I would suggest having both options available for the player to choose. I myself disapprove of sidebar since it blocks my view of the world and I want to know if a creeper is sneaking up on me from that side. But I do understand that most players like it for.... some reason that is just beyond me
It actually is only on the TAB menu as the Monument display is currently on the sidebar menu! I'll see what I can do to change that though - the monument objectives display isn't exactly what I call super important information.
I'd say expect some sort of update come Mid-September at the latest. With classes starting soon I'll be (perhaps ironically) far less busy, and will be able to fix all the bugs!
The map has good potential. Overall, I'm feeling okay about the map. Now, the map may get better as it goes on, but after the first 2 hours of gameplay I feel like I have a good grasp of what your mapmaking skills as a group are like. But there is going to be a hard reality to this review focusing on the various flaws of the map, and sometimes the flaw is in the creation in the map itself, violations of "Map Theory", if you will. This review will be split up into Aesthetics, Level Design, and Enemy Design, all of which will average out into your grade out of ten.
Aesthetics: This map is sort of cool looking... yeah. But that's all. I see an effort put in, but I'd bet all my marbles that if only one of the map authors were to be working on the map alone it would pretty much look like **** assuming everyone pitched in with the set pieces and the atmosphere. If you had only one person work on those things though, I'd say they did good, but not great. On top of that, I'll give y'all the benefit of the doubt that as the map progresses and the stakes get higher, and so does your standards as builders, that the quality of the aesthetic improves as you go on. That said, I feel like such a big crew should be able to kick a little more ass in the Aesthetic department. Now, that said, I actually don't know who was responsible with the aesthetic, and I can't really know the processes that went into the building. The thing about where you are on the scale out of 10 is that nobody but ridiculously skilled builders know how to tell you what to improve, so I'll mostly just shut my trap about how to get better about the look of the map. I will say this though: The natural scenery needs more texture. AESTHETIC SCORE: 7.5/10!
Level Design: It's meh. Levels are creative, fun, secrets are abound, and the levels give an air of grandiose quest. The monument is up front, and you get dumped right into the action. But it's got cons. so let's jump into it. First of all, your loot scales too damn fast. I shouldn't be dumped into the first area and already have access to endless mushroom stew and stone tools, and then have furnaces, cobble, anvils, bows, and the like. It's too much. Secondly: Shadow of Pluto isn't a good start to your map. The starting area feels cramped and enemies can jump on your ass at any moment due to the fact you never truly take command of the map at a whole when it comes to enemies. Never, and I mean NEVER EVER let mobs naturally spawn in your beginning area. It gets really hard to control, and it's frustrating to the player to have to immediately be on their guard for not only your spawner mobs that you have control over, but also the natural spawns. You don't know what MC is gonna do with that dark space right next to spawn dude! Thirdly and Finally: The Mcguffins and Collectibles can be a little confusing. I'm not sure where I should go first for dungeons, because I don't know what order the records go in, and I'm not sure where Prismarine pieces may be hiding. I just recently found one in Intersection one, which makes me think: I wonder if there are any in the Monument area. Give the player some notice about how many may be in an area, and tell them if there aren't any in an area either. Highlight these areas as "Off limit Zones" or something. That said, it would be pretty wicked to do some Peach's Castle-esque Primarine hunting inside the monument area. Final Note: The mine area, though very, very overwhelming for a fresh start player, is pretty dope. And for this reason and this reason only: Mineshaft B is ****ing off the wall. That should have been the Record area imo. It had consistency, beauty, danger, the whole shabang! Hide the prismarine in Mineshaft A please! It's so much easier than Mineshaft B, and it doesn't make much sense that the record is there. Now I've rambled long enough, your LEVEL DESIGN SCORE is 6/10!
Enemy Design: There isn't much to say. At least you had custom mobs. As I said above, you need to turn some of these areas to void biome or MushroomIsland, just because then you have more purchase on what happens in your map. The mobs are usually kind of bland in these first few parts. The only counterexample to this is the Shooting Star. And god almighty, update those ****ing things. A mob should never ever run faster than the player. My first death was to a Shooting Star, and I could have gotten away if it'd not been for the damn guy tailing me all the way to the teleport button. But other than that, er... yeah. That's it. ENEMY DESIGN SCORE: 5/10 (Or 5/10 for us blind folk <3)
Alright... so closing thoughts. You have a LOT of people developing the map, which may be advantageous to pumping it out sooner, but isn't advantageous for building a truly great map. It creates disconnects and generally weird little things that definitely aren't conducive to the overall quality of the map. You guys did pretty good at keeping the whole map clean and it sometimes feels for a little bit like only one person made the map. Which is a very good thing. But yeah, I'm not going to deride you for any bugs, nor will I say that this score is official or set in stone, as the Map is in Open Beta: But your OVERALL SCORE IS....
6.5/10!
Overall, it's a pretty fun map from just the first intersection, and I'll make sure I give an update to this review if my feelings change throughout my playthrough, and its definitely worth playing because overall it's decent and well put together.
Never, and I mean NEVER EVER let mobs naturally spawn in your beginning area. It gets really hard to control, and it's frustrating to the player to have to immediately be on their guard for not only your spawner mobs that you have control over, but also the natural spawns.
I should specify: Natural Spawns given by the coding to spawn enemies in the dark of the cave. The map maker should always presume control over the amount of mobs that spawn in the beginning area down to a science. This prevents say, 3 witches from spawning and wrecking your player's ****.
