One problem for me is that I get a lot of contradicting feedback. Take the loot for example: I've had people tell me there was too much loot, others say there's not enough and then there's a bunch of people who thought that the amount and distribution of loot was mostly appropriate. So in the end, I have to rely on my own judgement after all.
Same with the difficulty: Some people say Merciless Mines was easy or well balanced, others say it's too hard. The only thing I can say for sure is that you do NOT need to bridge anywhere in that area. And the castle ... a lot of people like it, someone even wrote that it was one of the most fun areas he's ever played ... others don't like it or say it's too hard.
I've given up on the idea of making (almost) everyone happy and now I'm just focussing on the group of players that this map was intended for in the first place.
By the way, there is a wool and some unique loot (+ extra random loot) in the castle. I'm not going to make a huge sub-area like that and not put a wool in there
Different people have different tactics on different areas I suggest giving more loot chests at the start but put weaker loot in the chests.
To follow up on my statement (was wrapping work on an area), it's the sheer lack of a good travel system. The hub exists, but returning to it seems very pointless, and the teleport checkpoints are not in useful/helpful places.
If the Hub was a monument, it'd suddenly gain a massive amount of travelability, instead of the current location of the monument, which feels very out of the way, and inconvenient. Further problematic are the teleporters, especially the one near the monument. I spent a fair amount of time clearing the surrounding area and getting to it, only to step into a teleporter and find I didn't have a way back.
It's just inconvenient.
The map needs to be better split up into chunks that progressively unlock useful and convenient teleport spots via the Hub, instead of an inconvient spot mid-way through an area that's more of a chore to use than help.
The map becomes too linear in this regard, as it's all about finding the wool, and then pushing forward. There's no purpose in making a base outside of the pre-approved Hub, as the map just constantly shoves forward.
Loot is overbalanced, and is nearly a perfectly horrible repeat of Inferno Mines, which was bogged down by its dreadful loot system.
Surviving complex traps has no tangible reward or benefit other than extreme time wasted.
Areas start to blend into each other as time goes on, with little discerning difference, when it's all a mob swarm anyway. As a player who relishes challenge, it gets extremely tedious to be fighting through the exact. same. mobs. within every single area. Wide area spawners definitely don't feel good when used, for example.
The difficulty also does really bad spikes similar to IM, where one area feels like a cakewalk, and the next is just obscene, to be followed by a throw-away area. Furthermore, the map encourages cheap tactics, such as overuse of pearling, invisibility pots, or tunneling, due to the overly used monster spawners in each area. Down time needs to be more easily achieved, for a player to catch a breather, or things just get dull and tedious, which is constantly impending my progress.
AAAAnnnddd topic change.
-------------------------------
The Stationary Guardian in Septum Immoriel is now 100% complete! This leaves another 10% of Tyranny of Agamemnon to do, and 95% of The Visions of Argus to do before I reach the final stretch of the map!
One problem for me is that I get a lot of contradicting feedback. Take the loot for example: I've had people tell me there was too much loot, others say there's not enough and then there's a bunch of people who thought that the amount and distribution of loot was mostly appropriate. So in the end, I have to rely on my own judgement after all.
Same with the difficulty: Some people say Merciless Mines was easy or well balanced, others say it's too hard. The only thing I can say for sure is that you do NOT need to bridge anywhere in that area. And the castle ... a lot of people like it, someone even wrote that it was one of the most fun areas he's ever played ... others don't like it or say it's too hard.
I've given up on the idea of making (almost) everyone happy and now I'm just focussing on the group of players that this map was intended for in the first place.
By the way, there is a wool and some unique loot (+ extra random loot) in the castle. I'm not going to make a huge sub-area like that and not put a wool in there
Make an area in the beginning like a village or something where people can get reasonably geared up and farm wood, food, weapons, and other essentials. Then keep the mobs to the dungeon areas.
