[Suggestion] a new approach

Catcocomics

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I've been noticing a few things about a number of our maps (particularly our old zombie maps), now that I've been catching the daily afternoon (for me) AoD party more frequently; many of them throw the team powers to rtd (sometimes the survivors get good loot and camp out, untouchable, and sometimes the hunters just flatten everyone in 5 seconds), which contributes very little to the fun of AoD and a lot to the salt, and let's be honest, most of the fun in AoD just comes from being with friends who you might or might not know irl.

To resolve this, I have a number of ideas, a few of which I implemented in my latest submission:

*Increase on items that don't drop after death (I recommend using the curse of vanishing on select items that would destroy kit balances in the hands of certain people).
I kid you not just how many maps there are where if there are more than 4 players, a bunch of survivors will camp out somewhere, wipe out the dark hunter(s) with little effort, and then use their gear to become virtually untouchable.

*Decreased emphasis on chest loot; a number of maps put some pretty ridiculous things in chests (like that prot 10 gold chestplate hiding in Western Nightmare), which often enough define the outcome of the match based purely on who got to the good stuff first (this is particularly bad on maps that have lesser known chests with particularly good loot that some person just happens to know about and exploits it every time they play the map).
My recommendation for chest loot is to prioritize food and ammunition among other knickknacks that can provide more options, support, and utility to players without making them god-like powerhouses.

*Heavy decrease on parkour in general. Granted, it's perfectly fine just throwing in some basic jumps here and there, but many maps have a bad case of every 3 blocks, another huge jump.
Hardcore parkour is quite honestly a bad thing in most cases with pvp, as it often alienates a lot of people who just can't merge advanced platforming with intense pvp in their mental processing, and then you get a bunch of Terres and Unus who become legendarily hard to catch or evade in these sorts of maps.
Doubtlessly, the infection game mode is the worst offender here, but a number of CTF and zombie maps have also been marred by brutal parkour courses.
On top of scaring away half the people who occasionally come to us for AoD, parkour-focused maps often end up looking like a singular land mass with tons of little squares dotting the sky with mazes of narrow walk-ways mixed in. This can be appealing in some cases, but often times, it can look like a kid tried to make a mario game with a bunch of free-floating legos or something, and just look at Safari if you want to know how blatant parkour maps can be about being parkour maps and not even trying to have a nice theme.
My recommendation on parkour may also be very long winded, because there are a number of conditions where parkour can work and work well.
Firstly, if you want to do a parkour-focused map, I suggest:
*setting a theme and putting your all into making the parkour match the theme
*keep the parkour fairly easy while making it look relatively interesting (a trail of 2x2 platforms isn't very interesting, but jumping from tree to tree can be pretty cool).
*use moderate-difficulty parkour sparingly or for exposed bonus loot if the map utilizes bows or enderpearls a lot.
*refrain from using the advanced or harder forms of parkour unless it's for an easy to attack spot with treasury worthy of the effort.
*Don't copy that map that was literally void with a rainbow grid of stained clay blocks.

*Try to make invovative and interesting maps with well balanced kits (prioritize the kit balance): this should honestly go without saying, but there's nothing more fun than trying something new and fresh, especially if the kits lead to very even, fair and fun fights. I can't say for certain if my newest map submission is balanced on the kits department, but I can say that it does sport some simple bow puzzles, which I have not seen in any AoD maps prior.

*Also, don't make a maze map where people can easily get lost and never find each other in. There is nothing more distasteful than having all your excellent gear and feeling all powerful and raring to go, only for anyone you could hope to use it on to just seemingly not even exist anymore, and then the round ends and they (or you) get rewarded for getting lost. Super anti-climatic and where's the fun in being all decked out with something when you just can't use it?

