You want to exp nice and clearly untill lvl 20 without checking your flags status on minimap (what for ? you are pro, you don't need to defend anything)... You want me to tell how pro this startegy is ? Ok, it's great, amazing strategy - just don't care about anything, don't read minimap, ignore pings, ignore crushing your defence, just exp and avoid your enemies. This strategy is the best... but if you like to use this strategy, don't tell how unfair it is when some thinking people beats you in game. Your complains here are just hilarious.

You just don't get it, don't you? Read my lips: I'm not complaining about taking/holding/defending flags. I'm talking about permalocking flags which REMOVES taking/holding/defending flags. Do you need a diagram? Imagine laughing people running around flags on one side and a locked flag with crying people staying around it on the other!

Completely locking flags all the time requires quite an investment. Granted, later in the game the flag locks are not that expensive any more, but when the opposition invests thousands of gold in flag locks, then surely you can monitor enemy movement, buy yourself some shiney equipment with your gold instead and avert the capturing of your home portals?

If the opposing team wants to run back and forth from play to go home and get more flaglocks to hold middle flags and such I would just let them. You can do something more useful with your time so you will outlevel the opposition soon enough. Later in the game the costs of locks are not so significant any more, yet even then buying locks soon adds up and if the opposition spends gold on locks you have some free gold to spend on other things. If you can hold your flags by defending them then the opposition pretty much made a useless investment, one that can easely be matched with some good playing.

I feel that the opposition slipping past you to grab your portal is just weak play on your part. A good team will communicate all the time and they will wonder where the opponents DG went if they do not spot him a half a minute or so. Then the least you can do is zoom out a sec and see. When you monitor the field with your entire team like that then the risk of having the enemy run amok in your home territory is not quite that big.

In public games however where every one treats the game as a free for all I can see the flag-locks as major causes for headaches, but then again those public games is not where the balance of this game should lie. People being annoyed by flag locks in those games should really grow up fast and learn how to play.

MKauf - Ok so think about what you said. To lock a flag, you need to have it. So you don't defend flags, enemy takes flag, and then you can't take flag back, because... ?

Let's say someone is using tp scroll to my locked portal. I would be there if that was the case, so someone tp to me, lock flag (it's almost impossible for me to interrupt 1 sec cast time), and die (he can't tp back, because he just used tp scroll and has cooldown on it). I just gained something like 1500-2000 gold (depending on lvl), and we have one opponent less for next 30-40 seconds (depend from his lvl again). That means our portal is locked, but we have half a minute 3 vs 2 (i assume we are playing 3 vs 3 - standard game), so we take enemy portals meantime, lock and tp back to our base, try to take our portal back. If enemy tp to our portal again to lock it, he will die again and so on. It's easy money if you play this right. That's why I wrote earlier locking opponents portal IS RISKY, but only when you play against good players.

Still, when you have warrank 10 it's the most important thing TO NOT LOSE PORTAL ! Just never let enemy take your portal.

Very insightful.  It couldnt be that I exploit the flag lock and recognize that it completely breaks the game mechanic?  That couldn't be it.  Next time do a little bit of research on someone before you retreat to 5 year old dick swinging contest.

I get that you spend your entire game camping your own portal flag. What am I doing.  Oh, I don't know, trying to take their portal flag?  Defending the other portal flag?  Unable to get there in time before the other team that plays as a team turns the flag in 5 seconds?  Smart enough to know not to port into two demigods that both have stuns?  Have you played this game against anyone that knows what they are doing?  I seriously have to question your judgement.

Again, stop being an idiot.  Just because you have learned to abuse a game mechanic to win does not mean it is not broken.

A glimmer of intelligence that was quickly smashed against the rocks.  I use and abuse portal locks with the best of them.

And there is the difference between you and me.  I don't consider the game okay because I win all the time.  I look at the gameplay as a whole.

Get a team together and let's see how good you actually are, best two out of three.

It's really no sense to talk with you Melric. You don't have ANY arguments to force your theory, how op locks are. If you can't deal with locks... well that's your problem, isn't it ?

People thinks Splt is abuse, because they died from it. Snipe is abuse too, because thay died from it too. Rook towers are... abuse. Vampire is a one big abuse. Whole game needs to be nurfed ! Tbh, I feel sorry for you.

EOT for me.

Same here. Amen!

@Poul I know you are better than this, listen to the poor guy, he is not crazy.

P.S. also, as erebus, I never had a problem walking to the flag, capping it and then batting out. Exposing myself to minimal risk.

