Outpost Rush Feedback + Discussion

[stregz]

I wanted to talk about my experience in outpost rush post 1.0.5. patch and potential ways to improve on the game mode. Overall my experience has been very positive, the game is really fun, I haven’t experienced too much lag post-patch, and some of the games I’ve played have been really balanced and competitive.

I have also noticed some trends to appear in the game mode that is slightly discouraging, and other players have spoken out about these issues as well. I think some are self-manageable and others could have some support from the developers for future game modes/changes to the current game mode.

1. Healer diff: It’s clear that whichever team has the most healers has an advantage (except perhaps if the majority of the team heals, i have yet to face a team with 10+ healers). While this sometimes can happen where one team has 4+ healer and other teams only have 1 or sometimes none, this can be self-managed through avoiding solo-queue, getting a team of 5 and making sure at least one of your team is a healer. This isn’t necessarily a great fix as we now are discouraging solo-queue. Another way to mitigate this would be to change outpost rush into a draft mode, where before queueing you select which role you’ll be playing (dps, tank, healer). This can have drawbacks as well as there are limited players available per server to play outpost rush at all, so perhaps something to think about if cross-server OPR becomes available. Another idea is to allow pre-made 20v20 groups for companies to set up and face off.

2. Skill diff: We are still in the early stages of competitive OPR, but I do sometimes experience really terrible beatdowns of the opposite (or my) team, where the skill comparison isn’t close. Is there any balancing or matchmaking occurring in the backend such as comparing HWM scores or historical OPR games? This is mainly a curiosity.

3. Greifers: This happens about ever game for me, where as soon as it seems like the opposite team has an edge and can seal the win, players on the other team stop participating entirely, standing at spawn until the end of the game. I’ve even had this happen during games where we could have won if we had secured baron, but no effort was made. There doesn’t seem to be any penalty against players who don’t participate (that I know of). Is there a way to prevent or discourage someone from entering OPR and just staying put until they receive their gold and azoth? With this idea comes the rabbit hole of people reporting others for “inting” or “greifing”.

I’m definitely missing some points but besides these pitfalls, OPR has been a real blast for the following reasons:

1. Gameplay offers more opportunity for large group efforts, but also tactical communication to try other strategies. While certain teams could perform a zerg-like attack on one fort, the other team could send 10 to backdoor other forts and the other 10 to azoth farm for brutes for late-game security.

2. Since it is 20v20, you’re given enough individuality to make a difference in the game, through azoth farming, group kiting, etc, but not too much individuality where a wrong play by 1 person, or even 1 person not participating at all determines the game.

3. Both teams get a reward for playing, so even losing doesn’t really feel aggravating, it’s always gg.

I’d love to hear other ideas!

[Scott2]

In all honesty, outpost rush needs a role queue.
Another good thing that they should do is initiate a ready check instead of an instant outpost rush invite. That way you won’t end up in a team that has 20 players fighting against 12 players, or vice versa.
It is impossible to win if the enemy team has way more healers than you do. It is impossible to lose if your team has way more healers than the enemy team does. The meta revolves around having more healers, whoever has that checked almost always wins the game. Outpost rushes are not fun because there is no real PvP, you either have an extremely big advantage or an extremely big disadvantage. In all outpost rushes I’ve been in so far, there was only 1 game that was fair and very close, that game was a lot of fun. The rest of 80+ of them were a stomp on either my team or the enemy team. Every game ends up at farming spawn points.