HIde and seek game mode

This is a game mode me and my friends have been playing recently. I am sharing it here for the sake of posterity, but it definitely wouldn’t suck if it became featured gamemode or something. I did not invent this, this is merely the rules my friends and me play with, and an invitation to discuss them. Keep in mind we are a pretty informal group, so there is quite a bit left to interpretation.

More in depth discussion at the top, summary at the bottom

The basic concept of the game mode is you have a team of 4-5 hiders and 2-3 seekers on the Dominion map. The rules are balanced mostly for 4 hiders 2 seekers, but may easily be modified for more people. The hiders each have 5 lives, and their goal is to keep survive until 35 minutes. The game is draft mode and Teemo and Evelynn are ALWAYS banned, as well as Guardian angel (there are a few more you may ban in home ruling if they become too annoying. Shaco and thresh spring to mind). You are not allowed to cap points, so that no minions may spawn, vision is kept universal on the outer ring, and gold generation is restricted to items/seeker kills/innate gold generation from the map.

The most important rule in this mode is that hiders are not supposed to kill seekers. They are allowed to use abilities and items solely with the intention of getting away from the hunters. Your objective is to stun, slow, knock away or move faster until the hunters lose track of you and you can find a new hiding spot. So hiders should focus their item builds on utility and survivability rather than damage. For example, picking Orianna and using the ball for movement speed/scouting/occasional knockup is a great thing. Building a deathfire grasp and nuking the hunter whenever they find you is not. Now under ideal conditions, hiders would have wither drastically reduced or entirely no damage, but in the base game this is just not the case. It does occur that the hunter may eventually get to low enough health that you are no longer able to slow/stun them without simply killing them. So there is a supplementary rule that if a hunter is driven to ~300 health or lower over a prolonged chase he is supposed to back off, with the reasoning that if he is kiting you for that long he has functionally gotten away. If the hunter does not back off after too long of being too low, the hider may be allowed to kill them. This does leave holes open for abuse but it is the simple unfortunate truth of trying to play this game mode in an unmodified client, and falls to the players not to abuse it. Buying is usually done after death, similar to Aram, but there are some problems with this, as mentioned below.

On the hider’s team, teamwork is highly encouraged. If a teammate is found, nearby allies should throw their thresh lanterns/activate their twin shadows to try and get them out. From my experience, this leads to two dominant strategies: running and hiding. Runners focus on keeping mobile and helping each other keep away from the seekers. This strategy is a bit more dynamic, but the hunters will know where you are more of the time. Hiding forces the hunters to waste more time attempting to find you, but usually leaves you in a worse position to escape if found.

The seeker side is focused on catching/killing the seekers. They should build primarily damage and utility. Having long range, cc, vision granting and/or chasing abilities are important for hunters. They should not need to prioritize tank as the hiders should not be building damage. Hunters are not allowed to leave the spawn until 2:00. They may not buy oracles elixir before 15:00. The hunters usually require a good degree of coordination in order to trap the hiders, and need to be efficient when searching bushes for hiders. Early in the game, it is fairly difficult for them to find and successfully kill enemy players, but as the game goes on and you kill the occasional fighter you will begin to gain increasingly higher gold advantage and damage. For this reason, the hunters will begin to dominate more the later the game goes. However, the more players you take out of the game, the harder it becomes to find those remaining, and the more time must be spent searching.

The specifics in these rules are for a team of 2 seekers, 4 hiders. Some simple modifications can be made for more players. An additional hider may be added without too much commotion. Adding a few minutes on to the timer is usually enough to accommodate. So the game may go to 38 minutes or something, it really depends on your group. Adding another hunter is significantly more tricky. We have accommodated by giving the hiders an extra life or two, or shortening the timer to 30 minutes. But the advantage another hunter brings is enormous and we have often found both to be necessary.

