Guide for Capture jobs

[Fachuro]

So, it's been almost a week since capture creator came out, and while a lot of original content is floating around, it's hard to tell the difference between what's well made and hard, and what's just sh*t. This makes it hard to create an Approved Capture job thread as there's no proper guidelines on how to judge a well-made capture job, yet...

 

That's why I'd like to invite the GTAforums community to aid me in defining the more and less important parts to pay attention to when creating a Capture Job. Speak up, and say what you consider bad in a capture job, and what's clever. Please think through WHY you think a specific element makes it bad or good as well, and add some arguments for and agains't certain elements. There is no right or wrong answers here as of yet, and that's why we need YOUR opinions, to be able to compile a proper list. I'm starting this thread to make sure an Approved Capture thread is up and running ASAP, and the more opinions and arguments we receive, the harder, better, faster and stronger this thread will be up and running ;-)

 

Tyvm in advance,

- Fachuro (XBL: Md Oz E, PSN: CampeKoellen)

[LuapYllier]

I don't really do combat jobs often enough to be able to say what is good for them but I can offer a few things that I DIDN'T like about some that I have played.

 

Did not like...

 

Being left with no vehicle to use after delivering a package.

Having enemy players respawning in the immediate area of the collection item.

Jobs that don't play well with low numbers.

 

I'd like to add also that I think we should be able to make much larger and or multiple locations for respawning.

Edited April 17, 2014 by LuapYllier

[Fachuro]

I don't really do combat jobs often enough to be able to say what is good for them but I can offer a few things that I DIDN'T like about some that I have played.

 

Did not like...

 

Being left with no vehicle to use after delivering a package.

Having enemy players respawning in the immediate area of the collection item.

Jobs that don't play well with low numbers.

 

I'd like to add also that I think we should be able to make much larger and or multiple locations for respawning.

Was there any factors you noticed that might've been the cause why some jobs don't play well with low numbers, and regarding respawns and vehicles, has there been any factors affecting how much of a setback this is to the job? Like I assume proximity between delivery point and pick-up point would affect how much the lack of a vehicle affects the playability, and it might even help in certain cases.

 

I'm just curious, trying to brainstorm...

[LuapYllier]

If a job has the capture points going in opposite directions both lack of vehicles at the point and low player count make it difficult to re-engage the enemy. Respawning at the item area means that niether team can clear an area long enough to get going. I think this is mostly from jobs with respawn set to point of death or no zone designated. None of these factors are wrong necessarily but I found it less enjoyable. Of course, I am not the typical gung ho combat guy.

 

I made a new one last night i am going to be doing some test runs on that hopefully address some of this...but I also tried some risky stuff that may not work out so well. I forsee some changes needed.

Edited April 17, 2014 by LuapYllier

[BitPieStudios]

- A capture would be more enjoyable if it makes use of a particular location's elements.

An example of this would be if there are two mansions, and the bases are inside each of them.

Try to avoid making prop-objects bases; it's more messy; unless you can blend it with the environment of course.

 

- Evenly placed spawns. Don't have 1 team start very close to a bunch of bags while another is far away(unless the team that is closer has to capture more than the team who is farther away).

 

-OPTIONAL: A little story. Be clever with it! My capture, personally, has a concept that revolves around two construction brothers, and each team grabs blueprints from a central base to bring to their respective brothers.

 

- If your capture is large in scale, USE VEHICLES. It would be very irritating to spawn very far away fro a central base on foot, and having to steal a car to get close.

 

- Be spawn camp-proof. Unfortunately, in an official rockstar job, some dick I was playing with camped up on a Pay and Spray's roof, with an RPG.

It was above our team's spawn point, and we spawned in cars. There was just no defending ourselves. Try to avoid possible situations like that, where a dick with an RPG/Grenade Launcher can kill people spawning in cars.

 

- Don't make the AI too hard to kill. I made this blunder in my map, where it's very packed and full of AI. It makes it nearly impossible to grab the bags. If you have a bunch of AI, at the very least set their accuracy to medium. Reserve hard for when there are one or two AI guarding a special point.

 

- ANOTHER AI TIP. This ties with the above. try to make it so that, if you have some AI set to unlimited spawning, to make sure the player can get out of the vicinity safely without being killed by the AI they killed to get there. Do this by spreading the AI spawn radius.

 

I'll add more later.

Edited April 18, 2014 by BitPieStudios

[B3astGTS]

Tough to judge as capture has a variety of game modes and the creator itself has some critical limitations/bugs that can mess thing up. The only things I would say that could qualify as a better design practice is:

 

-Use respawn zones as no zones is random (Had a map with no respawn zones and it spawned me out behind a barb wire fence with a long walk back to the action.

-Place respawn zones some distance from the base to give the team some defense against spawn killing

-Proper AI usage. I'd say proper with respect to aggressive and defensive settings. From what I've seen aggressive means they ignore patrol area to go after enemies where with defensive setting they stay within their patrol zones. So if patrol area matters you should be using the defensive setting.

 

Edit:

-One more key one. If you require a special vehicle to reach the objective, it needs to be placed in sight of the players as there's no guidance to placed vehicles other than capture objective vehicles.

Edited April 18, 2014 by B3astGTS

[Coin]

Some of this will be repeating, in a fashion, what others have said, so take it as me agreeing of sort but here goes: Any corrections to info I've posted is welcomed by the way.

