Custom Map #1223: Colosseum of Creep (FPS). By: qople

[knightace]

This map wasn't as difficult as everyone (including myself!) makes it out to be. It's just disheartening to claim nearly all the stadium then watching it gradually fall to the creeper...only to turn the tables in the end because you inevitably overpower it - no matter how much breeder growth it has, you become strong enough to obliterate the whole map. Now to the meat of things; though.

Sense of progress...it doesn't exist for the most part, on this map. That can be a real sucker-punch because the sense of progression looks like a net loss instead...you watch your gains dwindle away, plinking away with your tiny shots against a wall of creep that doesn't look like you're making a dent. That can be very disheartening.

Once you grasp the lay of the land it can also be somewhat enjoyable, though. Patience is key. What I was pleased with is I had claimed everywhere on the map except the south creep by 1:20. Then I made it my mission to hold the south flip-breeder at all costs...even lost the one to the west but didn't care; the south flip breeder was my goal. Nothing I did could ever advance on the blue breeder; so I just held ground until 10min mark - but was happy to have been able to hold all of the stadium except for the blue south creep and the south-west flip creep. At this point I was strong enough to finish off the rest of the map with ease and win.

So...to note; my fun was holding ground with zero progress for ten minutes, not gaining a lick of ground at all. Take that feedback as you will.

Edit: Oh; and I didn't mind the skimmers. It was interesting to play dodge-ball with them. I barely had them stun me at all...even hoards of them are pretty easy to dodge. My worst experience with them was turning around and removing creep they left on a blue breeder. (tip; just circle them and run back - shooting at creep the whole time. Most skimmers are now in front of you and coming for you...just run through them while strafing left and right to catch most of the stragglers to make them 'pop' behind you. Rinse and repeat as needed.)

[Malignantmind]

Managed to push back the creeper after 15 minutues of having it overwhelm me but the last wave of skimmers seemed to just spawn on top of me, causng me to be stunlocked and ultimately killed by all of the creeper that was left as I was too close to it. That's fine, I got too close to the creeper, I should have stayed a bit futher back. However when I went to respawn, it put me on an island, one of the disconnected pieces of land and not the spawn point and then the creeper took everything back as I was, you know, stuck on an island. Other than that, premise was interesting and needs some fine tuning, would have been nice if the sniper was affected by the powerup system to deal with the skimmers. And maybe the respawn system needs looking at too because making one mistake and losing is not fun.

The sniper does actually benefit from the upgrades into a rapidfire machine gun that can take out an entire wave of skimmers. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen until very late in the level and if you make it far enough to reach that point, you're probably already going to win anyways.

[mzimmer74]

Okay, after reading a few of the comments I'll say that I was able to finally beat it once I found a strategy that worked. I basically had to ignore skimmers (run around) until about the 15 minute mark when the sniper was upgraded enough to take them out quickly. That let me hold back the creeper long enough to survive until the upgrades were strong enough to push forward and recover lost ground. Definitely a challenging map, but a good one as well. Still not a huge fan of the massive numbers of skimmers, but worth a play.

[MrWizard]

Can you give me a bit more to work with? Knowing why people don't like a level helps a lot, especially since this one went in a different direction than the others I've made.

I think others have stated it fairly well, but I think the big problem for me was that it never felt like you accomplished anything. After taking a portion of the map I would have to babysit it instead of working on a new puzzle. For example, working out in the beginning where all the white and yellow generators are allow you to hit them with the AC cannon to start generating more AC for you, which was neat, but then its just waiting until you are powerful enough to deal with the primary creeper patch, but you don't do anything. You just have to babysit the two other yellow patches and try to avoid skimmers. Eventually the creeper outscales you or you outscale the creeper but you haven't done anything.

[favour6]

way way way too many skimmers... ever time progress is made the skimmers either stun you or you have to dance around like a loonytoon for so long the creep has won.

[heritor]

At about 25 minutes in, you end up encountering what can generously be described as a skimmer swarm.
I did have fun in the end, but the imbalance for the first 10-15 minutes was quite frustrating.

[Karzon]

The skimmers just need to be ignored - run in circles while firing at the creeper as it's way more important.  It's still super annoying, as that part goes on forever near the end because the skimmers just keep increasing in numbers.

Switch between anticreeper and another weapon often to slow the creeper from retaking the breeder patches.  For most of it, you're just holding ground (or losing one spot as you take another), but eventually your cannon gets powerful enough to take over the map by itself.

