerability is just not enough in that case. Players in the team under siege will just keep respawning and running to their deaths. If we were talking about smaller parties camping outside respawn point, the invul period would be enough. But that's not the case when you have two whole teams there.

Right. That can happen. After playing this mode for years, I've seen everything happen from the assaulted team pushing through the weaker and thinner team because they just have that much stronger players (they have the runaway lead for a reason), repeatedly respawn and run out like bots only to die without accomplishing anything, and a few rare instances where majority actually sat at the invincible base area until the other teams had no choice but to leave/engage eachother. Additionally, these coordinated assaults rarely last long because at these points of the game, S rank tomeliths spawn more frequently and when they do, one or both opposing teams are going to drop any temporary truce and forget about pinning down the winning team and dogpile on the gold tomelith like their lives depend on it because squirrel attention spans.

I have seen teams with 700+ points and over 300 points lead over the second place just melt away and finish third. Not once, not twice, but multiple times. I have been both in the giving and the receiving end of this. Unfortunately, this map is just too wide near base, so it allows two teams to camp a third one without coming into contact with each other. If it was narrower, it would be impossible to coordinate that type of action as the two aggressor teams would end up engaging each other somewhat.

I've seen fantastic throws too. Too many to count. Teams that have that high of a lead dropping to third usually only had that far of a lead from sheer opportunism and probably don't have many players with Battle Highs because they were probably chasing tomeliths all game and wanted to "let them fight," and got blown-up spectacularly when the other teams finally noticed. I've also seen people in these double-team situations get impatient or baited into engaging the other team because they can't help themselves but to get greedy and attack the closest thing their tab target picks up without distinction, so oftentimes these double-teams tend be short-lived and only last as long as the remaining timers of the active tomeliths.

In an ideal world the team under siege could position itself completely to the right or completely to the left, but that is impossible to coordinate. When people respawn they just rush whoever they see first.

I mean, in an ideal world, the leading team would always be under focus fire as the 2nd and 3rd place team should be stabilizing the score discrepancies every chance they get, but we all know that isn't what happens majority of the time. As you said, because "they just rush whoever they see first."

People need to understand that this 3-way conflict is intended for 2 teams to have the capacity to keep 1 team in check if they get too far ahead; that was the "comeback factor" the devs imposed on this mode, but it's up to the players to have enough awareness to utilize the other losing team against a common enemy. I've said before, but Frontlines modes are often nuanced game theories like the prisoner's dilemma or stag hunt where you need to consider what course of action will have your team's best interest in mind on what team to temporarily "cooperate" with to be put in an advantageous position later. Getting double-team is just an expected feature, otherwise you end up with situations that I'm sure we've all seen where a losing team obstinately attacks the other losing team out of revenge, short-sightedness or ignorance.