Recap for February 8, 2013

Our first match of the night started right at 6:59 PM CT with a nearly full party chat room.  By the time we finished the first map, our numbers were into double-digits.  It’s nice to start the night out with a good-sized room.

The first map on the table was mambonuts’ Pot Luck.  This map is set in a small valley with a river running through it.  Players are assigned to completing marijuana farms on opposite sides of the river.  We played TDM, Domination and Firestorm on this map.  Each mode had its high points, but Firestorm was probably the most hard-fought of the battles where the final radio position is set on a tiny piece of land in the middle of the river accessed from a single bridge.

As I mentioned earlier, party chat was bursting at its seams by this point.  So I’ll post the night’s roll call.  Note that not everyone was in the room this early, but here’s who we saw during the night: BiTTeReRli0N, Broken Piggy, Chongokiller, ChunkyCows,  Cold Justice, Crazy Uncle Dave, Darksteel Titan, FND Killer Tuner, mambonuts, Panyc333, RGC Cambles, Smoken Crow, wickedmoose306 and  xXxMENTALxXx.

The next map we looked at was unwanted, a small, well-detailed map by ST x EROCK.  Erock couldn’t make the match, but this map was definitely worth of play.  The map features a tiny military helicopter base around which a small town has grown.  As with Pot Luck, we played TDM, Domination and Firestorm.  This map played very strongly in each of the game modes we tried and is likely to become part of our regular rotation.

Chongokiller’s space opera SPACE INVASION pt2  (there are a pt1 and a pt3 as well) was put through its paces next.  Set on an asteroid, his map depicts an epic space battle, complete with giant robots and flaming flying saucers.  The review team had some initial concerns about  areas of the map where the steepness and vertigo would lead you to hurt yourself unintentionally, but in actual battle, those concerns went away.  The objectives and pacing of the battle tend to draw players away from the more extreme slopes in the map.  The only real criticism that the panel had with this map is that the spawns are disorienting because they tend to be facing out into space rather than toward the nearest path to battle.  Simply turning the spawn points to face stairs, paths, ladders, etc. would solve this problem.  At Chongo’s insistence, we only played Domination on this map.  The points were difficult to hold at times, but very fun.

From deepest space we moved to a more sedate setting, RGC Cambles’ Abandoned Park.  This map depicts a small California-esque park with a lake centerpiece.  It features a parking lot, baseball diamond, dog park, trails, a park office, restrooms and a picturesque gazebo at the center of the lake.  TDM and Domination both played well here.  Domination was especially interesting, because the map presents a number of opportunities for domination points to be protected by distant snipers.  So a new side-game of sneaking up on and executing snipers (Chongokiller, you know I’m talking about you!) became part of the fun.  It should be noted that there are some issues getting in an out of the third base dugout, but overall, the map plays very smoothly.  Abandoned Park is not a home run, but it is a solid map that plays very well.

Just a few miles away from the park, we stumbled upon Broken Piggy’s Overgrown City.  This small, bi-level urban setting map is in definite need of attention by the Public Works Department.  The centerpiece of this map is an open sinkhole in the street where a water main has broken.  The map features multiple routes to all locations, a bar, a church, a school with a nicely appointed playground, a gas station (complete with exploding pumps), a victorian home, a church, a hotel and a small warehouse.  All locations are highly detailed and the map has a very lived-in feel.  Or, at least it used to be lived in… that was before the forests and pirates took over.  We played TDM, Domination and Firestorm on this map.  Domination was the definite star here: the gameplay was fast-paced and furious.  Chongokiller took ownership of point C and woe to anyone who entered his territory.  Too bad the rest of his team didn’t just leave him to his devices, because one point doth not a victory make.  Team CJ figured out that owning A & B was good enough and that it’s not good to be greedy.  Virtue won out.

Firestorm was also fun, but there are concerns that there may be some balance issues on the map that favor points A & B over points C & D, with C being possibly too central to the traffic patterns of the map. (Almost every major path on the map passes by C – it’s essentially the hub of the map from a path perspective.)

Overgrown City, unfortunately, marked the beginning of our real connectivity problems for the night.  In particular, Darksteel Titan found it impossible to rejoin the match.  But he wasn’t the only one.  Room quality went steadily down from this point as the night progressed.

At this point several people needed to break for dinner, so we switched gears to a smaller map from our regular rotation: Broken Piggy’s Contained.  With six people playing TDM, it at first seemed like the room was too small with players dying almost as soon as they spawned.  But the room soon gained its rhythm and fun was had by all.

We then moved back to the new maps list for a bit and took a couple of spins on wickedmoose306’s Ghetto Life.  This map, whose flyover promises a much bigger map than the actual play area, is set in a typical Canadian ghetto.  The primary play area is a central street bounded by apartment buildings and run-down sleazy businesses.  Most of the action happens in the alleyways and the local strip club seems to come into play more than you would think.  TDM played very well on this map, as did Domination.  Firestorm, unfortunately had some serious balance issues and will need to be reworked.  We also found an unfortunately-placed fence piece that blocked a running path.

Changing things up a bit, we introduced the newer FCF folks to the desolate wastes of Broken Piggy’s Apocalyptica.  This map never disappoints, and last night was no exception.  Both TDM and Domination featured some very hard-fought battles.

Cold Justice's Jonestown was also pulled kicking and screaming into the mix around midnight CT.  Domination, TDM and Firestorm were featured.  Somehow the group’s younger members broke into a fifteen minute discussion about the weather during this time which had this correspondent wondering if he’d been suddenly transported to Shady Acres instead of Jonestown.  Jonestown, as always, was a blast to play on – and I think this marked the first time that Cold Justice lost a Firestorm match on it.

We closed the night with our last new map of the session: RGC Cambles’ Desert Day Inn.  We played TDM and Transmission on this map – this being the first time all night that Transmission came into play.  DDI features a hand-constructed hotel in the middle of a desert.  It has a parking lot and an indoor pool.  Both modes played okay, but there seemed to be something missing in the overall scheme of things.  A node-path analysis of the map reveals that it essentially  has four paths running between two nodes (the parking lot and the pool house) and this may explain why the gameplay is fun, but unremarkable.

We shut the room down at 1:03 AM CT, just over six hours from when  we started.  Overall, this was a good night.  Network problems were not as severe as on other sessions and the partygoers all had a great spirit and enjoyed each other’s company.  It reminded this reporter of the camaraderie that we first saw in the very first FCF sessions back in 2005.  Ahh, the memories…

Not played in this session were Broken Piggy’s updates to Katatonia and New Camelot.  We’ll catch these next week.

Have something fun to recall from this session?  Be sure to note it in the comments!