"Must-have" Addons for "Stronghold"?

[jwaffe]

Stronghold's pretty and all but its gameplay feels mostly pretty boring.

The actual fights usually consist of holding down M1 to defeat the enemy because most of the time the demons come from one direction and even when they don't, in multiplayer you usually are able to cap all of their entrance spots. The demons always come from the same path and even their type and numbers can be easily predicted by looking up the ACS source or just simply memorizing. Every fight is always the same thing.

You think the same as i do. Stronghold could be hugely funny but it is like a raw diamond which needs to be perfected. First thing there needs to be more monsters, more spawn points with larger maps, and like samsarahold more playing classes with different weapons and abilities. There should be two game modes, one intended for newbies and one for players who like the challenge otherwise you'll end up with newbies being obliterated and good players camping on the spawn points like dirty cheaters.

I also agree with this, I personally prefer the gameplay of Alpha-Delta invasion and Armageddon Invasion, over Stronghold (I know they're different game modes but I think there's some clever things they did that can be applied to Stronghold). Even though Stronghold looks quite nice it gets tiring after a while.

[bruiserdaemon]

I also agree with this, I personally prefer the gameplay of Alpha-Delta invasion and Armageddon Invasion, over Stronghold (I know they're different game modes but I think there's some clever things they did that can be applied to Stronghold). Even though Stronghold looks quite nice it gets tiring after a while.

I thought stronghold was actually much better than a regular invasion game, with all the items and a basical storyline to follow but anyway... i wonder why it is so difficult for modders to realize what is fun and what is not. Sometimes they look like they want to just show new stuff without worring much about the gameplay...

[Untitled]

I personally overhype Vanilla stronghold because I'm very good at overlooking what projects do badly in favor of what they did well - it's why I like pretty much almost every megawad ever; as long as it did something good. On the occasion Stronghold gets fun; it gets memorably so and I just sort of filter out the repetitive stuff from memory.

Personally, what most impresses me about stronghold is from a coding standpoint - the sheer effort put into it was really something. Something that could've been used better; but I give points for the sheer incredible factor of the code.

I also agree with this, I personally prefer the gameplay of Alpha-Delta invasion and Armageddon Invasion, over Stronghold (I know they're different game modes but I think there's some clever things they did that can be applied to Stronghold). Even though Stronghold looks quite nice it gets tiring after a while.

Care to elaborate? I'd be happy to try adding things - This is a man who once added 12 different monster path routes into a map (new version of STR32 has that many, though never all activated at once).

I thought stronghold was actually much better than a regular invasion game, with all the items and a basical storyline to follow but anyway... i wonder why it is so difficult for modders to realize what is fun and what is not. Sometimes they look like they want to just show new stuff without worring much about the gameplay...

Because different modders have different tastes of fun?

I mean, Stronghold itself had flaws; but I could still find what it did well. I can also find what it did less well, but the point is modders have different tastes. Some people don't mind repetitive gameplay - for me, as long as isn't too repetitive (at least vary your monsters types, that's often enough for me), I'm fine with it - I actually have found super-linear levels to be fun.

Also, it's actually REALLY hard to gauge fun-factor when map-designing - A lot of people look at their game differently from testing to when it's released; I know I do. I've made my fair share of mistakes in map-design (basically any time I've tried to use High-tier monsters ever).

[bruiserdaemon]

I don't play videogames often, and when i play i want something which is really funny or i don't even play. Stronghold has the potential to be possibly one of the funniest games ever if properly modded. You got close to it with samsarahold and the subsequent modifications you made, now we can make it even better, but you should abandon the idea that samsarahold should keep things similar to samsara and mod it freely without caring about that.

[Cruduxy]

Well I played stronghold a long time ago in sp only. If you only want to update it for multiplayer feel free to ignore the feedback :P.

