u/Distinct-Channel-528

I don't know what I did but this god forsaken horrible map seems to be exclusively paired with me ONLY when im EXE. I'll be trying to play Tripwire as if that isnt bad enough as is only for me to ONLY get this map it got so bad that I had a note page pulled up to mark down what map I got when it was my turn to be EXE and got the caverns over twice as much as any other map with Ycr and Hill Gym in 2nd and 3rd respectively. I must've been cursed at some point cuz lord does it happen often but thats beside the point right now.

This map sucks, playing 2011 here is a pain because the maps so vertically based that your screwed if you fall off the bridge with GT on cooldown. Kolossos doesn't struggle too heavily but this map still restricts him so heavily it isnt even funny, and fleetways fleetway but I feel scummy playing him anywhere so hes never played and therefore exempt from this post.

Playing Tripwire with the intent to win here is especially hellish because you can have all your mines precariously placed down and waste an ungodly amount of time doing it only for them all to dissappear while your in a chase. The time it takes for me to get back there actually screws the rest of the match over because for some reason her double jump actually gives her no height and is therefore almost useless when rock climbing, and her glide isn't even something to be considered. The radar does NOTHING on this map but make you run in circles since you can't get to the places the survivors are at without wasting so much time unless you happen to be nearby. Hitting ANYBODY once ensures they're gone and that you'll have to spend the rest of the match trying to catch up with them and land another whopping 29 dmg from your m1. And the moment there's a cream or silver i just lose, creams unable to be chased without a teammate intervening or me just losing her immediately because the map and radar are both shit, but if I let her go then all my snowball buildup chip damage is lost at almost the exact same time my mines dissappear pretty much ensuring im gonna lose another minute setting up again while trying to chase any survivors. Silvers actual torture to even have in the server. Even a new silver knows how to fly which just so happens to be all he needs there. With even a basic level of flight meter management I can't keep up with silver since Tripwires both the slowest killer in the game passively (walkspeed) AND now has no chase tools. If I finally manage to catch up to him I end up landing my terrifying 29dmg ensuring his flight moves faster than light and is now entirely gone from chase. I've actually spent a majority of a game chasing a single silver with little to no interference from any other survivor on the team with zero results to show for it, not even a down. On every other map this isnt even close to as large of an issue its JUST this map.

Between 0.2 release killers, ALLL of the 0.2 maps, and shadow/fleetways more recent arrivals. I'm entirely convinced they don't playtest any of their updates. You would need to play only a few matches on each of the new maps to see any of the SUPER PROMINENT ISSUES. Angel Island torches ALL had collisions, Green Hill has those disgusting spring lips and horrible collision walls, Crystal Caverns just bad in every way, AND ALL OF THEM HAVE AN OVERABUNDANCE OF INVISIBLE WALLS. To top off the super obvious lack of playtesting, you would have had to play a SINGLE match with tripwire to see that her glide just doesn't work. Only 1 playtest match with Kolo to see that no endlag is a disgustingly bad decision, and 1 match with fleetway to see that his stun negation tool doesn't work to negate stuns.

But to make matters even worse, these maps WERE PLAYTESTED, people actually played these and saw how horribly janky every last part of the maps were and still said "Yeah this is perfect." When Raven made that drama initiating statement ("This maps so ass") while playtesting green hill with Bonely, she was NOT wrong (though maybe a bit rude). These maps actually just make playing either side on them a hassle. Trying to work your way around janky collisions, horrible lighting, and CONSTANT UNDEFINED INVISIBLE WALLS.

Crystal Caverns had a single spot where EXEs sadly lacking in the verticality department (2011 and Tripwire) could quickly rotate from the floor onto the bridge without having to walk the entire length of the map to hit a spring or super long pathway. Survivors could also take this path though with more difficulty than the EXEs.

AND THEY REMOVED IT.

THAT WAS ACTUALLY THE ONLY RELIABLE ROCK CLIMBING METHOD WITH 2011 AND THEY TOOK IT AWAY. It's not like it was so fast it was unfair, it was still drastically slower than fleetway or Kolossos using their passives to get onto the bridge but was still so much better than going all the way around to a spring. Everything about this map is built to make the EXE experience as hellish as possible (unless your fleetway.) It comes with all the absurd tiny items with collision to interrupt your mobility tools, lighting thats okay at best, horrible navigation to any of the higher parts of the map, and your favorite, invisible walls.

