For the attack ability; you could make a persistent, so the attack fires 7 times; but checks each time to make sure the target is still alive; and that the SCV has enough energy to make the attack. It would be exactly the same as it is now; except rather thank clicking 6 times to kill an overlord, you would click once, and it would fire until you were out of energy or the overlord was dead.
Other than that, im not positive what each of your responses are to ><
Hmmm, yeah that I think would work, I have no idea how to do that though, so I might need some help.
When I Sendlirn made a dot point I made a response dot point for each one. The problem is the original dot points are on another page. Will make quote when get home.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Okay, so I played it around 6-8 times, at first a bit in single player to get a grip of what's going on.
After being utterly murdered in singleplayer I decided that it would be better to try it with full house after all. After getting utterly murdered in public fullhouse games I made a private party including a guy who played previous versions before, so he knew more than I did. We beat it in 20-ish minutes on our second try.
So, first out the technical stuff:
- Loading screen is mean towards non-widescreen monitor users (https://snag.gy/hQbpzX.jpg). I think one of editors settings allows you to scale loading screen properly for any resolution;
- Patch notes are a mess. First thing the guy I brought in said was: "You sure it's the right version? It hasn't been updated since the middle of last year";
- No menu button. One of the games a guy had a panic attack because he had to leave the game and he couldn't. I tried telling him the hotkeys but he said he was on mac laptop and he didn't have them. We decided to kill everything and trigger defeat so that the guy could leave;
-The chat bar misplacement. This alongside with the above points makes map feel technically broken;
- Timer overflow, I've built a rescue beacon 40 seconds before time and this is the result https://snag.gy/goUsG7.jpg (needing to wait 291 hours for rescue)
- Tesla Coil build button's description said it can attack ground and air units - it attacked only air. I felt very cheated that the iconic Red Alert tesla coil couldn't zap ground units t_t
- Harvest minerals objective also counts minerals from kills. I know what you mean, but it still stood out in a weird way;
-My SC2 hanged on indefinitely when I left games as last remaining player?
New player experience improvement suggestions:
- Make supply pickups semi-shared, e.g. when one player picks a supply crate (+4) all others get +1. This way new players who stay in base to repair ship don't get screwed over as much when someone who knows what to do goes out and takes all nearby supplies.
-Make repair free. You can already heal buildings for energy which is free, as a new player it felt dirt-cheap that I had ran out of my very sparse resources by trying to be helpful and just automatically repairing stuff. You can turn down repair rate to compensate. If you wish to have a quicker emergency repair you can add extra ability that restores buildings/units life in bulk for a portion of it's cost (can be done trough dummy ability + triggers).
Now, for subjective feedback:
It's obvious that you love the map the way it is. These are just my observations after half a day of playing it.
I think the map is a great hybrid of gathering, exploration and defense, at least initially.
Once mules kick in, everything changes. With them in play you mine out entire screens worth of minerals within less than a day cycle. This boosts your economy to insane levels, pretty much surrendering the pace of the game to players. You're either so good it's boring, or you're a newbie and the game kills you cause you built barricades and didn't explore the map from day 0.
Maybe it's the kind of gameplay that Krydon players appreciate, I wouldn't know, wipe out screen from enemies, then under 30 seconds plunder all resources, and then repeat the cycle all the while fortifying your ever invincible fortress. It's an ok gameplay. But for an outsider like me the gap between early, middle and lategame and how quickly it occurred left me feeling somesort of dissonance.
It's as if at some point players were given powerful tools and then in return enemies got buffed, but because pacing is so dependent on player skill it's impossible to balance the game.
And it's not just gathering element being made redundant by mules, exploration also takes a hit from sensor towers. Where once you needed to scout, now you can just scan entire map with a few scan towers in a little under 5 minutes. This surrenders to players even more control and power.
So I imagine if one wanted to normalize the pace, one could do something like:
- Remove mule (or limit it to 1), instead add upgrades for survivor to increase gathering rate (some other upgrades like attack/defense could be neat too). Perhaps a tech research/unlock for a building that slowly mines nearby fields (to process minerals inside base while you explore). Can even be a drone/ability that is released from survivor. (This idea is probably unviable due to current balancing of the game as I imagine it takes into account that at some point players start to gain income in massive chunks).