1) Maps with nothing but invisible demons rushing the exit are very annoying. Especially the doors where a single monster ends the game.
2) Early maps can be beat by helper marines and sentries alone without the players even shooting. IDK if the point of this is just to afk while the game plays itself.
3) Late maps you MUST buy iddqd and quad damage. Tbh the 2 powerups are win buttons without the other one. Should remove one of them from the mod entirely, preferably iddqd.
4) No maps with hellish number of waves. The later maps feel repetitve because the previous tiers already wasted a dozen of hours with you fighting imps+pinkies at start, for ROUNDS. That and a lot of time most monsters are more or less the same but with different stats.
5) add viles or something to meat wall rounds or just remove them entirely. Fighting demons that are only running to the core\portal gets boring fast, have some of them try to kill players instead..
6)Add a monster that doesn't attack but deals a shitton of damage to the core if it reaches it to a lane and nothing else if the other lane is going to have hundreds of demons rushing the core as well.

7) PLEASE don't only put imps and pinkies in the first tiers. Everyone who played the game already know all the monsters.. Might as well use them all from the get-go but have the later tiers have either stronger variants or more of them..
8) Unlock the next tier if a good percentage of the current tier maps are beat. Without needing a boss level or something, have it just be a bonus map. -This is just so people can play the maps they like and skip the rest.
9) Start each map with 3 lives and disable buying them from the shop. *optional. Might annoy people in multiplayer.

Overlord maps basically did nothing in singleplayer because it always died in seconds to iddqd+quad damage.

[Untitled]

Well I played stronghold a long time ago in sp only. If you only want to update it for multiplayer feel free to ignore the feedback :P.

1) Maps with nothing but invisible demons rushing the exit are very annoying. Especially the doors where a single monster ends the game.

Yeah, (if you are referring to the spectral monster family of shadows/spectres/phase imps/nightmare demons), but those have the mercy to not generally be used in deadline maps - well, aside from T3M3, and vanilla STR20.

2) Early maps can be beat by helper marines and sentries alone without the players even shooting. IDK if the point of this is just to afk while the game plays itself.

The best solution for that probably is move the Marines and Sentries up a tier or two, to be honest - they don't really have much insane killing power once you're beyond, say, the first 10 missions. They're still a lot of fun.

3) Late maps you MUST buy iddqd and quad damage. Tbh the 2 powerups are win buttons without the other one. Should remove one of them from the mod entirely, preferably iddqd.

Um, if you're saying it's basically mandatory to buy both, wouldn't removing one make the game kind of impossible?

4) No maps with hellish number of waves. The later maps feel repetitve because the previous tiers already wasted a dozen of hours with you fighting imps+pinkies at start, for ROUNDS. That and a lot of time most monsters are more or less the same but with different stats.

To be fair, in vanilla stronghold, only three missions have more than 10 waves - STR29, STR35, and STR56. In SamsaraHold, waves progress much faster, so there's a few more - STR26, STR32, STR33, and STR34 - but STR34's 13 waves and STR35's 20 waves have the decency to feature every single frickin' conventionally-used monster type, all of the bosses included, and STR33 every monster that's able to fit inside the damn cramped map, and STR26 every tech-themed monster (plus a few custom ones).

5) add viles or something to meat wall rounds or just remove them entirely. Fighting demons that are only running to the core\portal gets boring fast, have some of them try to kill players instead.

Depends on which meat wall rounds - imp and pinky tier are fun but manageable with archviles, but I've found that once you're beyond 4-6 archviles combined with, say, hell nobles, it becomes a complete "Ok, quad+invuln or die", which isn't fun. Most of us cannot manage that many archviles.

"So just use like 1 or 2 arch-" Alright, so say we have 1 archvile. Now, we play with 6 players.

Bam, 6 archviles.

If by meat wall rounds you mean the Hell Nobles - well, not much can really but done, but we have the high-tier Hell Nobles if any currently existing Hell Noble waves are too easy - actually, we have Hell Warriors, which remain one of the few monsters that cannot be killed instantly yet don't massively overwhelm the player if he's under-prepared. As much as I hated them as a player, I actually kind of like them as a modder.

6)Add a monster that doesn't attack but deals a shitton of damage to the core if it reaches it to a lane and nothing else if the other lane is going to have hundreds of demons rushing the core as well.

