I've been playing a lot of Splatoon 2 lately and I love how they solve ties on symmetrical gamemodes. Here's my idea based on that.
The round timer can be set to whatever is agreed on. For this idea I'd recommend a short timer, below 10 min. Timer never resets when a point is capped. Main point, when it runs out, instead of stalemating the round like normal, determine the winner of the round based on how close they were to capping last at any point.
Example 1:
- Team A had at one point owned 4 capture points at once. They had the enemy's second capped at one point in the match.
- Team B never managed to own more than 3 points. They capped mid a few times, but never took second.
- Timer runs out, Team A wins the round for making more progress in the map.
Example 2:
- Team A capped Team B's last 70% of the way, but never fully capped it.
- Team B capped Team A's last 30% of the way, but never fully capped it.
- Timer runs out, Team A wins the round for making more progress in the map.
What this means is that:
1. We wouldn't even need a golden cap anymore if this were used for every round. Alternatively, this could be used to have a golden cap always end with a victor after a certain amount of time.
2. Waiting on the round timer is never a good idea if you are the losing team. There is no strat where the losing team waits on the clock for a mid reset, they'd just lose instead.
3. If the winning team (in terms of peak map control) chooses to stall for round time, we at the very least don't have to wait anywhere near as long for the other team to attempt a comeback, due to timer pressure actually being a thing like what we see in KOTH.
4. More fights occur in the rounds as a whole, since people would push much more often.
5. More rounds would end on the timer, less rounds would end on capping last (would this be better or worse?)
Please by all means point out the major flaw in my idea if any. The only problem I can currently think of what I said in point 5.
Edit: Oh, and that it'd need a plugin or Valve assistance to actually set up, which means it will likely not happen.