[SUGGESTION] Hiding the opposing team's key carrier in Key Hunt

When I first played this mode I thought it was strange that I am shown where the other team's key carrier is. I'm not here to present a black and white argument for one option or the other but here are some thoughts:

HIDING THE OPPONENT'S KEY CARRIER

plusses

-if you made their key carrier invisible instead, you'd have to scout around the map much more actively (and generally know the map well so you don't miss cryptic niches)
-it's the safest for the carrier if they have team mates around them but at the same time it kinda gives their position away
-conversely they can go off on their own and try to avoid running into anyone making a stealthy approach more viable especially on bigger maps
-you can still just try to rush your opponent with everyone at once but even if you surprise them and manage to frag them all, the key carrier may not have been with them, which makes this strategy somewhat less powerful, I'd imagine

minuses

-the indicator for who has the key would have to be reworked so it still shows whenever you've spotted the carrier, but doesn't show through walls: maybe this is trivial though
-increased RNG? however, at current it's NO RNG and you can still affect your chances by being sly and observant

My personal experience of this mode is the two single player maps, of which the first one (RunningmanCTF) is big enough for hiding especially if there's only some 3 players per team. That's the way I'd personally prefer to play this mode. But how about those who have actually played against people? Is there something I'm missing?

EDIT:
someone was afraid of stalemates if the key carrier has found a hiding spot that's just too damn good (Xonotic maps are very liberal with where they allow you to go it seems), but that could be solved by making the indicator pop up after maybe 2-3 minutes if the round still isn't over. I don't think causing round draws is a good idea though because then they could use the same hiding spot again. That actually happens in QL Clan Arena when nobody is aware of the hiding spot the last guy went to existing.

I agree with you that big maps play better in this game mode.

What you haven't noticed yet because you haven't played it on a server is that it's rather difficult, arguably not even very fun if you play with less than 6 people. That is because 3 teams are hard-coded (I just fact-checked this in game and it seems g_keyhunt_teams 0 actually results in 3 teams, but you can set it to 2 or 4), so anything that's not divisible by 3 will be off-balance teammate wise. 1v1v1 can get frustrating depending the map and the circumstances... nothing like killing 1.9 people, only to have the first guy you killed respawn behind you and kill both you guys and win that round...

The reasoning behind having waypoints (arrows) above the key carrier's keys is to promote collecting the keys, whereas hiding could result in a stalemate. Though, what you're suggesting about the teamplay is very interested, and under the right conditions (map and team balance) could be very fun that way. Perhaps the is something that could be cvared.

I'm not really sure how or what we'd make more random, to your RNG point.

To address the tutorial aspect of your questions, a thought I had a few weeks about about the gamemode during the time it was featured on SMB Kansas is that the idea of "keys" isn't quite self-explanatory... why am I trying to collect 3 keys? My suggestion was changing the premise to finding "pieces of things", each team gets a piece of whatever the object is to make it whole. Do you think that would be helpful?

A list of cvars for the gamemode are available here, you'll see there aren't many to tweak: http://xonotic.org/tools/cacs/#0a/0/keyhunt

The guy who can probably answer these questions pretty clearly is Mario, however, he's currently just left for vacation. I'm sure there are other gamecode developers that can answer you more in-depth than I can.

If the game is running into problems with 1v1v1 why can't it be changed to default to two teams? That doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I'm suggesting. In fact I suppose kill-stealing (which is something a smart player would find ways to avoid happening to them) is all the easier if you can constantly see where all the keys are. Otherwise it at least forces you to keep track of that stuff manually. Also will the difficulty increase (let's define it as chance for any one player to score in 1v1v1) if you can't see the others? Because that also means you could catch someone off-guard, which wasn't possible before. Sound cues could give you an advantage. If it's still too draw-ey how about making it be more like clan arena so when you're dead you don't respawn? That way the rounds don't have an auto-balance mechanism when everyone spawns back in and gets their weapons which means it's bound to go someone's way ere long. On the other hand at that point (esp. 1v1v1) it's basically the same as CA so nvm.

With my suggestion I'm saying stalemates could be avoided by making the arrows show only after some time has passed. If a team is (collectively) unsure where to look on the map they can always just stick together and move around carefully. Though I know teamplay gets de-emphasized somewhat on public servers with no audio chat.

By RNG I mean if we hide the carriers then you can get lucky and find them quicky or unlucky and not find them, that's all. But I think that's an acceptable level of luck.

About the name of the mode: Yes, it's perhaps a bit uncertain what the keys are about - there isn't anything they unlock, it's just a macguffin. I can't immediately tell what would be that much smarter though. I think there could just be a more thorough explanation of what's happening (preferably in-game), for example an overlay and some text popping up showing you the key carrier display. I think the best tutorials I've seen in games like these are in UT2k4 where it has a whole voice-over explanation of everything with the camera showing you different stuff on the map... so I guess that's the ideal.

Hiding key carrier waypoints altogether would be terrible. Something more akin to CTF would be a better fit: if you are not doing anything that meets a predefined heuristic (moving around different areas, making a frag, something like that) then your waypoint will show up. We want to offer incentives to those who remain active participants of the game.