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I was watching Mambo vs. TeKs today. The game was pure cram. Mambo had the base for 13 minutes straight. Only variation was couple of terr kills while cramming. I'm not saying here TeKs should've beaten us, but they at least deserved a chance. In the beginning, they had lots of potential situations for terr kill, but they lost the game after couple of minutes when they got thrown out of base.
This is not a new thing. It has annoyed me for a long time. (There's other things that should be changed too, like shark shraps, but this is more importat so I'll start with this.) Unfortunatelly I've been lazy and also hopeful staff would realize this is just stupid. Well, I did manage to get a map change to base2 for a short period of time, but my discussion about it with Pure_Luck went something like this: "Pure_Luck> well, I asked my squadmates what they thought about this, and those who bothered to answer didn't dare argue with me, so future for any changes looks dim" (Ok, he actually just said "they didn't like it too much", but the point is still the same.)
In ?go base this isn't such a big problem, but in leagues, basically all the sharks are good enough to hold cram for long periods of time. There's been so many games that have been basically two or three crams. I can't say for sure, but I think vast majority of the games have had at least one cram that could be described "very long". If there's two squads of equal strength, it's very possible that a stray shark shrap decides whole game. Terr gets strayed, team gets thrown out of base, and they get crammed for the last 5 minutes. I've seen so many games in which neither team can break the other's cram effectively, even though in fr they're equally matched. There's also been games where a team is getting owned in fr, but manages to get couple of terr kills and then holds cram and finishes with 15:00-4:56. Do you think the ability to cram is that much more important than ability to fight fr battles? Most squads can get a terr kill once in a while against any squad, but if they get crammed, no chance and the whole game is boring. I'm not trying to say worse squads should beat better squads, exactly the other way around. With much shorter crams, lucky terr deaths mean less and the importance of skill grows. The games become much more interesting, and equally matches squads can decide the game in a fair way, and not in a manner where one of the teams constantly has the unfair advantage of cram.
I'm not talking about all games. Lots of games are pretty good with little cramming, but so many games are like 4 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 6 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 3 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 6 minute cram, terr flies in, gets killed, 4 minute cram, end. Who honestly thinks cramming is what basing is about?! I don't. Is there someone who actually likes cramming? Because if my guess is right, and most people don't, why the fuck hasn't anything been done to this thing?!
So what's my suggestion? The most obvious and easiest one: change the map. Here's my initial quick sketch:
As you see, the point is to remove a place for terr to sit so people get repped out of cram more effectively. It might have some problems and it might need some testing and tweaking, but my idea was to try to affect fr battles as little as possible. (Since people are so afraid of changes.) Possible problem with the old base2 map, where the terr sitting blocks were removed, so underflag was very open and there weren't too many places for hiding save for the suicidal dead ends. Under is a bit more open in this version too, but everything else is unchanged. (Except cram of course.) It gives a new safe place for sitting on the side of the flag thing, but that's not a big thing and might prove to be an interesting new strategic twist.
Again, I'm not saying that my suggestion is the best there is, it's just a suggestion, my main point here is that SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
This is not a new thing. It has annoyed me for a long time. (There's other things that should be changed too, like shark shraps, but this is more importat so I'll start with this.) Unfortunatelly I've been lazy and also hopeful staff would realize this is just stupid. Well, I did manage to get a map change to base2 for a short period of time, but my discussion about it with Pure_Luck went something like this: "Pure_Luck> well, I asked my squadmates what they thought about this, and those who bothered to answer didn't dare argue with me, so future for any changes looks dim" (Ok, he actually just said "they didn't like it too much", but the point is still the same.)
In ?go base this isn't such a big problem, but in leagues, basically all the sharks are good enough to hold cram for long periods of time. There's been so many games that have been basically two or three crams. I can't say for sure, but I think vast majority of the games have had at least one cram that could be described "very long". If there's two squads of equal strength, it's very possible that a stray shark shrap decides whole game. Terr gets strayed, team gets thrown out of base, and they get crammed for the last 5 minutes. I've seen so many games in which neither team can break the other's cram effectively, even though in fr they're equally matched. There's also been games where a team is getting owned in fr, but manages to get couple of terr kills and then holds cram and finishes with 15:00-4:56. Do you think the ability to cram is that much more important than ability to fight fr battles? Most squads can get a terr kill once in a while against any squad, but if they get crammed, no chance and the whole game is boring. I'm not trying to say worse squads should beat better squads, exactly the other way around. With much shorter crams, lucky terr deaths mean less and the importance of skill grows. The games become much more interesting, and equally matches squads can decide the game in a fair way, and not in a manner where one of the teams constantly has the unfair advantage of cram.
I'm not talking about all games. Lots of games are pretty good with little cramming, but so many games are like 4 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 6 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 3 minute cram, 1 minute fr battle, 6 minute cram, terr flies in, gets killed, 4 minute cram, end. Who honestly thinks cramming is what basing is about?! I don't. Is there someone who actually likes cramming? Because if my guess is right, and most people don't, why the fuck hasn't anything been done to this thing?!
So what's my suggestion? The most obvious and easiest one: change the map. Here's my initial quick sketch:
As you see, the point is to remove a place for terr to sit so people get repped out of cram more effectively. It might have some problems and it might need some testing and tweaking, but my idea was to try to affect fr battles as little as possible. (Since people are so afraid of changes.) Possible problem with the old base2 map, where the terr sitting blocks were removed, so underflag was very open and there weren't too many places for hiding save for the suicidal dead ends. Under is a bit more open in this version too, but everything else is unchanged. (Except cram of course.) It gives a new safe place for sitting on the side of the flag thing, but that's not a big thing and might prove to be an interesting new strategic twist.
Again, I'm not saying that my suggestion is the best there is, it's just a suggestion, my main point here is that SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
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