Drop shield would have been a better choice than Armor Lock, especially when it comes to 2v2s where one player can bait the enemy, get a few shots off, AL, and have their teammate pick them off. It takes no skill, would be frustrating as hell, and would only make it easier to hold down a key area of the map. With DS, you gain protection, but coordinated strike can bring you down all the same. Granted, with this game-type sprint and, more-so evade (which is also on this map? god help any team team that ends up facing a team paired with both Evade and AL), can be worse in terms of cheapness since they allow incredibly easy getaways and are godly when coupled with a CQC weapon...but only because the FHF game-type is **** and forces everyone to move so slowly. Whoever thought a 10% increase in speed was enough of a tradeoff for having no sprint is a dumbass. I honestly can't believe this game-type is even able to be considered competitive...it certainly isn't fun; just about everyone I know has more or less said the same. Anyways, regarding the map...looking at the screens I thought it looked kinda neat, but the video ruined it for me (partly due to the shitty music). It looks slightly above average in construction, sans that fugly rock/tin cup wall. There are quite a few sloppy areas though... I guess it just goes to show that all these maps (excepting the first) were used in this competition in order to give blowies to the higher-ups on this site. If any of them had an ounce of dignity, they'd have at least used the 2nd and 3rd place maps from the contest as well.
After playing it I haven't become a bigger fan of Armor Lock that's for sure. It's a silly AA no matter what you do with it.
This is entirely misguided. While the conclusions are correct, making the argument seem logical, the postulates they are based upon are flawed. Drop shield was the original ability there, and it had two faces; when against the majority of weapons, it stopped gameplay. It didn't slow the game down like AL, it stopped the game. This is in no way good. Slow gameplay gives more power to thought and intelligence than aim, an effective method of combating the god-damned randomness that is bloom, and can be beneficial when used correctly. Stopping gameplay is bad. Continue that DS can be used to shield BOTH players and regain health, it makes the health pack useless and the gameplay boring. Whether it is used to block and entrance from bullets, create a hidey-hole, or simply stop a bullet, it pissed people off consistently. On the other hand, if the enemy team had rockets, it was useless. By the time you could deploy it you were dead, and one rocket could take it out without sweating. Armor Lock, on the other hand, did what it was supposed to; counteract the evade and rockets. It is, in fact, nearly useless by itself and can ONLY be used in junction with another player, making it the only team-oriented power weapon on the map other than the suped-up AR and the Concussion Rifle. Don't let your bias get in the way; anything can be good when used properly. Since it is not a starting powerup, it becomes a useful item rather than a constant piss-off. Oh, and play the map before you pass judgement, thanks. Hold an area of the map with AL? Please. Its actually more useful for assaulting a team holding out with Rockets. Simply run into a room until you hear the missile engage, then AL, then laugh at the proper use of a nerfed AL. Before I respond to the entirety of this, let me make this clear. If you let the other team gain both power ups, you are doing it wrong. The FHT gametype is bad because it offers a slower game? I don't understand. Higher speed and no 'I can escape around the corner in two seconds' button slows down the PACE of the game, but increases the MOVEMENT. Do you understand the effect? A slower paced game entails more strategy, more thinking, and is more about how you can plan ahead than it is instinct. On the other hand, the faster movement means you have to be a better shot in order to keep up with the slight boost to strafing. In other words, it gives an advantage to the players who are smarter and better... am I missing something? The 110% was not a tradeoff for sprint, it was a tradeoff for Reach being retardedly slow. Sprint had no chance as a starting because having ANY armor abilities off spawn is broken in-of-itself. They are a power up, thats like spawning with a plasma pistol secondary every time. It rapes shields out the ass, and accelerates gameplay from enjoyable to hectic and chaotic. Other than Jetpack, which breaks everything I understand about logic in a FPS, sprint is the most OP armor ability because you can just go. Evade is nice, but if you go the wrong way or hit a door you get ****ed; risk VS reward. Armor Lock is nearly useless unless it is used en masse; its the second worst starting armor ability because everyone abuses it, but does nothing that a Sniper doesn't when laid as a pick up. If you disagree, the burden of proof is on you. Show me a game where a team wins solely by abusing the Armor Lock, and isn't inherently better than the opposition. Agreed, the pictures prettied it up a little too well and the music was... questionable. In reference to the aesthetics, get your opinions out of the matter. They are irrelevant, because it is subjective the way you look at it. While the wall itself is sketchy and not very pretty, it IS unique. Which makes it a great way to orient yourself upon