*This is more a suggestion for the admins to address, but a number of us have started to notice that our fantastic natural regeneration we get just isn't fantastic anymore. What I mean is, it seems to take an hour just to recover half your hp after getting battered in a cat fight with some random other person, which means that once that person has respawned, they have literally all the remaining round time to come and effortlessly 2-shot you while you're still trying to recover for an easy kill. I understand the hunger nerf we have is to stop people from just becoming invincible because their armor combined with 1.9 food healing, but honestly, when you're eating anything not made of gold, that food regen quickly runs out (or at least it does now), like a single steak will probably be good to recover 15 hp (7.5 hearts), but if you were to try and eat during a fight, you wouldn't be able to finish before you just got battered to death by whoever you're fighting, unless something intervened.
My recommendation here would be to completely re-enable the 1.9 food healing, though if it once again becomes an issue, reduce the saturation capacity instead of the hunger capacity. That way at least, we can recover at all without aid of potions when not fighting but still have quick fights that aren't prolonged by food-spam.

As a final note, these are recommendations towards making more entertaining maps and potentially being rid of those maps that instantly drop the player count from 16 to 3. If a map you are making is intended for something that would conflict with these guidelines, then do what you can to ensure that you execute that decision as best as you can.
 
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I've been noticing a few things about a number of our maps (particularly our old zombie maps), now that I've been catching the daily afternoon (for me) AoD party more frequently; many of them throw the team powers to rtd (sometimes the survivors get good loot and camp out, untouchable, and sometimes the hunters just flatten everyone in 5 seconds), which contributes very little to the fun of AoD and a lot to the salt, and let's be honest, most of the fun in AoD just comes from being with friends who you might or might not know irl.

To resolve this, I have a number of ideas, a few of which I implemented in my latest submission:

*Increase on items that don't drop after death (I recommend using the curse of vanishing on select items that would destroy kit balances in the hands of certain people).
I kid you not just how many maps there are where if there are more than 4 players, a bunch of survivors will camp out somewhere, wipe out the dark hunter(s) with little effort, and then use their gear to become virtually untouchable.

*Decreased emphasis on chest loot; a number of maps put some pretty ridiculous things in chests (like that prot 10 gold chestplate hiding in Western Nightmare), which often enough define the outcome of the match based purely on who got to the good stuff first (this is particularly bad on maps that have lesser known chests with particularly good loot that some person just happens to know about and exploits it every time they play the map).
My recommendation for chest loot is to prioritize food and ammunition among other knickknacks that can provide more options, support, and utility to players without making them god-like powerhouses.

*Heavy decrease on parkour in general. Granted, it's perfectly fine just throwing in some basic jumps here and there, but many maps have a bad case of every 3 blocks, another huge jump.
Hardcore parkour is quite honestly a bad thing in most cases with pvp, as it often alienates a lot of people who just can't merge advanced platforming with intense pvp in their mental processing, and then you get a bunch of Terres and Unus who become legendarily hard to catch or evade in these sorts of maps.
Doubtlessly, the infection game mode is the worst offender here, but a number of CTF and zombie maps have also been marred by brutal parkour courses.
On top of scaring away half the people who occasionally come to us for AoD, parkour-focused maps often end up looking like a singular land mass with tons of little squares dotting the sky with mazes of narrow walk-ways mixed in. This can be appealing in some cases, but often times, it can look like a kid tried to make a mario game with a bunch of free-floating legos or something, and just look at Safari if you want to know how blatant parkour maps can be about being parkour maps and not even trying to have a nice theme.
My recommendation on parkour may also be very long winded, because there are a number of conditions where parkour can work and work well.
Firstly, if you want to do a parkour-focused map, I suggest:
*setting a theme and putting your all into making the parkour match the theme
*keep the parkour fairly easy while making it look relatively interesting (a trail of 2x2 platforms isn't very interesting, but jumping from tree to tree can be pretty cool).
*use moderate-difficulty parkour sparingly or for exposed bonus loot if the map utilizes bows or enderpearls a lot.
*refrain from using the advanced or harder forms of parkour unless it's for an easy to attack spot with treasury worthy of the effort.
*Don't copy that map that was literally void with a rainbow grid of stained clay blocks.

*Try to make invovative and interesting maps with well balanced kits (prioritize the kit balance): this should honestly go without saying, but there's nothing more fun than trying something new and fresh, especially if the kits lead to very even, fair and fun fights. I can't say for certain if my newest map submission is balanced on the kits department, but I can say that it does sport some simple bow puzzles, which I have not seen in any AoD maps prior.