As the guy who did most of the balancing - I strongly disagree about turning off natural spawns. With proper honeypots (which we have), natural spawns are a must. After all, every playthrough shouldn't be exactly the same and having that element of random difficulty adds a lot to the early experience. Plus then we don't have to spam down spawners at all in order to ensure areas have some level of difficulty, while still maintaining most control over what a player experiences.
I will say now though - would really have preferred to wait for you to play the whole map before you wrote this up. Don't want to sound rude, but rating a whole map based on the first three areas doesn't really give you as a player a good impression of a map's design overall, especially when there's still 9 more areas for you to experience. This is especially big on the aesthetics portion I'd argue, as the map opens nicely and then scales even more crazily as you go on. I'd say some of the final areas are among the most gorgeous by a wide margin, and really show off what the team was capable of as we worked together more and more.
Regarding each area you covered:
- Shadow of Pluto - Interestingly, the thing you're calling a flaw (the cramped feeling with mobs hopping from anywhere) was actually the core gameplay hook. Create a tight, but open, area that offers a claustrophobic feeling while still giving the player a lot of room to maneuver around. You might be surprised at how many of the spawns you're encountering are from spawners there. There's more than just the ones out in the open. Either way, the idea of cutting off natural spawns in the opening area is one I personally am very against, as no mob in 1.8 is enough of a threat that a player in basic gear cannot deal with. When wood and stone is available from the get-go, the player should have a challenge as they go, but shouldn't be babied by mobs being fully controlled. That's design I find better for easier maps or maps that are going for a highly specific tone and style. I do quite like the idea for the Mineshaft swap, and it was something that was agonized over for awhile when making the map. I might give that a try in the next build.
- Grove of Starlight - You didn't say much about this one, but the Shooting Stars are one-hit kills even with your fist, and deal a single heart of damage. Just punch 'em. They're annoyances to distract from the more threatening mobs, and fill more of a trash mob hole than something really a challenge. Don't run from them - turn and face them like a beast and take them out!
- Monument - There's quite a bit of hidden stuff in there, including some Prismarine! Keep your eyes peeled!
Regarding your last paragraph, I'm glad to hear you felt like one person built the map at times. We brought on a number of people from the community to create and design, but once everything was done, a team of about 5 people went through the map in order testing and balancing it. So the map will feel quite cohesive simply because the balance team made sure it would. Aesthetic styles will change, but one thing that shouldn't will be the overall design. Loot is mostly standardized, mobs are standardized, and areas were cleaned up to make sure they stayed true to the rest of the map! Hopefully that will fit to your liking.
It actually is only on the TAB menu as the Monument display is currently on the sidebar menu! I'll see what I can do to change that though - the monument objectives display isn't exactly what I call super important information.
I'd say expect some sort of update come Mid-September at the latest. With classes starting soon I'll be (perhaps ironically) far less busy, and will be able to fix all the bugs!
How about if you make the monument display only appear in the monument room and turn off outside and only have it start showing only after placing the first block on the monument?
How about if you make the monument display only appear in the monument room and turn off outside and only have it start showing only after placing the first block on the monument?
That's sorta how it works now - it doesn't show up until you place an objective initially. Will have to see if we can dynamically change the sidebar display based on location though. I worry that could potentially reset your death counter by entering the monument or something. It'll be looked into though!
I suppose we can agree to disagree upon the first paragraph, it may merely be a difference in strategy. It's not a huge issue imo! Still playable, so it's all good!
I kind of guessed that, but I was really giddy to get into reviewing the map because it's genuinely a great first go at map making. I expected the aesthetics to scale well as I kept playing.
I think this next part may also be a matter of opinion. I prefer to use a huge beautiful area to hook the player, which may also be a reason why I prefer to closely control mobs, or else the player would be destroyed by waves of natspawns, so I can provide a challenge, but also not rely upon luck to spawn enemies that won't eviscerate my player from the get-go.
The way I like to light up large areas like this is pure torching, tanking the damage, and then breaking spawners upon another wave. Shooting Stars compromise me because the other mobs shooting arrows and blowing up bring me down enough for the shooting stars to pop me a few times and I die. That said, I'm really not used to enemies like this.
I did quite like the first portions of the map, and I'll update my review because I'm rather confident my opinion of the map with improve more as I continue. Thanks for the detailed response!
I suppose we can agree to disagree upon the first paragraph, it may merely be a difference in strategy. It's not a huge issue imo! Still playable, so it's all good!
I kind of guessed that, but I was really giddy to get into reviewing the map because it's genuinely a great first go at map making. I expected the aesthetics to scale well as I kept playing.
I think this next part may also be a matter of opinion. I prefer to use a huge beautiful area to hook the player, which may also be a reason why I prefer to closely control mobs, or else the player would be destroyed by waves of natspawns, so I can provide a challenge, but also not rely upon luck to spawn enemies that won't eviscerate my player from the get-go.
The way I like to light up large areas like this is pure torching, tanking the damage, and then breaking spawners upon another wave. Shooting Stars compromise me because the other mobs shooting arrows and blowing up bring me down enough for the shooting stars to pop me a few times and I die. That said, I'm really not used to enemies like this.
I did quite like the first portions of the map, and I'll update my review because I'm rather confident my opinion of the map with improve more as I continue. Thanks for the detailed response!
Definitely! It's all a matter of taste of course
And thank you! Most people involved have been with the community for awhile, so hopefully that experience shows as the map continues as well.
