I recently tested a well known 2v2 that is praised for its good design and art. I removed the power weapons to see what people would do on the map without them because a few days prior I was told that power weapons shouldn't define a maps flow or balance it's power positions and wanted to put this to the test. Turns out its these power weps/power ups that MADE the map, as without them the design completly fell apart. The team with the early lead ended up camping the middle of the map only barely moving between one spawn area and the other to dominate the losing team as they tried to fight off there spawn. The map essentially played like the feared donught with the winning team staying in one area the entire match and only moving slightly to see the two major spawn areas of the map. It was extremely one dimensonal and predictable. We then played a 2v2 with the power weapons back on the map and it played great! With players utilizing the entire play space to move and adpat as power weapons were respawned, picked up and expended.... It's almost as if the person that told me this didn't know it was the one thing that allows some maps to be considered good designs at all.
So much salt. So I made a thread so everyone can vent at each other. Let us stab each other in thy chests and not thy backs.
I was curious to see what map you played and I got impatient so I checked your recent games. https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...r chub?gameModeFilter=Custom&start=0&count=10 According to waypoint you haven't even played customs for the past few days, let alone any 2v2's in record. And I really doubt you play on an alt so I'm inclined to not believe you. But let's pretend for a second you were talking about Oblivion. It's quite literally common sense that a geometrical imbalance in a map isn't going to be solved by putting down power weapons because that's not a true solution. Top mid on Lockout is going to be dogshit no matter if you have a scarab gun spawning up there on 10 second intervals; you're not addressing the issue. You're just hiding it. If you can't recognize that it's because you in particular do nothing but rely off of analyzing low level bunk gameplay that means absolutely nothing. Frankly, there's no universe where Oblivion stagnates without weapons because frankly they were the last damn thing I thought/worried about when I was making the map. Incin flushes the tight spaces well, binary because there's cool line of sights, and Hydra because idk it's a Hydra. I'd swap the weapons out for Sentinel Beam/GL if I knew how to script the lightning to go with them but I don't. I've personally never felt the need to harshly time powerups or weapons on the map because I hardly think they're relevant; they're complementary at best (as weapons should be) And honestly just about everyone I've played the map has said the same thing, it's a map focused around gun play and movement, not weapon cycling. So if we're going off of bullshit anecdotal playtests my word is going to trump yours every time because frankly I'm a much better player than you. Isn't that what we agreed on, the higher level gameplay speaks louder? And you can actually check my ranks on Waypoint if you doubt that, or I could just give you footage of Batchford playing the map against his teammates. Ya know, actual pro players. At this point in level design actual gameplay tests mean just about absolutely nothing next to hypotheticals. That's how I've forged for years and that's how I forge now. Because user error is a real factor and forgers generally suck. But if I can clearly look at a spot (top mid Oblivion) and easily find 10 ways to deal with someone, chances are it's the player who needs to figure out what they're doing not the designer. And for the last 3 years my hypotheticals play out exactly how I think they'll play out 99% of the time. Your so-called weaponless-incentive less experience means nothing to me. For the record, I've played Oblivion weaponless many times because that's actually how I enjoy to play this game. It's your salty word against my entire playtest library. But like I said, even if your game did play out like that it's because the enemy team allowed it to. If you weren't talking about Oblivion my point still stands, a maps geometry needs to work independent from the weapon set. I've never seen you so defensive and salty about something before but it's not a good look for you man.