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

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This topic is for discussion of map #1223: Colosseum of Creep (FPS)


Author: qople
Size: 256x160

[MrWizard]

Not particularly fun.

[Qople]

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.

[Malignantmind]

It definitely seems to favor the creeper far more than you. A challenge is fine and all, but I'm seeing massive waves of creeper cropping up very quickly, as well as way more skimmers than I could ever hope to shoot or avoid, while seeing AC breeder just get overrun completely like it wasn't even there.

Could definitely use more balancing, is what I'm saying.

[Durikkan]

I think the longer you play the more the balance shifts in the player's favor, I had no idea if I was winning or losing in the middle and was losing ground before eventually just obliterating the remaining creeper. 

Also worth noting that the best strategy against the skimmers seemed to be to run through them, causing them to detonate, and you'll get far enough away by the time the stunners land. 

[WGarrison]

I like the FPS maps, but I am not a fan of this one.

I was able to start by taking over everything but the big blue patch in the south (I even tried starting out by taking over this patch and was unable to). I figured since it was an autoscale map, I could just bide my time until I was strong enough to outpace the creeper on that patch. It turns out the creeper was out scaling me and I went from holding steady to slowly losing ground. Once the creeper pushed into the yellow patch ahead of it the entire coliseum flipped to creeper in a matter of a minute or so. I could not even fend off at the "entrance".

Problems:
1. Creeper out scales you, which makes it a win immediately or just lose map.
2. Even if you out scaled the creeper, it becomes a bide your time until the timer says you are strong enough of map. No sense of progress, just maintaining status quo until you suddenly win.
3. The skimmers are not fun to fight at all, shooting them with the special gun is not effective. Getting stunned often causes a chain stun (getting stunned in an FPS is extremely not fun). Since I had to keep fighting creeper just to keep pace, I just had to strafe through the skimmers in places I knew weren't generators and hope an errant stun didn't happen to catch me.

I tried a couple times, but each attempt devolved into a slow painful death, which I can't picture anyone enjoys.

[Malignantmind]

Okay, tried it again after reading Durikkan's comment and managed to beat it. Around the 10 minute mark I was barely managing to hold a tiny patch of AC breeder on the upper levels. Not long after that I was able to make some progress, but it was still a solid 20 minutes until I was strong enough to actually make any meaningful progress.

As WGarrison said, the skimmers are not fun at all. It gets to the point where there are so many, it's almost impossible not to get chain stunned.

The upgrade system also heavily favors the creeper. Once I realized what was happening (breeder was expanding), I realized that only the creeper breeder, crimson breeder, and flip breeder was multiplying. I don't think AC breeder should multiply quite as quickly, maybe at half or even quarter speed as the rest, but seeing it spread would be nice if you attempt another shot at this style.

[UberWaffe]

Really wasn't bad as a "Win or lose in 5 min" map (which is what I had incorrectly assumed it was).

Reasons I thought it was a "Win or lose in 5 min" map:

• Didn't check win times before playing
• Could grab most of map but then started losing ground to the large creep / flip patch in the south. Just couldn't make headway into it
• Restarted twice, same pattern. Felt like this just kept resulting in stalemate slowly going in creeper's favour
• Started restarting and just bum rushing the south patch. Made more progress against it than leaving it for last.
• Finally won map in about 6 min by rushing south, squiring some ac at breeder along the way, and just focusing on not letting the south creep breed.

[burton5000]

i enjoyed it, as i do most fps maps, only criticism is as the others said is that the massive amount of skimmers were too much. I found that i was just managing to beat the creeper back just as all the skimmers spawned, then i was falling behind again by the time they were dealt with.
I was happy with the creeper getting stronger, didn't feel overwhelming to me, felt more like an actual battle than just clearing room by room

[Jerle]

Umm  feel like this is a april fools troll.   Yea no one likes skimmers in fps maps oh you're finally starting to clear creep spawn patch bam here is 40 of them have fun.

[mzimmer74]

Yeah, started out great, but the skimmers were just not fun. Even though I moved quickly and had a HUGE lead on the creeper, the time it took to kill the skimmers meant that whenever they showed up I'd lose ground. By about the 4th or 5th wave (seemed like there were about 30 skimmers but could be wrong) I realized I was done for and abandoned the mission. By that point my huge lead was down to me basically being pushed back to the entrance to the arena. It didn't feel like my sniper was shooting any faster to manage the greater number of skimmers. The map itself is a good idea. Just don't like the skimmer mechanism the way it was implemented here.

[HeyHeyHey]

Very good and fun, but one big problem, Skimmers ;)

[Quangohutt]

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.

[dklk]

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.

[superbrias]

So yea, skimmers are WAY too many, especially at 2-4 shots per skimmer it really shouldn't take less time to stand in place and let them explode on you then kill them all

The creep scaling is quite tough, I had luck seeding all the ac breeder first (somewhat from range) quickly storming over both the north c breeder patches and then useing mortar to fight the south patch slowly (letting the rest of the coliseum fill with AC), generally took so long the sprayer weapon would start obliterating creeper and I could roll over even active breeder