 

Respawns

*On large maps, due to only having one respawn point per team (unless there's a way to glitch place more) don't use them if it is going to take the player more than a minute to get where they need to go (be it a neutral capture point, or enemy base).

*Conversely, on smaller maps, you'll want to actually use the respawn points or things can and do become a chaotic mess more often than not. An example of a capture map that doesn't have a set respawn point and is small enough to suffer for it, would be All Abhorred.

*Respawn points should be placed in locations where they cannot be easily spawn camped (whether intentionally or otherwise). For raid style matches, I would suggest not placing the spawn point in the immediate vicinity of your base. Raid: Beachin' is an example of poorly placed respawn points (particularly the base on the beach) whilst Raid: High Road is an example of good spawn point placement. Ideally you don't want people to be easily sniped out in the open but that isn't always easy to accomplish this.

 

Player Size/others

*Pretty simple this one. Use the size of your area of play as a base to determine how many players it can feasibly support. Generally speaking, bigger = more players, smaller = less players.

*Game mode, flow and the number of teams should also factor into your decision.

*Highly subjective, but for me, a good barometer is always whether it starts to feel like more of a death match than a capture. The former tends to occur when there are more players in an area of play than it can perhaps support.

*Balance player limit and amount of teams. Just ask yourself, "Is my 8 player with 4 teams of 2 really going to be more fun than 2 teams of 4, or going for a 9 player with 3 teams of 3 instead", if the answer is no, something probably needs to change.

 

AI

*Balance accuracy and the level of weaponry the AI is using (as well as going for thematic). As a rule of thumb, if there are going to be a lot of AI in the same vicinity, with high accuracy settings, they'll have lower powered weapons. Anyone with a more high powered weapon would get dropped to medium.

*Basically what B3astGTS said about AI mentality. Aggressive will ignore patrol area once engaged, so keep this in mind and use sparingly (it can be useful for AI placed in vehicles to chase down players) if your goal is to have them primarily protecting whatever the objective of the capture is. I could be wrong, but I believe aggressive AI will respawn where you kill them, rather than where they were set initially (if anyone can correct me on that, it would be great) so it might be useful to set these types to limited respawn.

*AI Respawns. When choosing how many times an AI will respawn, keep in mind that there is NO respawn timer setting and that they will respawn quite quickly if set to do so (I don't remember the exact time off the top of my head, but it is less than 20 seconds). So again, if you have most/all of your AI allocation in a small area, it might be beneficial to set some or all to limited respawns.

*Wander. AI set to wander will, as advertised, wander the map. Because there are no boundaries, this will really be the entire map. So consider what the role of the AI is, and whether wander is going to be appropriate for it. If you want the AI to defend a location, then wander is going to be hit and miss. However, wander can be beneficial for those who want to give capture objects to them. In fact, personally, that is the only time I would use wander.

 

Weapons

*Unfortunately there's no forced weapons setting, so the best you can do here is only offering the sorts of weapons you want people to be using with weapon placements. This is only useful in-so-far as explosives are concerned though, since they have significantly lower ammo capacity and will run out faster.

*For weapon placement, I prefer to place primarily in the base or near set respawn points. I don't really judge a map based on weapon placement because it doesn't tend to be as important in GTA compared to say Halo.

 

Narrative Or the Clear Idea

*Basically what BitPieStudios touched upon, a little narrative for your capture goes a long way. It can help to form the basis of your capture, or at the very least, it is likely to leave a better impression in your job description than "lol this capture has tanks and jets, Saving Ryans Privates capture edition yolo swag".

*Don't just load up capture creator on a whim and decide to make something. Come up with an idea first, plan it out and then execute it. Knowing what you want to achieve before hand will lead to better results (and again, having a narrative here helps greatly) than randomly throwing sh*t together which is better served as a learning experience.

 

GTA Capture Style (Aka the vehicle capture mode)

*Use appropriate vehicles as your vehicle capture type. Be mindful of the surroundings (is it in the city, and thus dense, or out in the country and more open) and that most players will have access to weaponry that can destroy vehicles easily (be it explosives of some variety or miniguns). Large and slow vehicles, in dense areas, tend be incredibly vulnerable - All Abhorred is getting a special mention again here as a bad example (good idea but bad execution), in my opinion, of a good GTA style capture - and thus can drag things out or otherwise make them less enjoyable than is necessary.

 

Misc

*Whenever you publish, or revise your creation, don't play it to win. Play, but focus primarily on observing how everyone else is playing. Where are people going right? Where are they going wrong? Do they miss the special vehicles that you've placed consistently? Etc etc, you get the point. My first capture has undergone about 3 revisions to date, just by observing what it is going on and then adjusting when I see an issue come up.

*Balance your time limit and capture limit. If the capture limit isn't achievable in the given time limit, you may need to increase the time limit or lower the amount of capture points one needs to win.

 

I could write more, but most of what I'd say has already been covered and this post has already probably ventured enough into TL:DR territory.

[ILL]

^real advice

[elfoam]

I made a capture, hard.. Maybe, in testing not a single case has been delivered yet Lol. Need to edit some things so you can do it without being punished so much.

[BitPieStudios]

I made a capture, hard.. Maybe, in testing not a single case has been delivered yet Lol. Need to edit some things so you can do it without being punished so much.

It'd be swell if rockstar released, in the next patch, an option to turn invincibility off so we could avoid situations like this.

Also weapon locks so we could avoid situations like RPG car-spawn camping. But we've touched upon that enough here.

Edited April 18, 2014 by BitPieStudios