AC3 Revisited - Like a Decade Later...

[Desert Fox]

So I played through AC3 again, and did the arena thing with various ACs and a few things struck me.

 

Gameplay really was a lot of FUN. Just boosting around with all the old techniques is still really fun and cool.

 

Old AC games were hard. You have to just grit and keep going with your crummy AC performance until you can cobble some money for not-awful parts. (especially boosters and generator) I admire From's forcing you to do that slowly, to enhance appreciation of upgrades. It's a bit funny having to OB drift in starter missions just to get half decent speed.

 

Blading was good, but blading with OP-I should've been the default with HZL50 in play. Tracking was just so much better with most heads and FCS's than I remember, totally don't get why they messed it up for SL.

 

OB was drainy, but stages and areas were smaller so it wasn't that noticeable.

 

HZL50 needed some tweaking, more weight, less ammo, slower reload. Maybe all of the above to a degree.

 

OP-I was actually fun even without cannons, although obviously still a game breaker.

 

The VS stages kinda sucked, no open skies with cover.

 

Weapon tracking felt tighter, but it might be because ACs were slower with no MOB. Double locks felt a little faster. Kinda feel it actually was tighter, to a degree. Definitely had the capability - as OP-I Sawa guy clearly shows.

 

It was fun to see all the badly designed ACs in the arena, then as you get closer to the top you can see noticeable improvement in the designs, and at the top equipped with some of the best weapons.

 

Fun to mess around with the starter AC, Gundam ACs, and other giant robot lookalikes.

 

Or self-challenges like using the starter AC frame etc.

 

Potential

It's a bit disconcerting there was a bunch of potential they still never went anywhere with. Among other things...

 

- Advanced tutorials by arena Ravens (allies?) once you reach various ranks. OB drift/glide, OB run, OB jump.

 

- Level/Stage editor to let players design their own.

[Crimson Fury]

My only and ONLY gripe with AC3 was the bland arena selection. With arenas from SL-LR it would've been gravy.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I can get down with that criticism, but AC3 had some aesthetic arena bots.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

AC3 map selection was fucking terrible, one of the worst easily (maybe the worst)

 

yeah they had some nice looking bots in the arena tho man

 

lookin clean fellas, lookin real clean

[Desert Fox]

Well blading's fun, even if HZL is way more effective.

 

Btw, anyone know what Watcher's staple Owl was running AC3 era? I'm curious if he was using the HZL or a blade.

 

Can emulators run the old games (AA-SL) and play people online? You'd think someone would be able to hack that and fix SL's client lag if they had a mind to, or some up and coming game designer could do that as an exercise or something. If there was interest, which there probably isn't...

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Well blading's fun, even if HZL is way more effective.

 

Btw, anyone know what Watcher's staple Owl was running AC3 era? I'm curious if he was using the HZL or a blade.

 

Can emulators run the old games (AA-SL) and play people online? You'd think someone would be able to hack that and fix SL's client lag if they had a mind to, or some up and coming game designer could do that as an exercise or something. If there was interest, which there probably isn't...

 

owl 3 was

 

005

ner

i forget the arms i wanna say eas

edge

002

nd8

roz

sa44

i think 10 shot decoys i forget

r20

mm16/1

starter radar

srf80

sol (the wave sword)

 

he didn't use hzl50, he and i both kinda had a thing against it

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Seriously, I was ok with banning HZL50 in AC3 just out of principal that is was dumb.

 

AC3's hover boosters thou, so tier.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

hzl50 was literally a l arm ksaw for 1/7 the weight hahaha

 

like exact same stats and everything

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Yup

[Desert Fox]

Thanks, I was curious.

 

HZL50 was the L arm MG800 of AC3. Struck me as a gentlemen's ban. Without it in play, everything else for L arm is reasonably viable. After the initial ooo-ah, it seemed dumb. Cool laser swords or an awkwardly lobbed bomb. Blades probably could've used a bit of a boost though, maybe 10-15% more damage - it's more obvious when using the first two swords, they are plain weak for the effort.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

3-LR needed that 3-bladed beauty from AC2/AA.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

HZL50 was the L arm MG800 of AC3. Struck me as a gentlemen's ban.

 

everyone but me watcher and oliver ran it at moc3 hahahahaha

 

watcher was smarter about it than I was that's why he said fuck his staple he's going with what works, i learned my lesson by moc4 at least

 

oliver is oliver so it didn't matter he was getting his regardless

[LS]

Watcher ran EDGE in a tourney? That guy is the truest of heroes. It's been a long time since I looked at the numbers, but I remember there being literally no reason to ever use EDGE over underweighted 066.

