Cea said:
All this is imo
Well it is probably mostly the map, but i would disagree that the concept is sound.
How many true, balanced and successful game types punish the the punished, DM your punishment is death (yes i know, lose weapons and all that but that sorta comes with death any way doesn't it?), they don't further punish you, not like you now run slower or anything.
CTF, your punishment is they get an extra point, this is the same with what ever the ball game that comes with ut2003/4 is called.
Assault its simply time, same with siege.
Not necessarily. In CTF, the punished are certainly punished more, and deservedly so. Being punished in CTF isn't just out-capping your opponent. It's decimating their base, their players, etc.. Now, the trick is to allow the punished to get back into the game. The couple of times I played Onslaught, this was most definitely not really a possibility. If one team takes control of the game, it's over. Invariably, one team gets control of all but the last node, and at that point, the game is over. Since you can't attack and destroy nodes that you are not linked to, you have to focus on that one node that protects your base. So, essentially, you have 16 people all trying to defend a single node.. which is fine, but one side has a huge advantage, and the other side doesn't.
So, how do you balance it? Well, two possibilities come to mind.. don't allow players to automatically spawn at captured nodes. I think this was a huge mistake, because players find themselves immediately back in the game, and in a good spot, no less. Force players to do a little travelling. Don't allow them to transport immediately from their base to any node, but only from one node to another node. An alternative is to allow teams to destroy any node that the opponent owns, but perhaps not allow them to capture it unless they are linked. In that approach, you could allow a team to cut off the opposing team's supplies, and their link to the node you are protecting. It adds a little more diversity, I think. What it also does, is it spreads the game out a little.
I like the idea of assets, but I think you're right that they go a little overboard in Onslaught, and it certainly unbalances the game. On the other hand, a team that controls all the nodes but a single one.. well, they
should be able to win the game. There's a fine line between balance, and unbalance. If you give the winning team too much advantage, the game is over before you're even a minute into it, because that single extra node will be the difference. If you don't give the winning team enough advantage, the game is a perpetual stalemate, because while you might control all but that last node.. you can never gain full control over it, and even in the short time you do, you never get a chance to hurt their core.
I think if T:V had a game similar to what Thrax suggested for T2, it would do quite well. UT handles movement from one location to another with transportation.. I don't like that. There's no real skill involved. A bit of management, sure, but that's all. In T:V, however, you have skiing. It makes things far more skill oriented, I believe, because players who excel at skiing will obviously get to their destination faster than players who don't. Even on larger maps, the game will have an inherent quickness to it, because of skiing, and balanced vehicles. If they can balance out the advantages and disadvantages associated with capturing the mini-bases, it would be perfect. It would also be great for the players who prefer the larger scale war scenarios to the more sport attributes.
I think that kind of gametype would make everyone happy.