Eh, if we're going to have something be threatening to the core, we might as well make it hit the players too. Also, this monster will become effectively useless in limit deadline mode, which makes up STR16, STR18, STR19, STR24, STR29, STR30, STR32, STR52 in vanilla, and in the untitled patch all of those + STR20.

7) PLEASE don't only put imps and pinkies in the first tiers. Everyone who played the game already know all the monsters.. Might as well use them all from the get-go but have the later tiers have either stronger variants or more of them.

First tiers or first waves - the first tier is designed as a introductory tier that anyone should be able to access from the get-go - also, catharsi, cacodemons, and low-tier Hell Nobles appear. Heck, T1M3 even introduces the Cybruiser!

First waves (especially in the first couple tiers) generally only give you the shotgun, so typically people don't want to try too much - though a few weaker Hell Nobles (and some shadows and whatnot) is easy to get away with.

9) Start each map with 3 lives and disable buying them from the shop. *optional. Might annoy people in multiplayer.

Yeah, definitely not a multiplayer-conducive idea - I mean, sometimes I think 9 lives makes the game easy, but the thing is that about 60% of the time I'm lending a life to someone else.

Overlord maps basically did nothing in singleplayer because it always died in seconds to iddqd+quad damage.

In Vanilla, this was accentuated by the fact it was kind of the only way to win. OverMIND (not overlord, that's a boss monster in STR50) is actually a lot more fun in Untitled Edition - becuase Literally Invincibility Time prevents him from dying too fast.

[Cruduxy]

Well I wrote those were for single player only feedback for a reason at start :p.
But ye I'd definitely not fully balance around my suggestions. I always end up making wad stupidly difficult the moment you decide to touch UV skill level :p. And a lot of them disregard having multiple players.

Btw that core monster suggestion was just for core maps and not portal maps. And when I said delete one of the 2 powerups I kinda expected altering the map difficulties to not need using their combo.

Now that you mentioned the 6 viles instead of 1. That sounds more like it needs fixing for difficulty scaling per player for specific monsters rather than a monster choice problem. Maybe lesser monsters increase in number while the top ones get slight bonuses to their stats.

[bruiserdaemon]

5) add viles or something to meat wall rounds or just remove them entirely. Fighting demons that are only running to the core\portal gets boring fast, have some of them try to kill players instead..
6)Add a monster that doesn't attack but deals a shitton of damage to the core if it reaches it to a lane and nothing else if the other lane is going to have hundreds of demons rushing the core as well.

7) PLEASE don't only put imps and pinkies in the first tiers. Everyone who played the game already know all the monsters.. Might as well use them all from the get-go but have the later tiers have either stronger variants or more of them..

Good points, you think the same as me. Fighting pinkies on the later missions feels pointless as they go down extremely fast thanks to the lots of items and powerups, plus the reinforcements and the sentries. On the later missions only nightmare demons, blood demons and satyrs should spawn, and imps should be replaced with something else ( there are the stone imps who could be a nice addition, slow but healthy and powerful ).

Zombies are even more lame as they will help the players killing the demons instead of posing a threat, expecially the chaingunners and the rocket zombies! The bruiserdemons are pretty terrible too as their ground-scorching attack will do a ton of damage to the other demons to the point they are more of a help for the player than a threat.

There's nothing wrong at putting a few powerful demons on the first waves, as the players are good enough to kill them by the time they get to the later tiers!

As for the iddqd + quad dmg combo, it is pretty insane, to the point that either the modders adds huge wave to counter their power or they should be either removed or nerfed ( in MY personal modification i just made the quad damage last 25 seconds and only 2 could be carried around ).

[Untitled]

5) add viles or something to meat wall rounds or just remove them entirely. Fighting demons that are only running to the core\portal gets boring fast, have some of them try to kill players instead..
6)Add a monster that doesn't attack but deals a shitton of damage to the core if it reaches it to a lane and nothing else if the other lane is going to have hundreds of demons rushing the core as well.

7) PLEASE don't only put imps and pinkies in the first tiers. Everyone who played the game already know all the monsters.. Might as well use them all from the get-go but have the later tiers have either stronger variants or more of them..

