So has everyone given up on the idea of destroying robots?

Seems odd that, for a gametype named Robot Destruction, there seems to be very few custom RD maps that feature destructible robots. I've been out of the TF2 loop for a long ass time, so I assume this means that nobody likes Valve's idea for the mode?

 

No, I think it's more that Valve hasn't updated either of the beta maps in a long time and RD logic is still not clear or even accessible if I remember correctly.

 

I think most people despise Asteroid and probably a lot of people still find the mode confusing. I'm not sure how I would explain it.

There've been some modified gametypes using some of the rd logic but offhand I don't know exactly what... Frozen has a map based on it though.

I think it kinda sucks because it removes pvp as the dominant mode of play. Even in CTF or payload, pvp is a dominant part of the game. But in rd it doesn't seem as prevalent. I think many people also don't really understand the full breadth of the rd ruleset. Like I'm not sure what the core does when you steal it? I think you get points but I don't know how much or if it scales or what.

Earlier in chat I said it was like worse MNC and the more I think about that, the more I think it's right.

Also, I think Valve was right initially to not beta test maps with the public. Most people are bad, and many maps turn into DM on pub servers. Asteroid is another one of those, like Hightower, Standin, and 2fort.

 

Player Destruction is better anyway.

 

The game scoring mode was too confusing to me so I never played it.

It should have been an attack push style of map where you fight against robots that shoot lasers at you instead of some weird convoluted scoring system. Can I kill a robot - sure I can - do I win when all robots are dead I SURE DO! < See simple!

That being said maybe it's time to make a new game mode RK - Robot killing - simple setups just make respawning robots

 

I'd like to try to make an map for this gamemode. (But maybe adding something new for it too?)


I myself found this gamemode interesting one, but yes.

It's quite confusing for new players. (Even the cp_snowplow made more sense for players.)

 

Maybe I'm in the minority but I really love asteroid. It's usually the first map I look for when I have time for a late night game.

At first, the map was pretty badly laid out, but the latest iteration is a lot of fun IMO. It plays kinda sorta but not really like 2fort/doublecross only without stalemating. The only time when it stalemates is when one team goes sentry heavy in the first lobby and covers the cave too, or alternately when one team doesn't realize they can keep farming the lobby robots.

The games do take a very long time normally, thanks to the back-and-forth. But I love both defending and assaulting on the map, and it feels like I have fun with whatever class I pick, so I'd say they've done something right.

 

The last version of 2Fort... ehm Astroid isn't too bad until a team has more than 2 Engineers. There need to more ways to the intel, ones that provide good cover against sentrys while still being able to kill them.

Engineers really ruin Astroid.

 

RD introduces some neat things mappers can use for their unusual game modes. I think that's why you see the mode being used for these non-RD games.

Asteroid is a bit confusing for new players, but I don't think it's the scoring system that troubles them. I think it's coming to terms with the requirements of the map and the game mode. A team has four things to do: 1. Protect their core, 2. Protect their robots, 3. Attack the enemy robots, 4. Steal the enemy core. If you play any stock map on Valve official servers, you might think that a lot of players are less competent than bots. When these players only have a single objective, they can do some good simply by wandering over to it and rubbing up against a capture trigger for a few seconds. Imagine how long it must take for them to completely comprehend Asteroid.

The scoring in Asteroid is straight forward. You kill enemy robots and collect their cores. As you kill one set of robots, the next set is unlocked and you must travel deeper in to the enemy base in order to reach them. 'A' bots drop the lowest amount of cores, while the 'C' bots drop the highest. At any time, you can venture to the back of the enemy base and steal their reactor core. This is a flag which is a type of container. The longer you stand on the point, the more the container is filled with robot cores. You carry the enemy reactor core back to yours, as you would with intelligence.

When a team reaches the win limit of 300 cores, the game starts a countdown. At the end of the countdown, if the team still has 300 cores, they will win. This countdown gives the enemy team chance to make a mad push for the core, to delay or prevent the victory by stealing it.

The water drop-down hatch, just inside the front of the enemy base, gives potential core stealers an often overlooked, and discrete path to the enemy core. But when you try to escape with the core, you can't take the same route back, so it's a bit like a mouse trap. Thankfully there are plenty of places to hide in the base.

 

One big mode of snowplow development had players attacking the train.

