Black Fire Basin is a scenario in Tier 3. I know, I know, Tor Anroc is supposed to be the only T3 scenario but it is true. It features a classic Capture the Flag (CTF) mechanic with two flags. Usually CTF is pretty fun, but not here.
Last night I only had about 20 minutes to play, so I queued up. To my surprise Black Fire Basin came up. Sometimes it can be pretty fun, but that is pretty rare. So I hop in. When the match starts, a few of us Order head off to make a run at their flag. What do we find? The entire Destruction team at their base. We actually manage to grab the flag for about 15 seconds before we were all killed.
So we regroup and try again. the entire Destruction team is still turtling at their flag. In fact, I don't think any of them left the base for the entire match. Since we were aggressive, we had died more, giving them a score lead. They ended up winning due to the time limit. It was pretty awful.
This scenario should reward aggression, not the turtle tactic. Here are some ideas on how to improve it:
- Move Spawn points to opposite sides in the middle of the map. Right now, if a defender dies, they will easily be back in the action (without a rez) before the fight is over. This just makes turtling easier.
- The map is big, maybe a little too big. It takes a couple minutes to ride over to the enemy flag, which also supports turtling since the attacker has to come so far.
- Maybe the flag should cause damage, as other objects do in scenarios. This might help the situation when each side has the others flag and are turtling. Map size may also help here.
