Ok, so I’ve put a decent amount of thought into this. Shoot me down/critique/suggest/agree as you wish.
Ok, so the basic idea is to have a large mid point similar to the graveyard in Legacy of the Foefire that periodically drains life from all players on it, gaining (for lack of a better name, ill call it life force) life force. This draining happens, say every 60 seconds, and lasts 5 seconds, draining 2% of each player’s life every half second, for a total of 20% if the player stays on the point the whole time. We’ll say it gains 1 point of life force for every 2%hp it takes. Whenever a player is killed on the point, it gains 50 points of life force.
There are, lets say 3, tiers of life force for the point, similar to tiers of warrior adrenaline. Maybe the amount of life force required for each tier increases exponentially. Like tier 1 – 300, tier 2 – 700, tier 3 – 1200. The midpoint can be ‘activated’ once it has reached the first tier or higher. To activate the point, the team that wishes to activate it must have control of the point. They must also have a player who has a ‘death aura’. A death aura would be acquired at either of the side points. When a player’s team owns a side point, they would be able to interact with something there, giving them the death aura for, say 45 seconds. (There would be a cooldown time before a death aura could be gotten again from that point.) Then, as soon as they walked onto the midpoint with death aura, and if their team owned it, then the midpoint would become activated.
At tier 1 of life force, the effect of activation is that 2 veteran (insert name of necromaticish creature here. Ill just call them aatxes for now.) spawn on the point, allied with the team that activated the point. They attack any enemies on/near to the point. For the aatxes’ power, i’m thinking powerful enough that they can turn a 1v2 around so that the 1 wins. Like necromancer minions, they would last until killed.
Now for tier 2 – three aatxes spawn, and this time they can go anywhere on the map. They’re not limited to the midpoint.
Tier 3 – three aatxes spawn and do the same thing as last time. Also the team that activated it gets a buff where all points get the life drain ability, except now it drains life from their enemies and gives it to them. This buff would last for a limited time.
I think this would work nicely as a secondary mechanic because it will add more strategy to fighting on the mid point. You’ll probably want to get off the point when the lifedrain triggers (There would be some warning sign before the lifedrain happens, so you have a chance to get off, but it’d maybe only happen 2 seconds before the drain triggers) This could make stuns/immobs/cripple/chill more useful in mid fights, disabling foes so that they are stuck on the point for the drain. This mechanic could also force teams to make strategic choices about whether or not they want to get off the point. Because if they all leave for the full 5 seconds of the drain and 1 enemy stays on, i believe that is enough time to neutralize the point.
Also once the life force of mid gets high, possessing mid suddenly becomes very important, since you deny the other team the ability to activate it. Another way to deny activation is to possess the side points, since the death aura comes from them. Another strategy might be intercepting the player coming to mid with death aura and spiking them down before they can get there. This mechanic might also lead to comeback strats that involved getting one person with death aura and then sending all 5 players to mid to cap it quick and activate it for a big advantage. (Obviously this would only work really if the life force was at tier 3.)
Tell me what you think. What would you change? Do you think it would work as a pvp map at all? What strats would you do?