Catering to the 32man-instant respawn crowd?

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DrHaphazard

L5: Dapper Member
Jan 6, 2008
249
12
Hi guys, long time no post. I see that the letter to valve went through and yall got a reply. That's great! Anyways theres something thats been gnawing at me for a while, and I was wondering what yall think.

It seems that vanilla servers (servers with no modifications) are a rare commodity these days. Instant respawn seems to be a desired playstyle for a large portion of the TF2 community. 32man-instant respawn-2fort servers are especially popular.

Now I'd rather not hear what yall think about this, I personally dislike it, but what I am wondering is whether there is any way we could use this to our advantage. Essentially is there any way to make a GOOD 32man, instant respawn map that the community will appreciate? If so what would be the qualities of such a map?

While valve may continue to try and make maps for the 24 man vanilla servers, the tf2 mapping community might want to explore the player base's preferred play style a bit.

I would be interested to know if anyone is working on maps for that crowd, or if theres any maps out there that ya'll think have been designed with that in mind? I shy away from that kind of play style, so I am not sure what people find compelling about it. If anyone here does enjoy that style, I'd be interested to hear what the motivation is.

My guess is thusly:

1) Don't have to run far
2) Lots of frags
3) No wait to get back to the action
4) More interested in killing rather than objectives

Again I'd rather not hear how such players are generally the lowest of the low (although I lean towards that interpretation.)

Clearly the map does not need to be large, 2fort is anything but. Also if #4 is correct, one does not necessarily have to focus on objectives. Or to put it a different way, could one make it so that the objective is mainly to kill?

I recall a discussion about this way back when, talkin about how you could count how many people have died on each team. Sadly I can't remember the details about how it would be accomplished, but essentially you would have a trigger throughout the map that would go off every time a person from a particular team died. I have not seen a map like that yet, so perhaps it was not possible after all.

My idea for such a map would be 3 spawn rooms per team, the first being relatively close to eachother. Once 50 people have died for that team then the fowardmost spawn room is closed off. This could be used in conjunction with a CTF or CP map, since the closing of the enemy's spawn room would help the other team advance.

The downfall of the CTF system, as I see it in 2fort, is that your team spawns (instantly on the target servers) between the enemy flag carrier and his way out, making it extremely difficult to pull off (assuming the defenders are bothering to defend the flag.) Perhaps if the spawn rooms were located "behind" the flag room, so that defenders would have to chase after flag runners, instead of blocking their escape from the spawn.

Well this has been a longer post than I intended. Perhaps I will shorten later, but if anyone reads it all let me know what yall think.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
Well, instant respawn is popular as in some maps you are forced waiting 20 seconds for a respawn. especialy for rushing classes like the scout and pyro this is a real pain. People still prefer a objective above some simple killing even if the objective is quite hard to manage. this is why linear maps no matter how they are, usualy fail (as the objective is rarely reached).

The perfect balancing example in the case of instant respawn can be shown in goldrush and badwater. in goldrush the map is heavily unbalanced simply because too many red players are alive arround the cart. in badwater this is compensated by the lenght that the spawn is away from the cart. I like both maps even though i prefer to have instant respawn off in goldrush simply to be able to play in later stages more often.

Still, you arent able to check how many players in a team died. So that cant be used.

And another hint: NEVER compare your map to 2fort, its only popular by the people that played TFC and a giant stalemate map. 2fort is by far the worst map from valve simply because its allmost impossible to cap in a 16 vs 16 simply because you have to clear out 5 areas in a single attack. and its easy to defend most areas again before the next attack. Better take a look at turbine about how to make a ctf map. There people can take the flag without having to take alot of areas that are taken back after 10 seconds. (3 areas have to be taken and once taken the enemy has a hard time getting them back as they can only attack from the front or by passing the center - which is a major battlezone). In a ctf map you want it to be possible to have quick captures as then even a weaker team is able to capture. this can lead to counter offenses more often.
 

Galago

L2: Junior Member
Sep 29, 2008
90
5
Well, for the 32-man type you need open areas; lots of breathing room. On the topic of 2fort (off track, I know), this was the first map I was introduced to. My friends play on 2fort all the time, but I decided to check out some different maps, and I'd have to say turbine is MUCH better. It caters to all the classes (vent... SPAH :D)
 

slix00

L1: Registered
Apr 15, 2008
21
1
If you could put a brush entity around the entire map that outputted every time someone left the brush entity (therefore, they died) and somehow use a filter with that, then it's definitely possible, though I am not sure if such an entity exists. I've only seen a trigger, but that doesn't do it every time someone leaves the trigger. Also, spawn rooms may act weirdly, depending on if changing classes makes you "leave" the trigger.

If there was such an entity, you could certainly count deaths and award the other team. You could either do a point based system, first one that has x # of kills more than the other team wins. Or a "rush" based system where you earn more points per second the more kills you have over the other team, so that if you suddenly kill 6 people in an uber rush, your points start gaining rapidly, and the team is rushed to kill the other team to stop them from winning.

Either way, to display the points you might be able to use the CP interface. Add 8 control points somewhere invisible, and lay them out in the master in a line. Use them like a progress bar. Let's say the team needs 100 kills (bit of an overstretch, but still). RRRRBBBB If red gets 6.25 (round it) kills more than blue, then RRRRNBBBB If they get another 6.25 kills, then RRRRRBBB. It would add to the effect if you changed the neutral picture to be red on one side, blue on the other, and changed all the control point pictures to not have sides, only straight lines on the top and bottom. That would add to the feeling that it's a progress bar and add a visual to your gamemode.

Though, I've seen with badwater that many of the fights are small skirmishes, 1 or 2 players per team. That's why I play it, cause the fights are more personal than about uberrushes.
 

l3eeron

L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
Jan 4, 2008
593
88
I have an over-sized, open-ish map in the works, I'm wondering if it might work well with 32 man servers....


I've never played on a 32 man server (or a server with instant respawn) so I can't offer much. But, I will pitch in my .02 and say that, that's just the mentality of the gamers now days. They need instant gratification (or destruction) I guess.
 

Zeewier

L9: Fashionable Member
Sep 20, 2008
619
262
@slix
there's no need to make the kill counter that way ;) you can just make 2 counters that go to 100 or any other number you want :).

The real problem is how to assign kills ;) Triggers (when you die you leave the uber sized trigger, add a onendtouch +1 to counter) can be (and will be) exploited. (yes, I've done some research on counting kills)

It's possible to make a working script for Deathmatch, but that is a server side plugin...

But if anyone else is interested to make a working game mode like that, you can count me in ^^. (on finding a good working way within hammer or making a script and mapping a worthy map)
 

slix00

L1: Registered
Apr 15, 2008
21
1
@slix
there's no need to make the kill counter that way ;) you can just make 2 counters that go to 100 or any other number you want :).

Yes, but that's not visible everywhere and it doesn't use any TF2 UI.