spawn, unlike the gray boxes with random ****ing pictures that seem so popular today. Sloppy areas? That was me sacrificing looks for the perfect rendition of my map. I wanted it to play perfectly, and every corner was though out. Every curve was measured, every angle was graphed, etc. I spent well over 500 hours building, testing, editing, and enhancing the map. This is entirely gameplay > aesthetics, and while it suffers the issues that it should considering the whole 'year old' deal, it still plays exactly how I wanted it to. It has long, dangerous, and unique lines of sight that turn the game into a defensive ordeal. There is much more pull than push in the gameplay here, falling back is more common that rushing, and it rewards patience and planning over reckless abandon. **** you, don't be a dumbass. If you knew what was going on before speaking you could avoid completely annihilating any scrap of pathos you retained... but you didn't, and couldn't imagine a world where we actually tried to give you the best maps possible. Guess what? Four of the top five maps were deemed acceptable. I contacted all four of those members. Aces was locked in, then the other three responded with different variations of "I don't feel like working on the map to fix the major issues." If I may, speaking out of your ass stinks. Stevo, who built the majority of the maps seen so far question, agrees with you and refused the credit for them. What's A Scope made a damn good map, and if you deny Voodoo being deserving don't bother responding. It may not be perfect, but it is still good. The maps from here out only get exponentially better. Childishly insulting a group of people who provide you with a FREE tournament, with wonderful prizes that you do NOT have to pay for, set up solely for YOU seems nonsensical. Why? You aren't even privvy to our internal thoughts and yet you claim to see our minds eye, and you scream of its evils. You have no proof, no way of knowing, no justification. You come across as a passive-aggressive child looking to pick a fight. Why, exactly?
"Nou." What Ion is saying is spot on really, But this isn't the place to be derpin about this. Geez, Ion, Do yer jerb. ;D
I think it was just plain ol' aggressive, sir. There was no attempt at veiling what I said in passivity. Say hello to your mother for me.
I do agree that the tournament gametype needs some tweaking. Such as removing the radar to promote movement. Now people just slowly crouch around (usually sticking to one area) and wait for someone to show up on their radar. This tactic gets disrupted for the occasional power weapon spawn after which the crouching recommences. Also, I think 110% movement doesn't make up for the lack of Sprint. While I think it's fine to leave out sprint, not giving people at least 125% movement speed makes the game so agonizingly slow at times. It's not that much of a problem on some maps (like Cadence), but on maps like Haze with the long lines of sight it can be quite frustrating. Lastly, giving people Sprint at spawn balances out the AAs on the map better. People picking up Evade or Armor Lock will give up their faster moving speed (Sprint) and in return get something quite powerful. I think that balances out nicely. And because anything under 4v4 makes people very often spawn nowhere close to their teammates it would be very useful to have Sprint at spawn to get back to your teammate quickly. This hasn't really been a comment on your map, but I still think it was worth stating.
This was gone to keep it from being the assassination fest that was the old Arena without radar. It was NOT to make up for sprint. It was to make Reach's movement quicker because the default is retardedly slow. Originally, Shad0w wanted 120% speed, but it was skatey. Skatey is worse than slow, because it compromises maneuverability. Once again, it is not about balancing. We didn't want the AA's to be balanced, we wanted them to be on the same level as rockets, sniper, and sword. They are power items that can have a real effect on the game if they are not taken into effect. Besides, sprint causes more problems with running around corners and creating massive ring-around-the-rosies, and speeds up the game to a chaotic level. Think about the actual fighting, not what goes on in between; sprint is useless there except to run away and extend the game unneededly, giving life to people who otherwise wouldn't deserve it. Don't underestimate speed. A player with sprint has a strong advantage over someone who does not. I know, I just really like the gametype. Its how I think Reach should be played.
I've been working on it since the day I got Reach, September 16th. All of my forge for the first sixish months was spent on that map.
Do you see MLG becoming an assassinationfest? No, because those people actually look around. The radar only promotes camping and it slows down the pace tremendously. There's no reason to not remove it if you want a competitive tournament. I've been playing 120% movement speed without sprint quite a bit lately with the zero bloom gametype and all and I quite like it actually. In combination with (I think) 110% gravity and 125% jump height it felt like I had way better agility than I had before in Reach. All things considered I think next time you guys should just copy the MLG gametype, which works best for competitive matches. And add zero bloom, so people don't have to chance to run away making sprint less of a problem.
