Title: Power Play
Summary: Power play is a race against the clock and the enemy team.
Key features:
- Three Rounds
- Rounds 1 and 2 each have a middle control point and a final control point
- Matches are timed. Approx 8-12 max minutes per round
- Final round is a traditional head to head race
The first two rounds each have a two control points each. The first control point is shared between Red and Blu sides. This point is in the middle of the map. It is a race to see who captures it first. The first team to capture the control point will be given a slight advantage immediately. This advantage will last until the end of the third round and when the game resets. The second control point will award a more substantial advantage for the remainder of the game.
Advantages
Minor advantages
- Easier access to enemy base
- Cart becomes easier to push
Major Advantages
- Faster spawn times
- Relocation of spawn area
The goal of the advantages is to make winning a round meaningful by better rewarding the winning team with something more than a starting position. It also gives a losing team extra drive to try and improve their situation in the second round. These advantages are intended to help tip the balance toward a side but not to an extreme where > 65% a team with any of the advantages always wins.
Scoring and Timing
What makes Power Play different from any other payload race out there is that it’s a race against the clock and the other team. The goal is to reach the 2nd control point on each round within the time limit. If you fail to achieve this both teams miss out on the score and game play advantage that control point would have granted. The middle control point will always give a team a point as they cross it. This can assist in keeping the game scores close, however the outcome of the final round will always define a winning team. A point is merely being awarded to the scoreboard to provide audio feedback that the team “got something”
Thoughts on Balance
Changing spawn times, locations, access points, or the cart speed can each have an immense effect on gameplay. Added together their influence is even greater. A few methods of balancing in an effort to make the level fairer to a losing side are being considered.
1. Temporary advantages. Arguably if both sides get the same advantage they would effectively cancel each other out. The trick is to define when each advantage gets activated. Since the control point governing minor advantages can be crossed by both teams in the same round, the advantage could be given to the side which got their first for a finite time limit. This time limit could be similar to the level’s namesake. A “power play” in hockey is a personnel advantage given to a team for a period of time. Thus the first team to get a minor advantage has 5 minutes of exclusive access to it before it gets applied to the other team. On the other hand the advantage could be granted to the loser when the next round starts.
2. Additive Advantages. The advantages would be sorted by strength (weaker to stronger) and would be gained in that order. By this logic the only possible way to get the strongest advantage is to take every single point first. However a team that has won every round leading up to the final would have such a dominant position on the enemy it would be difficult for them to lose.
3. Round timer. The round timer would prevent long matches from occurring, but most importantly it has the potential to deny either side from getting a major advantage by causing the round to end if it has stalemated.
Each of these ideas has their own strength and weaknesses. On paper, I feel that each could easily work. Play testing would be the only method of determining which is best.