For the most part, the map is supposed to be middle of the line difficulty, so keeping lighter spawns set up and allowing natural spawns to fill in space was really what we were looking for here. Since most mobs won't really demolish a player permanently in 1.8 and below (even Witches!), I at least, felt more than okay with leaving things as they are.
Understandable. One thing I do like to see is an area that actually encourages a player to change their basic playstyle a bit. That area definitely does that by requiring you to deal with threats before they can make other actions. It offers some challenges in that regard and asks a player to re-prioritize what their normal order of play is.
Eager to hear your thoughts later on, and I hope you continue to enjoy the map!
Discordancy completed! Loved the map, some feedback below.
The Shadow of Pluto: A good starting area - I enjoyed not being desperate for food early on and being able to get straight into combat with wood/stone easily available. Mineshafts were fairly challenging to compensate, and nothing felt overly unfair.
Discordancy Monument: This place looks great, and providing a ready-made base with all the farms set up is heaven for a player like me. While there is something to be said for building up your own base and personalizing it, personally I can't wait to get to the challenge. I only ended up getting 3 of the prismarine blocks, (well, four, but only by the last area) and the Chesticle and Endstorm were great rewards. That damn trap got me. You know the one.
Grove of Starlight: Very nice looking area - the obsidian, coal and nether brick work really well together. The custom mobs force you to think on your feet and the potion spawning trees are a nice touch for gameplay and the aesthetics. The Aurian Manly Axe, as someone else said, basically made all other axes obsolete (for farming, at least) which I honestly didn't mind. I only had to farm wood once throughout the whole map anyway. Silence of the Stars was one of my favorite areas in the map, the whole 'ascend the tower' theme was really cool. I took one death here from a supernova creeper sneaking up on me, he must have walked down the stairs because I hadn't even up to the top floor yet. The blocks you gave out here were a godsend for the rest of the map too.
Shame of Adonis: Quite a step up from Grove of Starlight, my one worry is that attempting this area first might put some people off. Even with the loot from Grove of Starlight, this was quite tough and I ended up cryboxing with half a heart left at one point. The transition from ancient building/prison to underground mine and sewer system was pretty cool - not too much to say about the first part of this area. The shrine part was very tense and I started off methodically clearing spawners and making slow progress, until I made it about halfway to the fleecy box and ran for it. The skelebats are simply diabolical - very unpredictable and hard to hit.
Walkways of Abandon: Could use a difficulty increase, for the most part you can just walk through the whole place with ease. Perhaps some more broken parts which need to be bridged across, or some parts without rails, or punch 1 skellies could make this area a bit more tense. The chestplate reward really did not seem worth it, especially considering how well hidden the books must have been, (and the fact that I had the chesticle by this point) but I like the idea of it. Maybe buff the main reward bow and offer crappier ones as sub-prizes?
Abridged: One of my favorite areas, the sense of scale when you drop down is fantastic. Threat of falling kept things tense throughout and it really felt like I was assaulting that bridge the whole time. Not much else to say other than great job on this one.
Temple of Decay: Wasn't a huge fan of the beginning part, but the temple itself was fun. Rather easy by this point because I had the raging chain helm/chesticle/well built boots set which in all honesty is just OP - either buff I2 in general or nerf the well built boots, they let me have something ridiculous like 13.5 hearts and perma strength + speed to boot. Personally I'd nerf the items because if they were lost then I'd imagine you would have some trouble.
Prison of Forgotten Cries: This place was massive, good job on keeping it fairly varied throughout. Fairly standard gameplay throughout, the final hallways with the skeletons in the side walls + charged creepers below were certainly tense. Nothing too exciting going on here, solid area.
Grunkoid Falls: Gah. Opening part is somewhat overwhelming, lots of heavy knockback, hard to find spawners and little small areas to explore. Took my 3rd death (if we're counting that damn monument trap) here after getting knocked across the room by one of the green guys into about 3 other grunkoids, but I was able to recover most of my stuff (not my well-built boots unfortunately.) I ended up attacking the castle from the top as there was an easy path on the right side from the top of the waterfall. Something I'd suggest is adding some skeletons/ranged enemies to the fleecy box encounter - there were about 20 or so grunkoids crowded around by the time I got there, but I just bridged along the side with ease and grabbed the disc. Probably the hardest (and most annoying) I3 area.
Sporeblight Laboratory: Another one of my favorite areas, it had that nice feel of exploring an abandoned disaster site. The invisible creepers with the lingering potions on death were especially cool, and the potions here (and onward, really) were interesting and fun to use. Unfortunately there was the previously mentioned problem of being able to rush most of the spawners, which made this place quite easy. Maybe tinker with how fast the spawners here in particular spawn, or surround them with more/tougher blocks.
Shrine of the Last: Another favorite of mine - the ore traps were devious, and the main fortress really captured that endgame assault feeling. Diamonds were plentiful, which is always appreciated. The room before the final one in this area with the blazes and knockback skeletons could use some more loot - I was pretty disappointed to see a bow worse than what I already had. The final room was absolutely evil with the punch bow skellies near the end - fire resist came in handy here. It's worth noting that before this map I hadn't played minecraft for a couple years and I completely forgot you could make magma cream using slimeballs, so I was only using the very few fire resist potions given out. So I may have struggled a bit more with this area (and I4 in general) than most would. In general I4 was a huge ramp up from I3 - I definitely recommend buffing I3.
