Problems with Uncle Tully

Scathis explained the design behind Chickey rather well. I'm quite surprised people didn't understand it at first hand.

On another note, I'd love seeing Chickey on the other maps.

Oh god, "jungling." That term takes me WAAAYYY back to my DotA days. Seriously, read that and I was just like 3 straight minutes of flashbacks on good times had.

For anyone who hasn't played DotA, DotA has three "bot lanes" but there are also "bots" off the beaten path which players can hunt down to get "money" to level up their heroes. These side bots are in the forest and hills, thus it's known as "jungling." It was risky to hunt them (very high chance of getting gibbed by the enemy team if they know you're doing it) but extremely rewarding.

Soon as I played Funland and saw Chickey and where he spawns that's exactly what I figured they were doing with the map. Well done, Uber, well done, I like the concept. I also like when the entire enemy team tries to go kill him thus leaving me to push my bots right up into their base. Good times.

Exactly.

Eh, no, just no.

Your sounding incredibly elitist there. : /

Mostly trolling. Some thruth in that though.

If you have a mechanic in your game that can be exploited beyond belief and the average player just doesn't/can't use it, while a good player does it everytime, all is fine right? Right?

Point in case: There was this retarded tactic in Street Fighter 2, I think, which made you invincible. Bad players got destroyed, good players were untouchable.
For something closer: Juicechaining

You don't balance a game based on 5% of its population.

You balance games around perfect play.

No competitive game is ever balanced around mediocre players. Ever.

Keyword being balance, you can alter gameplay without disturbing balance. See chain-juice nerfs, and all QQ-driven nerfs in the history of online gaming.

Example, you don't balance a sniper around an aimbot(Perfect) level of play.

Humans aren't capable of reacting and registering a hit under 50ms.

Please continue to strawman and express your emotions.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Perfect

(And by aimbot, I DO NOT MEAN AN ACTUAL AIMBOT, but the properties, and since perfect play can not be improved, that means they will hit every shot, so no, not a strawman)

So you only balance gameplay around the highest possible play, rather than technically "perfect" play. More of a problem with the wording than the actual concept of balancing based on high tier play (like every other game in existence).

^ Has the point.

Wordplay wooooo.


/trollface.jpg

I don't balance around perfect play.

I balance around average-use case with consideration to the high-end case to make sure it doesn't break the average-use case.

thats more or less the point i was trying to make after all its the average player that pays the bills

The one thing I can say Uncle Tully is that the entire place is so much of a diffrent map compared to the others that I had to experiment with Assassin build order to make it work. I actually had drop cash in Smoke bomb right off the bat because of the many ledges and escape routes that are available.

Should be "Balance around high-end case with consideration to average-use case to make sure it doesn't confuse or break average-use."

You don't start any project in the middle. You don't haggle by trying to "mid-ball" them.

I'll try to be on topic.

Funland defines itself in the name, it's fun! No doubt about it! Sumo, flapjack wars etc. it's hilarious. As far as competitive play, uhm.. I won't make a specific opinion at the moment, it's a new map, and a very tight combat one, which I feel ends up in more "Who's first" kind of gameplay. Although what I feel saves the whole deal of it, is definitely the jumppads and some of their exaggerating effects! As a sniper, there doesn't seem to be a suitable cover spot, but ice traps and jumppads seem to be what saves my life - sometimes - from being hunted! Wilder!

I'd say the map has potential to be an awesome competitive map, I'm just not feeling it yet.

Now Vlane mentioned judging it by pub play didn't seem reliable, I feel he was kind of misunderstood.

Obviously you can be up against just as decent players in pub play, but there is the off chance that you're not, which is the point. If you're a sniper playing against an assault unaware of his capability of simply flying over your traps, well it's not exactly too reliable to say the sniper works fine, not saying it's the case, but just the fact that there's always the chance of feeling godlike in the new crowd.

Here is the thing: Sniper SHOULD have to choose safety vs quality. That is how map design should be.

Not saying that Funland doesn't have its share of problems (mostly in the fact that the bot path is so cramped that it is simply too easy to control bot flow and thus it takes an absolutely massive amount of work to be able to push the bots into the base.)

But how it handles snipers I think is in a good spot. There is some safe spots for a sniper to shoot and not have to worry about being counter attacked easily. But these spots tend to be fairly narrow in their area of effect, so the sniper doesn't get to have a large choice of targets to pick off. If he wants to be more effective he needs to move to a less safe location and use his ice traps to try and save him from counter attacks. The ejector platforms are a bit too safe still, but that is because it takes either walking directly in front of him or taking TWO jump pads to be able to get up to where he is. But compared to the safety of maps like G3/Spunky Cola/Ammo Mule where the sniper's safety is so high while still maintaining an extremely large area of effectiveness it is bearable.

The main problem I see with this map is the fact that the money balls are lower than the middle is. This means not only do the attacking team have the advantage of controlling the juice and annihilator but also the attacking team can kill the defending bots a lot easier. Considering a support can throw an air strike to outside of the bottom of the tube from a reasonably safe 3/4 up the tube. Along with the assault being more useful with their grenades travelling downhill.

The whole "once pushed into your base it's hard to recover" could be extremely weakened if not resolved simply by swapping elevation levels of the middle and the balls.