The main problem was everything was hostile. The paths around rage of the reptiles were full of spawners, constantly spewing out mobs and making travel a huge difficulty, when the only reward was getting to another hostile area, and a bit of loot.
I would say make the paths around the areas, mostly rage of the reptiles, contain less spawners and be a bit more lit up and then in return, make the dungeons more difficult, staying true to the hard difficulty while making the areas accessible.
In one particular area, you pass a huge amount of creeper/spider/skeleton/zombie spawners and are met with still creepers falling from the ceiling. Thought this was pretty awesome , but I wouldn't recommend putting them in that particular spot. That tunnel was essentially a 3x3 tunnel from vech's maps but more detailed, transitioning from one area to the next, so it should be a bit less mobfull and more peaceful. (I'm talking about the path from rage of the reptiles to merciless mines.)
Though the huge tunnels were breathtaking, the player rarely has time to take a look around due to them being constantly bombarded.
Suggestion: Rather than adding extra loot or giving the player obscene amounts of resources, remove most of the spawners from areas that were not dungeons and in turn make those more challenging (the cobble/mossy cobble felt equally if not less challenging than the tunnels)
More loot and resources would not make it less tedious.
I haven't gotten too far in the map yet so things may have changed later on, but I feel that the beggining areas should be the most balanced. Sorry about that, just trying to help out
By the way, just a little thing, it'd be awesome if you removed some of the glowstone from around the stone path in Rage of the Reptiles and replaced them with redstone torches. I think that'd look a lot better :3
And yeah, Soup's post is all accurate. Seriously, we're giving you some awesome feedback! xD
I'll try to take all that into consideration.
I think one of the problems is that I made the map how I wanted a CTM map to be, thinking that most people had the same motivations and a similar taste. For example, the impression that everything is hostile and every inch of the map needs to be conquered is exactly what I like about it, even though some people hate it. When I play a CTM map, I want constant action and "peaceful" areas just feel like a waste of space and time. I have to find a balance between making a map that I - and some others - like and a map that I hate but many people enjoy. I'm still new to the whole designing-something-for-other-people-thing and have to cringe everytime I make a change to an area based on someone's feedback while thinking "meh, this part just got a lot less fun for me". My personal taste just seems to be very different from the mainstream, which makes the whole process a lot harder
It's all about the experience! If it helps at all, it definitely is a gorgeous looking map. Major eye-candy. I really would love, as a player, to have that down time to take it all in. That's where the peaceful areas would really come in handy. To give you the time to examine the area and take in the effort that went into the design!
My Giant Map Is Finally Done I Just Need To Check A Few Things And Put Up The Link!
Heres a few pics. I will take any last minute suggestions for the map.
My Giant Map Is Finally Done I Just Need To Check A Few Things And Put Up The Link!
Heres a few pics. I will take any last minute suggestions for the map.
Numbers match each screenshot.
1. Looks good.
2. How is it a warriors potion if you get weakness? That seems anti-warrior-y. (Definitely a word, look it up.)
3. Lapis looks out of place.
4. Block variation. Mix the glowstone into the walls instead of have it be erecting from the walls like its on Viagra. >.<
Have you beta tested or played it thru a few times yourself? I remember you asking a question about the last area really recently...
So here's a paragraph. Or more. Ok a rant/rambling by me. I'll try to keep the ranting to a minimum, but I'll put up a separate thread for my future rambles. So here goes.
Most of these are most likely gonna be somewhat like the Extra Credits series, (if you don't know what that is, I'd highly suggest you go check it out). What I'd like to touch up on today is audience towards less skilled based players.
