Welcome back to my "criticising giga blockwars" series
Today I want to discuss a flaw that may not be obvious as first and may not even be seen as such by many, and its the player count of the gamemode.
In case you don't know: in giga blockwars you have 2 teams fighting each other, both having a maximum of 50 players each.
How exactly is it a flaw?
NOTE: there is a tl;dr at the end for those not feeling like reading the full thing and those needing a short summary
There are several reasons for it.
Firstly, the player count is realistically the only difference when compared to 5v5 and (formerly) 10v10 blockwars gamemodes.
What do I mean by that? What I mean is: everything in the gamemode is almost the same.
You have to capture the same amount of objectives. You still only capture 3 flags. You still only get into the pit 20 times.
The only real change to the maps is the pits/flags being slightly further away. And I ain't even sure about that btw, I played a couple 5v5 and 10v10 games, and I hardly noticed a difference in how long it takes me to get to the opponents base
And almost everything else in the gamemode is the exact same.
Lets compare that to the only other giga gamemode I have played: giga eggwars.
Giga eggwars has maps designed specifically to accomodate the increased amount of players, with tons of extra resource generators and the maps being significantly larger.
And it also plays differently compared to any other normal eggwars mode, the larger teams make the game last much longer even if one team is much better than the rest. The additional generators mean that, as the player count decreases, the average amount of resources per player increases. Not to mention pvp against large teams in a game based on the principle of "kill or be killed" being noticably different.
On giga blockwars, the only difference is that if you play in a full or almost completely full lobby the map gets crowded.
A giga gamemode, believe it or not should provide more of a gameplay difference than just a larger player count, as shown by giga eggwars.
Lets discuss the next and already mentioned problem with the large player count, which is the crowded maps.
Even the maps may be larger than in they are in normal blockwars, they are still not large enough for 100 players.
As a result, in a full lobby, the only thing preventing the game from being completely unplayable is the fact that nearly half of all players don't actually play the game. If everyone on both teams actually played the game properly, a full lobby would be an absolute nightmare to play in.
There are two obvious solutions, one is increasing the map sizes and changing the map design to accomodate 100 players.
Another is decreasing the player count. As you may guess based on the title, I support option 2, as it will also fix plenty of other problems.
Speaking of other problems, here is the next one:
The larger lobby size invites tons of players who don't plan on actually playing the game as intended and lots of players that are just generally being useless.
Believe it or not, that's not even as much of a problem on giga eggwars as that gamemode kind of forces you to play it at least semi-properly to be able to survive, not to mention only having 40 players, not 100.
What this results in for giga blockwars is a large amount of players just goofing around and not playing the game at all, spending their time doing all kinds of useless stuff.
To be fair to them, as much as I can't stand them, a player count this large makes it so that the burden to play well, or play at all, on the individual player is much smaller, as well as the punishment for it.
In eggwars, regardless if its giga or any other mode, refusing to be a useful player will almost always punish you naturally.
If you spend the game just exploring the map or building a house instead of making defenses or killing players or gathering resources, you'll die fairly often, fairly quick and not enjoy the game a lot.
Eggwars forces you to be "useful" to be able to continue playing. Giga blockwars makes that optional.
That is also a bit of a problem with normal blockwars, but due to smaller team sizes its much easier to compensate for it by being more active yourself. Not to mention that being useless gets punished more often as you are very likely to keep getting killed if you are not being very useful. And if the whole team is useless it'll usually lose fairly quickly.
This problem could only be fixed by either lowering the player count in giga blockwars, or adding features that actively punishes players for not doing anything useful.
A really dumb Idea I spontaneously came up with would be kicking players if they don't deal enough damage to opponents or don't spend enough time near their flag/pit or don't try to capture flags/get into the enemy pits.
That Idea is severely flawed, I literally said its bad before describing it.
The fourth issue with the player count is with how the server handles it.
