Flashpoint’s been here for about three weeks now, and while in general I find the fights quite fun, the downtime and point capture speed is definitely something I think feels a bit off both when watching competitively (like OWL or so) or even playing casually. I don’t think decreasing the net capture speed is the best idea for helping this because that would just make matches potentially last forever, and I’d like this gamemode to continue being very unique from Control.
What dawned on me is I think a good idea to make Flashpoint both have more room for creative plays, and also more potential fights, is to make it so that whenever the point is contested, the capture speed goes down noticeably. I’m not sure how much it should go down, maybe normal Control speed if not slower, but I feel this would be better to encourage more aggressive plays and make longer fights not feel like if you lose it’s ruined.
On top of this idea, I think a cool idea for FP would be to have the farthest points from each other have a longer time before they open up. Iirc, right now once a point is captured there are about 30 seconds before the next point opens up. Teams often get there by the time that is open, if not a bit earlier, but this feels a lot rougher when you go from one corner of the map to another. A way to make this not feel so tough would be to make the timer longer whenever you go from, for example, the far left corner to the far right corner (so distances like 150m). The timer can be extended by like 15 seconds, just to give more teams time for pathing, grouping up or even less stressful first fights.
These two changes together in my opinion would help the game mode majorly, but if anyone disagrees I would love to know why. I actually like every main game mode in the game from the OGs (outside of 2CP) to OW2 additions Push and Flashpoint, but I do think the most recent two have places they can improve before just giving up on them entirely.