There have been a few clan matches so far that are waiting to be turned into videos. The hold up is that they want to add announcers to the videos.
I only like this mod on really small teams. I dunno, the maps can seem too small at times, and not enough people play as a team. Play on a 3v3 game and there is teamwork, and plenty of room to breathe.
I was completely put off the mod by the asshole veteran stacks on the NEWBIE servers. Complete and utter fucking steamroll. Haven't played it since the first 3 days of STEAM release.
I can't recall, that happened in the first 3 days of Steamworks release. If I had applied my brain got names I would have addressed it on the SB forums.
I played it a bit. Tutorial 1. Screens on walls have mipmaps/LOD enabled so they are unreadable with low details. 99% people will play with high texture details but it would be nice. 2. Blue text in the middle is unreadable. 3. Tutorial tells you what you can do but it isn't enough to start playing on any server. Game I started playing on a server with ~10 people on it. For first 10 minutes I didn't have any clue how to move around. Then I learned how to walk. For another 20 minutes I was just playing with different weapons and stuff while others were playing. I switched to FD and it got easier. Controls are uncomfortable. I have to use both mouse buttons and I have to hold at least 1 of them constantly. The bottom line is that tutorial tought me nothing and my very important 1st hour of playing the game wasn't satisfying. If I weren't interested in fast-paced games I would remove Smashball from HDD right after.
I'd actually prefer much more open maps. All of the stock smashball maps feel a bit cramped and I am always running into walls/trees/blocks/etc. You have an amazing feature that allows players to swing around in a free 3D environment, which is restricted by the maps.
i would like to see a map like this http://www.wizardzone.nl/ipb/ency/zwerkbalveld.jpg from harry potter
Have you played Murderplex? That's a large map. The problem with open maps is there's no way to stop the ball carrier if they're skilled. The choke points are there to force the ball carrier to get closer to defenders and have the ball stolen.
I played this before downloading Empires. I got through the tutorial with some struggling and the online game was so confusing. Everything was moving way too fast. Meh.
Yes, I got that feeling that they had playtested it with the same people all the time and they got too good at it in comparison with average player.
Well, what can you do? It has a learning curve, and if the player isn't willing to put in the time for it, then they'll leave. The game is confusing and too fast for new people, and they all leave before they get the hang of it. I'm not the designer, so it's not really up to me nor do I really have an answer that doesn't change the gameplay itself. When we had new people at playtests, we'd give them a short example of how the game went, and then they'd play for real. They either stuck with it or never came back. This is probably a good lesson that people prefer slower paced games. This should be evident to everyone who saw multiplayer gaming go from the fast paced style of Quake games in the late 90s to the slower paced FPS games that were ushered in with Counterstrike.
yeah, gaming has really got casual and for 'soccor moms'. Some games feel like a 4 hour B movie "with you as the star!!!!". Unlike games people pay for, people don't want to invest time in games to learn them. they want fun and then they want out. If people pay for a game then they get buyers remorse and feel compelled to learn it. That said, i love fast paced games, I'm currently at the "challenge" part of UT99 playing through for shiggles (difficulty: masterful), but I just didn't understand smashball or like it. But then I played it ages ago before it looked better and I don't really understand american football either.
American football is about getting drunk, acting like you know how to play the game better than the players, and drumming up irrational hatreds of other teams for minor offenses. Need more of this in Smashball