Suspended Exodus: I decided to take this area on next and leave Flamekissed Foundry till last. This ended up the toughest area for me, purely because I'm an idiot. I took a death just walking off one of the islands, and another falling into void during the last part. The castle was extremely fun, and the void gauntlet was easily the hardest and most exhilarating part of the entire map for me. Punch bow skellies made the whole thing terrifying, the pigmen were pretty scary (thank god for knockback 2 swords) and the creeper stacks were just diabolical. I'm very glad I had the diamonds from Shrine of the Last before attacking here. The very final part I ended up just tunneling through to the fleecy box on the left side - whether this was intended or not, I don't know, but it was certainly easier than bridging.
Flamekissed Foundry: A fun final area, but definitely the easiest of the I4 areas. Those damn magma cubes were formidable enemies, and the charged creepers did their job of making things exciting. The wither skeleton skull definitely needs a nerf - it's basically complete immunity to lava/creepers. Custom potions were fun as always, but I'd possibly buff the loot a little - it's a bit strange having access to basically infinite diamonds, a plethora of xp and level 30 enchants and seeing unenchanted diamond gear in chests. It probably doesn't matter at this point. Maybe some OP books would be good here too (Sharpness/Power V, maybe) because I ended up just spamming enchanting bottles until I got them anyway.
Total Deaths - 5
Discordancy Monument - 1
Grove of Starlight - 1
Grunkoid Falls - 1
Suspended Exodus - 2
Overall thoughts - very good map - great aesthetics, fun areas. Recommend buffing I2 a bit and I3 a decent amount, Shame of Adonis might be too difficult going in first? Would have to be tested of course. Wither skull is OP, the raging helm/chesticle/labpance/well-built boots combo is a bit insane, otherwise, loot is balanced. Prismarine shard rewards (the later ones) are a bit iffy upon the ones I missed, there's so much resources that the infinite use items are just inferior to the decently enchanted swords you never run out of. Will update post if I can think of anything I missed.
Discordancy completed! Loved the map, some feedback below.
The Shadow of Pluto: A good starting area - I enjoyed not being desperate for food early on and being able to get straight into combat with wood/stone easily available. Mineshafts were fairly challenging to compensate, and nothing felt overly unfair.
Discordancy Monument: This place looks great, and providing a ready-made base with all the farms set up is heaven for a player like me. While there is something to be said for building up your own base and personalizing it, personally I can't wait to get to the challenge. I only ended up getting 3 of the prismarine blocks, (well, four, but only by the last area) and the Chesticle and Endstorm were great rewards. That damn trap got me. You know the one.
Grove of Starlight: Very nice looking area - the obsidian, coal and nether brick work really well together. The custom mobs force you to think on your feet and the potion spawning trees are a nice touch for gameplay and the aesthetics. The Aurian Manly Axe, as someone else said, basically made all other axes obsolete (for farming, at least) which I honestly didn't mind. I only had to farm wood once throughout the whole map anyway. Silence of the Stars was one of my favorite areas in the map, the whole 'ascend the tower' theme was really cool. I took one death here from a supernova creeper sneaking up on me, he must have walked down the stairs because I hadn't even up to the top floor yet. The blocks you gave out here were a godsend for the rest of the map too.
Shame of Adonis: Quite a step up from Grove of Starlight, my one worry is that attempting this area first might put some people off. Even with the loot from Grove of Starlight, this was quite tough and I ended up cryboxing with half a heart left at one point. The transition from ancient building/prison to underground mine and sewer system was pretty cool - not too much to say about the first part of this area. The shrine part was very tense and I started off methodically clearing spawners and making slow progress, until I made it about halfway to the fleecy box and ran for it. The skelebats are simply diabolical - very unpredictable and hard to hit.
Walkways of Abandon: Could use a difficulty increase, for the most part you can just walk through the whole place with ease. Perhaps some more broken parts which need to be bridged across, or some parts without rails, or punch 1 skellies could make this area a bit more tense. The chestplate reward really did not seem worth it, especially considering how well hidden the books must have been, (and the fact that I had the chesticle by this point) but I like the idea of it. Maybe buff the main reward bow and offer crappier ones as sub-prizes?
Abridged: One of my favorite areas, the sense of scale when you drop down is fantastic. Threat of falling kept things tense throughout and it really felt like I was assaulting that bridge the whole time. Not much else to say other than great job on this one.
Temple of Decay: Wasn't a huge fan of the beginning part, but the temple itself was fun. Rather easy by this point because I had the raging chain helm/chesticle/well built boots set which in all honesty is just OP - either buff I2 in general or nerf the well built boots, they let me have something ridiculous like 13.5 hearts and perma strength + speed to boot. Personally I'd nerf the items because if they were lost then I'd imagine you would have some trouble.
Prison of Forgotten Cries: This place was massive, good job on keeping it fairly varied throughout. Fairly standard gameplay throughout, the final hallways with the skeletons in the side walls + charged creepers below were certainly tense. Nothing too exciting going on here, solid area.
Grunkoid Falls: Gah. Opening part is somewhat overwhelming, lots of heavy knockback, hard to find spawners and little small areas to explore. Took my 3rd death (if we're counting that damn monument trap) here after getting knocked across the room by one of the green guys into about 3 other grunkoids, but I was able to recover most of my stuff (not my well-built boots unfortunately.) I ended up attacking the castle from the top as there was an easy path on the right side from the top of the waterfall. Something I'd suggest is adding some skeletons/ranged enemies to the fleecy box encounter - there were about 20 or so grunkoids crowded around by the time I got there, but I just bridged along the side with ease and grabbed the disc. Probably the hardest (and most annoying) I3 area.
