UNniversary Bash 3

[Treylina]

The event will be taking place on the 5th and 6th of August! At max, it'll be extended for 2 more days if at least relatively popular.

Missed out on the Anniversary Bash, or just want another chance to meet more players? Here's your second chance this year!

But what makes the UNniversary different though? It covers the maps of previous bashes, celebrating the past. It's also not an anniversary...hence the UN.

However, unlike the previous UNniversaries, I will be curating maps. I aim to pick 6 to 15 of the best maps from each year. This ensures less waiting around for poor quality maps to end and highlights the best moments. It will also let us get through the entire levellist at least once while it not being a ghost-town for the most part.

If you aren't familiar with bashes in general, we'll be going through a bunch of CTF and battle levels, while irregular players come and join to see what's up. We may run some custom variants and silly mutators too.

The event will take place around early/middle August (I will announce a more specific date later) and at least two days, four at most (depending on popularity). I want to hit that international summer holiday spot to get the most potential for people to join. Tell your old-time JJ2 friends too!


So I'd like to ask, what is the best time for you? I might make it late July instead. What are your favourite maps from the bashes throughout the years? No need to give a huge list, a little is fine as well.

Also I'll try and not end up finding a host the last-minute this time.

[Slaz]

For the time, I've got at least 2 weeks of vacation starting 16th July, but generally any weekend should be fine to me.

And for the maps, well I can only recommend Pinball Arena 2K15 again whahaha! (sorry) :p

[Treylina]

It's more than time for an update!

I've been curating through the maps lately, and I'm nearly done. However, there are some maps I'm not so sure about adding, so I might be having an open-curation session for those.

And I have finally announced the date! The event will at least be taking place on the 5th and 6th of August! At max, it'll be extended for 2 more days.

It's likely that Shaker will be hosting the levels, but I'm open to other willing hosts, as long they don't have a potato CPU (camel -cough-) or connection. I'll need to send some updated/fixed versions of levels, too.

[DJVee]

Sounds awesome, I'mma try to get some matches in alongside Splatoon 2!

[Treylina]

The maplist is finally done! Turns out the maps selected from each bash is smaller than expected, but I think that's okay. Would rather have quality over quantity. From as little as 3 (due to a lack of new maps selected that generation) to as many as 14 selected from each year.

Now I just need to update and send them. Shaker will be hosting the UNniversary bash. Not sure on the exact time of day yet, but it'll come soon.

P.S thanks to those who helped me decide on the remaining considerations!

[Treylina]

Ok, the event will be starting around 3-5pm BST. We'll be starting with battle, then CTF on the next day.

Note that I haven't picked maps purely to my own preferences. I'm going more for mass appeal.

Click here for the maplist! (https://pastebin.com/r1FRmxnr) Sorry they are only filenames.

[Logface202]

missed it because EXPENSIVE CABIN INTERNET.

[Treylina]

missed it because EXPENSIVE CABIN INTERNET.

You live even more in nowhere than I do.

P.S, It's still going! Today is CTF.

[ShakerNL]

Temporary URL for the level list:
https://www.pukenukem.com/levellist.ini

[Treylina]

Thanks to everyone who played! It's still going, but will be finishing on somewhere around 3:30pm BST, tomorrow.

..Unless I consider extending the UNniversary by one more day, so we can be a little more crazy with settings and cycle to the levels we never got to (which I feel a bit dissapointed about). But I'm not sure about it, as I kind of feel burnt out, and don't know who else would be willing to join.


I'll change up things next year. Next time, I'll be doing a public curation on all bash levels, and set a time and date for when I do. This way I'll be able to make the levellist even more refined for quality.

Also, I may enforce plusonly at the start so we can push custom gamemodes/mutators more. I don't regret making the early portion vanilla friendly though, as we did get some plusless players joining and talking. It did limit on what I could do however.

Maps will also not last as long. I will keep the timer to 10 minutes with no overtime and the maxscore will vary depending on the player count.

Overall, UNniversary Bash 3 feels like a moderate success. I'd say the peak players was lower, but a more stable count.

[Treylina]

I extended it for one more day...don't really feel it was worth the effort, but whatever.

[Roobar]

It was worth it for me. I have never played with mutators before. Like playing as Super Mario. Also, good choice of maps.

