Delve

Uriak

L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
Apr 27, 2008
543
70
Hello, we runned a full map test on our 24p server.

So currently what I would say is this map features tons of work and though, but feels - both looks and plays - rather unTFsish. I'm afraid in its current state it won't find its public.

Balance : actually blue managed to take all CP on both rounds, be it by chance, ninjaing, or raw push. I seemed that the first CP of all stages were rather doomed to fall whereas the second CPs could be taken by chance. The start of the map is pleasant to all classes, but the end is more spammy and tends to push people to play splach classes.

Looks : here's the catch, the map is really detailed and you did gave the map a background, instead of designing some random location. There are a zillion details scattered everywhere and the theme is rather uncommon. At the same time, the map doesn't look really nice enough, because of the way you did your lighting. Many area are pitch black, like most of the ceiling of stage 1, and this doesn't work in tf2 graphic chart. At the same time most of your light are too bright, and this gives the whole place a "leaked map" atmosphere. My guess is you set almost all lights to full quadratic, so you should add linear and maybe constant component to them to soften things up.
Another issue is your use of colored lights. Color add much to the atmosphere but is actually to intense, espcially the yellow and green ones. You should either tone them down, or keep them to remote eye candy areas.
With a more uniform (but not totally flat) lighting, your map should be more easy to look at.

Other than that, some spots feels too cramped. Whereas most cliffs are quite bare. You could average the level of detail between these extreme. Of course the lighting changes may give a fully different sensation.
You used highly reflective metal on some important pieces. On geometry this size, it looks quite alien, try something more usual.
Finally the tree reactor itself doesn't look right : suspended trees ? The pine models aren't that good looking, espcially from this weird angles. If you want to convey the reactor feeling, use some light/particle effect with some techno structure sitting on the ceiling, leaving the sensation something is absorbed from the trees below.

Layout and direction the layout was not too convoluted but people felt lost. It may be linked to the lighting issues I just spoke off, and a more gentle lighting and more visual cues should do the work.
People conplained of CP transitions being to long. This is not payload, and actually some corridors could be shortened.
The end is too spammy, aside from the rotating accesses (see below), the paths blue players would naturally choose are those small descending corridors leading to the spawn exits. This is no good, the flow of the game would ideally always feature the objective between both team territories.

Gimmicks You added a number of unusual features to the map. I don't mind them theoritically but they don't work right in game.

Killing zones in last stage : you made them either visually attractive/not distinct enough. Players are focused on the objective, try to explore everything. Either made some of them safe or more deterring.
Moving CP on second stage : the whole zone creates some frustrating gameplay, with one team stuck above the other and the objective rather uncatchable. The way spawns exists and ramps are places, blue tend to build offensive sentries and snipe to catch red when the use their exit grates. All movement, contact classes (pyro, scout, heavy) aren't doing much good in that part. The point itself followed some strange pattern (looked like stuck on the bottom, looking off balance )

What could be done : make the contact between the teams more frontal (upstairs) and maybe use the following for the CP : let it slowly descend upon capping and ascend when returning to red state. Make the lower acces more secondary.
Either way remember the wrangler turned the sentries into machines of doom. Big vertical situations can be extremely frustrating (calling sentry/grenade spam)

Rotating accesses to reactor : well, make the roation slower, and give more accesses for blue. Currently they tend to force their way directly onto the direction of red exits. Change the red spawn exit leading directly to rotating cylinder : people don't understand what happends with a door leading to nowhere or a deadly pit.

This map is clearly some impressive works, and I hope some tuning could make it popular. In short, you should aim to both a more simple look and layout. Get rid of extreme spotlights/darkness and too convoluted areas. Keep the moving things/pits but make them easier to handle/understand.

If you wish for more input/tests you can present yourself and ask on this topic : http://forum.canardpc.com/showthread.php?t=24828
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
The rotating wall can be stopped. Even though it hurts the player, blue team would still stop the wall to not let red onto the point for an easy cap. Either red needs more access or do something else with that wall.
 

Zarokima

L69: Deviant Member
Aug 7, 2010
69
10
I really like this map. The gaming community I'm in played it (32-man) as part of our Friday night event, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Nobody complained of horrible lag or anything, so you must have done a good enough job of optimizing it (and it ran just fine for me).

The biggest problem was open-ness, but it really wasn't too big of an issue. There was also some confusion initially in the red spawn of stage 3 where the big metal cylinder with the holes spins around, so maybe that should be rotated so that the hole is presented initially.

I liked that the fourth point moved. That was an interesting mechanic, and it worked out well.

The map is beautiful, but I feel that it's too detailed. See http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=14713
 

Smeeko

L1: Registered
Jul 31, 2010
11
0
Thanks for the recent feedback (particularly Uriak for posting on the fpsbanana thread too). In case anyone else still tries this beta out I figured I'd briefly respond here.

I'm glad gameplay issues were brought up because I already knew the detailing was kind of overdone and sometimes non-cohesive (visually). The last point is supposed to be the finale of the map's humor and gimmickness too, so yes, the trees are supposed to look stupid. I wanted people to get in there and go, "oh that's just ridiculous". I didn't technically want to make a gimmick map but I just ended up having too much fun with the ideas I had. So really, if it's a decent gimmick I'm not upset.

And people seem to be responding with a lot about the 4th point, for good reason. There have been some things I sort of knew were issues but was too tired to really adjust before this release. However, I really like this idea:

let it slowly descend upon capping and ascend when returning to red state. Make the lower acces more secondary.

It would still have to continue to oscillate in some sense though, otherwise it'd always stay at the top if the defense was doing well. There are probably a lot of good ideas to adjust it though. Thanks.
 

Smeeko

L1: Registered
Jul 31, 2010
11
0
I've just updated this map (finally) so I figured I could bump my own thread once. I have made some minor changes that will hopefully ammend gameplay a bit. Thanks again for those who have taken the time to give criticism so far.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
I like what I see in the changelog! But did you fix this?

The rotating wall can be stopped. Even though it hurts the player, blue team would still stop the wall to not let red onto the point for an easy cap. Either red needs more access or do something else with that wall.

If not... well, my group still can't put it into rotation.
 

Smeeko

L1: Registered
Jul 31, 2010
11
0
I worked on this a bit, but mainly added a nobuild to prevent engineers from sticking a dispenser right on the top platform and jamming the wheel and more hurting for players. There really is no way to completely avoid this issue since you have to be able to pass through the wheel. The only option would be to make the hurt brushes instakill which I don't really want to do. It's pretty hard to stop it and not get hurt pretty fast though.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
We found that if blu stuck a scout on the point and put a heavy with a medic in the way, Red could be blocked from getting the blue scout off the point before they could (1) realize what was wrong (2) find the culprit.

Maybe use trigger_pushes as well, so they get hurt and pushed back out?