Now most of us on the CTM community, from what I can see, have been mainly addressing older "veterans" or OK players of the CTM genre. Not to say that this is bad. This is perfectly acceptable, and by all means it should continue. But time and time again I find people willing enough to try out these maps, but being addressed wrongly about where to start. Most don't ask at all, and just jump straight into the latest map thats been released. This is a slight problem from what I can see. First off, it gets these people uninterested in the maps themselves, as they usually have no knowledge whatsoever about a CTM map if they haven't played one. Secondly, the few people that do find maps that are labeled "easy" are few in numbers, as most people who know about CTM maps go for the really popular map makers such as Vechs, Amlup, etc. These maps, though great, are not for them. They need to start off with the easier maps, and going to Vechs's maps is NOT really good. There are great "easy" maps made by amazing people (I'd like to give a shout-out to Skeeto for making an extraordinary map called Rugged Horizons. First CTM map I've ever beaten, and had fun doing it :)), but sadly, these maps only go to those who have an advanced sense of the game logic.
So I've said all these things that are "bad" for new players of the CTM genre. So how do we go about getting "newbies" to ease into the CTM map genre in the first place? Well, first of all, there needs to be an influx of maps that are more solely focused on the tutorial aspect of the CTM genre. Vechs has made a sort of "tutorial" style map, but this is, from what I can see, what most people who have found the CTM genre already know. So how do we make these maps? Well, thats fairly simple. By creating maps as we always do, with hazardous environments, custom spawners/loot, that sort of the usual stuff. But then we start focusing greatly on the gameplay more. People new to the CTM genre aren't really looking at the aesthetics at this point (though it is still a nice thing to implement into all maps), so gameplay is going to play a major role in the way these people feel about this map genre.
So here's an example:
In a map made for the more advanced player, vanilla spawners are almost out of existence unless they're for ambush spawners (Spawners that are hidden, or out of sight, and have a long delay to create a false sense of security for the player). These spawners would have a greatly shortened delay, and would, most of the time, start spawning mobs immediately as the player came into range.
Obviously for a map made for newer players who don't know gist of how most CTM maps go, the map maker could make a quick little note about spawner logic and such. This way, the player doesn't immediately face danger in the map, but is noted of future content that has the shorter spawn delay.
And so, even though this is pretty much common knowledge to most map makers (I'm sure you're all VERY bright individuals and probably see this as information that you all know), I don't see it quite often. I found it very difficult to find a map that was easy enough, but challenging at the same time to play with enjoyment, and the only reason I was able to get through Rugged Horizons with ease was because of knowledge from watching other Lets Plays of CTM maps. Even if others have previous knowledge, its nice to have a map that will ease a player into the genre instead of having them scream their head off from raging on maps that are not meant for their skill level. Don't get me wrong, the maps that you guys are making are phenomenal, and you should totally keep doing what you're doing. I'd just like to see more maps made for players with less skill.
So that end's this week's CTM ramble. Stay tuned for next week's topic!
P.S: I might have found a nice combination with mycelium: end stone! I'll see if it works later, as I'm greatly exhausted
Since there is a massive lack of easier maps in the community, I've decided that I might make an additional, lower difficulty version of Twisted Ultimatium that serves more as an introduction to CTMs. It'll have a tutorial area, tons of loot while still keeping the same atmosphere as it's original product. I feel like this is something every mapmaker should do, just throw a bone at the newer crowd to make sure that the wonderful CTM community can continue to grow. Sometimes, mapmaking isn't about just being like HEY FIGHT 50 GHASTS WHILE PARKOURING UP A SPIRE MADE OF LAVA!!1!!!1 :3
So I was building some creeper fountains, because EFFEESHANCY. Anyway, I was wondering... is it too evil to make the creepers have water breathing?
@Ren But... but fire and lava and ghasts and fire and lava and fire and did I mention lava?
Not really but if they don't drown they will stockpile into a high amount the effects of this include decreasing natural spawns and when the player attampts this the spawn count will be very hig...... Wait you have water in your map?
Ok so as some of you know i am almost done with my first completed mini map (and actual mapping project) ever. I need to the build the spawn area and make a few adjustments to the first wool area. But...im kind of almost bored with it at this point.