 

AC3 has Wasteland and whatever-it-is city, where that girl gets mad if you shoot her. Those and Structure aren't bad maps.

 

HUESO and HZL50 should definitely be banned in AC3. Probably CROW too, since iirc it drains less in AC3 than it does in SL, in addition to lasting like twice as long. I can't really think of much else, other than OP-I.

 

I remember thirteen37 on RH saying something about how he considered AC3 without HZL50 to be the real golden age of blading, even more so than AC2 era. I can't blade, so I don't remember why, but yeah, they really destroyed tracking in SL for some reason.

 

AC3 is definitely my favorite single player experience in the series. If I'd had to put up with client lag in SL, it would probably be my favorite multiplayer experience too.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Watcher ran EDGE in a tourney? That guy is the truest of heroes. It's been a long time since I looked at the numbers, but I remember there being literally no reason to ever use EDGE over underweighted 066.

 

Nah, he didn't.

 

watcher was smarter about it than I was that's why he said fuck his staple he's going with what works, i learned my lesson by moc4 at least

 

he ran the anti-oliver tank instead

 

oliver won anyways cuz ac2-ac3 era oliver is the most dominant AC player I've ever seen

 

dood was a deity

 

AC3 has Wasteland and whatever-it-is city, where that girl gets mad if you shoot her. Those and Structure aren't bad maps.

 

HUESO and HZL50 should definitely be banned in AC3. Probably CROW too, since iirc it drains less in AC3 than it does in SL, in addition to lasting like twice as long. I can't really think of much else, other than OP-I.

 

I remember thirteen37 on RH saying something about how he considered AC3 without HZL50 to be the real golden age of blading, even more so than AC2 era. I can't blade, so I don't remember why, but yeah, they really destroyed tracking in SL for some reason.

 

 

wasteland and structure were good maps for sure, structure was better in LR tho; metagame was better suited for that kind of map

 

truth is if we were to do moc3 now the ban list would prolly be longer, it took a long time for us to warm up to the idea of banning parts

 

crow was banned for it, hueso was too, but hzl50 was in and so was rf220 but both got a ton of discussion, and the biggest discussion was around defense (u might remember how idiotic AC3 and SL were about defense)

 

I think best periods for swordplay were MOA, AC2AA, SL. AC3 was okay tho.

[Desert Fox]

Watcher ran EDGE in a tourney? That guy is the truest of heroes. It's been a long time since I looked at the numbers, but I remember there being literally no reason to ever use EDGE over underweighted 066.

 

HUESO and HZL50 should definitely be banned in AC3. Probably CROW too, since iirc it drains less in AC3 than it does in SL, in addition to lasting like twice as long. I can't really think of much else, other than OP-I.

 

AC3 is definitely my favorite single player experience in the series. If I'd had to put up with client lag in SL, it would probably be my favorite multiplayer experience too.

EDGE are more nimble and agile than mid legs, even if stats are same or better. Jump higher, run faster, and I think turn faster. I noticed when I put my staple on lights legs in AC3 and NX recently. Harder to handle though, usually drainier and less armored - unless you're going really light or with something that empties fast, it's pretty hard to mount a mid-weight or heavier missile pack and get enough of a connect rate to make up for the speed loss.

 

CROW was banned and definitely the worst offender. HZL50 wasn't but could be by MG800 ban logic. Was it HUESO, or just with FLEET banned? I forget. RF220 didn't need banning in my opinion, at all. Blades would fix the super defense problem to a degree, the heavies had more limited mobility without MOB cores and higher weight - and without HZL50 they wouldn't be nigh un-bladeable.

 

I dunno, the AC3 maps were lacking - Wasteland was ok but you can't see much taking out a big part of the fun, Structure was ok but screws my staple verts or the dual verts. :/ Military Base, Trene, Crest Base, and the inside crest base (forget the name) and the tall pipes stage add a lot to the SL vs battles. Lag screws it up a lot though. Can't remember if Trene was in AC3 as a stage.

 

The green blade is basically the 3-claw from AA, though admittedly it looks more like Wolverine with 3-claw so its cooler.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

CROW was banned and definitely the worst offender. HZL50 wasn't but could be by MG800 ban logic. Was it HUESO, or just with FLEET banned? I forget. RF220 didn't need banning in my opinion, at all. Blades would fix the super defense problem to a degree, the heavies had more limited mobility without MOB cores and higher weight - and without HZL50 they wouldn't be nigh un-bladeable.