- Remove scan tower, if pinpointing tech location is an issue then perhaps make a sensor tower that only shows locations of buildings as red dots on minimap, so that players still need to head into unknown, just now they know in which direction to go.
But then again, this map has been around for quite a while, so I imagine that exploring such changes would be out of place.
Regardless, hope you manage to sort out all the technical issues bringing the map down so that more like-minded new and veteran players can appreciate the experience.
I have been leaving r0binicus thoughts and such via sc2 chat; but will post some feedback here for others to read. A lot of my opinions are shared by Treiva.
The loading screen means nothing to me; but you cannot expect someone to read all of it. Keep that in mind with text on a loading screen. The game is paused on the start. You could far more easily fade into an introduction cinematic, of the lander crashing. Panning over some zerg infested terrain, showing a lander crash, "other survivors" get eaten by zerg at night; then day breaks and the players jump out of the ship. Using only a few short transmissions, and some cinematics, you can tell the entire story and concept of the game in less than 20 seconds.
Ok I agree, I do want to do a cinematic, not sure how I would just because I am not sure how to delay the initialization of the timer for the first day. If i figure it out I probably would.
You start out with a builder, and there are some minerals. so, I mine minerals. That is what intuitivity tells me to do. But I cannot spend the minerals on anything. I assume SCV's are weak, so I am afraid to run around and find mineral packs and scraps. I NEED scraps to build turrets. I think you could create a scrap and mineral cluster for each player, that only they can pick up, and that is visible to them on start.
I completely understand this and agree, I will try and do this. I might just be able to fix this problem by making an upgrade that makes it so the transport ship can see through the trees (because the mineral insta pickups and supplies are almost always behind the trees), and it only being active when it is normal mode.
The first night falls, and any new player is still mining minerals (the mission objective told me to). They are left to defend with their lazer beam; which works, but is pretty angering, and can induce panic. Even worse if you built walls, and auto repair is enabled; so you are wasting your minerals repairing walls you wasted minerals building.
I will change objectives so they are more informative, or gives the player an effective strategy. I will also make it so the survivor auto repair is off when the game starts.
After playing with R0binicus, I see how "imbalanced" parts of the game quickly become. Being told "don't build those, because this is much better", by the guy in charge of making sure stuff is well balanced so new players aren't getting the shaft, is a little upsetting.
The "You must do this" part of it, is to uplift it, and bring it to your base; NOT defend it where it is. Once in the air, it cannot be killed anyway. Same goes for building a bunch of bases to lift off scout the map at the start. One of those things that alters the game by such an exponential amount, and new players have absolutely no clue about.
Any suggestions of how? I am a bit out of creativity right now, it is all being focused in ideas for my next project...
The game has many ways to win, which I think is awesome. Especially since the end starts to drag; I think it leaves plenty of time to accomplish those goals. You need to make those goals more intuitive though. Again, through short cut scenes and transmissions, you can show players how to win in those other ways. You can have a transmission from a drop ship in orbit; have launch a "location beacon" into the earth at a point, and advise the players that if they build more of them; the dropship can safely land and save them. This goes for all of the various win conditions. There is a lot you can do with 15-20 second cutscenes, during an hour long game, to make the game far more intuitive for players; opposed to reading all of the text; or being left clueless.
After talking with r0binicus, I can get his viewpoint of the game, and it is a place a lot of developers end up. He loves the game, and is insanely good at it, putting him too close to the action to see clearly. This is why he made an extremely difficult version of the game for himself and his buddy. There is a lot of really good content and options here; it is just presented poorly to new people; and some balance issues that can severely hinder a new player.
What do you mean 'presented poorly' and can you tell me the balance issues?
Also the lag, someone here might know a bit more. running the 32 bit version of the game, there isn't lag in the game. it is playing x64 that the lag is bad. The last time I played though, the lag wasn't as bad as it was my first few times. There was a clear frame drop, but not a horrible lag spike that would have me considering alt+f4.
