It is a totally dead game mode because it is horribly horribly unfun. Once every three months I think to myself “This mode was great in GMOD Tower. People are just mad it’s difficult. I’ll find a full server through the browser and play some.”
And at times of high traffic I can find one, and then I play, and I realize how wrong I was. This is not the game that I played in GMOD Tower. It’s bad. It’s reaaal bad.
I have never seen the Chimera win in a full server. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it kill more than 2 crusaders. The original was definitely not like this. The animation timing is fucked up real bad and the chimera is made totally useless every time it performs an action, making playing as it impossible so long as anyone else in the match understands the game even slightly.
Why did they waste all that time making cosmetics for a game that doesn’t even work? Make the game fun first! Not to mention what a waste it is that what is far and away the best looking mode in the game is far and away the worst one. I get that the artists probably aren’t the people altering the game rules, but one is completely invalidated by the other. And since the majority of the problems is just that the Chimera is too slow, it shouldn’t even be that hard a fix. At least start throwing changes at the wall so I can have the potential to have fun in this mode. Anything would be better than what we’ve got, but it’s laid untouched for years.
yea i agree with this post, I really don’t like playing little crusaders and even when I do I really dread being the dragon.
I don’t know how being an almighty dragon with the power to roar, stomp, and the ability to bite and kill knights strikes fear into nobody’s heart but mine and only specifically when I’m the one playing as it.
I don’t think the entire game is horrendous I do think it has it’s redeeming qualities, getting a kill or pressing the button is fun and satisfying, and I really do not want to look like I’m being overly negative or just that I am inexperienced with that gamemode, but when I play as the dragon it almost feels like it boils down into a button mashing fest sometimes just because of how easy it is to get overwhelmed fast by the knights.
again, I might just sound like I’m whining or that I haven’t played enough, but I used to play it a lot and it does seem way easier to win as the knights in comparison to playing as the dragon, that could be because of lower ping from not using a toaster oven as a router as I did back in 2014 and such, but it did seem a lot harder to win as the pigmasks back then. but also GMT chimera hunt was pretty buggy too so it’s not like THAT much has changed [at least i think it was a little buggy].
it does seem like one of the lesser refined gamemodes in comparison to things like ball race, and minigolf which seem to work flawlessly a lot of the time [minus the de-sync issues here and there those are weird but don’t have that much of an affect on game play], i’m not gonna sit here and say that LC sucks as a whole, but it could honestly use a lot of tweaking and balancing changes. I’m not someone who works on the game nor is my brain in a state to really be able to pick out flaws and suggest changes, I can only acknowledge that right now it does need a lot of changing because a lot of the time you can just win as knight by staying back and not even really doing much.
I do think it’s at least, somewhat tolerable in it’s current state, it’s not very fun or something I’m dying to play a lot of the time but it at least gets the job done and accomplishes what it’s supposed to be even if it accomplishes it in a very unrefined way.
I’m sorry if this post seemed like I was rambling for eons and if I repeated myself a lot of the time and if I made no sense whatsoever, I just do think LC needs some very major changes in order to make it worth playing.
This started as a reply to your post on r/towerunite, but I’m doing it here cuz I gotta get them forum points.
“I have never seen the Chimera win in a full server. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it kill more than 2 crusaders.”
How many full games have you played? With only about 100k exp in the gamemode, I can’t imagine your sample size is super high. In my experience, average-level dragons will kill about half of the knights before being turned off, unless they’re bum-rushed by all of the knights at the beginning of the round.
“And since the majority of the problems is just that the Chimera is too slow, it shouldn’t even be that hard a fix.”
I don’t get how you can think that UCH in GMT was great- and then say LC is too slow. UCH is molasses compared to LC. The dragon overall movement speed/control is significantly higher than the chimeras was and the end lag after a bite is only a few frames longer. If speed is the main thing that makes LC “reaaal bad” compared to UCH, I question if you’ve like- played UCH recently. That being said- plz bring back bhopping for the dragon >:]
“At least start throwing changes at the wall so I can have the potential to have fun in this mode.”
Last time they made major changes to the mode- it got even less fun to the point where one of the top players just straight up quit TU. If you want them do to changes- your best bet is to suggest specific ones you think will help instead of just waiting for Mac to have a brain blast and remove the crusaders entirely. Their track record when it comes to LC isn’t super clean, as they spend more time developing the mode than they do actually playing it, so they don’t always know how changes they make will affect those who are going to feel them the most.
I agree that UCH in gmod tower was more fun, but that could just be my nostalgia for it talking, and that Little Crusaders is pretty poorly balanced.
Being the dragon pretty much just means you cannot make a single mistake, especially if there’s a knight that even remotely knows what they’re doing. Any tiny mistake means the knights can just run up to you and get a free insta-kill, which I really don’t like. I know that’s always been a core thing since GMT and the original UCH, but with LC’s map design/balancing it really doesn’t feel fair unless I made a stupid mistake.
I think having to hold down the button for a specific amount of time before it’s fully pressed down (like 1 second or smth similar) would give the dragon a lot more breathing room, but like I said it’s changing a core part of the game so Idk how well it would work out.
I feel like another big part of the game feeling unfun is that new players seem to never know how the dragon works. I’ve had to tell people on multiple occasions that roaring or tail whipping exists.
