A new form of Control Points that solves most of the problems with Control Points

The map is Echo of Souls' CP battleground.

Just a few lines of context: Echo of Souls is a new mmorpg that was published by Aeria Game in the Western Hemisphere. There are only 5 classes and 2 specializations for each class. There is no dedicated healer. Most healing items cannot be used in combat or in battlegrounds. The only way to heal in a battleground is to run back to base and click the fountain.

Now, the much more interesting bit since it pertains to Dominion and circular CP game modes in general. The biggest frustration in circular CP maps (Arathi basin, Eye of the Storm, Battle for Gilneas, Dominion) is the fact that you can be shutdown at any point of the game, forever playing catchup and losing despite having even a 99% lead. In Arathi Basin, it is difficult but not impossible to be fivecapped and stay that way. You will lose the game if you are fivecapped. One could argue that you should. However, the topology of the map means that if you don't have any rogues, hunters with camo glyph, or druids, the enemy can, will, and should spawn camp you and the game is over. While this is harder to do in Eye of the Storm, it is still not impossible, and it's even easier to do in Gilneas.

And it's even easier to do in Dominion. Why? Because you don't need to five cap. You just need more bases than the enemy. So even if you are roughly even in terms of bases most of the game, you will have a hugely different score. There are arguments why this is better than AB, EotS, and BfG, and I agree. From both the defenders' and attackers' points of view, there are addons that not only display how long until victory but how many bases you need to win. When you only need 2 bases to win, or even just 1, the game is pretty much over because all you need to do is hold the easiest base and keep a small bit of pressure on their flank so that if they do take it, you can get one of theirs and have no difference. The game ceases to be a game of tactics and instead becomes "hold this base at all costs". It's boring, less deep and honestly frustrating on both sides because of the lack of agency.

When I first played Dominion and realized score was based on difference and not total bases, the above is exactly what I knew Riot was trying to combat. You cannot remain complacent in Dominion for one second. If you do, the enemy can get 3/5 bases and keep rotating them while they are sitting at 1 health left and pull off a victory.

It is exciting, it keeps the gameplay the same because priorities NEVER change, but holy fucking shit is it frustrating. The worst part is that you're not even throwing. People like to think that draining the enemy is like snowballing in SR, but it ain't. Dom is so swingy.

Now when Valve was developing 5gorge for TF2, they were obviously aware of AB's design problems. Part of the design difference is the fact that there is just so much burst in TF2, whereas it's just not available all the time in WoW. Thus while a sentry nest can stonewall a game, it's mostly decided by the skill of both teams and not the fact that you have a resto druid + Disc priest + arms warrior in Season 8 defending the stables. Bad teams will not be able to defend or break nests. Good teams will break any nest and stop any charge. So knowing that classes do not have nearly the stonewall capacity of WoW, Valve designed the battle area with various entrance points of varying degrees of freedom. In AB it is very frequent to be flanked at a base because the map is so damn big and the points spaced just so that even though the topology promotes semi-linear progression, it is entirely possible to be attacked from both sides. It's actually possible to be attacked from 4. Now compare with 5gorge.

5gorge has no more than 3 entrances per side to one point, and those 3 entrances are explicitly defined because they are mostly bottle necked. There is no way to go around the point without being seen or being too far away to be killed easily. This means you can attack the point very easily and flank people who over extend. Additionally, only one point can be capped and be lost at any given point in time. This means you know EXACTLY which point can be taken, and in fact it just means "fall back" instead of taking one of 4 paths to one of 4 points to defend that point when it could be a diversion since one of the remaining 3 could be attacked as well. And since spawns move with each advance, you're essentially always the same amount of distance from the point when you spawn.

The main "problem" with the mode is that Valve doesn't want old AV style games. Since CP_5 modes reset the clock to 10 minutes every time a point is capped, games could go on forever. The don't because 1) we're human and 2) points become easier to cap in terms of caped time required as you get closer to the enemy base.

And now here comes Echo of Souls with what is in my opinion the most genius take I've ever seen.

The map is a circle with obstacles on the periphery. It looks remarkably similar to Dominion's outer ring except it also has a Baron Nashor-like objective at the southern point. There is a platform in the center of the map that has 5 spokes which serve as roads directly to all the possible points. There is no way to get to this platform or utilize the spokes unless you spawn on the platform. You cannot respawn on the platform unless you team is losing by more than 200 points and you then lose the privilege if you are losing by less than 100. Since you cannot heal except by returning to base, everyone can see everyone on the minimap, you earn roughly 1 point per base capped, and you need 10,000 points to win, the game is much slower. We return to the old AB style game, but the respawn point changes everything. You know exactly where the enemy is and isn't and can attack accordingly. You don't need stealth; there is no stealth. You just make a beeline for the easiest to cap point when the enemy has overextended and you're back in the game.

See, there are two reasons why staying 5 capped in AB is hard: 15 people assaulting one base is a lot of pressure, and it's not actually difficult to assault a base physically. You have a ground mount that goes super fast and covers tons of ground easily. As soon as you get past those guys spawn camping you, you have the choice of 4 points to go for.

But here, even if you have 5 capped the enemy, you can't simply run over there directly. You need to run along the circle, and not to mention mounts are very slow compared to WoW. And even if you have just been 5 capped by the enemy, if they were losing you can't just use the platform when you die. They will catch up and lose the privilege. Then you need to assault bases, and if you can't and they are now in the lead, suddenly you can use the platforms and break it. Rotating isn't nearly as effective because of this mechanic. And then there's the Baron Nashor. If you kill it, you get an offensive buff, but it requires a huge amount of players to kill it. So only the winning team can afford to spend the 30-60 seconds required to kill the thing. Which means the losing team can get a 5 cap or even try and snipe the objective themselves. The kill lands the team a buff which vastly increases damage and damage resistance, meaning you can now spread yourselves more thinly to defend or assault bases for a short period of time. It's a very popular tactic to go for the objective near the end since it only lasts 1 minute so you can hold out just a bit longer for the game to end (else you will get steamrolled by zergs and maybe lose).

This game mode obviously has problems and isn't for everyone. It is much more slow paced than Dom or AB. One game can take 20-30 minutes. Additionally, if you are continuously within that 200 gap, you are back to the AB style of problems. Having no way to heal yourself means that if you are on the opposite side of the map, it is actually better to simply die and respawn at the base than to retreat and heal. That feels odd. However, my main problems with CP maps have always been:

1. They become boring as the game nears the end
2. The mathematics lends to a loss of agency in games
3. Frustration since the actual winning score is more about rate instead of current situation (with Dom being 100% about rate).

EoS's CP map addresses all 3 of these points because while 200 points sounds like a lot, it's a spit in the bucket compared to 10 THOUSAND. So even if you're just a little bit behind, the rubberband mechanic kicks in, which can allow you to get back in the game. This increase of agency reduces frustration while keeping the tension of a close match. A lot of your matches in CP will end within 200 points. That means if one team played just a little bit better for maybe 2 more minutes of gameplay, they would have won.

To me, that's a well balanced gamemode.