Post by prototypetom on Nov 2, 2016 17:00:17 GMT
I've taken the 1st of o_ManOfFire_o's Temple listings as the one to vote for if people want to vote for it. that work?
Reviews:
(it's another week of tough love I'm afraid)
MC Bikers Fight by ShelbyGR
From my perspective I basically have to wind back any reviewing melee DM's because the combat side of things is so dictated by the games ropey fighting mechanics. While you can commend a job for a location, concept or prop-craft, ultimately it's like reviewing waffles - they might just be the best dang waffles ever made, but they're just waffles. This particular waffle is clearly quite sensational, but I'm just not a fan of waffles - but I AM happy they exist for everyone who does love them, and if i had to eat one, this would be a good choice.
G[]$\\P *DM- Don’t panic by gosccp
this one's as dirty a pleasure as the location it's set in. It's a cool location and I walked away pleased for the experience. But it's got some fundamental issues... The rifles are way OP compared to the Sweeper shotgun (AKA spoon launcher) or anything else. And the weapon pick ups are horribly unbalanced due to the respawn pattern. If you are a team spawning mostly by the strip club you are at a HUGE disadvantage - you have no rifles, you have a bottleneck right in front of you and you're faced with a lot of movement restricting fencing, which makes the crap range of the shotgun even more of a disadvantage. I also would have appreciated some more landmarking with props and maybe a bit more design regarding line of sight/channels - the vertical carriage is brilliantly inspired, the upturned cars not so much. It was a fun map to play, but it needs some work to bring it's technical merits up to the same standard as it's spirit.
Temple Complex - o_ManOfFire_o
The easy thing to get out the way is it looks great and feels like a really well crafted and bespoke environment (except perhaps the interior of roads part). But then there are problems of scale, things I wasn't sure about when I played it with a handful of people last week. So to try and be as succinct as possible - it's a huge map which makes you feel tiny and cramped, and forces traversal on you rather than inspiring it. I'm not sure if it's been changed since that first play through - because I didn't have the time or motivation to go looking in this play, but there seem to be whole areas of the map, which to be blunt, are superfluous to the business of the deathmatch. When i find myself sitting through the painfully slow step climbing animation I have little love for the somewhat indulgent areas of the map which used up props that might have been used for ramps. If I could produce a heat map of my match, more than half of my kills would probably have taken place in the same small area of the map - most of my time spent away from that area was trying to find my way back there/looking for weapons/falling off ledges/running into walls/s-l-o-w-l-y going up and down steps. It's a great build, wonderful in fact - as a build. as a TDM it's just too mazey, restricting and interesting-in-the-wrong-places for me to gush about it - but it's not 'broken' at all, so it's obviously somewhat subjective.
My advice would be - if it's to be a great deathmatch (as opposed to a great build) the map needs to be opened up more on the audience side, simplified with a clearer path to weapons/killzones and more to be made of the strongest parts (the ridges). And fix the spawns which have you running off a ledge immediately!
OR make this into the LTS which suits a bit more emphasis on working the environment into your game-plan. but to say again, it is a cool build, it oddly made me feel like I was James Bond fighting Scaramanga - and that was the kind of slower contemplative battle I wanted to be having in a build such as it is, like an LTS.
Dante’s RNG inferno - ShelbyGR
Best in show for me. Although last week we had a couple of jobs which demonstrated how the stunt props could be successfully integrated into realistic maps, this is the first I've played which uses the new props themselves as the focus with no inherent problem with game play. That said, I think there was far too much spawn killing. I think this could be remedied by making the flow cyclical instead of a linear confrontation - instead of lots of bitty props in middle, have one big central construct and then bitty props around the circle. I really enjoyed the theme/concept, simple as it was. I liked how the odd glow made some of the outer cover blend into itself making players seemingly pop into existence. But conversely I felt I relied a bit too much on auto aim around the edges as people wearing black seemed to be completely invisible - not sure what you can do about that, but going cyclical would probably help that too.
*regarding the stunt prop maps*
I would like to say generally to all the peeps making maps with the stunt props that i appreciate that its a new suite of toys with new pitfalls, and that you are essentially acting as pioneers. I've opted out of it for now and it seems a bit douchy to sit on the sidelines being critical, but I do really appreciate what y'all are doing and experimentation (intentional or otherwise) is ultimately benefiting us all - if ever do make these props available the rest of us creators, we will all be well equipped from learning vicariously through your action. I believe that to review stunt TDM's with any artificial caveat or adjustment in sympathy of the new challenges of these props would actually be a disservice to what you're doing and diminish future expression of admiration as things inevitably develop.
