Best mods, Catch16 and Battle, deserve players
Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2015 1:41 am
You need to try out the mods Catch16 and Battle. I consider them the best, and will explain why.
If you disagree with me, don't like this mod, even after playing it, even if you don't know why, I would be glad to talk with you!
Both are awesome with many players, up to 16 right now, which may be the most appropriate, but 32 or even 64 should be tried. It would be too much to manage for CTF or DM, race mods have a lot of players because there are independent areas, but these mods truly are made for epic. It becomes truly chaotic, probably unlike what you have seen elsewhere, but you can still rise from it!
There are few servers for them, so you can add them to your favourites, and once in awhile bring people with you on them.
The servers are often empty or nearly. A required minimum numbers of players to bring the server to the visible part of server list is not reached enough, so they need a little kickstart. Battle is actually a little more played, except these 2 last days when I gathered players from other servers to play Catch16.
Catch16
Rules
- It is either played with grenade or laser. There is only one weapon for all, with infinite ammo. Even the laser explodes to make allow bounces.
- Every player is the leader of his own team at start, represented by a unique set of body and feet colours.
- A hit changes the victims' team to your own. Players do not die by hits, and have no life points. A team can spread with the "recruits" of the leader catching more victims. A leader can be caught by another team, while other players of his team remain in his team (and can bring him back). If a leader leaves the game, all of his team-mates are back to their own team as leader.
- You earn 1points for each hit, and 5points if every player is in your team. When you die in a killing entity, you don't lose points or your team colour.
- A round is finished when all players are in a same team. The game is finished when one player reaches 10 or 100 points depending on the number of players present.
Comparisons
Catch16 offers a very simple concept, with a very neat interaction.
It is actually ancestor from zCatch, but it feels like zCatch removed the best part of it.
Catch16's concept offers more complex strategies, with no one having to wait.
You display superiority by, keeping others prisoners in zCatch, using others for yourself in Catch16.
In zCatch, everyone is equal, and can be evaluated on the same criteria, but for an effective "filtering", a satisfying result, some players need to be put on hold. In CTF, respawning is cheap and has few consequence. Sometimes, it is even a tactic. DM is too simple. In Invasion, there is a consequence when you lose, you switch to Zombie side, but not everyone is equal, so not everyone can be judged on the same criterias. In Catch16, all players have the same status, but still can differentiate themselves a lot from the other.
zCatch is a deathmatch, in a tournament-like improved version that emphasize showdowns, Catch16 is a bigger scaled fight, for territory, in an improved version of war.
While in zCatch the best become the focus for their merits, being glorified as they display their skill, which their spectators can then learn, in Catch16, is a bigger scale fight for territory, where your usual zCatch solo tactics can make your fame, strategy becomes part of the game, in a satisfactory manner, compatible with fast-paced gameplay, succeeding where zCatch fails, solving the gameplay issue to reward the winner and punish the loser, in the best way ever seen, and avoiding pitfalls of slow-paced or turn-by-turn games.
It is a culmination of the good ideas from all other mods, a very good summary that doesn't need superfluous elements like flags, freezing tiles, many weapons. Its single ruling principle can be explored vastly, without the need for these various elements which become superfluous, while others are a patchwork of various single elements that can work together and need them to have an appeal.
Catch16 is the Teeworlds equivalent of the Go game.
(It is also similar to agar.io, though the later is ever-inflating and can only work if people disconnect frequently, but you can make artificial teams with others, while technically you only have yourself as a team).
What are the downsides?
If there are too few players, like 4, it isn't intersting. You don't have the necessary scale to plan strategies and you run into end situations quickly, a round lasts too little and you end up waiting more during the loading than in the actual game! So come by 8 people at least.
You can get lost with the team gameplay... It can seem to not make sense and not work, or be useless, just like creating territory in Go.
For example, isn't it unfair that someone works for a team that isn't its own when its leader is caught by another team? Shouldn't he become the leader of the team? After all, the leader does not contribute to his team. (Deku and I had a discussion about this.)
However, this is not true. If the leader doesn't contribute to his team, he faces more risk to lose it. Players can decide whether to stay in someone else's team.
You can quit it if the leader has too many points and favour a player with low rank's team, or you can betray teams, act like a mercenary and win with instagib points only, while dragging the round for long and not making the team victory necessary, which is especially good if your team is dissolved.
With a little experience, even with many players, you can understand the situation and take control of it. It is not random.
You could give a similar criticism to other mods. In OpenFNG, you work for a team, but the teams have to be balanced, or the game doesn't work well, so you switch team and lose all your score! In zCatch, everything is reset when you die, there is no intermediary between winning and losing, and a round lasts forever.
