The creation and evolution of one of Robocraft's strongest and most surviving meta bot The Sprinterplane Thanks to TheDepths for voicing the first half
This made for an interesting watch. Thank you for covering your contribution to the development of the sprinter-plane bot archtype. And thanks for sharing.
The very reason I quit the game a long time ago. Absurd balance physics and the devs' 0 interest of actually balancing the game. Look what they did to my favorite game. It started from funny cars and tanks but ended with all these horrible abominations. Yuck.
I wholeheartedly agree, thinking back to 2014/2015 when players almost always used bots that they had created themselves and how each one was specialised to the point where the announcer had lines that described them quite accurately showed how balanced the game was. Each version inevitably developed its own metas but back then it was see how much redundancy you can pack into the limited CPU coming in the form of more guns which you had to tier so that they could peak over one another rather than placing one giant gun and calling it a day. The absence of camera assist meant you had to have the mechanical skill to pilot a thruster stick instead of the game doing the hard work for you. Before the PSK and LOML there was an emphasis on aiming which naturally created skill gaps which was healthy as newer players had something to strive for. The building also had a more impactful skill gap before the CRF was added since you either created a bot from scratch or had to manually copy from a video tutorial which meant you got a better look at the internals and how it was engineered, going through the motions yourself helped players get used to certain advanced build techniques that might have otherwise gone undiscovered for some people. The movement parts felt robust and satisfying to pilot, half the fun of playing was from flying a smooth bomber or crawling up giant cliff faces which had previously been unreachable with the starter bot. The UI was clean and kept tucked to the sides of the screen as to not block vision, little things like this go a long way in making a game feel polished. Whilst the graphics may have been slightly low resolution at times it had a cool sci-fi aesthetic which is no longer the case. It still has a variety of planets but the style became diluted with bright neon colours and cartoony environments. It's a shame so much went wrong over the years and what might surprise some is that it wasn't a big screw up or series of mistakes, the plan was to abandon the current audience in hopes that an imaginary bigger group of casual players would suddenly pick up the game and stay long term. The baffling part is that they committed so hard to this vision of where they were taking this game that it went through years of update after update causing community backlash and no sign of the desired results before they took a step back and realised that they had ruined a once top ranking game on steam that used to have a dedicated fanbase before all the sweeping changes resulted in an experience too different from the original to the point where those players stopped enjoying it and had to reluctantly say goodbye to something that had once brought them entertainment and good memories. The issue then became that with fewer players the game was no longer turning a profit and so development ceased, that meant there was no time or money to undo the years of bad updates and regain the core experience that many more people enjoyed, that leaves us with what's left today only a few balance tweaks which can never fix the fundamental issues this game has. RC 2 might be a step in the right direction but it is missing the blocky aesthetic which removes a good bit of nostalgia, I'm sceptical that the devs will be able to balance a game that is much more complex than RC 1 when the history shows they did not manage that simpler game well enough to retain players.
One thing I would like to credit that was not mentioned here is that this meta in a lot of ways changed how people thought when it game to making bots. I would argue this changed the age old "build for piloting" to more of a build for shooting, and caused people to rethinking designs they would have otherwise discounted before.
I don't enjoy fighting against these bots because of how versatile they are with no real counterplay possibility besides just hitting your shots faster than the opponent. They are really impressive
From what I can figure out, helium spam might be able to soft counter this type of bot through area denial and being plain tanky, and only then, on some game modes
The sheer lack of inricacy with modern bots disgusts me. You don't even need wings on both sides to fly? You show amazing turn speed for old robocraft standards and call it "slow". Back then it was really difficult to design something that balances survivability, redundancy, and mobility. You needed to design awesome bots with proper gun clearance because having just one gun on top wasn't enough. Now you just mishmash everything and make disgusting abominations. I hate what robocraft turned into
This made for an interesting watch. Thank you for covering your contribution to the development of the sprinter-plane bot archtype. And thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
The very reason I quit the game a long time ago. Absurd balance physics and the devs' 0 interest of actually balancing the game. Look what they did to my favorite game. It started from funny cars and tanks but ended with all these horrible abominations. Yuck.
