FreezePoint/FreezeTag (Game Mode) [25/06/2019]

[MrTapa]

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FreezePoint is a brand new game mode, combining the classing mechanics of freeze tag, with the constant flow of domination.

There may be between 3 and 7 capture points in a map, only one is active at a given time and players fight over its control, when captured, every frozen player gets unthawed, and after a few seconds, the next capture point is announced to everyone.
When a point is announced, it begins unlocking for about 10 seconds and then it's capturable.
That cycle repeats throughout the game, and rounds are restarted only when an entire team has been frozen/killed.
The game ends when the time runs out, and scoring is based on captures and team wipes, with a single capture giving you a score of 2, and a team wipes 1.
Maps have to be built for FreezePoint, in order for the mode load that logic, if not then classic round based FreezeTag is initiated.
One more this, which is new here is the class system: FreezePoint isn't about weapons, it is about the points, and FreezeTag is also about the freezes, so why should you bother spending time to find the right weapon. At the start of each round, you can choose how you want to play by selecting from 3 pre-made classes.

Level Design:
As part of my university project, one of the requirements for this game mode were for it to challenge and change the classic level design rules used in Unreal Tournament, I recommend checking out DeepEnd as a level design guide, as we created the level specifically for the game mode.
You can get the source files here: http://bit.ly/2RiBXMQ
Your only level design tool is the BP FreezePointMarker, the GM does not need anything else to recognize your levels for FreezePoint, drag 5 [I will support 3-7 in the future] blueprints and assign them names, tweak their radiuses (I would recommend keeping them at 600 but it is your level). You can assign lights and meshes to each point, the mesh is to be used for trough wall outlining when you are far from the active capture point.

What is coming:
Bugfixes as always, I am aiming to have this GM fully polished and completely bug-free by the end of Summer 2019 (but I can only do that with your help reporting bugs, giving me feedback and improvements and so on so go do that here: http://bit.ly/2wKCIFe
Offload balancing, to rulesets, so that every tweakable variable, from capture point times/intermission delays and even the full range of classes that you can pick, is exposed to launch commands so that your favorite servers can craft different experiences.
Support for your favorite mutators ( you have to report what isn't working out fo the box though)
Bot support (yes, unfortunately, there is no bot support yet)


------------------------------------------------This forum post will be updated with more through explanations/guides and media content soon---------------------------------------------------------------

[joellll]

>with a single capture giving you a score of 2, and a team wipes 1.

Mongo clarifies stuff in discord:
>Frozen players remain at their place after thawed
>Round ends when either team is wiped or one team has more captures. New rounds reset capture points & they are selected again randomly

Team A freezes two or three of team Bs players - Team B is now at a hard disadvantage and unlikely to win this round so remaining players rush onto the point, both to stop it being capped and to try to maybe kill the entire enemy team - the point can't be capped without clearing off enemy players (assuming here) so team A gets one point after killing the remaining team B players. Besides players being unaware they need to pile on so the enemy team only gets one point how would you ever score two points? There are not many gametypes I can think of where avoiding killing the enemy players is more beneficial than killing them. I was originally going to point out how chaotic it would be to have a focus point for players (the cap point) that has many frozen enemies on/near it just unfreezing in each others faces but.. that probably won't happen much (however I can see people liking this mexican standoff setup.. a lot) since there is no point to staying alive, in fact it is detrimental because the enemy team gets more points if you do? Am I missing something? The point control thing seems interesting and I always liked freeze tag but combining them and then having different scores for different win conditions (when one of them is "+forward and die to avoid giving the enemy team 2points" after a certain point) seems odd. Obviously the scoring difference is to give more weight to capturing the point.. but does it work? There seems to be no point to avoiding engagement to wait for the next point?

This might also be compounded somewhat by having loadouts rather than needing to spend time picking up weapons - it will be very focused (gtfo the point, which is good) but that also means that there isn't much else to do. The points cap fast so you must engage straight away to stop it happening - you can't spend time setting up or trying to make any sort of coordinated plays because omgitscappingrrigghnowaandtakeslikee4secondssomustgetonit. All the fighting will happen on the points. All the deaths will happen on the points.