I still think the game is fun, especially with friends, but a lot of that fun is lost when playing with random players, which I never seem to experience in any of the other game worlds. I know enough about the game that I tend to constantly get the kill on the dragon/kill all knights on servers with low ranking players, which never seems to happen in games like minigolf or even virus.
tl;dr I like little crusaders, but i think the balancing needs to be worked on a lot, especially to make it more fair/understandable for newer and unexperienced players
While I do agree that the developers have made some poor decisions in the past with Little Crusaders, I have to disagree that the dragon is “too” OP for the most part. I join games all the time and I get a ton of button presses and my own button gets pressed quite often. The game just takes a lot of practice. UCH on GMTower was… buggy… and that has its own pros and cons. On GMT for example, the dragon had too much sprint and the pigmasks had too much sprint as well, wasn’t very balanced and it was quite wacky.
I don’t have the data behind the mode, the dev team does. They know what’s wrong with it a helluva lot more than I ever could, especially since the game is dead now and I can barely stomach playing more than a few rounds even when it isn’t. They know what’s wrong with it but clearly don’t care, and it’s about damn time that they do something about it.
LC: Roar no longer scares Knights if the Knight is behind walls or hiding behind objects
LC: Dragon enraged mode
LC: Birb can be thrown a bit farther
They’ve got changes in the work, Mac has also talked about changing how the sword on Mystic Grove works. They definitely care- they just have other things prioritized because this is one of the lesser played modes and a majority of the community want other things worked on- and the people who do play LC are more or less fine with it.
i feel like this point also shows a huge flaw in some of tower unite’s gamemodes in general, that a lot of mechanics aren’t really. explained at all? I don’t even know if most mechanics are mentioned outside of tips that again aren’t a good excuse at all, TF2 does the same thing where most of it’s explanations are completely out of the way and relegated to tips in loading screens or in a part of the menu where most people don’t even go.
tower unite’s gamemodes are far less complex than tf2 though, so it almost kinda gets a pass in this regard, you don’t really need a whole tutorial for things like ballrace or minigolf as they are very simple and don’t require an intricate explanation. things like virus, LC, and possibly ZM could benefit from having some sort of explanation, I sometimes feel like the only person on the planet who knows that the sprint bar recharges faster when you crouch after it starts recharging.
again, not every gamemode on TU needs a tutorial but something to help ease new players into it rather than just throwing them face first in a game and expecting them to know whats going on would be appreciated
Well they have an idea. That’s game analytics, and this is a very well put together game so I’m sure they have those up the wazzoo. I get that it’s not constructive to say “fix it” with no advice, but I’m not gonna go all arm chair dev and pretend I know what’s wrong with it when the only thing I know is that I hate it.
But with 5 straight years of this mode sucking this hard, along with a GMOD version that is much better received, I’m sure they’re sitting on mountains of player and design data and complaints that could give them an idea on what to do.
Along with making LC the devs have to balance working on minigolf, ball race, virus, accelerate, ZM, the plaza and the several games in it, condos, and the still-pretty-large pile of unreleased features. The gmod gamemode has been around for at least half a decade longer than TU’s version, so obviously it’s gonna be better balanced as well
When was the last time you played GMTower UCH? There were so many issues on there that honestly made that game essentially harder than Little Crusaders. Such as having too much sprint, the dragon being glitchy/not turning correctly, and a whole load of other bugs. Little Crusaders is honestly more polished and overall way more fun to play on than GMT UCH. I am definitely not saying that Little Crusaders is perfect and is completely fair for everyone, but still. I hope you see the point I’m getting at.
Also, keep in mind that UCH in GMT was not created by PixelTail. It was a Garry’s Mod gamemode that PixelTail modified for GMT. Little Crusaders is pretty much 100% made by them, so they have their own touch-ups and mechanics for the game.
When Little Crusaders was first developed, we based the gameplay to be as close as possible to the original GMT version of UCH. Efforts included math to convert the timings and movement from Source to Unreal, recording videos of gameplay from GMT’s UCH and lining them up with Little Crusaders as much as possible, adjusting timing and network prediction to match, and keeping core mechanics.
Over the years since it’s release, Little Crusaders has had many gameplay adjustments and fine tuning to balance it better based on community feedback. We also improved network prediction for button presses and biting. There’s still a few things that need to be adjusted, but the core gameplay is more refined than its first release.
We do care about Little Crusaders, as we have made several changes to the game in various updates over the years, including many changes and improvements paired with the Mystic Grove update and since then.
Little Crusaders has a few issues that we’re aware of and will be adjusting more:
When there is more than 5 knights, the dragon has a disadvantage. We plan to resolve this by having two dragons when there are that many players
Roaring needs tweaking, often times the dragon can roar constantly and the knights are at a disadvantage
The bird mostly isn’t used, but at the same time, the bird wasn’t designed to be used often. It was designed to help mitigate dragon’s who are camping
Biting needs a little more work
Enraged mode needs to make a return
We are working on a better matchmaking system to help gather more players to the game, but I do believe the gameplay is a bit harder to get into than the other games, which can lead to less population. That doesn’t mean the gameplay is inherently bad, it just has a little more of a learning curve.
I’ve played plenty of TU LC and I agree completely. I never have fun. It’s either a stomp as the knights (some rounds I don’t even see the dragon), or trying my best as the dragon. I can usually win consistently against 3 or 4, but it’s just too easy to get bum-rushed. You can only kill one, mayyyybe two knights at a time and you have such long delay after any moves that you’re too open for how fast the knights move with sprint. The dragon has tools to deal with every option the knights have, but combined, it’s all too slow to survive.
It sucks cause this is a really charming gamemode. Hopefully with the things Guy mentioned and some more tweaks and balances it can be fun again. But the dragon is just not as scary as the chimera was, in terms of gameplay.
Personally I would kill 2 birbs with one stone and just add some of the GMT mechanics as mutators for those who want them but personally I feel that the game is pretty balanced.