I wholeheartedly agree, thinking back to 2014/2015 when players almost always used bots that they had created themselves and how each one was specialised to the point where the announcer had lines that described them quite accurately showed how balanced the game was. Each version inevitably developed its own metas but back then it was see how much redundancy you can pack into the limited CPU coming in the form of more guns which you had to tier so that they could peak over one another rather than placing one giant gun and calling it a day. The absence of camera assist meant you had to have the mechanical skill to pilot a thruster stick instead of the game doing the hard work for you. Before the PSK and LOML there was an emphasis on aiming which naturally created skill gaps which was healthy as newer players had something to strive for. The building also had a more impactful skill gap before the CRF was added since you either created a bot from scratch or had to manually copy from a video tutorial which meant you got a better look at the internals and how it was engineered, going through the motions yourself helped players get used to certain advanced build techniques that might have otherwise gone undiscovered for some people. The movement parts felt robust and satisfying to pilot, half the fun of playing was from flying a smooth bomber or crawling up giant cliff faces which had previously been unreachable with the starter bot. The UI was clean and kept tucked to the sides of the screen as to not block vision, little things like this go a long way in making a game feel polished. Whilst the graphics may have been slightly low resolution at times it had a cool sci-fi aesthetic which is no longer the case. It still has a variety of planets but the style became diluted with bright neon colours and cartoony environments. It's a shame so much went wrong over the years and what might surprise some is that it wasn't a big screw up or series of mistakes, the plan was to abandon the current audience in hopes that an imaginary bigger group of casual players would suddenly pick up the game and stay long term. The baffling part is that they committed so hard to this vision of where they were taking this game that it went through years of update after update causing community backlash and no sign of the desired results before they took a step back and realised that they had ruined a once top ranking game on steam that used to have a dedicated fanbase before all the sweeping changes resulted in an experience too different from the original to the point where those players stopped enjoying it and had to reluctantly say goodbye to something that had once brought them entertainment and good memories. The issue then became that with fewer players the game was no longer turning a profit and so development ceased, that meant there was no time or money to undo the years of bad updates and regain the core experience that many more people enjoyed, that leaves us with what's left today only a few balance tweaks which can never fix the fundamental issues this game has. RC 2 might be a step in the right direction but it is missing the blocky aesthetic which removes a good bit of nostalgia, I'm sceptical that the devs will be able to balance a game that is much more complex than RC 1 when the history shows they did not manage that simpler game well enough to retain players.
@@staroxi_music RAIL WALKER SPOTTED
One thing I would like to credit that was not mentioned here is that this meta in a lot of ways changed how people thought when it game to making bots. I would argue this changed the age old "build for piloting" to more of a build for shooting, and caused people to rethinking designs they would have otherwise discounted before.
I don't enjoy fighting against these bots because of how versatile they are with no real counterplay possibility besides just hitting your shots faster than the opponent.
They are really impressive
t4 ion tank thread spider zzz
These made the game fun for a while again.
Yes, they were fun to play and make
@@archidamus2483 What do you mean 'were'?
epic voiceover
Indeed
I've never heard your voice before, not what I was expecting. Then again, I don't know what I was expecting.
Depths' voice
@@deegobooster gigachadspartan voice
I’m glad everyone doesn’t just use these bots all the time. It would make things a lot less interesting
From what I can figure out, helium spam might be able to soft counter this type of bot through area denial and being plain tanky, and only then, on some game modes
Thanks man!
cool video! i def learnt some stuff, thanks!
thank you for video, it was interesting.
I like it
Very interesting video
The sheer lack of inricacy with modern bots disgusts me. You don't even need wings on both sides to fly? You show amazing turn speed for old robocraft standards and call it "slow". Back then it was really difficult to design something that balances survivability, redundancy, and mobility. You needed to design awesome bots with proper gun clearance because having just one gun on top wasn't enough. Now you just mishmash everything and make disgusting abominations. I hate what robocraft turned into
Creative
Some sort of mobile suit I guess XD
Is it possible to learn this power ?
Go Arichibro