- Thread starter ibex
- Start date
So I had A1 tested twice to try and get a sense of the balance, and beyond the usual first round learning and team balance issues it does seem like teams have a bit of an issue actually taking the point consistently. I can potentially balance this with some adjustment to the spawnwave times based on point ownership, but at the same time beyond minor fixable issues the sentiment for the maps seems to be "why?".
At first my attitude was more or less "some people just aren't going to enjoy it", but I took some more time to think about it. What I've made here is asymmetric koth, but it also functions in the A/D style where Red owns the point initially, has a setup time window to build defenses, and gets a spawn much closer to the point. While I wanted to build an asymmetric koth to mix up the formula, I front loaded most of the balance issues by designing it like A/D rather than attempting to play with the usual koth formula itself.
My only frame of reference for asymmetric koth was Freyja's steelkoth sulfur, where the A/D koth mechanic works really well as a forgiveness mechanic for red losing their last point. What that achieves isn't really applicable to regular koth where trading the point is the only battle. Additionally, the setup time also doesn't have much impact here beyond increasing the initial time before Blu can make their first cap, elongating Red's timer to balance.
I'll mark this 72hr attempt down as a learning experience, and maybe come back to it after I get my arena map to beta. If anything I'd like to use asymmetry to subvert the tried and true koth structure, but that'll take more planning than a simple A/D layout.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully some of this is helpful to anyone wanting to try asymkoth in the future.
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edit: So some discussion came up from this on the Discord that I figured I'd add and extrapolate on here for a more complete picture (and if it wasn't clear this is about single point asymmetric koth).
At first my attitude was more or less "some people just aren't going to enjoy it", but I took some more time to think about it. What I've made here is asymmetric koth, but it also functions in the A/D style where Red owns the point initially, has a setup time window to build defenses, and gets a spawn much closer to the point. While I wanted to build an asymmetric koth to mix up the formula, I front loaded most of the balance issues by designing it like A/D rather than attempting to play with the usual koth formula itself.
My only frame of reference for asymmetric koth was Freyja's steelkoth sulfur, where the A/D koth mechanic works really well as a forgiveness mechanic for red losing their last point. What that achieves isn't really applicable to regular koth where trading the point is the only battle. Additionally, the setup time also doesn't have much impact here beyond increasing the initial time before Blu can make their first cap, elongating Red's timer to balance.
I'll mark this 72hr attempt down as a learning experience, and maybe come back to it after I get my arena map to beta. If anything I'd like to use asymmetry to subvert the tried and true koth structure, but that'll take more planning than a simple A/D layout.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully some of this is helpful to anyone wanting to try asymkoth in the future.
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edit: So some discussion came up from this on the Discord that I figured I'd add and extrapolate on here for a more complete picture (and if it wasn't clear this is about single point asymmetric koth).
- Balancing asymmetric koth with a/d elements didn't really improve on the koth formula, and just made an unsatisfying A/D map.
- If you want to make an A/D koth, I think you should aim for making it very hard for both teams to capture the point, in addition to shorter round times. That way when blue finally takes the point it feels satisfying and red can't immediately retake without an amazing offense. Set the timers around what you'd estimate for one cap per team.
- In either A/D koth or "standard" asymmetric koth, red spawn should probably have relatively similar walk times to the point as blu. This helps give red engi's some purpose even if their initial nest goes down.
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