To sum up Poul's argument: I win, therefore no problem - everyone else must suck.  

Locks need tweaking.  Not removal from the game, just tweaking.  The simplest answer is to increase the global cooldown on the lock so that the same person cannot keep a flag permalocked.  It doesn't prevent the team from perma locking, but at least one person cannot keeping doing it.

That will be huge advantage for all voip teams, and make game much more complicated for all random teams.
Why do you want to do that ?

The problem is not really the locking, but rather the inability of disorganised teams to prevent it. Disorganised teams should however not be the standard to which balanbce should be calibrated. Imo we can therefore not really complain about the locking per se.

Nope.
One or two waves aren't gonna make any real difference.
Whichever team first gets a lock and successfully prevents the other team from getting a lock for a few minutes afterwards wins.
While on Cataract accomplishing the first objective may often times owe more to luck than skill, achieving both means you simply deserve to win.

I do believe than Cataract needs a fix (you shouldn't be able to just walk to an enemy's portal, you should have to first fight to gain such a liberty), but locks don't. "Fixing" them as has been suggested in this thread would just turn Conquest into Slaughter mode (which, I guess, is the real intent : many players seem to think it's all about getting kills).

I had it done to me before in a custom game. In that game I was defending like mad until finally I had to give in. That game however we were so pushed back that claiming the lock was the final push was a bit stretched since the team was not in a good shape before the lock.

Come to think of it, I saw many games where the team that was in trouble lost after a portal lock. Then again those teams lost anyway. I think if you are winning and your portal gets locked you can just slaughter a wave or two and get the flag back. If the losing team loses a flag they are in more serious trouble because they can barely do anything against it any more.

In the end I have not enough experience to be a good judge I think, but what I do know is that I would consider locking a problem if the losing team can get a comeback simply by getting a surprise lock. If your team is having the upper hand then the locking is just an extension of that upper hand rather than a real issue. This locking will allow you to finish the game rather than dragging it out longer. This way the locking is the beginning of the end, like it should be imo. In the beginning of the game you have the chance to win, and when you finally capture that flag that seems unreachable in the beginning, the victory is near.

Maybe I am not seeing the real issue here because this problem that is considered serious by some people is just a minor thing in my book. I would not oppose to increasing the cooldown on the locks but I would not consider it absolutely needed.

Really interesting when both sides manage to take all opposing portals in a kind of trade, though.

I see no problem with cap locks.  Both sides have equal access to them and they help speed up the game.

Just because it is symetrical doesn't mean it is a great mechanic. There has to be a change in the game so that other choices than chain portal lock offer simialr risk and rewards. Early game there are more possible choices to make and it is more interesting. The game would be better if there were more ways to win.

Actually, my Reg had just sniped their Reg, and their rook had taken quite a few of our base towers down and captured one of our gold flags. I'd been saving gold for a while and when at base bought both cata and giants upgrades since I just got gold for a kill. The rook and QoT was fighting 2 of my teammates right infront of the citadel. We still somehow had one of the middle portal flags so I ported there, ran up the side past a few towers, capped their portal flag while tanking 2 towers, locked it, and saw my teammate TB on the other side just about to start capping it, obviously the catas/giants I bought forced the 2 at my base to retreat, and they then bought all the minions to, but it was too late. Their base died pretty fast and we kept on locking portals and harrassing behind our large force of creeps. They were unable to do anything at that stage, their citadel fell in no time.

All of us were atleast 2 levels lower then their lowest and 5 levels at highest. So they had a great advantage, I guess we spent gold better on upgrades and they just got lots of items thinking that they had the game in the bag really.

As for the actual topic, I still would like some better tower placements on some maps *cough* Cataract *cough* as well as some tower buffs to make them more of a detterant at mid/late game. They should either scale or allow us to pay for them to scale. The lock times should be reduced to like 30sec and a 5 second non-lockable time period after the lock expires. Also having it so you can't lock it if an enemy comes in capture range would be great to.

I would argue that it IS a great mechanic because it allows games to be decided based on more than just generally ganking.  It actually helps add to the overall map strategy.

And like i said before, it helps speed up the game because it allows for game changing plays to be made.

Yeah, flag locks definately need a nerf.

I played a game on Cataract the night before last which turned into a Flag Lock tug of war. Despite pulling a momentary comeback and capping their flags and attacking their citadel, they pushed us back with Giants and Artifacts, capped our flags and won. It was a great game. Stopping them from capping our flags was merely a matter of getting their attention elsewhere on the map; i.e. capping and locking their flags.