Gameplay on 4-Team Maps...

[jitspoe]

I'm not sure how many of you have experience playing on a 4-team map, but there are a few issues:

- Quite frequently a team wins by default, obtaining all of the points in the round, without even having to do anything.  For example, say the blue team eliminates the yellow team, and when combating purple, the last players on each team simultaneously eliminate each other.  Red wins 3 points, and nobody else gets anything.
- Not quite as bad, but a team can just wait for all the other teams to get eliminated then attack the remaining one and get all the points.
- If a whole team is eliminated, players on that team can't respawn, however, players on the other team can.  A team could get eliminated at the beginning of the match, and if flagcapendsround isn't set, the rest of the teams could be running around trading flag captures while the eliminated team has no chance of getting any points.

These issues tend to make 4-team CTF less enjoyable as cheap tactics are usually the most effective.  We need to come up with some better rules.

[Eiii]

Keep flagcapendsround set.

Or, make it so that eliminated teams can still respawn.

[b00nlander]

maybe score 1 point for each kill like in siege mode? that would force teams to go out and battle the others.

[Briton]

Make all the four player levels a 1-flag scenario, scoring at your own base. Also put on 10 second respawn like in the DeepRage server. This will mean that no teams can just sit idle but instead have to reach the flag and return it to their own base.

[jitspoe]

Or, make it so that eliminated teams can still respawn.

If we did that, you could eliminate everybody on a team, and then take their flag.  It would also take forever for rounds to end.

[P!nk]

Post removed

[jitspoe]

The one flag thing is up to the mapper, really.  The auto-kill is an interesting idea, and could potentially counter other issues in the game (ie: excessive defense once a team has the lead), but it adds more complexity and tries to force people to play a certain way.  I could see it causing a lot of problems.

Enabling respawn probably wouldn't be the best idea, especially since you get points for holding the flag when a team is eliminated, so some people could come into the base of the eliminated team, sit on the flag and spawn camp them, racking up tons of points.  Perhaps what we could do instead is disable respawning for every team once one team has been eliminated.

For the scoring, there are a couple alternatives to winner takes all:
- Every live team gets a point when a team is eliminated.
- The team that eliminated the last player gets a point.  Either all or none of the other teams would get points on a suicide.  It would probably have to be the former as the latter could be abused -- people suiciding to prevent grabs and getting no point penalties.
- Each kill counts as a point, as b00nlander suggested.

In the first idea, a team could still get points by sitting back and not doing anything, but the other teams would get points as well.  The second would ensure that only teams partaking in the battle get points, but it might just be the team snatching the last kill when another team did most of the work.  The last idea would probably lead to rather quick matches, as it wouldn't take a team long to total 50 kills.  In siege mode, the offensive team used to have such a distinct advantage that the whole defensive team would just suicide so they could attack.  With the new mode, though, it's about even with 5v5.  Defense can get 6 points and offense can get 6 points.