Ok good, i still would like some help with that lag if possible, and also if you could think what might be causing the 'crash when exit' glitch.
A very good map that has pretty bad presentation. I love the variety in ways to win; but dislike how "mandatory" some things are if you are playing above normal. I think there is a lot of work that can be done to better explain the story and how to play the game; which would result in a better player return rate.
Can you give me some examples of what some "mandatory"things are? (I feel like you are getting annoyed at me for asking for so many suggestions and examples, sorry if you are) I think I will add some story, I will probably only add it on the 'normal' mode though, the cinematic would be the hardest bit.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
- Loading screen is mean towards non-widescreen monitor users (https://snag.gy/hQbpzX.jpg). I think one of editors settings allows you to scale loading screen properly for any resolution;
- Patch notes are a mess. First thing the guy I brought in said was: "You sure it's the right version? It hasn't been updated since the middle of last year";
- No menu button. One of the games a guy had a panic attack because he had to leave the game and he couldn't. I tried telling him the hotkeys but he said he was on mac laptop and he didn't have them. We decided to kill everything and trigger defeat so that the guy could leave;
-The chat bar misplacement. This alongside with the above points makes map feel technically broken;
- Timer overflow, I've built a rescue beacon 40 seconds before time and this is the result https://snag.gy/goUsG7.jpg (needing to wait 291 hours for rescue)
- Tesla Coil build button's description said it can attack ground and air units - it attacked only air. I felt very cheated that the iconic Red Alert tesla coil couldn't zap ground units t_t
- Harvest minerals objective also counts minerals from kills. I know what you mean, but it still stood out in a weird way;
-My SC2 hanged on indefinitely when I left games as last remaining player?
The loading screen is meant for widescreen minitors, it uses the setting: Aspect Scaled. The other options are normal and stretched. Do you want me to use stretched?
Hmmm yeah, I keep forgetting to update them, I will just say in the patch notes that I update almost every week and you can go to my SC2mapster page to see patch notes.
Yes I know about this, the thing that causes this is the coop dependency, it also removes the buttons near the menu button and removes the chat box's border then puts it in the game UI.
Haha, wow I forgot about that glitch, suprisingly, I will try and look into it.
I thought i changed the description... (just checked) oh I changed the unit's description, but not the button one, fixed.
Right, Not sure how to fix that, but I will try.
I am not sure what you mean, If you mean that when you left the game, SC2 goes into "not responding", I know about that, still have no idea what causes that, any ideas of what could be would be helpful.
- Make supply pickups semi-shared, e.g. when one player picks a supply crate (+4) all others get +1. This way new players who stay in base to repair ship don't get screwed over as much when someone who knows what to do goes out and takes all nearby supplies.
-Make repair free. You can already heal buildings for energy which is free, as a new player it felt dirt-cheap that I had ran out of my very sparse resources by trying to be helpful and just automatically repairing stuff. You can turn down repair rate to compensate. If you wish to have a quicker emergency repair you can add extra ability that restores buildings/units life in bulk for a portion of it's cost (can be done trough dummy ability + triggers).
I think I might make it so the person who got the supplies gets 4 supply and the other players get 1, or make it so the one who gets it gets 3 or something, I am reluctant to make it so everyone only gets 1, it would just make it so everyone never has enough supply. I might make it so everyone gets 2 supply though.
I want to do this, i do not know how. As far as I know the repairing repairs the units and takes the percentage that the unit was repaired and use that percentage of the units total cost. So if a unit costs 100 minerals and 100 gas and it is repaired 25% it uses up 25 minerals and 25 gas. Also I think the time it takes to repair a unit depends on the unit that the lets say bunker's repair time. If i am wrong (which I hope so) pls tell me.
I will be back for the rest of your feedback soon (probably tomorrow)
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
I realized one thing... I suck at giving feedback. Now that I think about the things other users said, I agree with most of them but I haven't noticed them during playthrough.
I played solo the regular version in the lowest difficulty. I didn't have any lag issues, and I enjoyed myself while playing. After finishing the mission starcraft crashed.
I did find the amount of options overwhelming, but the objective system is a nice tool to gradually learn what they do. Still, when the game was advanced, I've started missing the objectives and couldn't get the high tech tips.
