How to mitigate llamaing?

[MightySheep]

or something simple like if you llama you lose half your health

 

[Disci]

I find this conversation funny. Not trying to make fun of anyone, but think about it, preventing llama grabs is a job of one player and that is LD stay. If your team doesn't have stayd then ofcos enemy is able to llama the flag. If your team doesn't have chaser but does have stayd then you should have good cappers because you can't really stop a good capper on your own as the only D in your team.

PUB's are bad no matter what you do. There is going to be another annoying thing replacing the old problem which was solved by some illogical way. Llamas should realise the situation when to use this highly precious skill they have. This is the only way to solve this.

 

[Daphinicus]

I find this conversation funny. Not trying to make fun of anyone, but think about it, preventing llama grabs is a job of one player and that is LD stay. If your team doesn't have stayd then ofcos enemy is able to llama the flag. If your team doesn't have chaser but does have stayd then you should have good cappers because you can't really stop a good capper on your own as the only D in your team.

PUB's are bad no matter what you do. There is going to be another annoying thing replacing the old problem which was solved by some illogical way. Llamas should realise the situation when to use this highly precious skill they have. This is the only way to solve this.

Agreed, Disci. Agreed.

To this day, I don't have a problem with llama grabbing. It can be perfectly effective, from a PUB to a PUG to a scrim, if executed at the right time, under the right conditions, or by a player that has a superlative exit route to get the heck out of Dodge. I've capped out by running llama routes on Moonshine many a time. "Yes," you say, "on MOONSHINE," but hey, it worked beautifully, in that situation.

Let's get straight with ourselves: We don't hate llama grabs. We are driven nuts by folks who llama the flag, and then dawdle all the way back to their base, guaranteed to get blown apart within 300 meters of the enemy stand. That takes up time, ruins solid cap routes, and allows the enemy to get their flag off the stand of 30 seconds, which can make a difference in the outcome of the game.

The solution isn't to implement some magical anti-llama device that only works when we turn it on; it's to educate players. Help them learn routes! Offer to show them a few if you notice they aren't being effective. Lend them a helping hand.

 

[Disci]

They don't want a helpful hand. Learning needs energy and effort. This is something, it seems, most of the people lack. Those who want to learn have done it already(or are showing that they want to learn). I see the same people doing the same stuff day after day and I'm 100% sure they see what is happening around them. They see good cappers, defenders etc. There is no way they don't wonder how people are able to do things they do.

For example the issue I pointed out in my first post, OD front routes. Good players, those who have played the game(atleast they say they have) almost since the beginning are not able to figure out what is effective and what is not. They keep banging their heads towards the wall no matter how hard that wall hits them back. Are they idiots? I don't know. All I know that it's the map that sucks rather than they would admit they lack something...

 

[Daphinicus]

They don't want a helpful hand. Learning needs energy and effort. This is something, it seems, most of the people lack. Those who want to learn have done it already(or are showing that they want to learn). I see the same people doing the same stuff day after day and I'm 100% sure they see what is happening around them. They see good cappers, defenders etc. There is no way they don't wonder how people are able to do things they do.

That may be, but we can't implement game balance components simply because bad players choose to play like bad players. E-grabbing alone is enough reason for me to want to keep llamaing in the game.

That said, I wouldn't get too hard on OD cappers in PUBs. Whenver I play in a pub, I'm constantly trying to practice OD capping, simply because I'm so freaking bad at it that I keep running into walls. They're PUBs... who cares what the scores are? It's all folks practicing and having fun anyways.

 

[Disci]

Like I said, I find it more annoying that flag is taken by someone using front OD route that is not effective and flag is probably gonna be dropped in the middle of the map rather than close to the stand where I might have a chance to pick it up. After dying the 10th time in a row like that atleast I would think if it is effective enough or not.

I didn't want to suggest that there should be ways to force/help people to realise when to llama flags. Far from that. I just wanted to say what I think about trying to help people on the server. Heck, I've been called names, cursed at + other idiotic things when I've tried to tell people what would be the best for the team. Sometimes people loses their temper and starts shooting me for daring to give them advices what to do.

 

[RiPTaCk]

Like I said, I find it more annoying that flag is taken by some front OD route that is not effective and flag is probably gonna be dropped in the middle of the map rather than close to the stand where I might have a chance to pick it up. After dying the 10th time in a row like that atleast I would think if it is effective enough or not.

Oh Disci you do not know how true that is.

 

[Homingun]

You know what is more annoying? Players who use OD grabs and don't go straight back to base and die midfield. Then the flag can be held midfield until someone wastes their time to force the return or worse yet, reset the timer.

I don't think llamaing is the issue here. If you look at maps like frost and zenith with lower flag stands and bowls farther away from flagstand, llamaing is not really a problem. If it is a problem, then someone on defense isn't doing their job or the player is a good llama .

I think what people find actually annoying is when someone can llama the flag and instantly get speed by jumping into a bowl. It doesn't really give time for the defense to react. This I would attribute to how certain maps are built. Whether that was the purpose of these maps or they should be changed is up to the devs.

