Managing Sightlines

well badlands has that flank (diagnol bridge) area with the window jumping classes can get into to flank the sniper. also they can sneak through gray bridge and flank the battlements through lobby. this is usually how 5cp balances them i suppose - with many routes and a flank for every sniper spot.

koth, theres something about heavy being powerful because the maps are small and long sightlines help balance it. in your viaduct ss, that sightline isnt too bad as theres a way to get up close without being seen via the enemy team's cliff. (basically a flank for the sightline)

in dbowl one, theres the house + rockswhich can be used for cover....and the gully in between the 2 upper routes is decent for flanking that. seems like a/d sightlines are more powerful and harder to flank for some reason.

tl;dr: put long sightlines in a few select routes and then have flanks round these sightlines, but dont focus on this. focus on the map being cool and fun mainly as good sightlines have tons of variety in how they are balanced.

I've noticed that often starting areas in tf2 maps are in theory really difficult to fight out of- look at upward's sight line, dustbowl's cramped point, the height disadvantage in Badwater. Badwater, gold rush and thundermounain all have theoretically excellent sentry positions just outside spawn. And yet, those points are still the easiest to take, because of the sheer volume of attackers coming through- with hardly any walk time from spawn, a safe place to build ubers and a health/ammo cabinet at their back, attackers have enough advantages to push through even well-entrenched positions.

Just goes to show that well-understood special cases trump received wisdom I guess.

What i also noticed that all those flanks feature either alot of cover from sniper fire, or they have some non linear path forcing the sniper to also aim vertical especialy when they get near. This makes it a little harder for a sniper to be devestating as strafing already is able to change the vertical angle they have to aim. (note that all general sniper sightline on those screens take about 1/4 of the vertical height of the screenshot itself)

Then also, these flanks are out of range for a sentry gun. So a sniper on that part is able to take his time to counter that hazard. And let that many times be the reason why it works. Sentries are often a major hazard for stalemates.

However, dustbowl stage 3 is a bad example for a sightline as that one is actualy poor for gameplay as it stales on that (although its close its less good for snipers but its a hell of a sentry nest option). Obviously it matters less on that stage as the team already showed being capable of doing some good pushes (otherwise they wouldnt win the first 2 stages).

But distance to the enemy spawn matters alot on countering as swordfish mentioned. If there are too many enemies the sniper isnt capable of taking enough out anyway.

Still, there is allways a little bit of luck needed to predict how players play a map. If a part doesnt feel natural they will behave diffirent and its hard to predict. Sometimes an obvious sniper spot isnt being used because people arent using their 'ideal' path in the first place.

UKCS-Alias said:

However, dustbowl stage 3 is a bad example for a sightline as that one is actualy poor for gameplay as it stales on that (although its close its less good for snipers but its a hell of a sentry nest option). Obviously it matters less on that stage as the team already showed being capable of doing some good pushes (otherwise they wouldnt win the first 2 stages).

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Often an uber can overcome it and often it does, but you need to make sure in testing that that is actually happening from the players. The previous two stages kinda get harder and involve more team push, and it kind of creates the mindset for stage 3.