Anyway sorry and thank you to those who read through my absolutely justifiable vent post about this god forsaken map.

TL;DR for everyone who understandably didn't wanna read all that:

Crystal Caverns fucking sucks.

Yes there is a TL;DR at the end for all those who don't wanna read but it does leave out smaller important details so I suggest reading the whole thing.

As the title implies, since before 0.2 release Tripwire and Kolossos by extension we're horribly screwed over by the devs handling of prioritizing as well as basic things like playtesting. Drama will be touched upon but I'll try to avoid making this post entirely about it. I'm writing this as objectively as possible so when I include something subjective I'll type it in italics like this so its obvious and not mistaken as the objective portion.

Before I go into this I want to make this clear, THIS IS NOT MEANT TO HARBOR ANY ILL WILL TOWARDS ANYBODY WHO WAS OR WANSN'T ON THE DEV TEAM, DO NOT USE THIS POST AS AN EXCUSE TO DISRESPECT ANYONE. This is an informative post as well as a slight vent as Tripwire is undoubtedly my favorite character who's been handled like garbage since before her release.

During the relentless exe bullying sim that was 0.1, 0.2 was being worked on focusing on Blaze, Silver, and the TD roster: Kolossos and Tripwire. Tripwire is a take on tails doll made by Raven, who's well known for making Faker/Exe and Sonic Legacy 2017X (They were removed from the outcome memories roster for reasons I'll talk about later.) Kolossos was very publicly playtested while Tripwire footage stayed obscure at Ravens request leaving only a handful of gameplay clips prior to 0.1. To add to the update, fleetway was also being added (I'm pretty sure its because of a donation request but don't quote me on this) and was publicly playtested just about as much as kolossos (also he was pretty much a dev only character so they were more than happy to play him for testing.)

(This is all stuff we learned after 0.2s release but for the sake of time mapping I'll include this now.) Behind the scenes of 0.2s development, there was a cluster of incompetence, bias, hate, ego, and a SEVERE lack of communication. I won't go into every last detail about every last 0.2 related drama but the ones relating to Raven and Tripwire by extension. There was a bunch of things that I can split into 2 portions so from here ill explain the first. There was a large amount of (really stupid) drama between raven and some other devs, larger known 2 being Altaz and Bonely, though there was others that absolutely had part. Alot of the Raven related drama was her giving criticism, people refusing to accept said criticism, then bashing on Raven because she dared to criticize things that deserved it. She criticized Bonelys maps saying something like "this maps so ass" when playtesting 0.2 Green Hill with Bonely (Let's be honest the map sucks, I can only imagine how bad it was pre-release) which helped push him into supporting the hate train towards Raven that Altaz started. There was another rather small drama including the composers behind Vainglory and Bravado, the initial shadow Lms. Her criticism was put simply "The song itself is well put but it should be a song, not a callback to Maria." Her criticism was a bit harsher that how I put it but it was blunt and straightforward. The song is great and personally I believe it'd be much better if they better balanced the Maria portions of it with the music portions, some parts of the songs buildup are often cut off by Maria talking, but thats my opinion. The composers didn't even attempt to look over the criticism and instead just made fun of her saying something along the lines of "What would she know about music she doesn't even make it". Again this was used as "evidence" against her in the Altaz stuff.