What i really want to know is how many of you (besides Infamy because the map is specifically for him) actually want to play the map? I want to see if there's a significant amount of people, because if there is, i'll work double time to get it done tomorrow. if there's not, i'd rather take a while longer to finish up and get it into beta.
Anyway, that's all i really have to say right now...
I'd love to play it. I like playing any map, really xD But still, take your pace. It's important not to get too burnt out, or else we could lose you for a much longer amount of time
Ok so as some of you know i am almost done with my first completed mini map (and actual mapping project) ever. I need to the build the spawn area and make a few adjustments to the first wool area. But...im kind of almost bored with it at this point.
What i really want to know is how many of you (besides Infamy because the map is specifically for him) actually want to play the map? I want to see if there's a significant amount of people, because if there is, i'll work double time to get it done tomorrow. if there's not, i'd rather take a while longer to finish up and get it into beta.
Anyway, that's all i really have to say right now...
I'm going to stream it ASAP I'm über exited for this map XD
I'll try to take all that into consideration.
I think one of the problems is that I made the map how I wanted a CTM map to be, thinking that most people had the same motivations and a similar taste. For example, the impression that everything is hostile and every inch of the map needs to be conquered is exactly what I like about it, even though some people hate it. When I play a CTM map, I want constant action and "peaceful" areas just feel like a waste of space and time. I have to find a balance between making a map that I - and some others - like and a map that I hate but many people enjoy. I'm still new to the whole designing-something-for-other-people-thing and have to cringe everytime I make a change to an area based on someone's feedback while thinking "meh, this part just got a lot less fun for me". My personal taste just seems to be very different from the mainstream, which makes the whole process a lot harder
Maybe a suggestion is to use the sign off shelter concept that vechs uses? These are easily accesible to people (but not to mobs) and make for a good resting area without making an entire area peaceful. <aybe put a note at the beginning challenging players to see how far they can get without using them. That way people who want to beast mode it can and others can set up for a little in safe zones. Finally:
More Spawners > Wide Area Spawners (95% of the time)
The reason for this is that those spawners in the ceiling of your map are virtually unbeatable. Even when lighting up areas they will keep spawning mean that you have essentially unconquerable areas. This makes rushing the only really legitimate strategy. Multiple spawners (best if they are visible) allow for a slow conquering of an area where you know your finally safe once you beat it. In my experience this is almost always better.
I would like to play but take your time please. Rushing it out will always get you bad results. Better to have a good map that takes two months to make then a bad one that takes two days.
Different people have different tactics on different areas I suggest giving more loot chests at the start but put weaker loot in the chests.
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Retired StaffTo follow up on my statement (was wrapping work on an area), it's the sheer lack of a good travel system. The hub exists, but returning to it seems very pointless, and the teleport checkpoints are not in useful/helpful places.
If the Hub was a monument, it'd suddenly gain a massive amount of travelability, instead of the current location of the monument, which feels very out of the way, and inconvenient. Further problematic are the teleporters, especially the one near the monument. I spent a fair amount of time clearing the surrounding area and getting to it, only to step into a teleporter and find I didn't have a way back.
It's just inconvenient.
The map needs to be better split up into chunks that progressively unlock useful and convenient teleport spots via the Hub, instead of an inconvient spot mid-way through an area that's more of a chore to use than help.
The map becomes too linear in this regard, as it's all about finding the wool, and then pushing forward. There's no purpose in making a base outside of the pre-approved Hub, as the map just constantly shoves forward.
Loot is overbalanced, and is nearly a perfectly horrible repeat of Inferno Mines, which was bogged down by its dreadful loot system.
Surviving complex traps has no tangible reward or benefit other than extreme time wasted.
Areas start to blend into each other as time goes on, with little discerning difference, when it's all a mob swarm anyway. As a player who relishes challenge, it gets extremely tedious to be fighting through the exact. same. mobs. within every single area. Wide area spawners definitely don't feel good when used, for example.
