Why I don't like Saxton Hale in MM8BDM

[Balrog]

I don't think Jenova is aiming for a matter of fairness, though. From the way it was worded, it sounded more like it would be the easiest way out from the first time such a matter is asked, which is sloppy. Not assuming Jenova was indeed being sloppy, but that's just the way I perceived it. On the other hand...

The complete rationale he gave was "We're not going to keep people from playing certain wads just because they're stupid or unbalanced." The MM8BDM thing was just an example.

[Knux]

Oh alright, thanks for clearing that up, man.

[Chme]

If there is so many peoples who plays SH without liking it, so they're enough for playing in another servers...

[Kapus]

If there is so many peoples who plays SH without liking it, so they're enough for playing in another servers...

Most people don't have the time or patience to sit in an empty server until it populates itself. A lot of people just want to have a quick game of MM8BDM with a decent amount of playmates to interact with. Populating an empty server often takes a really long time. By the time there are actually people there, you might not even want to play anymore.

[MusashiAA]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the need to rework Saxton Hale to something more Megaman has to do with the fear of the game as a whole devolving into something it really isn't. I, for one, feel this "fear".

My solution to that was that we integrate the superboss concept with Mega Man/Capcom/NES/Doom/deathmatch elements. Or even better: make a Terminator expansion based off superboss mode.

Here, I have an idea: let's say we create 6 types of superbosses: Gutsman-G, Heatman-G, Snakeman-G, Ringman-G, Napalmman-G and Blizzardman-G. Each superboss has a different kind of Terminator powerup, and the player who grabs it turns into the superboss that powerup represents. The Terminator powerup appears and reappears in different places of the map every 5 seconds or so, and it randomly changes form. The goal would be to kill the player that has the Terminator powerup. Superbosses walk somewhat slow but their attacks are very powerful, being attacked fills up a devastating rage mode, and their health is calculated as you would expect from a superboss mode. A twist would be that, during rage mode, you're more vulnerable to attacks and if you're killed, you drop the Terminator powerup for others to pick up. If you're the last player alive, you gain some extra abilities to deal with the superboss (namely the vanilla Terminator enhancements), and if you defeat him, you win. If there are more players alive and they defeat the superboss, they win.

EDIT: Let's add something else to the mix: the way players get randomized weapons is different from the usual. Instead of getting a number of random weapons of the totality of weapons the game offers, each player gets a random set of weapons that are put together based on certain abilities: rapid-fire, hard-hitters, explosives, rippers, shields and elemental weapons. Some deathmatch weapons like shields and healing items would need to be changed in order to make them more teamwork-oriented, though.

[Rozark]

Oh boy you're in for a treat.
Rozark Presents: 50 Shades of Saxton Hale- The Do It Yourself Webster's Edition Segment I

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Part 1- Level 1

I will mantain my argument: we can create something better than Saxton Hale, something everyone can enjoy.
If it were an issue of no variety, the solution is simple: let us host something different every three days or so, and keep that initiative alive.

Let's dissect this for a moment with.. OPINIONS.
Because quite frankly I'm tired of people complaining about Saxton Hale.

we can create something better than Saxton Hale, something everyone can enjoy.

Yes, we CAN create something better than Saxton Hale (Your opinion stated there) but will we? How many people have the actual motivation to go and say, recreate Domination? Make a better CTF? No? Those don't sound good? You might say create your own mode, but then what happens? We get the people, we get the hype, we start making things and just like expansions.. IT DIES OFF.
Back to Saxton Hale, back to people hating on it because it's "popular" (which for that reason it's wrong), and back to people here trying to make more alternatives before the cycle repeats itself. Alright, on to the next bit.

If it were an issue of no variety, the solution is simple: let us host something different every three days or so, and keep that initiative alive.

