Final boss ideas (Rayquaza and Zapdos)
During the first season Zapdos was a big topic of discussion. People were complaining it was too OP and very frustrating because the 8 first minutes were useless.
It was partly true but pokemon unite has 10mn games, which is very different from other mobas. Because of that, you need to have a comeback mechanic to avoid being 100% sure of losing the game if you make a bad start. Zapdos was a good idea, but the downside is that it allows too much "random comeback" if people are flipping the objective.
For the second season, timi changed zapdos for rayquaza, and the shield mechanic instead of the open bases mechanic. This was a very good change, and almost everyone was happy. The value of Rayquaza was just a bit low so timi decided to buff it (decrease rayquaza's HP), and honnestly it was the perfect spot. 99% of the players were very happy of it.
Then timi decided to buff it again, and again, and again... Increase the shield, reduce the time to score, increase the damages when you have shield, tornado that bumps you when opponents have the rayquaza (this one is by far the worst idea). Well, people started to moaning again. Rayquaza was at the perfect spot, and now it's Zapdos again. Honnestly I don't understand that decision.
Well, I understand that we need to have a comeback mechanic otherwise people will just forfeit at 5mn every games. But we need to allow people to comeback IF THEY DESERVE IT which mean, if they are able to win the last fight, and not if a single player steal the rayquaza alone. We also need to deter players from flipping rayquaza when all 10 people are alive (because it's just a coin flip, and it's neither fun and fair).
For that, I have two proposals :
- 1/ Only players that are in the central area (let's say the rayquaza zone and not the six corridors that leads to the rayquaza) will be granted a shield. It prevents situations where you win the fight but an alone ennemy manages to randomly steal the rayquaza, because he will be the only one to have a shield, even if his team is respawned.
- 2/ When rayquaza is defeated, an orb spawns in it's place. Each player on the team that defeated rayquaza needs to collect the orb to be granted the shield. In this case, if an ennemy steals the rayquaza alone, he will have to wait his team to safely collect the orb. The other team still have the opportunity to KO ennemies before they collect the orb. This idea allows to reward the team that won the last team fight and comback, but does not reward random 1v5 steal, and random 5v5 flip. I believe it makes the game more fair but keep the comeback option.