*Also, don't make a maze map where people can easily get lost and never find each other in. There is nothing more distasteful than having all your excellent gear and feeling all powerful and raring to go, only for anyone you could hope to use it on to just seemingly not even exist anymore, and then the round ends and they (or you) get rewarded for getting lost. Super anti-climatic and where's the fun in being all decked out with something when you just can't use it?

*This is more a suggestion for the admins to address, but a number of us have started to notice that our fantastic natural regeneration we get just isn't fantastic anymore. What I mean is, it seems to take an hour just to recover half your hp after getting battered in a cat fight with some random other person, which means that once that person has respawned, they have literally all the remaining round time to come and effortlessly 2-shot you while you're still trying to recover for an easy kill. I understand the hunger nerf we have is to stop people from just becoming invincible because their armor combined with 1.9 food healing, but honestly, when you're eating anything not made of gold, that food regen quickly runs out (or at least it does now), like a single steak will probably be good to recover 15 hp (7.5 hearts), but if you were to try and eat during a fight, you wouldn't be able to finish before you just got battered to death by whoever you're fighting, unless something intervened.
My recommendation here would be to completely re-enable the 1.9 food healing, though if it once again becomes an issue, reduce the saturation capacity instead of the hunger capacity. That way at least, we can recover at all without aid of potions when not fighting but still have quick fights that aren't prolonged by food-spam.

As a final note, these are recommendations towards making more entertaining maps and potentially being rid of those maps that instantly drop the player count from 16 to 3. If a map you are making is intended for something that would conflict with these guidelines, then do what you can to ensure that you execute that decision as best as you can.
1. I have never seen this happen other than campus and maybe colorido

2. so you want to literally take out one of the main aspects of the game I hate to break this to you but that is one of the best parts and kinda goes with survival of the fittest aspect of aod

3. as far I as know the only parkour maps are infection and even those aren't that bad to do and I never saw a player leave because of parkour in a map

4. wait wait wait is this the same catco who made elements Flames of Time and etc right?

5. it's not that hard to learn a map sure the first 3 times you made get lost but other than that everyone then starts to learn where to hide

all in all, it's seems like three things one a lot of the nerfing you said to do has been done before and it led to a decline in players which is why aod is still struggling for players two it seems like you are figuring out that maybe you aren't as great as you thought you are at pvp champ three most of the changes you suggest won't work like 1.9 regens it will regen way to fast for PVP and some require more plugins like editing capacity and the like
 
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*Increase on items that don't drop after death
I can see this being useful in maps where the first hunters get unique/stronger items.
*Heavy decrease on parkour in general.
In a way, parkour offers a different challenge for players. I don't personally see a problem with maps having jumps that may result in deaths. It offers an alternative for players who may not be as good at PvP. It also provides a change of pace from maps where players try to hide or fight.
*Decreased emphasis on chest loot

*Try to make invovative and interesting maps with well balanced kits (prioritize the kit balance)

*Also, don't make a maze map where people can easily get lost and never find each other in
A lot of what you bring up is more effective when talking about specific maps, rather than in general. Often, it's hard to predict if a map (and its items/kits) will be balanced or not until it is put into the game. I feel like the most practical solution for this would be a round of map voting. People could vote to keep, remove, or change certain aspects of the maps.

I get that the last point may be a bit frustrating, but it doesn't seem to be a big part of Zombie maps, which seems to be the center of your point when you're talking about gear. Most of the maps that I can think of with mazes are Infection or CTF maps. In those game modes, mazes (like parkour) add new elements into the game.
*This is more a suggestion for the admins to address, but a number of us have started to notice that our fantastic natural regeneration we get just isn't fantastic anymore. What I mean is, it seems to take an hour just to recover half your hp after getting battered in a cat fight with some random other person, which means that once that person has respawned, they have literally all the remaining round time to come and effortlessly 2-shot you while you're still trying to recover for an easy kill. I understand the hunger nerf we have is to stop people from just becoming invincible because their armor combined with 1.9 food healing, but honestly, when you're eating anything not made of gold, that food regen quickly runs out (or at least it does now), like a single steak will probably be good to recover 15 hp (7.5 hearts), but if you were to try and eat during a fight, you wouldn't be able to finish before you just got battered to death by whoever you're fighting, unless something intervened.
My recommendation here would be to completely re-enable the 1.9 food healing, though if it once again becomes an issue, reduce the saturation capacity instead of the hunger capacity. That way at least, we can recover at all without aid of potions when not fighting but still have quick fights that aren't prolonged by food-spam.
Like you said, this is mainly for the admin/developer. I would like to bring up that the natural regen does make the rounds go faster so that people that are in camping spots aren't as invincible. In my opinion, if 1.9 food healing is applied, many of the maps would need to be readjusted.
 
