a1 test notes (forgot to write this up earlier):
A got a lot of positive feedback. At one point a red player blocked blue's capture by hiding in a corner. This corner is created by a piece of cover that I decided doesn't need to exist anymore, so I've removed it to try and prevent this in the future. The water route worked more or less as expected, though the fact that it requires a 180 from blue team means it is probably seeing less use than it could. I expect this route to get more traffic as people learn the map. Despite giving blue many height advantages, red was generally able to hold onto it for a while.
B is definitely the weaker part of the map. It's a bit of a meatgrinder, which last points tend to be, but a lot of players saw the main route to the point as a death trap. The flanks were fun to navigate and provided good positional advantages for blue, though some players found it difficult to navigate. To help alleviate the meatgrinder issue, I plan on enlarge the whole point area to provide a bit more breathing room. I will also move the capzone closer to blue so there is a bit more capture zone on their side of the saw.
a2 test notes:
No real changes to A, so not too much to report. I saw pyros using the neon annihilator, which was nice. Snipers held forward on the roof to the side of the point, which I did not anticipate. It is probably too strong of a position - I think it will be effectively nerfed if blue players get a safer route to the flank so that they can attack the sniper.
Making everything larger at B definitely made it play a bit better, though it is still a meatgrinder. The balcony route over the main choke proved to make it too difficult for red players to hold forward on the main choke. This upper route was deliberately left exposed to make it an unsafe route for blue (as it is very easy to hit them with splash damage, and there is no cover from bullets), but I think enclosing it is a better idea so that red can put more pressure on the choke.
One undocumented change was that I moved red's spawn points closer to the route behind the point rather than to the side of the point - I wanted red to approach the point more often facing directly at blue rather than coming from around a corner, as I thought this would help make saw gameplay more relevant, and also make it a bit easier for blue players to attack red players who are on the point. This kind of worked, but balancing around this seems risky, as players will continue to learn the map over time, and may figure out that leaving through the "main" spawn door is simply a better way to defend. I'll move the spawn points back.
One last point that was raised is that B's defense relies a lot on sentries. I'm not too sure about this, but I will keep it in mind for future changes.
