[Official] Planning a new FFA

Vatumok

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Calling out all the AoD players.

With changes in progress for the Zombie gamemode and custom kits being introduced in CTF, Free for all is now priority to get some changes to it. Some people still enjoy it but right now we're quite unhappy with the general opinion on the FFA gamemode.

What we consider as problematic in FFA right now:
  • Only kills matter, there is no strategic depth, everyone just piles on and fights.
  • Many games are decided by being lucky with last hits or waiting for the other players to fight it out to swoop in for the kills.
  • Some kits are stronger than others on some maps and especially poison can be annoying as you can win a fight but still be left for dead staying at 0.5 hp.

What we wish to end up with after the changes:
  • Still free for all, as the other gamemodes are all teamed it's fun to have one where personal skill matters.
  • Exciting gameplay for a larger group of people, in the worst case good enough for no one to leave because they dislike it.
  • Winning a fight should be rewarded while losing one should mean something bad. Getting into a fight should be risky.
Right now some possible changes for FFA are:
Removing a point for dying which means you can't just rambo in if you wish to win. This can add strategic depth by having to think about your health bar. Here we could also play more with kits and make players choices in kits/store relevant.

Changing deathmatch into a very short paced elimination round. Players get rewarded for getting kills building an advantage over hiders. It's extra tense because dying means game over. Orbs awarded for kills with a multiplier for top 3. A disadvantage is that dead players can only spectate, however, if the round is short this doesn't have to be a big deal. More about my idea here: http://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/rework-suggestion-ffa.19072/

What do we want from you?
We have some ideas thrown around but there has not been enough good discussion to come up with a good plan of what to do with FFA. It would be awesome if everyone that has played AoD could write a bit on what they dislike about FFA and more importantly, how to improve on it. We want to use this thread to hear your plans for FFA and to discuss them. Even if you don't have a full plan pointers can still be useful. Think about: Scoring, kits, gamemode type, store, player choices ingame, making it exciting for everyone, etc...
If it seems useful I will open a poll to see what the general opinion is, after that we will make a final decision of what to do.


If there's anything I forgot to mention in this thread I will let you know. Questions are of course also welcome. Thanks for reading!

With kind regards,
Vatu~
 
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sessybessy

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waiting for the other players to fight it out to swoop in for the kills.
I have this point happen to me a lot (pretty much every time I play FFA) and it's getting to the stage where I'm not as enthusiastic about playing FFA anymore. I'm not sure if there is a plugin out there but perhaps one that determines a kill on how many hits you get on someone? So if you hit someone till they had 0.5 hearts and someone swooped in and killed them, since you had hit them more...you would get the kill?

I'm not trying to act innocent and say that I haven't ever steal killed, because I have...well accidently. But some people (not going to name anyone) seem to do it deliberately and arguments are caused by this. Operators should maybe have an extra look for people who are kill stealing and if they see a pattern in the way they fight,I.E waiting till someone has low hearts and...going in for the kill...:^), the operator can have a talk with them. I do feel that my last point about the operators watching might stress the staff a bit and I do understand that they want to enjoy the game too and play the game like a normal player.

I have tried to think about more ways to improve FFA but this is all I've got.
-Jen-
 
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Mastersten

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I would say let ffa start with a balance (lets say 100 orbs) and you start with a scorestreak (shown in xp bar) and everytime you hit a player the bar gets filled until its a new rank (EG. Start with xp level 1: scorestreak 1, go to scorestreak 2)
When you kill it fills and when you die it drains.

But there is a sideeffect! When you reach a high scorestreak (lets say 5) an effect will apply like weakness or slowness. Then every x levels this intensifies or increases in amount of effects.

Elaborating this more tho!
When you get killed in a 5+ scorestreak you get set back 1 level.

