Furnace Creek (cp_furnace)

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
Sentries are bad.

Sentries block of points and areas, and you need to counter it to proceed with the game.

Normal Counter to sentries is an uber

Uber's take 60 seconds to fill up.

A pyro or a scout can completely neutralize an uber with air-blast and sandman.

Games take even longer and are even more of a stalemate, which is bad.

So Sentries are bad.

See where I'm going?
 

lerlerson

L2: Junior Member
Nov 27, 2007
75
7
Sentries are bad.

Sentries block of points and areas, and you need to counter it to proceed with the game.

Normal Counter to sentries is an uber

Uber's take 60 seconds to fill up.

A pyro or a scout can completely neutralize an uber with air-blast and sandman.

Games take even longer and are even more of a stalemate, which is bad.

So Sentries are bad.

See where I'm going?
So like...

Just out of curiosity...

How do Spies factor into all of this?
 

TMP

Abuser of Site Rules
aa
Aug 11, 2008
947
560
Sentries are bad.

Sentries block of points and areas, and you need to counter it to proceed with the game.

Normal Counter to sentries is an uber

Uber's take 60 seconds to fill up.

A pyro or a scout can completely neutralize an uber with air-blast and sandman.

Games take even longer and are even more of a stalemate, which is bad.

So Sentries are bad.

See where I'm going?

So pretty much Valve sucks for putting in the engi class and everyone should just be a compplayer and only play soldier, demo, medic, and sniper.


Uh huh, not a smart idea.

(Ok, that's over the top of the idea)

But the thing is, engis are part of the game. Without them, there would be no foundation of defense that actually took part to kill. Sentries take a good bit to kill, but are not indestructable (Indeed, far from it! That is why they aren't used competitively!) and give the attackers a targeted obstacle to their objective. Without it, what is the objective? To kill everyone around the point? Why not play arena for that? As I say, with a sentry, the main objective when you cap is to take out the sentry(ies), then kill the people on the point and cap. Without it, you don't have a structured attack, and teamwork isn't enforced by the masses. It's a team game, and the sentry helps explain and contribute to that.

See where I'm going? Sentries are good because to win, you have to devote teamwork to destroying them and everyone else instead of individual skill.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
but, sentries aren't hard to kill. They are not an objective. 1 sentry is the work of 1 demoman. 2 sentries, a demo medic combo. 3 sentries, f***ing 2fort turtle spam fest.

Essential you only want your map to support one sentry tops, and they shouldn't be a priority.

And people don't coordinate against sentries. You have 2 people go spy and sap, and more people just spam and run into it and died, and now you have people who will bonk it.

/sentry debate (If someone thinks that they are really correct, and I'm really wrong, make another thread, and argue in their, leave this thread for the map.

Nice, map, great sunset, but make sure that artistically it looks different then GPit, becuase structurally, it looks kinda the same, and if it is too close, tons of people will be bashing it for being an uninspired gpit clone.
 

GrimGriz

L10: Glamorous Member
Jan 2, 2009
774
133
TLDR version: Don't worry about balancing sentries. Good people don't use them and they break the flow of the game.

A good map has stuff for every class, regardless of how elitists play the game. If you're in the ETF2L contest or something, I'd see why you might change your design ideas...but in general a sentry spot isn't going to slow good players down, and it will make bad people like your map better :)
 

flubber

L4: Comfortable Member
Nov 16, 2007
171
35
Sentries are he fundation of defense, inge fixed the defense line with tp dispenser covered by Sentries. Just to remember there is team in team fortress, and the fact is that with the pyro "pshit" and the scout bonk, the classic move of launching an uber on a demo with no one beside is over, the spy got to sapped exactly when the medic or the scout under an energy drink draw the sentry bullets, in order to let the rest of the team make a global attack to take over the defense. That's Team Fortress...
 

Nineaxis

Quack Doctor
aa
May 19, 2008
1,767
2,820
I think it's safe enough to say a good map is balanced for both competitive and noncompetitive play. As a noncompetitive player, I want to have fun playing engy. So do many others. In fact, lots of players do not play 6v6 competitive. A map should market to everyone, especially the majority of people who play it.

We will balance engies, whether or not they are used in competitive play. I don't see sentry balancing having any major effect on how any other class is played if engy is excluded from competitive play, so why do you care so much if we make sentry-balancing changes?
 
Feb 14, 2008
1,051
931
People play all sorts of classes in 6v6 when they feel like it :)

Sentries are good, and most maps inadvertedly cater for them anyway, the only thing the mapper has to do is create viable locations at which they can be destroyed - otherwise that sentry location is overpowered.

However, you can't make all sentries too easy to destroy, because otherwise that'd make the engy class useless (and was the basis of criticism against earlier versions of Hoodoo).

You've got it all wrong Mar.
 

MungoKing

L3: Member
Jul 12, 2008
148
47
Great map, feels very balanced, at least for A and B. Can't comment too much on C because at that time I started getting bad lag for some reason >.> Only one thing, and I mentioned it while we were playing, the spectator camera that seems to be outside of the skybox:

cp_furnace_a30000.jpg


Hope that helps, can't wait for the beta!
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
Yeah thanks for that, since its in a brush thats going to become a displacement the chances are when I geto to that area I'll find a more logical place for it.

I've seen some effective SG spots in the playtests we've done, although it is intentionally much harder to lock down with SGs than gravelpit since that's the feature we like least about gravelpit, B is totally suceptable to a group of engies making it quite hard to cap.

Hopefully with two of us working on it the first beta shouldn't take too long to do. Its coming along nicely now. No progress shots just yet but there might be some in a week or so.

:thumbup1:
 

trainRiderJ

L5: Dapper Member
Mar 14, 2008
203
31
in competitve 6v6 and 8v8 people don't use engies, you don't need engies, and sentries are bad for the flow of TF2 in general.

Engineers are used all the time on gravelpit in 6v6. Sometimes teams will even run an engi at A to stall the other team instead of a scout.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
When I download the map is says that it needs a password to unencrypt it.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
When I download the map is says that it needs a password to unencrypt it.

Don't decompile it then!:p

On a more serious note... wtf?? works for me, it worked fine for ID who had to bz2 it to put it on the gameday servers...
 

CJLJ

L1: Registered
Apr 27, 2008
26
10
The map with the most balanced sentries in my opinion is badlands. You can use them to stop people running across an area and backcapping but it's also relatively easy to take them down from an odd angle if you have a soldier or demoman. I haven't played a round of it yet but from having a look round it seems odd that A only has one path on to it for non-mobile classes. I guess it's so low down that it doesn't really matter in practice though. Looking forward to playing it.
 

Chilly

L6: Sharp Member
May 3, 2008
326
127
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?p=54915

Here's my thread on sentries. Perhaps if it doesn't relate specifically to Furnace Creek we should comment over there.

Regarding Furnace Creek, I think the number of good locations at A and C is still a bit lacking, but there are 1-2 excellent ones at both locations. I would personally prefer more mediocre spots than 1-2 excellent ones, since it prevents turtling of those areas while giving engineers more options.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
Don't decompile it then!:p

On a more serious note... wtf?? works for me, it worked fine for ID who had to bz2 it to put it on the gameday servers...

No, no! I'm not decompiling it!

When I open it up in peazip, it says "no match, try providing a password or using flat view mode (+).

It also says "stats not available; cannot browse archive."
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
Peazip is the deafault thing to open zipped and compressed files.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
And now it works. Why? I do not know.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
[AoC] would really love to give you map a comp playtest. Please check this out.

Steam me (steam id: b_Mar_d) if your interested.