I can give you a couple terraining tips since there are none here, and the rest is mostly covered:
I understand that you can't use many doodads because of the pathing and the lag, so that seems ok. But the texturing has some readability issues, and improving it wouldn't affect performance at all.
There are a couple places where is hard to distinguish cliffs. I walked with my SCV through enemy bases without noticing it a couple of times because of that.
In the the river zones, the organic cliff color is very similar to the sand textures.
In the rest of the areas, mainly at night (because of the lighting) there are some issues too. Those could be solved by placing a common texture over the cliffs. Check out blizzard maps.
Another thing to make the terrain easier to read is to paint "paths" on the open areas, like those that are in the center of the base and take to the 4 ramps.
I'm attaching images of your map and Haven's map from WoL to show what I'm talking about.
It's obvious that you love the map the way it is. These are just my observations after half a day of playing it.
I think the map is a great hybrid of gathering, exploration and defense, at least initially.
Once mules kick in, everything changes. With them in play you mine out entire screens worth of minerals within less than a day cycle. This boosts your economy to insane levels, pretty much surrendering the pace of the game to players. You're either so good it's boring, or you're a newbie and the game kills you cause you built barricades and didn't explore the map from day 0.
Maybe it's the kind of gameplay that Krydon players appreciate, I wouldn't know, wipe out screen from enemies, then under 30 seconds plunder all resources, and then repeat the cycle all the while fortifying your ever invincible fortress. It's an ok gameplay. But for an outsider like me the gap between early, middle and lategame and how quickly it occurred left me feeling somesort of dissonance.
It's as if at some point players were given powerful tools and then in return enemies got buffed, but because pacing is so dependent on player skill it's impossible to balance the game.
And it's not just gathering element being made redundant by mules, exploration also takes a hit from sensor towers. Where once you needed to scout, now you can just scan entire map with a few scan towers in a little under 5 minutes. This surrenders to players even more control and power.
So I imagine if one wanted to normalize the pace, one could do something like:
- Remove mule (or limit it to 1), instead add upgrades for survivor to increase gathering rate (some other upgrades like attack/defense could be neat too). Perhaps a tech research/unlock for a building that slowly mines nearby fields (to process minerals inside base while you explore). Can even be a drone/ability that is released from survivor. (This idea is probably unviable due to current balancing of the game as I imagine it takes into account that at some point players start to gain income in massive chunks).
- Remove scan tower, if pinpointing tech location is an issue then perhaps make a sensor tower that only shows locations of buildings as red dots on minimap, so that players still need to head into unknown, just now they know in which direction to go.
But then again, this map has been around for quite a while, so I imagine that exploring such changes would be out of place.
Regardless, hope you manage to sort out all the technical issues bringing the map down so that more like-minded new and veteran players can appreciate the experience.
Have a nice day~
I will not remove the MULE or limit it to just one, I will more likely limit it to 5, but now that I think about it, yes maybe the MULEs are a little OP
I also will not remove the scanner tower, I will just Nerf it, maybe make it more like the SC1 command center equivalent.
thanks
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
I realized one thing... I suck at giving feedback. Now that I think about the things other users said, I agree with most of them but I haven't noticed them during playthrough.
I played solo the regular version in the lowest difficulty. I didn't have any lag issues, and I enjoyed myself while playing. After finishing the mission starcraft crashed.
I did find the amount of options overwhelming, but the objective system is a nice tool to gradually learn what they do. Still, when the game was advanced, I've started missing the objectives and couldn't get the high tech tips.
I can give you a couple terraining tips since there are none here, and the rest is mostly covered:
I understand that you can't use many doodads because of the pathing and the lag, so that seems ok. But the texturing has some readability issues, and improving it wouldn't affect performance at all.
There are a couple places where is hard to distinguish cliffs. I walked with my SCV through enemy bases without noticing it a couple of times because of that.
In the the river zones, the organic cliff color is very similar to the sand textures.
In the rest of the areas, mainly at night (because of the lighting) there are some issues too. Those could be solved by placing a common texture over the cliffs. Check out blizzard maps.
