108
fairy godmilf
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: oakland, california
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 Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 11:34 pm |
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as i just typed in bleak's superior VIDEOBALL thread in the axe, vito's tips are a bit outdated! well, the one about "chase down the ball", anyway. now that VIDEOBALL has something like twenty different arenas of different shapes and sizes, there is great benefit to shooting from a distance, and playing a zone.
also, re: being aware of your teammate, i would one-up that to "think as much about your teammate as you do about your opponents".
vito only played two-on-two, though now we have three-on-three, so "positions" have developed their way into the strategy of players now. we have two-on-two games where players choose positions on the fly.
you need to not just think about where your teammate(s) is (are) -- you need to think about where they will be if X happens, and where they will be if Y happens, and what they'll likely want to do if X or Y happens. you need to communicate verbally, and with speed and efficiency.
i'm in the middle of recording some hot VIDEOBALL matches in hopes of excerpting some examples of higher-level play -- hopefully i'll also make a trailer! man. VIDEOBALL is so cool. if anyone has any hardcore and/or mainstream VIDEOBALL questions, please ask me. :3
| swampfriend wrote: |
| oh man i am pretty good at VIDEOBALL. at PAX brandon sheffield said i was the best VIDEOBALL player in the world B) |
i said that before brandon did you jerk :-/
| swampfriend wrote: |
| what is secretly much, much more important than everyone seems to realize is #6, be aware of your teammates. even tim, who is very good, will constantly fly right up in between you and a ball when you're about to release a shot and just eat it |
i wouldn't say "constantly" you jerk
also when we played on a team together we had a problem of trying to do the same thing at the same time; that was only in the beginning, though!
| swampfriend wrote: |
| sounds like you and me need to team up and become unstoppable |
no, you need to join me and mccune's three-player team, The Action Button Oaklanders. me and mccune are a super-good team; i bet we could develop an incredible three-player strategy on some of these new arenas.
| swampfriend wrote: |
| the blocks become more prominent and more effective in big board 3v3 mode where you will often have one guy exclusively hanging back on defense. as well, even in 2v2 if you keep a block or two on the center of your own zone it's a decent defense against slam dunks (LV3 slamming the ball from its spawn position into the goal) |
it's super worth noting that the versions kerwin and vito have played are all "three balls, three minutes, small field, big goals", though currently VIDEOBALL contains multiple arenas (some with tiny fields, some with huge fields, and some with tiny goals / corner goals / horizontal goals) and a pre-game options menu. the options menu allows the players to really sandbox the heck out of their gametime fun. you can choose between one and five balls, and you can set a time limit between 60 seconds and one hour. alternately, you can set a score limit (play to ten points). i plan to leave this depth of options in the game so that tournaments will be more exciting: it's up to the organizer to announce the rules for the final round immediately prior to the final round.
the number of balls on the field, the arena chosen, the synaptic connection between the teammates, and the time or score limit each, individually, have an enormous psychological effect on the type of VIDEOBALL that gets played. you need to eat a balanced diet of VIDEOBALL to become a true VIDEObuilder. it's way huger than even i anticipated. kerwin, you need to move to oakland so we can beef up every day. there's about to be a war on.
so what i am trying to get at is: people sure don't "understand" using blocks, as vito evidences in his opening post here. once you start playing on bigger / smaller / weirder fields, the usage of blocks becomes huge. we have one-ball ten-point matches that go twenty or thirty minutes, and the walls are enormously helpful. a lot of the arenas have bottlenecks or vertical walls that introduce buckets of chaos to the game when you are too free with your slam shots, so maybe two times out of five you'll end up charging a slam, only to see the ball more an inch or your opponent move two inches, at which point you realize a slam right now would kill the next two minutes of the game for your team, so you Wall It, and make a block, at which point you realize the angle of the block can impact the next thirty seconds of the game, and then . . . etc etc etc. blocks are cool. here is an example of heated play (two veterans, two newcomers) in which blocks (both intentional and accidental, both for explicit defensive purposes AND for cautionary slam-exemption purposes) change the dynamic of the game pretty majorly.
http://www.twitch.tv/actionbutton/c/3391298
i'll admit that the tactic's usefulness is still a bit fuzzy, though i stand by the block being a fantastic thing, and often it is (albeit subtly) a victory sealer. to "complete" the block mechanic, all we need is for, uh, more players to play the new levels and learn when to embrace the use of it.
so, anyway: after playing the new levels for a couple hours, even hardcore block-hater zak "delicious" mccune started using them . . . even in the simple stage.
The Game Is Changing!
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