I know they are loved by some and loathed by others. I think they keep people on their toes and make the game more dynamic. They're relatively easy to spot and present a sort of 'area denial or give away your position' situation, or if you're feeling confident you can try to jump over or duck under them. Seeing an enemy's tripmine you want to destroy it to deny them a potential kill, but you don't know if there's someone nearby with a crossbow or RL that would be alerted to your presence.

Ultimately it's down to the level though, lots of stairs, tight corners, and narrow drops can make them a pain. I've also played some maps where they served as a "hole up in the RPG/crossbow tower and pick people off while nobody can flank you without you knowing in advance" device.

Overall I like them, what are your opinions?

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o

A lot of people I know try to camp using them, but I never find their efforts too fruitful. BUT! Our local pioneer of the grav-grenade (he figured it out like three days after we started playing - before it hit the big time) also perfected these things to where he could place them so close to the floor that you had to be high on SOME kind of stimulant to actually see them.

The place where I always bought it with this technique was the top of the stairs behind the security desk on steamlabs. The stairs that used to be a ladder, that is.

Mind you, I don't consider it cheap, but good use of presented abilities. I'm all for the slammers. Now, my other friend who exploited the duck-to-move-your-hitbox-into-your-crotch thing is cheap for sure. :razz:

[edit] holy grammar

I kinda like them, as long as they're sparsely used I suppose. They do make gameplay more varied and can lead to some fun situations, but too much and just walking around becomes a pain, at which point I'd rather look for another map. But yes, it depends on the map. A map should have a few areas were slams are usefull, but there should also be places where you're relatively safe for them. Besides, I don't like too small, cramped and corridory maps anyway. Give me some free space please! :razz:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I usually place them on barrels so that you can't really see them when you're coming but if you as much as touch the barrel BOOM. :heee:
Other than that, i sometimes build "demotraps" using a wooden bench on an explosive barrel and a trip mine as a detonator. It takes patience but it's fun to see someone touching the bench and going BOOM.

I think every HL2DM map needs them. There's so few weapons in the first place that getting rid of one weapon (really two, but I doubt the satchel is used more than the tripmine) weakens the map. Especially with how little ammo you can carry.

I know in HLDM trips and satchels could be used to camp effectively, and the gauss rifle usually could counter that, but in HL2DM the prevalence of throwable props and grav guns reduces their effectiveness by an even greater amount in my estimation. Plus, as has been mentioned, the way you can booby trap or hide them using other props is very cool.

What do you guys think about hiding them in maps? Would it be effective at keeping slam-spam down? Or would it give an unfair advantage to people familiar with the map?

I mean, I'm currently placing an RPG in a dangerous spot (how creative!) but I'm also sparse with rockets: there's exactly one in the map, and quite hidden too. This basically means that players either have to take a big risk for every 3 shots, or know where the rocket is hidden and pass through that area each time they want to fire a shot...

On the other hand, a slam-only map doesn't sound too bad either... hehehe...

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

It just depends on the kind of map you want to make. Hiding things works in some designs and it doesn't work in others.

Depending on how you hide them you could basically end up making them useless or almost never used. If they are too out of the way to reach and not worth the effort to get people will mainly ignore them, like the snarks in datacore. Why would you bother with them when you would be more productive elsewhere?

If you hide them like the snarks in Rapidcore or Stalkyard or the damage multiplier/random secrets in many UT games (ie like wolf3d, no clue its there but if you go pressing 'use' on every wall you'll bump into them) then people may just never find them.

Hiding would only give people an unfair advantage if you were hiding something that if reached would give that player an unfair advantage. Like putting a gloun gun, 100 ammo, and 100 shield in one hidden spot would be unfair. If it's just small things like ammo or a slam or something its not nearly as bad.

The big issue with hiding things is that it can really slow down a map, and if it's a smaller load map it can pretty much ruin it.

Wow, even Yak likes them. I always felt like they are generally hated because of the annoyance factor.

Personally, I like them. I too think that HL2DM needs as many weapon options as possible for variation. They shouldn't be too easy to get, though.

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Why snark works.

I loved them in hl1, they were fun and you could build ladders with them.
However, I can't stand the hl2 tripmines, they have got to be the most annoying thing ever, especially because they're so easily acquired, and are often placed not far from places where people prefer to camp, so usualy, a person will entrench himself, wait for someone to run into a tripmine, run out and grab new mines, repeat, repeat.

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Boo f**king Hoo

Well, I can see your point about camping. Camping in any game is taboo, but in DM, a game dominated by the route-runners, it's a bit more of a slap in the face. I guess that's really why I like them. They open up a different style of play to compete with the classic DM, and may force a route-runner to have a couple of different choices of circuits, in case his favorite one gets mined into oblivion. That's mainly how I see tripmines used. During the few times that I ever get locked into a specific route, I find myself always laying the things down, and running into them later. It's kind of a pain. :/

Anyway, I'd see the satchel part as more of the camper's handy-man. But it also takes some skill to use because of that little blinking light.

uhh, you can build ladders with slams, and they are just as easily acquired as hl1 tripmines... they are used just like trips, behave the same, and can be used to camp just the same. Soooooo, why would you like one and hate the other? It sounds like you should take issue with weapon placement and map design, not the weapons themselves.

EDIT: and the cool thing about satchels in HL2DM is that with the grav gun you can punt them back into a camper's face if you're fast enough.

Sure they behave the same way, but somehow I remember the hl1 tripmines being much more fun, I don't recall people camping behind trimpines in hl1, perhaps I was just lucky.

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Boo f**king Hoo

If you hide them like the snarks in Rapidcore or Stalkyard or the damage multiplier/random secrets in many UT games (ie like wolf3d, no clue its there but if you go pressing 'use' on every wall you'll bump into them) then people may just never find them.

I want to throw a tangent in here... super-hidden snarks are fantastic. First off, they do need to be super hidden... obnoxious to get to is not enough. Anyways, then the challenge becomes acquiring the snarks, and then making a kill out of them, not often an easy task. Once you've done that, it's announced to the whole server that you just killed someone with snarks. Especially on a map like Rapidcore, it's really sweet. It's an extra level of humiliation to dump onto your opponents.

put my vote in the NO camp.

They are only fun when they're a challenge to install I find, as in a full Overwatch. Any other use puts them in the no-skill weapon category to me. Their sensitivity radius is waay to big; add in a laggy connection and a fast moving player, it's a recipe for frustration.

If there was away to disable the primary function and leave the secondary, that would create some fun options.

OFFTOPIC:

I look forward to any version of OP4 for HL2. I dunno if they are even considering it, but it was my most favorite HL1 mod. Snarks are cool, especially if you are on 56k and have no option to make decent headshots because of ping times but nothing beats eating someone with a grapnel. Somehow munching someone running from you is so satisfying.

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The best things in life, aren't things.