Another thing to make the terrain easier to read is to paint "paths" on the open areas, like those that are in the center of the base and take to the 4 ramps.
I'm attaching images of your map and Haven's map from WoL to show what I'm talking about.
I am glad you had fun, everyone else seemed to hate my map and found it very boring.
Um yes SC2 does crash when you leave, no idea why. Any ideas of what is causing it?
Yes I need to update the objective system.
Hmm I guess it is do you suggest I change the sand texture, the cliff texture? Also if you want me to change the cliff texture i do not want to change all of that texture the entire map. I want to do something like on the Skygirr station HotS mission where there are different cliff textures for different cliff heights.
For the path painting I am reluctant to add paths because it has been like 20 or 30 years since the zerg invaded the planet, so why would there still be paths? Would not they be overgrown by now? Sorry I feel very restricted by realism. Well if I were to do the paths i would do them lightly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Thank you for the feedback, but I am not so sure about the "brutally honest" bit.
I am curious, what is so different about your experience of my map. Your first feedback when doing the BWTT was so different, to now when doing the MCPT?
First Time? - I want to say yes but remember playing a similar style map ages ago (but had very different looking terrain)
Number of players - 4 (full lobby)
What I liked:
Extremely well executed gameplay imo. For a RTS game it often felt relaxing and well paced for me.
Extremely noob friendly. I noticed the load screen tip to "follow objectives as a new player". As I played it became naturally clear this was a coop defense map (with no tutorials or giantly obstructing text explanations!). Those chat messages that kept popping up were good because I noticed them and it kept me up-to-date with the events of the game
Extremely minimal micromanagement required. I was so happy to notice that structures near the crashed ship regenerate HP. I also noticed that we can share resource drop-off structures and that we only need 1 SCV to build and do everything. Endless regenerating mineral patches are also cool.
Extremely flexible and sense of freedom with choices available. I liked how the objectives were always changing meaning that if I didn't complete some of them, I gained the impression it wasn't the end of the world and I could continue anyway. I like how I could just rely on 1 built command center for resource drop-offs and lift off/on wherever and whenever I want
Very team oriented gameplay. My SCV 'fainted' a couple times and the other players rescued me by repairing me. The first time it took them a while to start heading to me then reaching me and I didn't expect to be saved.
Our efforts are additive. The team can build more rescue beacons to shorten the time until we win.
Fairly simple. This is like a combination of stuff of stated above but it generally wasn't that difficult for me to play, understand things, or learn stuff about this game (because most information was readily available like in unit buff icons)
What I disliked (mostly minor):
Slightly confusing lobby showing 2 teams instead of all 4 player slots on 1 team
Lobby taking 10 seconds to enter load screen instead of 3
Slightly confusing that mining from endless mineral patches would mean my scv would sometimes stop mining. I thought it was a bug (that slightly annoyed me) but didn't realise until near the end of the game that the mineral patch doesn't disappear and can end up on 0 minerals.
Game was lagging a bit at the start and also towards the end when there were so many units trying to attack our rescue beacons
The game takes too long to officially end. After the rescue beacon timer reaches 0, it gave us too many reinforcements and for a good few minutes I was lost and didn't know if the game actually ended. I would've preferred a victory screen right after the rescue beacon reaches 0 so things don't drag out
Load screen text. I hate feeling pressured to read important gameplay information before the load screen is finished. I hate reading in general when a game has better, more fun, and more efficient ways to communicate information to the players
Extra Comments:
You sir/madam(s) have earned my respect with your game design prowess/decisions. I have bookmarked this map and it's by far the best coop experience I've ever had in the arcade and I would enjoy this way more than Blizz's coop commanders mode.
This is one of the most fun arcade games I have played in a long time and I can see myself replaying this alot. Overall it's extremely fun for me.
Thanks for making this game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
I think with the slow decline of trievas map, he became more critical of other maps. The realization of how dumb the average arcade player is, he attempts to embody that perspective.
Anyway, I work outta town but am home on weekends. If you make a list of things you'd like help with, I'll try to help you get them done so that by the end of the month, you can get some reviews on the updated project.
