Dastardly Ridleylash
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2015
- Messages
- 1,926
- Location
- Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
- NNID
- Ridleylash
- 3DS FC
- 1736-1657-3905
This is a topic that I'm surprised nobody's made yet, at least as far as I can tell; because it's a very interesting topic to think about.
PC-created games offer a unique service that not many other gaming platforms can, at least not without having to hack your system; the ability to create content for games on the system. This is a big benefit for PC games, as mods can greatly enhance a game and ultimately become part of the draw of playing it, and user-created content also makes a game live longer than other games would.
Take Team Fortress 2, for example. The game itself is pretty fun, even without mods. But with mods on the table, this already fun game goes to 11! The userbase in TF2 has done so many extremely unique things with the game's engine that it's no wonder it's one of the most sucessful PC games of the last few years.
TF2's base gamemodes are quite basic for an FPS game; Capture The Flag, King of The Hill, Team Deathmatch. Over time, though, the game has become incredibly diverse in gamemodes to play, both official and unofficial. Valve have added Mann VS. Machine, a survival gamemode that pits a team of human players against hordes of AI-controlled robots, into the game. The community has made their own immense library of gamemodes, though; stuff like Dodgeball (a game where two teams of Pyros must reflect a rocket untill one team falls), Deathrun (which pits a whole team against an obstacle course, where one person on the other team sets off traps to try and kill them), Vs Saxton Hale (which pits one incredibly powerful, shirtless Australian man against an entire team), The Hidden (where one player is chosen to be the titular entity who must use his wiles, special abilities and cunning to kill an entire enemy team) and many more.
The Hidden is a particularly engaging mode for the game, since it uses the game's own mechanics to make it into a completely different experience. I'll go into depth about it.
When a round of the gamemode starts, one person on the server is randomly selected to be the titular Hidden. The Hidden's objective is to kill everyone else on the server, while it's everyone else's objective to hunt down and kill the Hidden. However, this is no easy task; the Hidden is invisible (permanently cloaked) to the other team, with only two exceptions; when the Hidden uses a dash, he becomes visible, and he also becomes visible when he kills somebody. Meanwhile, the other players are all as they normally are in vanilla TF2, weapon stats and all. However, the Hidden is nowhere near as durable as Saxton Hale, and getting cornered is pretty likely to kill him. As a balance measure, Pyros have very limited ammo on their flamethrowers; so they must use it wisely. This is because otherwise Pyro would have an incredibly easy time in the gamemode, as it entirely revolves around a cloaked Spy.
Where the Hidden player excels in is the mindgames his mere presence in the map plays on the other players. Often you'll see players in this gamemode huddling together inside of one area with their backs to the wall; this is their attempt at trying to make it easier to kill the Hidden, as otherwise he is incredibly frail if he's found out. The Hidden has the ability to "spook" the other team, however; spooking them will force them into a stunned, helpless state. They can move in this state, but slowly and they lose the ability to fire their weapons. The Hidden has a cooldown on this, to balance it out. The Hidden can also preform a superjump, which lets him go places nobody would suspect him to be, such as on rooftops, as well as giving him an incredibly versatile movement option.
However, the Hidden also cannot stall out his prey for too long; stalling too much will actually cause the Hidden to begin starving, draining him of his health. The only way to stop this is to kill another player, since backstabbing someone as the Hidden instantly fills his health.
The gamemode has an incredibly tense atmosphere and absolutely revels in making players fear the Hidden's presence. It's like playing as a Spy, but multiplied by 10....speaking of which, that's another really fun mod to mess with.
x10 is a hilariously simple mod with incredibly amusing effects. This is the gist of the mod; all stats on a weapon, good or bad, get multiplied tenfold. So, for example, items like the Atomizer, which usually only grants you one extra jump at the cost of some health, now let the Scout fly like the wind, while the Brass Beast now puts Heavy at a standstill when deployed. The Gunslinger now builds Mini-Sentries almost instantly and also grants the Engineer a massive pool of health. The Sandman now makes Scout only have 1 hit point. But the most disgustingly good weapon out of all of them is the Spy's own Conniver's Kunai.
When you start out with it, as the x10 rules apply here, you've only got one hit point. That seems like a massive issue, but then you backstab someone and then suddenly you have a huge amount of health. That's the beauty of the x10 Kunai; it's insanely risky, but the rewards are insane for doing it. The only problem is that, well, every Spy on a x10 server is probably using the Kunai; meaning they become really annoying to kill unless you manage to pin them into a corner and stuff them full of bullets.
This is only a small selection of the many TF2 mods out in the wild, and already that's a lot of variety in the game. Mods can really make a good game into an excellent game just by being an option, as the fun factor and enjoyment is much higher when you have mods to tinker with; and mods keep the players coming back long after they otherwise would have dropped a game.
