I’ve said this before and thought it worthy of its own post.
Back when Rolling Steel came out, I thought it prudent to suggest it be moved into the Special Assignment category. At the time, I was baffled because it seemed like “Operations” were just Special Assignments with a different name (Short, Cinematic, story-driving mission with something new and fresh about them).
Now I’m older, wiser even (I wish) and no longer believe that.
Now I think it’s the Orthus Offensive that should be an Operation instead!
You can keep it in Special Assignments too, but Special Assignments would now be for maps with attributes like a skip to boss feature or secret hardmode. Stuff that might cause the map to vary too much or be trivialized. In fact, Operations should start out as Special Assignments, and then be moved into the map pool after people have moved on from them.
Rolling Steel shows us that we can have short maps in the rotation. VT2 showed us we can have boss fight maps in the rotation. Just, remove the “Skip to Boss” and “Hardmode” bells and it’d be ready for both mission boards!
As a bonus, we’d now have two ‘Operations’ maps which would make getting that 50 win penance slightly less of a chore.
(Tangetially, I fear a lot of people have forgotten just how cool the map bit before reaching the boss fight actually was. Most folks skip it, but it was metal af. Having to fight off the twins multiple times, the ambush section, the lighting, the decorations! Maybe I’m just being nostalgic. I’ll have to convince Da Boyz to play it with me again)
A cart with 4 squeaky wheels still gets the job done. And let me tell you, Darktide? Very squeaky. Downright Greaseless. In their defense, it did take them like, 2 years or so to get all the wheels on after they sold us the cart so comparatively they’re doing a lot better.
Got da boyz together and did an orthos run. And I went in thinking I’d burst my nostalgia bubble but would ya believe it, the map looked better than I remembered it:
Man, why couldn’t we get a “festivized” map every year? Just an old map given new decor, a new coat of paint and some odd adjustments to freshen it up. Did people make the mistake of complaining or something?
I will say, I’m even more convinced that this map would be fun on an Auric Hi-Shock. Releasing Orthus as its own Operation would be a good “Supply Drop” update, or a relatively easy way to sweeten any other update.
I didn’t even know the Heretics celebrated holidays.
But if you’re referring to the devs, they could always create these maps well ahead of time and schedule them to come out before the holiday in question. Unless this is a joke I’m missing out on :c
Creating a variant of an old map with new lighting and cover placement can’t be as intensive as creating a new map. I’ve made a few for sourcemods myself (Fistful of Frags, No More Room in Hell). They’re not completely comparable, but I’m extrapolating here.
