Category: Game Modes

The most unique and difficult way to play. Even though traditional modes are still played (TDM, border and FFA), at night they feel like completely new game modes. You can barely see in front of you so spotting other players who are starting from the other side of the map is impossible. I remember seeing enemy flashes and shooting at them, which then gave away my position to everyone on the other team. Normally you’re only on edge when behind enemy lines, but in night ops you never know where the enemy might be. Even though I’ve only played night ops once or twice, it’s still one of my top 3 favourite games.

This is my personal favourite game mode. It follows the same premise as base assault, but there are no attackers or defenders. One team will start near the bottom fort, and the other will either start near airdrop or the top fort. Both teams have 20 lives with no respawns. The winning team is the one with the most players alive in either fort in the village, so you could have 3 players in one fort and 1 in another to combine that score. This game mode is more strategically difficult than BA as players can choose to rush to the village to defend it (and risk being surrounded) or let the other team take the fort and flank them.

10/10 – Very tactical as you need to decide when you’re going to enter the village and from which angle.

My second favourite game mode and one of the first to exist. This predates base assault – the rules are effectively the same except the building is replaced by the whole of Zone A. However, the defenders cannot leave Zone A and the attackers can leave and enter at any point, but only by the 2 entrances. Traditionally, the attackers would have 25 lives and the defenders would have 20 as the defenders have a massive advantage. The defenders have far more cover points and places to hide, and to win they only need one person alive. For the attackers to win, they need to kill every single member of the defending team in 10 minutes. This is rarely done but is possible if the attacking team is able to enter the zone in under 2 minutes and has good cover fire from hawk’s nest. The defenders will usually have a few people very close to the entrance to deter attackers from entering too early and they will always die due to being the first ones being fired upon. The larger guns are able to sit at the very back with good cover and it’s very difficult to get to them unless the attacking team are very coordinated. 

10/10 – Defenders need to have good teamwork and attackers need to be quick. A lot of action in a small area.

In a standard free for all it can be very difficult to spot who is cheating. This is because all you need to do is stay a good distance to whoever you’ve teamed up with, not shoot them and not talk to them when others are around. Even when they are spotted, it can be very easy to deny just by splitting up and then regrouping later. When called out by other players, it just devolves into ‘he said she said’ as they all accuse each other. Hunger games was created to make managing the final game easier with one tweak: allowing teaming up. Just like the hunger games source material and traditional free for all, there can only be one winner, even if you decide to team up. The same scoring rules still apply and everyone is on the 1X mode so they can still shoot their teammates. Before starting the final game mode, a vote is usually offered between FFA and Hunger Games –  99% of players will raise their hands for hunger games despite playing team games for the past 100 minutes. Standard FFA has never won when put to a vote.

8/10 – Resolves the main issue with FFA (cheating) but still provides a good challenge whether you team up or not.

This is a one-off game mode that can only be played when everyone is fully aware of the rules and agrees to them. All standard FFA rules are applied, but all players split into groups of 2. Unlike the other FFA games, their score is combined with their teammate’s and they will win as a pair if they have the highest score. This can be tricky to calculate as it relies on players returning back with their partner to add their scores together. 

8/10 – The duos rule adds an interesting tactical element as it’s almost impossible to win without your teammate.

Along with domination, this game mode is the most fast paced. This game is just like team deathmatch, but only the kills that are confirmed count. To confirm a kill, the player has to return back to their base alive and with at least one kill. They are then new missioned, which resets their hits and kills. The team with the most confirmed kills wins. There is a high level of risk vs reward as a player needs to decide whether to waste time running back to base to confirm their kills or to keep going and risk losing their kills. This game mode can be very tricky to manage because your ref gun can hit multiple players at once, meaning you can reset a player you have not yet checked the score of. If you have too many players, it can take longer for them to respawn as they have to wait in a queue for the marshal to check other players’ scores. However, if there are too few players, there will hardly be any kills as most players will not want to to go beyond the middle path to avoid having to travel too far to respawn or bank kills.

6/10 – A fun and very fast paced mode, but is difficult to keep track of the score.

This game mode has only been played once or twice and is the same as base assault but with the one difference being that the defenders need to have 1 person left alive in the top fort. This can be more difficult as the defender as it is a smaller space and is difficult to get back into due to the fort being on a hill. The attackers can just take the fort and are able to easily see any defenders coming back at the end of the game.

3/10 – Same flaw as base assault, but the area is harder to attack.

One of the newest games. It used to be very commonly played as it is very easy to set up. The base rules are like team elimination as they both have the same number of lives and no respawns. The only difference is that one team starts at the first aid building (the defenders) and the other in the car park (the attackers). To win, the defenders need to have at least one player inside the building alive at the end of the game. If they don’t, the attackers win. Both teams can enter and leave the building at any point in the game as long as they do not stand in the entrance. Some player’s first instinct is to hunker down in the building and be ready for the attackers to enter but they’re advised that this is a bad idea since they will always be outnumbered (as all defenders will not be in the building) and they can be killed easily because the windows can be shot through and the light will bounce off the walls until it hits their sensors. The most common tactic is to wait until the very last minute to run in the base to win. When this game was played in easy mode, it was impossible for the attackers to win as there is a 3 second delay between each shot. Therefore, if you left cover to run to the building with less than a minute left, you cannot be killed because it would take 60 seconds to hit the same person 20 times, assuming the other players were accurate enough. Now that this game is in standard mode, the defender would need to do this with under 20 seconds to do the same strategy. The defenders still win more often than not. as they are able to get inside the building and not die if they have multiple people rushing back at the same time.

