Mission name - Demonheim
Map - mvm_underworld_rc2 Difficulty - Expert Contributors - BlacKy (myself) for making the mission; Woozlez/signalmax/Llutozz for making the map
Restrictions:
-test without sniper or spy. -if testing with a medic, he must use a shield. otherwise, no medic at all. -if testing with a soldier, he must equip any kind of banner as secondary weapon. 
Hi, we judged your mission.
(This post was last modified: 01-03-2024, 09:30 PM by "I have emails" -David Starkey.)
Verdict: NO STRIKE (FIRST RUN) Judges present: Egg, Pasta, Skin King, Floro Demo link: https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...50.dem.zip Overall This mission is not good in its current state. Spammy in the extreme, many robots that are way too strong, or with arbitrary attributes that are flat out unfair to fight. However, with enough dedication, this could be a workable mission. The list of issues we're giving to you is non-exhaustive, these are only the most egregious. -Update relays to prevent automatic bomb resets. Wave 1: -The booster heavy inexplicably has rage giving scale; do not arbitrarily give rage giving scale to regular giants. -Pistol scouts are incredibly strong on any AI level above easy. If you want a continuous stream of bullets, use heavies. -Lots of giants spawning in way too fast from many different locations, causing an amount of stacking that's completely overwhelming. Wave 2: -Slow milk giant scouts are not fun. Replace them with something that does offer counterplay options (ie. common nataschas). -The tomislav heavies have absolutely no business having 75% faster spin-up time (same issue as common pistol scouts). -The Pyro boss gets gimped pretty hard by the automatic bomb resets. Wave 3: -The backup soldiers have unclear icons; do not use barrage icons for soldiers that shoot nothing like one. -The final 3 demos are among the worst designed bots we've ever seen. 400% damage bonus, 400% explosion radius with 20 projectiles in clip that all cause the big smoke explosion isn't hard, it's unfair. Cut these robots from your mission entirely.
Thanks for the feedback. I needed to test the waters and see whats your standard of shenanigans and overall difficulty that can be allowed during the campaign, because the last and 2nd last events had some very challenging exp missions (isolation and waterfront respectively).
Anywho, here's the changelog: General * prevented the bombs from reset * removed all rage scales from non bosses enemies and set all bosses to have a 0.5 value w1 * removed the bonk! from the g scouts * buffed the tank by 5000 HP * removed one g shotgun heavy * changed pistol scouts to backscatters, condensed them, and changed spawn dependancies around them * removed the g meds and made the deflectors with battalions instead w2 * removed the modified fire rate for scatterbonks and nerfed their numbers * removed the jump ability from the samurais * added 300$ (in total) into the tanks * lowered crit scouts skill to normal * removed the fast spinup time from the g tomislavs * removed the slow effect from the milk scouts * made the boss faster and added HoK to it w3 * removed the backup from the g barrages and changed the icon to bazooka * reduced the stun effect from the g soldier into RS level of 1 * reworked the 3 demo bosses entirely - each of them now has its own shtick and it seemed balanced enough after 3 or so tests. i will not gonna axe them entirely, just gonna rework the attribute values instead if needed
Tried to avoid using an external site but im not sure how to drop a file into the comments, i see in other people's posts that its possible.
In any case, here's the new file (V2): https://mega.nz/file/Bgs0zLQB#_qwqPX6Ke_...ISYXXpwpVo 
STRIKE ONE
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2024, 04:31 AM by M1.)
Judges in attendance: M1, Floro, randomguy, Skin King Demo link is broken atm. Will hopefully be up soon. Overall: -You are using WAY too many custom robots. Less is more, and you risk the players being unable to anticipate the challenges ahead in any way with the number of custom robots. In the future, consider the following advice. Quote:When designing your own custom bots, there are a few things to consider. First things first and probably the most important thing: Don't use custom bots for the sake of using custom bots! When people start to design their own first few missions, it's almost a guarantee that it's filled to the brim with custom bots. Even I'm guilty of this. But this isn't necessary in the slightest.-Many of the regen custom robots are unnecessary and not properly communicated. Consider removing them. -Experts really should not be endurance length. It prevents the wave from being a coherent push-punish combination that makes playing an expert so memorable. -The mission should not have EventPopFile Halloween, as obscuring the wave with "Wave 666" is unhelpful. This is hard coded in the game and cannot be avoided with any amount of vscripting. -Include a vscript file that removes crumpkins in the future (ask me to make it, it's not hard). -Not a gripe with the mission itself, but underworld has a major nav issue that makes many giants get stuck near the left-side pit. -We were a little uneasy with striking the mission. You're able to take advice well, but the mission is currently in a far-from-passable state. Wave 1: -Unlimited conch support is a band-aid fix to the problem of insane pacing issues. Once you've been pushed, the bots take large breaks and then follow it up with big, singular pushing forces. Remove them and try to figure out a better way around the pacing issue. -The back scatters don't make the issue of hitscan hell any better. You can't walk anywhere. -The soldier subwave does absolutely nothing because the scouts have no opportunity to pick up the bomb. Throw them in the same spawn as the soldiers. -Cabers and steels should not be randomchoiced. They have massively different power levels. -The giant soldier and giant armored sandman section has very little difficulty from anything but health. Add some