No matter your ping, your wifi connection, the strength of whatever device you are playing on, you'll probably experience some form of lag if you play in a full or almost full giga blockwars lobby simply because of the amount of players.
This honestly just feels like the server infrastructure is simply not designed to handle 90-100 players in one lobby.
Now the lag may not feel severe in lobbies like that, but its at least noticeable. I for example, despite a good ping, in full lobbies tend to experience delayed arrows when shooting bows, difficulties jump resetting and an ocassional player lagging to the point they can't be damaged.
Now imagine how it must feel for someone who doesn't have the luxury of a decent ping.
And to the last problem:
I already mentioned how the larger lobbies attract players who don't feel like actually playing the game.
Well, it also attracts way more trolls, campers and cheaters.
I made several posts about one highly notorious troll, obviously he is not the only troll on the network or that minigame, just the worst one of them all.
I have encountered plenty of less notorious, less active and less severe trolls, as well as a fair share of hackers.
The higher player count not only tends to attract them, but also ruins the fun of way more people.
A pair of teamers in an eggwars solos game can only ruin the experience of up to 10 other players.
One troll on giga blockwars can ruin the experience of up to 50 players, assuming the opponents won't be bothered by the entire opposing team being unable to play properly.
It also doesn't help that the gamemode in its design allows for trolling very easily, but that's a topic for a whole another post.
Now to solve this it'd be best if the gamemode got redesigned to make trolling a little more difficult WHILE still lowering the player count.
Now I mention lowering the player count a lot, but by how much exactly would it need to be lowered to fix those problems and how high would it need to be for the gamemode to still be worthy of the "giga" label.
Lets see:
Firstly, lets see how many players the maps are designed for.
Now based off of having played the gamemode and most maps with all sorts of player counts, lowest being around 15 and highest being a full lobby, I think I can provide a pretty good estimate of that.
To start off: they are clearly not for 10v10 or even 15v15 (between 20 and 30 total), on those player counts the map feels insanely empty with players only really being visible near their spawn areas. Even the diamond generators tend to be fairly empty on those player counts.
Realistically there is only one map that feels (almost) large enough to be fit for a 50v50, and even that one feels overcrowded in a full lobby, and that's canyon for CTF.
20v20 isn't much higher, though the maps do feel a bit more crowded, and games with 40 players are defintely very fun regardless of the map being a bit empty in some places.
Lets switch to the other extreme for a bit: the game is almost unplayable on anything around 80 players or above.
The diamond generators have 10-15 players EACH, attempting to capture flags means having to run away from anywhere between 1 and 20 players, each teams spawnpoint looks like a north korean military parade, but with worse equipment and you can find players almost everywhere on the map, even underground or in the sky.
Going down to 70 players is an improvement, though on that player count it tends to vary heavily based on whether or not a team happens to have better or more active players. But that's also the point, and the game overall players fairly decently with 70 players. 70 is the point the lag problems start kicking in, though, ruining the experience a little.
That brings me to 60 players, aka 30v30. On that player count games are still very fun. No portion of the map feels overcrowded. A single good player will still find it challenging to try and carry solo, but not the point of complete impossibility like in a full lobby. And it feels mostly right given the map sizes of most giga blockwars map. Its also not too laggy in my experience, though as a player with an okay-ish ping idk how much I can say in that regard.
50 players on the other hand feels like a bit too little, though I rarely come across lobbies with ~50 players so maybe I need to play on such ones a bit more. And the lag is nonexistent to me at this player count, but again, idk about others.
See ya next time for when I will detail how exactly giga blockwars makes trolling easy in just about every aspect I can think of.
Tl;dr: The maps are too small and not designed for 100 players, 100 player gamemodes invite tons of trolls and useless players, a full 100 player lobby is laggy even with perfect internet and low ping. And giga blockwars makes no effort to actually try to be different than the 5v5 versions of the gamemode, which is insane considering the player count being literally 10 times higher. According to a small analysis of the maps, previous games I have played and just my overall experience I think the ideal player count is somewhere around 60.
