Yes yes, yet another Lockdown suggestion - this time to make it more in line with other MOBAs. Really the only problem I am addressing isn't "lockdown imbalance" but actually just the sheer lack of beginning-mid-end game lockdown: there's no form of progression throughout a match other than "take those caps! keep those caps! kill those people trying to take our caps!" All while not removing the 'personal touch' of loadouts and allowing players to use gear they've worked hard for in PVE and being forced to play a neutral, vanilla PVP mode.
Nutshell changes:
- Remove "tier" based LD - It's just one Lockdown independent of tier.
- Every item is treated as Lv 10 and weapons get their CTR Med bonuses. It would be silly to treat this otherwise.
- Remove Loadouts altogether - Everyone starts in basic cobalt and get 2 weapons based on class: Sword/Gun as Striker, Gun/Bomb as Recon, and Bomb/Sword as Guardian. In Tier 3, this would be Cobalt sets and their respective weapon equivalents. Class buffs stay the same, as well as health.
- Supply Depot changes to charging a different currency specific to being in Lockdown. Let's call it LDC as short for 'lockdown currency', what it actually is doesn't matter.
- As your team earns points, you gain LDC to spend on Supply Depot - either to buy Sparks of Life, trinkets, trinket slots, weapons, or armor. Of course anything you buy using LDC isn't permanent and lasts only for the match. Your entire team earns LDC for each point tick your team gets, and you also earn LDC as an individual for a kill. There is potential to add in-game objectives to earn bonus LDC (leaning more towards LDC earning potential for Recon and Guardian since getting caps/kills highly favors Striker. Bonus LDC for death marking someone, having someone die after being deathmarked, small LDC gain for each teammate HP healed from guardian shield, are examples of LDC gain for those classes).
- To make sure your hard earned UVs don't go to waste, when you buy an item in the Supply Depot, if you actually own the item, you can select to use that version instead (including costume and UVs). eg. If you try to buy a Valiance with LDC and you have an ASI VH variant, you can opt to get that instead.
How this creates progression throughout a match:
- At a glance, your team would immediately try and capture points and fuel LDC gain for the team.
- You then have to make a choice of how you want to spend your LDC: do you go for your UV'd armor? or buy trinkets for more sustainability? weapon slots? if you don't have enough LDC to buy your UV'd armor right away, do you buy lower tier armor first? Such as buying Dusker Cap/Coat with LDC as you work throughout the match to earn enough to buy a Skolver Cap/Coat.
- Note that you may even start exploring high UV'd non 5* gear for this purpose! If you are hard core LD, you'd consider picking up Dusker Cap Pierce Max as well for a big leg up in mid-game play or ASI High Master Blaster.
How this "indirectly" adds a bit of balance to the game:
- Exclusive items such as using a Black Kat Cowl would be available for use by paying LDC - its cost may be higher than the other 5* Headgear. At the same time, people who worked hard to obtain one outside of LD aren't punished because they can opt to use their own version that has UVs. All while making a top tier item such as the BKC a more "end game" item to wear late into an LD match and not something immediately available to everyone. They need to "earn it."
- There's much higher sustainability of the Recon/Guardian classes early game since Strikers don't immediately have access to sword bonus beyond +2, and recall Strikers will not have trinket access unless they buy it with LDC.
How T3 veterans still maintain an advantage over T1 newbies who play Lockdown:
- This is important because you still want PVE progress to apply towards LD, but not overbearingly so. The main deal is being able to use your own UV gear in LD, which you can.
- T1 players still have access to all the same items in the Supply Depot that T3 players do, but obviously if they don't own the equipment, they're forced to use non UV versions. This puts them on more even footing, and it's hard to argue it's unfair to give a newbie access to basic Skolver Cap if you've got access to one with Shock High.
Thoughts?
Would be good to call it a "lockdown tourney" though. Why? Because doing all of this in 8 minutes or so seems far too short. Double that time, increase the size of the teams, and award more rewards for the winners and we're getting somewhere.
This sounds like a lot of fun. This would allow experimentation for players, and also to see how it all works. My only concern would be how the weapons would scale. Would this all take place in D25, like tier 3 lockdown currently does?
A good thought would be for loadouts to still work, just you can only equip the things you have access to. Perhaps add a queue system so that once you get enough LDC you would automatically unlock and equip certain gear? So we don't need to be useless to our team while choosing our equips? Or maybe even a special loadouts screen only for this PvP gamemode?
Another idea is you need to heat your items while playing the game, and if you already have that item then you'll retain the heat it has. Heat would work like the old system, and capping/defending points would give a whole lot of heat to your knight, and killing other players might give a decent amount too. That might be a bit too much, but might be a fun way to see your LDC grow and progressively do better with your weapons.
An idea also for this game is that every time you get an item, it has the same chance as everything to get a random UV for that item. This would essentially make people be able to use their LDC after they get all of their items to see if they can roll a good UV on the item for that match, while players who naturally have that UV on an item won't need to and can focus on objectives. We all love gambling, right?
Say, this has given me an idea for a SK-like gun game...