Hi.

Post complaints, fixes, strategies, and what you think should be changed.

Switch placement:

The switch needs to be moved from it's current placement at the top of the TNT core. In two games I've played in the switch has gotten destroyed by accident from water flowing in from above because somebody digs into the water source for whatever reason; and when this happens, we don't really have a protocol for it. Of those two games:

• In the first game we played it out. I got over there and couldn't find the switch, but the other team swore they didn't remove it (it wasn't til after the game that we found out water was the culprit). We played the game out and I actually had to bring my own switch (or maybe it was a redstone torch) to set it off.
• In the second game it changed the outcome of the game. The whole enemy team was in our base, we had no bed or resources. They pretty much had the game. However water destroyed the switch but nobody noticed beforehand. The enemy team didn't point it out or anything, I think most of them thought they were just in the wrong spot. While they were scrambling on the planet I managed to grab some Ender Pearls and work my way to the other team's base to blow it up.

So as you can tell the consequences of this can be pretty dramatic. In one scenario it really just prolonged the game unnecessarily without changing the result, and in the other it prolonged the game long enough to change the outcome because nobody brought it up.

While I prefer the switch to be on the surface personally, if the desire is to leave it in the core then it should definitely be at the back of the planet, like it was in the first few games on Smogcraft.

As it is currently, the lava pillar is hollow. This is what allows me to get the diamond chest so fast and so consistently. I think it should be filled up, because there used to be a nice struggle for the center whereas now every time I play I basically just blitz in within 2 minutes of the start and grab the chest.

Also I'm not sure how we could handle this, but something has to be done to nerf the skybridge strategy. If you have arrows and are building a bridge, it is extremely difficult to resist the enemy's advance, and once they get over your planet it's pretty much game. Something I thought could work would be to move the entire arena higher so that it is close to the sky limit. This means that there is no glass roof for lava walls, but there is still a set height at which sky bridges stop. This discourages ridiculously high ones, because then you can't make stairs so they are one-way paths. Any other ideas?

Also I agree with Veed.

I think it would be nice to have a wool squish game in the waiting area.
For choosing which captain gets first pick and also for general retardation.

SkyBridges.
now there isnt anything wrong with sky bridges, they win games but i just wish we could change it up every now and then. I personally find myself not enjoying the games where the moment either team has a skybridge they trap and kill the opposition.
Sure Skybridges are the bet way to win but there cirtainly not a fun way imo, i miss the grand fights around the lava pillar, the push and pull gameplay now its just up and over =/

concessions
spectators get hungry too

i don't think it's completely fair to attribute the current state of the game to skybridges specifically. the problem at its root isn't that skybridges are too powerful, it's that lately one team always manages to seize the advantage early on, and then holds it for the entire match and preventing the other team from gaining any momentum. the winner is decided 15 minutes into a 40 minute match. i agree that skybridges can be pretty powerful, but they're not the ultimate source of the problem here. some of the most dangerous bridges i've faced were only 6 or 8 blocks above my own and/or didn't extend past the lava pillar; meanwhile, i've seen a number of max-height skybridges extended directly over our base that failed to accomplish much of anything. at other times i've witnessed the opposite results from both. building a skybridge =/= guaranteed victory. the science of building and managing bridges in oosos is surprisingly rich and subtle, more than i think any of us realizes, and none of us has come close to mastering it yet.

i don't think the skybridge typically wins games by itself. it takes a combination of factors to pull it off. projectiles are one; give one player a bow and from the safe vantage point of a skybridge he can singlehandedly shut down the enemy team's construction efforts. he can keep it up for the whole game, too, since arrows are so plentiful. drastically decreasing the number of arrows available would probably go a long way in reducing the dominance of skybridges (i'm thinking 10 gravel in the first nodes, none in the side nodes, and 5 flint in the diamond node... or just, say, cutting the number of available feathers down to 10 or 20); beyond greatly decreasing the duration for which archers can stifle enemy advancement, it might even force arrows into 'but what if we needed these later' status (like diamonds) and induce hoarding. definitely something we should playtest. making the diamond node harder to access, as boro suggested, should also help with this to some degree!

the other thing is beds. it's much, much harder to counter a skybridge when the enemy can instantly respawn atop it. this is where vonfiedler's argument against beds starts to hold water imo, this is as vital a factor in an offensive bridge's success as arrow fire is. a skybridge on its own is not a tremendous threat. a skybridge with arrows is daunting but beatable. a skybridge with arrows and a bed... pretty much seems like gg to me. i can't really think of a solution for this one short of removing beds (which i'd prefer to avoid since i really enjoy the extra dimension of depth they add to the game, especially as i think there's still much more room for exploration), but i'm hoping the reduction in arrows will be enough to neuter the infallible trifecta.

another way to approach the problem is to increase the team's motivation for staying low. we already do this to some extent - the game always begins as a base-level scramble to obtain the most nodes. skybridges of significant height rarely come into being before this point. once all the chests have been plundered, however, there's little reason to stay at base height. if you could find some reason to keep the players actively working at that altitude, i think skybridges would become somewhat less common. i don't have any ideas about how exactly to accomplish this, but i'll think about it.
alternatively, rather than fight high-altitude bridging, you could restructure the game around it. if, for example, the nodes were all staggered above the planet, most of the natural bridges would be above base height anyway, and so the vertical advantage given by true skybridges would be lesser. it's a fairly simple change to make, so maybe we ought to toss that on the playtest schedule.

more than anything else, though, i think we should probably just give it a little more time. the oosos metagame evolves slowly - it took us this long to even zero in on a dominant strategy. skybridges have been around for a while, but they've only recently been recognized as a huge threat. there hasn't been much of a chance yet for us to adapt to them and figure out how best to handle them. there may be a simple solution that just hasn't dawned on us yet. every bridge has its weakness, after all; perhaps we as defenders need only learn to exploit them. i have a few ideas myself that i can't wait to test. :>

a smaller height cap may also help but i think that would be getting ahead of ourselves! i do like the wool squish idea as fist fights can be fairly lengthy and also i suck at them.

as regards switch placement, i still want to try the switch-on-the-surface-but-sunken setup suggested by mastadi, both with the landing pool in front of and behind the switch. this arrangement should keep the switch protected and also prevent stealth victories better than the previous model did...
(i guess it's on me to get that incarnation of the map set up so i will get on that tomorrow!)

tbh rg I don't think i'd leave the waiting area if there was wool squish.

I think the metagame will change again with the new items. Gold actually has a use now: Higher level enchantments.

after one of the games we played the other day some one mentioned that creepers were now a slight threat with thier new AI. this got me thinking about using mobs to our advantages, we already do this to a basic degree by trying to destroy the oppositions torches but i was thinking we take it to a different level.
in the middle chest perhaps, there should be silverfish blocks, (the ones that when broken relase silver fish) this would add an extra degree of stratergy to the game on both the offecne and defence. it could alsp promote new Stone generators to add to the mind games or simple bolster your silverfish forces.
Tell me what you guys think, does this sound like a good idea? or am i just silly =P