At the end of the round, the scorestreak you got will be multiplied with the 100 orbs startbalance

Player with highest endbalance wins
(Just a 'small' idea idk)

What will this so
-higher tiered players will need to watch out not to get killed or set back.
-lower tiered people got higher killchanges cause the higher tiered players are weaker.
-no extreme high killcounts cause you only get little bit more scorestreak xp then with hits
-more fun
 
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From the perspective of someone who's just outright horrible at PvP, FFA (and CTF) is the fastest and most reliable way of earning orbs, averaging at about 100 orbs per round as opposed to 0 from zombie (Which happens way often than it should ;-; )

The best way to balance this out would probably be to award orbs proportional to damage induced.
 

3nd3rslayer

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So I have an idea on something that could replace ffa but still has some similarities:
we should have a gamemode where if you kill a player you should get a better kit or an upgrade etc. but to help disadvantaged players, if you get killed several times you get to have an upgrade too for example regeneration bottles or power bow etc.

Another idea is to make a game mode called one in the quiver where practically you have a bow and a iron sword and you only have 1 arrow.
The bow is a 1 shot kill and every time you kill someone you get the arrow back but if you miss you have to go sword only and if you kill someone you still get the arrow back.

Please consider this,
3nd
 
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Another idea is to make a game mode called one in the quiver where practically you have a bow and a iron sword and you only have 1 arrow.
The bow is a 1 shot kill and every time you kill someone you get the arrow back but if you miss you have to go sword only and if you kill someone you still get the arrow back.

Please consider this,
3nd
Ideally, we don't want to have game modes which already exists on larger servers. We want something we can call our own, which players have to go to our servers to have. Also, I don't actually like copying other servers.
 
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sessybessy

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but to help disadvantaged players, if you get killed several times you get to have an upgrade too for example regeneration bottles or power bow etc.
Wouldn't the problem with this be that people would deliberately get killed to move up upgrades? Or have I just completely missed a point?
 
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Wouldn't the problem with this be that people would deliberately get killed to move up upgrades? Or have I just completely missed a point?
I think the idea was, that if you get killed multiple times in a row, then you get an upgrade. With that, you would have to die, say, 3 times to be able to get an upgrade to gain 2 kills. Which probably wouldn't work well for those wanting to earn as many orbs as possible.
 
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3nd3rslayer

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Ideally, we don't want to have game modes which already exists on larger servers. We want something we can call our own, which players have to go to our servers to have. Also, I don't actually like copying other servers.
thanks for having considered it comp.
I understand your point and I see why my idea would not work well. I'll try to think of other options that are more original and that would attract more players.
See you soon,
3nd
 

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I have always liked a gameplay where every player gets a secret role. The goals will be different from player to player. Originally I had an idea like this.
There is 3 different roles you can have king, survivor and hunter. All of them will be secret and no one else does know the role, before the guy is killed. Everyone will get the same kits. The round will last for maybe 5-7 minutes.

The roles will be divided like this.

- One king
- 25% hunters
- 75% survivors

The survivors goal is to protect the king. They do not know who the king is and have to try to protect the unknown for all costs. If a survivor die and the king is protected until the round is done, the survivors still get orbs. The survivors also gets orbs for killing a hunter. If the king dies the survivors has lost.

The hunters goal is to kill the king. The hunters is secret as all the others, and they don't know who the others hunters are(can be changed). The hunters will have to try and find out who the king is, and try to find out who the other hunters are to organize attacks. They only have 5-7 minutes to kill the king. The king can be any of the ones online. If they cant kill the king until the rounds over or all of the hunters die, they have lost, and will receive less orbs. A hunter can receive orbs on two ways. Winning the round(killing the king), and for killing survivors.

The kings goal is to survive the round, but its a + if all the hunters get killed(receive orbs). The King doesnt know what roles the others has(this might be changed so that the king knows who that is the hunters). The king gets orbs for killing hunters, getting all the hunters killed and for surviving the round.

Well this is just an idea I have come up with. I think if this is going to be a strategic gamemode the map has to be small and easy to walk around on and see others.