The difficulty also does really bad spikes similar to IM, where one area feels like a cakewalk, and the next is just obscene, to be followed by a throw-away area. Furthermore, the map encourages cheap tactics, such as overuse of pearling, invisibility pots, or tunneling, due to the overly used monster spawners in each area. Down time needs to be more easily achieved, for a player to catch a breather, or things just get dull and tedious, which is constantly impending my progress.
AAAAnnnddd topic change.
-------------------------------
The Stationary Guardian in Septum Immoriel is now 100% complete! This leaves another 10% of Tyranny of Agamemnon to do, and 95% of The Visions of Argus to do before I reach the final stretch of the map!
Here's a celebratory picture!
This is why open betas are bad, IMO.
[YOUR AD HERE FOR JUST $69.69]
Make an area in the beginning like a village or something where people can get reasonably geared up and farm wood, food, weapons, and other essentials. Then keep the mobs to the dungeon areas.
The main problem was everything was hostile. The paths around rage of the reptiles were full of spawners, constantly spewing out mobs and making travel a huge difficulty, when the only reward was getting to another hostile area, and a bit of loot.
I would say make the paths around the areas, mostly rage of the reptiles, contain less spawners and be a bit more lit up and then in return, make the dungeons more difficult, staying true to the hard difficulty while making the areas accessible.
In one particular area, you pass a huge amount of creeper/spider/skeleton/zombie spawners and are met with still creepers falling from the ceiling. Thought this was pretty awesome
Though the huge tunnels were breathtaking, the player rarely has time to take a look around due to them being constantly bombarded.
Suggestion: Rather than adding extra loot or giving the player obscene amounts of resources, remove most of the spawners from areas that were not dungeons and in turn make those more challenging (the cobble/mossy cobble felt equally if not less challenging than the tunnels)
More loot and resources would not make it less tedious.
I haven't gotten too far in the map yet so things may have changed later on, but I feel that the beggining areas should be the most balanced. Sorry about that, just trying to help out
And yeah, Soup's post is all accurate. Seriously, we're giving you some awesome feedback! xD
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Retired StaffIt's all about the experience! If it helps at all, it definitely is a gorgeous looking map. Major eye-candy. I really would love, as a player, to have that down time to take it all in. That's where the peaceful areas would really come in handy. To give you the time to examine the area and take in the effort that went into the design!
Heres a few pics. I will take any last minute suggestions for the map.
Don't expect to see those areas any time soon. Their at intersection 8.
Numbers match each screenshot.
1. Looks good.
2. How is it a warriors potion if you get weakness? That seems anti-warrior-y. (Definitely a word, look it up.)
3. Lapis looks out of place.
4. Block variation. Mix the glowstone into the walls instead of have it be erecting from the walls like its on Viagra. >.<
Have you beta tested or played it thru a few times yourself? I remember you asking a question about the last area really recently...
Most of these are most likely gonna be somewhat like the Extra Credits series, (if you don't know what that is, I'd highly suggest you go check it out). What I'd like to touch up on today is audience towards less skilled based players.
Now most of us on the CTM community, from what I can see, have been mainly addressing older "veterans" or OK players of the CTM genre. Not to say that this is bad. This is perfectly acceptable, and by all means it should continue. But time and time again I find people willing enough to try out these maps, but being addressed wrongly about where to start. Most don't ask at all, and just jump straight into the latest map thats been released. This is a slight problem from what I can see. First off, it gets these people uninterested in the maps themselves, as they usually have no knowledge whatsoever about a CTM map if they haven't played one. Secondly, the few people that do find maps that are labeled "easy" are few in numbers, as most people who know about CTM maps go for the really popular map makers such as Vechs, Amlup, etc. These maps, though great, are not for them. They need to start off with the easier maps, and going to Vechs's maps is NOT really good. There are great "easy" maps made by amazing people (I'd like to give a shout-out to Skeeto for making an extraordinary map called Rugged Horizons. First CTM map I've ever beaten, and had fun doing it :)), but sadly, these maps only go to those who have an advanced sense of the game logic.
