What is the greatest [non-game specific] multiplayer game mode ever?

[Roy]

Never really fell in love with Battlefield until Battlefield1's Grand Operations. What a fantastic mode, seems like genuine warfare a lot of the time.

Fuck EA/DICE for ruining it in BF5.

 

[aesync]

Capture the flag - countless hours of memories in Halo, Tribes, Unreal, team fortress. When I think of classic multiplayer modes with my fondest memories, it's this. I think it's cuz it translates directly to me being even younger, playing with the neighborhood kids after dark and setting up big games of CTF in one of our yards.

 

[Jakisthe]

"Non-game specific" in the title and OP.

50% of the replies are game specific.

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I think CTF is the best cross-game multiplayer mode. It's been ported to seemingly every single 4+ multiplayer game and it's just a really versatile mode.

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Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to phrase it - I guess I meant something like "game mode which you could see working in another game with minimal tweaking". Warzone, for Killzone 2/3 for instance, is pretty exclusive to those games, but I could definitely see it being used in, say, Halo.

 

[Rndom Grenadez]

Halo CTF

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The king

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

There is nothing like Zones in Warhawk. The perfect mix between on-foot, vehicle and air-battles - everything tightly balanced. It was so much fun and it's a crime that we never got a real sequel or at least a PS4 port.

 

[Leviathan]

World v. World in GW2. I'm aware of the thread conditions and genuinely think there could be a take on this in far more games than currently have it.

 

[DaciaJC]

Conquest is the greatest of all time.

 

[RedSparrows]

CTF
SPIES VS MERCS
TDM

 

[Sean Noonan]

Spies vs Mercs gets my vote.

Some of my fondest multiplayer memories. The low player counts really held back the community size so player numbers weren't especially high for very long. I think these days it would do well if they were to bring that back for a future game. I'm not sure if it could hold it's own as a standalone game, I just think to compete in that field will always lead to relatively high development costs, and I'm not particularly fond of the methods that are often used to recuperate those costs.

Maybe I'll just keep it as a happy memory :)

 

[RavFiveFour]

My top 5 are
Grand Operations, Battlefield 5, very fun
Survival Mode MGO2, not the easiest
Hero's vs Villains Battlefront 2015, very impressive
Elimination Chamber Here Comes the Pain, very fun
Terrorist Hunt, R6V2

 

[WolverinesFather]

Capture the flag/conquest.

Though greatest multiplayer is dark corridor flaming monkey tag.

 

[Tatsu91]

We've all seen the classics. Deathmatch. Capture the Flag. King of the Hill.

And they're pretty great! They're classics for a reason. But are they the best? What does Era say are the best non-game specific MP modes out there?

By "non-game specific", by the way, I don't mean "this mode has only ever been in one game", I mean "this mode really wouldn't work in most other games because it's really specific to the mechanics of basically just his one game". For instance, Nidhogg. Nidhogg's tug of war, right of way 2D combat obstacle course is great, but also, it's not that broadly applicable. Yes I'm sure there's a semantic distinction which could point out edge cases, but work with me here.

Me, I'd say 3 come to mind:

• Conquest, Battlefield series. This unbelievably clever take on a combination of "hold the points" and "deathmatch" for some reason is never much imitated, and I never know why. It allows for a really organic evolution of offensive and defensive objectives, works great within the BF mechanics, and has multiple ways to win to keep things closer than they'd otherwise be with a single objective, but it's just "do whatever". Really great stuff, and such simple execution.
• Warzone, KIllzone 2 and 3. I almost feel like this is cheating, but it works so well and appears basically nowhere that I half think that Guerilla has a patent on it. For the uninitated, it's a combination of deathmatch, capture the flag, assassinate a single target, 3 point KotH, and search and destroy. Which sounds basic, but what makes it fun is how it never needs time to switch. Some team kills an assassination target, the game becomes a DM right then and there, with all the turrets and invisible players and defensive postures still in place. Someone wins that, and now it's capture the flag, and everyone is scrambling to the other side of the map. It's awesome.
• Onslaught, Unreal. I'll be the first to admit this wasn't very well balanced. It's a "connect the node to the enemy core" type mode, but once the final node was connected and the enemy core exposed, there wasn't much in the way of comebacks besides the defenders just...being better. When it wasn't only the final one though, that's when the mode truly shined. Needing to determine which nodes to go to, having to defend and attack simultaneously, it all worked great, and what's more, the way the game worked in general (everyone could go everywhere with the right vehicle) meant that there was plenty of unorthodox approaches to be had. Later games added map dynamicism, but for me, nothing quite beats driving a Leviathan over a special angle on the mountains in some maps and dropping right into the main.

So yeah. Great memories, and some really fun modes beyond just the standard ones (although I'm sure those are favorites for people as well). What about you? Which ones would you say are the biggest and best (and maybe even rarest) standouts in your MP time? Not just FPS games either, all of them.

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Fiesta Gun game etc. any game with people spawning with OP weapons and letting loose

 

[Pyro]

Team Deathmatch.