Ok thanks :) that makes me feel better. I have just found all this feedback a bit overwhelming, stressful and depressing. This is probably because most people's feedback is mostly negative (in terms of word comparison)(which BTW is normal, I do this) but there is no dedicated good part, they do not strait out say the good thing or it is 'good thing' but 'bad thing' (the last one is not so bad). It is also that I got it rather than the space of 2 weeks, in 2 days and because most of the feedback from the BWTT and mostly ever and the SC2 ratings are at about 4.5 stars (sorry if the last bit seems like I am bragging) so it was quite a shock to have so people suddenly have a lot of negative.
ANYWAY I can not usually do Sundays, which because of the timezone difference is your Saturday and I can not do Monday as well (your Sunday). I think I am can do the (NY time) 4th of feb.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
For the attack ability; you could make a persistent, so the attack fires 7 times; but checks each time to make sure the target is still alive; and that the SCV has enough energy to make the attack. It would be exactly the same as it is now; except rather thank clicking 6 times to kill an overlord, you would click once, and it would fire until you were out of energy or the overlord was dead.
Other than that, im not positive what each of your responses are to ><
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
Hmmm, yeah that I think would work, I have no idea how to do that though, so I might need some help.
When I Sendlirn made a dot point I made a response dot point for each one. The problem is the original dot points are on another page. Will make quote when get home.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
Okay, so I played it around 6-8 times, at first a bit in single player to get a grip of what's going on.
After being utterly murdered in singleplayer I decided that it would be better to try it with full house after all. After getting utterly murdered in public fullhouse games I made a private party including a guy who played previous versions before, so he knew more than I did. We beat it in 20-ish minutes on our second try.
So, first out the technical stuff:
- Loading screen is mean towards non-widescreen monitor users (https://snag.gy/hQbpzX.jpg). I think one of editors settings allows you to scale loading screen properly for any resolution;
- Patch notes are a mess. First thing the guy I brought in said was: "You sure it's the right version? It hasn't been updated since the middle of last year";
- No menu button. One of the games a guy had a panic attack because he had to leave the game and he couldn't. I tried telling him the hotkeys but he said he was on mac laptop and he didn't have them. We decided to kill everything and trigger defeat so that the guy could leave;
-The chat bar misplacement. This alongside with the above points makes map feel technically broken;
- Timer overflow, I've built a rescue beacon 40 seconds before time and this is the result https://snag.gy/goUsG7.jpg (needing to wait 291 hours for rescue)
- Tesla Coil build button's description said it can attack ground and air units - it attacked only air. I felt very cheated that the iconic Red Alert tesla coil couldn't zap ground units t_t
- Harvest minerals objective also counts minerals from kills. I know what you mean, but it still stood out in a weird way;
-My SC2 hanged on indefinitely when I left games as last remaining player?
New player experience improvement suggestions:
- Make supply pickups semi-shared, e.g. when one player picks a supply crate (+4) all others get +1. This way new players who stay in base to repair ship don't get screwed over as much when someone who knows what to do goes out and takes all nearby supplies.
-Make repair free. You can already heal buildings for energy which is free, as a new player it felt dirt-cheap that I had ran out of my very sparse resources by trying to be helpful and just automatically repairing stuff. You can turn down repair rate to compensate. If you wish to have a quicker emergency repair you can add extra ability that restores buildings/units life in bulk for a portion of it's cost (can be done trough dummy ability + triggers).
Now, for subjective feedback:
It's obvious that you love the map the way it is. These are just my observations after half a day of playing it.
I think the map is a great hybrid of gathering, exploration and defense, at least initially.
Once mules kick in, everything changes. With them in play you mine out entire screens worth of minerals within less than a day cycle. This boosts your economy to insane levels, pretty much surrendering the pace of the game to players. You're either so good it's boring, or you're a newbie and the game kills you cause you built barricades and didn't explore the map from day 0.
Maybe it's the kind of gameplay that Krydon players appreciate, I wouldn't know, wipe out screen from enemies, then under 30 seconds plunder all resources, and then repeat the cycle all the while fortifying your ever invincible fortress. It's an ok gameplay. But for an outsider like me the gap between early, middle and lategame and how quickly it occurred left me feeling somesort of dissonance.