Yet I can get six assassinations in a game of MLG without even trying... I'm all for removing it, because I never touch the damn thing thanks to my headset, but the reasoning for it being there is solid. Its another asset to put at the hands of players. While I generally enjoyed past MLG gametypes, the Reach gametype feels too much like they are catering to the players who shoot better than they think, which annoys me. I prefer a slower, more intellectual game. We aren't adding zero bloom in the middle of a tournament, that would be a terrible idea. We aren't changing the gametype on the middle of a tournament. For a new tourney, however, I will stab someone if we don't make use of it. Even if you like it, 120% speed IS skatey, especially with sprint. And sprint being the most passive AA doesn't make it the best, just the easiest to forget about. Not saying you are wrong, just saying there is a flipside to the coin.
Yeah, people camping around corners has been really enjoyable so far this tournament. I'd rather people get 10 assassination than play the frustrating and agonizing playstyle the current gametype promotes. Without the radar people are so much more free to move around as they like, resulting and way more interesting matches. You're heavily exaggeration about the amount of assassinations people will get anyway. Unless you're playing completely incompetent people this will not be the case. I said "Next time" as in "The next tournament". Anyway, like I said, with zero bloom you could justify adding sprint. With zero bloom it's a lot harder to run away for safety. Also, a bit unrelated, I'm kind of curious why you chose to put Evade on your map if you hate people getting away easily. With Evade you can cover the same amount of distance in a much shorter time-frame than Sprint can making it much easier to escape death.
Overdoziz, here's the thing. Headsets are powerful, powerful tools. I can beat most anyone on the 1v1 map Sequence, except for guys like Shad0w, who have the ability to stand in the center of a room, hear my footsteps, turn around and kill me. Our games have ended with scores as low as 2-1, simply because no-radar slows the game so much. In a 4v4 game, no-radar's not a problem. In 2v2, it's less of a problem, but the problem still exists. Radar can slow down the pace of the game, but at least it makes it fair to anyone who doesn't have incredible game sounds.
You got Reach on the 16th? Noob. OT: The map looks alright from the pictures. Will have to get some games on it soon.
Yeah yeah, so I had to rob a fortune500 company before I could afford Reach, and that delayed me a bit. What of it?
You could've spend 2 more days Forging! Edit: Armor Lock adds so much to this map! It's sweet. I loved waiting for people to come out of it. Here's a picture of the action: Seriously though, my biggest problem with the map is the lower area. It's such a deathtrap. Without sprint it's even worse. There's hardly any good ways to get out of there quickly. And this ramp annoyed me to no end. Getting stuck on it mid-battle isn't as enjoyable as it may sound. Also, the matches I just played once again have shown how awful having a radar is. Holding your ground and moving around as little as possible is the best tactic which is so boring. For the love of god remove it next time. So far every team we've played said they didn't like the gametype even when they won. You may enjoy your slow-paced gametype Reflex, but it's agonizing for many others. Competitive matches are about quick decisions and hoping it's the right one. Not about carefully making a plan while you're sitting in a corner of the map waiting for the other team to show up. Adding Armor Lock suggest that you really like your slow-paced gameplay. The only thing AL does it slow down the gameplay tremendously.
This map was the only map of the bunch I didn't like. Had you released this map 2-3 months after forging it, this would have been a top-of-the-line map, but it just doesn't live up to today's forging standards. The only match I had on it was a 1v1 on MLG settings, and the only enjoyable time I had was the many Evade no-scopes I had on this map. Other than that, it was a pretty bad time.
Its a overall good map and for that time spent i think that it's got serious potential in many ways keep up the good work good job. [br][/br]Edited by merge: i respect your opinion and see where your coming from and i respectfully disagree because i think it just adds another layer of intresting gameplay possibilities.
I agree. @Overdoziz: Each of the maps have been made to suit different playstyles and the gametype supports each of those playstyles. Removing the radar doesn't promote movement in my opinion, it just causes more players to hold their ground more because running round corners without any notice is just instant death. At least with radar, you get an indication of where an opponent can be and you and your team mate can coordinate an attack. Without radar, there wouldn't be as many successful flanking maneuvres and most encounters would be 2v2 in the same area. It would be very rare that team mates would split up. In honesty, the tournament should support every playstyle possible, so the winner of the tournament has proven to be the most successful at every playstyle we threw in. If FH wanted to hold an elitist MLG tournament, they would have just used their settings and designed maps entirely round their requirements. Throwdown is not MLG, so please don't compare it's playstyles to it.