Breezy
Inkster Jr.
- Joined
- May 9, 2018
- Messages
- 26
So let's get something out of the way. I despise clam blitz. The mode feels very tacked on and not well thought out, and it just isn't fun for me. Granted, I have only played it in soloqueue, so it may be different in league, but I actually take umbrage with the core design apart from the required team coordination. And I noticed something kind of distressing; people are far more likely to give up in this mode than any other I've played, and I've been trying to figure out why and think I have an idea. That said, if you enjoy this mode, I'm genuinely glad, and hope you continue to do so. I just want to articulate why playing it is so exhausting for me. By the way, my CB rank is S+2. Nothing special, but high enough to denote at least mild competence if you ask me. So giving this some serious thought, I've boiled down my gripes to two main causes; the comeback wall and push inertia.
What do I mean by comeback wall? Basically, it's the size of the obstacle a team must overcome to stage a comeback. The higher the wall, the more difficult the comeback. If I had to rank the modes' max comeback walls from highest to lowest, I'd probably say CB, TC, RM, then SZ. But the thing is, CB's max comeback wall is significantly higher than the others because of the way overtime works. For TC, RM, and SZ, you can theoretically take the objective from 0 points to KO during the span of an overtime period. This is simply not the case with CB, as you are given 20 seconds at most from the creation of a powerclam to run it to the opposing goal. If you did not already have a push in active progress by the time overtime begins, the match is effectively over and all players know this. In all other modes, when overtime begins, everyone, everyone is on edge, because if the defending team slips up, the opposing team can and will take the win. In CB, it doesn't matter how many powerclams are on the field or how close they are to the goal; if the unrealistically short timer runs out, you're done. And if the defending team has any semblance of turf and clam control when overtime begins, it's even more pointless. This futility is not lost on the playerbase, and while I do not condone giving up, and do my absolute best to refrain from doing it, I can't deny that the urge to pack it in and accept defeat can be overwhelming; I'm not having fun, there's virtually no chance at winning, what's the point?
Which brings me to push inertia. Again, let's invoke the mechanics of the other modes. For these modes, there is a minimum amount of time it takes to run a push to KO. for TC and SZ, the counter ticks down at a constant rate. The outlier here is RM, where the counter tick down rate is proportional to the speed at which the carrier can approach the podium, which can be fast or slow depending on the defense. To pause a push in these modes, you must either cover the zone, clear the tower, or splat the RM carrier. These conditions generally involve splatting one or two people. Now, how much inertia a push has depends on how much effort it requires to restore the objective's neutrality, or "kill the push" as it were. A high inertia push example would be when the zone is under your control and you push into the enemy spawn and splat them as they come so they can't get back in to cap the zone. A low inertia push would be someone trying to ride the tower with the entirety of their team dead with the other team fully active. For all modes except CB, the inertia of the push most of the time is almost solely dependent on player competence. Even in 30 second RM matches, I would argue that the winning push had low inertia, but it just worked anyway (unless there was an immediate team wipe involved). In CB, however, the inertia of pushes are abnormally high for a couple reasons that I'll list below:
1.) Enemy mobility while attacking the basket:
While throwing clams in the basket, you have full mobility and killing power, which allows you to bob and weave and kill the enemy at your optimum potential. This is not the case for the other modes where an objective is "held" by a player. In TC, you have your weapon, but are confined to a tiny, highly visible space that is vulnerable to multiple positions of higher ground (more on that in reason #2), and if you're splatted, the tower is neutralized. In RM the carrier has a powerful weapon, but it slows you down to a crawl, your exact position is marked, and all the enemy has to do to pause the push is splat you and only you. This doesn't really apply to SZ since the objective doesn't move at all, but you don't actually need to splat anyone to stop a push anyway (although it helps a lot). In CB, you have full mobility, can throw clams in the basket from any angle, and if the whole team is involved in the push, a wipe is near necessary to stop it, but this is made more difficult by...