It's as if at some point players were given powerful tools and then in return enemies got buffed, but because pacing is so dependent on player skill it's impossible to balance the game.
And it's not just gathering element being made redundant by mules, exploration also takes a hit from sensor towers. Where once you needed to scout, now you can just scan entire map with a few scan towers in a little under 5 minutes. This surrenders to players even more control and power.
So I imagine if one wanted to normalize the pace, one could do something like:
- Remove mule (or limit it to 1), instead add upgrades for survivor to increase gathering rate (some other upgrades like attack/defense could be neat too). Perhaps a tech research/unlock for a building that slowly mines nearby fields (to process minerals inside base while you explore). Can even be a drone/ability that is released from survivor. (This idea is probably unviable due to current balancing of the game as I imagine it takes into account that at some point players start to gain income in massive chunks).
- Remove scan tower, if pinpointing tech location is an issue then perhaps make a sensor tower that only shows locations of buildings as red dots on minimap, so that players still need to head into unknown, just now they know in which direction to go.
But then again, this map has been around for quite a while, so I imagine that exploring such changes would be out of place.
Regardless, hope you manage to sort out all the technical issues bringing the map down so that more like-minded new and veteran players can appreciate the experience.
Have a nice day~
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
I will be back for the rest of your feedback soon (probably tomorrow)
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
I realized one thing... I suck at giving feedback. Now that I think about the things other users said, I agree with most of them but I haven't noticed them during playthrough.
I played solo the regular version in the lowest difficulty. I didn't have any lag issues, and I enjoyed myself while playing. After finishing the mission starcraft crashed.
I did find the amount of options overwhelming, but the objective system is a nice tool to gradually learn what they do. Still, when the game was advanced, I've started missing the objectives and couldn't get the high tech tips.
I can give you a couple terraining tips since there are none here, and the rest is mostly covered:
I understand that you can't use many doodads because of the pathing and the lag, so that seems ok. But the texturing has some readability issues, and improving it wouldn't affect performance at all.
There are a couple places where is hard to distinguish cliffs. I walked with my SCV through enemy bases without noticing it a couple of times because of that.
Another thing to make the terrain easier to read is to paint "paths" on the open areas, like those that are in the center of the base and take to the 4 ramps.
I'm attaching images of your map and Haven's map from WoL to show what I'm talking about.
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thanks
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
Ok Trieve
Thank you for the feedback, but I am not so sure about the "brutally honest" bit.
I am curious, what is so different about your experience of my map. Your first feedback when doing the BWTT was so different, to now when doing the MCPT?
Trieve feedback for BWTT
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.
I think with the slow decline of trievas map, he became more critical of other maps. The realization of how dumb the average arcade player is, he attempts to embody that perspective.
Anyway, I work outta town but am home on weekends. If you make a list of things you'd like help with, I'll try to help you get them done so that by the end of the month, you can get some reviews on the updated project.
Skype: [email protected] Current Project: Custom Hero Arena! US: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/263274 EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/186418
Ok thanks :) that makes me feel better. I have just found all this feedback a bit overwhelming, stressful and depressing. This is probably because most people's feedback is mostly negative (in terms of word comparison)(which BTW is normal, I do this) but there is no dedicated good part, they do not strait out say the good thing or it is 'good thing' but 'bad thing' (the last one is not so bad). It is also that I got it rather than the space of 2 weeks, in 2 days and because most of the feedback from the BWTT and mostly ever and the SC2 ratings are at about 4.5 stars (sorry if the last bit seems like I am bragging) so it was quite a shock to have so people suddenly have a lot of negative.
ANYWAY I can not usually do Sundays, which because of the timezone difference is your Saturday and I can not do Monday as well (your Sunday). I think I am can do the (NY time) 4th of feb.
Also how the heck do I have Curse Premium?
Stranded on Krydon Renewed- A renewed version of Stranded on Krydon that is being constantly updated, has improved visuals, is more friendly to new players, lots more fun tweaks and much more planned to come.
Stranded on Krydon Renewed EXTREME- A modified version of SoKR with much harder difficulty.