i hope the mods aren't going to close this thread since everything that is posted in this forum is seen as a direct attack against the humanity, but go ahead.

i personally can't stand The Chasm. when i first saw it i was totally blown by the tileset use which i still think is great, however nowadays i just can't help but hate it to death; the ammo is just too little and powerless compared to the huge size of the level and the large amount of carrots, added the pits which put you in that silly "jail" and you get the most boring level ever. a few parts of this level, though, admittedly, i still consider genius and i'd secretly rip them off if i was to ever make my own level.

I think bblair is way too platformish, random and unbalanced for how popular it is!

eyecandy is unimportant (you did see this one coming.)

battle1 is my favorite battle level by miles and whenever i set up a public server i would never have an urge to play anything else. battle2 is also good though a little too slow-paced (due to the lack of power-up's) and limiting.

b3, however, sucks.

Dirty Laundry is among the best CTF levels ever. Unfortuantely, hardly anyone plays it nowadays ;(. I also think that Rather Useless CTF has a really nice gameflow, but of course that might be considered self-advertisement

I think Semi is restrictive and annoying to play in.

i find all popular levels from B1 to Semi to Zaitox incredibly fun to play in and never ever get tired of them.

Originally Posted by Unhit

Dirty Laundry is among the best CTF levels ever.

Agreed. That was one of the few CTF levels that I actually enjoyed playing.

b1 is the only level where i enjoy playing

Instagib streetfighter is my favorite custom gametype.

Originally Posted by Unhit

Dirty Laundry is among the best CTF levels ever. Unfortuantely, hardly anyone plays it nowadays ;(. I also think that Rather Useless CTF has a really nice gameflow, but of course that might be considered self-advertisement

Very good layout. Unfortunately it has way too many full nrg carrots. In a 2vs2 where both teams are good, games last a very, very long time. It gets boring. Even moreso when the players stick to the mentality that only the flag holder should be getting full nrgs. If the teams do that, then the game WILL last for hours. A 3vs3 or 4vs4 won't be as bad, but the level is small and as such it will feel a bit crowded. That's why the level isn't played much any more.

Originally Posted by R3ptile

i personally can't stand The Chasm. when i first saw it i was totally blown by the tileset use which i still think is great, however nowadays i just can't help but hate it to death; the ammo is just too little and powerless compared to the huge size of the level and the large amount of carrots, added the pits which put you in that silly "jail" and you get the most boring level ever. a few parts of this level, though, admittedly, i still consider genius and i'd secretly rip them off if i was to ever make my own level.

You're not the only one. Try playing chasm in low detail.

I think it's silly to play DW. It is such a stupid level with a stupid layout, zero eyecandy and very little gameplay thanks to the box. It's a piece of crap that's an insult to level design and everytime it's hosted, it's like taking a dump on level design philosophy. I never truly found the level fun, and the oldies that played it so much was only cause they were used to playing it, so newer players would have a hard time surpassing them there.

However, the box does add a few amusing tactics but I think another level should be made with a similar concept akin to the way Rag made Undulation, which is heavily based on One Spot.

Originally Posted by FireSworD

However, the box does add a few amusing tactics but I think another level should be made with a similar concept akin to the way Rag made Undulation, which is heavily based on One Spot.

Sacrifice?

What's DW? I can't understand this community's use of acronyms.

Diamondus Warzone (Capture3.j2l)

The funny thing about DW is no one even plays the official version of it, that's how broken it is. It has a plasma shield sitting in the corner, and bunch of single player start positions so it's possible to luck out and spawn near the enemy base. With fixes applied, the level isn't bad, but it isn't good either. It's just mediocre. Compare that to the other official CTF levels which are largely unplayable without very serious editing.

Battle 1 actually has the same problem. A lot of people praise it for its layout, and it does indeed have its moments. However, the original design comes with a water shield out in the open. Most versions played remove the shield but replace it with nothing, so a whole section of the level is rendered empty. This and a whole bunch of other things make battle 1 a very slow paced level for dueling and can sometimes go for a minute or more without seeing the other player. To me and I'd argue most people that's just boring. A lot of other battle levels suffer from the problem of being slow paced, and I'd argue that's why CTF is the more popular game type in competitive play.

I have my own theories on how to design a good battle level, which seem to go against a lot of popular opinions. Bascially I think that the ideal battle level for dueling should have abundant powerups and carrots (or ones that respawn quickly). Some people seem to get it into their heads that fewer carrots/powerups is better, since it makes the level easier to control by depriving the other player of them. This is true, but it also encourages camping and hit-and-run tactics (since chasing is usually too dangerous to be worth it when health is scarce). Risky tactics in general have less payoff, so a very conservative and defensive playstyle dominates. Again, fun for some people, but I have a short attention span.

With a lot of carrots, or carrots that respawn quickly (still needs a bare minimum of 3 carrots), this changes. Camping carrots is a bad strategy because then your opponent is open to try all the other spots in the level. Whereas if there are only two carrots, then each player can camp each spot. This means that players will be moving around the level a lot more, and chasing down your opponent is sometimes necessary. And a lot of powerups means that people take more damage, balancing out the abundance of health and also making the game much faster. To me this is more fun than the slower style of level, and just as strategic, though it involves a whole different set of strategies and demands faster thinking.

I think this is largely due to the fact that CTF by definition has a point to which the player is always drawn; the enemy base (when you don't have the flag yet) or your own base (if you do have it). You will of course need to hunt the other player(s) especially in duels; but you can't stray too far from that base either or else you will never score. Therefore in CTF it is a lot easier to predict where someone is and thereby find and fight him. In battle levels on the other hand, especially those with more than one carrot, the enemy could be pretty much anywhere and thus finding him can take a lot more time.