There is also some negative sides on this idea, like:

- What if the king leaves?
- If there is few on

This idea is so far just a small idea, so please comment on what that could be improved.
 
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Iggish

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So I have an idea on something that could replace ffa but still has some similarities:
we should have a gamemode where if you kill a player you should get a better kit or an upgrade etc. but to help disadvantaged players, if you get killed several times you get to have an upgrade too for example regeneration bottles or power bow etc.

Another idea is to make a game mode called one in the quiver where practically you have a bow and a iron sword and you only have 1 arrow.
The bow is a 1 shot kill and every time you kill someone you get the arrow back but if you miss you have to go sword only and if you kill someone you still get the arrow back.

Please consider this,
3nd
1. Play Less Call of Duty :p
2. The people who keep dying shouldn't be given an upgrade, they should be given a perk IMO (poison arrows,strength,swiftness)
3. This was my idea while i was reading the thread and so stole it ;)
 

jackamel

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Mulbery 's idea is best, proportion orb distribution for damage dealt. I had a similar idea of giving different amounts of orbs dependant of whether a kill was yours or a steal.

So to explain, currently you get 25 orbs for a kill on FFA.
In the new system you would only get 25 orbs if the player was your kill (100% damage dealt)
If the kill was a steal/amongst a fight of several players, and not 100% damage dealt, you would get say 10 orbs.

This could even become a new death message in chat: 'Iggy234_2001 just got kill stolen by jackamel' (ha iggy)

Kill: 25 Orbs
Steal: 10 Orbs

Obviously I have no idea how easy/hard it would be to code such a thing, but I really think this is a good solution, as kill stealing is the only real issue players have with FFA.

I dont think dramatically changing the game mode and overcomplicating game play is a good idea. The ideas of starting with orbs, loosing orbs, gaining orbs, having different ranks and levels of kits, different player roles, a king, queen, hunter, survivor, princess, whatever, is all too much.

Fix the problem of kill stealing and maybe add a couple nice smaller features such as a bounty that could be player induced or the server randomly chooses someone e.g. 'Unusual_dude has a bounty for the next 30 seconds' or at least until he was killed. There could also be special ffa rounds with Mobs [Mob FFA] or op-kit rounds with diamond and sharp 5 enchants [Power FFA], or teamed FFA, which i guess wouldn't be free for all, and more of a team pvp, but could still work. Just don't over complicate the game mode.

Keep It Simple, Stupid x
 
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Mastersten

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Mulbery 's idea is best, proportion orb distribution for damage dealt. I had a similar idea of giving different amounts of orbs dependant of whether a kill was yours or a steal.

So to explain, currently you get 25 orbs for a kill on FFA.
In the new system you would only get 25 orbs if the player was your kill (100% damage dealt)
If the kill was a steal/amongst a fight of several players, and not 100% damage dealt, you would get say 10 orbs.

This could even become a new death message in chat: 'Iggy234_2001 just got kill stolen by jackamel' (ha iggy)

Kill: 25 Orbs
Steal: 10 Orbs

Obviously I have no idea how easy/hard it would be to code such a thing, but I really think this is a good solution, as kill stealing is the only real issue players have with FFA.

I dont think dramatically changing the game mode and overcomplicating game play is a good idea. The ideas of starting with orbs, loosing orbs, gaining orbs, having different ranks and levels of kits, different player roles, a king, queen, hunter, survivor, princess, whatever, is all too much.

Fix the problem of kill stealing and maybe add a couple nice smaller features such as a bounty that could be player induced or the server randomly chooses someone e.g. 'Unusual_dude has a bounty for the next 30 seconds' or at least until he was killed. There could also be special ffa rounds with Mobs [Mob FFA] or op-kit rounds with diamond and sharp 5 enchants [Power FFA], or teamed FFA, which i guess wouldn't be free for all, and more of a team pvp, but could still work. Just don't over complicate the game mode.

