Mapsters 4.5 for Mapcraft 2017 has been significantly updated. Very interested in feedback for anyone who has time. Just about 20 days til contest ends.
Some changes of note:
- The end is an actual boss fight now, far different than it was before. So much improved. Type "boss fight" without quotes after you choose difficulty if you want to skip straight to it for testing purposes.
- Changed the supply max to 100, and added an addition second level upgrade for the healing bots. This makes it easier to keep a fully healed up army.
- Changed the tanks impact indicator to make it more distinct from the grenade ability indicator. So hopefully that'll help the player to know to dodge the tank attacks.
- Lots of other various things I don't remember :P
"boss fight" should probably activate all upgrades....
anyways the 2nd upgrade for the healing bots now makes them healing grenades, and making the single target heal rather pointless (except on heavily damaged marauders or heroes). Throw one in front of your army, crowd around it, and shoot for 25 healing and then you can keep moving (saving you time)
Drop pods are interesting, but in the end it's a pain to keep selecting new units that can be on the other side of the ship and try to group them with you.
Ghost dude's epic cloak on wound means that it's actually generally better to keep dying (which you will anyways, due to the sheer hp of everything that spawns)
Mapsters is a fun and interesting campaign, and is absolutely worth playing by all. It pulls off a decently-written unserious story (I'm not great at evaluating stories, so this rating is very high praise), its terrain, and unique mechanics every map.
Where mapsters falls short is in gameplay. I felt incredibly limited to the point that I only built one or two types of units in a mission. This turns mapsters from an RTS map to a micro-puzzle map, where you find the unit that works the best and mass it. The worst offenders are mission 1 and 2, where it's very hard to get anything but mass zerglings due to the gas you'll be pumping into hockleberry+upgrades. Mission 3 is a lot better since you get banelings to play with, along with enough gas to produce things like roaches and hydras. The anti-ground protoss mechanic of 5 really makes it incredibly micro-intensive to attack with a ground army, along with huge losses you'll be taking against reavers. Combine that with the advantages of mutalisks...
While there's nothing wrong a few limits to what you can build, or less efficient comps, it's just that I feel that I'm extremely limited every mission except for 3, the gates for success for inefficient comps are incredibly high, and for missions 1 and 2 in particular, you cannot have a composition that wins without a large portion being the offending unit.
However, the puzzle aspect does mean it's a good test for players to see if they can determine what they need and execute that build, and as such I feel Mapsters is best played without any aid of walkthrough vids.
Warning: review gets less serious ahead.
Releasing 5 missions only is a stroke of genius, though. It's clear how the plot resolves. For those of you who are lazy, let me guide you through the only way the plot can end, starting with this:
This proves that Jayborino doesn't really exist, as Mapsters states he does have a daughter (sorry if you were big on that existence thing, Jay). Now since it's obvious that Jay cannot be real, who could be posing as Jayborino? Who wants to kidnap Hockleberry and poison ElvinDL?
The answer is obvious, the zerg CEO. Let us remember that ElvinDL moved up the ranks via BETRAYAL, and suddenly in mission 4 after an interaction with Jay, repents. Is he actually poisoned or is that a side effect of his brain being rewritten by the Zerg CEO? Is the zerg CEO rewriting minds with his own? Yes! What's better than one brilliant CEO? A management team made up of mental copies of the brilliant CEO!
So why is hockleberry needed? He has to die in order for Wargirl to get promoted to match her skill. I mean you fight an upper level manager and take on the cult of Sixen. Wargirl's pretty skilled if she can take 'em on. But look at what you can do while you have hockleberry around. Mass zerglings? Can't build support units like infestors and gas-heavy attack units at the same time? Ultras are a luxury item? That's what a low-level manager would do, not a middle or upper manager. Why can't wargirl do cool zerg things? Hockleberry! He's gotta go for Wargirl to be promoted.
So in mission 6, Hockleberry dies, you "kill" the Jaypuppet, Wargirl gets promoted, and everyone is happy (except for Jayborino who doesn't exist, ElvinDL who is now becoming a mind-clone of the CEO, Hockleberry for obvious reasons, and the protoss and the terrans who you murdered), I MEAN EVERYONE.
Please don't rush. I would love a mission that we need to build a variety of units to win (part three) , not mass zlings or mutas like in parts one, two, and five.
