FreeGameDev

So, I took a break from RE for a while and recently came back (today, actually!)
I thought of a random idea.....hear me out:

Situation: A team that is perhaps not doing so hot (perhaps 3 flag captures down, a large losing margin, etc)

Solution: Give the underdogs a bot of sorts. Not any bot. Remember 343 guilty spark from halo? Yeah, imagine a floaty thingy with an inaccurate SMG helping out the losing team along a path embedded into map design. Invincible, and stays for only 30 seconds and then disappears with a cooldown period.

The result: A little bit more strategy and competition. Did those things ever hurt anyone?

(Yes, it is a handicap)

Wrong forum. moved.

If I understand that right, sounds similar to a Deathstreak from CoD to me. The team should be rewarded for sucking? That's not a path I'd go.It seems to bring more casuality to RE(meaning, winning or losing is no longer tightly bound to the player skill).It is a far greater feeling of success to be on the losing path and win out of own strength and motivation, then being on the losing path and winning (partially) because of being helped by a robot.

I quite like the idea as a mutator. Could also assign a few drones to the losing team.

This reminds me of something which used to be done in S4 League, which they called "team balance". The idea behind that feature was that the losing team would get some boosts. In S4 League, these were the boosts:
- Lower to no SP (Impulse) degeneration when holding the Fumbi (comparable to our bomber ball)
- A small damage boost

Seeing as our impulse system is used differently, we obviously can't do this.
Personally, I'd like to reuse the buff-when-near-affinity system we currently have, which is constantly on in hard gauntlet for the defending team.

The power of this buff would, of course, be dependent on how far the team was behind.

Will it make the game more casual? Yes, and no. For the players who aren't good at the game, they will be given a better opportunity to win, although a buff system like this is unlikely to change the way the match goes, as it will disappear again if the losing team catches up with the winning one. As an additional bonus, the actual good players will more often end up playing against players which, after the buff, will be more around their level, making the game harder for them. Of course, this would be useless for clan matches, although I would still like this to be a server-side variable instead of a mutator.

What about automatic team balancing insetad, like you see in Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2? Granted, RE is not played in rounds, but with sufficient warning, it shouldn't be that much of a shock to either team.

I think the feature already exists, it's a matter of making it clever enough to run on its own when the time is right.

Evropi {l Wrote}:I think the feature already exists, it's a matter of making it clever enough to run on its own when the time is right.

The current "map balance" feature does not shuffle the team according to any score or so, it just moves everyone into the opposite team (excluding the bots) to switch the spawn points in asymmetrical maps.

I'm all pro, but I can imagine situations where you don't want this to happen every time, so a mutator would be nice. Sounds cool to me.

I like this Idea(especially about guilty spark)