> As Leftley noted, we ran into a bit of confusion over the trench replacement. At one point Leftley became annoyed because I was able to replace a piece of his trench that was blocking mine and surrounding the exit. Although this may have been a bug, I actually thought it was the correct behavior because he had basically sealed the victory and with this replacement I was able to give myself a chance. I don't remember the situation very well and it's kind of difficult to explain, but I think a bit of playtesting may help adjust the endgame rules.
You can argue the morality of sealing off the exit and deliberately stalling (the tactic originated as a way to squeeze extra points out of the level without risking someone else getting to the exit, in addition to the fact that it's fun to try and run everyone else's snot flow dry before finishing), but the fact was that this wasn't an isolated incident. As Charsie and others can well attest, with a little experimenting I was able on several ocassions to dig directly into other people's trenches, particularly the opening stretches (for most testing purposes I replaced them immediately when I could.)
Possible balance enhancer: allow players to place crosspieces over other players' unfilled straightaways? That way, it would be significantly harder for a player to "lock" the exit up for themselves, and if they're going to go through the trouble to set up a trench barricade convoluted enough that other player's can't cut over it, they probably deserve the right to fiddle around on the level a bit longer getting points. |
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