Several weeks ago I wrote a post that made a variety of suggestions. One of the suggestions in particular seemed to catch a few people's attention and for a while I’ve thought about the concept and how it could work. The idea was to add another tactical layer to Gigantic besides relying on creatures and kills and was largely born out of a map in Guild Wars 2 called Temple of the Silent Storm. Although the map in question has the standard capture points, similar to Gigantic, it also has a second objectives known as Meditations. The two main meditations that spawn in different locations, at fixed times, are the following:

1. Meditation of Stillness (center) — Your team receives double points for each captured point. Comes at 11:30, 8:30, 5:30, and 2:30. The buff is effective for 25 ticks.

2. Meditation of Tranquility (north - underground) — Captures all three points for your team, launching foes out of the capture point. Comes at 8:30 and 2:30.

Unsurprisingly, both Meditations are incredibly important because they have the potential to flip capture points, but also to increase your existing point gain. Whilst neither would be appropriate for Gigantic, what would be is the principal of a secondary objective that forces players to react. You could not leave either Meditation uncontested because it would guarantee you’d lose all your control points or see the enemy team receiving double gains. What makes this additional mechanic so interesting isn’t the potency of it when you secure both, but the fact that it creates a series of questions for both teams:

1. How many players do we send to the Meditations?

2. How vulnerable are our Capture Points if we stop defending them?

3. Can we take the enemies Capture Points once they’re vacated?

4. Is there any potential to kill some of the enemy team as they make their way to the Meditation?

To apply such principles to Gigantic, I think there needs to be two specific things:

1.  A spawn at a set location on each map that needs to be interacted with

2. The object of interaction should provide a benefit to the team or an individual

In this instance, a Focus Fountain at one set location, on a timed interval, would become a valuable secondary resource. Unlike in Guild Wars 2, it would provide 2 Focus to the player who captures it, with players unable to capture the Orb if they receive damage. The reason why I think the Focus Fountains should be independant from Guardians and why they should give 2 Focus is fairly simple. At present, Power is largely easy to obtain to the point where any additional objective that is added to that resource, would create too many opportunities for snowballing. Separating the Focus Fountain so it only charges your only Focus skill adds an entirely new dynamic to Gigantic.

At present and certainly in the existing Meta, it can be fairly difficult to find the time to upgrade a creature. In fact, often games can reach The Clash before you even need to place a single upgrade. By providing two Focus to anyone who secures a Focus Fountain, there’s the opportunity to:

1. Save an additional Focus to reach 3, for the most powerful Creature upgrades.

2. If you already have one Focus, leap to 3.

3. To aid in a push should you choose not to use it on Creatures.

4. To save it for a group fight when defending.

In addition to the above, implementing a secondary objective of this nature would stretch teams and challenge existing tactics. Whilst a team could quite easily ignore the Focus Fountain, failing to secure two Focus would, at the very least, provide the opposition with a much stronger creature (especially if summoned on their backline) going into The Clash. In addition, it would also put teams who fail to capture the Focus at a slight disadvantage when engaging in the next team fight: they know the opposition has a two Focus ready. Alternatively, if you can contest from afar often enough, you could ensure no team secure its benefits.

These variables would create an interesting dynamic, especially if your Guardian alerted you to its impending arrival: “I sense Focus is gathering. Claim it!”. Players would be forced to make a decision on how they wanted to react to the Focus Fountain, whilst still juggling their own control points and creatures:

1. How many do we send to the Focus Fountain?

2. Do we ignore and push onto the enemy base knowing they’ll all be at the Fountain?

3. Can we ambush, kill the enemy team and still secure the fountain?

4. Can we use the time to upgrade, knowing the enemy team is distracter?

Where the finer points are concerned in terms of visual effects, spawn times and locations, of the two maps publicly revealed there are already perfect locations: the center of Canyon and the center of Mistforge, below Altar. Both locations are perfectly positioned to be equal for both teams, and would require very minimal adjustments by Motiga. As for when the Focus Fountain would appear, I think once every 3 minutes would be acceptable and with most matches lasting around 20 minutes (unless you’re absolutely steamrolled). Finally, interacting with the Focus Fountain would take around 6 seconds to channel the buff, giving both sides enough room to mount a defence.

By making this suggestion I’m not in any way suggesting Gigantic is shallow, but I’ve often found that the best multiplayer games have multiple layers to their game that challenges what players do and how they go about it. I think Focus Fountains, with a little fine-tuning, could be a very good thing for the game.

What do you think?