Good points, you think the same as me. Fighting pinkies on the later missions feels pointless as they go down extremely fast thanks to the lots of items and powerups, plus the reinforcements and the sentries. On the later missions only nightmare demons, blood demons and satyrs should spawn, and imps should be replaced with something else ( there are the stone imps who could be a nice addition, slow but healthy and powerful ).

Zombies are even more lame as they will help the players killing the demons instead of posing a threat, expecially the chaingunners and the rocket zombies! The bruiserdemons are pretty terrible too as their ground-scorching attack will do a ton of damage to the other demons to the point they are more of a help for the player than a threat.

There's nothing wrong at putting a few powerful demons on the first waves, as the players are good enough to kill them by the time they get to the later tiers!

As for the iddqd + quad dmg combo, it is pretty insane, to the point that either the modders adds huge wave to counter their power or they should be either removed or nerfed ( in MY personal modification i just made the quad damage last 25 seconds and only 2 could be carried around ).

I'll be honest, by Tier 5-6, most of the time weaker monsters are included to space out the stronger ones.

For example, take the Bruiser Demon - let's say for whatever reason, a mission requires that 1 player takes out 3 bruiser demons with a Super Shotgun. It's very tricky, but it's possible.

Now let's say 8 players are required to take out 20. This isn't possible.

Because of this, weaker monsters are often included to prevent the stronger ones from grouping up - honestly, if, for example, cyberdemons are in a wave, you shouldn't even notice the existence of, say, imps - they are simply a filler. It's most obvious in my version of the final mission - originally, a lot of the cannon fodder wasn't there, but then 4 players had to fight a wave composed of 12 pyodemons and 24 archons of hell in a giant clump, which is literally only possible via a Smart Bomb.

[bruiserdaemon]

Now let's say 8 players are required to take out 20. This isn't possible.

It is actually very possible... you prolly didn't notice that the bruiserdemon's scorching ground attack damages other bruiserdemons as well ( they don't have the " don't hurt species " line! ). What you said applies more for the cyberdemon which is immune to radius damage of other cybers and missiles of every kind.

[jwaffe]

I also agree with this, I personally prefer the gameplay of Alpha-Delta invasion and Armageddon Invasion, over Stronghold (I know they're different game modes but I think there's some clever things they did that can be applied to Stronghold). Even though Stronghold looks quite nice it gets tiring after a while.

Care to elaborate? I'd be happy to try adding things - This is a man who once added 12 different monster path routes into a map (new version of STR32 has that many, though never all activated at once).

Yes, I would be happy to, but unfortunately I'm pretty busy at the moment... I'll send you a pm when I get some time.

[fr blood]

That's simple to explain, less player there are better the gameplay is, I remember a map where we are on a station in the orbit of the earth, I can't tell the wave number but in it you have to fight Mancubus/Arachnotron/Fusion Arachnotron, and we were like 8 players with an high difficulty(I don't remember witch one), at the end I was the last survivor after killing hmm maybe 200 of them(not joking) and of course it became pretty boring, I hope you guys could find a solution about that.

[Untitled]

Now let's say 8 players are required to take out 20. This isn't possible.

It is actually very possible... you prolly didn't notice that the bruiserdemon's scorching ground attack damages other bruiserdemons as well ( they don't have the " don't hurt species " line! ). What you said applies more for the cyberdemon which is immune to radius damage of other cybers and missiles of every kind.

They do have +NORADIUSDMG, which mitigates that - though here you are admittedly right, Bruiser Demons are a bad example - Both Diabolists and Pyrodemons are however, very good demonstrations of the problem.

EDIT: My brother pointed out that this isn't my thread; so I'm probably not going to hyper-respond as much - I'm sorry, I'm used to doing so.

EDIT #2: Tormentor667, I just released a new version of the Untitled Patch - this one is a highly important one, containing the Voting System - once you enter a mission on netplay, instead of giving the countdown and then exiting, in now initiates a voting lobby (Fire to say yes, Altfire to say no) - if the "no" votes are greater than the "yes" votes, the map does not change (as a warning, it's coded inelegantly). It also contains a few map changes.

http://www.[bad site]/download?file= ... hv1.90.pk3