Sporeblight Laboratory: Another one of my favorite areas, it had that nice feel of exploring an abandoned disaster site. The invisible creepers with the lingering potions on death were especially cool, and the potions here (and onward, really) were interesting and fun to use. Unfortunately there was the previously mentioned problem of being able to rush most of the spawners, which made this place quite easy. Maybe tinker with how fast the spawners here in particular spawn, or surround them with more/tougher blocks.
Shrine of the Last: Another favorite of mine - the ore traps were devious, and the main fortress really captured that endgame assault feeling. Diamonds were plentiful, which is always appreciated. The room before the final one in this area with the blazes and knockback skeletons could use some more loot - I was pretty disappointed to see a bow worse than what I already had. The final room was absolutely evil with the punch bow skellies near the end - fire resist came in handy here. It's worth noting that before this map I hadn't played minecraft for a couple years and I completely forgot you could make magma cream using slimeballs, so I was only using the very few fire resist potions given out. So I may have struggled a bit more with this area (and I4 in general) than most would. In general I4 was a huge ramp up from I3 - I definitely recommend buffing I3.
Suspended Exodus: I decided to take this area on next and leave Flamekissed Foundry till last. This ended up the toughest area for me, purely because I'm an idiot. I took a death just walking off one of the islands, and another falling into void during the last part. The castle was extremely fun, and the void gauntlet was easily the hardest and most exhilarating part of the entire map for me. Punch bow skellies made the whole thing terrifying, the pigmen were pretty scary (thank god for knockback 2 swords) and the creeper stacks were just diabolical. I'm very glad I had the diamonds from Shrine of the Last before attacking here. The very final part I ended up just tunneling through to the fleecy box on the left side - whether this was intended or not, I don't know, but it was certainly easier than bridging.
Flamekissed Foundry: A fun final area, but definitely the easiest of the I4 areas. Those damn magma cubes were formidable enemies, and the charged creepers did their job of making things exciting. The wither skeleton skull definitely needs a nerf - it's basically complete immunity to lava/creepers. Custom potions were fun as always, but I'd possibly buff the loot a little - it's a bit strange having access to basically infinite diamonds, a plethora of xp and level 30 enchants and seeing unenchanted diamond gear in chests. It probably doesn't matter at this point. Maybe some OP books would be good here too (Sharpness/Power V, maybe) because I ended up just spamming enchanting bottles until I got them anyway.
Total Deaths - 5
Discordancy Monument - 1
Grove of Starlight - 1
Grunkoid Falls - 1
Suspended Exodus - 2
Overall thoughts - very good map - great aesthetics, fun areas. Recommend buffing I2 a bit and I3 a decent amount, Shame of Adonis might be too difficult going in first? Would have to be tested of course. Wither skull is OP, the raging helm/chesticle/labpance/well-built boots combo is a bit insane, otherwise, loot is balanced. Prismarine shard rewards (the later ones) are a bit iffy upon the ones I missed, there's so much resources that the infinite use items are just inferior to the decently enchanted swords you never run out of. Will update post if I can think of anything I missed.
Thank you so much for all the fantastic feedback, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the map! Planning to do further work on the official release copy today, so I'm so glad you posted this when you did. Loads of great comments and thoughts here that I'll definitely be taking into account!
When is this map going to be released as an official version? (Not beta) I've seen some images and I would like to play it and then probably make an speedrun! ;D
It definitely is! Unfortunately I'm in college and my time has gotten very limited, but I'm working to get it done and out!
Nice map, I've completed the beta but there is a lot of bugs D: I had 16 deaths not a lot, not much difficult but some kinda annoying with the Electric Creepers :'v. Good luck finishing the things you need to get the map at 100% PD: if you need the bugs that I saw tell me
Nice map, I've completed the beta but there is a lot of bugs D: I had 16 deaths not a lot, not much difficult but some kinda annoying with the Electric Creepers :'v. Good luck finishing the things you need to get the map at 100% PD: if you need the bugs that I saw tell me
Would love a list of them if you could! I'm prepping a playthrough soon to collect all the bugs and issues I can find to get the map out of beta officially, and the more things you had issues with that I can fix, the better!
It actually is only on the TAB menu as the Monument display is currently on the sidebar menu! I'll see what I can do to change that though - the monument objectives display isn't exactly what I call super important information.
I'd say expect some sort of update come Mid-September at the latest. With classes starting soon I'll be (perhaps ironically) far less busy, and will be able to fix all the bugs!
Alright: This is my review.
The map has good potential. Overall, I'm feeling okay about the map. Now, the map may get better as it goes on, but after the first 2 hours of gameplay I feel like I have a good grasp of what your mapmaking skills as a group are like. But there is going to be a hard reality to this review focusing on the various flaws of the map, and sometimes the flaw is in the creation in the map itself, violations of "Map Theory", if you will. This review will be split up into Aesthetics, Level Design, and Enemy Design, all of which will average out into your grade out of ten.
Aesthetics: This map is sort of cool looking... yeah. But that's all. I see an effort put in, but I'd bet all my marbles that if only one of the map authors were to be working on the map alone it would pretty much look like **** assuming everyone pitched in with the set pieces and the atmosphere. If you had only one person work on those things though, I'd say they did good, but not great. On top of that, I'll give y'all the benefit of the doubt that as the map progresses and the stakes get higher, and so does your standards as builders, that the quality of the aesthetic improves as you go on. That said, I feel like such a big crew should be able to kick a little more ass in the Aesthetic department. Now, that said, I actually don't know who was responsible with the aesthetic, and I can't really know the processes that went into the building. The thing about where you are on the scale out of 10 is that nobody but ridiculously skilled builders know how to tell you what to improve, so I'll mostly just shut my trap about how to get better about the look of the map. I will say this though: The natural scenery needs more texture. AESTHETIC SCORE: 7.5/10!
