Brushpush - My Analytical Approach
Preamble: This is a process i usually use at the moment when creating a new map. I usually just don't write it down in this level of detail - Most of the time i just wing it while opening the reference map or maps in the background.
So, in the last Gameday,
@Diva Dan,
@Psy and
@Wilson raised some good points about Brushpush. Most of it, rather than being about some special interaction in one part of the map, were general gameplay critisms. Let me recitate some of them.
Rather than wildly overreacting (Which at some points in the past has been my approach to these kind of critism) i tried to find out why the kind of gameplay happened that caused them to give this kind of feedback.
The first and easy-to-find-out reason was that i completely missed a sentry spot used by
@Anguish that could, with some preparation, create a situation in which RED could hold the ramps from B to C in a way more aggressive fashion than i expected them to be able to, which caused pushes to spill over into every flank that was thought to help the attackers, which caused the attackers to be overrun from directions i did not think would be reasonable places to attack back from. Combined with the BLU forward spawn being as small as it is (and clearly doesn't have to be) and the a-bit-too-long respawn times that caused a "we're being attacked from all sides" feeling.
The second one, and one that takes a lot longer, is to take a look at official maps that did similar things. As some of the players (or the guys who read the posts in this thread) already realized, brushpush is at it's core deeply inspired by pl_upward. This is because i still consider Upward to be the gold standard of Payload maps in TF2, maybe even the gold standard of all official TF2 maps.
As i said before, i'm not a big fan of the chokey, long alleyway kind of gameplay of hoodoo, goldrush and similar. While it's easy to set a focus on these kind of maps, personal choice plays a much smaller role in them. I enjoy myself much more on the open, lots-of-flanks gameplay areas of Upward and Borneo, and the perfect or near-perfect mixture between focus and choice is what i try to reach when creating a map.
While the shapes and areas of Brushpush look different (the most obvious thing is that Upward is spiral-shaped and Brushpush is S-shaped,) you still can see a lot of similarities.
First Capture Zone
The easiest-to-see similarity is the spawn. While they look different, the exits are within a few HU apart from each other if you copied and pasted them from one map to the other. The biggest difference is that brushpush has two front exits where Upward has one and that the right side exit opens in front of a building rather than to the side.
Upward has two flanks, one on each side. The left one has a small battlement. The right one provides a lot more cover when trying to get to the playground. It has a choke area with the playground (aka another battlement.) It offers direct access to the top of the playground with a few jumps over the rock in front of it.
Brushpush also has two flanks. The left one also has a small battlement. The right one in this case is a low ground which provides a lot of cover from anyone on the big battlement (aka the playground.) It also offers direct access to the top of the playground by walking a few extra steps.
Another important difference is that because of the shape of the map, the tracks on Brushpush don't go right after the curve to the left, but leave the area to the left.
The track length between points is ~2800hu on Upward and ~2400hu on Brushpush.
Directly talking about what
@Diva Dan said during the gameday: The chokiest point to move through is 200hu on Upward and 320hu on Brushpush, so i don't think i have to change that. The right flank is between 128 and 192hu wide, and i understand why that could be too small.
A to B
This is easily the most different area in terms of look and gameplay, and also interestingly the most problematic area in A2a. As i plan to redesign most of it for A3, i won't go into detail on that one. Let me just say that while i won't try to replicate Upward A to B, i'll take a good, long look at it before deciding what happens with my new area.
B to C
Doesn't look too similar, right? Well, if you define the wooden construction on Upward and the serpentine on Brushpush as a ramp area, you can begin to see the similarities. You spawn on the left and directly go to the left flank route (upper building on Upward, and the building with the big ramp on Brushpush) The flank route on the right is smaller, but also exits at the top of the hill way faster. Both flanks on both maps exit on about the same place.
The left flank also opens up into more flanks for last - I'll write more about that when analysing last.
The main difference: To complete the left flank on Upward, you have to go through the main fighting area. To complete the right flank on Brushpush, you also have to go through the main fighting area - This has been switched around.
Track length: 1600hu "downtime" on Upward (usually not contested) +2560hu, Brushpush has 2600hu. This means that while RED doesn't have as long to set up after they lose B, they'll probably still be close to the ramp area and might have even already set up defense when they lose B. Depending on how A to B will look like after i changed it, this might change and might cause me to change something on this area.
The final push
Let's look at the similarities first. There's a main path with a choke before entering the final area. Both of them have about the same width. Both of them have an highground flank which can be accessed from the building that was the left flank on B->C. Both of them have sniper battlements on the red spawn as well as giving slight height advantage to anyone exiting red spawn. Both of them have a "downtime area" in front of the final building which usually shouldn't be heavily contested.
There's quite a few differences here: The left flank on Brushpush also offers a secondary, lower flank route that gives you A REALLY DEEP PENETRATION into the final area. This replaces the low level flank on Upward and also serves as a deep flanking opportunity for RED. The downtime area in front of Brushpush final is less spacey and open, but the left flank is quite a bit larger (and more important,) which should invite BLU engis to set up camp there, which also should give attackers better options. It's harder for RED to get on the attacker high ground because you have to push through left flank rather than getting your own stairs on the right flank. Last but not least, red does not have a sentry platform on Brushpush, but has a sentry position next to the right flank exit in the same vein as Badwater last.
If you combine everything, you still get about the same gameplay elements, except for REDs access to the high ground, which i didn't really realize until i wrote this all down (And this is why doing writing way to many words is helpful sometimes.)
Track length: Upward: 1780hu downtime + 1012hu, Brushpush: 1670hu downtime + 700hu
So, taking all that into account, i have to say that i don't think the problems happened because of the areas i described here in detail (although i found quite a few things to think about and/or change while writing this down) but rather from a combination of problems with the way A->B is set up, which then spilled over into the B->C area. I also realized that the difficulty level isn't yet fine-tuned enough, as B is harder than C and might even be harder than D.
I hope my analysis was enjoyable to read, i know i learned a lot of things by writing it all down. I hope you learned something about my map creation process too and maybe even found an insight into the mad mind of Dr.Lambda
Feel free to let me know about anything that you think is wrong about this post. I didn't expect this to take 90 minutes to write down, but here we are.