DISCLAIMER:
(Just to clarify, I do not mean this as a suggestion, as I would post this in the games category if it wasn’t foolishly removed. Please don’t feel obligated to vote if you agree with one thing and don’t like something else. This is only meant for discussion)
Anyway, I’m going to be making an essay post on Ground Wars, and how I think it could be fixed. I’ll be covering various topics, which include the powerups, what unique cosmetics could be used, and what unique features I would implement into the game. Anyway, let’s get started.
Powerups
Tweaking
To start us off, I would immediately remove the knockback egg, as it really has no real good use, and can’t really be buffed in any way to make it much better. The explosive egg I would buff to have a much larger radius than it currently does now, as it doesn’t really do much and could potentially destroy cover if its radius was just bigger. Hell, we could even make it destroy the mounds in the ground that a lot of players use for cover instead of building if we really wanted to. And secondly, I’d implement the suggestion that I made here to improve the imposter powerup. Now, that’s it for my tweaking, but which powerups would I add?
Adding
Well, a good but basic idea that I have is simply having a large egg. Which is the exact same as a normal shot, just a much bigger radius, at around 3-4 blocks. Quite self-explanatory really, but this would definitely add an extra layer of fun to the game, as players who say aren’t that good can slightly compete with the sweatier players if they get this powerup, and the spawn frequency of it would definitely be high, and it would probably be called “Radiation” (and would look like radiation spreading when it hit the ground). Another one that is a lot like imposter that I thought of I would call “Trickster.” It’s where you disguise yourself as one of their players on your own side, making them think that you are an imposter, and you can activate this at any time. However, instead of just keeping your skin, you would change it to another person on your own team to trick them into not thinking you have this powerup, and it would last about 15-20 seconds. Another thing I remember reading about on this forum is the idea of a freezing powerup, however that would be very overpowered, so instead let’s make it a ‘slowness egg.’ This would have about the same radius as a blindness egg and would slow the player down for about as long as if they got hit by a blindness egg. (2-3 seconds). That’s all that really needs to be done with powerups to at least make them more fun and worth it.
Gameplay
XP
I also want to talk about XP, as I feel that the XP system in Ground Wars is pathetic, as you only get 1 XP from killing someone, and 10 from winning a game. So, let’s do some math to determine how long it’ll take me to get to 28,500 XP in Ground Wars and max it out to level 20. First off, here are the need to know stats: 44 games played, with 31 wins, and 501 kills. Another important thing is that I have Hive+, which increases my XP by 50%. So, here’s our formula:
number of kills ÷ # of games played = 11 kills per game - 11 XP every game for kills
number of games won ÷ # of games played = 70.45 win%, or ~7 XP every game for wins
11 + 7 = 18 average XP per game. 18 x 1.5 = 27 average XP per game including Hive+. 28,500 ÷ 27 = ~1,056 games to max out Ground Wars. And without Hive+, it’s ~1,583 games.
Way too slow considering it’s only to level 20 and pretty damn repetitive. I feel like every powerup collected should award 1 XP per. This change could really help in speeding up the leveling up process for Ground Wars, so let’s do the math again to see what our new games played amount is with 1 XP per powerup, which we’re going to assume is 15 per game:
Keep in mind 70.45 win%
11 + 15 = 26 XP with kills and powerups combined. 26 + 7 = 33 x 1.5 = 49.5 XP per game 28,500 ÷ 38.25 = ~576 games played to max out Ground Wars. This is with Hive+, and without Hive+, it’s ~864 games. I do believe that this is necessary because look at Block Drop for example. I have played 133 games, with an 18.5 win%, and am already at level 16/25. I’ve played about 1/3 of the games I’ve played in Block Drop in Ground Wars, with having gotten 43.55% XP in Block Drop, taking me 133 games. Now, we’re just talking about me, but what about the average player?
Well, the average player has about a 50 win%. How do I know this? There are only 2 sides in Ground Wars, making it a 50/50 that you win every game. And for kills, we’ll go with 6 because that’s how many players are on the other side most of the time. Key stats: 2 games played, 1 game won, 12 kills
6 + (0.5 x 10) = 11 average XP per game. 11 x 1.5 = 16.5 Average XP per game including Hive+
28,500 ÷ 18 = ~1,727 Holy [donk] that’s insane. Without Hive+? ~2,591. That needs improvement. I’d say improving the amount of players from 12 to 18 could really help, though that doesn’t seem likely considering the player count can consistently be below 500. Let’s put out new rules into place though, with 1 XP per powerup, the average we’re going to assume is double the kills at 12.