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Catcocomics

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1. I have never seen this happen other than campus and maybe colorido
I guess you mean the thing where survivors get dark hunter gear and that suddenly makes them invulnerable for the rest of the game.
Perhaps it's less of an issue now, probably because a lot of maps that were like this didn't make it to AoD 2.0, but back in the day, this was almost unavoidable, especially when such survivors immediately started camping with more survivors and got endlessly fed more stuff as wave after wave of normal hunters came and got whomped without effort.

2. so you want to literally take out one of the main aspects of the game I hate to break this to you but that is one of the best parts and kinda goes with survival of the fittest aspect of aod
1.
As a final note, these are recommendations
If a map you are making is intended for something that would conflict with these guidelines, then do what you can to ensure that you execute that decision as best as you can.
2. Honestly, unless it's like Outset Island where you barely stand a chance, even with half the chests in the map, this wouldn't be terrible.
A lot of maps already start you with everything you need, and you end up ignoring all the chest armor and weapons because you already have them (or you take them so no one else can have them, then die and suddenly arm all the hunters or survivor campers)

3. I feel like we don't hardly have enough any maps that actually make you look for food anymore. I mean, wasn't this supposed to be zombie survival? Hmm, and now that I think about it, I should probably knock down all the gold carrot stacks in the survivor kits on my new map.

4. This actually would tie-in excellently with my hunger/saturation idea.

3. as far I as know the only parkour maps are infection and even those aren't that bad to do and I never saw a player leave because of parkour in a map
Actually a fair point; most of my argument was founded on a shit load of past frustrations with suddenly losing what little hope I had of catching someone just because I slipped.
However, almost every infection map I can think of suffers from this thing of "keep running/chasing until someone screws up".
To remedy that, I'd suggest implementation of puzzle elements into infection, with or withough the parkour.

4. wait wait wait is this the same catco who made elements Flames of Time and etc right?
1. You actually got to play on elements?

2. Falmes of Time wan't put in correctly (3 times in a row). I believe the first time was because for some reason, the Blue Flame kit was the only one that got near-full diamond (something I very much did not intend), and the other times was because everyone suddenly had eternal saturation that literally made everyone invulnerable, despite the hunger nurf. I have asked Computerguy to coordinate with me at some point so I can guide him through with what I actually want in that map and what I don't want.

3. Impressive, you know how to attack my ideas with the almighty power of ad hominem. Shall I, too, counter your argument with reasoning based on your flaws and mistakes, whether you had the chance to make them or not?

4. By the way, I can *gasp* change!


5. it's not that hard to learn a map sure the first 3 times you made get lost but other than that everyone then starts to learn where to hide
Learning a map means nothing when you're looking for someone because they're the last survivor(s), but they simply aren't on the map anymore (well, they are, but might as well not be).

all in all, it's seems like three things[BCOLOR=#00ffff]:[/BCOLOR] one a lot of the nerfing you said to do has been done before and it led to a decline in players which is why aod is still struggling for players[BCOLOR=#00ffff],[/BCOLOR] two [BCOLOR=#00ffff]:[/BCOLOR]it seems like you are figuring out that maybe you aren't as great as you thought you are at pvp[BCOLOR=#00ffff],[/BCOLOR] champ[BCOLOR=#00ffff],[/BCOLOR] three[BCOLOR=#00ffff]:[/BCOLOR] most of the changes you suggest won't work[BCOLOR=#00ffff],[/BCOLOR] like 1.9 regens it will regen way to[BCOLOR=#00ffff]o[/BCOLOR] fast for PVP and some [BCOLOR=#00ffff]may[/BCOLOR] require more plugins like editing [BCOLOR=#00ffff]saturation[/BCOLOR] capacity and the like[BCOLOR=#00ffff].[/BCOLOR]
1. w0oo, more ad hominem

2. so based on my opinions, your conclusion is that I'm bad at pvp? Remind me, what is it you are trying to argue again?