The simplest, although not ideal, fix for this would be to invert the win condition scores - so capping is one point and wiping is two. This would potentially lead to interesting things happening where teams opt not to capture the point and instead hunt down the enemies. This is not ideal but it is potentially better than "everyone pile on right now otherwise the enemy gets 2 points". You can take the easier route - capping the point or you can spend the time to track down the enemy players and kill them. At the same time if you opt for killing you need to also guard the cap point to stop the enemy scoring (this is the better option for the team with less players left alive in a round as they don't need to win 3v5)

tldr : the win condition will cause a team to simply pile on after losing a few players in a 4-5 players per side match.

[MrTapa]

>with a single capture giving you a score of 2, and a team wipes 1.

Mongo clarifies stuff in discord:
>Frozen players remain at their place after thawed
>Round ends when either team is wiped or one team has more captures. New rounds reset capture points & they are selected again randomly

Team A freezes two or three of team Bs players - Team B is now at a hard disadvantage and unlikely to win this round so remaining players rush onto the point, both to stop it being capped and to try to maybe kill the entire enemy team - the point can't be capped without clearing off enemy players (assuming here) so team A gets one point after killing the remaining team B players. Besides players being unaware they need to pile on so the enemy team only gets one point how would you ever score two points? There are not many gametypes I can think of where avoiding killing the enemy players is more beneficial than killing them. I was originally going to point out how chaotic it would be to have a focus point for players (the cap point) that has many frozen enemies on/near it just unfreezing in each others faces but.. that probably won't happen much (however I can see people liking this mexican standoff setup.. a lot) since there is no point to staying alive, in fact it is detrimental because the enemy team gets more points if you do? Am I missing something? The point control thing seems interesting and I always liked freeze tag but combining them and then having different scores for different win conditions (when one of them is "+forward and die to avoid giving the enemy team 2points" after a certain point) seems odd. Obviously the scoring difference is to give more weight to capturing the point.. but does it work? There seems to be no point to avoiding engagement to wait for the next point?

This might also be compounded somewhat by having loadouts rather than needing to spend time picking up weapons - it will be very focused (gtfo the point, which is good) but that also means that there isn't much else to do. The points cap fast so you must engage straight away to stop it happening - you can't spend time setting up or trying to make any sort of coordinated plays because omgitscappingrrigghnowaandtakeslikee4secondssomustgetonit. All the fighting will happen on the points. All the deaths will happen on the points.

The simplest, although not ideal, fix for this would be to invert the win condition scores - so capping is one point and wiping is two. This would potentially lead to interesting things happening where teams opt not to capture the point and instead hunt down the enemies. This is not ideal but it is potentially better than "everyone pile on right now otherwise the enemy gets 2 points". You can take the easier route - capping the point or you can spend the time to track down the enemy players and kill them. At the same time if you opt for killing you need to also guard the cap point to stop the enemy scoring (this is the better option for the team with less players left alive in a round as they don't need to win 3v5)

tldr : the win condition will cause a team to simply pile on after losing a few players in a 4-5 players per side match.

Balancing for uneven team sizes is hard, and certainly not my priority for now, although one feature I plan on adding is a small algorithm that will pick the next capture point to be closer for the losing team. Either way, your issue is the inherent Mexican standoff that is happening because of the mix with freezetag and capture points, you forgot to mention this, so I am assuming that you weren't aware of it, but every time someone captures a point, everyone around the map is automatically thawed, if they were frozen. This was introduced the issue which you pointed out, and although it needs balancing (auto thawed players should have invincibility for something like 0.5 seconds) it does prolong engagements and allows multiple captures per round, which is what it all comes down to. Initially, I had 1 point per capture and 1 point per team wipe, but I changed the captures to 2, as otherwise, it wasn't apparent that they are the thing you should be going for. But the main premise is, within the time frame of a match, you can capture more points than you can eliminate the enemy team. Anyway thanks for sharing your thoughts, this is still first release after all, and when I am done with the bugfixes I would like to focus on balancing and finding that link between freezing the enemy and capturing.

[joellll]

> Balancing for uneven team sizes is hard

Not uneven team sizes, when one team has frozen players and the current round is 3v5. Once one side has "picks" they have an advantage - this is normal in gametypes where players are "out" for a round. One team has a numerical advantage. In this gametype the team with the disadvantage can stop their opponent from scoring "full" points by making sure they die (or are killed) - triggering the "All enemy players eliminated" win condition +1 rather than "point captured" +2.

