Too many cheese maps?
I loved this game, got more hours in the game than I did work this last week, however the cheese maps made me stop playing a few times throughout this week as they were all I found some days.
By cheese maps, I mean maps that were impossible to ever see the Genmat because they've just created huge one or two room bases with floor to ceiling armored & rapid fire enforcers/hornets, Sentinel eyes with Deadman's Switch & plasma spread (can't remember the AoE mod name), and corrosive blocks everywhere. Sure, you can shoot a few, but we're talking about roughly 20 guards (a few maps may have had more) and at least as many Sentinel eyes, if not more.
Even if you have two people (which became a near necessity the last two days, as I almost exclusively got these types of maps) these maps would usually kill you and place your body somewhere your teammate wouldn't be able to survive even with a drop shield (as the shield blocks direct hits, but if the Sentinel eye bolts hit anywhere around it, the AoE would go through it and kill you anyhow.
I get why people make these maps, because guaranteed kills are the best, but it's not fun to have to redo a level 9 times because people are just creating troll maps. Maybe some sort of increased cost to repetitive use of defenses that have infinite uses would help lower this. It could even be a capped price increase that doesn't go past a certain point, like based on the size of the map. For instance, in a 4,500 build size, after placing 30 of a combination of Incenerators, Sentinel Eyes, and/or Guards (regardless of which type) each one after that will increase the base price by 10 cost, up to a maximum of like 120 per these unit types.
Maybe that's not the right way to go about limiting these sorts of maps, but this is the sort of thing that will just make more and more people quit. I've seen some people mention making it so that the player has to beat their level in order to post it, and maybe this would work too, I dunno.
The only thing I'm sure of is that this will be the reason a lot of new people quit the game or don't even buy it as, if it started getting this bad in a week of beta, I can only imagine how many more people will do these same builds at launch and as the game goes on. I get we all want to ensure our bases get the maximum kills, but if everyone's base is the same flavor of "open room with 30+ infinite shooters" less and less people are going to want to raid. You can't incentivize people to raid with "bonus points for completing" if they have to spend 30+ minutes playing before they even see the Genmat. By that reasoning, why not just build their own open room with infinite shooters and not raid at all? (Which is something quite a few people did apparently? Had no idea till I got on here today)
I'm all for discussion of alternate ideas to fix this though! I really enjoyed this game, and I'd like to see more creativity.
Edit: Something I just considered is that maybe I was just stuck in REALLY bad RNG, it's not impossible I suppose.
Comments
-
Someone else suggested that, but wouldnt some limitation of a certain amount of capacity of traps/guards in any given volume of an outpost counter such builds? I have no idea how you would balance that or if its even feasible programming wise, but that seems like something that would bring people to intelligent placement instead of spam i guess.
1 -
I don't think the given problem is about limitations, but a bit unbalanced, noone cares about how many arrow traps are, because once you trigger them, its gone, however, incinerator , and pistons, don't , and their strenght leads in small corridors, incinerator, counting with correct mods, and well placed , turns in a so annoying problem , that literally can only be solved "easy" with granades/lancer, if you sum the fact of having proper corrosive cube, and several more incinerators, because why else using something else in a corridor, it turns in a very annoying thing, you can't even melee destroy incinerator without dying once they are firing or neither use grab from max distance and melee it if has the mod of long range so you can only watch (btw if you want it more annoying put the mod of letting the ground on fire too, make it a ramp, and so its just frustrating without bow to reach). I've heard suggestion of "make owner complete it to be able to playable" however imagine changing just 1 mod, and having to repeat all each time, and neither you can say "only for mayor changes" since 1 block, can change totally the difficult of the dungeon , removing it from the back of the gem so making this a non stop repeating loop , however the idea of "accomplish it to be champion" sounds fair and keep it the way it was for this, sadly this would prevent people who wants to build challenging dungeons but don't have the skill to do them, sure you could always ask for someone else to do it but still.
In my experience I think there has been only 1 dungeon I didn't accomplish, and actually because I got dced doing it, and lost it after for some reason while this didn't happen other times, I've played 50h and all i've played practically with few exception at beginning, was brutal, and I can assure you that everything can be done even if some are really not worthy, I do remember one which was literally just incinerator & pistons all small room, and anything but annoying, or other one same thing, but it was just a 3 floor dungeon which literally was each corridor , the same, in the ramp too, or one which is one corridor filled with incinerator all the sides(making corners so its more effective than just an straight line and plasma at the end of it, with lava anything else)
(also no I didn't spent hours to make each one I do speedrun most of the maps, but this one I had to go slower, and took me like 10 minutes or 15 even , lucky this kind of dungeon """well done""" wasn't that common)
so skipping that long story, you do realize that everyone when want to make a "cheese" dungeon as you call it, they use, incinerator + corridor + piston, or small room with lots of incinerators, so its an obvious difference of unbalance, making the incinerator too strong, it activates fast, it has good range, good duration, doesn't destroy other traps, (pretty obvious, but can't be deflected , just shielded, with hardware since the timing with the barrier is impossible , you can try at maximum distance, but then its just pointless because you would be at the beginning, or run through it trying to deal what comes in the next corridor fast, which I assume is not the idea even if can be done) it can even let the ground on fire not allowing you to move while cooldown , which is not longer.
however any amount of guards or other combination of trap, even if its an spam of sentinel eyes, hornet, with all the mods you want to put on them, is not really something to be cap, hornets can be lure , and if can't then they lack or shooting speed or armor(and also you don't need to do much, there's friendly fire, they would end up killing themselves) sentinel eyes only shoot while when obviously, they see you, you have lot of tools, you can deflect, or use the barrier shield, or use the grabbing hook, to move so freedom in general in this scenarios, and cover yourself behind the own block of the sentinel eye once you destroy it, and if they explode just destroy it at distance first, or use the shield since you would be using some other weapon than melee.
0 -
Give player ability to destroy everything in a room but once. I think this will incentivize builders who want to create the most lethal mazes to spread their traps more, well now they need to think where the player will use that ability so the worst they can do in terms of spamming traps in a single room to have 2 rooms equally bad, or bait player to use the power early but that will just give them maybe 1 or 2 additional kills.
1