3. No, the latest player decline was because suddenly a bunch of mob maps (woo, exciting), but then they all had the exact same kits and gear for purchase (with minimal exceptions) and an almost absolute lack of:
*enchantments
*unique/interesting mobs
*winnable maps
*crowd control
*interesting maps that don't screw everyone over
Plus, there is no way for anyone not a helper+ (mod+ at the time) to skip a mob round other than by having everyone die or logout (and many who logged out ceased to return for quite some time).

4. If we already have a plugin for changing the hunger capacity, would it really be such a big ordeal to tell it to change the capacity of a different variable, like say, saturation (which is directly tied to hunger)? Unless you actually know some things from personal experience in coding, I suggest you back off on this kind of argument and let Tnm or Comp say whether they can or can't, please.

By the way, I couldn't help but make the flow of your last paragraph easier to read. The absolute lack of punctuation really disrupted my flow, and I had to sort it out quite a bit, but now it's much smoother with the additions I marked with [BCOLOR=#00ffff]specially colored text,[/BCOLOR] and removals marked as also demonstrated.
Please don't take this last, or any of my statements as offensive, as with exception of where you could learn to tidy up you English a bit better, I am just answering your arguments, if bluntly and/or defensively.


Claire, I did read what you had to say and I am very thankful that nothing was actually aimed at me for once.
I do believe that in this post, I have answered some of your questions, but there are also some other things (particularly how the 1.9 hunger-heal could work) I would like to better elaborate on.

And finally, I would like to again point out to everyone that I am only suggesting things here. I'm not saying it has to be this, or like this, but that maybe various parts could come in handy and maybe do us a bit better.
 
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It would be very helpful if you could give a list of the maps which you think should be nerfed, have OP mazes, OP kits etc and individually explain which maps have problems. Here is a list of the maps to make it easier for you:
Bourg Robinas, Isles, Laser Tag, Permafrost, Pipeway Panic, Prison Camp, Seaspray Rig, Snowfight, Temples, Terminal, Trenches, Zap
Frostfall, Isolated, Lockdown, Mahjong, Narrows, Nightmare Garden, Sword Base, Tube, Victoria Square
Abyss, Block Forts, Caverna, Chompland, Contritio, Cornfield, Crypt62, Darkness, Glast Heim, Hide and Seek, Iron Lake, Mystic, Nobuild, Octopus of Love, Peach's Castle, Roquefort, Runners Resort, Safari, Silver Edge, Tropic Islands, Wild Dead, Woodlands
Canyon, Desert Ruins, Dog Fight, Farmland, Last Man Standing, Mob Arena, Night Siege, Temple of Doom, Wagon Train
2Fort, Claymore City, Colossal, CompMap, Hamster Cage, Pagoda Madness, Turbine
Academy, Aerodash, Aquatica, Buildbox, Campus, Clockwork, Close Quarters, Colourido, Create, Crop Circles, Desert, Desert Ops, Donut, Dourbridge, Echo Grotto, Emerald Arena, Explosive Arena, House of Terror, Morse Summit, Outset Island, Pacman, Pool Hall, Purgatory, Siege, Snowchille, Sumo, Western Nightmare, Whittleton Junction, Windy Hills
Looking at this list from a maze perspective:
CtF: Laser Tag, Pipeway Panic, Permafrost. FFA: none. Infection: Glast Heim. Mob: none. TNT: 2fort maybe? Zombie: Academy?, Clockwork?, Pacman.
Looking at this list from a parkour perspective:
CtF: Pipeway Panic? FFA: Mahjong?? Infection:Abyss, Chompland, Contritio, Crypt62, Hide and Seek?, Mystic, Roquefort, Runners Resort, Woodlands, Tropic Islands, Silver Edge?. Mob: none. TNT: none. Zombie:Clockwork, Colourido, Morse Summit??.
This is just my opinion but as you can see there are not a lot of mazey maps and while there are quite a few parkour infection maps, there are many which aren't. There are different styles of infection maps. Only 11/21 of the infection maps contain substantial parkour elements in them, so there are still plenty of maps which don't so I don't really think that it is a problem.
But as I said, it would be great if you could say which maps need fixing and changing.
 