Hey. Recently played through some of the missions and I noticed something on mission 4. You can place a creep tumor and get it to spread under the door, and get the abberation to unburrow. You can conquer the facility without worrying about the timer. You can get wargirl to transfuse through the door (sadly she can't drop the ursadons), plus once you get roaches you can micro them. (I'll upload a screenshot soon, if necessary).
Otherwise, it's fun. Love the unique twists on missions (even if I want to rant on and on about the vespene limitation, especially mission 1), the unique story, the unique and whimsical (kill 30 overlords) sidequests, the replayablilty (what happens if I don't kill the bio-dome, for example).
Edit: should I reply here or move it to the other page?
In reply to MaskedImposter:
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
Mapsters is a fun and interesting campaign, and is absolutely worth playing by all. It pulls off a decently-written unserious story (I'm not great at evaluating stories, so this rating is very high praise), its terrain, and unique mechanics every map.
Where mapsters falls short is in gameplay. I felt incredibly limited to the point that I only built one or two types of units in a mission. This turns mapsters from an RTS map to a micro-puzzle map, where you find the unit that works the best and mass it. The worst offenders are mission 1 and 2, where it's very hard to get anything but mass zerglings due to the gas you'll be pumping into hockleberry+upgrades. Mission 3 is a lot better since you get banelings to play with, along with enough gas to produce things like roaches and hydras. The anti-ground protoss mechanic of 5 really makes it incredibly micro-intensive to attack with a ground army, along with huge losses you'll be taking against reavers. Combine that with the advantages of mutalisks...
While there's nothing wrong a few limits to what you can build, or less efficient comps, it's just that I feel that I'm extremely limited every mission except for 3, the gates for success for inefficient comps are incredibly high, and for missions 1 and 2 in particular, you cannot have a composition that wins without a large portion being the offending unit.
However, the puzzle aspect does mean it's a good test for players to see if they can determine what they need and execute that build, and as such I feel Mapsters is best played without any aid of walkthrough vids.
Warning: review gets less serious ahead.
Releasing 5 missions only is a stroke of genius, though. It's clear how the plot resolves. For those of you who are lazy, let me guide you through the only way the plot can end, starting with this:
This proves that Jayborino doesn't really exist, as Mapsters states he does have a daughter (sorry if you were big on that existence thing, Jay). Now since it's obvious that Jay cannot be real, who could be posing as Jayborino? Who wants to kidnap Hockleberry and poison ElvinDL?
The answer is obvious, the zerg CEO. Let us remember that ElvinDL moved up the ranks via BETRAYAL, and suddenly in mission 4 after an interaction with Jay, repents. Is he actually poisoned or is that a side effect of his brain being rewritten by the Zerg CEO? Is the zerg CEO rewriting minds with his own? Yes! What's better than one brilliant CEO? A management team made up of mental copies of the brilliant CEO!
So why is hockleberry needed? He has to die in order for Wargirl to get promoted to match her skill. I mean you fight an upper level manager and take on the cult of Sixen. Wargirl's pretty skilled if she can take 'em on. But look at what you can do while you have hockleberry around. Mass zerglings? Can't build support units like infestors and gas-heavy attack units at the same time? Ultras are a luxury item? That's what a low-level manager would do, not a middle or upper manager. Why can't wargirl do cool zerg things? Hockleberry! He's gotta go for Wargirl to be promoted.
So in mission 6, Hockleberry dies, you "kill" the Jaypuppet, Wargirl gets promoted, and everyone is happy (
except for Jayborino who doesn't exist, ElvinDL who is now becoming a mind-clone of the CEO, Hockleberry for obvious reasons, and the protoss and the terrans who you murdered), I MEAN EVERYONE.The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
Please don't rush. I would love a mission that we need to build a variety of units to win (part three) , not mass zlings or mutas like in parts one, two, and five.
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
Hey. Recently played through some of the missions and I noticed something on mission 4. You can place a creep tumor and get it to spread under the door, and get the abberation to unburrow. You can conquer the facility without worrying about the timer. You can get wargirl to transfuse through the door (sadly she can't drop the ursadons), plus once you get roaches you can micro them. (I'll upload a screenshot soon, if necessary).
Otherwise, it's fun. Love the unique twists on missions (even if I want to rant on and on about the vespene limitation, especially mission 1), the unique story, the unique and whimsical (kill 30 overlords) sidequests, the replayablilty (what happens if I don't kill the bio-dome, for example).
Edit: should I reply here or move it to the other page?
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)