So I've said all these things that are "bad" for new players of the CTM genre. So how do we go about getting "newbies" to ease into the CTM map genre in the first place? Well, first of all, there needs to be an influx of maps that are more solely focused on the tutorial aspect of the CTM genre. Vechs has made a sort of "tutorial" style map, but this is, from what I can see, what most people who have found the CTM genre already know. So how do we make these maps? Well, thats fairly simple. By creating maps as we always do, with hazardous environments, custom spawners/loot, that sort of the usual stuff. But then we start focusing greatly on the gameplay more. People new to the CTM genre aren't really looking at the aesthetics at this point (though it is still a nice thing to implement into all maps), so gameplay is going to play a major role in the way these people feel about this map genre.
So here's an example:
In a map made for the more advanced player, vanilla spawners are almost out of existence unless they're for ambush spawners (Spawners that are hidden, or out of sight, and have a long delay to create a false sense of security for the player). These spawners would have a greatly shortened delay, and would, most of the time, start spawning mobs immediately as the player came into range.
Obviously for a map made for newer players who don't know gist of how most CTM maps go, the map maker could make a quick little note about spawner logic and such. This way, the player doesn't immediately face danger in the map, but is noted of future content that has the shorter spawn delay.
And so, even though this is pretty much common knowledge to most map makers (I'm sure you're all VERY bright individuals and probably see this as information that you all know), I don't see it quite often. I found it very difficult to find a map that was easy enough, but challenging at the same time to play with enjoyment, and the only reason I was able to get through Rugged Horizons with ease was because of knowledge from watching other Lets Plays of CTM maps. Even if others have previous knowledge, its nice to have a map that will ease a player into the genre instead of having them scream their head off from raging on maps that are not meant for their skill level. Don't get me wrong, the maps that you guys are making are phenomenal, and you should totally keep doing what you're doing. I'd just like to see more maps made for players with less skill.
So that end's this week's CTM ramble. Stay tuned for next week's topic!
P.S: I might have found a nice combination with mycelium: end stone! I'll see if it works later, as I'm greatly exhausted
@Ren But... but fire and lava and ghasts and fire and lava and fire and did I mention lava?
[YOUR AD HERE FOR JUST $69.69]
That's not evil. That's simply being kind to the creepers. You wouldn't want to upset creepers, would you?
Not really but if they don't drown they will stockpile into a high amount the effects of this include decreasing natural spawns and when the player attampts this the spawn count will be very hig...... Wait you have water in your map?
What i really want to know is how many of you (besides Infamy because the map is specifically for him) actually want to play the map? I want to see if there's a significant amount of people, because if there is, i'll work double time to get it done tomorrow. if there's not, i'd rather take a while longer to finish up and get it into beta.
Anyway, that's all i really have to say right now...
I'm going to stream it ASAP I'm über exited for this map XD
B-b-but that was what my post was about... Y u no give credit? X3
Maybe a suggestion is to use the sign off shelter concept that vechs uses? These are easily accesible to people (but not to mobs) and make for a good resting area without making an entire area peaceful. <aybe put a note at the beginning challenging players to see how far they can get without using them. That way people who want to beast mode it can and others can set up for a little in safe zones. Finally:
More Spawners > Wide Area Spawners (95% of the time)
The reason for this is that those spawners in the ceiling of your map are virtually unbeatable. Even when lighting up areas they will keep spawning mean that you have essentially unconquerable areas. This makes rushing the only really legitimate strategy. Multiple spawners (best if they are visible) allow for a slow conquering of an area where you know your finally safe once you beat it. In my experience this is almost always better.
I would like to play but take your time please. Rushing it out will always get you bad results. Better to have a good map that takes two months to make then a bad one that takes two days.
Hey! I like, run this... or something: