You want to exp nice and clearly untill lvl 20 without checking your flags status on minimap (what for ? you are pro, you don't need to defend anything)... You want me to tell how pro this startegy is ? Ok, it's great, amazing strategy - just don't care about anything, don't read minimap, ignore pings, ignore crushing your defence, just exp and avoid your enemies. This strategy is the best... but if you like to use this strategy, don't tell how unfair it is when some thinking people beats you in game. Your complains here are just hilarious.

Completely locking flags all the time requires quite an investment. Granted, later in the game the flag locks are not that expensive any more, but when the opposition invests thousands of gold in flag locks, then surely you can monitor enemy movement, buy yourself some shiney equipment with your gold instead and avert the capturing of your home portals?

If the opposing team wants to run back and forth from play to go home and get more flaglocks to hold middle flags and such I would just let them. You can do something more useful with your time so you will outlevel the opposition soon enough. Later in the game the costs of locks are not so significant any more, yet even then buying locks soon adds up and if the opposition spends gold on locks you have some free gold to spend on other things. If you can hold your flags by defending them then the opposition pretty much made a useless investment, one that can easely be matched with some good playing.

I feel that the opposition slipping past you to grab your portal is just weak play on your part. A good team will communicate all the time and they will wonder where the opponents DG went if they do not spot him a half a minute or so. Then the least you can do is zoom out a sec and see. When you monitor the field with your entire team like that then the risk of having the enemy run amok in your home territory is not quite that big.

In public games however where every one treats the game as a free for all I can see the flag-locks as major causes for headaches, but then again those public games is not where the balance of this game should lie. People being annoyed by flag locks in those games should really grow up fast and learn how to play.

Very insightful.  It couldnt be that I exploit the flag lock and recognize that it completely breaks the game mechanic?  That couldn't be it.  Next time do a little bit of research on someone before you retreat to 5 year old dick swinging contest.

I get that you spend your entire game camping your own portal flag. What am I doing.  Oh, I don't know, trying to take their portal flag?  Defending the other portal flag?  Unable to get there in time before the other team that plays as a team turns the flag in 5 seconds?  Smart enough to know not to port into two demigods that both have stuns?  Have you played this game against anyone that knows what they are doing?  I seriously have to question your judgement.

Again, stop being an idiot.  Just because you have learned to abuse a game mechanic to win does not mean it is not broken.

A glimmer of intelligence that was quickly smashed against the rocks.  I use and abuse portal locks with the best of them.

And there is the difference between you and me.  I don't consider the game okay because I win all the time.  I look at the gameplay as a whole.

It's really no sense to talk with you Melric. You don't have ANY arguments to force your theory, how op locks are. If you can't deal with locks... well that's your problem, isn't it ?

People thinks Splt is abuse, because they died from it. Snipe is abuse too, because thay died from it too. Rook towers are... abuse. Vampire is a one big abuse. Whole game needs to be nurfed ! Tbh, I feel sorry for you.

EOT for me.

@Poul I know you are better than this, listen to the poor guy, he is not crazy.

P.S. also, as erebus, I never had a problem walking to the flag, capping it and then batting out. Exposing myself to minimal risk.

That will be huge advantage for all voip teams, and make game much more complicated for all random teams.
Why do you want to do that ?

I had it done to me before in a custom game. In that game I was defending like mad until finally I had to give in. That game however we were so pushed back that claiming the lock was the final push was a bit stretched since the team was not in a good shape before the lock.

Come to think of it, I saw many games where the team that was in trouble lost after a portal lock. Then again those teams lost anyway. I think if you are winning and your portal gets locked you can just slaughter a wave or two and get the flag back. If the losing team loses a flag they are in more serious trouble because they can barely do anything against it any more.

In the end I have not enough experience to be a good judge I think, but what I do know is that I would consider locking a problem if the losing team can get a comeback simply by getting a surprise lock. If your team is having the upper hand then the locking is just an extension of that upper hand rather than a real issue. This locking will allow you to finish the game rather than dragging it out longer. This way the locking is the beginning of the end, like it should be imo. In the beginning of the game you have the chance to win, and when you finally capture that flag that seems unreachable in the beginning, the victory is near.

Maybe I am not seeing the real issue here because this problem that is considered serious by some people is just a minor thing in my book. I would not oppose to increasing the cooldown on the locks but I would not consider it absolutely needed.

I see no problem with cap locks.  Both sides have equal access to them and they help speed up the game.

Actually, my Reg had just sniped their Reg, and their rook had taken quite a few of our base towers down and captured one of our gold flags. I'd been saving gold for a while and when at base bought both cata and giants upgrades since I just got gold for a kill. The rook and QoT was fighting 2 of my teammates right infront of the citadel. We still somehow had one of the middle portal flags so I ported there, ran up the side past a few towers, capped their portal flag while tanking 2 towers, locked it, and saw my teammate TB on the other side just about to start capping it, obviously the catas/giants I bought forced the 2 at my base to retreat, and they then bought all the minions to, but it was too late. Their base died pretty fast and we kept on locking portals and harrassing behind our large force of creeps. They were unable to do anything at that stage, their citadel fell in no time.

All of us were atleast 2 levels lower then their lowest and 5 levels at highest. So they had a great advantage, I guess we spent gold better on upgrades and they just got lots of items thinking that they had the game in the bag really.

As for the actual topic, I still would like some better tower placements on some maps *cough* Cataract *cough* as well as some tower buffs to make them more of a detterant at mid/late game. They should either scale or allow us to pay for them to scale. The lock times should be reduced to like 30sec and a 5 second non-lockable time period after the lock expires. Also having it so you can't lock it if an enemy comes in capture range would be great to.

Yeah, flag locks definately need a nerf.

I played a game on Cataract the night before last which turned into a Flag Lock tug of war. Despite pulling a momentary comeback and capping their flags and attacking their citadel, they pushed us back with Giants and Artifacts, capped our flags and won. It was a great game. Stopping them from capping our flags was merely a matter of getting their attention elsewhere on the map; i.e. capping and locking their flags.