 

CROW was banned, hzl50 wasn't cuz it was such a new thing bscly, we all just kinda felt like let it rock and see what happens, especially since it was inevitable at that point that l arm guns would get introduced

 

FROM saved us the trouble of banning it later by removing it altogether, I think they realized how bad a mistake that weapon was

 

fleet was never up for discussion in AC3, or SL; LR it was banned. In those games I don't think it'd be up for discussion even now

 

hueso was banned, rf220 wasn't but nearly was. Reason being it was proven that hueso+rf220 was proven to be broken through tons of jap tournies and all of the test tournies we did here; I suspect the hunk style heavies would be just as bad and woulda gotten the same level of consideration now that hueso rifle boys did then

 

man heavies were fast as shit in AC3 hahahaha, and hzl50 blew them up, and the defenses would get so insane the only way to hurt them anyways was blades...that they could use too. Remember you could make a lot of weapons do 0 damage per hit, and iirc you could make heavies that were viable that could reduce GNL15 damage to like 200 per hit

 

franko was best proof of how mobile heavies were in AC3, dood ran a high drain heavy and took 4th or 5th at moc3

 

heavy defense was bullshit in those two games, no real way around that either cuz there were several ways to get the higher numbers needed

 

trene city was SL iirc, good map

 

oh, but about rf220 we all kinda just said "this is only broken with hueso but otherwise its just the best gun so let it rock and ban hueso"

 

I'm mainly just tossing facts out and reminiscing tho, I'd never play AC3 again tbh

[Desert Fox]

CROW was banned, hzl50 wasn't cuz it was such a new thing bscly, we all just kinda felt like let it rock and see what happens, especially since it was inevitable at that point that l arm guns would get introduced

 

fleet was never up for discussion in AC3, or SL; LR it was banned. In those games I don't think it'd be up for discussion even now

 

hueso was banned, rf220 wasn't but nearly was. Reason being it was proven that hueso+rf220 was proven to be broken through tons of jap tournies and all of the test tournies we did here; I suspect the hunk style heavies would be just as bad and woulda gotten the same level of consideration now that hueso rifle boys did then

 

heavy defense was bullshit in those two games, no real way around that either cuz there were several ways to get the higher numbers needed

I'm almost sure FLEET wasn't banned until LR, at least on the forums. It's on my SL staple and no one batted an eye about it in the day, I'm sure I'd remember. I recall the discussion about it centering on FLEET + HUESO in AC3, with the majority deciding HUESO were the problem vs FLEET. LR was the first AC I remember where we agreed it was necessary to ban a booster across the board, that was a big deal and some people thought it was ridiculous until they saw it in action.

 

RF220 was the best gun due to the huge box (should've been standard), plus overall deep killpower plus ability to heat. I see it like 008 core in SL, it's best but the margin's not so large - clearly best doesn't mean needs ban for me. I had no human vs back in AC3 era, so I never got to test it.

 

I remember it was the RF220/HZL50/HUESO/FLEET that was AC3 uber-AC. I'm pretty sure HUESO was the only part banned, at least initially. We decided the weapon combo was best, but like 008 core, not so much better than other options it needed banning. Maybe you guys decided that later in the Cali groups.

 

It'd be easy to put at least some limits on heavies by banning the heaviest arms, but the speed boost leaves the end result pretty similar. If I remember right, everyone back in the day decided we didn't want to go down that road and so we just collectively said they were lame and put it on disdain to discourage. I do remember ammo to crack the superheavies and tanks being a concern when designing. It just got more ridiculous in SL with solid shields and PEGASUS.

 

You could try and deal with weapon inaccuracy in AC3-SL by limiting boosters to weaker ones, I've been messing around with them for fun in the arena, but then GNL and/or LQ15 are super-dominant.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

I'm almost sure FLEET wasn't banned until LR, at least on the forums. It's on my SL staple and no one batted an eye about it in the day, I'm sure I'd remember. I recall the discussion about it centering on FLEET + HUESO in AC3, with the majority deciding HUESO were the problem vs FLEET. LR was the first AC I remember where we agreed it was necessary to ban a booster across the board, that was a big deal and some people thought it was ridiculous until they saw it in action.

 

word, except it wasn't ever about fleet itself in AC3, it was pretty much always just hueso. The part combo everyone was afraid of was rf220+hueso, in particular. Noone was afraid of fleet before because acceleration and stuff from boosters didn't work like it did in later games. Fleet just happened to be the fastest. Not like in LR where fleet can do things no other booster can do.