All the valve guys "Eeehhhh this kinda isn't fun, shooting a train. Shooting players is fun" ... fast forward a few months and ROBOT DESTRUCTION! Sooooooo yeah, right back at you guys. Shooting robots is less fun than shooting players.

I still believe that the rd is terrible as it is. But the entities allow for a _massive_ amount of custom gamemodes. They're an absolute goldmine for custom gamemodes. Which is why I've done several different varieties of non-rd maps using the rd ents.

I want to make it very clear that excavation's thread only uses rd as it's prefix because it wont let me have a custom prefix or use none.

 

"Rock Destruction."

 

Robot Destruction sits in there with Power Up Mode and Mann vs. Machine as evidence that people at Valve desperately want to actually make new games, but because they can't get enough people on board when they already have this free game printing money for the company, they're stuck trying to awkwardly shoehorn their ideas into that game instead. In this case it seemed like the idea was "What if we could make something halfway between a team shooter and a MOBA?"

 

While mvm can be really fun, I think that both rd and mannpower are not that good. Both are really confusing, and rd_asteroid IMO is a terrible map: it stalemates often, can be fustrating to play, takes years to finish a match, and has too many gimmicks.

However, I like the way the entities in rd allow much more flexibility than any other entity in game, and that allows us to make many types of rd- it can be without robots, without cores, without robots and without cores, it can be anything! People did some amazing things with the rd entities, like Egan and Bakscratch's pd gamemode.

 

I agree with this regarding RD and probably Mannpower (though I haven't played it at all... not sure I want to). But not for MvM. It's a little weird and the story justification for it was pretty bizarre, but I don't see it as anything more than an extension of what TF2 already was.

Many people like defending and feel vindicated when they successfully defend a map. The problem is that the Blu team also wants to, you know, win. Creating a PvE experience for TF2 was brilliant, because it essentially removes the concept of losing a round from the game. If you lose, you just restart. It's so simple. It could have been attack or defense really, but I guess they chose defending because it was a more unique experience in TF2 compared to what other maps offered.

Plus you can get upgrades and jump higher and run faster and stuff. Hasn't that also been a long-standing wish for some players? I think everyone has fun just taking a game and making one part of it "overpowered" in that regard--look at the recent addition to Hearthstone, Tavern Brawls, which does exactly that. Or the amount of people that cheat in Skyrim or GTA just to mess around. Same concept.

MvM was also pretty brilliant in its use of microtransactions. MvM specific drops and loot are a great way to create additional revenue from an otherwise free game. People want to play it to get the cool drops and experience the fun upgrades, and there's a range of difficulties for everyone.

When Blizzard added Tavern Brawls to Hearthstone, they did a bunch of things: they created a new gameplay experience; added infinite replayability; gave experienced players a new outlet and newish players an interesting place to explore; created "overpowered" decks for players to use, which seem intentionally unbalanced (probably to promote player-based stories--Blizz is big on that); and, I imagine, they plan to monetize it in the future.

That's how I see MvM, for Valve. They want to promote those kinds of player stories just the same as Blizzard does and they did it in a similar way. And regardless of how I feel about it (I think it gets pretty stale after a while) or how anyone else feels, I can't say MvM is as alien to TF2 as RD or Mannpower are/seem. I think it fits right in with TF2 and Valve's goals for it, whatever those may be.

 

I think a PvE mode would have made sense for TF2, but I've always felt that the upgrade mechanic on top of both the class distinctions and the loadout system was at least one layer too many. I found myself not really giving a shit what I had equipped — especially since I couldn't switch things out from wave to wave without losing my upgrades — beyond making sure I always had Jarate/Mad Milk for the specific upgrades they offered. Like, if you were to pitch MvM as a brand new game, you know it would have been a lot more stripped down. No loadouts, fewer classes, each one specifically tailored to fighting waves of enemies instead of each other. And then maybe the robots would have been custom instead of nearly all based on the player classes.

It's still the best job they've done adapting a weird game mode to TF2, and I actually do like the lore they came up with for it a lot even if it explicitly places the entirety of PvP, including any future maps, in "the past" relative to itself.

 

So I read through this entire thread to leave you guys my experience/opinion:

Robot destruction is a great gamemode. Of course it has some flaws, but all in one a pretty good gamemode.
Robots destructions charm is its nonlinear gameplay:
- You can guard your bots and try to attack the enemies bots.
- You can guard your reactor core, letting the enemies destroy your bots, attack the enemies bots and try to steal their reactor core to gain 300 cores more quickly
or
- You can guard your reactor and set your main focus on the enemy reactor core.