Today I want to discuss a flaw that may not be obvious as first and may not even be seen as such by many, and its the player count of the gamemode.
In case you don't know: in giga blockwars you have 2 teams fighting each other, both having a maximum of 50 players each.
How exactly is it a flaw?
NOTE: there is a tl;dr at the end for those not feeling like reading the full thing and those needing a short summary
There are several reasons for it.
Firstly, the player count is realistically the only difference when compared to 5v5 and (formerly) 10v10 blockwars gamemodes.
What do I mean by that? What I mean is: everything in the gamemode is almost the same.
You have to capture the same amount of objectives. You still only capture 3 flags. You still only get into the pit 20 times.
The only real change to the maps is the pits/flags being slightly further away. And I ain't even sure about that btw, I played a couple 5v5 and 10v10 games, and I hardly noticed a difference in how long it takes me to get to the opponents base
And almost everything else in the gamemode is the exact same.
Lets compare that to the only other giga gamemode I have played: giga eggwars.
Giga eggwars has maps designed specifically to accomodate the increased amount of players, with tons of extra resource generators and the maps being significantly larger.
And it also plays differently compared to any other normal eggwars mode, the larger teams make the game last much longer even if one team is much better than the rest. The additional generators mean that, as the player count decreases, the average amount of resources per player increases. Not to mention pvp against large teams in a game based on the principle of "kill or be killed" being noticably different.
On giga blockwars, the only difference is that if you play in a full or almost completely full lobby the map gets crowded.
A giga gamemode, believe it or not should provide more of a gameplay difference than just a larger player count, as shown by giga eggwars.
Lets discuss the next and already mentioned problem with the large player count, which is the crowded maps.
Even the maps may be larger than in they are in normal blockwars, they are still not large enough for 100 players.
As a result, in a full lobby, the only thing preventing the game from being completely unplayable is the fact that nearly half of all players don't actually play the game. If everyone on both teams actually played the game properly, a full lobby would be an absolute nightmare to play in.
There are two obvious solutions, one is increasing the map sizes and changing the map design to accomodate 100 players.
Another is decreasing the player count. As you may guess based on the title, I support option 2, as it will also fix plenty of other problems.
Speaking of other problems, here is the next one:
The larger lobby size invites tons of players who don't plan on actually playing the game as intended and lots of players that are just generally being useless.
Believe it or not, that's not even as much of a problem on giga eggwars as that gamemode kind of forces you to play it at least semi-properly to be able to survive, not to mention only having 40 players, not 100.
What this results in for giga blockwars is a large amount of players just goofing around and not playing the game at all, spending their time doing all kinds of useless stuff.
To be fair to them, as much as I can't stand them, a player count this large makes it so that the burden to play well, or play at all, on the individual player is much smaller, as well as the punishment for it.
In eggwars, regardless if its giga or any other mode, refusing to be a useful player will almost always punish you naturally.
If you spend the game just exploring the map or building a house instead of making defenses or killing players or gathering resources, you'll die fairly often, fairly quick and not enjoy the game a lot.
Eggwars forces you to be "useful" to be able to continue playing. Giga blockwars makes that optional.
That is also a bit of a problem with normal blockwars, but due to smaller team sizes its much easier to compensate for it by being more active yourself. Not to mention that being useless gets punished more often as you are very likely to keep getting killed if you are not being very useful. And if the whole team is useless it'll usually lose fairly quickly.
This problem could only be fixed by either lowering the player count in giga blockwars, or adding features that actively punishes players for not doing anything useful.
A really dumb Idea I spontaneously came up with would be kicking players if they don't deal enough damage to opponents or don't spend enough time near their flag/pit or don't try to capture flags/get into the enemy pits.
That Idea is severely flawed, I literally said its bad before describing it.
The fourth issue with the player count is with how the server handles it.
No matter your ping, your wifi connection, the strength of whatever device you are playing on, you'll probably experience some form of lag if you play in a full or almost full giga blockwars lobby simply because of the amount of players.