The biggest issue is that the spawn position at the beginning of a round does not change. It is not random, and everyone spawns at the same place. So the encounters at the start are always the same, which is unfair. Though, it doesn't ruin the game, since if you play on a big map like grasscatch, you don't run into someone immediately and you can chose different ways, and in a small map like ctf5, everyone is packed, so the fights are more chaotic and the outcome vary, even pro lose their team sometimes at the beginning against noobs.
If there are too many players, the colour sets can be confusing. You can end up with two teams with green head, and only different feet colours. Though it can also be considered interesting (like players who disguise themselves in Zombies in Invasion by taking a similar skin), and does not happen often. If the game evolved to manage 32 or 64 players, new team characteristics should be added, like a different skin in addition to colour.
Details
The official map is "grasscatch", a big map with various zones, including corridors, platforms, and hiding spots.
There are options to:
- change the map
- change
Servers
Currently, there are two Catch16 servers:
Hookzone.net:
- grenade
- many maps
Game-in-Evolution.
- laser
- grasscatch
- hide/show names and chat
Trivia
If you are still a child, and the Kirby-like graphics of Teeworlds don't appease your parent's critics on how this game is violent, show them this mod, precisely explaining how this is only a painting game: the laser is just a spray of paint, while the grenade is actually a paint bottle! (If possible, make them addicted, to help this server grow back...)
This "paintball" concept could have inspired Splatoon?!?
Battle
It is an extended CTF.
There are checkpoints you can capture to spawn at.
There are new weapons, including vehicles! Helicopter, Plane, Tank, Motorbike, Turret, Battleship, Submarine. There are fancy elements like teleports, barriers with switches, water dynamics, guided shots. The heavier vehicles can be ride by 2 tees.
There are classes, and frankly you get a bit lost among these, and the best is engineer IMO.
The result can look glitchy, because of the reused weapons and armor icons to draw vehicles, but it is creative.
There are newbies often playing, so the CTF gameplay is often shadowed by the DM gameplay, they sometimes capture checkpoints, but barely target the enemy flag, they are most busy picking a vehicle and a class and trying to use it.
There are various official maps that are big, horizontal, feature HQs, various environments such as water, lava, etc.
What do you think of these mods? How to make them popular again?
Fifi is also in favor of these mods and made me discover Alien, which I have still not played, and was only dreaming about up to now, in his topic Let's play cool forgotten mods! (Alien, Battle, Catch16).
If you disagree with me, don't like this mod, even after playing it, even if you don't know why, I would be glad to talk with you!
Both are awesome with many players, up to 16 right now, which may be the most appropriate, but 32 or even 64 should be tried. It would be too much to manage for CTF or DM, race mods have a lot of players because there are independent areas, but these mods truly are made for epic. It becomes truly chaotic, probably unlike what you have seen elsewhere, but you can still rise from it!
There are few servers for them, so you can add them to your favourites, and once in awhile bring people with you on them.
The servers are often empty or nearly. A required minimum numbers of players to bring the server to the visible part of server list is not reached enough, so they need a little kickstart. Battle is actually a little more played, except these 2 last days when I gathered players from other servers to play Catch16.
Catch16
Rules
- It is either played with grenade or laser. There is only one weapon for all, with infinite ammo. Even the laser explodes to make allow bounces.
- Every player is the leader of his own team at start, represented by a unique set of body and feet colours.
- A hit changes the victims' team to your own. Players do not die by hits, and have no life points. A team can spread with the "recruits" of the leader catching more victims. A leader can be caught by another team, while other players of his team remain in his team (and can bring him back). If a leader leaves the game, all of his team-mates are back to their own team as leader.
- You earn 1points for each hit, and 5points if every player is in your team. When you die in a killing entity, you don't lose points or your team colour.
- A round is finished when all players are in a same team. The game is finished when one player reaches 10 or 100 points depending on the number of players present.
Comparisons
Catch16 offers a very simple concept, with a very neat interaction.
It is actually ancestor from zCatch, but it feels like zCatch removed the best part of it.
Catch16's concept offers more complex strategies, with no one having to wait.
You display superiority by, keeping others prisoners in zCatch, using others for yourself in Catch16.
In zCatch, everyone is equal, and can be evaluated on the same criteria, but for an effective "filtering", a satisfying result, some players need to be put on hold. In CTF, respawning is cheap and has few consequence. Sometimes, it is even a tactic. DM is too simple. In Invasion, there is a consequence when you lose, you switch to Zombie side, but not everyone is equal, so not everyone can be judged on the same criterias. In Catch16, all players have the same status, but still can differentiate themselves a lot from the other.
zCatch is a deathmatch, in a tournament-like improved version that emphasize showdowns, Catch16 is a bigger scaled fight, for territory, in an improved version of war.