 

RF220 was the best gun due to the huge box (should've been standard), plus overall deep killpower plus ability to heat. I see it like 008 core in SL, it's best but the margin's not so large - clearly best doesn't mean needs ban for me. I had no human vs back in AC3 era, so I never got to test it.

 

I remember it was the RF220/HZL50/HUESO/FLEET that was AC3 uber-AC. I'm pretty sure HUESO was the only part banned, at least initially. We decided the weapon combo was best, but like 008 core, not so much better than other options it needed banning. Maybe you guys decided that later in the Cali groups.

 

Exactly, It was the best gun in AC3 but not bannable. At the time anyways, who knows now.

 

That was the first god AC, yeah, altho iirc just about any of the top tier boosters worked fine for it (there were 3 in AC3). Oliver was the first guy to point it out here in SoCal, and everyone else learned it soon after from jap tourney vids.

 

The next god AC was Hunk, jujuboy's heavy. mg1000 hzl50 oc15 rm20 on a bunch of heavy parts with volar legs. Empty the orbits and then camp out cuz its impossible to come in on mg+hzl in that game if your defense is high enough. You gotta remember that defense in AC3 and SL is not linear scale, it's exponential.

 

franko's bot was very similar to that but he took it to the next level at the cost of making it a little more difficult to pilot, also he was a far superior player to jujuboy. Hence he got the result he did at MOC3.

 

It'd be easy to put at least some limits on heavies by banning the heaviest arms, but the speed boost leaves the end result pretty similar. If I remember right, everyone back in the day decided we didn't want to go down that road and so we just collectively said they were lame and put it on disdain to discourage. I do remember ammo to crack the superheavies and tanks being a concern when designing. It just got more ridiculous in SL with solid shields and PEGASUS.

 

You could try and deal with weapon inaccuracy in AC3-SL by limiting boosters to weaker ones, I've been messing around with them for fun in the arena, but then GNL and/or LQ15 are super-dominant.

 

Nah I don't think we ever discussed banning based on values, or banning heavy parts. Also lots of people ran that kind of stuff at MOC3 tbh (including watcher). One particularly infamous result was someone cracking the top 10 with a near max defense tank and tons of camping. People didn't realize until it was too late just how god tier tanks are in AC3.

 

gnl was dominant anyways in AC3. It's a big part of why tanks were top tier and quads could be right there. EJ was another (infamous) example of that. His quad was an amalgamation of the best weapon combos he saw other people use (gnl15, mg1000, mm16/1+rm20, hzl 50), along with the easiest and most effective playstyles. He also cracked the top 10 iirc. Was big for his reputation (and ACO's).

 

SL is a different animal so I'd prefer talking balance/history about one or the other, not both at the same time. Too confusing for me hahaha

 

oh and you're right, the superheavies got to the true point of brokenness in SL, because we were finally seeing values where weapons were doing 0 damage, which before that point was unheard of (not to be breaking my own rule about mixing the two, I just wanted to add this in as a note haha)

Edited June 7, 2014 by BISHOP MUSHROOM TIP

[Shirtless Crackhead]

RF220 was legit as fuck.

 

HZL50 wasn't.

 

Oliver was also, legit as fuck.

[LS]

With HUESO banned I don't really see the point of banning R220, since iirc there were only three rifles in AC3, one of which was the garbage starter rifle. You just force ACs that would use R220 to use R160 or whatever it's called instead, which is just a straight nerf of rifles. I never felt like R220 was ending up on ACs that wouldn't otherwise be using rifles, with the exception of ACs that were trying to minimize weapon weight to stack def or speed, like HUESO lights, and I think banning HUESO and HZL50 takes care of most of that.

 

Rifles as a whole never seemed broken to me, especially since the def stacking hurts them more than it does a lot of weapons. A lot of ACs would rather have a laser rifle anyway, especially since without HZL50 it's significantly harder to burn through defense with R220's heat.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

hzl50 wasn't banned

 

if you're talking hypotheticals though, if you ban hzl50 then rf220 probably loses a lot of its effectiveness, but the ability to chip without having to actually aim can't be understated tho, especially in that game since its almost entirely wide open flat plain maps. The Japanese players understood that better than us. They were big on playing for chip damage and winning with the clock years before we were hahaha. The closest we got to that in AC's hayday (so AC2 thru SL) was using the clock to apply pressure, not using the clock to actually win (shout out to roach and Lord Myrthael tho they actually did do this from the jump).