This game mode is extremely fun, and I would recommend trying it. I also believe it would make a great candidate for a featured game mode, as the ability to implement damage reduction/item restrictions may solve many of the problems present in this game mode. Speaking of problems, I should probably address some of the issues we have noticed and not really solved

Known problems:

The biggest issue is what to do with players who get knocked out early. They can still get some entertainment out of watching the game, but will often get slightly bored. In our sessions, players would usually either have a dance party near the two buff crystals in the middle or race around the perimeter, or just generally screw around. It is in general agreement that "dead" players are not allowed to directly interfere with the hunters, or the hiders for that matter. One anomaly we have encountered is the concept of following, where the dead hunters basically follow the hunters around, not interfering but still basically tracking them. On one hand, this did actually provide a degree of counterbalance in the case where the hunters managed to eliminate players very early, as it gave the remaining hiders a way to survive for longer. On the other, some characters could utilize the near constant vision to never be found (shaco can just disappear and juke us before we even knew we were near him). We kind of ruled that if the hunters took out multiple players early (say before 15 minutes or so), then the players could follow the hunters. They cannot buy any more items, and the hunters can continue to kill them if they wish (so you may essentially be giving them more gold) They will no longer be allowed to follow if there is only one champ left or if there is only 5 minutes remaining, because at that point it simply becomes too hard to track and kill them if they constantly know where you are.

Buying. It is generally agreed that the hunters may go and buy whenever they choose to. However, there is some debate about when the hiders can buy. We usually play so that hiders buy only after they have died, Aram-style. However, this does lead to the occasional scenario where a hider dies twice in close succession, and is essentially unable to afford anything, putting them at a heavy disadvantage, as limited lives means limited buys. It is agreed that no matter what, hiders are not allowed to recall.

Camping. It is generally agreed that hunters should not wait outside of the hiders store and kill them as they respawn. In practice, however, this is hard to enforce. There is nothing restricting the hiders from hiding near their base, and respawn timers may be difficult for the hunters to keep track of. So it has often occurred that a hider will come out of their base and simply run into a hunter that was either chasing somebody else or innocently patrolling. And there is usually no way for the hunter to tell if they just respawned or just happened to be running by.

Vision. Overall, the vision in this map suits this game mode well. However, there are a couple of specific places which cause issues. Namely, there are two strips in front of each base allowing unseen passage to and from the center. These have been often abused as an unintuitive hiding spot, as well as dishonestly used for hiders to return and buy (our group tends to agree that if hiders go to buy, there should at least be the risk of revealing yourself to the hunters).

Volley fire. We have occasionally encountered a runner style team made primarily of utility mages, such as lulu, karma, sona, etc. They would load up with utility items such as twin shadows and rylai's. However, these items are AP based, and though they usually don’t present a problem on a single player, on a group of mages they HURT. Their usual response to seeing a hunter would be to fire everything and run in the other direction. But with 5 mages we found that a single volley could take out 80% of a hunters health (or more), simply because many of the best utility items give AP. The hunters are then forced to get some tank in order to continue the chase, which in this environment drastically reduced their ability to quickly kill the runners. The challenge here wasn’t that a Single target was really being abusive in damage, but that as a group they were scaling well enough to have the same effect.

Long chases. This was discussed above, so only a minor recap. If a hider is able to kite a hunter for long enough, even with no bad intent, the hunter eventually gets low enough that the hider can no longer act without simply killing the hunters.

Leaverbuster. Sometimes if you have a good hiding spot the game tries to kick you. Mostly a minor annoyance but be sure to pay attention.

Summary

-- Game is 35 minutes long -- It is played on the dominion map -- One team has two hunters, one has 4 hiders -- Hunters win if they kill each hider 5 times before time is out -- Teemo and Evelynn are permanently banned due to permanent stealth abilities. -- Neither team may capture points -- Nobody may buy a guardian angel

Hiders -- their goal is to stay alive until the end

-- Hiders are only to use abilities which provide some sort of utility to escape the hunters, such as movement speed increase, dashes, or CC. -- Hiders are not to focus on damage, and are not to kill the hunters if possible. -- Hiders should only buy at points which the group agrees upon (usually at death). -- Hiders may not recall -- Eliminated hiders may not directly interfere with either team -- Hiders must leave base within 30 seconds of respawn

Hunters-- their goal is to kill each hider 5 times

-- Hunters may buy whenever they want -- Hunters should attempt to avoid killing the hiders as they respawn. -- Hunters may not buy oracles before 15 minutes.

These rules assume that players are good spirited and are not actively trying to abuse the game. If that occurs, some more strict guidelines may be necessary.

If anybody has suggestions on how to improve this, please feel free to recommend it. Or if you have funny/awesome stories. OR any reason to post. DISCUSS. TALK. BE FRIENDLY. STUFF LIKE THAT.