And in a continuation of a chat from yesterday: I agree and you're right about your view of how to become a good player. But you don't realize that this is also the very reason why there won't be many new people joining the multiplayer servers, unless there's a separation for noobs and pros.

[Treylina]

It was worth it for me. I have never played with mutators before. Like playing as Super Mario. Also, good choice of maps.

And in a continuation of a chat from yesterday: I agree and you're right about your view of how to become a good player. But you don't realize that this is also the very reason why there won't be many new people joining the multiplayer servers, unless there's a separation for noobs and pros.

I liked the fact I got to put on silly settings the third day. I just wish more people joined. I hosted this not just for regulars, but irregulars as well.

As for the latter subject, gaining XP from kills is easily abusable - killing idlers, sandbaggers (i.e people who deliberately play bad for you) and poorly skilled players excessively. Not to mention, killing is just last hitting so it's not the most accurate indication of skill, especially in any gamemode that isn't battle.

Sure, I wouldn't mind stats but there could be a better way to judge - however setting less-skilled and more-skilled players apart is simply impractical. It would be even harder to set up a match than it would now.

The reason why there isn't many players anymore is less about matchmaking, and more about how most fans have moved onto other matters - such as real life or other games/activities. And that the game is getting increasingly hard to obtain legally.

..I feel like you should be typing that in the group, not here though. Now there's context missing for anyone who isn't in it.

[Stijn]

I am speaking purely from my personal perspective here, so get that this is meant as one point of data, not something prescriptive.

That said, I think I can see where Roobar is coming from. I don't get much enjoyment from large, free-for-all public servers, as exciting as their level list may be, because typically some of the players will be idling, and most others will be far better than me, so I'm essentially running around randomly shooting and dying a lot without getting much done. I obviously still enjoy the chatting and getting the occasional kill, but by and large a 10-player battle/ctf free-for-all isn't super fun for me as a mediocre player who mostly joins these events for nostalgia's sake.

This is obviously not a problem with your server specifically but something inherent to the game itself, and maybe I should just suck it up and accept that JJ2 just isn't my type of game (anymore). But I do enjoy the more "silly" side of JJ2, like the various gun mutators, that one mutator by Sal that give random advantages to teams, et cetera. Sure it's more random, but that also makes it enjoyable across the board instead of just for veterans. No one joins a Bash-like server to play a serious hardcore game of CTF anyway.

As for this event specifically, it's cool that you reserved some time for that on day three and four, but then the weekend was over and I wasn't super interested in joining anymore. I recognize that there may be interest in "normal" game modes as well and you don't need to go all out on the mutators from the beginning, but maybe mix it up a little more instead of having the prime time (i.e. the weekend) be mostly vanilla-only. That way everyone has a chance to have some fun playing.

[Treylina]

I can understand. I'm not into multiplayer as much as I used to.

I think the more practical solution is to use more random mutators, than to encourage or seperate player skill. Sure Jety will whine but who cares?

I had made it vanilla friendly for quite a while, so I could get such players to come in and see the community to download plus. And sort of for nostalgias sake. And I admit some people having outdated versions of plus kind of drove the decision too. It wasn't like that last year because the levellist didn't work for vanilla players.

Though I could make the sacrifice next year, or just make vanilla-time shorter.

I'd like to see some more silly casual maps made for AB20 too. Rhythm-based and randomly-generated battle anyone?

P.S there wasn't any Unniversary on day 4.

[Jelly Jam]

I think making it vanilla friendly til the pre-2013 maps is good. Maybe you should leave it like this. c:

Off topic but it would be so cool if we had all new levels for AB20.

[DJVee]

For my first Jazz 2 event, it was awesome! I really enjoyed playing with everyone, even though I really suck since I'm so new, haha. I can't wait for the next event! :)

[PurpleJazz]

I enjoyed the nostalgia of the event but I just couldn't bring myself to stick around long enough to play all of the levels. There were simply too many of them and the timelimit on each one was far too long, meaning that the event felt like a slog at times. Next time I suggest going with a more concise levellist (cutting down on the number of old levels especially) and making each round relatively short (no more than 10 minutes) so people have the chance to play a wide variety of levels without having to stay up well into the night.

[Jelly Jam]

I can't wait for the next event! :)

Tomorrow! Teeheehee