 

[Mhi200]

^This. (The second and third parts)

 

[Lin]

I think it'd help more if new players actually knew hot not to llama. Returning from IA after a year and a half, and never having gotten good at the original, i can say from personal experience that learning a good, high speed/od cap route is the hardest thing to learn. Give new players more help, maybs a tutorial, and it would cut down on llamas dramtically.

 

[NightHawk043]

I know Vel's doing a series of videos called "legions quick tips". The first one has been out for a while. It's called "don't llama the flag". In it he says why you shouldn't llama, what to do instead, and includes an example; a simple Nivosus front OD route.
I have my suspicions that even if you put video's in the loading screens giving quick easy starter routes on both teams for each map, that you'd still get a lot of people who'd ignore the movie and just llama anyway, because they know they can do that, and why would anyone want to waste time Learning.

 

[ripperthedipper]

At the moment llama's are not annoying. More annoying are those people who run front OD routes on pretty much any map and dying pretty much right after the grab(Gorge for example is not very good for those). They also think they are good cappers who knows good "routes". You don't need many of them to *dance* up your teams effort to win the map.

A lot of ppl are doing front routes, because when they do a side route, there is 90% chance that the flag is already taken by someone else.

 

[RockeyRex]

I have this solution for this problem. Defence.

No, seriously.

The whole problem originates from the fact that slow people don't die fast enough.

LT/Cluster (Yes! It's tribes taim!) had minedisking for instant kills to slow targets and possible more skilled moves against faster targets.
HOWEVER! This makes the game rock hard for new people. It is a brutal newbie killer.

Original mods had base assets to counter llama grabs. This was actually a more newbie friendly option as it doesn't instagib you and you'll prolly learn after a few tries to not try again.

Other possibilities could of course be there, but I'm just pointing out where this problem originates from and how it was handled in the past.

 

[Vox]

My idea is to make the flag ungrabbable by llamas(does not affect cappers who have velocity warning when grabbing flag) unless the enemy is a certain distance from the base
so for example. lets say i am at the enemy base, the enemy flag carrier is pretty far from their base, so i can't llama but other cappers could do their fast caps. but then the enemy gets pretty close, i would be allowed to llama to prevent the enemy from capping.

 

[Mhi200]

How about we limit llamas to 88m/s till they respawn

 

[Volt Cruelerz]

A lot of ppl are doing front routes, because when they do a side route, there is 90% chance that the flag is already taken by someone else.

Not necessarily... I for instance don't take side routes often simply because I do have effective front routes on most maps and on Frostbyte for instance, there's one route that almost always works for me (unless they all just respawned basically).


As for OD routes in general, they just take a lot of practice. Back before IA went down, I decided that I would teach myself an OD route on Nivo. I never got it to work (before IA went down), but now, I have a good side OD route. OD capping is just a skill that doesn't really inherit any skills from the ones you get elsewhere. You have a ton of momentum that you have to worry about, and you're trying to turn quickly... It just takes practice.


Making the flag ungrabbable to llamas is just stupid. E grabs couldn't work. As for those that are certain distances, there are some routes I use that are faster on the return than the leave. That means that while there are some perfectly effective "llama" grabs, they wouldn't be allowed.


As has been said, the solution to this is to teach people to ski properly. Unfortunately, not all want to learn. This is true, but I don't think we should cut the throat to cure the nose bleed.

 

[MJ1284]

That may be, but we can't implement game balance components simply because bad players choose to play like bad players.

Even if 95% of bad players choose to play like bad players?

Other than that, I'm pleased to see how actively you people have been pondering on this issue. While I agree that lousy Defense is partially responsible of llamaing, as Homingun mentioned the map layout also has a huge part in llamaing (ie. flagstand is right next to a bowl = way too easy to gain speed after llama grab).

Also, if devs leave it up for seasoned members to teach people (who are mostly uninterested) in basics of skiing and grabbing with speed then something has gone wrong.

PUB's are bad no matter what you do.

True true, I feel like Don Quijote... but I wouldn't complain so damn much if we had an alternative. So far PUBs are only thing Legions has to offer (with some "once in two months" PUGs or such).

 

[Daphinicus]

So far PUBs are only thing Legions has to offer (with some "once in two months" PUGs or such).

You might just not be on at the right times; there's been a PUG going on every night I've been on for the past several weeks. That may not be EVERY night, but they are happening. Of course, it helps if you're in the right timezones and locations and all to make it easy on ya. =/

 

[Shanks]

I think it would be much easier to have an ol' fashioned mine that has a delay of maybe a second or less on explosion. This way fast cappers are out of there by the time it explodes and llamas are still meandering near it

 

[Application-1]

I think it would be much easier to have an ol' fashioned mine that has a delay of maybe a second or less on explosion. This way fast cappers are out of there by the time it explodes and llamas are still meandering near it

But when missing the flag and using OD to get back to that flag still results in a mine slapping in your face