Major Update Speculation XXVI: Much Ado About Nothing - Games

[QUOTE=Cosmic feel;47950391]Well, you know when there's a bunch if jerry rigged traps in its way and a timer counting down while said traps are readying its kinda implied[/QUOTE] Except the main spectator/deathcam shot is of the train. Not the traps. The focal point of the map is the train, not the traps. There's a healthbar in the shape of a train, not of traps. What's implied is that the train is the attention of the map. It has a a healthbar, so it's implied damage can be dealt to it (damage can, but from outside sources). There's no unique announcer lines that make it any easier to understand. People can go on and on about how easy it was for them to understand, but that doesn't matter. Was it an easy to understand map? Arguable, I'd say no.

[QUOTE=Rajikaru;47950477]Except the main spectator/deathcam shot is of the train. Not the traps. The focal point of the map is the train, not the traps. There's a healthbar in the shape of a train, not of traps. What's implied is that the train is the attention of the map. It has a a healthbar, so it's implied damage can be dealt to it (damage can, but from outside sources). There's no unique announcer lines that make it any easier to understand. People can go on and on about how easy it was for them to understand, but that doesn't matter. Was it an easy to understand map? Arguable, I'd say no.[/QUOTE] Understanding the concept of the map is pretty much a one-time thing though. Once you learned it, you know what to do. Unless of course players nowadays are unable to learn as well, in which case I don't want to live on this planet anymore. Getting lost on Steel however is still common even for people who understand what the objective is.

[QUOTE=Psychopath12;47950099]There are icons for control points. A lot of them have locks on them except A and E. There are signs everywhere telling you which point you're going toward if you continue down the path. When you're dead, the spectator cam slaps a chalk drawing of the map at your face so you can read it, this chalk drawing updates when more points are captured. The difficult part of steel is knowing when to attack or defend which points, not finding your way around or understanding the mode. This is true with all maps and it's not an exclusive enigma specific to steel: knowing when to push, hold ground, or retreat.[/QUOTE] And this is less complicated than snowplow was how? In terms of map layout, snowplow was pretty straightforward. Steel actually requires looking at a map to understand.

[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;47950519]Understanding the concept of the map is pretty much a one-time thing though. Once you learned it, you know what to do. Unless of course players nowadays are unable to learn as well, in which case I don't want to live on this planet anymore. Getting lost on Steel however is still common even for people who understand what the objective is.[/QUOTE] Once you learn anything, you know how to do it for the rest of your life. However, that has no bearing on how difficult it could be to learn in the first place.

Snowplow should've just been exactly as it was, but with a regular timer and without the train health. It would've made it a fair bit better knowing exactly how much time was left in a round.

With all the speak of snowplow, a player could just play 2-3 rounds, and would get what the game-mode is all about. Y'know, like any other game-mode.

I thought Valve cancelled Snowplow because it was a shitty map and kept crashing servers, but said it was too confusing so as not to hurt the feelings of YM and Frozen?

[QUOTE=DarthMewtwo;47950916]I thought Valve cancelled Snowplow because it was a shitty map and kept crashing servers, but said it was too confusing so as not to hurt the feefees of YM and Frozen?[/QUOTE] snowplow was great

[QUOTE=Cavalierguy;47950725]With all the speak of snowplow, a player could just play 2-3 rounds, and would get what the game-mode is all about. Y'know, like any other game-mode.[/QUOTE] The game modes are built to be very very quick to understand once you understand the fundamentals of what a control point is. The only exception is CTF, which describes itself in its own name: Capture the Flag. Once you understand what a control point is and how it functions, every other PvP game mode becomes clear. Payload is a moving CP. Koth is a single CP with 2 timers. Attack/defense cp and standard CP are distinguished by the locks that appear on the HUD. The HUDs are all very minimalistic, they only contain information that's vital to game progression. Hell, even Robot Destruction has a minimalistic and simple HUD for how complex the mode itself is. It highlights as little as necessary to understand the fundamentals and pairs a voiceover from the administrator to explain the remainder of the stealing mechanic and that robots must be attacked instead of captured. Snowplow's mode was not minimalistic, it added clutter for no reason other than the novelty of having a train prop. That is why it's confusing. Yes, the mode could have been understood fairly quickly, but that doesn't excuse it from having all the clutter that it did have. If it's going to [I]function[/I] like A/D, it should be [I]presented[/I] like A/D. To have it presented differently implies that it also functions differently.