Level Design: It's meh. Levels are creative, fun, secrets are abound, and the levels give an air of grandiose quest. The monument is up front, and you get dumped right into the action. But it's got cons. so let's jump into it. First of all, your loot scales too damn fast. I shouldn't be dumped into the first area and already have access to endless mushroom stew and stone tools, and then have furnaces, cobble, anvils, bows, and the like. It's too much. Secondly: Shadow of Pluto isn't a good start to your map. The starting area feels cramped and enemies can jump on your ass at any moment due to the fact you never truly take command of the map at a whole when it comes to enemies. Never, and I mean NEVER EVER let mobs naturally spawn in your beginning area. It gets really hard to control, and it's frustrating to the player to have to immediately be on their guard for not only your spawner mobs that you have control over, but also the natural spawns. You don't know what MC is gonna do with that dark space right next to spawn dude! Thirdly and Finally: The Mcguffins and Collectibles can be a little confusing. I'm not sure where I should go first for dungeons, because I don't know what order the records go in, and I'm not sure where Prismarine pieces may be hiding. I just recently found one in Intersection one, which makes me think: I wonder if there are any in the Monument area. Give the player some notice about how many may be in an area, and tell them if there aren't any in an area either. Highlight these areas as "Off limit Zones" or something. That said, it would be pretty wicked to do some Peach's Castle-esque Primarine hunting inside the monument area. Final Note: The mine area, though very, very overwhelming for a fresh start player, is pretty dope. And for this reason and this reason only: Mineshaft B is ****ing off the wall. That should have been the Record area imo. It had consistency, beauty, danger, the whole shabang! Hide the prismarine in Mineshaft A please! It's so much easier than Mineshaft B, and it doesn't make much sense that the record is there. Now I've rambled long enough, your LEVEL DESIGN SCORE is 6/10!
Enemy Design: There isn't much to say. At least you had custom mobs. As I said above, you need to turn some of these areas to void biome or MushroomIsland, just because then you have more purchase on what happens in your map. The mobs are usually kind of bland in these first few parts. The only counterexample to this is the Shooting Star. And god almighty, update those ****ing things. A mob should never ever run faster than the player. My first death was to a Shooting Star, and I could have gotten away if it'd not been for the damn guy tailing me all the way to the teleport button. But other than that, er... yeah. That's it. ENEMY DESIGN SCORE: 5/10 (Or 5/10 for us blind folk <3)
Alright... so closing thoughts. You have a LOT of people developing the map, which may be advantageous to pumping it out sooner, but isn't advantageous for building a truly great map. It creates disconnects and generally weird little things that definitely aren't conducive to the overall quality of the map. You guys did pretty good at keeping the whole map clean and it sometimes feels for a little bit like only one person made the map. Which is a very good thing. But yeah, I'm not going to deride you for any bugs, nor will I say that this score is official or set in stone, as the Map is in Open Beta: But your OVERALL SCORE IS....
6.5/10!
Overall, it's a pretty fun map from just the first intersection, and I'll make sure I give an update to this review if my feelings change throughout my playthrough, and its definitely worth playing because overall it's decent and well put together.
I should specify: Natural Spawns given by the coding to spawn enemies in the dark of the cave. The map maker should always presume control over the amount of mobs that spawn in the beginning area down to a science. This prevents say, 3 witches from spawning and wrecking your player's ****.
As the guy who did most of the balancing - I strongly disagree about turning off natural spawns. With proper honeypots (which we have), natural spawns are a must. After all, every playthrough shouldn't be exactly the same and having that element of random difficulty adds a lot to the early experience. Plus then we don't have to spam down spawners at all in order to ensure areas have some level of difficulty, while still maintaining most control over what a player experiences.
I will say now though - would really have preferred to wait for you to play the whole map before you wrote this up. Don't want to sound rude, but rating a whole map based on the first three areas doesn't really give you as a player a good impression of a map's design overall, especially when there's still 9 more areas for you to experience. This is especially big on the aesthetics portion I'd argue, as the map opens nicely and then scales even more crazily as you go on. I'd say some of the final areas are among the most gorgeous by a wide margin, and really show off what the team was capable of as we worked together more and more.
Regarding each area you covered:
- Shadow of Pluto - Interestingly, the thing you're calling a flaw (the cramped feeling with mobs hopping from anywhere) was actually the core gameplay hook. Create a tight, but open, area that offers a claustrophobic feeling while still giving the player a lot of room to maneuver around. You might be surprised at how many of the spawns you're encountering are from spawners there. There's more than just the ones out in the open. Either way, the idea of cutting off natural spawns in the opening area is one I personally am very against, as no mob in 1.8 is enough of a threat that a player in basic gear cannot deal with. When wood and stone is available from the get-go, the player should have a challenge as they go, but shouldn't be babied by mobs being fully controlled. That's design I find better for easier maps or maps that are going for a highly specific tone and style. I do quite like the idea for the Mineshaft swap, and it was something that was agonized over for awhile when making the map. I might give that a try in the next build.
- Grove of Starlight - You didn't say much about this one, but the Shooting Stars are one-hit kills even with your fist, and deal a single heart of damage. Just punch 'em. They're annoyances to distract from the more threatening mobs, and fill more of a trash mob hole than something really a challenge. Don't run from them - turn and face them like a beast and take them out!
