Team Spar Arena
 

A new arena for team sparring has been added within Supernicks.

• Two teams must pick a side.
• While the spar is stopped, healing is automatic upon entering the arena.
• The first 2 players to enter are set as the challengers, who are unset by leaving or dying.
• The first 2 challengers must say Start to begin the spar. Each sparrer (or the one remaining sparrer) must say Stop to end the spar.
• Once started, any 3rd player that enters the arena containing 2 challengers shall be warped back to the relevant area, or shall otherwise be set as a challenger.
• Display Options and Focus from normal sparring are retained.
• Ratings + Win/Loss/Tie statistics are disabled within team spars.

Attachment 54580

Why? Planning on it being a separate statistic?

Also, if it's a tag team spar, you should have wider spaces for the players to move in and out of their zone to tag their partner than what you have available with the staircases.

No, it's in the interest of fairness. What is supposed to be a 1 vs 1 rating can become distorted in this environment. A statistic for team wins would require a more complex, automated and secure system.

That's why there are 2 staircases on each side. If there was just one larger staircase this would increase the chance of recoiling out of the arena, which could be an annoyance.

I guess the rating is understandable.

The 2 staircases doesn't help. If someone is running to tag their partner, they can still be hit while on the staircase, and someone will ***** about it. If you're hit into your zone, you can use blink to run back out and not worry about being hit - except on these staircases where the opponent can literally block someone from coming out from such a narrow space. Looks like they'd have time to run to the other staircase and block them again once they get them once as well, assuming both partner's can't enter the spar area at the same time.

When within a spar arena level, but not within the actual arena area, damage and player blocking are disabled.

So a player running into the arena won't be blocked by someone standing right at the entrance? What's to stop them from hitting the player immediately after the script has worn off since they'll always be in either of those two spots?

From experience, having narrow spaces (even 2 narrow spaces) like that for tagging has always been an issue somehow. Having to specifically be in that space to do something as important as tagging your partner will always result in it being abused somehow. Allowing players to run in from wider spaces allows them to run away or punish the opponent for being that close.

Ofcourse it's not perfect but if you're going to go into hypotheticals, then ultimately the level is for fun with no statistics at stake, so no real harm can be caused.
Such an act would be prevented within the GC version that has the tag titles at stake.

Hypothetically it won't be fun if you can just abuse the entrances.

Take it from someone who has been sparring for years and years -- the level design is nice, and the scripts sound cool aside from having no rating on the line. But those entrances need to be wider.

With an entrance of 2 tiles in height, in order to recoil up the stairs the player's y would have to be aligned exactly, and their recoil would have to be the exact straight line angle, which isn't going to happen very often. With a larger set of stairs there would be a larger range of y positions and recoil angles which cause the player to recoil out.
Recoiling up the stairs could disrupt a players blink manoeuvre and even temporarily free up the arena for someone else to enter, not re-entering straight away would also create a situation which invites the opponent to abuse the entrance.

But getting hit into the tag zone has never really been an issue - it's always been about entering and leaving the arena into the tag zone.

Nothing you can do about having people sit in their zones in a tag-team environment, unless you have a "tag" button, but that usually means warping their partner into the arena which has multiple problems of its own. If your partner has to be at one staircase while you go through the other one, then the narrow-spacing becomes a real problem of people just waiting by the entrance to hit the emerging player as soon as they enter.

Also by default, you cannot disrupt blink unless you release the first hit directional button after being damaged or swing your sword; which is why being hit into a wider area of the tag-zone has never been an issue since you can just hold left or right and then blink-move diagonally away from your opponent. So unless you've messed around with blink mechanics, wise sparrers will never be at a disadvantage from being hit into their tag zones once in awhile.

(Are there really any sparrers who don't know what blink is by now?)

This isn't the case though, first because player blocking is disabled to those within a spar level but not within the arena, second because in any level players surrounded by wall tiles on 2 sides will not block other players (benefit of scripted systems over default).

Yes definitely, I'm constantly having to explain how it works to both new players from iPhone, and older Classic players from back when the pre-wipe systems had an incorrect form of blink in relation to default. This is even so with much of the lesser experienced sparrers who regularly play UN.

That's cool about the scripted system. I still think you'd be making a mistake by using narrow spaces like that. From past experience it's never worked out right. But I guess I haven't tried your systems out myself.

iPhone players I can understand not knowing blink. Some of them think Graal is something completely new. Older players I could imagine not knowing. Sparrers from UN though? What the ****.

And I miss the days of "incorrect" blink. You could spar so offensively since you could just combo the **** out of someone by moving to where their player would be hit to and hitting them again. So much fun.