Re: Battle for Neighborville: A reflection on it's death.

I'm starting to realize that the sprint mechanic isn't actually all that bad.

It's more the MAP DESIGN that causes battles to take place in smaller areas.

Sprinting doesn't help that, sure, but it's primarily the fault of the map designs funneling players through small areas and not really having many alternative routes to a location. Not to mention the lack of real verticality...

Still, those are FIXABLE ISSUES.

With enough constructive feedback, the devs could have been swayed to change how they approached designing future maps.

Shame we'll never get to see that in action, and are stuck with the current boring, small, and badly designed PVP/Ops maps. 

Another thing i'm noticing is just how quiet the music is.

Even at max volume, the music is sometimes barely audible even if everything else is fine.

Not only that but it has a tendency to cut out during Gnome Knight battles and explorable area skirmishes/battles.

This is a real shame because the themes of the Gnome Knights are really really good.

Come to think of it, this game is riddled with audio bugs...

I've completely changed my stance on sprinting.

I think it works.

Or at least, in CONCEPT it could work.

It was somewhat necessary to ensure attackers could get to frontlines faster since teleporters and portals aren't a thing anymore.

I also think teleporters/portals being removed is a fair change.

In GW and GW2, the moment the attackers got a teleporter or portal up, almost everyone would use it. This resulted in flank routes being largely unused since players would always just... take the teleporter and attack from one side of the area. Of course, that all goes away once the teleporter or portal got destroyed, but it shouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

Sure, REMOVING the teleporters and portals wasn't the only option, as they COULD have been reworked, but it's a fair enough choice.

Sprinting was added to speed up movement and to substitute teleporters and portals.

The main issue:

The map design doesn't lend itself well to the mechanic.

Since the maps are so small, everyone manages to get to the objective in <10 seconds most of the time, resulting in absolute CHAOS around the objective while the rest of the area pretty much sat barren.

Flanking and smart positioning are essentially pointless when everyone reaches the objective so quickly.

Getting vanquished isn't as punishing, so smart plays aren't as important.

Sprinting could have been a very interesting mechanic if the maps actually took it into account.

But the faster speed combined with small map sizes just ruins any chances at anything other than both teams dive-bombing the point.

At least it works in team vanquish since the objective is just "kill the other team", but even then the small maps and sprinting mechanic just don't work at all together.

...God, the map design is really a KILLER in this game.

Still.

Enough feedback, enough people providing helpful advice WOULD HAVE HELPED.

The devs PROVED they cared about feedback.

Shame that people didn't give them a chance to learn and make better maps going forward.

BFN had 3 major issues that cause the community to despise it and not give it a chance.

LACK OF VARIANTS

This is honestly the biggest one.

This is the one that caused the majority of people to not want to touch BFN.

For sure, not having variants stings a bit, as they were a large part of the first 2 games, but ultimately not having them actually opens up MORE opportunities.

No variants means better balancing.

More robust upgrade and customization systems means you can create your own pseudo-variants.

The addition of new characters being more substantial than simple variants.

The lack of variants was a face-value problem.

If players actually took more than a second's look at it, they would realize it's really not as big of an issue as it initially seemed.

BUGS

Yea. BFN was EXTREMELY buggy on launch.

Improper debugging and lack of closed testing meant the game was... a bit bugged.

Still, the bugs got patched very quick.

Within the first 2-3 months, the majority of major bugs were spotted and dealt with.

This was big, but also quickly dealt with.

MAP DESIGN

As I've said many times, the map design is really bad.

This is one thing i don't have a counterargument for.

The map design IS BAD. The maps are way too small, they encourage NOT taking alternate routes, there's virtually no verticality, it doesn't take sprinting OR character skills/roles into account, and it's just a complete mess from start to finish. 

But like everything else, it could have been fixed.

It could have been fixed......

I regret not submitting more helpful feedback.

I regret not analyzing and explaining the issues.

I regret doing the very things that I condemned people for doing.

It wasn't until about halfway through the game's life that I switched from "complain constantly" to "actually submit helpful feedback".

I regret the way I acted.

I regret not doing more to help.