[QUOTE=DarthMewtwo;47950916]I thought Valve cancelled Snowplow because it was a shitty map and kept crashing servers, but said it was too confusing so as not to hurt the feefees of YM and Frozen?[/QUOTE] What's the point of your unnecessary rudeness? Are you trying to accomplish something by being that rude?

All this talk about snowplow is making me itchy and scratchy. [QUOTE=DarthMewtwo;47950916]I thought Valve cancelled Snowplow because it was a shitty map and kept crashing servers, but said it was too confusing so as not to hurt the feefees of YM and Frozen?[/QUOTE] Just for informative purposes, the reason the map crashed servers often was because the gamemode entities required a lot of 'space' in the power of the server (for the sake of this explaination, the 'spaces' are called edicts). Most gamemodes are hard-coded in and only require a couple of entities in the map. Snowplow required something like 10 per point + 20-30 generally. The edict limit wasn't a problem in testing because we didn't have certain things in at the time. After the brunt of public testing, we added said missing things (lots of dynamic and physics props), which pushed the edict limit over the acceptable thresh-hold, thus causing the crash. We didn't do any full-server tests right before release because we didn't think we needed it at the time, so we didn't know the edict limit was being broken. The crashing problem was fixed[I] within 3 days [/I]the End of the Line release and the map is now stable.

[QUOTE=Fr0z3n;47951442]All this talk about snowplow is making me itchy and scratchy. Just for informative purposes, the reason the map crashed servers often was because the gamemode entities required a lot of 'space' in the power of the server (for the sake of this explaination, the 'spaces' are called edicts). Most gamemodes are hard-coded in and only require a couple of entities in the map. Snowplow required something like 10 per point + 20-30 generally. The edict limit wasn't a problem in testing because we didn't have certain things in at the time. After the brunt of public testing, we added said missing things (lots of dynamic and physics props), which pushed the edict limit over the acceptable thresh-hold, thus causing the crash. We didn't do any full-server tests right before release because we didn't think we needed it at the time, so we didn't know the edict limit was being broken. The crashing problem was fixed[I] within 3 days [/I]the End of the Line release and the map is now stable.[/QUOTE] wasn't an overabundance of duck props one of the main prop issues? That's not a joke, i legitimately heard somewhere that was one of the release issues.

[QUOTE=Punchy;47951571]wasn't an overabundance of duck props one of the main prop issues? That's not a joke, i legitimately heard somewhere that was one of the release issues.[/QUOTE] Yes, one of the major causes of the edict breaking was both the ducks we had in our map, and the ducks being dropped by the duck journal (which temporarily add to the Edict count). It was the only time I could blame a server crash on a duck.

[QUOTE=Cavalierguy;47950725]With all the speak of snowplow, a player could just play 2-3 rounds, and would get what the game-mode is all about. Y'know, like any other game-mode.[/QUOTE] Except Asteroid. I've played about 10 rounds of Asteroid and I still dont fully how to play it. Or even why it exists. Or why its been in beta for over a year.

[QUOTE=Oizen;47951700]Except Asteroid. I've played about 10 rounds of Asteroid and I still dont fully how to play it. Or even why it exists. Or why its been in beta for over a year.[/QUOTE] I second this feeling.

- kill the robots inside the enemy base to earn points - each group of robots you kill unlocks another group deeper inside their base that's worth more points - all of a team's points are stored in the reactor vault in the back of their base - take the enemy reactor and bring it back to your vault to steal their points ??

kill robots to collect power cores until you reach 200, that's basically what RD is, with the added thing that you can steal the other team's supply

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;47952012]kill robots to collect power cores until you reach 200, that's basically what RD is, with the added thing that you can steal the other team's supply[/QUOTE] which everyone goes for every single time

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;47952012]kill robots to collect power cores until you reach 200, that's basically what RD is, with the added thing that you can steal the other team's supply[/QUOTE] It's a shame that the majority of people don't know this. I've been on several games where my team is trying to go for their core when it's barely got anything on it, yet the robots are available to kill and aren't being defended. They probably think it's just fancy space CTF with some shit at the bottom of the HUD that's not worth paying attention to.

