So, cp_snowplow.

Vel0city

func_fish
aa
Dec 6, 2014
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What's the current state of Snowplow? Is ...rc3 the final version? Is ...rc4 in the works? Is ..._final in the works? RC 3 had a lot of little things that needed to be ironed out in order to make it a great map, both gameplay and performance wise. I thought I posted some pretty valuable feedback on the current version of Snowplow which is seen here, seeing how a couple of respected and well-known TF2 mappers posted there agreeing with the a lot of stuff and/or giving a thanks to the post.


To Frozen/YM: don't let one dumb Valve employee ruin all the hopes and dreams. If anything, show them how badly we (as a community) want the map (and how badly the game needs it) and how wrong they were on cutting the map from the update with the well-known lame excuse of 'it's too complicated'. Giving up makes doesn't make Valve rethink their obvious bad choice, hell, it makes it very possible for them to make more bad choices in the future since they didn't get slapped in the face for their previous failures.


Seriously, I've never seen the TF2 community (or any other community in general) have one unanimous opinion on anything related to the game which is AWESOME. The only other occasion I can recall in the 4 years I've been playing this game was when the Stickybomb Launcher got nerfed to death in the Love & War update and that's about it. And we all knew how that decision got reverted really fast (which was one of Valve's greatest decisions of all time) and how it got a proper nerf with 2014's Smissmass update. I see no reason for the cp_snowplow story not to have a part 2 which, unlike part 1 which is out now, has a happy ending which includes this Snowlpow going official and Valve taking their idiotic statement back and admitting they were wrong on that part.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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I can't speak for YM, but I would like to update the map at some point in the future. At the moment though, I dont' really have much time to do so.

After EotL dropped, I took a break from a lot of my game dev stuff (I do more than just TF2, surprise surprise) so I can recharge and refocus (and it was the holidays!). During/after the holidays, I had to start focusing almost all of my time onto another big(ger) project that I'm a part of. This project will occupy my time for a little while. So I can't promise anything from me in the coming weeks.
 
Dec 28, 2014
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Yeah I would really love to see you guys put out a finished version of Snowplow, though if you are working on other things I can understand why it would be difficult to finish up.

Considering the map is in the RC state I doubt we'll see a lot of huge changes to it since that would require a lot of playtesting and balancing.

I do agree with you cubemap that I would like to see Snowplow go official, I think it's a better map then Cactus Canyon or Asteroid and have more fun playing on it then either of those maps. Despite the universal outcry from the TF2 community I have my doubt that the TF2 team will ever admit they were wrong though.
 

ProselyteCanti

L2: Junior Member
Mar 27, 2014
91
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Oh asteroid looks fantastic...it's just insanely complicated. But I think that has more to do with the gamemode itself and less to do with the map.
 
Dec 28, 2014
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Asteroid sucks.
It's also much more complicated than snowplow.

Yeah I don't like Asteroid very much at all. It looks really nice, but it's just another CTF variation (and I don't like CTF in TF2 at all) and the design feels way too close to 2Fort. It has gotten better (some of the early beta versions were a joke, if your map is so big that it needs a prebuilt tele to get people to the front lines you know you have a problem). Honestly if Asteroid was a custom map I would be happy with how nice it looks and then hope that I never play on it again.

Cactus Canyon is a bit better, but it still has a lot of problems. Most of the first stage feels very narrow with a lot of choke points aside from the very beginning and very end of the map. It almost feels like Gold Rush mixed with the elevation changes of Frontier, though with just a few more side routes then Gold Rush. The removed second stage was a joke, the first half of the stage was almost impossible for red to hold and blu almost always steamrolled red. The second half was just one huge choke point, starting from the capture point all the way to the end. I don't know how Valve could of improved it and I'm kinda glad it's gone.

The final stage of Cactus Canyon does some interesting things for a payload map, with the no start up time, the train that moves through the stage and changes the routes available through the map, and having to hold the cart at the final point waiting for the train. I will give Valve some points for trying some new stuff with this stage, but honestly the red and blu spawns are way too close together (I think they are closer then most KotH or Arena maps) and a lot of times the match just turns into a team death match. Honestly if it was a community map I don't think I would want to see it become official until some major changes were made to both stages.


Besides those maps (and not counting Halloween maps) the last PvP map Valve put out was Doomsday, and the less said about that the better. Needless to say I've not been impressed with Valve's PvP map output in the last few years (either quality or quantity). At least they added Standin, Process and Snakewater, all of which are excellent maps, though honestly there are a lot of PvP community maps that are a lot better then any of Valve's 3 recent PvP maps and should of been made official during the huge drought of map content we've gotten in the past 3 years.


Snowplow was a lot of fun. It wasn't perfect (but then again I don't really think any maps, community or Valve made in TF2 are 100% perfect). Even with all the fine tuning it felt like some points were usually capped really fast, while others were really hard to push, but honestly I like it a lot better then either Asteroid or Cactus Canyon. The train health/damage mechanic wasn't a huge change from the traditional A/D timer, but it was different and unique enough to help the map stand out. I played a lot of games of Snowplow with people who had never played it before and while people were a little confused at first, it seems like almost everyone picked it fairly quickly, and honestly it's normal for people to be a little confused at first when they play a new map or game mode. The map also looked great, maybe not quite as nice as Asteroid's art pass so far, but one of the better looking community maps I've seen. Even in it's currently not quite perfect state Snowplow would of made an excellent addition to the TF2 map rotation, especially considering the last A/D map we got was Mountain Lab/Mann Manor several years ago. Of the 3 beta maps last year I honestly liked Snowplow the most, so Valve cutting it from the EotL update was a pretty big disappointment for me.

Sorry about the mini rant. The super high standards Valve has for selecting community maps while having fairly low standards for their own maps kinda make me mad when I think about it.