I call your bluff right here. This exact spot. Nope, not going to happen. Do you know why? I've already stated it above. IF interest even happens, IF people actually pursue that interest and play, and IF people continue to join those servers, that still wouldn't do anything. Introduce people to new modes yes, but ultimately it's up to the player and what they want to play. You can't outright force them to stop playing something they enjoy; there's no need to ridicule them either. If you honestly want to go "host something different every three days", then go get people and do it. Quit complaining about how it doesn't happen and just GO DO IT.
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Part 2- Balrog Speaks

Saxton Hale (and Classes Saxton, and Roboenza, and whatever Lego's working on, and Team Classes, and All Out War 2, and...) is popular because it allows idiots to win without doing anything that merits any kind of recognition, along with griefers who love griefing the Hale with flying classes.

Oh Balrog how you make me laugh.
Give me a moment.

Ok done with that.
Let's lay down a few ground "rules"
1: They're not idiots, they play this game too, they're community- the same community both you and I are apart of. By that definition we're both idiots, which, that isn't the case.
2: Without doing anything? They fight with respectable combat against each other, that's what mm8bdm is down to some of the bare bones, right? Every mode has these; they're all doing something.
3: Any kind of recognition? Is playing a game supposed to get you recognition; some sort of fame/being recognized? Isn't it good enough to just, play the game?
4: Flying classes. Instead of just outright removing classes, don't even touch them. Do NOT touch them in any way. If people REALLY want to play classes saxton, by entering the server they acknowledge the terms and agreement. A very subtle, yet noticeable rule: You accept the bullshit that may occur while playing this. You willingly and acceptingly go into this KNOWING what's about to go down. If you don't like it, go attempt to start another fad with the rest of the "haters".

Now that the ground rules are done, let's dissect. No, just no.

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Part 3- Balrog Speaks 2: Electric Boogaloo

Nothing will change this short of actively hiding the game from discovery and beating back everyone who doesn't meet our standards, thus letting the idiot population whither and die. This is untenable, for obvious reasons. FWIW, Tsuki bugged me about trying to get the combination of Classes and balrogsh banned from BEST-EVER. Jenova said that if things worked like that MM8BDM would be banned from the Zandronum master server.

OH BOY HERE WE GO

Nothing will change this short of actively hiding the game from discovery and beating back everyone who doesn't meet our standards, thus letting the idiot population whither and die. This is untenable, for obvious reasons.

I'm trying to understand this. I stared at it for 5 straight minutes. I put it through google translate, through gizoogle, everything I could think of, and I just can't make sense of it. I can't, you're Balrog, I can't. If you're saying that can't be objectioned to, that's because this can't be made any sense. Also state these "obvious reasons".

FWIW, Tsuki bugged me about trying to get the combination of Classes and balrogsh banned from BEST-EVER. Jenova said that if things worked like that MM8BDM would be banned from the Zandronum master server.

Stop. Hold up. Tsuki is a special case; at one time he supported the combination and defended it, yet here you're saying he doesn't want it. What. Also, what made you even think that bothering someone to ban the thing that is most played was the greatest idea? Jenova stated that he acknowledges that MM8BDM is played often and won't ban it because of so. You're trying to ban a popular played mod, no. Also Balrog, I'm aware you may or may not have jumped to these sections simply because it says your name. Go back and read the thing on Myroc's, more specifically, how to stop complaining and do something AKA the name of this post.

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Part 4- Bonus Content: Knux- and that's it.

> Saxton is dominant
> MM8BDM is being played.
> be glad

Someone else is going to say it if I don't anyway, but you're sorely mistaken. If 8BDM was being played, there wouldn't be so many complaints about Saxton. But no, it's not. And for the rest of us that actually care for the real game, that's nothing to be glad about. Get your facts straight.
WE NOW RETURN TO YOUR REGULAR SCREENSHOT PROGRAM.

