Halving the Pool. . . Again
What if I told you that the total number of rounds in Squads Show was about to be cut in half? A ridiculous idea to you, I'm sure. With the string of recent bug-related round removals over the last two weeks, Mediatonic have already dropped the Squads roundpool to a depressingly small number. There are just 22 rounds left in Squads (only 20 if we don't count the final versions Fall Ball and Basketfall as seperate rounds), which is actually LESS rounds than when the game first launched in August 2020!
However it would seem even this isn't as bad as it gets. The upcoming Power of BeanSkull event, a crossover between Fall Guys and He-Man: Masters of the Universe, is set to drop the total roundpool for Squads the lowest it has EVER been. The Power of BeanSkull show, containing just 13 total maps, is planned to replace Squads Show from November 3rd to the 8th. That is five whole days of Squads Show being replaced by this mess. I know it was lacking in variety, but it was still preferable to this!
Chip Damaged to Death
So what exactly happened here? Well I can tell you that MT did not plan for this show to be so small. When I first got my hands on it back in September, after the huge Dev Branch leak shortly before S8's launch, the show was a fairly respectable 26 rounds. However, over the past 6 weeks every round removal has hit this show hard. Originally set to feature 26 rounds and 4 finals, a signifcant portion of the roundpool has been affected by MT's failure to fix issues on time. Let's look at the list!
Airtime - Would have been the first time we'd seen Airtime with collectables to hunt for, but alas, it was pulled from all shows back just after S8's launch due to points not being given to certain players
Big Fans, Tundra Run, Team Tail Tag - Pulled from all shows for uknown reasons, according to MT there were issues found during their testing
Party Promenade, Skyline Stumble, Space Race, Cosmic Highway - All lost to performance issues last week
Wall Guys - Not sure why this one was pulled, but it's gone
Fall Ball/Jinxed (final and non-final) - Again, not sure what happened to cause these to be removed but, it's part of why there's so few finals
It's possible some of these removals were due to MT not getting the collectable objects to spawn properly, but we'll never really know what happened. As it stands, the show has been ruined over time and what's left is just a boring mess.
Fall(back) Mountain
The rounds in this new, stripped down version of the show should come as no real shock to anyone playing for the last month or so. As part of MT's seemingly unending desire to make us all sick of the new variants they no doubt worked hard on, the roundpool is taken straight from the one we currently have, featuring only the new S8 variants of all the maps.
Currently the show features 7 Races, 3 Survivals, 2 Finals and 1 Team game. For the full list of maps, check out my document here! Unfortunately, due to the player counts these each have, the show is likely going to be very repetitive, as the total number of rounds able to be chosen peaks about halfway through it. With just two finals, even if you DO manage to get down to the required 2 teams, there won't be much to write home about here.
However, you're not even likely to see a normal sized Final, as it happens! MT has made another one of their classic mistakes, and left a gap of player numbers where no rounds in the show can be chosen. If you have anywhere from 9 to 11 beans at any time, the game will be forced to pull the Fallback round, as the smallest player count any round here can have is 12. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if the Fallback round was not Fall Mountain, a map which only holds 9 players at the most. I hope you're ready for spawning inside the other team every time you drop below 12 players!
Wasted Wormholes
The strangest change to me, and in my personal opinion, the biggest loss, is the removal of the wormholes that were planned to be inluded here. As recent as this past Monday, the variation overrides for the Power of BeanSkull rounds were set to include the Warped versions of each map (that had one) from the previous Wormhole Wanderers event. I'm unsure why this was changed, perhaps due to backlash from the community about that event? While I agree with everyone that the event itself was a mess, especially the challenges, I actually quite enjoyed most of the Warped rounds, and I think combining the idea of using portals to get around and collecting items would have allowed for some creative ideas. Imagine using a normally not-worth-taking portal to get to some hidden or hard-to-reach collectables. I think it would have been fun!
In the end, though, we're left with a gutted bore of a show that's just more of the same rounds we've had non-stop since S8 began. Sure, Stompin' Ground, Fruit Chute, and Jump Club have actually been missing from Squads and Duos since S8 launched (for unknown reasons), and having them back is SLIGHTLY different variety, but there's so few maps that not only will they be spammed to death in the show, but they weren't exactly beloved maps to begin with. Maybe this will get changed, but seeing how soon the event is (just next Thursday, at time of writing) and the fact there's a Newsfeed about it scheduled for this Monday, I doubt MT has any time to fix this mess. I guess it'll just be yet another stupid, frustrating event to add to this season's pile. It could have been fun. . .