While in zCatch the best become the focus for their merits, being glorified as they display their skill, which their spectators can then learn, in Catch16, is a bigger scale fight for territory, where your usual zCatch solo tactics can make your fame, strategy becomes part of the game, in a satisfactory manner, compatible with fast-paced gameplay, succeeding where zCatch fails, solving the gameplay issue to reward the winner and punish the loser, in the best way ever seen, and avoiding pitfalls of slow-paced or turn-by-turn games.
It is a culmination of the good ideas from all other mods, a very good summary that doesn't need superfluous elements like flags, freezing tiles, many weapons. Its single ruling principle can be explored vastly, without the need for these various elements which become superfluous, while others are a patchwork of various single elements that can work together and need them to have an appeal.
Catch16 is the Teeworlds equivalent of the Go game.
(It is also similar to agar.io, though the later is ever-inflating and can only work if people disconnect frequently, but you can make artificial teams with others, while technically you only have yourself as a team).
What are the downsides?
If there are too few players, like 4, it isn't intersting. You don't have the necessary scale to plan strategies and you run into end situations quickly, a round lasts too little and you end up waiting more during the loading than in the actual game! So come by 8 people at least.
You can get lost with the team gameplay... It can seem to not make sense and not work, or be useless, just like creating territory in Go.
For example, isn't it unfair that someone works for a team that isn't its own when its leader is caught by another team? Shouldn't he become the leader of the team? After all, the leader does not contribute to his team. (Deku and I had a discussion about this.)
However, this is not true. If the leader doesn't contribute to his team, he faces more risk to lose it. Players can decide whether to stay in someone else's team.
You can quit it if the leader has too many points and favour a player with low rank's team, or you can betray teams, act like a mercenary and win with instagib points only, while dragging the round for long and not making the team victory necessary, which is especially good if your team is dissolved.
With a little experience, even with many players, you can understand the situation and take control of it. It is not random.
You could give a similar criticism to other mods. In OpenFNG, you work for a team, but the teams have to be balanced, or the game doesn't work well, so you switch team and lose all your score! In zCatch, everything is reset when you die, there is no intermediary between winning and losing, and a round lasts forever.
The biggest issue is that the spawn position at the beginning of a round does not change. It is not random, and everyone spawns at the same place. So the encounters at the start are always the same, which is unfair. Though, it doesn't ruin the game, since if you play on a big map like grasscatch, you don't run into someone immediately and you can chose different ways, and in a small map like ctf5, everyone is packed, so the fights are more chaotic and the outcome vary, even pro lose their team sometimes at the beginning against noobs.
If there are too many players, the colour sets can be confusing. You can end up with two teams with green head, and only different feet colours. Though it can also be considered interesting (like players who disguise themselves in Zombies in Invasion by taking a similar skin), and does not happen often. If the game evolved to manage 32 or 64 players, new team characteristics should be added, like a different skin in addition to colour.
Details
The official map is "grasscatch", a big map with various zones, including corridors, platforms, and hiding spots.
There are options to:
- change the map
- change
Servers
Currently, there are two Catch16 servers:
Hookzone.net:
- grenade
- many maps
Game-in-Evolution.
- laser
- grasscatch
- hide/show names and chat
Trivia
If you are still a child, and the Kirby-like graphics of Teeworlds don't appease your parent's critics on how this game is violent, show them this mod, precisely explaining how this is only a painting game: the laser is just a spray of paint, while the grenade is actually a paint bottle! (If possible, make them addicted, to help this server grow back...)
This "paintball" concept could have inspired Splatoon?!?
Battle
It is an extended CTF.
There are checkpoints you can capture to spawn at.
There are new weapons, including vehicles! Helicopter, Plane, Tank, Motorbike, Turret, Battleship, Submarine. There are fancy elements like teleports, barriers with switches, water dynamics, guided shots. The heavier vehicles can be ride by 2 tees.
There are classes, and frankly you get a bit lost among these, and the best is engineer IMO.
The result can look glitchy, because of the reused weapons and armor icons to draw vehicles, but it is creative.
There are newbies often playing, so the CTF gameplay is often shadowed by the DM gameplay, they sometimes capture checkpoints, but barely target the enemy flag, they are most busy picking a vehicle and a class and trying to use it.
There are various official maps that are big, horizontal, feature HQs, various environments such as water, lava, etc.
What do you think of these mods? How to make them popular again?
Fifi is also in favor of these mods and made me discover Alien, which I have still not played, and was only dreaming about up to now, in his topic Let's play cool forgotten mods! (Alien, Battle, Catch16).