heavier hitting robots to make it interesting. -The wave in general has no punish. There are no uber medics to force a team to play together or play forward, and the tank is sent early enough to never punish the player. Getting pushed is more useful than it is detrimental. Note: we had to panic through the last section because of connection issues. Wave 2: -The regen on the pyros doesn't really do anything. You could add medics to it instead. Floro suggests a popping bigheal. -The icon for regen pyros suggests heal on kill, which would be a lot stronger. Also a possible suggestion to change the pyros (replace passive regen with restore all health on kill). -The scatter bonks and the shortstops are more hitscan hell and are not interesting to play around. Try not to mess with player expectations with AI and wavebars. -The crit on kill on the heavies doesn't really do anything. Crit on kill only works on giants. -If you're going to have permanent backup pyros, you should instead throw the banner on the boss itself. -The boss was not interesting since counterplay involved using heal on hit and bodyblocking. The flame range made kiting the AI impossible. -The boss's heal on kill doesn't help at all. Wave 3: -The giant kritz medics should have IgnoreEnemies. In its current state it's just "go pyro or hug it" -The mission support spies are completely BS. It unfairly punishes any class that doesn't do burst damage (read: pyro and engineer) -The sandman + heavy subwave drags on FOREVER. It reached the point where we panicked through it because it lasted so long. -The sandmans should not have the look velocity attribute applied to it. It's random and is not properly communicated to the player. -Grapple heavies are a tired, worn out gimmick. They don't work here. -The final demos have arbitrary health increases as compared to regular template knights. -The last demo SHOULD NOT have permanent immunity to all but melee. We immediately panicked through it. 
Here are the demo files from that session:
https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...18.dem.zip https://us-testing.moonlight.tf:27107/de...10.dem.zip
Well, personally i think it should be clearer (in the main guidelines for example) of how much modified robots are a big no no. Yea i can remove all the random attributes i put but it will feel too bland as i totally disagree with the saying that 'valve has supplied us with everything we need'. No, imo custom missions should have their own flair with some random attributes and i did all i can to show the players what each bot does using the custom icons (also NYS is amazing, im not sure why some had issues with the icons).
If you guys are against this mentality then im gonna have to drop this submission away. As said, i CAN do this your way, but i choose not to, because i wont enjoy playing it (learning this the hard way via my GG mission in potato). Sorry Randomguy, no Condemned Cock for you after all  Some smaller nitpicks regarding the feedback: * I asked on Discord before submitting this if the next event will be themed, and if its possible to submit a halloween mission. I got the green light by the staff that it can be featured, tho i was a bit uneasy with having a halloween mission in a non halloween event, i know that there are no promises that next halloween will have its own event, either by ML or potato, so i wanted to poot it here as it was fine with you guys. But then you're saying that w666 is a usual nono as it doesnt mention how many waves are there and so on, well, this is basically how any halloween mission is played out, and its not (imo anyway) a problem to the general playerbase. * Correct me if im wrong, but both Underworld and Underground share the same nav, as its just a reskin. I did notice some very mild nav issues in these maps in the span of playing them within the last few years, but overall i feel like its fine, and pacing wasnt really hurting becaue of robots being stuck. Going back to your guidelines, you've said that "Your mission must use a map that is deemed "sufficiently complete and functional." ", and Underworld definately answers this criteria. For those who know me well enough, my criterias for good maps boil down to 3 elements: -Front upgrade station is a must, even in a small map like dusk/barren, because just like irl, killing yourself is not a valid option (ends killstreak basically, or just an annoyance if the players have no killbind), also its somewhat forcing the engy to buy the bisexual teleport upgrade. -Tank paths that dont crush you with zero remorse (im looking at you, powerplant!). -Flank spawn that actually makes you turn your head around to fight the flankers (otherwise its like bigrock). * The 'bullet hell' remark is still unclear to me. Floro mentioned that even heavies are better suited to fight against than the pistol scouts (now back scatters) in w1. I dont see the reason here. If i supply enough money for resistances, then you're fine with whichever bullet based robot is spawning. During playtesting, nobody said anything bad about these scouts except their pacing/amount/subwave length, which all got fixed for this judging session. * Having no uber meds in the mission is one of the main gimmicks (alongside being a demonic themed mission based on Runescape lore). I've tried compensating it with adding some difficulty in terms push force, either by amount of giants or health buffs. * I personally find the last demo boss to be a nice challenge overall, the resistance bubbles are clearly showing the info the players need to know about (and even if not, a few secs of firing at it with no damage numbers would tell them what they need to know). I made him easy enough so you *dont* need to spec into melee upgrades/classes in order to get him killed, as hes been nerfed enough during tests when people complained about him having too much damage. *** No nitpick, i just wanna say that i do want to remove the pumpkins, yet have no knowledge whatsoever about vscript, so.. yea, feel free to tell me what to do about it, and thanks in advance! |