Modes Overview¶

ACB has six modes:

1. Alliance
2. Assassinate
3. Chest Capture
4. Escort
5. Manhunt
6. Wanted,

This page will provide you with a quick overview of all six modes, so you can see which one might suit you best. Keep in mind, however, that alliance and wanted are disabled on the competitive ACB 2.0 server due to balancing issues.

Alliance¶

Alliance is a three team mode, with teams consisting of up to two players. There are two rounds, with each team having one of the other teams as their pursuers and the other team as their targets for that entire round, and these pursuers and targets then rotating between rounds.

As all teams have a compass, the teams usually tend to gather in a close area towards the middle of the map, where they have to run away from their pursuer while going after their target, leading to a stalemate where no team can go after their target as this would mean immediate death to their pursuers, with the last team alive gaining a sizable advantage. Additionally, as players can't despawn after getting stunned, stun locks are incredibly valuable in this mode, with no counterplay possible once such a situation occurs.

Assassinate¶

Assassinate is a free-for-all mode with its main focuses being movement and lock timing, as the mode allows every player in the lobby to acquire and release targets whenever they want. As there is no detection meter without a target, releasing a target also resets a player's detection meter, allowing players to get high point kills without ever leaving high profile.

This means that assassinate is the mode where stealth is the least viable, but parkour mechanics, reaction speeds, and player prediction are heavily rewarded. Due to its fluid nature allowing players to freely change targets, there is effictively no randomness and a high skill ceiling, making this a very popular mode among competitive players. However, these features can also make it quite difficult to newcomers, especially those who aren't used to fast-paced gameplay.

Chest Capture¶

Chest Capture is a 3v3-4v4 team mode where one team has to kill the other team and the other team has to collect chests. In the original version of ACB, the chests were very low value, meaning this mode was effectively a gimmicky version of manhunt. In the ACB 2.0 patch on the competitive server, this mode tries to immitate the Domination mode from AC3/4, where chests make up almost all the points in the game, making capturing them more important than high point kills. This means the chest capturing team has to survive by any means necessary within the small area that defines each chest, making good parkour skills very important along with solid ability usage.

Escort¶

Escort is a 2v2 team mode where one team has to kill specific NPC VIPs that are walking around the map, while the other team tries to defend them. The biggest gotcha with this mode is that there is no compass or detection meter for the defending team, enabling very stealth heavy gameplay from the hunters, while the defenders can run around freely trying to detect them and keep their VIPs alive as long as possible.

This mode has proven to be fairly intuitive for newcomers, but also exhibits the highest skill ceiling, as it makes heavy use of every aspect of the game, such as stealth, parkour, abilities, coordination, and spawn manipulation. Unlike every other mode, every ability is viable in escort, making it the only mode where the hidden gun is useful. While it hasn't historically been very popular, it's become the premier competitive mode in the last couple years. However, due to its unique (stealth) gameplay and the nature of 2v2, it remains fairly controversial in some communities.

Manhunt¶

Manhunt is a 3v3-4v4 team mode where one team has to kill the other team, while the other team has to not get killed and try to stun their hunters. This game mode is often misunderstood, as the Animus Lady's voiceline is "hide and survive" for the defense team. However, due to the compass, hiding is usually impossible in manhunt, with defenders instead needing to rely on stunning their opponents to survive and gain an advantage. Ideally, defenders want to knock out the entire opposing team and keep them in a stun lock, which can be very difficult, but also very rewarding. The hunting team's task is simply to get high point kills without giving up too many stuns.

This mode is historically ACB's most popular team mode, having been the only competitively played team mode for the first ten years or so, and for very good reasons. The mode is fairly simple to grasp once you've made sense of defense and allows for lots of skill expression, mostly by playing around abilities, with a heavy focus on teamplay.

Wanted¶

Wanted is a free-for-all mode in which every player gets a target to kill, which can change due to death or a failed pursuit. The target selection system places a higher priority on players with more points, who can have up to four pursuers at a time. As a result, higher scoring players usually have to spend a lot of time on running away from their pursuers, as they can never have enough abilities to defend themselves, which usually leads to the entire lobby running after each other in a similar, but more chaotic, way as in alliance. However, as lower scoring players often have no pursuers or only a single pursuer, the mode is very simple for new players. The randomness of the target selection system makes it a lot easier for lower scoring players to suddenly get lucky and do well in a match. This makes it a very controversial mode, with most veteran players refusing to play it, and many newer players heavily favoring it and being discouraged from playing other modes where they may run into more veteran players.

Mode Comparison¶

The following chart serves as a rough comparison of the four most popular modes, assassinate, escort, manhunt and wanted, in terms of their focuses on randomness, ability usage, stealth, and parkour: