How would you fix PLR not giving a good reward for winning Stages?

generally that's why people stay away from multistage. pipeline rewards players with a small advantage in the form of a headstart (too small to be an advantage of any significance). This is not a bad way to go about it, the advantage is so little that it really doesn't matter but still gives the illusion that previous stages are important. The problem is if you're going to give any meaningful gameplay advantage, sub-secant stages will systematically be unbalanced and no one wants to play that.

What I personally would like to see is a narrative incentive that has no effect on gameplay. Perhaps a more spectacular ending for the team that has been performing well throughout. Make the players want to complete the objective because something freaking cool will happen.

fubarFX said:

generally that's why people stay away from multistage. pipeline rewards players with a small advantage in the form of a headstart (too small to be an advantage of any significance). This is not a bad way to go about it, the advantage is so little that it really doesn't matter but still gives the illusion that previous stages are important. The problem is if you're going to give any meaningful gameplay advantage, sub-secant stages will systematically be unbalanced and no one wants to play that.

What I personally would like to see is a narrative incentive that has no effect on gameplay. Perhaps a more spectacular ending for the team that has been performing well throughout. Make the players want to complete the objective because something freaking cool will happen.

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RED completely dominates Pipeline, then Merasmus pops out and blows up the cart making RED win.

fubarFX said:

sub-secant

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"subsequent"

Where the hell is Fubar even from?

Zed said:

Where the hell is Fubar even from?

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Judging from the avatar, I'd say... space?

Honestly, multi stage playload race is a flawed gamemode. Just bad. Sure the stages themselves are fun, but when combined it sucks. Single stage payload race or bust.

What about a system where instead of winning an advantage, you just... straight up win?

Say one team wins stage 1 and 2; they would just outright win, and the third stage would be skipped. The third stage would merely act as a tie-breaker in the situation where the scores are even.

=D

That could work, but a normal plr would work so much better.

stevethepocket said:

"subsequent"

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Nah, I'm pretty sure he means tan(x)sec(x).

More seriously, I feel like the solution Jethro proposed would be the best for multi-stage, or maybe something a la tc.

It was a dumb idea to make a symmetrical gametype multi-stage in the first place and one of Valve's weirder brainfarts. Honestly, the only reason for any maps to be mutli-stage at all is to provide some variety, and at that point you might as well just toss any pretensions of linear progression and just say "this is a map with multiple sub-maps within it". Kind of like how that Mega Man map does it. There's no goal to win all three or four or however many stages there are in that map; you just cycle between different ones because it's more fun than just fighting over the same point over and over until the map changes.

Well, how about big single-stage PLR with capture points that give forward spawns/reduced spawn timings?

To me the significance part should definitely matter, but still be well countered. To me removing a rollback zone (or shortening it - either 1 short or split to 2 shorter ones) would for example matter quite a bit, but still allow the other team to counter as in the end the final push is what matters. The boost in this case can realy boost the moment of when that final push can happen. But a good team can counter it.

Vel0city said:

Well, how about big single-stage PLR with capture points that give forward spawns/reduced spawn timings?

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The trouble with this is that, unlike 5CP, a forward spawn could potentially put you ahead of the enemy cart's position, forcing you to backtrack if you want to defend. With 5CP, the two goals are always one quarter of the map's size away from each other. That might be the reason Valve decided to try breaking Pipeline up into stages, come to think of it.

Now, if you had just the right layout, you might be able to design it so that once your cart gets to a checkpoint, a new route opens up that lets you access it quicker but not lose a quick route to your own endpoint. Or just have all those routes open to begin with because it's simpler that way and there's no reason not to.

Not a lot of people make PLR maps anymore in general, and the ones in recent memory have always been on the short side. It's not easy to create two long tracks that are perfect 180-degree rotations of each other but stay close enough together that it's never too long of a walk between the two carts.