 

I think that if we played AC3 now I think the metagame would be considerably different, to the point that we'd have to rethink a lot of what we did back then, in terms of rules and in terms of designs.

 

AC3 coulda turned into a nightmare imo but didn't because people either weren't willing to exploit or didn't realize how to, yet. Prolly both, tbh. There were several very exploitative builds at MOC3 but MOC4 was way more cutthroat.

 

examples from MOC3:

 

LM took 4th with a wild exploitative build (mid with verts and srf80 and energy shield, ran the whole fight and played AP lead)

 

Franko took 5th with what I'd have considered one of the strongest robots in the tournament (plasma rifle, orbits, hzl50, hunk type frame)

 

Watcher ran a tank that was anti-Oliver and played against the metagame of AC3 very well (it ran ECMs and an energy shield)

 

Kobel ran bscly the easiest to win with tank design you could use (so bscly hunk with lower drain and bigger guns but less agile)

 

EJ ran a wild exploitative quad (multis, and he'd bscly just fly to the top of the map and fire mm16 straight down for wins, worked like a charm; one of the funniest and most clever things EJ ever noticed and stole tbh)

 

The most interesting thing you'll notice from those examples, assuming you followed the metagame post-SL, is that all of those kinds of builds/strats became the norm afterwards: stalling, running, chip damage, working the clock to try and win by time or 'suicide by cop' type shit where doods get killed from getting fed up with you and the clock

 

its interesting stuff to think about imo

Edited June 9, 2014 by BISHOP MUSHROOM TIP

[LS]

Yeah, I was speaking hypothetically in the context of my previous post. Let me try to explain it a bit more clearly.

 

In my mind, a ban has to increase part variety in order to be justified. There are two ways a ban can do this. The first is by weakening a dominant archetype, increasing the frequency of other archetypes. An example of this could be the solid shields ban in SL decreasing the dominance of def stacking heavies. The second is by giving an archetype several viable options where before it had one. MG800 in SL is the perfect example of this, since it split MG users into MG1000 and MG500.

 

I guess what I meant was that banning R220 does not increase part variety in the second way, since there is only one other good rifle in the game. Given that, in the context of HUESO being banned, I would rather ban HZL50 than R220, because that weakens the same critical archetype that banning R220 does, while also giving people a choice between one of several blades, a shield, and using the weight elsewhere, on multiple AC archetypes that would otherwise always use HZL50.

 

On another note, I don't really see a distinction between what you're calling exploitative builds and what I'd call good designs in the context of the metagame, especially since the ACs you listed are all at least somewhat different, and certainly are not all the same archetype. Why would more of this sort of thing have been a nightmare?

Edited June 9, 2014 by LS

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

yeah i more or less agree with u, rf220 by itself isn't necessarily a problem

 

On another note, I don't really see a distinction between what you're calling exploitative builds and what I'd call good designs in the context of the metagame, especially since the ACs you listed are all at least somewhat different, and certainly are not all the same archetype. Why would more of this sort of thing have been a nightmare?

 

the short answer is you want to see the best player win. Also my bad on this, I just realized how unclear my list of examples could look...I didn't mean that all of the bots on my list were exploitative, I only meant the ones that I stated were exploitative were, despite that first paragraph leading into it. Again, my bad.

 

you might not see the distinction because of philosophical differences in what 'best player' or even 'winning' means but I'll try to explain more what I mean:

 

*this will get edited in kinda slow cuz I'm about to take lunch at work which means signing off this thing during it*

 

LM took 4th with a wild exploitative build (mid with verts and srf80 and energy shield, ran the whole fight and played AP lead)

 

He ran a mid with ner core, verts and relation missiles, energy shield, srf80, and then chipped and ran the entire match, for every match. At MOC3 he won nearly all of his fights by time, and the general idea behind it all was 'If I can't beat you in a fight, I wont get into a fight. You will die from trying to drag me into one.' Pretty much everyone hated him for it, because those fights were boring to watch, even worse to be in, and most people were left thinking they lost to a worse player. Most people weren't thinking about playing this way, which as I said could be partly their bad, or just not willing to go that far, or w/e.

 

Him and the guy who ran the one tank from MOC4 (I think?) are the only two guys I've seen who actually caught shade from the community at large, too. That's kinda strange, but also kind of telling.

 

EJ too, of course, but his playstyle wasn't the only thing that rubbed people the wrong way. I'm sure you're plenty familiar with that by now, though.