2.) Enemy positioning while attacking the basket:
It is utterly clear to me that many of the maps of this game were not designed with CB in mind, or that this design was incompetent. I'm looking specifically at Musselforge, Mainstage, Humpback, and Shipyard. These maps have one thing in common; the basket is placed on the edge of a dropoff that cannot be scaled directly and is accessible from behind or, in the case of Mainstage and Shipyard, the basket is accessible from high, positionally advantageous platforms that cannot be easily reached by shorter range weapons and there are walls that block long range weapons from shooting these platforms from the safest angles. Either way, the enemy can easily position themselves to become very difficult to hit while they chuck clams to the basket, either by hugging the wall of the dropoff under the basket (and splatting people as they come down to contest the push) or by just standing at the top of a platform or behind the basket idly throwing clams while the defending team has to go all the way around to even have a chance at stopping it. As a stark contrast, this problem is not present at all in Piranha Pit. There is nowhere for the attacking team to safely hide or fortify that also gives them basket access, and the defending team is given almost sole access to the high ground, which the attackers cannot get to without going far out of their way, directly past the enemy spawn. This is a massive breath of fresh air from a map perspective. But to summarize, many of the maps in this mode give the enemy a positional advantage while they're on the offensive, and this is unacceptable.
3.) Map and clam control momentum:
CB is unique in that all team members can participate in scoring, but it only takes one to keep the push going. Because of this, while some members are hurling clams into the basket, dodging enemy fire and taking advantage of position as per points #1 and #2, the other team members can run around collecting clams, switching off with the initial scorers, who then can run around doing the same thing, keeping a push going until the timer, which resets every time a clam is thrown in, depletes. In fact, since only one barrier can be down at a time, the defending team is forced to give up map and clam control while they are defending since they have to rush back to their spawn or risk losing even more points, which gives the attacking team tremendous momentum that carries them even after the push is over, pity clam or no pity clam. This would not be the case if a) both barriers could be attacked at once or b) the barrier timer lasted a set amount of time regardless of scoring. But the way it works now gives way to a much higher incidence of avalanche pushes in CB, where the team that scores can ride the momentum of their push to nigh unreachable heights.
So what effect does all this have on the players during a CB match? Simple; it completely and utterly demoralizes them. The morale drain from the defending team when this happens is palpable. It's so overt no matter what side I'm on. Some stand in spawn face down. Some twirl around aimlessly. But the saddest is when they weakly drop into the field clearly lacking energy, clearly lacking drive.
Clearly lacking hope.
Now I can see how this may come off as melodramatic, and one could argue that those who give up shouldn't be playing a competitive game anyway, but taking one look at the community this game has created and the joy it can bring to so many people, it really saddens me that this mode is the way it is because, and I could be wrong, but, I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Please tell me what I'm missing. Please tell me that I'm incorrect and why. I desperately want to to have fun with this mode, to experience the electrifying exhilaration of an intense match that persists until the very last second. But as it is now, for me, clam blitz is a mode entirely devoid of color.
Huh, kind of ironic isn't it?
What do I mean by comeback wall? Basically, it's the size of the obstacle a team must overcome to stage a comeback. The higher the wall, the more difficult the comeback. If I had to rank the modes' max comeback walls from highest to lowest, I'd probably say CB, TC, RM, then SZ. But the thing is, CB's max comeback wall is significantly higher than the others because of the way overtime works. For TC, RM, and SZ, you can theoretically take the objective from 0 points to KO during the span of an overtime period. This is simply not the case with CB, as you are given 20 seconds at most from the creation of a powerclam to run it to the opposing goal. If you did not already have a push in active progress by the time overtime begins, the match is effectively over and all players know this. In all other modes, when overtime begins, everyone, everyone is on edge, because if the defending team slips up, the opposing team can and will take the win. In CB, it doesn't matter how many powerclams are on the field or how close they are to the goal; if the unrealistically short timer runs out, you're done. And if the defending team has any semblance of turf and clam control when overtime begins, it's even more pointless. This futility is not lost on the playerbase, and while I do not condone giving up, and do my absolute best to refrain from doing it, I can't deny that the urge to pack it in and accept defeat can be overwhelming; I'm not having fun, there's virtually no chance at winning, what's the point?
