Crystalline Conflict tweak for Casual/restoring casual play

[Zofian]

If one has played enough CC, they will have noticed that people who are in the deep end of playing ranked CC (which to keep things civil I will just say that I have no interest in Ranked until PvP is overhauled) sometimes decide to go and punch down on people that just want to play casual, effectively raiding the casual queues and ruining it for those who just want to do a 5v5, maybe win, maybe lose, have some fun, earn some tomes.

A fair solution to help combat powergaming in casual CC would be that, when your team has the crystal in the enemy's checkpoint or beyond, your teams back-third of the whole field becomes some kind of poison zone for enemies, inflicting significant damage (5k damage per second regardless of shields) to any enemies that enter and remain in it. That may sound odd, but the point is that there shouldn't be any in it- the issue is that only overinvested powergamers from ranked, who do not belong in casual, would chase or hunt all the way into your teams backfield at this time, to get a kill while their team is fighting on the crystal on the opposite side. The poison zone at your base's end would disable if/when the crystal gets pushed back through the enemy checkpoint towards the middle and your teams base direction). The ranked-players-raiding-casual element that makes the experience unfun wasn't something you saw on day 1, but it's quite common now. Please recalibrate casual CC for casuals with this fix. No genuine casual players will be negatively impacted by this.

Where the 'poison' zones would reach when you have pushed the crystal into the enemy checkpoint or beyond:
Palaistra- From your base to the bottom of the stairs that touch the middle area. (and horizontally across the map either side, partially covering the speed zone yes).
Volcanic Heart- From your base to the top of the stairs that touch the middle area (and horizontally across the map either side, again covering some of the speed zone).
Cloud Nine- From your base to the bottom of both sets of steps that touch the middle area.
The Clockwork Castletown- Pretty much from your base up to the portal door ahead, and from here horizontally across 4 of the 5 flipboard zones and covering the checkpoint side.

[ThaCa]

If Ranked had something worthwhile to aim for, the queues would pop and there would be less high ranks in your Casual matches.
Yet they decided to put same match rewards for Casual so it's vastly faster and easier to farm once you have locked down your rank.

[Valence]

Realistically you can't expect ranked to always pop no matter what, and crystal players also like playing other jobs than their mains. I'm not gonna try out other jobs in ranked, that would be griefing. At best a handful in the top 30 may be able to pull this off for obvious reasons, but well...

I do understand the frustration though, and I actually don't know what the matchmaking system takes into account when splitting players between teams besides a rough balance between melees and ranged jobs. Does it try to spread ranked players quietly so it's more balanced or not? No idea. What if there is only one ranked player in the full roster? What if said ranked player plays an off job or a job they're discovering, and another is playing their main jobs?

I'm not sure telling ranked players that they don't belong in casual is very productive though. Your idea is changing/butchering the mode so much that it would effectively puts me off the mode altogether, not gonna lie.

[Elfidan]

I don't understand why you would want the back of your field to be poison when you're in the lead. Confirming kills is an important part of the mode and turning tides in battle. If anything, the majority of abuse comes in the form of being pinned in your base when you're on the defensive side.

I do agree they need to have separate prize pools though.

There really should be some sort of matching based on your lifetime comp ranking. It's not really fun to go in and smash a bunch of people who are new or haven't played the mode that much.

[Zofian]

Basically I think that in order to foster a genuine competitive scene and support what appears to be an attempt to become an esport, there needs to be gameplay distinctions between casual and ranked. In counter strike for example (when it was good), you can pass through your teammates in casual mode, but in competitive (ranked) your character is solid and this makes things harder as you can fall to an enemy because your teammate got in the way, and also the other way around (not that this will work for CC at all, again just an example). The damage and HP situation is identical between modes in CS apart from armor being automatically applied/bought in casual and can only carry 3 utilities instead of 4. Crystalline Conflict will benefit from gaining ruleset/gamplay distinctions between Casual and Ranked, with ranked players then being able to take pride in playing a harder ruleset mode. Basically under this change to casual, you would now only get the 'privilege' to use discretion to go hunting to the enemy's backline in specific moments when your team is actually up against the wall fighting on the crystal at your end. Backline hunting indeed can seal a win, but this advanced thing should become something you only have to contend with when you step up to the 'advanced' mode of Ranked. After this change would be implemented, I would no longer feel the need to refer to it as 'powergaming' because it would only take place in the ranked ruleset mode where it belongs.

On top of this rule tweak to Casual, perhaps a rule tweak could also be done to Ranked itself whereby you can no longer see enemy Limit break information etc, to improve the harder nature and add to the 'prestige'- but this may also create a greater need to add more communication options for Ranked. Implementing these rules distinctions and maybe a couple of others should attract people to Ranked and shorten queues. There would also need to be decent and exclusive rewards for ranked of course. Probably some kind of exclusive currency that doesn't have an 'end life' due to buying everything. But somehow also something that doesn't attract widespread use of cheats- so not limited time rewards. It may even be feasible to make it so you can win an extra day to your sub, once per week or two-weeks, based on some performance/results metric- because that's not entirely useful to cheater/burner accounts. Maybe a CC ranked variant of a wondrous tails book would be good, where the top or middle prize is a free extra day, if you get enough wins crossed off or something (and a few objectives like getting wins with a number of different jobs).

[Valence]

Alright. Question: how do I practice for ranked on a gamemode with different rules? How do I learn a job on a mode that's basically played differently? Do I just have to bite the bullet and learn it in ranked?

Jokes aside anyway, while having the enemy team running rampant in your spawn and everywhere is one of the first frustrations that I also experienced when starting in CC, you also learn that when this happens, it essentially means that the game is lost due to an utterly irreconcilable discrepancy in skill and pressure between both teams. It's a strong indicator of the game having reached that point, and no matter what you do to alleviate this to happen, you'll still have the enemy team crushing yours at the crystal instead, so.. Not totally sure what it would achieve in fine, for a very convoluted and hard to implement solution that would also raise so many questions...

I do think that considering ideas to make spawns safer is not necessarily bad though, but when thinking about it, the very spawn tower is safe. What would it change to have a larger safe area or not? You'd still be camped just outside.

The very idea to hide LBs is not a good thing either, because that's what it makes the games tactical in ranked (high level). It's what generates so much counter play and skill play that removing it and making everybody blind would not only make them even more powerful, but also hard to counter, or just relying on pure luck. No thanks.

I don't understand why you would want the back of your field to be poison when you're in the lead. Confirming kills is an important part of the mode and turning tides in battle. If anything, the majority of abuse comes in the form of being pinned in your base when you're on the defensive side.

I do agree they need to have separate prize pools though.

There really should be some sort of matching based on your lifetime comp ranking. It's not really fun to go in and smash a bunch of people who are new or haven't played the mode that much.

What do you mean by separate prize pools? A general pool that can be obtained by both modes and one specific to rank? Or one exclusive to casual and one exclusive to ranked?

[Elfidan]

I would think exclusives to both so neither suffers from a decline in engagement as we see ranked experiencing on most data centers at the moment.

[Valence]

You do realize that this would mean even more ranked players in casual all the time if just to farm the casual rewards then?

[Elfidan]

If there were some sort of sorting that wouldn't be an issue though. Why are you so grumpy these day?

[Astralrisk]

I would think exclusives to both so neither suffers from a decline in engagement as we see ranked experiencing on most data centers at the moment.

I don't know why casual needs exclusive rewards, it already is incredibly accessable and the most efficient place to farm out achivements/xp/tomes without the fear of getting demoted.