 

Franko took 5th with what I'd have considered one of the strongest robots in the tournament (plasma rifle, orbits, hzl50, hunk type frame)

 

This was borderline exploitative, but I'm inclined to defend it as simply a great bot mainly because he showed a lot of pizazz with it and he took a gun that was criminally underrated (xcg20) and forced it down everyone's throats. I say borderline because it was basically just Hunk with a r arm gun change, but he didn't play it anything like Hunk gets played, and I know from personal experience that he's a more daring and clever player than most people I've ever seen. Also, I'm not so sure anyone else at MOC3 could have gotten anywhere near the results he did with it. This is a better example of a great design for a great player, than anything.

 

I've told people this many times, with regard to both AC and other games, but the thing that'll piss people off the most is how you play, not what you play with.

 

Watcher ran a tank that was anti-Oliver and played against the metagame of AC3 very well (it ran ECMs and an energy shield)

 

This bot wasn't necessarily exploitative (except against Oliver lol). Anyone else runs this bot at that time and they probably get knocked out a lot earlier than he did (by Oliver). Like in Franko's situation, it was more of a great bot for a great pilot situation. I think the later metagames we saw develop would be far better equipped to run this kind of bot, though.

 

But again, about Oliver's dominance, go back and watch these fights. Coma (Watcher's tank) has 9705 AP, Oliver's ksaw does 309-310 per hit, and has 50 rounds. That means he had to land 32 rounds per fight to kill Coma. That's just over 62% accuracy, against ecm pods, no hzl50, in mostly open maps, against the Watcher. Fucking unreal.

 

Kobel ran bscly the easiest to win with tank design you could use (so bscly hunk with lower drain and bigger guns but less agile)

 

He literally played this as Hunk, but with a GNL15 instead of orbits. The only differences were the legs (he used SHUT) and the back mount (GNL15 instead of OC15+rm20). Let your AP and the clock force them to you, and then just back away while firing grenades and hzl rounds at them til they die. This bot is a perfect example of what I mean by saying tanks were a potentially dominant AC in AC3 that people didn't notice until it was too late.

 

He almost beat Watcher's tank with this tank, too. That's telling considering that Watcher was in a different stratosphere to Kobel in terms of skills.

 

EJ ran a wild exploitative quad (multis, and he'd bscly just fly to the top of the map and fire mm16 straight down for wins, worked like a charm; one of the funniest and most clever things EJ ever noticed and stole tbh)

 

Basically, he watched Watcher (lol) use multis a bunch and realized that they're almost 100% accurate if you fire from directly above your opponent. He then did this in every single fight, the entire fight, to fantastic results. He also had the mg1000/hzl50 (of course he did) and a gnl15 that he almost never used. Truth is even if you were prepared for it, it's really hard to deal with.

 

It's a very similar situation to the LM one from earlier: some missile packs (or playstyles and archetypes, even) in AC3 can get you wins on their own even if you're no good as a player, as long as you can find ways to remove 'playing' from the equation of 'winning'. It's sort of like employing a Fabian strategy.

 

---

 

The nightmare comes from this: what happens if those bots that did so well become the norm? If everyone played like EJ and LM, you'd have a wild boring game. Few people would want to continue playing, and even fewer would want to watch. If nobody wants to play or even watch, then the scene dies.

Edited June 9, 2014 by BISHOP MUSHROOM TIP

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Legit shooting is legit.

 

I ran so many ppl out of ammo in SL tournaments it's not even funny, and I'd often do it w/ bots that have no business doing that.

 

The dodge game was harder IMO in 3, I think it just lent itself to weapons you weren't going to dodge. Also, it's mad hard to do the strafe strutter in a tank, which is pretty key to effectively dodging sawa shots aside from just position play. Bulldogging 2 stronk 4 lyfe, ya hurd.

 

But you'd see that shit in SL tournaments too. People doing counter-builds, purposefully picking certain strats to beat others, and Tearsin did the goofy shit where you could have 3 bots per event. It would have been way more whacky if it was just 1. I would have been fine tbh, cuz I tended to main and play others just for shits and giggles, like my dual-zook bots.

 

3's meta was pretty goddamn legit all things considered. RF220 was good except everything not hulk, and HZL50 make all hulks pay, so it was really only 'OP' in the sense that it dunked on an entire category of strats that are totally legit IMO. Soaking damage is something you should have to consider.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

fuck that's gotta be the biggest post I've made on this forum hahahaha christ