4/10 – Too easy for a defender to win, which makes the game very predictable.

This game mode is sometimes used when there is an unusually high amount of time remaining at the end of the session. All the standard FFA rules apply, but each player has around 30 – 50 lives and the time limit is increased to around 20 minutes. This makes the standard FFA more tactical, as you cannot reliably kill the first few players you see without taking a high amount of damage yourself due to the high HP.

7/10 – Enjoyable mode but the games can have quiet parts in the middle when some players are out and the rest are hiding.

One of the first game modes to be created, this is also one of the most fast paced. The teams start on opposite ends of the main path: one by airdrop and the other by the secondary entrance of the map. There is a domination box which has been placed in the first aid building and the objective is to shoot the box to take control of it. Once shot, a timer will start for the team of the player that hit it. If a player from the other team shoots the box, the first team’s timer will stop and the other timer will start. The winning team is the one with the highest amount of time in control of the box. The start of the game is the most chaotic as both teams will want to take control of the box first and protect it by killing anyone else trying to enter the building. A lot of strategy and communication is involved in this game as you may need to organise multiple people to retake the base as going in one at a time will be difficult. Players with larger guns will tend to go around the top of the hill (either to hawk’s nest or the top fort) in order to flank the other team and take lives off them as soon as they respawn to make it harder for them to get into the building. The team which starts at the secondary entrance has an advantage as they can easily get to hawk’s nest and shoot through the window of the first aid building.

9/10 – Very fast paced game mode with lots of different strategies.

A unique game mode that is no longer played. It involves a sniper (on one shot kill) and a machine gun on the same team with 20 lives and no respawns. The rest of the players are all on 5 lives with unlimited respawns. The objective of the game is to kill both the sniper and the machine gunner. The start of the game is highly strategic for the sniper’s team as they need to choose a place that is both secluded, easily defendable and has opportunities for escape in case they get surrounded. I remember being a sniper in this game mode – it sounded easy as you have a 1 shot kill gun and lots of targets to shoot at. However, the other team is aware of this and will move very fast between cover to make it as hard as possible for you to hit them. The sniper is also wildly inaccurate if it is in the wrong hands. That was the first and last time I used that gun.

2/10 – Not as fun as other modes if you’re not on the sniper / machine gun team.

This game mode used to sometimes be played instead of TDM but is now usually played in game 4 and 5. All players have 20 lives instead of 5, but there are no respawns. If the teams are unbalanced, the first x players to die may respawn where x is the number of players fewer than the other team. The winning team is the one with the least number of players dead. Once a player is out, they have to return to a given point (usually airdrop) and cannot leave until the match is over. As of mid 2024, 10 lives is currently being used as most people play conservativly when they only have one life. This tweak guarantees there will not be any games where no one dies and the match becomes an anticlimactic draw.

7/10 – Provides a good challenge for all players.

A true classic, this game (or its variants) features in every session. In its base form, all players start off with 20 lives, no respawns and no teaming up. Once a player dies, they return back to the car park. The game usually lasts 10 minutes but is sometimes extended to 15 if the time allows. The winner is determined by whoever is the last player standing at the end of the game. However, this is very rare so 99.99% of the time the winner is the player with the highest score in that game. To calculate the score the hits, kills and lives are added up. So if you hid all game and came back with full HP but didn’t fire a single round, your score would be 20 and would have very little chance of winning. The current high score for this game is over 90 but a normal winning score would be around 40 or 50. There are 3 ways this game is started:

• Staggered start – this is the traditional method and is no longer used. Each player is sent out one by one, usually with about 10 seconds gap. This allows each player to gain cover but has the unfortunate downside of allowing earlier players to spawn camp.
• Chaos start – this style is very rarely used as it can be unfair. At the end of the free for all brief, the Marshall will shout “the game starts in 3,2,1” and then instantly start the game with their ref gun, meaning all players can shoot from the start. Most players will run but some will stay and try and get as many hits as possible before taking cover. This can be a risky strategy as that player will rarely be the only one to think of it, so you will get 2 or more players taking a lot of lives away from each other at the beginning of the game, reducing their chances of winning.
• Delayed start – this is now the most common method of starting the game. The Marshall will start the game but no one will be allowed to shoot until the whistle is blown, which is usually after around 20 seconds. The main downside to this is that in almost every group, there will always be a few players who decide they don’t need to wait for the whistle and will just shoot whenever they feel like it. This can often cause confusion and cause everyone else to begin firing and be impossible to determine who broke the rule in the first place.

8/10 – Challenging game mode, great to play as it’s the only mode where you can’t rely on a teammate.

The easiest game mode to set up, this is always the first game that is played. Both teams have 5 lives and an unlimited number of respawns. The winning team is the one with the least respawns on their box. Some players realise that if they do not respawn at the end of the game, then their respawn will not be counted. However, the number of dead players is added onto their respawn count if the scores are close enough for this to matter. This used to be a 15 minute game but is now 10 minutes to allow for 3 of them instead of 2 and to align the time with every other game.

5/10 – An average mode, very commonly played.

Another game mode that’s inspired by call of duty, it’s no longer played now due to it being tricky to set up and having flaws. 2 players start off as the zombies on one team and the rest are survivors. Their objective is to kill all the survivors. The zombies have 20 hp and can respawn at any point and the survivors only have 5 hp, meaning their only way to survive is to hide. If a survivor dies, they have to return to the car park, gain 20 lives and then swap to the other team to join the infected. The main flaw with this game is that most of the survivors’ time is spent hiding. While this can be suspenseful, there’s little to no action.

1/10 – Complicated to set up and has too many flaws.