Supermarket Shopper (SMS)

There are more schemes than people playing schemes these days.

Of course, because creating schemes is fun 😊.

I do like to talk about these things to be honest. 

Sure, it's fun to be creative in general and consider myself a highly creative person, but 90% of schemes out there are pretty much 5 minute wonder schemes that are either only fun for 5 minutes or incredibly niche.

Also 90% of those 90% of schemes are schemes most people will never want to try for various reasons... Looks boring, looks unoriginal, too easy, too complex, too luck based, plan silly, a slight variation of an existing scheme, too wacky... Etc.

Then 90% of the 90% of the 90% of schemes are schemes most people haven't even heard of!

The trouble is, quality vs quantity is a real issue, we have too much quantity and not enough quality.

Think of it this way, look up any game on Steam which has a modding community, and you will see there are thousands of mods, but only a handful are popular.

That doesn't happen by chance or luck, it happens because most people who create schemes don't actually know what most people want, or simply, don't care, they do it for their own fun!

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And unfortunately, most people only play the same schemes for several years.

Unfortunate? That's weird because I strongly believe it's historically the opposite and that you should count yourself lucky there are people who only play the same schemes! I call them scheme specialists, it's also MY biggest strength as a player!

If it were not for all the thousands of players who were loyal to the schemes they loved for the first decade WA was out, this community probably wouldn't even exist, you might not even play this game!

Those scheme specialists pushed skills to the next levels, they drive competition by always raising the bar, and competition brings about a consistent community! Without this competition, we wouldn't exist here like this.

Thanks to all these unconventional schemes, people actually suffer from choice overload these days, the major problem is that most of these schemes are scheme variations of core concepts.

Now it's easy for guys like us, who have been around for a decade or longer, we have so many years of experience, a sense of who is who in the community.

For noobs though? What chance do they have when they hear 100 different voices screaming "Play this!", "No, play this it's better".

I wish there was a way to get new players immediately involved in ONLY the classic schemes first when playing online, a way to filter out all the extra stuff. Then, later if they become more invested, can pursue that at their own peril.

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For me ALL schemes boil down to 3 main categories:

Strategic - Focused on using your mind is your biggest asset, to out think your opponents, to plan ahead and use your cunning to beat your opponents.

Artillery - Focused on mechanical skills, using accuracy and consistency to win games.

Physical - Focused on mechanical skills, using hand to eye coordination and physical reflexes to win games.

Every scheme that exists is either purely one of these categories, or a combination of these categories.

There is a 4th category, but I never really share it because it's so uncommon, that's RnG, schemes which are completely out of our control and luck purely decides winners, such as Comet Dodging.

You have a handful of main schemes for each category, then everything else is a sub-genre/remix of those.

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My point is, even though you see all these new schemes, they don't bring anything new or original to the table, and have not done for a very long time.

Hence why we have literally thousands of schemes, 5392 on TUS to be precise right now, while less than 25 of these are considered exceptionally competitive schemes worthy of being in Leagues by most players who have ever existed.

I'm guilty of adding to this! Of course there may be exceptions. I've made slight variations of schemes, though to be fair they DID have a specific purpose, for a Challenge, or Cup, or Tournament, etc.

A really well thought out and written reply! Nice!

I'll reply to a few parts I found most interesting, or something I'd like to counter.

Although, everyone in this community enjoys doing something in the game. I like schemes, I consider myself an amateur historian of this community, specially regarding schemes. Some people are map makers, other only make soundbanks, other are involved with PX weapons or other PX things. Not only the competitive scenario makes the community active. Having fun is the core thing to a community stay alive.

Agreed, and I apologize for not including the other people who contribute to the game! It wasn't the focus of my part so I'm glad you mentioned it.

To be fair, in my opinion that's YOUR speciality, that's YOUR passion... A lot of people are grateful for it, even I learn stuff from you often.

Regardless when we disagree on stuff please always remember that the work that yourself, Korydex, StJimmy and many others do recording the history of the game is a massive task and something we do not take for granted!

To be fair, this isn't even a "competitive" scheme, in the sense that it's being actively played in the major Leagues in WA, I guess I've got scheme stuff on the brain with Fort scheme editing and talking about Aerial over the past week.

It's nice though, to have people trigger me in such a way, because although you wrote that one sentence, it has led us, at least from my side, to once again take a moment to consider myself grateful to bask in the greatness that the combined community has created over the years.

There are lots of brilliant musicians out there that are not recognized while most of the music being heard by people are not complex and the "artists" sometimes pay others to write songs for them, or are just a pawn controled by a company behind the "artist".

People in general have herd behavior, and in WA this is not different. People play schemes becouse many people are playing so they start playing that scheme without thinking much why. People's opinion are like this too. People listen to music because it plays on the radio or is on top spots in spotify. If you watch a film that everybody is talking about at the moment, you have something to talk on a bar, while if you watch an old 50's movie, you can share your experience, but people will probably not opine much, because they most likely didn't watch the film.

This is a VERY fascinating conversation!

I'm a people watcher, I've studied a lot about psychology, human behaviour, cause and effect, etc...

There ARE lots of brilliant musicians out there, I wouldn't say they aren't being recognized, I'd say they aren't as popular as they would like to be.

I'm assuming we're talking about legit musicians, people who have put serious effort into their craft. None of them would be musicians at all if they had literally ZERO recognition. I know, I'm one of them lol! For me personally that's mostly due to choice, I'm good at producing, good at doing mixdown engineering, however I don't promote my music or take it seriously as a professional, it's just a hobby.

Though... The point I'll eventually get to! Music is similar to WA schemes is similar to the choice of food, the choice of movies, the choice of gadgets and other technology we have in todays world...

WA hasn't evolved as fast as it has simply because of WA alone, we have the rest of the world to thank for this as well, as the world grows at increasingly exponential rates in technology and knowledge, that translates to... EVERYTHING!

We are becoming oversaturated by all the failures it takes people to reach their potential.

People NEED to fail before they succeed, they need experience, they need practise.

The reason why we have a handful of successful and popular schemes isn't just because of "herd mentality" aka "herd behaviour" dictating what everyone does... Of course it plays a small part.

For Worms Armageddon though, it's strongly to do with word of mouth, if you've heard of that term?

Of course, things could have played out differently had Worms Armageddon been released with everything we have now, 24 years ago!

It is what it is though, and the schemes which passed the test of time became "authentic" schemes.

Just like I had to study how to be authentic to produce music, by studying all the best samples, best techniques, you learn the foundations then you can tweak things to make your own flavour.

You can think of schemes as being authentic, that doesn't mean the only way possible, it just means the right recipe and ingredients, or set of circumstances that make things most enjoyable!

Over 24 years we've tried and tested almost everything possible and as a global community we've decided which groups of settings are the most "authentic".

We've created authentic schemes for artillery, for physical schemes and for strategic schemes.

Though in our case, replace the word "authentic" with "classic".

Let's go to the fourth and last section of your comment. This is the one I have more to say:
Here I can see ignorance in your comment, because you don't seem to understand how schemes evolve the way they are being played competitively right now.

Well, I strongly disagree with this!

I have a solid understanding of how evolution affects, well, everything on the planet and the universe. I understand cause & affect, human behaviour, physics and many other things, things we can control and things we cannot control.

WA scheme evolution is kind of, simple, compared to other things I've researched in life and fortunately have the capacity to comprehend.

So while I might not speak about it in a way that aligns with your personal appreciation of history regarding WA schemes, I certainly understand where we've came from(generally speaking) to get to where we are, for the most part.

Of course I don't remember absolutely everything perfectly lol! Nobody does!

Which is why guys like YOU are an actual treasure around here! You love teaching others about it!

Do you understand how schemes evolve?

You mean via the spark of an idea, based on an entire life experience up until that point, to create something that triggers other experiences so they can do the same thing...

Then it will either fail or succeed, if it fails they might try to fix it, they might have to fail a lot, experimenting, until something clicks!

It might succeed! Though in due time people discover new experiences in life and want to add that to the collective experience, in this case they would "update" their "scheme".

Yes, evolution is simple, in every aspect of life. Why do you ask?

So, all schemes are important, and must not be hidden from others, but I agree that a new player should know the famous ones not necessarily first, but soon (and honestly, this is something natural).

Yes, and no... It depends on perspective really.

For example, I could say that both my idea here and your idea here would help a newcomer, it really depends on the person learning and we would have to adapt the way we teach to fit each person.

Though if it were up to me I'd make some sort of beginners guide implemented into the actual game with a VERY brief summary of what WA has to offer.

even your beloved Darts scheme once was played differently under the name "Long Jump" and other names. Long Jump I think is the oldest one.

This has been the subject of conversation many times! It's interesting, same thing happened with Grenade Wars also, came from another scheme others made!

So yeah, if you haven't already, watch this, I think you would absolutely love it! You can take all the information from this and apply it to, well, pretty much anything in life: