Forums
March 28, 2024, 03:00 PM

Author Topic: So I uninstalled WMD...  (Read 4407 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline skunk3

So I uninstalled WMD...
« on: January 28, 2018, 12:02 AM »
I eventually couldn't take it anymore and uninstalled WMD from my computer. For anyone considering the game (which I doubt many are), here's a few reasons why:

1. Team17 created a 12-month roadmap of planned updates for the game a year ago. Only a couple of the things ever actually made it into the game. The rest were all just empty promises and Team17 was completely silent about the issue for many months until finally one of the community managers basically said that we shouldn't expect any more updates.

2. W:A, while not as active as it once was, is still active enough most of the time to find a game, so why would I bother playing the inferior one?

3. While WMD does add some interesting gameplay elements such as buildings and weapon emplacements, there's also some game-ruining elements added that I simply cannot stand. Vehicles are cheesy and OP in most cases, but they pale in comparison to the crafting system. Crafting ruins the game and is easily the worst element of WMD. Let me explain:

-you start every match with a certain amount of crafting materials, which is determined in the scheme creation screen. you can pick from "few," "some," or "lots."

-every item in your inventory can be deconstructed to give you a set amount of crafting materials, including any items you pick up from crates

-crafting crates also randomly drop, and the amount of materials in the crates is totally random

-there's a new utility in WMD that is basically a drone. It has a few uses including being able to pick up crates. It is thrown like a grenade and then you steer it using your arrow keys. It does have a limited amount of fuel, but the fuel usage doesnt start until you 'activate' the drone by pressing an arrow key. This means you can chuck one all the way across the map and use the drone to pick up MANY crates in one turn, all without having to use any mobility items like parachutes, jetpacks, ropes, etc. You can just stay in your little hidey hole and spam drones on every turn. Also, the drone is very inexpensive to craft so basically picking up just one crafting crate is likely going to recoup the cost of crafting the drone, thus depriving your opponent of the crate.

-you can craft on every single turn, including your own. You just right click and select the crafting tab. Crafted items are available for use on your next turn. What this means is that you can watch your opponent's turn to see how it is going to end and then craft an item 2 seconds before their turn ends... the perfect item for whatever that situation is. It is unbelievably cheesy and basically acts like a handicap system. Why bother getting good at roping when you can just craft another jetpack? Why get good at making long-range zook or nade shots when you can just craft some "point and click" noob weapon?

I personally don't think that crafting adds any skill or strategy to the game whatsoever. All is does is make it luckier and more unpredictable.

4. There's a glaring lack of scheme and game customization options.

5. There's many weapons and utilities missing from past games that I consider to be essentials. (just from W:A - dragon ball, battle axe, bungee, petrol bomb, skunk, girder starter pack, freeze, mole, etc.)

6. There are so many stupid, OP weapons in the game, and many weapons that are utterly redundant and/or useless... to the point that there's several that I have NEVER seen anyone use online.

7. The rope, while better than games since WWP, is still kinda crappy. The only way you gain momentum from the rope is by pressing up. You can't bounce yourself off of walls/terrain/ceilings/etc to gain speed. In fact, that often deadens your momentum. There's lots of tricks that simply cannot be done in WMD with any of the 3 rope variants.

8. The map randomizer function doesn't seem very random at all, and we lack the ability to quickly edit a map with paintbrush tools. Also, no random girders appear on randomly generated maps.

9. User-created content is mostly garbage.

10. Fire is very weird in WMD. When a barrel explodes, it explodes into globs of fire rather than an even spread. A worm can be not far away from a barrel when it explodes and literally avoid taking any fire damage at all. Also, there's no persistent fire in WMD, so petrol bombs are just a fond memory. (Team17 claimed that persistent fire was causing FPS issues in WMD so they scrapped it.)

11. There is no concept of rules or etiquette at all. Hardly anyone knows what KTL or ABL means, and those that do are an extreme minority either informed of the rules by myself or a handful of other people. Friends will often join game lobbies and work together as a team even though they aren't the same color. Of course, you usually don't realize this until several turns in and by that point they're either completely silent or actively taunting. Also, randoms will often team up together to take out players that they deem threats, or simply just because they annoyed them one time. I might as well wear a bullseye hat in WMD because I get focus fired on in almost every game, and I don't mean just when it is convenient, either... these people will literally kill off their own worms and waste all of their resources to kill you just to troll.