6+12 = 18 + 5 = 23 average XP per game. 23 x 1.5 = 34.5 average XP per game including Hive+
28,500 ÷ 34.5 = ~826. Without Hive+? ~1,239. Could definitely still be improved upon, so we’re going to make every kill earn 1.5 XP instead for the next one
12 x 1.5 = 18 for kills + 12 = 30 + 5 = 35 average XP per game. 35 x 1.5 = 52.5 average XP per game including Hive+.
28,500 ÷ 52.5 = ~543 Without Hive+? ~814. This is where I feel the sweet spot is for Ground Wars, at around 500-850 for the average player. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Hive can do .5s, as receiving a meh vote in JB actually grants 0.5. All they do is round your total at the end, so the math may or may not be that accurate. Now, how long will I take with these? Well…
16.5 + 15 = 31.5 with kills and powerups combined 31.5 + 7 = 38.5 average XP per game x 1.5 = 57.75 average XP per game including Hive+
28,500 ÷ 57.75 = ~494 games. Without Hive+? ~740. This sure as hell works for a slightly below average sweat.
So the new methods of XP on the website would be:
Kill - 1.5
Collecting a powerup - 1
Win - 10
At the end of the round, your total XP is rounded up to the nearest whole number
Also, please correct me if my math is wrong with no hesitation
Minor but important changes
Okay, so the gameplay I believe is what ticks most people away from Ground Wars, as it is often described as boring and repetitive. And I can easily understand, as each round feels exactly the same outside of maybe a few imposters or center powerups. First off, I would change the block being used from concrete to wool, as that way it’s much easier to destroy your own blocks without having to use your own ammo.
Couple other things, I would probably make the build height much higher, as it could really add some strategy and make it less repetitive, and there shouldn’t be barriers in places that you otherwise would be able to get to without building because of the build limit. Oh, and I think that there should be a similar hotbar system to the Bridge one, where if you put something in a certain slot, it’s saved there for every game you play. This definitely doesn’t affect me as much as others, but it could help for other players.
Display
What do I mean by display? Well, I mean cosmetics and maps.
Cosmetics
I’m going to start off with talking about the most underwhelming feature in my opinion, the cosmetics, as there’s only 9 of them, and they are all only one thing: the projectile that you throw. This could definitely be improved upon by adding something simple like say a projectile effect. While I can’t really see much else as the only thing to expand that much upon is the projectile that comes out of your bow, I still believe that 9/20 for cosmetics is a bit low, so let’s fill up 6 out of the 11 empty spots:
Level 3 - Red particles
Level 6 - Skulls
Level 9 - Flowers
Level 11 - Neon particles
Level 13 - Fire/flame
Level 18 - Ender effects
This could definitely be improved upon, but please tell me what you think about this and what you would tweak to make it better.
Maps
Something else I’m noticing is that the maps are very… dull. Sure, the outside generally looks pretty stunning, but there’s not really much on the ground other than your own blocks and maybe 1 or 2 mounds on the surface. I feel like that needs to change. Shown below is what I believe the interior should look like for the theme I’m choosing, which I’ll go with nether. For this map I only made one side to save time.
First off, I believe there should be an upstairs added to spawn with 3 entrances up there. The 2 on the side will contain a castle-like structure like this:
This is a build free zone as it is still considered spawn, and I also believe that you shouldn’t be able to build in spawn because players love blocking it.
In the middle one, there would be a path similar to this:
Now there is one thing I’d like to clarify; I don’t believe that the path should be accessible without either going upstairs at spawn or building up, so ideally these paths would connect on both sides instead of going to the ground. I also believe you should be able to build up to 3 blocks on the path to make some cover. The fire thing is a unique element to only maps with fire in them, and all they would do is break armour, but would never kill you. The mounds right now are fine as is, but make sure to include them instead of making it empty. I’d also like to clarify that the designs shown are templates, not final designs, so you don’t need to harass me about how my building sucks.
Phew, that took a while. Anyway, with all of that being said, please give me as much feedback as possible, and don’t tell me that it’s a “list,” because I clarified in the very first paragraph that I wouldn’t post this in suggestions if I had a choice. Anyway, thank you for reading my 3000+ character essay, and have a good rest of your day.
. If the projectiles could go further would be cool.