However, the biggest flaw of rd is the ignorance of its player:
Somebody is stealing the core? -Not my Business (This behaviour can also be seen on CTF maps)

He got the core and now he tries to escape. Which route will he take? The door? Nah, it's a one-way door and and therefore locked. The laser grid? Nah, I can't navigate through the laser grid, so he won't be able to navigate through the laser grid, too. - The result: The most people will instantly go into / guard the ventilation shafts. A fast scout can escape within a few seconds, through the laster grid. (This is more a map related problem)

A other thing is the lack of interrest for the enemy reactor core:
The countdown is ticking. Someone was able to take some cores to interrupt the timer. He drops the reactor core. The most people will now try to attack the A, B and then the C Bots before they take care of the enemy reactor core. It makes sense to attack bots when you got atleast 210 cores, so that you can trigger the countdown for your own core, before the enemy reactor core return to its base. Otherwise it's just a waste of time and resources.
The most people simply don't know how many cores they can get in one wave (hint: 90).

A other, non player related, problem is the HUD:
It might take some time until you understand the thief icon, how it works and how to use it's information. An example: When the icon moves a little bit back in the middle you know that the thief is going through the cave. When the icon moves straight forward he is using the upper bridge. This method is not 100 percent safe, but is applicable in most cases.
It might be interresting to see how rd would play with the CTF arrows.

 

Now you see the problem - I've just read what you said and have absolutely no idea what the f' you're talking about. If I don't get it here how should I expect to figure it out in game when people are shooting at me?

 

Mh, do you mean my horrible spelling and grammar, or the way I tried to explain my opionion about rd?

The most things I mentioned shouldn't be that important when you play rd for the first time.

The first thing would be the nonlinear gameplay. You will never thing about it: How are we going to play?
It depends more on how good your team is attacking/defending and how good the other team is playing. And depending on this you will automatically either destroy the bots or try to steal the reactor core.

The fact that people are very ignorance is a problem that effects many gamemodes (rd included). They are ignoring every hint that the enemy team got the flag/reactor core and refrain from defending it. However, if you're familiar with the core principles of CTF this shouldn't be a problem for you. When somebody is stealing your core/flag you need to defend it. It's not that hard or complicated. You just need to take care of it.

The next thing I mentioned is, more of less, a map related problem. New players, which are actually defending the core, are usually entering the reactor room through the one-way door and leaving the room through the vents. They usually fear going through the laser grid. And when somebody is stealing their core, they go automatically into the vents to defend the core. They don't think much about it, it's for them the only route to escape the reactor room. A person who knows how to get quickly through the laser grid can escape quickly, without heavy defence.

The last issue is the rd HUD:
Its very hard to tell where your core currently is, since the HUD only schows the distance of the core to the reactor room. You can try to predict where your core is by watching the movement of the thief icon. New players can't predict the current location, because they are not familiar with the map. This is something that they learn over time. A other minor issue with this HUD is the fact that every map features a unique icon movement and that you need to learn everything from scratch.

That's why I said it might be interresting to see rd with the CTF arrows that shows the current location of your flag.

 

This is the key difference between MvM and something like Mannpower in my opinion; MvM actually feels like an extension of the game whereas Mannpower feels like something totally new. To be honest, I think it's really impressive how well Valve translated a PvP game into a PvE one. You can play the classes similarly to how you would normally but with an extra layer of strategy and they managed to make it so that all of the PvP classes can play a role in a PvE context. Even Scout, who doesn't really fit the bill as a defender, got his own little role carved out as the money gathering guy.

Mannpower does the opposite. Rather than building off of TF2, it goes in the other direction. It disassembles the fundamental aspects of TF2 which make it so good; how each class has strengths and weaknesses and so on. When you give everyone hookshots it totally undermines how the game was originally supposed to be played and, to be honest, it lacks the depth of regular TF2 so I don't find it nearly as entertaining.

 

I'd be more interested in destroying robots if they didn't do that silly flailing scared stuff when damaged. It hinders their motion along a track, meaning using the robots as a STOP THE TANK! mode is ineffective.

EDIT

If anyone has any features they'd like me to request from valve with regards to RD entities, let me have them, I'm making a shopping list to send to the lovely TF2 team.