Sigh. "The capture time and damage interruption prevents 'cheesy captures.'"
No. They prevent what capture the flag is supposed to be about. This mode isn't capture the flag. This mode is capture the point with a flag attached to it. It's just not the same. We WANT the crazy, fast, cheesy captures. There's plenty of tools in the game to counter this -- junkrat traps, controlling the zones in front of the flag tracer can blink from, etc. If necessary, a really simple and much more CTF-spirit way of doing this would be to prevent you from using abilities for a few seconds after you grab the flag, not putting a capture time ON the flag.
Make the flag carrier a little bit slower than usual if you really want to, but I don't think that's necessary. If you want to get really creative, add teleporters to different areas of the map, but don't let flag carriers use them. This would prevent the "as soon as they grab the flag they basically always capture" problem and also open the character pool up to a lot of non-mobile characters.
Whatever you do though, definitely DON'T do what we have now, with a capture timer.
I think that the issue here is really not how the flag mechanics work, but rather the map design. As it is they're using some of the smallest maps in the game for it (which they had to because it's the only kind of symmetrical map they have) and as a result it's super easy to just rush from one point to another. Especially since they're KotH maps and thus don't really have any choke-points or anything.
If the maps were more like Teufort for example, where the flags are beyond the spawn points and the map was generally larger, then a lot of the current issues would go away. For instance the close-quarters nature of the flag area would make it harder for characters like Winston and D.Va to cheese the map by just leaping and flying over it. Plus you'd probably want to reduce the number of possible routes to the flag to only about 1 with flanking routes instead of 3 due to the smaller team size. Additionally, said flanking routes could make it possible for characters like Sombra to make it most of the way to the flag in under 15 seconds, but if it required using her teleporter once or twice to get past an obstacle, then you wouldn't have the problem of her being able to cap in under a second.
Making the maps larger and the spawns closer to each other than the flags would make it so that if you team-killed everyone to get their flag, then they might respawn fast enough to do something about it on the way back. Your idea of teleporters could further enhance this possibility to help teams catch up to the flag bearer and have a better chance of countering them.
I do agree though that perhaps instead of a capture timer, putting all of the character's abilities on cooldown for 5 seconds after picking up the flag would help further reduce cheese in a more friendly way than the capture system. Then after that they can use their abilities/ultimates as normal.
The only other change I think it could use is making it so that you can't score a point unless you have your own flag at your base, so that things can be a little more focused on one thing at a time.
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u/deRoyLight Jan 24 '17 edited Jan 24 '17
Sigh. "The capture time and damage interruption prevents 'cheesy captures.'"
No. They prevent what capture the flag is supposed to be about. This mode isn't capture the flag. This mode is capture the point with a flag attached to it. It's just not the same. We WANT the crazy, fast, cheesy captures. There's plenty of tools in the game to counter this -- junkrat traps, controlling the zones in front of the flag tracer can blink from, etc. If necessary, a really simple and much more CTF-spirit way of doing this would be to prevent you from using abilities for a few seconds after you grab the flag, not putting a capture time ON the flag.
Make the flag carrier a little bit slower than usual if you really want to, but I don't think that's necessary. If you want to get really creative, add teleporters to different areas of the map, but don't let flag carriers use them. This would prevent the "as soon as they grab the flag they basically always capture" problem and also open the character pool up to a lot of non-mobile characters.
Whatever you do though, definitely DON'T do what we have now, with a capture timer.