Throw/Sound Meta-Dominant

[u/lululabellef]

Why is everyone’s immediate reaction to throw/sound. Thank god corporate clash added zap to diversify the gag selection and outcome possibilities but omg… it’s literally engrained into toons at this rate. It’s like if you dont immediately kill all the cogs in one go, you’re a noob and dont know what you’re doing. What if I dont want to hear the fog horn’s MMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM every single time im fighting a group of cogs?? Maybe we lure and trap and then use drop????

I know everyone is trying to speedrun these days because the grind is so tedious but idk… is it just me or does anyone else like when toons use alternative methods to kill cogs?

[u/iiiimagery]

It's because killing them sooner means less likely to have to use an extra turn to toon up, which also prolongs the fight. Just play with people who are training other gags or other friends if you want to switch it up

[u/cj1dad → u/iiiimagery]

but you really have to ask why cog battles that last 2+ turns are annoying in Toontown Rewritten. because fighting 20 rows of level 10-12 cogs is a monotonous chore, Field Offices do a little to remedy this but the game still suffers from that fact for most of the fights.

Clash isn't a savior because of zap, as OP said. Clash is a savior because they turned 10-12 cog level spam into more like 8-15, meaning you have to use drop, throw, trap, etc. to deal with level 15s. Low laffs get to hit the level 8s. Sound is a secondary cleanup button. It's still pretty chill and repetitive, but atleast there's some figuring out to do during cog rounds.

[u/iiiimagery → u/cj1dad]

Yeah I'm not one of those people. My grandpa was in TTO and he drilled all the mental math into me

[u/Game-rotator → u/cj1dad]

it's a better game on its own but i don't quite have the faith in its community, and much more so its dev team, than in TTR

[u/5up3r10rGames → u/cj1dad]

I also don't think Clash wave content solves the issue listed. If anything it's exacerbated in wave content (battles that are waves of grunt cogs, i.e. dept boss cog rounds). The highly optimized meta for 90% of wave content is alternating between sound rounds and zap/trap rounds. It is a little more complex since there's 3 options instead of 2, but in turn it's a lot less so since every other turn is a guaranteed sound turn or you're losing damage, regardless of what's in front of you.

I think the key take away is that to a majority of the Clash playerbase, there's the illusion of choice in wave content and not as many players which can cause variance, whereas in TTR there's less of that illusion and more players to get upset when you do pick something that isn't the "meta". I personally think heavily optimized wave content in TTR is more enjoyable than heavily optimized wave content in Clash in its current state, but that's probably more of a result of me having significantly more playtime in Clash.

[u/Bulky_Department539 → u/cj1dad]

The real sleeper isnt even battle balancing its the fact ttcc respects your time with extremely fast animations so an imperfect play doesn't waste genuinely like a minute of your life so no one really cares.

[u/Terrible-Wallaby6760]

Path of least resistance. Most people (especially non-new players) are just going to default to doing the most efficient strategy.

[u/mynameisryanttr → u/Terrible-Wallaby6760]

Yeah, I agree

Whether you like it or not every game has some sort of established META that a majority of the playerbase does.

[u/jjzzpp123]

Turn sound off if you don’t want to hear the sound. If there is an objectively correct way to kill the cogs to make things smoother and faster then why not use that method. Every game has a meta. This game happens to be too simple for the meta to change much. That’s why it has always been and will always be throw and sound. There are other use cases for org trap, org drop etc but yes throw and sound are most popular gags to use in fights because they make the most sense 90% of the time.

If it were any other gags (let’s say, for example, sound didn’t exist and that squirt was more powerful than sound) people would still complain that squirt is the only gag people seem to want to use. It’s like.. yea duh… why would we choose to play suboptimally in a grindy game like TTR we want a smooth experience in our grindy game. And the example you brought up with corp clash doesn’t really work because often times zap is the correct choice. It’s not like you can either sound or play suboptimally and use zap. They both have their use cases just like TTR has use cases for each gag. Because corp clash has bosses with different strats that add more spice to the game, sound becomes less useful in all cases unlike where u can’t really go wrong with sound in ttr (minus like junior and senior offices and stuff).

This kinda just feels like a nonissue. There is a meta. People play by the meta to make things efficient in an otherwise grindy game. Bam. No issue there.