You also have an arrow in CTF.

It depends on level design but for most levels that's quite true and it's why CTF tends to work better. It's also easier to make a good CTF level for that reason: the layout is grounded on two points, the bases. It also helps that CTF has 3 hearts instead of 5.

You're a bit wrong on the subject of CTF duels where you said if you stray too far from the base you can't score. This certainly applies to larger games, but in a duel you will score as long as you are reasonably fast and the spawn points are sane. Generally the blue spawn should be as far as possible from the red base, and vice versa. If not, it's probably a bad level for CTF duels.

True, but you do know where the enemy will go after he has killed you: usually first to the base and then to the carrot, as long as you've hit him once. This is another advantage of CTF in the sense that the killer always knows generally in which area the victim will respawn (as long as, as you said, the start positions are sane) and the victim always knows where his killer will go. Because of this gameplay picks up quite fast after a kill whereas in most battle levels after a kill people can spend minutes looking for each other.

And good point Gry, the arrow helps a bit too 8)

Assuming there is one carrot: In a duel going after the carrot right after you make the score isn't always the best idea, in fact very often it's a good idea to avoid it even if you are at 1. This is counterintuitive at first but makes sense. This is because your opponent knows you are hurt, whereas you know your opponent is at 3 because they just spawned. If they camp the carrot, you will be an easy kill assuming you go right to it after making the score. But if you ignore the carrot entirely and they camp it, you can go grab the enemy flag and all the powerups. Once you get their flag, they will probably go try to get yours, which opens up the carrot for you to easily take (they couldn't have taken it because they are at 3).

In other words, I would argue that after making a kill in a ctf duel, it's more often better to score, then capture the enemy flag, THEN get the carrot. This does not apply to all levels and all situations though. For example none of this applies if there are multiple carrots, and it's good to switch it up once and a while so you are unpredictable.

Let me add that it depends on the design and skill of the player. In most cases (assuming the server isn't laggy) I would be confident the player wouldn't have the reflexes to kill me, even if he tried to camp at the carrot.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

post

Of course good players will try to apply reverse psychology in such cases and do the opposite of whatever they expect their opponent to think they will do, who will (if experienced) know that they will do so. Tactics are fun 8D

In which case:
I won't go for the carrot, that's obvious.
I won't sneak up from behind, they'd expect me to do that
I won't get all the weapons and pounce on him, he'd be ready for that if he thought I would change my plans on going for the carrot to sneaking up from behind to this.
I won't hide in foreground scenery, it's the last thing I'd normally do, but my enemy will assume that I'm trying to psych him out, and will figure that I won't go to the place where you would normally psych someone out in hiding, so he would check in some odd spot and find me not ready for him.
So I guess I'll just have to use helicopter ears above the pit, leave the server and change my name!

STRATEGY

I won't hide in foreground scenery, it's the last thing I'd normally do, but my enemy will assume that I'm trying to psych him out, and will figure that I won't go to the place where you would normally psych someone out in hiding, so he would check in some odd spot and find me not ready for him.
So I guess I'll just have to use helicopter ears above the pit, leave the server and change my name!

valco.... ultimate ctf master........

Then again, by the time I had that planned out the other team had one and we had switched to the next level.

Hotels are great!

No. No they are not.



Valco, your theory has a flaw, no player is perfect, so the whoever it is won't be ready for evertything. Plus, the ones that are ready for everything are cocky, so they will let you do wutever they want, you will pwn their butts, they will say you cheat and leave/ban you from the server!


edit:
I said don't instead of are not. .

I guess your right. My JOKE does have a flaw.

A lot of games have pretty wack level designs, but the overall gameplay was fun. Check out super mario. Levels were simple, but the game was a killer and still fun.

Hotel levels? wth gayness hahahaha. no, i like the idea, it's nice to see some added innovations for these new generation of gameplays. I'll probably check those levels out sometime soon then.

What? Hotels sucks. Don't check them out.

I personally don't like playing hotels over actual games either, I just find my self quite good at making them. I don't want Bboy Type7 to download every hotel level, but at least mine one that has a decent rating, to get a taste of it.

I'll check some out. They sound pretty interesting.

98% of hotels you'll find on J2O are total crap. If you want to explore a good hotel, I recommend contacting EvilMike, Sciz, or Black Ninja and asking them to let you explore their (now defunct) hotels.

I checked some this morning. A lot looks really nice. However, it looks like the downloads section didn't have a hotel category in it. That'll be pretty good if it did had one.

there is no hotel category on j2o because if there was it would be impossible to tell them apart from random spam uploaded by people trying to attack the site.

There's a hotel level I checked out called Galaxia. It looks dope. The tileset didn't have shading that much to it or texture, but the level was good. Lots of things you can interact in that lev. Fresh level.

dude, dope kills people :\

A lot of the hotel levels were well designed. Props to the level designers. The thing I didn't like were those elevator tiles in most hotel levels. There are times you get stuck on them. Ammos added there were ok, but not necessarily for a hotel level. If that hotel level has deathmatch battles there, it would be nice.

It's casual english. Dope means really really good. Fresh means new, innovative. Ever heard of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? When I mean that level or that thing is dope, I mean it's hella good. It's alright really, cuz you guys aren't really from english speaking countries. We use these a lot man. You gotta use em in the right time, buddy.