Team play theorycrafting

[bigwig]

I'm thinking of how a teamplay vs mode would best work, and am looking for input. If anyone knows of a team vs mode that works well, I'd love to learn about it.

Idea:
Assume tspins and combos are awarded; garbage is about tf e+. 2v2 or 3v3. You can see everyone's playfield.
The lines you send are sent to one opponent. You can switch targets at the click of a button, let's say up arrow. Cycling through opponents takes no more than two button presses. You can see where your allies are targeting, but not where your opponents are targeting. You can see where each attack came from though, through either garbage color or the attack graphics like in battle 6p.

The strategy would come in the form of the "tank" button. Up to 1 person at a time on a team can be the tank. In a 2v2 game, every 2nd line your ally takes goes to the tank. In a 3v3, every third line of both the tank's allies goes to the tank. The tank would be concerned with downstacking as fast as possible to stay alive. If another ally presses the tank button, then x seconds later, that person would become the tank. After y seconds cooldown, the tank button can be pressed by another player to become the tank, or the current tank can press the button to untank, so that no one on the team is currently the tank. It is not immediately obvious who the tank on the other team is, but it should become apparent after a cursory glance and a few seconds observation.

This could allow a number of interesting situations:
1) It allows the non-tanks a bit of leeway to set up combos or tspins
2) It encourages multidisciplinary play and diverse teams, with speed, setups, and downstacking each having their place.
3) If there is a big skill difference in teams, having your best player be the tank most of the time will allow the game to go a bit longer.
4) Not paying attention to the attack switch and tank buttons doesn't hurt noobs that much.
5) It allows dynamic role switching in the middle of the game, as the tank becomes overwhelmed and has to untank.

Thoughts?

[Rosti_LFC]

I like the tank idea. At the very least, I think it'd be an interesting and fairly fun mechanic.

I think the opportunity to manually target is a really bad idea for 2v2 or especially 3v3 though. If a team discusses beforehand who they're going to target first, then that player is basically f***ed. Even with a tank mechanic taking 1/3 of the garbage away, at high level play someone is going to struggle to survive for particularly long if they're taking garbage from 3 players of similar skill to them. And if you happened to choose to target the player who chose to be tank at the start, they'll probably be dead before their team can react and do anything about it.

Without manual targeting, looks interesting. With manual targeting, it'll just be a fairly short race to who can target one player down first, and they'll probably swing it after that.

[bigwig]

I like the tank idea. At the very least, I think it'd be an interesting and fairly fun mechanic.

I think the opportunity to manually target is a really bad idea for 2v2 or especially 3v3 though. If a team discusses beforehand who they're going to target first, then that player is basically f***ed. Even with a tank mechanic taking 1/3 of the garbage away, at high level play someone is going to struggle to survive for particularly long if they're taking garbage from 3 players of similar skill to them. And if you happened to choose to target the player who chose to be tank at the start, they'll probably be dead before their team can react and do anything about it.

Without manual targeting, looks interesting. With manual targeting, it'll just be a fairly short race to who can target one player down first, and they'll probably swing it after that.

So the lines should be evenly distributed or should the target move automatically like in arena?

[Rosti_LFC]

So the lines should be evenly distributed or should the target move automatically like in arena?

I don't really mind, though most people would probably go with the former. Either way though manual targeting is too harsh on whichever player gets picked on.

[Zircean]

myndzi was actually implementing a sort of tank mechanic in the old nullpo, but we ran into a lot of roadblocks because that codebase sucked. So, I guess it will be back later?

[zaphod77]

Here's an idea.   Have garbage evenly distributed, but if someone presses the tank button they instantly get all pending garbage, without even having to lay down their piece.

So if someone just cleared out their playfield they can take in some additional garbage and keep the person setting up a big attack from topping out.