The next portion was more a communication thing (cuz outcome doesnt have enough of that) or rather a lack of it. She tried to build a road map for outcome in a call with a small amount of devs, to which they all basically just stubbornly denied and shot down without any real negotiation. Due to this, Raven decided to take her characters (Faker and 2017x) and leave after 0.2s release as she didn't want them being mischaracterized. To top this off, they labeled this as "Raven trying to take over ownership of the game" which like, seriously? Outcomes only real attempt in history of actual solid communication and it was shut down hard. Following this was like immediately prior to 0.2s release we learned from a post by PR that Tripwire got not even 20 playtest sessions before the release due to a tight schedule and SEVERE lack of communication. Due to this we had what was 0.2 release Tripwire which honestly wasnt even that bad (aside from reach out forcefield). Compared to what was release Kolo and Fleetway she was far less frightening. Speaking of Kolo what couldve possibly led them to think that both of his old passives together was fine. He was playtested far more than Tripwire so I have no idea how they let him go so far past balanced like he did, not to mention his grab through revive frames. As far as I can tell nobody seemed to really want to work on anything Tripwire related as compared to kolo and fleetway. Tripwire only had 3 finished emotes (1 of which just being her sitting down) and a skin that didn't even have most of its animations finished (we saw after the game got canceled.) Otherwise there was a glorbwire skin with a different chase theme (dev only) and thats it. Kolossos had 4 emotes, and a forest skin with 3 entirely new themes. Greenlossos exists but as far as I can tell its just green survivor kolo. Fleetway has everything. 4 emotes (2 being emotes from other characters) with like 2 more that was being made. He has the Nazo, Yourself, Tricky, and Dark sonic, on the way with like 2 more dev only variants (diamond fleet and a 2nd one I'm not entirely sure of.) No matter how you look at it they were giving Tripwire the short end of the stick by a rather large margin.

When the Altaz stuff happened Bonely left the dev team and the game got shelved for it. Nearly all the blame for this was pinned on Altaz and Raven, and by extension Tripwire. Tripwire got nothing but hate for this from then on to the point where seeing a weekly supportive Tripwire post was rare, hard times to be a Tripwire fan. After about 3 weeks of straight Tripwire hating eventually the community calmed down and after time the game got picked back up.

After 0.2s release we got a series of balance fixes that gave us modern Tripwire and Kolossos (not super modern im not talking abt endlagless kolo and Slowire), as well as a post mentioning fleetways delay because he was (and still is) severely unbalanced. This announcement post said put simply "fleets delayed but kolo and Tripwire are out" which is good because I feel like EVERYONE forgot that this was the "TD update" in which the TD characters should've gotten priority instead of the exe that was completely separate. Fleetway seemed to have gotten all the attention from both the fans and the devs leaving Kolossos with just enough attention to get by and for Tripwire to be forgotten by so many. After this was a several more weeks of hate posts towards Tripwire for delaying fleetway when FLEETWAY ISNT PART OF TD.

After then is when fleet was added alongside shadow which basically made Tripwire a "pick if you want to suffer" option. Shadow existed as a terrorist to Tripwire and fleetway was just a better Tripwire. Remember when everyone was making fun of the devs for saying "Fleetways and Tripwires kits are too similar rn." They were infact similar. Anyway eventually shadow got removed and Tripwire was playable again, then she started floating away on mobile and being unable to double jump on console alongside Kolossos being unable to grab sometimes. Then they buffed kolo into the sky and nerfed Tripwire into oblivion and even now Tripwire will still get hate simply for being played. After 3 shadow updates (Tails voicelines and anti-cheat, 2nd update fixing the anti-cheat on private servers, 3rd update fixing some stuff on mobile.) Neither Tripwire nor Kolossos (and i guess fleet burst) has recieved ANY fixes.

The TL;DR for everyone:

Tripwires creator, Raven, was caught up in drama of which it really boiled down to her being a little bit too rude with her otherwise correct criticism, and instead of talking to her about it they put together a giant hate post and chased her out of outcome. This is what the Altaz situation was and somehow a HUUUUGE margin of the blame was passed onto Tripwire despite Tripwire being nothing more than a victim of it. Prior to 0.2s release Tripwire got not even 20 playtest sessions and was barely worked on possibly because of a large quantity of the devs animosity towards Raven, we've seen several times how unreasonably spiteful the devs can be (recent Romeo situation.) Tripwire was released slightly overpowered and then was nerfed to be slightly underpowered while being simultaneously hated on for being "OP" because people didnt wanna work as a team and being hated on for "delaying fleetway" despite it being the TD update (fleet shouldn't have taken priority.) Later better Tripwire (fleetway) was released and yet you'd still get endless hate for even liking Tripwire. Then the instant loss counter pick (shadow) was released and she'd STILL get unjust hate. Shadow was removed and later Tripwire broke and is now unable to glide and STILL gets hate. A couple silent updates release and Tripwire still gets no fixes. Seriously what did Tripwire do man.

Anyway if you read all of that I sincerely apologize for making you sit through that vent post/history sum up. If I was wrong about anything here please feel free to correct me and I'll correct myself where I can.