This honestly just feels like the server infrastructure is simply not designed to handle 90-100 players in one lobby.
Now the lag may not feel severe in lobbies like that, but its at least noticeable. I for example, despite a good ping, in full lobbies tend to experience delayed arrows when shooting bows, difficulties jump resetting and an ocassional player lagging to the point they can't be damaged.
Now imagine how it must feel for someone who doesn't have the luxury of a decent ping.
And to the last problem:
I already mentioned how the larger lobbies attract players who don't feel like actually playing the game.
Well, it also attracts way more trolls, campers and cheaters.
I made several posts about one highly notorious troll, obviously he is not the only troll on the network or that minigame, just the worst one of them all.
I have encountered plenty of less notorious, less active and less severe trolls, as well as a fair share of hackers.
The higher player count not only tends to attract them, but also ruins the fun of way more people.
A pair of teamers in an eggwars solos game can only ruin the experience of up to 10 other players.
One troll on giga blockwars can ruin the experience of up to 50 players, assuming the opponents won't be bothered by the entire opposing team being unable to play properly.
It also doesn't help that the gamemode in its design allows for trolling very easily, but that's a topic for a whole another post.
Now to solve this it'd be best if the gamemode got redesigned to make trolling a little more difficult WHILE still lowering the player count.
Now I mention lowering the player count a lot, but by how much exactly would it need to be lowered to fix those problems and how high would it need to be for the gamemode to still be worthy of the "giga" label.
Lets see:
Firstly, lets see how many players the maps are designed for.
Now based off of having played the gamemode and most maps with all sorts of player counts, lowest being around 15 and highest being a full lobby, I think I can provide a pretty good estimate of that.
To start off: they are clearly not for 10v10 or even 15v15 (between 20 and 30 total), on those player counts the map feels insanely empty with players only really being visible near their spawn areas. Even the diamond generators tend to be fairly empty on those player counts.
Realistically there is only one map that feels (almost) large enough to be fit for a 50v50, and even that one feels overcrowded in a full lobby, and that's canyon for CTF.
20v20 isn't much higher, though the maps do feel a bit more crowded, and games with 40 players are defintely very fun regardless of the map being a bit empty in some places.
Lets switch to the other extreme for a bit: the game is almost unplayable on anything around 80 players or above.
The diamond generators have 10-15 players EACH, attempting to capture flags means having to run away from anywhere between 1 and 20 players, each teams spawnpoint looks like a north korean military parade, but with worse equipment and you can find players almost everywhere on the map, even underground or in the sky.
Going down to 70 players is an improvement, though on that player count it tends to vary heavily based on whether or not a team happens to have better or more active players. But that's also the point, and the game overall players fairly decently with 70 players. 70 is the point the lag problems start kicking in, though, ruining the experience a little.
That brings me to 60 players, aka 30v30. On that player count games are still very fun. No portion of the map feels overcrowded. A single good player will still find it challenging to try and carry solo, but not the point of complete impossibility like in a full lobby. And it feels mostly right given the map sizes of most giga blockwars map. Its also not too laggy in my experience, though as a player with an okay-ish ping idk how much I can say in that regard.
50 players on the other hand feels like a bit too little, though I rarely come across lobbies with ~50 players so maybe I need to play on such ones a bit more. And the lag is nonexistent to me at this player count, but again, idk about others.
See ya next time for when I will detail how exactly giga blockwars makes trolling easy in just about every aspect I can think of.
Tl;dr: The maps are too small and not designed for 100 players, 100 player gamemodes invite tons of trolls and useless players, a full 100 player lobby is laggy even with perfect internet and low ping. And giga blockwars makes no effort to actually try to be different than the 5v5 versions of the gamemode, which is insane considering the player count being literally 10 times higher. According to a small analysis of the maps, previous games I have played and just my overall experience I think the ideal player count is somewhere around 60.
