W.I.P
The MGA gamemode
This document contains a description of the "Market Gardening Arena" gamemode. The specifications written here are in no way "official"; they are but a mere subset of what the biased author thinks is necessary for a server to implement in order to offer an experience that he and he alone will call good. The purpose of this document is to have in written form the rules of this gamemode in order to make them easily searchable. Moreover, this should make it easier for anyone to look up the possible pitfalls that should be handled in order to have a fun, fair MGA server.
Introduction
The MGA gamemode revolves around the Market Gardener, a melee weapon for the Soldier which allows this class to inflict critical damage when rocket-jumping.
Most MGA servers create rules that make this weapon deal always fatal damage upon hit (which may not be the case by default) and make the Soldier have unlimited rockets and unkillable through means other than with the Market Gardener, such as fall damage or any damage coming from other players.
Basic ruleset
The core of the gamemode is about getting kills with a melee weapon while blast-jumping. Friendly fire is off, and any source of damage should come from other blast-jumping players' melee weapons or environmental damage (if the arena has pitfalls and the like). Any and all other damage must be prevented by the server (e.g. through plugins).
Any melee weapon used must kill in one hit when blast-jumping. The Market Gardener is the only weapon which possesses this feature, but other weapons may be given this condition with plugins. Most servers only allow the former, but this is not a requirement. (While most competitive servers ban all other melee weapons, there is almost no downsides in allowing most if not all of them, providing some are reworked.)
Players must have infinite ammo both in their weapons' clip and in reserve. (Note that some weapons must be handled differently due to working differently than most other weapons, e.g. the Beggar's Bazooka.)
Players should be able to join whatever team they want, whatever the number of people the team already has.
For obvious reasons, random crits should be disabled.
Allowed classes
Most variants of the MGA gamemode restrict the classes to the Soldier only. While doing this allows for a more balanced and competitive environment, it isn't mandatory as most classes, being less mobile than the Soldier, are often at a disadvantage and any player picking them over him would not make the game unbalanced. However, if other classes are to be allowed, some of their weapons must be reworked so as to not disrupt the flow of the game too much.
Weapon rules
Some weapons must be banned or reworked to fit into the MGA gamemode. A preference should be given on reworking them, as banning weapons is often a source of frustration. Note that the following rules are merely suggestions.
All weapons
All weapons must have an infinite ammo supply. The easiest method would be to periodically refill the weapons' ammo at a fixed rate.
All melee weapons
The damage output of all melee weapons must be sufficient enough to kill players in one hit when blast-jumping.
The Disciplinary Action
This melee weapon's range is far greater than most other melee weapons, with virtually no penalty to balance it out. It must therefore be banned or reworked so that its range is the same as the Market Gardener.
Demoman's swords
The swords have a longer range than other weapons, although since they take a longer time to pull out, they can be considered weaker in a gamemode where speed matters a lot. For this reason, a rework isn't deemed necessary.
The Mantreads
This weapon must be banned or reworked so that its effect is nullified. As this weapons diminishes recoil from blast damage and increases air control, any player equipping it is automatically at an advantage over other players, forcing them to also use that weapon. Giving its effects to all players is a possibility but since players often prefer the default air control and use blast damage to protect themselves, this would be rebuked by most.
The Airstrike
This weapon's fire rate increases when the owner is blast-jumping. As this gamemode gives infinite clip ammo, this weapon would allow players to fire virtually all the time more rockets than their opponents. This weapon must therefore not have its clip made virtually infinite; instead, a longer wait period should be implemented to make the user wait a bit before having its clip refilled. (Not refilling the clip entirely would make the owner waste too much time reloading, making this weapon useless.)
The Direct Hit
This rocket launcher excels at airshotting, which can be seen as an unfair advantage in combat. One may choose to ban or rework it so it fires rockets at the same speed as other rocket launchers. However, it should also be noted that its splash radius is smaller than that of other rocket launchers, which can be seen as a downside large enough to balance out its upside. For that reason, banning or reworking it is left as a suggestion.
The Beggar's Bazooka
Due to this weapon working differently than most rocket launchers, its clip must not be made infinite like other weapons.
Pyro's flamethrowers
The flamethrowers allowing the Pyro to airblast must be banned or reworked so that the airblast doesn't prevent the players from strafing.
Engineer's sentries
As the sentries are a major source of knockback and annoyance, they should be banned or reworked so that they do not hinder gameplay. (A suggestion would be to make them unrepairable.)
Chat commands
Most MGA servers implement common commands which most players expect to exist on all of them. The following list contains the most used commands that most players expect to have access to:
- /fov number
- The /fov command must allow users to set their own desired FOV, up to at least 130 degrees.
- /mga
- The /mga command must send the player to the main arena. At every death, the player must be immediately respawned into the arena.
- /r
- The /r command must send the player back to the spawn arena while also disabling the behaviour set by /mga.
All commands should be typed in the chat, prepended by an exclamation point or a forward slash (e.g. /fov 90).
Conclusion
Implementing these basic rules should allow one to setup a basic MGA server. Of course, the written rules here can be ignored or expanded upon and other rules can be added. This here only provides the foundations for a solid, mostly fair MGA experience.