12. The ranking system is flawed, the ranked scheme is flawed, and there's only one ranked scheme, which is the "Pro" scheme. (It's a bit different than in W:A.) Newcomers have 0% chance of ever getting in the top 20 even if they grind all day because they never reset the leaderboards and it basically just comes down to grinding out the most games. There's some people who do nothing but play like 10 ranked games a day every day since the game came out.

13. Starting order is randomized in response to people complaining about first turn advantage. While a lot of people really like this change, I don't... whether that is a 1-on-1 match or a 6-player match. I don't like it because it forces you to pick suboptimal placements. If I *know* that I am going second, I can more wisely select my spawn points... same with going first. When it is randomized you basically just have to play it safe, which I personally don't like but whatever.

14. There is so much mobility in the game. Even though the maps are huge by default W:A standards, it's still really easy to get around because you have teleports, 3 types of ninja ropes, parachute, a combat parachute (that lets you basically ignore wind), jetpacks, jetpack eco (which basically halves fuel consumption), party balloons, plus you can manually activate parachutes at any time... so someone could flagpole up, then activate their chute and float to the other side of the map. On top of that, many vehicles offer a lot of mobility. The helicopter is like an unlimited jetpack. The Rocket League car is fast and can double jump really high. The mech can glide really far. The drillboat can float on water. The only vehicle with shitty mobility options is the tank... but it's a tank and can take loads of damage before blowing up. Mobility is problematic in WMD.

15. Fall damage is very forgiving compared to W:A. You can drop much further than before without taking damage or losing a turn.

16. It's difficult to predict exactly how far away you need to be from an explosion to prevent taking damage. There's like an invisible shockwave that goes beyond the actual bounds of the explosion that damages worms which look like they should be safely far away. The only way to prevent taking damage is to put as much space between your worm and the explosion as possible.

17. Hardly anyone chats, voice or text... in game OR in the global lobby.

18. There's only maybe 6-7 terrain themes. The themes themselves look great, but it gets stale fast.

19. Lots of scheme types simply cannot be played in WMD due to lack of options.

20. The player base is divided between Steam, GOG, XB1, PS4, and Switch. Most days the Steam version of WMD feels about as active as W:A, but it's probably a little more active.

21. Lack of previous gameplay features that were excellent and added nice dimensionality to the game, such as dynamic water, worm classes, physics objects, etc.

blah blah blah

I can go on and on but anyway I just wanted to share some insights. WMD could have been a fantastic game but Team17 dropped the ball once again. I think that casuals and noobs would love WMD, especially for local multiplayer and whatnot, but for serious competition and deep gameplay, it's a stinker.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 12:04 AM by skunk3 »

Online Sensei

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2018, 01:06 AM »
Good for you.

Offline The Extremist

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2018, 06:03 AM »
The only way you gain momentum from the rope is by pressing up. You can't bounce yourself off of walls/terrain/ceilings/etc to gain speed. In fact, that often deadens your momentum.

Does this apply to all three rope types?

Offline Senator

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2018, 09:47 AM »
That's not true. You can gain momentum by holding Up + Left/Right when you bounce off of a wall, it's just unpredictable. You need to release Up arrow key at the right time or you may lose momentum (seems to depend on the rope angle/length). You can adapt to it but it's still annoying and unpredictable.

In this video you can see that I gained momentum from the walls. I didn't lose momentum at any point either ;)
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 10:00 AM by Senator »

Offline Shadow-The-Worm

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2018, 09:54 AM »
It's just because of your issues with Worms Series other than Worms Armageddon. Honestly, I don't bother uninstailing non-WA games in the Worms series, cause you know, what I am making with them as a base. Worms Story Mods in the Worms NT series are all based on PC Worms games (except for some cut-outs, like Worms: Boggy's Memories (a DS game)). But hey, since you denied my Worms story mods, you'll go the hard way in Worms NT series from now on.
I don't want to harm anybody, but when I am triggered, you'll see no mercy, only angry reaction.
My reaction to 3.8: STATUS CANNOT BE REMOVED!

