When I spawn out of the plane I'm usually dead before I even hit the ground. How did this become part of the official map rotation?
Forum
Try playing at the lowest difficulty level and with at least 4-8 other people. It isn't meant to be easy and if this is happening, you're probably not getting enough supporting fire from additional players. It's best to avoid respawning at all in this map.
I'm sorry to say that this map is not made for rushers, new players, kids, or laid back clickers. In short, its not made for the average SC player. If there is no coop, you will not even win on the easiest difficulty.
People in Sven Coop are used to just point and click running in a general direction, no healing, no coop, no reviving and most importantly trolling, spamming sounds and colors, spamming the mic, blocking, etc…
Perhaps if all maps were like this, people would understand. At the same time, perhaps the people wouldnt even be there.
If you feel that the map is unfair, it simply means you are approaching it wrong. If you are dying on insertion or getting pinned down, it means you didn't send players ahead to secure the area. If you get gibbed by a tank, it means you are not using your flanking options or teammates to create a diversion. If you get sniped, it means you didn't appoint a sniper on your team to counter that threat.
This map is supposed to be challenging and not just another simple run and gun experience. Don't expect to win this on your first round. There is a learning curve. You can win this map with other casual players on easy or maybe even medium mode but if you want to beat hard or insane, you better bring your A-team.
This map has been tested EXTENSIVLY over the course of 4 months and altered accordingly before it became an official map. Check the readme file, the changelog alone spans over 4 pages! And, believe it or not, we've managed to win it with 0 deaths a few times. even on insane mode. There are many systems in place to balance out the gameplay according to the amount and type of players on the server, such as dynamic monster health, different layers of difficulty and different layers of challenges. If you're really going to chalk this map up as 'badly designed' then you got to ask yourself if it might just be you doing something wrong.
With my testing group we had to play the map several times, trying different approaches and discuss strategies before going in. We had to grind our teeth, adapt and overcome and finally reached the Platinum award. Players cheered and made screenshots and videos to proof we actually made it. This was really a team effort and it felt really awesome that we pulled it off. I don't remember ever having such an experience in SC before.
I know there are many casual players who don't want to think that deeply about the game and just want to blast and go solo, but those aren't the people I made this map for. This one is made for real cooperative play, as SC actually should be. But even those people could still beat the easy and medium modes.
Streamfox, get a few friends together and really try to beat the map on hard or insane. It will take a few attempts and you'll have to use all insights you got but once you win, you'll understand this sense of achievement I was talking about.
And if that isn't your cup of tea then that's fine by me, but then don't bash my map for it. A lot of blood sweat and tears went into making this map (and not just by me) so I don't care for short sighted comments from people who gave up on the first try.
I can't really see those "short sighted" people, and the ones bashing the map. I only see one comment concerned about getting damaged/killed when rappeling down form the helicopter. Which I commented on it is a bad gameplay design getting damaged right at the start, or any kind of spawnkill.
Anyway, probably I'd play it more seriously and would be my kind of beverage, if it wasn't the 100th class based map, where you enter some door labelled [insert class name] then getting three or so from the default crappy guns. Only if the script wasn't just extended to some dynamic difficulty and adjustment, but actually having scripted custom tactical guns(iron-sight, different fire-modes, expansions etc) and maybe class based perks(ie scripted classes). Such as you are invisible while ducking and not shooting, or can hold more ammos, but slower etc, you can imagine. Optionally custom monsters. But instead it is just the usual default contentfest with classes, just this time some difficulty adjustment and fancy badges script added to the mix.
It's pretty easy to avoid the abseil/rappel points from becoming over-run, unless you're solo, then yes you're going to get slaughtered. Just played it again tonight with 3, was good fun! We only got silver but then 2 were newbs to the map, still it was a blast again.
@Streamfox: your class customisation ideas sound pretty good to me, but that would probably require a lot of extra work (models, scripts, sounds, animations, etc). In SC, maps are still made mostly by a single mapper (with some ocasional help from friends) and within the SC team there isn't a map project group with different talents all working on 1 official map (would be cool if there were, tho), so such a highly customised map will probably not appear for a while (or ever).
Really solid, well-designed and fabricated - played very well with no lagging despite seeming huge. We were 2 and cheated with a little bit of xpm (not a great deal) but even so it took a few goes and some strategy to win through. I look forward to being able to play with a good team of proper co-op players some day, using vanilla SC, as this is a true co-op challenge well worth tackling!
The level of detail was lovely, everywhere you looked, the expertise and polish was evident throughout.
Nice solid entity work resulting in smooth flawless operation, it's always impressive to see the work of master mappers - inspiring stuff! Balance seemed good for 2 so far, although difficulty is high - not that that's a bad thing, too many latter-day maps ignore teamwork. In order to beat this you have to band together solidly and fight together as one, which is the core principal of SC after all, so good job with this Hezus, you made something pretty remarkable!
If you enjoy bullet sponges, respawning enemies, corridors with two boxes for cover and artificial difficulty in general, you are gonna love this one.
InsectMeNot
Are you sure you played the same map everyone else did? :p