Elevators and TF2

To be fair, the elevator on doomsday is annoying as hell to be on due to the shuddering and collision problems. So I'm not sure the fact that they used one in doomsday means it's a good idea.

Hightower's elevators seem to behave alright, as far as I can tell. Never had any problems on them myself.

There's also the thundermountain elevator for the track on stage 1.

I guess overall the lesson is that they're fine to use as long as it's sparingly.

You'll notice those elevators are climactic points in the map, not ways to move around or anything. In fact, they are all but impossible to use to traverse between height levels and exist almost as battle arenas unto themselves. I think they work because they're unique, open elevators with no other purpose.

They are very deterministic, and players can only control them on a primitive level. By contrast the elevators in Mach and Garbage Day are enclosed spaces that single out players and pop them into new areas without any warning to others. How important that is is debatable, but remember that TF2 is a game that takes footstep sounds into accounting for balance. Modern TF2 may be removed from the original design goals, but keeping them in mind isn't going to hurt.

Also I hate elevators.

Elevators are slow and don't deal with conflicting player interests well. They act as choke points and are generally difficult to reach from the ground level when they are in the air. They also give classes with aerial mobility an advantage. Elevators also tend to produce sound when they operator, something that is important to gameplay balance.

To sum it up, an elevator is usually something to fight over, since it is useless for most other purposes.

Yeah, had my experience with elevators in tf2 and i must admit they are better left out. Unless you have a really, really great idea how to put them in just let it be. Same with ladders.... they belong to tfc - just like nadespamming.

Hightower elevator works well because of the enclosed space. You have two tall platforms, a lot of entrances, but most are from long range shooting, and a spire. With so many entrances, and a lot of places to shoot, the cart starts to do what MangyCarface tried to get on Frontier - use the cart as cover.

I have tried a number of different style of elevators and most of the time players fall through them

Try trigger_push.

Bungie talks about elevators and teleporters in game design several years back, and they decided they were terrible design features in multiplayer maps. That's why we ended up with man cannons. There's an element of risk to using them, they function predictably, and they don't disorient the user because they can see where they're going.

Would have to come up with some type of prop for justifying them in TF2 though.. like an enormous fan or something.

xzzy said:

Would have to come up with some type of prop for justifying them in TF2 though.. like an enormous fan or something.

Click to expand...

A cannon? Would fit tf2 perfectly