Which brings me to push inertia. Again, let's invoke the mechanics of the other modes. For these modes, there is a minimum amount of time it takes to run a push to KO. for TC and SZ, the counter ticks down at a constant rate. The outlier here is RM, where the counter tick down rate is proportional to the speed at which the carrier can approach the podium, which can be fast or slow depending on the defense. To pause a push in these modes, you must either cover the zone, clear the tower, or splat the RM carrier. These conditions generally involve splatting one or two people. Now, how much inertia a push has depends on how much effort it requires to restore the objective's neutrality, or "kill the push" as it were. A high inertia push example would be when the zone is under your control and you push into the enemy spawn and splat them as they come so they can't get back in to cap the zone. A low inertia push would be someone trying to ride the tower with the entirety of their team dead with the other team fully active. For all modes except CB, the inertia of the push most of the time is almost solely dependent on player competence. Even in 30 second RM matches, I would argue that the winning push had low inertia, but it just worked anyway (unless there was an immediate team wipe involved). In CB, however, the inertia of pushes are abnormally high for a couple reasons that I'll list below:
1.) Enemy mobility while attacking the basket:
While throwing clams in the basket, you have full mobility and killing power, which allows you to bob and weave and kill the enemy at your optimum potential. This is not the case for the other modes where an objective is "held" by a player. In TC, you have your weapon, but are confined to a tiny, highly visible space that is vulnerable to multiple positions of higher ground (more on that in reason #2), and if you're splatted, the tower is neutralized. In RM the carrier has a powerful weapon, but it slows you down to a crawl, your exact position is marked, and all the enemy has to do to pause the push is splat you and only you. This doesn't really apply to SZ since the objective doesn't move at all, but you don't actually need to splat anyone to stop a push anyway (although it helps a lot). In CB, you have full mobility, can throw clams in the basket from any angle, and if the whole team is involved in the push, a wipe is near necessary to stop it, but this is made more difficult by...
2.) Enemy positioning while attacking the basket:
It is utterly clear to me that many of the maps of this game were not designed with CB in mind, or that this design was incompetent. I'm looking specifically at Musselforge, Mainstage, Humpback, and Shipyard. These maps have one thing in common; the basket is placed on the edge of a dropoff that cannot be scaled directly and is accessible from behind or, in the case of Mainstage and Shipyard, the basket is accessible from high, positionally advantageous platforms that cannot be easily reached by shorter range weapons and there are walls that block long range weapons from shooting these platforms from the safest angles. Either way, the enemy can easily position themselves to become very difficult to hit while they chuck clams to the basket, either by hugging the wall of the dropoff under the basket (and splatting people as they come down to contest the push) or by just standing at the top of a platform or behind the basket idly throwing clams while the defending team has to go all the way around to even have a chance at stopping it. As a stark contrast, this problem is not present at all in Piranha Pit. There is nowhere for the attacking team to safely hide or fortify that also gives them basket access, and the defending team is given almost sole access to the high ground, which the attackers cannot get to without going far out of their way, directly past the enemy spawn. This is a massive breath of fresh air from a map perspective. But to summarize, many of the maps in this mode give the enemy a positional advantage while they're on the offensive, and this is unacceptable.
3.) Map and clam control momentum:
CB is unique in that all team members can participate in scoring, but it only takes one to keep the push going. Because of this, while some members are hurling clams into the basket, dodging enemy fire and taking advantage of position as per points #1 and #2, the other team members can run around collecting clams, switching off with the initial scorers, who then can run around doing the same thing, keeping a push going until the timer, which resets every time a clam is thrown in, depletes. In fact, since only one barrier can be down at a time, the defending team is forced to give up map and clam control while they are defending since they have to rush back to their spawn or risk losing even more points, which gives the attacking team tremendous momentum that carries them even after the push is over, pity clam or no pity clam. This would not be the case if a) both barriers could be attacked at once or b) the barrier timer lasted a set amount of time regardless of scoring. But the way it works now gives way to a much higher incidence of avalanche pushes in CB, where the team that scores can ride the momentum of their push to nigh unreachable heights.
So what effect does all this have on the players during a CB match? Simple; it completely and utterly demoralizes them. The morale drain from the defending team when this happens is palpable. It's so overt no matter what side I'm on. Some stand in spawn face down. Some twirl around aimlessly. But the saddest is when they weakly drop into the field clearly lacking energy, clearly lacking drive.
Clearly lacking hope.
Now I can see how this may come off as melodramatic, and one could argue that those who give up shouldn't be playing a competitive game anyway, but taking one look at the community this game has created and the joy it can bring to so many people, it really saddens me that this mode is the way it is because, and I could be wrong, but, I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Please tell me what I'm missing. Please tell me that I'm incorrect and why. I desperately want to to have fun with this mode, to experience the electrifying exhilaration of an intense match that persists until the very last second. But as it is now, for me, clam blitz is a mode entirely devoid of color.
Huh, kind of ironic isn't it?
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