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wait wait wait is this the same catco who made elements Flames of Time and etc right?
it seems like you are figuring out that maybe you aren't as great as you thought you are at pvp champ
specially colored text
Impressive, you know how to attack my ideas with the almighty power of ad hominem. Shall I, too, counter your argument with reasoning based on your flaws and mistakes, whether you had the chance to make them or not?
Stop acting like children.

I think most of these ideas, such as lesser emphasis on chest loot (which I can agree with to an extent), are just map balancing issues that need to be sorted out per map, and if it isn't, like parkour-based maps, I think a good map rotation will balance it out. It is important that AoD has a variety of mapstyles to appeal to the greatest number of people and spice AoD up a bit. If you had the same sort of ground PvP map every single time, or parkour map every single time, it would be boring. I think Iggy trying to help identify problematic maps is the most helpful thing to do right now, and then we can keep discussing core changes that need to be made.
 
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Catcocomics

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I think most of these ideas, such as lesser emphasis on chest loot (which I can agree with to an extent), are just map balancing issues that need to be sorted out per map, and if it isn't, like parkour-based maps, I think a good map rotation will balance it out. It is important that AoD has a variety of mapstyles to appeal to the greatest number of people and spice AoD up a bit. If you had the same sort of ground PvP map every single time, or parkour map every single time, it would be boring. I think Iggy trying to help identify problematic maps is the most helpful thing to do right now, and then we can keep discussing core changes that need to be made.
you pretty much said it all, but as I stated, I do want to elaborate on my saturation idea, and it's based around how saturation already works in vanilla survival.

The thing is that with our current system, people eat less frequently, meaning that once you have 16-32 food (depending on some things), you need not look for any more. This is because when the hunger caps out at 19 (9.5 drumsticks), we just get the least hunger regen, which is pitifully slow, and don't eat through it very fast.
No one wants to keep eating to max hunger because they'll basically be throwing food away.
The slower regen encourages people to stick together because with more people around you, the more likely it is that you can take a hearty 5 minutes to recover and be ready for battle again.

If we put a limit on max saturation (like, limit it to 10 or 5 out of 20), food will go by much faster and people will recover faster from hunger-overflow, meaning that they will be less inclined to seek shelter of company because they can actually hold their own for more than 2 encounters, mean while their food will run out faster because less saturation means get hungry faster, and then people will actually top off their hunger to get the food healing.
This would also mean that people would be less inclined to camp because if hunters constantly know where they are and attack, their food will drain rapidly for all the healing. And also, if only 2 or 3 out of 6-12 people have food, they'll be even less inclined to stick together because they'll all be wanting food, but a whole stack will only serve them all for one or two fights.

For concerns of people eating mid-battle, they'll likely be doing it to try and recover, since the hunger over-flow doesn't last terribly long with low saturation capacity, which means that an eating person is probably decently injured, and when they're preoccupied with eating, you can probably flurry-rush them into oblivion before they have their sword ready.

This would likely work best on maps where the chest loot is focused on food, but I imagine it can also work pretty well in other zombie maps.
 

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Ok let me try to address of each of the points you made.
*Increase on items that don't drop after death (I recommend using the curse of vanishing on select items that would destroy kit balances in the hands of certain people).
I kid you not just how many maps there are where if there are more than 4 players, a bunch of survivors will camp out somewhere, wipe out the dark hunter(s) with little effort, and then use their gear to become virtually untouchable.
This is something which I added as a config option but no map actually has used yet. Specific items aren't specified as not dropping, but instead a certain percentage of the items are not dropped. For some maps having the curse of vanishing could work, although I don't actually think that right now this enchantment actually works on AoD, so I might have to add something to take it into account.