- Monument - There's quite a bit of hidden stuff in there, including some Prismarine! Keep your eyes peeled!
Regarding your last paragraph, I'm glad to hear you felt like one person built the map at times. We brought on a number of people from the community to create and design, but once everything was done, a team of about 5 people went through the map in order testing and balancing it. So the map will feel quite cohesive simply because the balance team made sure it would. Aesthetic styles will change, but one thing that shouldn't will be the overall design. Loot is mostly standardized, mobs are standardized, and areas were cleaned up to make sure they stayed true to the rest of the map! Hopefully that will fit to your liking.
How about if you make the monument display only appear in the monument room and turn off outside and only have it start showing only after placing the first block on the monument?
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That's sorta how it works now - it doesn't show up until you place an objective initially. Will have to see if we can dynamically change the sidebar display based on location though. I worry that could potentially reset your death counter by entering the monument or something. It'll be looked into though!
I suppose we can agree to disagree upon the first paragraph, it may merely be a difference in strategy. It's not a huge issue imo! Still playable, so it's all good!
I kind of guessed that, but I was really giddy to get into reviewing the map because it's genuinely a great first go at map making. I expected the aesthetics to scale well as I kept playing.
I think this next part may also be a matter of opinion. I prefer to use a huge beautiful area to hook the player, which may also be a reason why I prefer to closely control mobs, or else the player would be destroyed by waves of natspawns, so I can provide a challenge, but also not rely upon luck to spawn enemies that won't eviscerate my player from the get-go.
The way I like to light up large areas like this is pure torching, tanking the damage, and then breaking spawners upon another wave. Shooting Stars compromise me because the other mobs shooting arrows and blowing up bring me down enough for the shooting stars to pop me a few times and I die. That said, I'm really not used to enemies like this.
I did quite like the first portions of the map, and I'll update my review because I'm rather confident my opinion of the map with improve more as I continue. Thanks for the detailed response!
Definitely! It's all a matter of taste of course
And thank you! Most people involved have been with the community for awhile, so hopefully that experience shows as the map continues as well.
For the most part, the map is supposed to be middle of the line difficulty, so keeping lighter spawns set up and allowing natural spawns to fill in space was really what we were looking for here. Since most mobs won't really demolish a player permanently in 1.8 and below (even Witches!), I at least, felt more than okay with leaving things as they are.
Understandable. One thing I do like to see is an area that actually encourages a player to change their basic playstyle a bit. That area definitely does that by requiring you to deal with threats before they can make other actions. It offers some challenges in that regard and asks a player to re-prioritize what their normal order of play is.
Eager to hear your thoughts later on, and I hope you continue to enjoy the map!
Discordancy completed! Loved the map, some feedback below.
The Shadow of Pluto: A good starting area - I enjoyed not being desperate for food early on and being able to get straight into combat with wood/stone easily available. Mineshafts were fairly challenging to compensate, and nothing felt overly unfair.
Discordancy Monument: This place looks great, and providing a ready-made base with all the farms set up is heaven for a player like me. While there is something to be said for building up your own base and personalizing it, personally I can't wait to get to the challenge. I only ended up getting 3 of the prismarine blocks, (well, four, but only by the last area) and the Chesticle and Endstorm were great rewards. That damn trap got me. You know the one.
Grove of Starlight: Very nice looking area - the obsidian, coal and nether brick work really well together. The custom mobs force you to think on your feet and the potion spawning trees are a nice touch for gameplay and the aesthetics. The Aurian Manly Axe, as someone else said, basically made all other axes obsolete (for farming, at least) which I honestly didn't mind. I only had to farm wood once throughout the whole map anyway. Silence of the Stars was one of my favorite areas in the map, the whole 'ascend the tower' theme was really cool. I took one death here from a supernova creeper sneaking up on me, he must have walked down the stairs because I hadn't even up to the top floor yet. The blocks you gave out here were a godsend for the rest of the map too.
Shame of Adonis: Quite a step up from Grove of Starlight, my one worry is that attempting this area first might put some people off. Even with the loot from Grove of Starlight, this was quite tough and I ended up cryboxing with half a heart left at one point. The transition from ancient building/prison to underground mine and sewer system was pretty cool - not too much to say about the first part of this area. The shrine part was very tense and I started off methodically clearing spawners and making slow progress, until I made it about halfway to the fleecy box and ran for it. The skelebats are simply diabolical - very unpredictable and hard to hit.
Walkways of Abandon: Could use a difficulty increase, for the most part you can just walk through the whole place with ease. Perhaps some more broken parts which need to be bridged across, or some parts without rails, or punch 1 skellies could make this area a bit more tense. The chestplate reward really did not seem worth it, especially considering how well hidden the books must have been, (and the fact that I had the chesticle by this point) but I like the idea of it. Maybe buff the main reward bow and offer crappier ones as sub-prizes?
Abridged: One of my favorite areas, the sense of scale when you drop down is fantastic. Threat of falling kept things tense throughout and it really felt like I was assaulting that bridge the whole time. Not much else to say other than great job on this one.
Temple of Decay: Wasn't a huge fan of the beginning part, but the temple itself was fun. Rather easy by this point because I had the raging chain helm/chesticle/well built boots set which in all honesty is just OP - either buff I2 in general or nerf the well built boots, they let me have something ridiculous like 13.5 hearts and perma strength + speed to boot. Personally I'd nerf the items because if they were lost then I'd imagine you would have some trouble.
