Well, I don't have much experience playing Aerial, but it is an amazing scheme, and I enjoy it. I plan in the future playing more Aerial. Despite my inexperience playing the scheme, I must say that I do have experience balancing schemes and creating schemes. So, I would like to give my opinion, and I think you should consider it:
About the crates, recently I played that Intermediate tournament that was the real and official Intermediate, not the ONL or CWT scheme. It was an interesting experience playing it competitively. The first thing that caught my attention is that the crates have an impactful effect during the game, specially the fact that they can explode. When you see a crate near an enemy, you have a dilema: should I take the crate and risk finding a shitty weapon, should I take the crate and try to get that powerful weapon that will lead me to the comeback I'm needing? Or should I just explode that crate and burn the enemy worm to secure a kill or a good damage?
I like the possibilities and game-changing things that the crates add to the game. Crates bring more diversity, make players think more what they should do, since the situation can change a lot from one turn to the next one. At the same time something completely unpredictable on a scheme is bad, way too much luck is bad. I don't like the original "Kaos Normal" scheme, because that scheme is completely unbalanced. Anything going in the Kaos Normal direction would be bad in my opinion, but some crates would be cool, because I think they combine well with a scheme centered on Jet Pack skills and short time. My scheme
Jet Pack War is similar to Aerial and has a lot of crates, I like to collect crates with Jet Pack on schemes like this.
I'm against utilities in crates. One of the reasons I enjoy
Neocombat is that it doesn't have utility crates. It is unfortunate that WA doesn't have much control in utility crates, so Damage x2, Double Turn Time, Invisibility, Laser Sight can spawn when usually scheme makers would want more Jet Pack and Low Gravity in utility crates. Kaos mod is a workaround that honestly is far from the ideal, so I think even using Kaosmod settings for utility crates wouldn't be sufficient in terms of good balance. That's why I don't want to see utility crates in Aerial. At least until 3.9 or other version that brings inovations to the scheme makers work.
About the original Aerial scheme, I never played WA in PS1, so I never played and I'm not sure exactly what is the feeling of playing the original PS1 Aerial. I didn't know it has crates, I wonder if the crates are rare or common, and the weapon probabilities... All I know is that it has
45 seconds of turn time and infinite grenade, so it surely was completely different from HHC's scheme called Aerial and Sensei's variation (modification) of it.
I like Sudden Death in schemes. I agree that Aerial has a very short playing time, so bo3 is not a bad idea, specially if the scheme has some luck factors such as bad spawnings and crates. Although, I like playing bo1 games. bo3 sometimes force people to play the same thing again, when they want to diversify things a bit. I think in leagues it wouldn't be so cool to play 3 rounds to receive a single victory. 3 rounds are 3 rounds, 3 different games, so all the games should be counted. In this sense, I think I prefer bo1 Aerial.
The weapons probabilities in the crates are strange for me. Banana and Super weapons seem very OP for aerial. I think they could be removed. Weapons that when found give x3 ammo like Cluster Bomb, Girders, or petrol that gives x2 ammo, seem to have way too much chance. I know that in Sensei's scheme crates are rare. I don't know if it would be better with more crates spawning on the map or keeping them rare. I think only weapons that require some skill to play and are not way too much OP should appear in crates. The weapons in crates should be different from the ones that players start with some ammo. Maybe only a few crates containg more ammo for already in inventory weapons. I think Axe, should be rare, or removed from crates. It is an early game weapon and melee, it doesn't make so much sense to me, since, health crates are very rare too and give only 25 HP.
Aerial without crates would cut a bit of the luck and make it more "competitive" maybe, it wouldn't be bad. But, the crates would bring fun to it, in my opinion.
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