*Decreased emphasis on chest loot; a number of maps put some pretty ridiculous things in chests (like that prot 10 gold chestplate hiding in Western Nightmare), which often enough define the outcome of the match based purely on who got to the good stuff first (this is particularly bad on maps that have lesser known chests with particularly good loot that some person just happens to know about and exploits it every time they play the map).
My recommendation for chest loot is to prioritize food and ammunition among other knickknacks that can provide more options, support, and utility to players without making them god-like powerhouses.
This is mainly an issue of chest balancing. It has been an issue since AoD was just a server, and remains an issue. It takes a long time to balance a map, and it has to be played to find many problems. We do try to avoid especially over powered chests. I do mostly agree that chests should be mainly food and ammunition, but there should be items which are better than those in the kits otherwise there would be little point in having the chests. Balancing chests and kits though takes a lot of time for staff, so how realistic balancing all chest loot is I'm not sure.

*Heavy decrease on parkour in general. Granted, it's perfectly fine just throwing in some basic jumps here and there, but many maps have a bad case of every 3 blocks, another huge jump.
Hardcore parkour is quite honestly a bad thing in most cases with pvp, as it often alienates a lot of people who just can't merge advanced platforming with intense pvp in their mental processing, and then you get a bunch of Terres and Unus who become legendarily hard to catch or evade in these sorts of maps.
Doubtlessly, the infection game mode is the worst offender here, but a number of CTF and zombie maps have also been marred by brutal parkour courses.
On top of scaring away half the people who occasionally come to us for AoD, parkour-focused maps often end up looking like a singular land mass with tons of little squares dotting the sky with mazes of narrow walk-ways mixed in. This can be appealing in some cases, but often times, it can look like a kid tried to make a mario game with a bunch of free-floating legos or something, and just look at Safari if you want to know how blatant parkour maps can be about being parkour maps and not even trying to have a nice theme.
My recommendation on parkour may also be very long winded, because there are a number of conditions where parkour can work and work well.
Firstly, if you want to do a parkour-focused map, I suggest:
*setting a theme and putting your all into making the parkour match the theme
*keep the parkour fairly easy while making it look relatively interesting (a trail of 2x2 platforms isn't very interesting, but jumping from tree to tree can be pretty cool).
*use moderate-difficulty parkour sparingly or for exposed bonus loot if the map utilizes bows or enderpearls a lot.
*refrain from using the advanced or harder forms of parkour unless it's for an easy to attack spot with treasury worthy of the effort.
*Don't copy that map that was literally void with a rainbow grid of stained clay blocks.
I honestly disagree with you. I find parkour to be a fun part of maps, as long as it isn't constant difficult parkour of several 4 block jumps in a row. I would say most, if not all, of the maps we currently have I see no problem with. I'll probably remove Safari again (always good to remember why you hated a map). I would say the majority of the players on the server enjoy the mix of parkour in some of the maps we have, and the infection game mode is heavily based on parkour - if there was no parkour it would honestly be boring. On the point of rainbow chaos, fair enough, but it was pretty funny watching people fall in the void :)

*Try to make invovative and interesting maps with well balanced kits (prioritize the kit balance): this should honestly go without saying, but there's nothing more fun than trying something new and fresh, especially if the kits lead to very even, fair and fun fights. I can't say for certain if my newest map submission is balanced on the kits department, but I can say that it does sport some simple bow puzzles, which I have not seen in any AoD maps prior.
We rely on the rest of community to build maps for AoD, and when we as staff review maps one of the things we consider is the kits. Having new ideas in maps is always a good thing, but we should prioritise game play over adding maps with new concepts because they just may not work very well on the server.

*Also, don't make a maze map where people can easily get lost and never find each other in. There is nothing more distasteful than having all your excellent gear and feeling all powerful and raring to go, only for anyone you could hope to use it on to just seemingly not even exist anymore, and then the round ends and they (or you) get rewarded for getting lost. Super anti-climatic and where's the fun in being all decked out with something when you just can't use it?
As iggy stated, not many of the maps are really that maze like. I personally don't get lost in any of the maps, although I do know most of the maps pretty well. Some of the maps might benefit from being a little easier to find your way around, although it can be fun to be lost in a map. I can understand where you are coming from though. I didn't want to bring up your map like chaotic did, I think it may illustrate your point. When I was looking around the map I got very lost and forgot where I had already looked at. Maps which are above ground tend to be a lot easier to navigate than those under ground or totally enclosed, so I can understand why laser tag may seem pretty confusing.