[QUOTE=austin0331;47952098]It's a shame that the majority of people don't know this. I've been on several games where my team is trying to go for their core when it's barely got anything on it, yet the robots are available to kill and aren't being defended. They probably think it's just fancy space CTF with some shit at the bottom of the HUD that's not worth paying attention to.[/QUOTE] Anyway, you or your team playing the objective or not, asteroid is awesome. One of my favorite maps, sadly is in limbo right now.

I really want to see asteroid art passed fully, at first I liked cactus canyon better but asteroid seems more fun.

I honestly don't understand how anyone can have fun on asteroid. Valve took the low ceilings of Junction, the cramped corridors of Turbine and Dustbowl, and mixed it with the worst of 2fort. It might fit the gamemode, but it's terrible to engage in actual combat with someone. Maybe one of you can explain cause I just don't see it.

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952566]I honestly don't understand how anyone can have fun on asteroid. Valve took the low ceilings of Junction, the cramped corridors of Turbine and Dustbowl, and mixed it with the worst of 2fort. It might fit the gamemode, but it's terrible to engage in actual combat with someone. Maybe one of you can explain cause I just don't see it.[/QUOTE] You said it, the best of all those maps in one. And I don't know what "the worst of 2fort" is.

explain how the low ceilings and cramped layout is a good thing

[QUOTE=TwoYearLurker;47951999]- kill the robots inside the enemy base to earn points - each group of robots you kill unlocks another group deeper inside their base that's worth more points - all of a team's points are stored in the reactor vault in the back of their base - take the enemy reactor and bring it back to your vault to steal their points ??[/QUOTE] You forgot the part where you need 6+ engineers to actually defend your base.

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952623]explain how the low ceilings and cramped layout is a good thing[/QUOTE] Not the ceilings or that other stuff, I mean the spirit of the map. Fast and fun. 2fort, turbine, etc, IMO the best way to summarize those maps in a single sentence is that, indeed, fast and fun.

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952566]I honestly don't understand how anyone can have fun on asteroid. Valve took the low ceilings of Junction, the cramped corridors of Turbine and Dustbowl, and mixed it with the worst of 2fort. It might fit the gamemode, but it's terrible to engage in actual combat with someone. Maybe one of you can explain cause I just don't see it.[/QUOTE] I agree 100%, also I'm not sure why Valve felt like TF2 needed a 3rd CTF variant after CTF and SD. At least RD is a little bit better then CTF and SD since you don't have to entirely rely on a single team mate carrying the intel like those modes (since your team can still attack the enemy robots to get points) but it's not good enough that I'm going to want to play it regularly.

[QUOTE=Chicken McFly;47952646]Not the ceilings or that other stuff, I mean the spirit of the map. Fast and fun. 2fort, turbine, junction, etc, IMO the best way to summarize those maps in a single sentence is that, indeed, fast and fun.[/QUOTE] I can sort of understand that for 2fort and Turbine, but "Fast and Fun" is the complete opposite of how I would describe Junction. It's a slow, stalematey shitfest

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952741]I can sort of understand that for 2fort and Turbine, but "Fast and Fun" is the complete opposite of how I would describe Junction. It's a slow, stalematey shitfest[/QUOTE] Yes, TBH actually you are right. Sorry for that comparison, junction has nothing related to asteroid or what I said, besides what you said earlier. My bad.

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952741]It's a slow, stalematey shitfest[/QUOTE] Did you mean Junction or Asteroid? I'd argue that Asteroid is better designed to prevent [i]prolonged[/i] "stalemate shitfests". Cores cannot be permanently lost once they're acquired, only stolen, and even then people can continue gathering cores while the "home core" is stolen. There are 4 entrances to the base and due to robot placement/pathing, even if one team is limited to farming the A bots they're always going to be working toward the goal unlike CTF where an entire team can pile on top of the single intel briefcase until it resets where it all begins again.