I had thought of disabling caps, but did not want to do it because that would be bringing extra mechanics into an already confusing map. Also there likely would be nothing stopping caps from getting capped ten seconds after the minute is up (though I'm not entirely sure of that).
Hydro is not a confusing map. It only might look like that since its underplayed. Im 100% sure that in the beginning payload race for many also was confusing. Or what about koth with its 2 timers.
Those are just minimal things which players can easily get used to.
The timer itself on a cap isnt confusing aswel, koth already shows that. However, the cp needs a timer for that and i dont know if you are able to do that.
Very productive gameday, it showed me that everything I did was basically useless. Spawntimes, extra paths, captimes, none of that matters if I can't get players to comfortably attack. Coming up with a solution feasible both from gameplay and technical perspective will take some time
No one wants to step into the enemy ground without knowing what to face. On hydro people expect massive sentry nests but they dont exactly know where. People need to know what they can expect to face or they need to be able to guess the defense well.
Its kinda the same way on dustbowl where they have countered that, it has alot of possible positions for enemy to defend the cp. But you are able to look at that at a safer position (you have a grate which you can look through and you have some higher up ledge only a few can attack through). This allows you to somewhat plan an attack.
The opposite happens on hydro. You already have a weaker attack position, you cant realy see what you face until you are already on the point. If you are 90% sure you arent going to reach it, why run in, die and wait 10 seconds for the respawn timer, need 15 seconds to walk to the front line only to face the same situation? Instead camping for free kills is more fun.
Information is vital, and only when players are actualy able to see or predict what they are going to have to counter then players are willing to.
If people see 90% chance on losing, they arent going to try to win.
If people see a 50% on victory, they will try.
Even if they see a 10% on victory they also will try.
And especialy the first and last on that show the diffirent on dustbowl and hydro. In dustbowl they focus on winning (positive feeling promotes attacks), while in hydro they focus on not losing (negative feelings avoid attacks).
Somehow you need to make the map interesting for people to attack on rather than just making them focus on defending the ideal spot to kill the enemy players.