[IDEA] Negative Flags

i think for a start the flags' negative effect should be passive within a certain radius around it. Upon entering this radius, you will inherit the effect of the flag. btw, i dont think it should be a flag but something more along the lines of an 'obelisk' maybe.

some possible effects are:

- life degen

- energy degen

- skills energy cost is doubled

- skills recharge takes 33% longer

- General: for as many minions you have you take X amount of dmg every 3 secs. Assassins: for skills every skill you use u take X amount of dmg.

- you take double dmg from all sources

- armor deficiency

- cannot teleport

etc. but ill stop here lol

I was thinking global effects versus an entire side. Imagine a normal Flag at point 'A', where 3 Mines are located. Everybody wants the Mine income, but to capture it you have to traverse a path that forces you to influence an array of negative Flags. Cursed Totems. Black Obelisks.

You can venture forth and capture them, gaining the income, but for at least the immediate future your side will suffer some serious detriment in performance. As the effects wear off you will have the upper hand due to the benefit of that income... unless the detriments give the enemy the opportunity not only to stomp you but to take those Mines for themselves as well.

I like this idea.  Another interesting one: make it so that the easiest way to top one of the magic War Score-increasing percentages is to capture a flag whose effect is negative.  e.g., if there are 10 flags on the map and each side has 4 that are inside their base, the two external ones could be negative flags.  Then to get to 60%, you have to either attack their base directly, or swallow the debuff attached to the center flags.  If it was balanced right it could lead to an interesting dynamic.  OTOH, it might be contrary to the notion of games that are over fast.

I figure the negative flags would be exactly like the positive ones, but "with signs reversed" -- e.g., a "laggard" flag that increases your cooldowns, a "fragility" flag that decreases your HP by ~10%, etc.

This is a good idea.

It would add an interesting option to the game, adding more strategic depth to it.

I'd be all for it.

And I've said this in another thread, but how about a flag that once captured reduces the war score of your enemy, letting the portals make less units.

I believe I would agree that there needs to be or could be another factor that can influence/temper/control what comes through a Gate and when. Objective points/flags that do such have potential. I think right now you could argue that there is a race to get Catapultasauri on the field, since they can deliver tremendous damge in short order to anything. Shaking that race up a bit strikes me as a good idea.

I think this idea is kind of silly. Flags are supposed to be bonuses. You are supposed to capture them. It wouldn't be fun for your demigod to "capture" negative curse flags for just walking past them. There would also be too many ways to circumvent them: you could just go around to another path, or take the enemy demigod's path instead, or get a lot of speed boosters and run past them before they could capture, or just teleport past them. It would also make it easier for a stupid or malicious player to grief his teammates.

On the other hand, would that be detrimental to the idea of fast victories?

I maybe should have said earlier that I like the idea of negative flags in general, but not the idea of deliberately making them incidental captures.  Since War Score was implemented, *all* flags are inherently bonuses: what I think is interesting is the idea of combining that bonus with a negative (so you need to decide whether the trade-off is worth it; obviously this only is interesting if the answer is sometimes "yes" and sometimes "no").  However:

Ew, I didn't think about that (partly because I rarely play online games).  That seems to me like a good reason not to do this.

A Cursed Point would lose its effect over you over time, unlike the Flag points you *want* to control. The purpose would be to introduce some type of momentary strategic negative that goes with the capture of a normal Flag or area that is of great consequence to the game, thereby giving your foes an opportunity to turn the tables and take such for themselves or otherwise inflict severe damage to you.

Of course if you had an alternate route to a valuable Flag or area that bypassed a Cursed point, you would take it. Unless time & circumstances demanded immediate action (when a path past a Cursed point was shorter...).

eg. single path filled with several different cursed obelisks, and at the end of the path is a unique/powerful flag up for capture