Ripped from Screenshots thread.
First up: That isn't an actual quote, rather, that's just 4chan summarizing, if I'm not mistaken.
Second: Classes Saxton is being played in mm8bdm, therefore.. mm8bdm is being played at the core. People complain about saxton because they don't go and make their own things/get a group together, as stated previously above. Also, this IS the real game @ MM8BDM. Despite me liking vanilla, mods keep this thing fresh and alive. We're still alive, just to some of the more Rantists of the community, it isn't fresh. Go do something then. Also, my facts ARE straight. I'm not the one who stated mm8bdm isn't being played when the mm8bdm core IS being played with a mod. It's being played. Done.

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Part 5- Segment Conclusion

Now that all that is over, I conclude that complaining over something without actually doing anything yourself is very bad, so stop complaining and go do something already. Don't just plan, ACTUALLY GET A TEAM AND GO GET WORK DONE. Good luck not getting in expansion pack limbo. We don't even need a thread for this; why is it still up? Just go head on over to events, go schedule one, watch people agree and go play. Win-win, as it was said.

[Russel]

Why don't we just port Mann vs Machine to 8BDM instead

Ow...
My brain.
Just the simple thought of getting monsters to move along a fixed patch hurts my head beyond all forms of comprehension.

As much as I would love to make Monsteropolis Mash, yeah...as TGOT said it isn't happening any time soon due to Under Siege.
The only thing about that? What I was working on for Under Siege is basically finished. The only thing I have left to do for it is guess what?
Minion pathing.
Which is getting monsters to move along a fixed path.
This was an issue that stopped me from working a week ago. I thought of a system to do it, but I never implemented it...I need to do that this weekend and then maybe I will finally be able to make something else.

Anyway, my two bits.
I'm personally quite happy this topic came into being. The whole idiocy with Saxton Hale has gotten quite old.

[MusashiAA]

*snip*

Hey, you go change that, you're quoting me, not Myroc. You change that into Soda Fountain.

Also thanks for that buzzkill and how you missed a chance on actually going piece by piece and giving a proper response to the original post instead of complaining about complainers and being a party popper.

To make it simple, that is a matter of how MM8BDM servers are moderated. Not in the sense of bans and kicks and whatnot, but rather how they're hosted and set in the playability sense, but that's another story. What I want to focus on is to why Saxton Hale is seen by some as bad, and try to give my own thoughts regarding that.

If it were an issue of no variety, the solution is simple: let us host something different every three days or so, and keep that initiative alive.

I really did expect a proper analysis of my rant (why I don't like Saxton Hale in MM8BDM), and not a rant of a different topic (lack of variety in hosted mods). But I will answer one particular part that did catch my attention:

Yes, we CAN create something better than Saxton Hale (Your opinion stated there) but will we? How many people have the actual motivation to go and say, recreate Domination? Make a better CTF? No? Those don't sound good? You might say create your own mode, but then what happens? We get the people, we get the hype, we start making things and just like expansions.. IT DIES OFF.

I think that comes from yet another topic: how expansions are conceived, and how development is managed. I recall discussing that here with some guy I don't remember, and I think the conclussion was this: we come up and try to make many interesting things, but we have very limited talented developers, so most of those interesting things come to a halt until someone else picks them up and tries to finish them. These developers are working on their own projects that they like, and we can't ask them to just drop it all and work on this one thing ASAP as if it was a matter of life and death. Our community developers always have their hands full, so what we need is a new brethen of those. Not only that, but development managing also calls for a proper vission of leadership and design coherence, as well as a change of perception on what expansions are.

But that's another story: I focused on why the current state of Saxton Hale is, in my opinion, badly designed, and if people had other opinions. Mike also pointed out that we can't force people to play something else because of that if they find it fun, which is good, to which I agreed and replied with the need of remaking the superboss mode into something that everyone can enjoy.

But then Rozark was all like "but in reality we're lazy and never finish anything so stop complaining".