Reviews:
(it's another week of tough love I'm afraid)
MC Bikers Fight by ShelbyGR
From my perspective I basically have to wind back any reviewing melee DM's because the combat side of things is so dictated by the games ropey fighting mechanics. While you can commend a job for a location, concept or prop-craft, ultimately it's like reviewing waffles - they might just be the best dang waffles ever made, but they're just waffles. This particular waffle is clearly quite sensational, but I'm just not a fan of waffles - but I AM happy they exist for everyone who does love them, and if i had to eat one, this would be a good choice.
G[]$\\P *DM- Don’t panic by gosccp
this one's as dirty a pleasure as the location it's set in. It's a cool location and I walked away pleased for the experience. But it's got some fundamental issues... The rifles are way OP compared to the Sweeper shotgun (AKA spoon launcher) or anything else. And the weapon pick ups are horribly unbalanced due to the respawn pattern. If you are a team spawning mostly by the strip club you are at a HUGE disadvantage - you have no rifles, you have a bottleneck right in front of you and you're faced with a lot of movement restricting fencing, which makes the crap range of the shotgun even more of a disadvantage. I also would have appreciated some more landmarking with props and maybe a bit more design regarding line of sight/channels - the vertical carriage is brilliantly inspired, the upturned cars not so much. It was a fun map to play, but it needs some work to bring it's technical merits up to the same standard as it's spirit.
Temple Complex - o_ManOfFire_o
The easy thing to get out the way is it looks great and feels like a really well crafted and bespoke environment (except perhaps the interior of roads part). But then there are problems of scale, things I wasn't sure about when I played it with a handful of people last week. So to try and be as succinct as possible - it's a huge map which makes you feel tiny and cramped, and forces traversal on you rather than inspiring it. I'm not sure if it's been changed since that first play through - because I didn't have the time or motivation to go looking in this play, but there seem to be whole areas of the map, which to be blunt, are superfluous to the business of the deathmatch. When i find myself sitting through the painfully slow step climbing animation I have little love for the somewhat indulgent areas of the map which used up props that might have been used for ramps. If I could produce a heat map of my match, more than half of my kills would probably have taken place in the same small area of the map - most of my time spent away from that area was trying to find my way back there/looking for weapons/falling off ledges/running into walls/s-l-o-w-l-y going up and down steps. It's a great build, wonderful in fact - as a build. as a TDM it's just too mazey, restricting and interesting-in-the-wrong-places for me to gush about it - but it's not 'broken' at all, so it's obviously somewhat subjective.
My advice would be - if it's to be a great deathmatch (as opposed to a great build) the map needs to be opened up more on the audience side, simplified with a clearer path to weapons/killzones and more to be made of the strongest parts (the ridges). And fix the spawns which have you running off a ledge immediately!
OR make this into the LTS which suits a bit more emphasis on working the environment into your game-plan. but to say again, it is a cool build, it oddly made me feel like I was James Bond fighting Scaramanga - and that was the kind of slower contemplative battle I wanted to be having in a build such as it is, like an LTS.
Dante’s RNG inferno - ShelbyGR
Best in show for me. Although last week we had a couple of jobs which demonstrated how the stunt props could be successfully integrated into realistic maps, this is the first I've played which uses the new props themselves as the focus with no inherent problem with game play. That said, I think there was far too much spawn killing. I think this could be remedied by making the flow cyclical instead of a linear confrontation - instead of lots of bitty props in middle, have one big central construct and then bitty props around the circle. I really enjoyed the theme/concept, simple as it was. I liked how the odd glow made some of the outer cover blend into itself making players seemingly pop into existence. But conversely I felt I relied a bit too much on auto aim around the edges as people wearing black seemed to be completely invisible - not sure what you can do about that, but going cyclical would probably help that too.
*regarding the stunt prop maps*
I would like to say generally to all the peeps making maps with the stunt props that i appreciate that its a new suite of toys with new pitfalls, and that you are essentially acting as pioneers. I've opted out of it for now and it seems a bit douchy to sit on the sidelines being critical, but I do really appreciate what y'all are doing and experimentation (intentional or otherwise) is ultimately benefiting us all - if ever do make these props available the rest of us creators, we will all be well equipped from learning vicariously through your action. I believe that to review stunt TDM's with any artificial caveat or adjustment in sympathy of the new challenges of these props would actually be a disservice to what you're doing and diminish future expression of admiration as things inevitably develop.
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