TeamA 5 | TeamB 5
TeamA 5 | TeamB 4
TeamA 5 | TeamB 3

At this point it becomes less likely Team B can kill the enemy team and cap. Of course it depends on more than just players alive, for instance two of Team A might be close to death, but for simplicity here we will just use player numbers.

Team B has a choice - they can "let" Team A cap and +2 or they can make sure they are killed and +1. The decision is clear.

The only way +2 is going to occur is if people do not play the objective. The goal is to get people to play the objective. It is an obvious objective and since there doesn't appear to be much else to do (not negative, having it focused is great) means that players spawn -> goto point is the way it will be played. The only way teams will cap is from the opponent players going off and doing something else that isn't the objective.. of which there isn't? However it is unintuitive that you should die in order to limit the points the enemy team is getting. It is also unintuitive that you shouldn't kill the enemy players when you are trying to cap the point unless they are actually on the point.

You could do things like allow thawing team mates the same way as freezetag, but I don't think this would work given how focused on the point the game will play and how fast the point caps. You won't be able to unfreeze team mates because they will likely be next to/on the capture point where the enemy team is.

> your issue is the inherent Mexican standoff that is happening because of the mix with freezetag and capture points, you forgot to mention this, so I am assuming that you weren't aware of it, but every time someone captures a point, everyone around the map is automatically thawed, if they were frozen.

No, that is precisely what I am describing. I think people would like this part. Maybe not great for comp but that isn't super important - when I started the post that was going to be my main point (because it would be messy), but after thinking things through I decided to concentrate on the other, imo, more problematic problem. There are other issues with unthawing everyone at the same point but they might be considered good or bad depending on opinion. Overall I like this and think it would be fun but was going to point out how messy it was.

> But the main premise is, within the time frame of a match, you can capture more points than you can eliminate the enemy team.

You won't capture points - The premise is broken because of the scoring. If you played vs competent players who understand the scoring system the game will 100% default to players running onto the point after one team has enough team mates frozen to make it unlikely to win*. Perhaps trickling onto the point in order to push the length of the round time as long as possible to minimise how many points the enemy team gets over time. Or doing it very quickly if they are behind - which leads to the capping team trying not to kill their opponents.This then plays into "What happens when a team has the lead and controls the area of the capture point". Do they capture it? Or do they sit around waiting for the other team to come and capture it. That is sort of interesting.

*This is ignoring how fast the point captures which removes any setup or planning time and forces players to simply pile on to prevent the enemy capturing - making teams trickle in order to stop capping.

There are further interesting (sort of) ramifications - like getting killed in a location that gives your team an advantage after players are thawed. For example an enemy player is frozen near the point and the opposing team freezes three players right next to them in order to instantly kill them when unfrozen. This add some potential interest and without exploring it more would be a point against spawn protection on thawing. Maybe you need to just die to prevent +2 but you can do so in a manner that gives you a positional advantage in the next round.

BTW I don't really like my suggestion of inverting the scores but felt I should offer some suggestion and not just negativity.

[MrTapa]

joellll From what you are describing, it seems that you think this game mode is a combination of domination and player freezing. While I take the blame for not properly explaining my game mode, I do want to clarify a few things: you can very much unthaw your team mates by merely standing next to them and unlike domination, this is a capture and forget type of deal. The simple act of capturing gives you 2 points, after that everyone frozen is thawed and after 5 seconds, the next capture point is randomly selected. After the new point is selected and announced to everyone, the waiting period begins which is 10 seconds and then the point becomes capturable. And that is the loop. Spawn>PointAnnouncement>10secs waiting time>PointCapturable>5sec capture time>2 points given to the team that captures>everyone thawed>PointAnnouncement>10secs waiting time>..... If a team is wiped, round resets and everyone respawns again, but rounds are just for that, a reason for which the teams should go back to their spawns, so that the first point announced after a round start, is equal distance to both teams. Rounds dont technically give you points, nor can they end the game, game ends when time runs out, thats it. Whichever team has more points by that time, wins.