[Magnet Dood]

As much as it hurts to hear, he's pretty much right. The only one with a reliable track record for releasing things around here (not including the devs) is YD, finishing and releasing at least one version of all of the projects he's started. Mess and Myroc have also been pretty good with their projects, but that's about where the line ends. Other expansion leaders haven't even come close to releasing anything of such magnitude, such as myself, Rozark, Korby, and a whole slew of others. Clearly the talent pool is spread too thin to get anything done of merit around here.

[Balrog]

stuff

Good god that's long. So long I can't be bothered to split it up.

By "recognition" I mean things like having skill. In modes like DM, you need personal skill to win. In Saxton Hale (plus the other wads I mentioned) you can sit in a corner for 20 minutes and still have "You Win!" on your screen despite contributing nothing to the team's victory. (All team-based stuff has this to an extent, but for some reason these mods are the worst about it.) Yes, this sounds elitist, but it seems to line up with my personal experience. By "idiots" I mean, well, people who act like idiots on the Internet far past the point where it stops being funny. I've already made clear what I mean by this in previous "why are these new players so bad?" threads, so I don't feel I need to repeat myself. I feel that such players aren't really a part of the community because they make no attempt to actually follow the standards and etiquette of the community, nor do they contribute to the game. It's the difference between paying attention to your instructor, taking notes and maybe offering your insights during Philosophy class versus spending the session texting and chewing gum.

The basic process I've happened upon is "New player gets computer priveliges from parents, new player Googles 'free megaman game', new player installs MM8BDM, new player finds Doomseeker tutorial from launcher button, new player joins server, new player loses horribly, new player gets frustrated that other players with skill are beating them, new player and thinks 'this is unbalanced as heck!' and ragequits instead of practicing, new player happens across Saxton Classes Roboenza 2: The Second Coming, new player wins, new player thinks 'finally something that's balanced!' and plays nothing else forever and ever." Multiply that by a large n where n is the SCR2-only playerbase.

We know that people tend to play on full servers rather than loiter in empty servers hoping that they populate. Now the Saxton overload effect begins to be apparent despite the vitriol expressed here.

The banning thing was all Tsuki's idea, I just bounced it off of Jenova because I was curious to hear his end. I never expected him to approve it; if I did I would have dropped the matter, because actually getting a ban implemented would be a tremendously dickish thing to do. There's a reason I haven't closed off the ACS for Saxton Hale to complicate the process of removing the classes-blocker; it's because I believe that sharing your work is a good idea, and that completely blocking off any form of class-based modification from Saxton Hale is a dick move because it precludes the creation of mods specifically balanced against the hales.

The "nothing will change" part was derived from the following process:

Idiots (as defined elsewhere) will be able to find this website and therefore this game as long as it is easily discovered
As long as idiots are able to find this game the above bandwagon effect will occur
Therefore the solution to preventing the above bandwagon effect is to keep the game from being easily discovered.

The "obvious reasons" are that we'd be utter asshats if we did that and it would cripple our growth, causing the game to slowly whither and die.

The reason that nobody has done anything about this is twofold. First, it's far easier to complain about something than to do something about it, especially on the internet. Second, there seems to be a perception that any such events are doomed to fail in the long term because of the aforementioned bandwagon effect. I'd be happy to see more vanilla events and non-ass mods; I'm surprised there aren't any right now.

As much as it hurts to hear, he's pretty much right. The only one with a reliable track record for releasing things around here (not including the devs) is YD, finishing and releasing at least one version of all of the projects he's started. Mess and Myroc have also been pretty good with their projects, but that's about where the line ends. Other expansion leaders haven't even come close to releasing anything of such magnitude, such as myself, Rozark, Korby, and a whole slew of others. Clearly the talent pool is spread too thin to get anything done of merit around here.

And that.

Overall, I've decided I created a monster by keeping Saxton Hale alive. There's nothing else on anymore. If I had known this would happen, I would have never made Balrog's Fixed Saxton Hale and discouraged Tsuki and Lego from doing anything. Still, what's passed is passed, and all we can do is adapt to the new reality and try to keep play diversity (now circling the drain) from disappearing entirely.

