woppin

Join Date 02/2008

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Cataract

Some thoughts and criticisms

Cataract

Games on Cataract take longer than the other two, and the reason for this is fairly obvious: there is a lower proportion of neutral flags to owned ones. Each of the three neutral flags contributes the same War Score amount as the ten other flags do individually, and therefore for a team to gain a significant (capitalisable) advantage in war rank simply holding the flags in the middle is insufficient. There are five flags granted to each team at the start, all defended by towers save for the (erroneous?) gold mine flag.

I don't think this is a particularly good situation, it makes games last longer than necessary, simply due to the losing team being able to keep up in war score without having done anything other than defend the flags they held at the start of the game.

Suggestion: Tie one gold mine to each portal flag. Remove the current gold and cooldown flags.

Which bring me to another point about Cataract that I find strange: both teams START with a cooldown flag. Why should both teams start with one of these, and have it defended by towers? All it really achieves is a slippery slope for the losing team when they lose it, which will generally be mid game, but this doesn't add any strategic depth imo. Most of the interesting play is early on, before those flags are viable targets for capping, and having everyone cast abilities faster seems ill-thought out.

The final point about Cataract is one I brought up in another thread: the health flag is better than the mana flag, and the gold mines can be capped out of tower range, while the cooldown flags can't. This means forces of darkness have an advantage on this map because by doing the logical thing and doubling up along the health lane they can also take the gold flag. The forces of light do not have this strategy available to them, they need to have a strong enough 1v1 player to take down the mana side first tower before they can realistically attempt to cap the opposing gold flag, or they risk losing the health flag if they double up the other way around. Placing all three players on one side will dilute the XP pool and is of course not recommended unless serious shit is going down.

TL;DR: Too many flags on Cat so the meaning of holding the neut ones is diminished. Cooldown flags for both teams is pointless. Asymmetry bad.

ASIDE: We need a two lane map. Someone put a hole in the middle of prison!

demigod

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I completely agree with you on all accounts about Cataract. It doesn't make sense to start off with cooldown flags for each side, at least if they're going to be defended by towers by default. Just lowers everyone's cooldown for no reason. Silly.

On another note, I agree that having another map just like prison except split in half lengthwise would be pretty cool. I love prison for its openness (people have no right to complain about that map being unbalanced) but having a simple two-lane map would be nice too.

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I have to disagree. I think having as many flags as Cataract does is a good thing. Losing a flag is reason for concern, however it shouldn't cost you the game. If there were less flags, this decreases the likely hood of the losing team being able to re-coup from it. Being as it's already difficult to turn games around, which is one of the reasons we have a few Rage Quitters amongst us, I don't really think we need to decrease the already low chances. You might think this is stupid or even backwards, but really, if a game is decided in the first 30 seconds because your team lost the all important flag, then whats the point in playing the additional 44 minutes and 30 seconds to see the outcome?

Perhaps changing what the apparently surpurflous flags do might change up how the map plays out? I agree with your comment about the Health Flags, however, it can be exploited and I've seen it done. I'd like to see the flags moved so that they are protected by the towers as, frankly, that's pretty much how it should be.

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STOP.

Warscore is NOT linear. If you hold 60 percent of the flags you get a bonus, if you got 75 percent you get a bigger bonus(something liked 50% IIRC).

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Quoting Alterschism,

reply 1

For no reason? The reason is to reduce the cooldown. Obviously. And if you don't like this principle then you don't like any of the other maps either, since almost all of them have such flags.

Gaining a Warscore advantage on Cataract isn't that hard. It just requires pushing and flag locking, just like on any other maps. Also, the flags on the side can be capped without being in the range of the towers that are defending it.

Cataract is fine as it is.

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Quoting Spooky,

reply 4

For no reason? The reason is to reduce the cooldown. Obviously. And if you don't like this principle then you don't like any of the other maps either, since almost all of them have such flags.

Oh, I love the implementation of cooldown flags. But other maps have them as neutral flags. Having each team start off with them nullifies the effect, at least until much later when people might start to make capping runs for them. Having a CD flag (or any flag) as neutral makes it a real point of contention all game long. Each team having one on their side doesn't give a big incentive to go after them instead of the other team's gold mines. I never see people go after the CD flags over gold mine flags on Cataract. That's just what I've seen in practice.

