Zike In SJ airpogo reached the point a while ago to where if you want to consistently airpogo you’re going to be staring at speedo for the entire duration of said airpogo. No not glance at speedo here and there like you do for conc. You literally just stare at the speedometer. Unless you are literally moving straight down in a corner against walls, the speedometer is immensely helpful for hitting each and every sticky.
So the history of this is I assume (I don’t know, so do correct me if I’m wrong) – people realise airpogo can be done in general and subsequently realise that the speedometer is a massive help for it, and now you have entire maps dedicated to watching the speedometer because it’s what facilitates the whole thing anyway (newjuls and soup aside I guess, but if you get to use emp as a metric…)? I know I’m getting repetitive with the point, but is that a good thing and are you playing the game anymore?
I’m sure some people would enjoy the niche (I’ve seen a lot of niches-within-niches in many movement games I’ve played through the years so nothing would surprise me), but it seems like the inclusion of the technology has steered SJ into something it wouldn’t have been without it, and I’m (‘we are’) concerned about the same thing happening to conc.
I’m sure some people will enjoy the evolution of it all, but it doesn’t sound like you’re actually playing the game at that point. I do realise that this point is – even among the wider discussion – incredibly subjective, and you’re right that when we try to compare between modes, conc will not have “constant staring at the speedo” as SJ does. What it will have is an increasing reliance on numbers and data directing player actions and in the longer term, what maps look like and the actual gameplay on a per-jump level, which was the original point at hand.
In summary so far, the speedometer is helpful for conc yes, but it’s honestly laughable its impact on the mode compared to SJ.
I genuinely do not see the merit in using “it could be worse, look!” as an argument.
Trying my best to abuse the speedometers on conc_xmt and conc_totobro_plus my times are still significantly behind Emp’s due to how good he is at the game. The speedometers just aren’t powerful enough to trivialize the mode.
Yes, us oldies will be better for the foreseeable for anything that can’t be learned by rote (eg prec) and relies on ‘the feeling(tm)’. Saying you can’t quite approach someone with >20k hours in the game after 500 hours with the available tools is not a good comparison when the argument on the table was never “it makes the game completely free”.
...timer bars etc...
Generally agree with everything you’ve mentioned here to be fair in terms of impact, as it’s about what I said in the original long post.
Getting people to actually play prec might be a good thing, as far as I’m (personally, not ‘we’ this time) concerned it’s properly a young person’s game and my brain quickly turns to mush with that many overlapping beeps.
Multi-bar hud as originally discussed would turn prec into DDR/whack-a-mole gameplay which sounds even less appealing than playing hard prec in the first place.
Again, as posited before, putting this as an option into practice mode for people to learn with would be a fine compromise, but having it as more than a practice tool feels exceptionally cheap and fosters reliance on numbers/data rather than playing the game, which goes back to the crux of the boomer argument.
However, if that option does not include the exact numbers, explain to me what is stopping me from going over to github, searching for an open source stopwatch, and editing it slightly to display a timer from 0 to 3.81 every time I press mouse1?
This comes around nicely to one of the concessions put forward early on in the wider discussion. If the main refutations (any or all) against any of this are:
You could just cheat anyway and get it on your screen so just enable everything by default
We need some or all of this on screen to facilitate accessibility (eg deaf users)
It’s about parity between modes
then fair enough if that’s the decision to be made on a game design level. The discussion to date has been focused on the ‘what if?’ of how these changes can impact the game as it stands and potentially the future direction of mapmaking/’the meta’.
If ultimately it’s all moot because of the above reasons, I guess that’s fair enough, but if those reasons aren’t blockers, I don’t think anything stated so far really refutes any of the original point(s) made (I’m aware of my own bias obviously, but still).
“It could be worse” and “you’re not always using them!” still acknowledge the inherent benefits of the data that wasn’t once there, and even before this kicked off you’d mentioned your use of speedo on bro+ for j1 and 2 in particular.
The boomers not enjoying these HUD elements is a fair enough opinion, but this is 5 people attempting to make a decision for every other current and future conc player. While yes, they have a lot of experience concing, they do not have a lot of experience making games which is more what I feel this is about.
I do feel this is what the decision will ultimately be made on. You’re right, we’re not game designers, simply people who played the game in the past and know at the time what made it fun/what made it terrible in places, and ultimately what kept people hooked while it’s been on life support for the past 10+ years.
It is, of course, entirely within reason that we’re all old man yells at clouds.jpg incarnate and trying to preserve something that has been lost to the annals of time – we weren’t in the source movement community (FF never took off really…) and so maybe the parity argument has more legs simply because it’s expected data for today’s future movement stars. I can certainly see that being the case as much as I’d disagree with it on a personal level.
Shegetz I'm In favor of our current conc implementation because I see it as making the mode more speedrun friendly. I like the idea of making it easier to get into, I like the idea of making it easier for people to do runs, and I like that speedo opens up overheads as a more viable strategy in run.
I’m also in favour of making conc easier to get into, and on top of the original longer post’s summary of what MM has at baseline that TFC never did, we’re all fine with any and all of the tech on the table being available in learn and practice modes to get people up to speed and into the game.
When it comes to ‘opening up overheads as a more viable strategy in runs’, I feel we start to get into cheapening the game and any resulting accomplishments on top of the aforementioned “you didn’t really do this, the data did”.
I should reiterate (again, since it probably bears repeating every post at this point) that the boomers are still not trying to gatekeep and prevent anyone from getting good, or encouraging people to suffer for the sake of it. ‘We’ still ultimately want a fun and approachable game that people enjoy long after we all move to Florida to retire.