What do you guys think of this topic? It's definitely very interesting to think about.
PC-created games offer a unique service that not many other gaming platforms can, at least not without having to hack your system; the ability to create content for games on the system. This is a big benefit for PC games, as mods can greatly enhance a game and ultimately become part of the draw of playing it, and user-created content also makes a game live longer than other games would.
Take Team Fortress 2, for example. The game itself is pretty fun, even without mods. But with mods on the table, this already fun game goes to 11! The userbase in TF2 has done so many extremely unique things with the game's engine that it's no wonder it's one of the most sucessful PC games of the last few years.
TF2's base gamemodes are quite basic for an FPS game; Capture The Flag, King of The Hill, Team Deathmatch. Over time, though, the game has become incredibly diverse in gamemodes to play, both official and unofficial. Valve have added Mann VS. Machine, a survival gamemode that pits a team of human players against hordes of AI-controlled robots, into the game. The community has made their own immense library of gamemodes, though; stuff like Dodgeball (a game where two teams of Pyros must reflect a rocket untill one team falls), Deathrun (which pits a whole team against an obstacle course, where one person on the other team sets off traps to try and kill them), Vs Saxton Hale (which pits one incredibly powerful, shirtless Australian man against an entire team), The Hidden (where one player is chosen to be the titular entity who must use his wiles, special abilities and cunning to kill an entire enemy team) and many more.
The Hidden is a particularly engaging mode for the game, since it uses the game's own mechanics to make it into a completely different experience. I'll go into depth about it.
When a round of the gamemode starts, one person on the server is randomly selected to be the titular Hidden. The Hidden's objective is to kill everyone else on the server, while it's everyone else's objective to hunt down and kill the Hidden. However, this is no easy task; the Hidden is invisible (permanently cloaked) to the other team, with only two exceptions; when the Hidden uses a dash, he becomes visible, and he also becomes visible when he kills somebody. Meanwhile, the other players are all as they normally are in vanilla TF2, weapon stats and all. However, the Hidden is nowhere near as durable as Saxton Hale, and getting cornered is pretty likely to kill him. As a balance measure, Pyros have very limited ammo on their flamethrowers; so they must use it wisely. This is because otherwise Pyro would have an incredibly easy time in the gamemode, as it entirely revolves around a cloaked Spy.
Where the Hidden player excels in is the mindgames his mere presence in the map plays on the other players. Often you'll see players in this gamemode huddling together inside of one area with their backs to the wall; this is their attempt at trying to make it easier to kill the Hidden, as otherwise he is incredibly frail if he's found out. The Hidden has the ability to "spook" the other team, however; spooking them will force them into a stunned, helpless state. They can move in this state, but slowly and they lose the ability to fire their weapons. The Hidden has a cooldown on this, to balance it out. The Hidden can also preform a superjump, which lets him go places nobody would suspect him to be, such as on rooftops, as well as giving him an incredibly versatile movement option.
However, the Hidden also cannot stall out his prey for too long; stalling too much will actually cause the Hidden to begin starving, draining him of his health. The only way to stop this is to kill another player, since backstabbing someone as the Hidden instantly fills his health.
The gamemode has an incredibly tense atmosphere and absolutely revels in making players fear the Hidden's presence. It's like playing as a Spy, but multiplied by 10....speaking of which, that's another really fun mod to mess with.
x10 is a hilariously simple mod with incredibly amusing effects. This is the gist of the mod; all stats on a weapon, good or bad, get multiplied tenfold. So, for example, items like the Atomizer, which usually only grants you one extra jump at the cost of some health, now let the Scout fly like the wind, while the Brass Beast now puts Heavy at a standstill when deployed. The Gunslinger now builds Mini-Sentries almost instantly and also grants the Engineer a massive pool of health. The Sandman now makes Scout only have 1 hit point. But the most disgustingly good weapon out of all of them is the Spy's own Conniver's Kunai.
When you start out with it, as the x10 rules apply here, you've only got one hit point. That seems like a massive issue, but then you backstab someone and then suddenly you have a huge amount of health. That's the beauty of the x10 Kunai; it's insanely risky, but the rewards are insane for doing it. The only problem is that, well, every Spy on a x10 server is probably using the Kunai; meaning they become really annoying to kill unless you manage to pin them into a corner and stuff them full of bullets.
This is only a small selection of the many TF2 mods out in the wild, and already that's a lot of variety in the game. Mods can really make a good game into an excellent game just by being an option, as the fun factor and enjoyment is much higher when you have mods to tinker with; and mods keep the players coming back long after they otherwise would have dropped a game.
What do you guys think of this topic? It's definitely very interesting to think about.
