First team match playtest

Last week saw the first real match between teams of players. Not the usual one-on-one match, but 2 vs. 2!

First things first: that was fun :) The game was clearly unpolished, some rules needed tweaking (rules changed between each game, and once again after the last match), but it was interesting and fun to play.

Our main concern at the beginning of the game was to avoid having a no-brainer strategy consisting of taking out one of the two players first to get into a 2 vs 1 situation. We discussed several adjustments to get to it.

The first rule we adopted was:

If you are targetting someone, and are targeted by someone who isn't your target, this player gets a bonus

The goal of this rule was to simulate a case where two players would gang on one player of the opposite team. The attacked player then adopts a defensive stance, trying to parry the attacks of both attackers. And during this time, the attackers are wide open to an attack from someone else.

This of course is a very simplistic simulation, but it still gave us a good ground from where to start. The first game went on, and was pretty one-sided. One team got the advantage early on, and it kept widening during the whole game. The losing team forfeited after one player got taken out.

The post-match analysis mainly revealed that one move was strongly imbalanced (it was easy to smother another player), and that a given combination of moves lacked a proper counter. We fixed this, and went on to the second game.

For the second game, we decided to try and apply the "take one out first" strategy, and concentrated our attacks on one of the opposite team's players. We got a bad start, but eventually managed to take them out. The situation at this point could have been seen as close: the single remaining player had the same amount of hit points than both of us combined. However, as expected, it is more or less impossible to survive in a 2 vs. 1 environment.

We then all agreed that the 2 vs. 1 situation is something we should have a clear answer to. Several ideas were proposed: the ability to revive a fallen ally, a change in how players were allowed to play when the 2 vs 1 situation would arise, etc.

In the end, we decided that there would be no heal (my call, I don't like healing) and no revive ability. We would instead focus on giving the teams the tools to avoid facing this 2 vs 1 situation.

The main idea we have had for this was to allow players to "transform", or "specialize", during the game. For instance, you could trade Blue charges to get an improved defense and reduced damages. Or be more efficient at interrupting someone else's moves, or dealing more damage, etc. We still have to test all of this though (we played only two games) - so stay tuned for fresh news :)