[MISSION] Steep - Catastrophic Carnage

Since the next event cycle has started, this mission is back to zero strikes.

Hi, we judged version 14 of your mission.

Verdict: STRIKE 1
Judges present: Egg, Frahtcy, Randomguy, Floro
Demo link: https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...63.dem.zip

Overall:

The waves were incredibly long for a 7-waver, each of them taking over 5 minutes, despite a few of them having been played at front the majority of the time; many subwaves vastly overstayed their welcome, and should either be trimmed quite a bit, or cut off entirely.
Most waves had a very high dps demand that a team of 4 players could not possibly meet, on top of a very large amount of medics which were either essentially guaranteed to pop around backup soldiers (wave 2), or made the final boss quite literally impossible to play (wave 7). The trimming shouldn't just be done to shorten the waves, it should also be done to have the mission fit its difficulty label.
We found that a few bots had inexplicably unusual properties. Too many hitscan robots being expert for no apparent reason, and too many soldiers being easy which ultimately ended up being little more than filler. The 450 HP shotgun heavies (can be made bigger to convey more clearly their increased HP) and the increased HP on the rapid fire soldiers were also very confusing. Don't add random attribute changes unless you can clearly convey a clear expectation of that to your players.

Wave 1:
The wave seems to be a big dps check, due to how much HP the bots have altogether. We suggest either removing umeds, decreasing the amount of steel gauntlets and / or scrapping crit bat scouts.

Wave 2:
The combination of battalions and ubers was very overwhelming, since the battalions in question force the ubers to pop, no matter what you try to use.

Wave 3:
Long and uninteresting wave that was way too long even when the majority of our time was spent on the front and also somehow being easier than the previous 2.

Wave 4:
The whole part with main wave spies, and supers pushing alongside with them was too overwhelming, because there were no way, that one could even try to bodyblock them, without being backstabbed or knocked away by the scorchers. Wave difficulty took a big nose dive past that section.

Wave 5:
Trim it, too long.

Wave 6:
Changing the attributes of Valve template bots is not a good idea, especially if you are going to use exactly the same icons.

Wave 7:
We could not put a single dent into that boss, and didn't want to give it more than one try after the slog that was the rest of the mission. The medic spam makes that boss flat out untouchable without some form of high melee or untyped damage. Wave should be scrapped to the benefit of a more interesting concept than medic spam making the wave unbeatable.

Hi, we judged version 14 of your mission.

Verdict: STRIKE 1
Judges present: Egg, Frahtcy, Randomguy, Floro
Demo link: https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...63.dem.zip

Overall:

The waves were incredibly long for a 7-waver, each of them taking over 5 minutes, despite a few of them having been played at front the majority of the time; many subwaves vastly overstayed their welcome, and should either be trimmed quite a bit, or cut off entirely.
Most waves had a very high dps demand that a team of 4 players could not possibly meet, on top of a very large amount of medics which were either essentially guaranteed to pop around backup soldiers (wave 2), or made the final boss quite literally impossible to play (wave 7). The trimming shouldn't just be done to shorten the waves, it should also be done to have the mission fit its difficulty label.
We found that a few bots had inexplicably unusual properties. Too many hitscan robots being expert for no apparent reason, and too many soldiers being easy which ultimately ended up being little more than filler. The 450 HP shotgun heavies (can be made bigger to convey more clearly their increased HP) and the increased HP on the rapid fire soldiers were also very confusing. Don't add random attribute changes unless you can clearly convey a clear expectation of that to your players.

Wave 1:
The wave seems to be a big dps check, due to how much HP the bots have altogether. We suggest either removing umeds, decreasing the amount of steel gauntlets and / or scrapping crit bat scouts.

Wave 2:
The combination of battalions and ubers was very overwhelming, since the battalions in question force the ubers to pop, no matter what you try to use.

Wave 3:
Long and uninteresting wave that was way too long even when the majority of our time was spent on the front and also somehow being easier than the previous 2.

Wave 4:
The whole part with main wave spies, and supers pushing alongside with them was too overwhelming, because there were no way, that one could even try to bodyblock them, without being backstabbed or knocked away by the scorchers. Wave difficulty took a big nose dive past that section.

Wave 5:
Trim it, too long.

Wave 6:
Changing the attributes of Valve template bots is not a good idea, especially if you are going to use exactly the same icons.

Wave 7:
We could not put a single dent into that boss, and didn't want to give it more than one try after the slog that was the rest of the mission. The medic spam makes that boss flat out untouchable without some form of high melee or untyped damage. Wave should be scrapped to the benefit of a more interesting concept than medic spam making the wave unbeatable.

Okay so honest question. Will you ever pass this if I don't make any changes to the robot selection but just balance all waves, slower or less spawning etc?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

If you're asking whether you can keep random changes to robots' healths and other stats, we will not. We strive for consistency and to maintain player expectations.
If you're asking whether you can tone down the bots until it is in a good state, you can do that. We simply desire the creation of fun and consistent challenges.

v16a, changes: a lot. Mainly, bomb no longer resets, engineers on waves 2-4 only, reduced giant scouts, boss vaccs resistance lowered.
  mvm_steep_rc3a_adv_catastrophic_carnage_v16a.pop (Size: 32.4 KB / Downloads: 25)

Verdict: NO STRIKE

Judges Present:
randomguy (scout)
Skin King (pyro)
Quantum Apple (engineer)
Other Players:
Hell-met (Heavy)

Demo: https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...83.dem.zip

Overall:
Some engineer spots on this map don't seem to have teleporters, so you'll need to use vscript to add them in yourself.
From wave 2 to wave 5, the mission relies heavily on spam with strong common bots trying to carry weaker giants. This completely shuts down mobility based classes such as scout while strengthening classes that abuse corners and chokes such as heavy and engineer. This is only made worse by Steep's many strong chokes.

w1:
DPS test wave, not a problem but there's not an awful lot here to threaten heavy or engineer, aside from some easily picked umeds.

w2:
Fine wave, but the start with all the soldiers and burst demos did feel a bit spammy for scout.

w3:
Common spam with weak giants isn't particularly fun here, as it just shuts down mobility based classes and makes everyone hide behind chokes, which also makes heavy and engi significantly stronger than they should be due to their ability to easily hold chokes, you should tone down the spam here and use stronger giants.

w4:
Same problem as w3, the gpyro is especially weak at this point.

w5:
There's just uber medics everywhere this wave on both the giants and commons, making the wave feel like a chaotic mess with little structure. Cut back on the usage of the uber medics, currently, with so many bots having uber medics attached to them, there is a lot of time spent just waiting for a bot's uber to wear off. I'd also recommend to use full duration uber medics on giants instead of commons.
Some of the giants were also stacking due to their frequency, which is only made worse by them all having uber or giant medics.
Additionally, the wavespawn controlling the shortstop scouts has four WaitForAllSpawneds, this doesn't work, and only one is actually used, we also didn't see them during either of the wave 5 attempts.

w6:
The volume of medics and their vaccinators having permanent (as far as we could tell) resistances while also running at max speed makes this wave uninteresting because it makes it unfeasible to kill the medics before they reach the boss, giving red team very little counterplay aside from melee or untyped damage.

Since the advanced mission quota has been filled for the next event, this mission submission will be deferred to the following event.

This mission is now on zero strikes. The judges may choose (at their discretion) to pause judging this submission until the next event cycle officially starts.