And I DO like Cataract a lot. It's pretty nice as is. Infinitely more balanced than Crucible, at least, heh.

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Well, the maths of it simple - if you cap their Cooldown flag it's effects are magnified by 2 due to the fact that they started with it. They lose it, and you gain it. If neither team started with one, it's effects aren't as profound.

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Quoting Alterschism,

reply 5

Oh, I love the implementation of cooldown flags. But other maps have them as neutral flags.

No, on many or most maps you have them right from the start too.

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Quoting Spooky,

reply 4

Also, the flags on the side can be capped without being in the range of the towers that are defending it.

Cataract is fine as it is.

Only the goldmine flags can be capped without being in range of the towers also you will find you can cap both goldmine and portal flags by standing exactly in the middle of them, neither of these things can be done with the celerity flags. As far as I can gather it is because the celerity flag has a smaler radius it can be captured from compared to the goldmine flag. I looked through the lua files but couldn't fine anything on the individual flags.

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Quoting Spooky,

reply 7

Quoting Alterschism, reply 5Oh, I love the implementation of cooldown flags. But other maps have them as neutral flags.

No, on many or most maps you have them right from the start too.

No you are wrong again, the only map that has a celerity flag own by a team at the start of the match is cataract. All the other maps have it as the neutral flag.

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I looked through the lua files but couldn't fine anything on the individual flags.

Have you checked the _save.lua file of the map? That's where I'd start to look if I weren't that lazy atm.

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Thanks Colonel_ Jessup although I had checked cataract's save.lua file before I checked again and found where the flag info is and low and behold

For the goldmine flag:

Flag = {
        # Capture tick occurs every 1.5 seconds
        DarkCapturePoints = -375,
        DarkMaxPoints = -500,
        DarkPrimaryDemigod = -50,
        DarkAdditionalDemigod = -25,
        DetectionRadius = 15,
        LightCapturePoints = 375,
        LightMaxPoints = 500,
        LightPrimaryDemigod = 50,
        LightAdditionalDemigod = 25,
    },

And for the celerity flag:

Flag = {
        DarkCapturePoints = -375,
        DarkMaxPoints = -500,
        DarkPrimaryDemigod = -50,
        DarkAdditionalDemigod = -25,
        DetectionRadius = 10,
        LightCapturePoints = 375,
        LightMaxPoints = 500,
        LightPrimaryDemigod = 50,
        LightAdditionalDemigod = 25,
    },

All flags other then the gold mine have a detection radius of 10 also the goldmine flag file is the only one with that comment about the capture ticks.

The files where in Demigod/dgdata.zip/units/un/b/ and are the *_unit.bp files.

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I tested it by changing the goldmine flag detection radius to 10 and I had to be in tower range to capture the flag. Also I could no longer cap both the goldmine flag and portal flag at the same time. I looked into it further and the portal flag and goldmine flag are space 25 units apart so the portal flag with a dection radius of 10 and the goldmine with 15 allows you to cap both at once.

Whether this is intended behaviour or not I am unsure.

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Warscore is NOT linear. If you hold 60 percent of the flags you get a bonus, if you got 75 percent you get a bigger bonus(something liked 50% IIRC).

    # Percent of flags required for flag control multiplier
    FlagControlFlagPercent = 0.75,

    # WarScore multiplier for flag control
    FlagControlMultiplier = 2,

    # Percent of flags required for minor flag control multiplier
    FlagControlMinorFlagPercent = 0.6,

    # WarScore multiplier for minor flag control
    FlagControlMinorMultiplier = 1.5,

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I really hate Cataract, and the flag imbalance is one of the main reasons.

Unfortunately it's not like Prison is a better choice....

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For me personally it's not that I hate cataract but that everyone plays cataract.

As far as the gold flag goes though, it does make that corner tower inordinately important to protect. If it goe sdown early you have to watch the flag from ninjaing DGs the rest of the game.

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