Offline HHC

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2018, 10:18 AM »
Aww skunk. Can't say you didn't give it a try. I think most people stopped way before they even got to discovering the game in-depth and its strategic/tactic abilities.

I wonder what T17 is up to now. I think your criticism is only partly fair. They had big plans with this game, developing it into an e-sports game with wide appeal, etc. But the player base just wasn't there.. from day 1 on. I think it's fairly obvious to them that the lack of success of this game makes any real investments in it a waste of resources and time. That and the obvious boasting for sales.

But yeh, wonder if they gonna make a new worms title anytime soon, or just leave it to rot in pieces.

Many developers are like this, but yeh, worms didn't get lucky  :(

Offline WTF-8

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2018, 10:44 AM »
I wonder what T17 is up to now. [...] They had big plans with this game, developing it into an e-sports game with wide appeal, etc.
What, did you actually believe that?
The manual in the installation folder is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural

Offline Jengu

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #7 on: January 28, 2018, 12:07 PM »
That's not true. You can gain momentum by holding Up + Left/Right when you bounce off of a wall, it's just unpredictable. You need to release Up arrow key at the right time or you may lose momentum (seems to depend on the rope angle/length). You can adapt to it but it's still annoying and unpredictable.

In this video you can see that I gained momentum from the walls. I didn't lose momentum at any point either ;)

I love the speed at which the rope attaches to the wall. WA needs that.
           

Offline HHC

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2018, 01:01 PM »
I wonder what T17 is up to now. [...] They had big plans with this game, developing it into an e-sports game with wide appeal, etc.
What, did you actually believe that?

No. But I imagine T17 would do more updates/fixes if the title had proven succesful, which seems the logical thing to do. The company had an interest in investing in a (competitive) community because it would attract more players > more sells. I'm pretty sure their initial targets were limited, but I'm sure they counted on more than getting max 6 players to sign up for their community events  :-[

Offline nino

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #9 on: January 28, 2018, 05:15 PM »
Jonno must be sad with that news!

Install again ae buddy!
You Are Losing Time Reading my Signature.

Offline StepS

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2018, 10:08 PM »
I love the speed at which the rope attaches to the wall. WA needs that.
I don't, and I guess many people in our community will agree with me.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 10:13 PM by StepS »
Dec 30 2013 23:59:44 <StepS> windowed mode isn't the only thing you need about frontend
Dec 30 2013 23:59:49 <StepS> you need it to be actually bigger
Dec 31 2013 00:00:13 <StepS> it actually is very small on my 15-inch full HD screen
Dec 31 2013 00:00:25 <StepS> while running at 640x480 or stretched mode makes it fuzzy
Dec 31 2013 00:00:44 <StepS> this problem has been around since the Worms Armageddon's release and no one has even tried to beat it
[...]

Offline h3oCharles

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2018, 05:34 PM »
No. But I imagine T17 would do more updates/fixes if the title had proven succesful, which seems the logical thing to do. The company had an interest in investing in a (competitive) community because it would attract more players > more sells. I'm pretty sure their initial targets were limited, but I'm sure they counted on more than getting max 6 players to sign up for their community events  :-[

Look at TUS Cups as well. Sure, ppl sign up, but then after couple months it's forgotten.

Offline The Extremist

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2018, 01:03 AM »
No. But I imagine T17 would do more updates/fixes if the title had proven succesful, which seems the logical thing to do. The company had an interest in investing in a (competitive) community because it would attract more players > more sells. I'm pretty sure their initial targets were limited, but I'm sure they counted on more than getting max 6 players to sign up for their community events  :-[

Team17 already has an eSports-ready game. They just need to remaster it.

Just imagine, WA with high-res assets, a ranking system, and NO OTHER CHANGES.

Glorious.

Offline Rabbzz

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2018, 03:10 AM »
If they remaster wa I’m sure they will mess something up  :-X

Offline Anubis

Re: So I uninstalled WMD...
« Reply #14 on: January 30, 2018, 01:20 PM »
When I take a look at games played I see days, sometimes even a week between games, there is no doubt competitive W:A is nearing it's end.