Prison of Forgotten Cries: This place was massive, good job on keeping it fairly varied throughout. Fairly standard gameplay throughout, the final hallways with the skeletons in the side walls + charged creepers below were certainly tense. Nothing too exciting going on here, solid area.
Grunkoid Falls: Gah. Opening part is somewhat overwhelming, lots of heavy knockback, hard to find spawners and little small areas to explore. Took my 3rd death (if we're counting that damn monument trap) here after getting knocked across the room by one of the green guys into about 3 other grunkoids, but I was able to recover most of my stuff (not my well-built boots unfortunately.) I ended up attacking the castle from the top as there was an easy path on the right side from the top of the waterfall. Something I'd suggest is adding some skeletons/ranged enemies to the fleecy box encounter - there were about 20 or so grunkoids crowded around by the time I got there, but I just bridged along the side with ease and grabbed the disc. Probably the hardest (and most annoying) I3 area.
Sporeblight Laboratory: Another one of my favorite areas, it had that nice feel of exploring an abandoned disaster site. The invisible creepers with the lingering potions on death were especially cool, and the potions here (and onward, really) were interesting and fun to use. Unfortunately there was the previously mentioned problem of being able to rush most of the spawners, which made this place quite easy. Maybe tinker with how fast the spawners here in particular spawn, or surround them with more/tougher blocks.
Shrine of the Last: Another favorite of mine - the ore traps were devious, and the main fortress really captured that endgame assault feeling. Diamonds were plentiful, which is always appreciated. The room before the final one in this area with the blazes and knockback skeletons could use some more loot - I was pretty disappointed to see a bow worse than what I already had. The final room was absolutely evil with the punch bow skellies near the end - fire resist came in handy here. It's worth noting that before this map I hadn't played minecraft for a couple years and I completely forgot you could make magma cream using slimeballs, so I was only using the very few fire resist potions given out. So I may have struggled a bit more with this area (and I4 in general) than most would. In general I4 was a huge ramp up from I3 - I definitely recommend buffing I3.
Suspended Exodus: I decided to take this area on next and leave Flamekissed Foundry till last. This ended up the toughest area for me, purely because I'm an idiot. I took a death just walking off one of the islands, and another falling into void during the last part. The castle was extremely fun, and the void gauntlet was easily the hardest and most exhilarating part of the entire map for me. Punch bow skellies made the whole thing terrifying, the pigmen were pretty scary (thank god for knockback 2 swords) and the creeper stacks were just diabolical. I'm very glad I had the diamonds from Shrine of the Last before attacking here. The very final part I ended up just tunneling through to the fleecy box on the left side - whether this was intended or not, I don't know, but it was certainly easier than bridging.
Flamekissed Foundry: A fun final area, but definitely the easiest of the I4 areas. Those damn magma cubes were formidable enemies, and the charged creepers did their job of making things exciting. The wither skeleton skull definitely needs a nerf - it's basically complete immunity to lava/creepers. Custom potions were fun as always, but I'd possibly buff the loot a little - it's a bit strange having access to basically infinite diamonds, a plethora of xp and level 30 enchants and seeing unenchanted diamond gear in chests. It probably doesn't matter at this point. Maybe some OP books would be good here too (Sharpness/Power V, maybe) because I ended up just spamming enchanting bottles until I got them anyway.
Total Deaths - 5
Discordancy Monument - 1
Grove of Starlight - 1
Grunkoid Falls - 1
Suspended Exodus - 2
Overall thoughts - very good map - great aesthetics, fun areas. Recommend buffing I2 a bit and I3 a decent amount, Shame of Adonis might be too difficult going in first? Would have to be tested of course. Wither skull is OP, the raging helm/chesticle/labpance/well-built boots combo is a bit insane, otherwise, loot is balanced. Prismarine shard rewards (the later ones) are a bit iffy upon the ones I missed, there's so much resources that the infinite use items are just inferior to the decently enchanted swords you never run out of. Will update post if I can think of anything I missed.
Thank you so much for all the fantastic feedback, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the map! Planning to do further work on the official release copy today, so I'm so glad you posted this when you did. Loads of great comments and thoughts here that I'll definitely be taking into account!
The zombie pigman in Sporeblight laboratory don't react to the player, they just stand there while I attack them.
Yeah, they're weird... They were supposed to move but instead are just stationary damaging mobs right now. This is planned to be fixed!
It definitely is! Unfortunately I'm in college and my time has gotten very limited, but I'm working to get it done and out!
Nice map, I've completed the beta but there is a lot of bugs D: I had 16 deaths not a lot, not much difficult but some kinda annoying with the Electric Creepers :'v. Good luck finishing the things you need to get the map at 100% PD: if you need the bugs that I saw tell me
Would love a list of them if you could! I'm prepping a playthrough soon to collect all the bugs and issues I can find to get the map out of beta officially, and the more things you had issues with that I can fix, the better!
Tomorrow I will give you the list today I can't :c
Looking forward to it!
OMG I forgot !!! Sorry doing it right now
Well "a lot of bugs" there wasn't a lot but there we go
- After you complete 1st Area "[b]Shadow of Pluto[/b]" The thing on the screen that says Completed Area Shadow of plo is repeating in all the map
- Teleports to go from the Discordant Monument to Intersection 2 3 4 are bugged( I needed to put in creative and change the tp command block
- The pigmans from Sporeblight Laboratory [/b]are buggend and they don't move
The only bogs I remember but I think there are more
Sorry I forgot to do it because the Christmas tnigs and all that