Suggestion: A way to mitigate the deathball strat and dishonorable kill problems | Forums

[Ulffhedinn]

I think everyone has noticed the huge increase in deathball issues going on over the past 4 months. Its getting worse. But there is a way to make this strategy ineffective. And it has to do with a basic mechanic the devs already use.

Currently when you get a kill you get points toward the score. Currently, if you get a dishonorable kill: 2 or more VS 1; the game subtracts a little bit from the score gained by the player.


Issue: Deathball Strategy
Basically all team members roam together as a unit, and pick off players; or non-strategically rampage like a horde into each point and due to the time mechanics and spawn mechanics of the game; it forces an opening in score accrual that nearly all non-organized groups will not be able to come back from without great skill and some luck.
Also, it forces negative feedback from the community; and It also creates a frustratingly non-competitive environment for team play. As only one strategy is available to combat it, which is to deathball in return and hope for a victory. If you do not stop it though, the match becomes moot and clearly over in the beginning, as a comeback is frustratingly near impossible.


Suggested Fix:
Utilize the current in game score decrease mechanic. However tweak the numbers a bit to bring about a larger punishment for dishonorable kills.
This new score decrease mechanic would affect not just the players overall scores, but the overall team score in game as well.

New score suggestion:

1v1 honorable kill full points awarded. Execution bonus enabled.

2v1 dishonorable kill: only 5 points for the kill awarded. No execution bonus.

3 v1 dishonorable kill: NO PONTS AWARDED. -25 points SUBTRACTED from ALL players score involved in the fight and 40 points SUBTRACTED from the overall team score for each player involved in the fight.. -120

4 v 1 dishonorable kill: NO POINTS AWARDED. -50 points SUBTRACTED from all players involved. And 50 points in overall score SUBTRACTED per player in the fight to the team score. -200

These score subtractions CAN take away a players abilities if he drops back below the abilities threshold for points. And CAN force the team score to drop below 1000 and stop "breaking" during team matches.


Conclusion:
By using this already available internal system and then tweaking it. We can mitigate the use of deathball strategies and dishonorable kill stratagems by players. The game will focus more on the 1v1 and 2v1 fight. Which is where this game belongs in most match modes.
It will significantly improve quality of life for newer players. Giving them a more focused gameplay with less cheese styled tactics thrown at them.
It will also hinder the use of upper tier skilled players “Carrying” their friends in matches constantly, or simply running around and taking advantage of easy situations that less advanced players find themselves in.
From another perspective it can also make it easier to balance the game as a developer. Because it will contain the fights more appropriately and allow for abilities and hero stat numbers to be adjusted more to the perspective of the “duelist”. Which they currently do anyway.
I think this would be very healthy for the game and the community as a whole.

If you like this idea, and would like to see something like this in play, say so below here, and keep this post relevant.

[Corentin10111]

Nice points system, i like the honor thing but it would brobably be too complicated for the dev team. I think adding self damage when friendly firing could be a solution too.

[Daubenyfanclub]

This......would make 4v4 a dead playlist. Dominion (and breach) would no longer be a fun game mode as the whole point (working as a team) would be completely negated by tools that DISCOURAGE TEAMWORK. I'm sorry, but no. If you 1v4 the last guy when it's breaking, do you seriously want it to not only revert breaking upon kill, but revert all of the team's feats to a degree?

This would foster much, much more negativity than it solves. Deathballing is also counterable by just capping points they're not on (all four of them grouped up can only guarantee having B at all times, A and C would be easy to backcap.)

A theoretical example....

Team A is dominating Team B. Team A has been playing smarter than B and not going it alone when capping points. However, Team B is able to accrue a much higher store of feats and is able to defeat Team A despite Team A's teamwork. Team A is eventually able to force Breaking but the game continually refreshes back out of it due to the fact that when it comes down to the last couple of people, they lose 200 points and their tier 4 feats. The cycle continues until

Team A decides to try to resolve this with 1v1s, which is the only way this system could work.
Team A collectively quits.
Team A finally defeats team B after accruing more than 1500 points in order to still have them breaking when they go in to finish them.

This is NOT how you 'fix' ganking.

[Lord-Krake]

This is a horrible idea.

Also did it happen to cross your mind that war ain't fair and not all people want to fight fair. Promoting a system where the better team loses cause of "honor" is idiotic. I agree that it's nice that you get a bonus for being honorable but this is not the way.