Keep It Simple, Stupid x
what exactly could this further solve? FFA has more than 1 problem as Vat noted above:
    • Only kills matter, there is no strategic depth, everyone just piles on and fights.
    • Many games are decided by being lucky with last hits or waiting for the other players to fight it out to swoop in for the kills.
    • Some kits are stronger than others on some maps and especially poison can be annoying as you can win a fight but still be left for dead staying at 0.5 hp.
if it were that easy that fixing killsteals could 'fix' FFA, we wouldn't have made this thread but these kinds of problems often got simple solutions.
 

Iggish

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Mulbery 's idea is best, proportion orb distribution for damage dealt. I had a similar idea of giving different amounts of orbs dependant of whether a kill was yours or a steal.

So to explain, currently you get 25 orbs for a kill on FFA.
In the new system you would only get 25 orbs if the player was your kill (100% damage dealt)
If the kill was a steal/amongst a fight of several players, and not 100% damage dealt, you would get say 10 orbs.

This could even become a new death message in chat: 'Iggy234_2001 just got kill stolen by jackamel' (ha iggy)

Kill: 25 Orbs
Steal: 10 Orbs

Obviously I have no idea how easy/hard it would be to code such a thing, but I really think this is a good solution, as kill stealing is the only real issue players have with FFA.

I dont think dramatically changing the game mode and overcomplicating game play is a good idea. The ideas of starting with orbs, loosing orbs, gaining orbs, having different ranks and levels of kits, different player roles, a king, queen, hunter, survivor, princess, whatever, is all too much.

Fix the problem of kill stealing and maybe add a couple nice smaller features such as a bounty that could be player induced or the server randomly chooses someone e.g. 'Unusual_dude has a bounty for the next 30 seconds' or at least until he was killed. There could also be special ffa rounds with Mobs [Mob FFA] or op-kit rounds with diamond and sharp 5 enchants [Power FFA], or teamed FFA, which i guess wouldn't be free for all, and more of a team pvp, but could still work. Just don't over complicate the game mode.

Keep It Simple, Stupid x
There is one plot hole with this idea jack....




























you could never kill me nub
 

jackamel

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if it were that easy that fixing killsteals could 'fix' FFA, we wouldn't have made this thread but these kinds of problems often got simple solutions.
In my personal opinion, I find FFA is fine as a game mode, other than the kill stealing I find no issue with it. Who needs strategic depth, its fun to go ape shit for 5 minutes.

For all the people who dont like FFA they want to change it, however there are still many people who like it just the way it is.

Free For All doesn't need changing in my opinion, my prior suggestions were to improve the current mode which I love.

p.s. iggy234_2001 yes i could :]
 

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I could give orbs based on damage dealt, but really its too impractical to implement. I would have to store who did what damage, but then once you take into account regeneration, it just wouldn't work well. E.g, what if I damage a player to a heart, then they heal and somebody else fights them and kills them? I would take half the orbs, despite doing not having any affect on the fight. Ideally I would like something that isn't based on damage dealt.
 
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i would say when a playerA kills PlayerB, PlayerA should get their health fully regen as to stop players from cleaning up and rudely taking kills by beating down on the weakened player
 

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i would say when a playerA kills PlayerB, PlayerA should get their health fully regen as to stop players from cleaning up and rudely taking kills by beating down on the weakened player
Then player A could target a weak player and then easily get 1/2 kills. Would not work in a cluster fight
 
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Then player A could target a weak player and then easily get 1/2 kills. Would not work in a cluster fight
the weak player would only be weak if he bailed on a previous battle
 

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the weak player would only be weak if he bailed on a previous battle
or if he was in the middle of a fight with 1 or 2 people and player A comes along, kills the weak guy and since he gets full hearts could easily kill the other two guys who were fighting each other and after that, he would have full hearts again and so on...