This has, somehow, convinced me to go out and get Live again. I'm extremely happy to see they're keeping Reach up and going.
Doubles versions of Solitary and Battle Canyon. I came. It's about damn time that this was released, though. I'm excited to play doubles and/or Arena with all the lovely changes.
Oh my god. Alpha Zombies on Deadwalk is a MUST. If you haven't played it, do it. Now. They have removed all of the HLG spots and now it makes you either work as a team or solo (I went solo, and never got infected except within the last 10 seconds.) It feels soo much like as if it was a real zombie apocolypse now.
The thought of playing Solitary in a situation as tense as Dubs genuinely makes the semen leap back inside my *****. Battle Creek will be awesome, but the spawning on Solitary is just so incredibly godawful that I will never be enthusiastic about that map until/unless they address it. Would much rather see Penance. I know it's a lot bigger and would likely be a little easy to lock down (haven't played it 2v2 tbh, just guessing), but I still think it has more potential than Solitary does.
Solitary, the newer version, has extra routes to make nearly every area more accessible. The only spots I have concerns for are the basements, which are still deathtraps. However, it would be much tougher to lock down the spawns on that map with only two people to a team, which is why I'm very interested to see how it works out. It could work out beautifully, or it could be a disaster.
Prisoner is actually only good for 2v2. Outside of that it's an awful map so I look forward to playing it in team doubles.
And not only is it Prisoner, but it's an improved Prisoner. THEY ACTUALLY HAVE RAMPS UP TO THE SNIPERS. Yeah, I'm pretty damn excited to get home and play some doobles.
its already in action sack for shotty snipers, which is even worse than normal snipers, especially seeing as the shotty now needs nerfing
Just played Sniper on Countdown and really liked it. Same goes for Zealot. Spawnkilling wasn't an issue at all on Countdown.
I've played Solitary, the geo changes are fine but the spawning is still awful. Locking down the spawns isn't even the problem, stuff like people spawning 10 feet away from you at the top of the map is the problem. I can believe it's a little better in 2v2 simply because there are going to be more "safe" spawn areas open down low to stop top control being worthless and just a risk of being spawned on top of. However, a map that's so ready to ignore safe spawning in proximity terms will still do so in 2v2, even if it's less frequent, and since each death has more immediate impact in 2v2 I'd say it could well still come out equally awful in practical terms.
I wish they added some custom minigames to action sack, though. Like toilet flush, or hall of balls, or splatter monkey. EDIT: Actually splatter monkey is an infection minigame.
In 4v4s, the problem is simply that the map is too damn small, and sightlines are too damn open. With no viable spawning options, the system basically freaks out and becomes unpredictable. Enemies can spawn within a backsmack's distance when this occurs. (I've seen it far too often on Zealot in Squad) Maybe I'm just the optimist here, but my speculation is that with new spawning areas, (the back halls, which do have spawns in them) and less people, the issue of spawning on Solitary will be, for the most part, resolved. Predictability could be an issue, but the map has quite a few rooms, and if the basements don't have too much weighting, then everything should work out swimmingly.
Just played some arena. It was great. Not only is it all DMR starts (obv), there's no AL either. It is now my new go to playlist. BTB is also fantastic. That is all.
*opens up thread looking for anything interesting or incentive to start playing reach again* "Living dead updated-new spooky map variants"
I played 5 or 6 games of BTB and didn't play anything aside from TU BTB Slayer on Hemorrhage. I think they need to change some of the weighting of maps and mix them up a bit. Other than that, I'm glad to see the TU get spread around the game and Living Dead to get some actual zombie maps instead of the empty, boring slop that flooded the old playlist.
Yea I agree the weighting needs to be fixed. I played about 15 games of BTB with my group of friends, we got hemorrhage about half of the time. Also, abridged and that one map with the two banshees and a lazer didn't even show up for us, or maybe I didn't pay attention.
I don't know about that. People never vote for the bad forge maps any more - they're still in there but it's been forever since I played the worst ones (Mt. Lam Lam, whatever that one is that is basically Hemorrhage with a giant structure in the middle). Actually they don't even tend to vote for the decent ones (Trident, Wayont). Basically if you go into BTB, you can expect to end up playing Hemorrhage at least half the time, and the other half a mix of Spire, Boneyard, and Utopie.