Moviebattles II R21.8.00 Released

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T01:26:49+0000

Goosto said:
The player base isn't split due to having both Open and Legends, they have different appeal, you take away one and most people would not migrate to the other.

They have different appeal yes, but that is also part of the problem. There is plenty of overlap of people who just enjoy playing the mod in general for how it plays. And now you see tons of complaints on discord about one or the other not being populated at a given time. MB2 functioned for almost 15 years without legends existing and I don't think we gained any players from legends existing, because ya know its not really part of the marketing or anything. Some may have stayed, but A lot of those same people probably would have stayed if Open was good, had more abilities and more classes like was planned but never got the focus it deserved.

Also, youve gotten so much support, no ones squandering your tools. You've gotten the majority of the effort the last few years. Don't even.

shea conn said:
Not when you take into account the respawn system that comes with it.
If people actually enjoyed the ctf mode it would have had its own dedicated servers further fragmenting the open playerbase.
Your rhetoric about warning against playerbase fragmentation only works because the mode you made was booty and never took off.

Ah yes, slightly faster respawning in general is completely equivalent to completely different classes, abilities, etc. Yup yup, brilliant take.

Ham1 · 2026-01-14T02:09:27+0000

MaceMadunusus said:
They have different appeal yes, but that is also part of the problem. There is plenty of overlap of people who just enjoy playing the mod in general for how it plays. And now you see tons of complaints on discord about one or the other not being populated at a given time. MB2 functioned for almost 15 years without legends existing and I don't think we gained any players from legends existing, because ya know its not really part of the marketing or anything. Some may have stayed, but A lot of those same people probably would have stayed if Open was good, had more abilities and more classes like was planned but never got the focus it deserved.

Also, youve gotten so much support, no ones squandering your tools. You've gotten the majority of the effort the last few years. Don't even.

Ah yes, slightly faster respawning in general is completely equivalent to completely different classes, abilities, etc. Yup yup, brilliant take.

Dude there's people that flat out don't touch open and just play legends, If the formula of open wasn't fucked with so much we wouldn't be here today discussing this. Saying that Legends hasn't gained mb2 any new players is ridiculous and out of touch almost.

Goosto · 2026-01-14T02:10:21+0000

Well, Legends has had no pop issues, in fact in the last couple of years some hardcore-committed communities have sprung up, ensuring pop even at 5 AM on a weekday. I can also say from experience people have specifically come to this game for Legends, or found Open not to their taste but stuck around for Legends. The more chaotic/casual appeal of playing as a little rat, for instance, is too strong.

Open players have a disorganization problem, where you will see 10 people at a time bitching on discord because of a lack of pop, blaming it on everyone but themselves. Some times you just gotta idle on a server til it grows, I've done it for every mode.

When I talk about squandering our tools, I mean artificially limiting the game's growth because of unfounded fear of fragmentation, developer vendetta against valid modes like RP or fun plugins, etc.

Agree that Open needs more though. I see it as having an identity crisis split between hardcore, change-resistant players and players that want to see more FA-style implements.

nomad.marshall · 2026-01-14T02:14:17+0000

game would have a lot more of its playerbase stick around if the people who actually played the game were the ones making changes for it.

source: legends being most popped mode past year or two (shoutout goosto)

competing visions would result in half-assed patches that break the entire game or make it unfun losing the support of their playerbases, and takes on the game that are funner, adequately balanced and have some long-term goals to strive for would get popped in their place. instead of arrogant devs resting on their laurels for a decade, and then when players stop enjoying their vision of the game, thinking the players are wrong for having fun in the wrong way.

2cwldys · 2026-01-14T02:17:28+0000

Open and Legends aren't competing with each-other, the open players are having to conform to playing legends cause it's the only place where you don't have to be a sweaty condescending asshole. With way more variety of fun character selection and thrilling gameplay. That also happens to have the most level headed admins that don't allow some of the most disgusting behavior I see while playing Open; at least in the NA hemisphere.

A mixture of poor closed-minded open development decisions (go figure, changes nobody ever ask for) combined with your social problems would lead to the "open is dead" fiasco. I'm actually thrilled they're making attempts to restore Open to pre R20, my advice? Try listening to more than just scrimmers for your feedback with open for a change. Focus on making it an actual thrilling gamemode to play and not just designed amongst a select few.

The game has roughly two servers to three servers active in each hemisphere, if you're lucky. The time for ignoring player feedback with your gamemodes is over. Legends and other gamemodes do so well because the player is listened, adhered, and catered to.

Also please utilize Open Beta for fucking legends, please. It's actually annoying that the many many past few patches are used as the "see what happens" "fix things that are broken later" release branch instead of having a proper testing workflow. There's actual communities willing to do this at the drop of the hat, like Freaky. You need only enable them.

It doesn't make sense to me to make people sign NDAs (providing their government name) to playtest amongst a select few, with no legal basis to enforce them; which usually only goes to privatized Open changes anyway that doesn't really consider what the player has to say or think.

Despite my personal issues with scrimmers, I'd love nothing more but to see Open thriving, but it's been shot in the foot too many times for my tastes, and completely mishandled by the very people that understood it's systems so well. Removing attunement is a great start. Revert nerfs to proj, pistol 3. It's a no brainer why people prefer Legends over Open, because it's code is accessible and the community has direct involvement in what the gamemode has to offer. This is the stark contrast between what's happened to Open, and why Legends is doing great.

hera · 2026-01-14T02:17:50+0000

legends gets pop because it gets frequent. meaningful patches.
you cant abandon a mode and then get pissy when nobody plays it.
it also gets pop because of momentum. i get pinged in discords for legends all the time. people log in and afk.
nobody has ever pinged me for a public match of open in like a year. edit: i actually played open last night and enjoyed it way more than legends. then all those players left to a private server.