[D0m0nik]

My favourite type of map but yeah, what everyone said about skimmers! I also don't like the time based upgrade system, you are not being rewarded for progress, in fact the slower you are the more upgrades you will get!

[dwilkinson]

I'm gonna have to say there is an issue with respawn, i ended up next to one of the max height walls, with no way around, so i kept getting stunlocked in the corner and then killed by the creep that was already there. I would say rather than a fixed point could you look for an area where there is the least creep(or most anticreep) to respawn in. I don't know if there is functions for that in the 4rpl or not.

[Qople]

I would say rather than a fixed point could you look for an area where there is the least creep(or most anticreep) to respawn in.

This map does actually respawn you in the cell with the most anticreep. The thing I didn't consider is that you can't walk everywhere anticreep can flow through, so you can spawn in an inescapable area if there's a big spike there. Live and learn, I guess.

[jtalisman]

I think the problem to me was it felt like the worst kind of whack-a-mole. I'd recover an area only to turn around and find the creeper had recovered an area or two i'd previously secured, and by the time i'd cleared that, the previous one was gone. with the fact that its basically a circle, there's not much way you can 'hold' an area. I didnt find a problem with the skimmers as long as you keep running though.

This is exactly how I felt as well. One of the things I like most about the CW games in general is that feeling of pushing forward and making progress as you gradually take over the map, this map literally felt like 30s of taking over most of the map, ~15 minutes of helplessly trying and failing to hold back the creeper as it slowly but surely grows more powerful than you can handle, then the game just hands you a super unsatisfying victory by patting you on the head and saying, 'ok you're a god now, have the win."

[Ionie]

I like this! Sure, there was a "shit, shit, shit, shit" -kind of feeling 10 minutes in, when i'm losing ground like mad, but i figured the player out-scales the creeper, which is always the case in FPS-maps, and it was here as well. I noticed also after claiming everything in anti-creep that the ground changes, and the creep-emitters grow. Nice touch!

For people struggling with this: mortar and sprayer are your best friends. The creeper is deep enough for hte mortar to shine, and in late-game (10 min and later) the sprayer becomes awesome, especially with the amount of flip-breeder around. Shoot down a bunch of skimmers, relocate, turn around to keep firing, relocate and so on. You can also win by just going to the west flip-emitter, cover that in AC, shoot down skimmers from where you are, and buy time until around 14 minutes, to just clear out the entire colosseum.

...also, can we just appreciate the awesome firepower that is the cannon at like 1 hour or something? That shit just cuts through creep like Moses parting the Red Sea!

[Craftyname]

Can you give me a bit more to work with? Knowing why people don't like a level helps a lot, especially since this one went in a different direction than the others I've made.

Level is fun and you are playing with a very fun idea. Hope to see it more. There are ways it could be MORE fun, like some of the things people have pointed out. Progression felt a little stifled, but as a first try with a new system it was great. If there were a way to make it so there were a few less skimmers, that would be nice :)

Or even if there were a way to build a nullifier, but as the player we have to keep it charged, by standing near it, or shooting it with a certain gun or something. That way when/if we forget about it we get punished. Thanks for your map!

[knightace]

Can you give me a bit more to work with? Knowing why people don't like a level helps a lot, especially since this one went in a different direction than the others I've made.

Level is fun and you are playing with a very fun idea. Hope to see it more. There are ways it could be MORE fun, like some of the things people have pointed out. Progression felt a little stifled, but as a first try with a new system it was great. If there were a way to make it so there were a few less skimmers, that would be nice :)

Or even if there were a way to build a nullifier, but as the player we have to keep it charged, by standing near it, or shooting it with a certain gun or something. That way when/if we forget about it we get punished. Thanks for your map!

Now this is kind of interesting...and stands to see some use with the fabricator gun and the fabricator-aura being tested out in some maps. Possibly some areas that don't receive any power - or some maps with lanes / islands /etc that have no power connection. You fuel it and/or choose the path to go down.

[Bobs]

I really enjoyed the map! Keep up the good work!

Even initially when I seemed to hit a brick wall... i found it fun to be kiting skimmers around, whilst trying to hold the creeper back & hold patches that I had grabbed with AC...

It wasn't until i had played the map a few times, that I noticed only the Creeper spawners and the Flip spawners where growing & covering more ground, but the AC spawners stayed at default size... once i realised that it was a game changer... just ignored the AC spawning ground and focused on clearing Creep spawns and holding Flip spawns... skimmers a bit nuts, but the sniper can deal with them :)

Thoroughly enjoyed!

Bobs