The Demoman Sticky Jumper

Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
Hi - discussion type of question.

This new weapon is proving to be a challenge in terms of future design for any map.

The sticky gun jumper does no damage on blast and will allow you the demoman to fly like the wind - almost impossible to stop giving you unlimited downrange access based on the map. An 8 sticky jump will allow you to go fast as lightening and you will avoid snipers and sentires can't lock onto you fast enough. Ali Baba's wee booties might give you the ablitiy to do a 90 degree turn in mid air alhough it's designed for the charge weapons - I did this one a map wearing these when doing a sticky jump.

Issue - because of this weapon it looks like canyon style or outdoor maps will become very hard to design because of this weapon.

Example - badwater basin - the usual red course of action is to turtle on top of the roof but with this sticky - if you get 4 blue demos using it at the start they can fly right past any red defenders so fast they can get up onto that roof faster than the engies can build or alternatively they could turn to the right and then head to red spawn to camp it out by getting into the map room and just tossing nades over.

How do we as mappers:

1. Let people use this weapon because it is HUGELY FUN WHEN DONE RIGHT AND ON A LARGE OUTDOOR MAP! :wow:
2. Keep the game play good - because there is lot's of potential for abuse with this thing. i.e. Defending demos can fly right to the end of the map to get to blues spawn to harass the attackers after the cart has been pushed away from it i.e. cart in tunnel in badwater, demos can fly up and over to attack blue from behind. Attackers/Defenders can fly to the end to get to and harass snipers. Attackers can attack red before they can get a defense built, etc.

The ony thing I can think of is to put up player clips - but that would suck - imagine doing a sticky jump only to hit an invisible wall in the middle of nowhere.

Has anyone else looked at / used this weapon and is modifying their maps to use it / shut it down? If yes, what are you doing for better use of the weapon or to keep players from using it excessively?
 

colacan

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 14, 2012
235
85
Make the map in a shape so that demoman can not jump from one end to the other. (S-shaped?) Also, I've never seen it being abused on a map, especially not by multiple demoman at once. So I think it's not really an issue. I have one myself, but I rarely use it, I prefer to lay normal stickies to blow up people. :)
 
Sep 7, 2012
638
500
If a demoman uses the sticky jumper he's denying himself the opportunity to put out the kind of damage most demomen can with their regular stickies. It limits damage output to pipes and swords/cabers so it's really not too much of an issue. The only negative effect I've seen is the extra space on payload maps being abused to jump past the attackers/defenders and blow up the engie's teleporters from their spawn, severely hindering the other team's pacing.

Making the map in the shape of an S won't be much use, because anyone with enough skill to use pipes alone will know how to airstrafe. Maps should curve around a fair bit anyway for good optimization, so that's not really a reason in itself to make your map twisty. The only demomen that will be negatively affected by such a restriction are the ones who put all 8 stickies at once, and hit the skybox or the wall in front of them anyway because they don't know how to airstrafe and probably don't crouch jump.
 

GPuzzle

L9: Fashionable Member
Feb 27, 2012
638
414
Well, I use the Sticky Jumper to just sticky jump, get at an unsuspecting place with high health, and then use the Grenade Launcher to deal pipe damage. It is not the most effective tactic, but it can do an Uber drop in the right ocasion.
I think of a Sticky Jumper Demoman of a Gunboats Soldier.
Increased mobility, damage possibilities decreased.
 

Crash

func_nerd
aa
Mar 1, 2010
3,315
5,499
High up obstructions work really well too. Look at Viaduct's mid. It's really difficult to sticky jump past the center from the opposite side.

Lakeside could use something like this, IMO.

I also did something similar to Viaduct on Aquifer to address the sticky jumper issues.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
Valve cheeses it on thunder mountain. Though I think they did it for optimization purposes, they got lucky because the setup has the side effect of restricting sticky jumps. They put sky brushes poking into the playable area that limit how far a demoman can fly.. best example being stage one above the first CP. It does a nice job limiting demomen without impacting everyone else's play. At the same time, it saves the mapper from having to design sky-filling geometry into the map.

It is a good idea to design for the sticky jumper where it's appropriate though. The last stage of thunder mountain is ridiculous fun because of the generous skybox.

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYiQ-5pUUAA
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
You know, I never understood the Sticky Jumper. The whole point of it and the Rocket Jumper was to be used to practice explosive jumping without worrying about killing themselves. So ignoring the fact that they could just block it from being equipped in real game servers, why not limit the clip to two stickies so demomen can only jump as far as they normally could without dying?
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
It's fun in jump servers I guess?

I wouldn't design around the SJ or RJ. They are joke weapons. Yes, it's possible to be good with them anyway, but extreme movement comes with an extreme nerf. If you've got a problem where SJ demos can fly across your map and kill snipers, well, either your map is a giant open box and that's bad, or it's normal sized and they could do it with the regular stickies anyway. As with most things, a sufficiently complex map will guard against this.
 

Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106
Disabling a weapon in regular play is pointless. It's basically saying to the user, "You're playing the game wrong. You can't have fun that way, it's not allowed."
 

LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
aa
Aug 8, 2010
4,102
6,597
Disabling a weapon in regular play is pointless. It's basically saying to the user, "You're playing the game wrong. You can't have fun that way, it's not allowed."

Additionally you're doing it because YOU have failed. It's like Railroading in an RPG. "Can we go north?" "No, i haven't planned the north. Rocks fall. Go south."