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:23:04+0000

hera said:
you cant abandon a mode and then get pissy when nobody plays it.

I'm pissy because people on the dev team abandoned open for legends mode dev work years ago and lead us to this point. I kept fighting for open for a long ass time. I didn't abandon open, the people working on legends did.

Goosto said:
Well, Legends has had no pop issues, in fact in the last couple of years some hardcore-committed communities have sprung up, ensuring pop even at 5 AM on a weekday. I can also say from experience people have specifically come to this game for Legends, or found Open not to their taste but stuck around for Legends. The more chaotic/casual appeal of playing as a little rat, for instance, is too strong.

7PM US time, and theres 7 players in legends. Even when open mode was bad a few years ago that was basically unheard of. But okay toot your horn.

nomad.marshall · 2026-01-14T02:25:21+0000

further proof you dont even play the game. theres a full server rn and has been p much all day

2cwldys · 2026-01-14T02:25:40+0000

MaceMadunusus said:
I'm pissy because people on the dev team abandoned open for legends mode dev work years ago and lead us to this point. I kept fighting for open for a long ass time. I didn't abandon open, the people working on legends did.

I thought you were "retired" and rage-quitting, while deleting maps and code. When you decide to step out of the picture I don't see that as you being around advocating for open. In fact the only times you ever made changes to Open they weren't really popular ones. You only recently joined MBII discord & community back after the whole Supremacy debacle.

It's great when mappers stick to what they do best, mapping. Instead of over-reaching and making decisions with the rest of the game. We can obviously see what happens whenever you do that each time.

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:26:26+0000

nomad.marshall said:
further proof you dont even play the game. theres a full server rn and has been p much all day

I checked the web server list and that server was not there, and is still not there. So my bad on that one.

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:27:13+0000

2cwldys said:
I thought you were "retired" and rage-quitting, while deleting maps and code. When you decide to step out of the picture I don't see that as you being around advocating for open. In fact the only times you ever made changes to Open they weren't really popular ones. You only recently joined MBII discord & community back after the whole Supremacy debacle.

You really never know what the fuck you're talking about, so just shut your whore mouth up. I am retired you dumbass. I still have an opinion.

hera · 2026-01-14T02:28:19+0000

was goosto ever an open dev? it just sounds like goosto is doing a better job than the people responsible for open.

2cwldys · 2026-01-14T02:29:00+0000

MaceMadunusus said:
You really never know what the fuck you're talking about, so just shut your whore mouth up. I am retired you dumbass. I still have an opinion.

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:30:06+0000

hera said:
was goosto ever an open dev? it just sounds like goosto is doing a better job than the people responsible for open.

Goosto just edits a bunch of text files, which is easy when you're just doing balance tweaks. However he and legends got an absolutely fuckton of code support for the things they wanted to do. Which sacrificed things like new classes for open mode that have been mostly finished for years.

Goosto · 2026-01-14T02:31:43+0000

There is not substantial overlap between Open and Legends development. I don't work on Open at all. Probably been more Open changes the last year than years beforehand, as well. New weapons, balance, QoL etc

I have no idea where your numbers are coming from, but right now Legends has a full server and some run-off, like it does most hours. Some times it's the only mode being played.

Also I am quite grateful Legends development is easy to pick up, lets me focus on the fun stuff and the design philosophy, which is a more mystical skill.

2cwldys · 2026-01-14T02:32:18+0000

MaceMadunusus said:
Goosto just edits a bunch of text files, which is easy when you're just doing balance tweaks. However he and legends got an absolutely fuckton of code support for the things they wanted to do. Which sacrificed things like new classes for open mode that have been mostly finished for years.

Oh right I forget, "FA developers can never really become true developers" but it seems he's been putting in more work than you lately, so.

It turns out the people who can "edit a bunch of text files" can actually contribute much more in recent months, and find more productive things to do than this.

nomad.marshall · 2026-01-14T02:32:29+0000

MaceMadunusus said:
Goosto just edits a bunch of text files, which is easy when you're just doing balance tweaks. However he and legends got an absolutely fuckton of code support for the things they wanted to do. Which sacrificed things like new classes for open mode that have been mostly finished for years.

that moment when 2 years of text edits outshines 2 decades of full dev support

2cwldys · 2026-01-14T02:34:15+0000

INB4 Mace wrangles Defiant on to give me an infraction for "trolling" while Mace gets to tell you to "shut your whore mouth up"

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:35:13+0000

nomad.marshall said:
that moment when 2 years of text edits outshines 2 decades of full dev support

The moment when I was crying for dev support to un fuck so many areas of open mode code, so that it would essentially be text edits to balance. But people had to focus on other shit instead.

Remember, even doing basic ammo stuff was spread across multiple functions with certain groups of weapons having their own function just to give basic balance values. Rather than ya know, being essentially in a singular text editing spot like a sane person would put it. How much better/faster open mode balance would be if ya know it got the resources sooner! Amazing.

MaceMadunusus · 2026-01-14T02:37:07+0000

2cwldys said:
INB4 Mace wrangles Defiant on to give me an infraction for "trolling" while Mace gets to tell you to "shut your whore mouth up"

They're fully in their power to infract me for that. I don't give a shit to be cordial to your ass anymore after the shit you pulled.

Moviebattles II R21.8.00 Released

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

Ham1

Goosto

FA / Legends Contributor

nomad.marshall

2cwldys

Supremacy Maintainer

hera

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

nomad.marshall

2cwldys

Supremacy Maintainer

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

hera

2cwldys

Supremacy Maintainer

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

Goosto

FA / Legends Contributor

2cwldys

Supremacy Maintainer

nomad.marshall

2cwldys

Supremacy Maintainer

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer

MaceMadunusus

Level Designer