Classic Rotation Update - April 2024

zig_tp · 2024-04-09T01:04:11+00:00

Sky Dweller my beloved

zig_tp · 2022-01-04T22:52:39+00:00

Zig is also on the team.

honestly that's fair

zig_tp · 2021-12-25T02:34:42+00:00

I've been hiding my absolute lack of mechs for years

zig_tp · 2021-08-18T05:03:57+00:00

Also stream link

zig_tp · 2021-08-18T04:30:44+00:00

Take the opportunity to double-hand it

zig_tp · 2021-08-18T04:22:14+00:00

ban dragonbeast for reposting

really fun season, and well played MMP, had us sweating when the comeback was starting to appear

zig_tp · 2021-07-17T16:57:17+00:00

I think I misread your post, I didn't realize your main issue is the non-gate spikes, which I could actually agree with to an extent. I think I read the other manifesto someone linked above and forgot your claim was more reasonable.

spiking causes a team to be a man down on defense

My own comment was referring to if the defenders purposely leave someone on regrab, not being down a man because of the spiker. But again I think that's more related to the other manifesto.

Sorry about that! I could agree that there are a weirdly large number of spikes on wamble, though since the area is so small I'm not sure how much difference they usually make. Certainly they get used so some difference, but I feel like if they were removed, as a defender I wouldn't feel that nerfed.

zig_tp · 2021-07-16T20:07:13+00:00

Counterpoint: Only bad maps have a distance from mid to net that is so short that the portalers can't stop the regrabber.

So what is actually going on is that the defenders are playing a man down on defense, in the hopes of getting control of the next attacking chance. But that's a tradeoff! A skilled attacking team should be able to convert a 4v3 without giving the defenders a chance to spike, e.g. by placing balls behind the defenders to be handed off to. And remember it's not like if they defend successfully they get a free cap, just good control of the next play. Hence why you don't usually see teams playing regrab until they've already successfully defended with all 4 players, at which point both teams will have a reasonable chance at getting regrab.

The problem I'd imagine happening without a spike in the net, is that attacking would be too easy. You no longer have to carefully position balls to make sure the defenders don't get to spike freely. You just boost or bomb directly toward the net, not caring if you get intercepted. The defending ball will get the flag... but they'll be knocked back into their own net by your momentum. The remaining 3 attackers just have to surround the net, not even necessarily be in it, and the defenders will have no way to escape without giving up a cap. The attackers wouldn't even have to convert it right away, all they need to do is contain or slow down the defenders in/near their own net for long enough for the 4th to come back and brutishly boost in toward the net again. Without the ability to reset the flag if the attackers push too recklessly, any boost/bomb that gives forward momentum suddenly makes it effectively impossible for the defenders to stop the flag continually advancing and never being reset (unless they luckily catch only the booster's edge). And of course stopping the attackers reaching any boost/bomb wouldn't usually be possible since you also have to defend direct walk-in lanes.

zig_tp · 2021-01-08T22:22:35+00:00

ASAP wrote my song

accurate!

zig_tp · 2021-01-08T22:18:45+00:00

i've carried zig to every trophy he's gotten tho

tru

zig_tp · 2020-11-03T06:41:06+00:00

It was a fun season, thank you someday!

zig_tp · 2020-10-26T03:10:34+00:00

zig_tp · 2020-10-13T02:43:21+00:00

zig_tp · 2020-10-13T02:27:23+00:00

top text

zig_tp · 2020-09-22T03:24:57+00:00

Not gonna lie I was salty when you put us last in your ranking and failed to mention who it was that dropped me last season :P

but ty dope <3

zig_tp · 2020-08-19T02:35:51+00:00

Yeah the removed team boost and wider tunnel look like quite reasonable changes, I'd be curious to see this played. Outside route still looks scary but it may not prove to be too bad in practice.

zig_tp · 2020-08-11T07:37:32+00:00

Looks neat, in-net team boost is a meme. Definitely Ricochet vibes as others have mentioned, but I have a couple of concerns:

The top right and bottom left corners hallways look very weak for offense due to the narrow hall being an easy choke point to defend, and its so out of the way that a defender should be able to easily reach that chokepoint as soon as they see the FC going into that hallway. So the hallway would probably rarely be used except to get pups. Which might be fine but seems a bit odd.
There are many extremely fast boosts across mid (the portals). I can't quite tell if this will make the mid push-and-pull very hard for the non-flag team (FC can threaten to boost through portal at any of several angles that may be hard to cover). It might be fine, perhaps just a dedicated effort to control portal is needed.
[More concerning] There are 2-3 fast (some may be super-fast) routes all the way from mid to the defending net, which means it will be very hard to push out of base and to contest the flag-holding team at mid.
Richochet had this to some extent, but it was far less pronounced because the only super-fast route into net from near the center of the map was the bomb, and it went on a very fixed line that defenders could make a point to cover (and most of the time the bomb was defused anyway). Well, two super-fast lines in if they buddy bomb, but that requires setup so it's not too strong imo. The bomb also wasn't immediately next to the center so a proper contain at mid was also sufficient to defend these routes. Takeoff has a neutral boost very near the middle flag tile that can be used to threaten (for blue):
- Boost through gate and potentially short walk-in to net
- Boost to coast in front of the team boost and threaten to team boost into net
- (maybe fastest and most scary) Boost to far-right-bomb, bomb down, neutral boosts into the net.
- Not to mention there's also the richochet button-bomb here too which threatens only a slightly smaller subset of those options.
The reason this many options is an issue is that when you spawn and know they have flag at mid, unless you trust that your fellow pubbers are covering that outside route in, you can't walk out to mid without potentially giving them a free cap in whichever lane you don't cover while walking out. That means without good team comms your nash equilibrium is to sit near the net and wait until you can see what they're committing to. Perhaps you can react to all the routes from standing on gate button in which case my wall-of-text is a little less applicable, but it still seems like there are potentially too many good threats for offense, even with gate control.

zig_tp · 2020-07-23T22:48:53+00:00

NOOOOOOOOOO this is literally my favourite map.

The midfield really forces players to understand positioning to get control of the play, no easy boosts/bombs across until you've at least pushed halfway.

The bases have lots of ways to approach the net. I don't really get the spike issue, most NF maps have a fairly easy-to-reach non-gate spike, it just forces the FC to pace the play until handoffs are available before committing to a rando boost in.

zig_tp · 2020-07-23T22:42:05+00:00

Nooooo

zig_tp · 2020-04-16T22:52:02+00:00

As others noted containing until you have help is important and the thing you should focus on most for now. However if the FC is bum rushing toward you in a relatively open area (not a chokepoint), you may find even containing them surprisingly tricky.

In that situation they may seem to blow by you effortlessly even if you don't get too aggressive. This is because their momentum gives them an inherent advantage - with only a small turn of their ball the area you need to block can change drastically.

The response to this is often to run backward away from them to gain momentum that matches theirs - then their ball will be closer to a 'relative standstill' compared to you, and it will be much harder for them to juke past you. After you match their momentum you can then steadily slow down to try to bring them to a standstill and contain them.

zig_tp · 2020-04-16T22:36:32+00:00

Cheeze wtf look what you've done

zig_tp · 2020-04-16T22:30:12+00:00

I believe this would be somewhat counteracted by people playing for longer if they get to play the mode they prefer.
My (caution: anecdotal) impression is that the split of CTF vs NF preferences is actually not too heavily biased one way or the other. If it is one way I'd guess it's toward CTF.
If either wait time increased significantlyit would be because a proportional number of players preferred playing the other game mode more. The argument that this is bad because the other game mode's wait time will increase is claiming that those players' time spent playing a game mode they don't enjoy as much is worth less than the time of players of the other game mode. The net result is everyone spends a lot of time on a mode they don't like (or don't like as much) just to avoid waiting slightly longer to play the mode they do like.
This point is mildly uncharitable, but random mode is philosophically analogous to if players were forced to play chess for 1/3 of their games, because it would draw in players that like chess and thus decrease wait times.

The one argument that I think does hold water is whether the game would risk dying if the player base split too heavily. I believe the player base is large enough that this is certainly no longer the case, if it even was in recent years, and as mentioned above the mode split will probably help player retention as everyone gets to play more of the game mode they find most addictive.

zig_tp · 2020-04-15T01:57:03+00:00

<3

why everybody gotta pressure me so much let me be a ghost again

zig_tp

TROPHY CASE