Ok on to the topic of hunger. I've explained it to a few people on the server before, but I'll write it out here in full.
I'm not really that happy with the slow rate of regeneration right now - I also feel its too slow and uses up too much food. However, here are the problems which I have with the 1.9 pvp system, and why we decided as staff when 1.9 was released to change the system a little:
  1. Regenerating health uses a lot of food. This means that survivors who get into combat run out of food really quickly
  2. Health regeneration is extremely quick. When survivors have enough food they can easily regenerate to full health after any fight, resulting in hunters being at an extreme disadvantage due to often having to travel a little way before they can fight the survivors again. Another aspect of this, is that because hunters don't lose hunger they would regenerate extremely quickly without having to stop and eat.
  3. If a hunter feels that their efforts are hopeless, they may often ragequit. This isn't good for the server, and it also means that a survivor may not run out of food before this happens. When a new hunter is chosen, they have barely any food left.
So that's why we decided to switch back to a 1.8 system. However, it isn't as simple as it may seem to do so. The hunger system is implemented in the server and isn't modifiable by plugins. Therefore, I had to have a hacky work-around which prevents hunger from going above 19 (or 9.5 hunger points). Although this means that saturation doesn't decrease as fast, there is less of a hunger buffer between eating and not being able to regenerate again. There may be a few things which I could do to introduce a kind of new hunger system, but I wouldn't be able to make any promises on that. In an ideal world, I would be able to have AoD fully Minecraft 1.8 pvp, however it isn't really possible running the latest version which allows us to be connected to the lobby.
 
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Iggish

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I can't help but feel that many of catco's points are from a dark hunter perspective. You have brought up survivor loot, hard jumps and mazes which I can't help but feel is because of some grievance while playing as a dark hunter. While playing as a lone dark hunter or even a hunter in general can be very frustrating, I don't think they have it as hard as you depict.
I kid you not just how many maps there are where if there are more than 4 players, a bunch of survivors will camp out somewhere, wipe out the dark hunter(s) with little effort, and then use their gear to become virtually untouchable.
This is really not the case. While certain maps have overpowered spots (morse summit's tower for example) many maps do not contain very OP spots. In atleast 80% of zombie maps the hunters win. While yes, the survivors may have good stuff and while yes, there may be good spots, there are many difficulties that they face. The most commnon way for a round to swing in the hunters' favour is when the survivors are whittled down. Take colourido for example. On this map there aren't really any "OP" spots or "OP chests". The survivors always become outnumbered and end up losing the round.
As you said catco, the hunger regen is low. This hinders the survivors and so benefits the hunters. Yes, some maps and chests need to be nerfed but generally, I think it is not too bad as it is.
 

Danni122112

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I can't help but feel that many of catco's points are from a dark hunter perspective. You have brought up survivor loot, hard jumps and mazes which I can't help but feel is because of some grievance while playing as a dark hunter. While playing as a lone dark hunter or even a hunter in general can be very frustrating, I don't think they have it as hard as you depict.

This is really not the case. While certain maps have overpowered spots (morse summit's tower for example) many maps do not contain very OP spots. In atleast 80% of zombie maps the hunters win. While yes, the survivors may have good stuff and while yes, there may be good spots, there are many difficulties that they face. The most commnon way for a round to swing in the hunters' favour is when the survivors are whittled down. Take colourido for example. On this map there aren't really any "OP" spots or "OP chests". The survivors always become outnumbered and end up losing the round.
As you said catco, the hunger regen is low. This hinders the survivors and so benefits the hunters. Yes, some maps and chests need to be nerfed but generally, I think it is not too bad as it is.
I really feel that AoD has always been nerfing maps to benefit hunters, and very rarely done things that benefit survivors, while its of course horrible to not have a chance as hunter, it is not fun to know that you have no chance of winning the map as a survivor either.
 
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Iggish

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In the end it comes down to your PvP skill, if the first hunter is a good pvper then they will almost always win, if not, they still have a chance but we shouldn't try to make it too easy for them.