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Originally Posted by
Zwiffle
I played this a while ago but forgot to post comments. I can't say I hated it, but I'm not sure I was a fan of it. First off, I'm not a huge ctf fan, but this sort of thing is interesting.
At first, nothing much was going on because both teams just camped the flag until they figured out wth was going on. Later on, it became much more oriented on offensive-based teamwork, and each team basically left an engi and heavy/medic guarding the flag, and the gameplay picked up quite a bit.
Yes, the initial reaction is always "Hey, what's going on? Where does the intel go? I'm gonna follow it and see what it does!"
Any ctf map should focus on offensive teamwork really imo, so that's all good.
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Now this might have been around the time that rocket jumping was screwed up, so this might not actually be the case, but the catwalk entrance was too high to consistently rocket jump too. It seemed I could barely make it. If this isn't a problem since they fixed the rocket jump bug, then never mind. Even so, the catwalk feels way too thin imo, and could do with being widened a bit.
I can rocketjump up there fairly easy, just watch your head to not hit the catwalk on the way up, and use the crouch rocket jump. Perhaps it was just the bug.
The catwalk is thin because you should be vulnerable up there, it's a design I chose to give defence a way to counter the height differance in that area.
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I'm not a fan in general of the entrances, I think mainly because of the height difference to the defending team, it feels too strong. It could just be because both entrances connect at the same junction, and they're both high-ground? I think separating the two entrances so you don't connect to the same area might work, but this isn't really a big deal - I didn't feel it was game breaking, just kind of awkward.
Height variation makes for a more fun and exciting game, in general (compared to completely flat maps...). The base layout favors offense somewhat because I wanted a ctf map that was very hard to defend (mind that it's still entirely possible to set up a solid defence with the right classes and map understanding).
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Speaking of awkward, the middle. I'm not really sure what to make of it. It doesn't feel natural to me. All the cliffs and wall-cover made it feel too cramped for me. I would like to see it more flattened out, removing the shingle-wall-cover things, and making it more of a mesa. This may be tricky to explain, but maybe cover up the lower middle route some more by bringing the high-ground closer together, so that players on top can still see down to the lower route and can fire into it, but can't directly access it except at the sides? Not sure what to do with the middle. Again, it's not game breaking, it just feels kind of weird to me.
The middle is completely new for b1 version, which means that part is practically a1 standard
I also feel that the middle is a little cramped and thought of making the lower route a little less accessible from above.
Remaking that part was a pain though, I'm amazed it even fits together as it is now. I have very limited space to work in and the base entrances (3 of em) are all on different heights. And keeping in mind it should be possible to traverse to the other side in other ways than over a single choke is also important...
What's in the map now was 1 of the better layouts I tried (I spend 2 days blocking out only that section, probably went trough 9 or so iterations with tweaking to each of them... it was incredibly boring and difficult
Even with your suggestions I'm unsure what you mean exactly, or how to improve it myself.
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I do find that soldier/demo are best for capping, as they are (I think) the only two classes that can jump down from that catwalk entrance, nab the intel, then rocket/sticky jump back up and run away without having to fight through the rest of the base to escape. I'm unsure if the scout with a FaN can do that. Maybe this is intentional, I don't really see it as a flaw in the design myself, but just realize soldiers/demos have a fairly large advantage on this map.
I also felt that Engineer had a disadvantage, but that could just be because the engi(s) we played against let their buildings die pretty easily.
The thing is that the intel is only in that area (center of the base) for 30 seconds or so every 4 minutes. if a team is constantly being capped by that tactic they could relocate some offensive players on defense for that brief period. A lvl 1 sentry, a few stickies or even a pyro airblast could all ruin such an attack by themselves.
Engineers complaining that they can't camp the intelligence should start working their brains to be useful in other ways.
One very effective tactic is to use sentries to completely block off a entry/exit, or just put a sentry in the middle of a room to deny scouts and spies to just run around and do as they please.
It's always nice to hear what people think, If more people posted impressions as these, the difficulty of map development would probably halve
Thanks!
System