My brain hurts. I'm going to play Skullgirls for a bit now before bed.

[Ivory]

Reliable and getting things done is two different things. YD has gotten things out, but he's hardly "reliable" at it. RNC was dead for the longest time. The same goes with Myroc. Mess tends to be the main driver for getting anything related to PU done. So Mess is the only one I would say is "reliable" the other two just happen to get it done eventually.

Now for my next point. And this one is direct especially towards people like you Magnet Dood.

Focus on one project. The reason official MM8BDM expansions get done effectively and efficiently isn't just an effective dev team, it's that a majority of the members are putting most of their effort into the official expansion. DOS, R&F2, V, MI, etc all suffer from having main players who divide their focus between multiple expansions. The result is barely anything gets done. So if you really want to get more expansions on their feet, just pick one and focus most of your energy in it. That's how v3 got done. That's how v4 is getting done. It works.

[Knux]

Yeah, my replies in blue.

Second: Classes Saxton is being played in mm8bdm, therefore.. mm8bdm is being played at the core.

Force shoving one thing into another different thing makes it something else, so no.

People complain about saxton because they don't go and make their own things/get a group together, as stated previously above. Also, this IS the real game @ MM8BDM. Despite me liking vanilla, mods keep this thing fresh and alive. We're still alive, just to some of the more Rantists of the community, it isn't fresh. Go do something then.

Oh yeah, no shit. It's what we're trying to get at here, genius.

Also, my facts ARE straight. I'm not the one who stated mm8bdm isn't being played when the mm8bdm core IS being played with a mod.

Except you just did once again. Twisting the fact that we have an uber popular mod that's full of game mechanics and sounds not originally intended for the core game won't help your point, whatever the hell that is. The bottom line is, it doesn't feel like MM8BDM AT ALL.

If you had a glass of orange juice and added a bunch of sand to it then drank it, could you say it was orange juice? Hahah, yeah I didn't think so, either. After all, it would be what the human brain recognizes as indigestible shit.

Then again, I guess some like the taste. Oh well!

[Rozark]

Balrog, you're not helping your case by just going "stuff".

Quick dissection and I'm done with you; it's easy to pick apart.

If we're talking about "skill" you don't need skill for any mode. At all. DM doesn't count because you grab closest weapon, fire into swarm, win. Duel isn't skill either due to "LETS FIGHT NO LETS HEAL NO LETS FIGHT NO LETS HEAL -10 minutes later- FIRST FRAG"

Also, they play the game to have fun, not follow whatever rules you're making up right there.

You're hating on new players. This is why you're named "The Harbinger" in a thing I contributed to. You're afraid of new players, fix that. It's an open community and it's going to stay that way.

-skipping over a few things because i've already told you that the "idiots" you're talking about are new players as we all were at one point-

Done with that.
Get over your fear of new players and stop complaining and do something.
Silly how just that sentence alone takes care of that entire page you wrote.

On another point, Star Dood, that statement puts the ENTIRE effort of 4mi on myself, when that isn't the case. HD and Blaze took the entire thing before I, where as I've only had it for 2-3 months. 2-3 months isn't enough time so rephrase that sentence of yours/yes I've still got a fairly reliable track record.

Also, hey knux, that's still orange juice, just with sand in it. You don't just call it sand juice, that'd be pure sand.
I'm also aware that saxton isn't core mm8bdm, but you're still playing mm8bdm.

Lastly I'll take that note Ivory wrote and put it in my executive folder.

Gee I just keep adding on as I think of things.
Musashi, I'll leave your first post alone FOR NOW because you gave reasons on why it wasn't fit for mm8bdm, which I'll later get back to if I feel like it. I really don't think this topic should even exist as it mostly consists of people just complaining about doing something rather than doing it, but whatever.

[MusashiAA]

I'd like this topic to end with Rozark's post. I request this topic to be locked, please.

[LlamaHombre]

I guess that's that, then.