Nixie

CP Nixie b1

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon submitted a new resource:

Dixie22 - I gave up on payload

Dixie is a 2 stage attack/defend CP map based on Dixie National Forest in USA, Utah. Red has secured rights to a national park, quietly starting back up the abandoned hydroelectric plant for electricity, and to use as a secret base of operations. Blue wants to take control.

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a2

A:
-changed respawn times from 6 to 8 (both teams)
-adjusted health in basement from small to medium
-added one-way window for defense to watch spawn from inside the building

B:
-fixed bug where respawn times got really long
-various visual changes in canyon for better readability and navigation
-small gameplay changes in canyon
-added another health/ammo combo to canyon
-adjusted ammo at building entrance from full to medium
-adjusted cover at building entrance to make approach easier for...

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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s1_a2 test notes:

A plays about how I expected, which is to say not super well. A lot of people pointed out that blue spawn is too close to the point. I'm not sure if I agree or not - the spawns are intentionally close because I'm trying to avoid giving blue a forward spawn and I want to keep walk times to B reasonable.

There are like 3 different ways for blue team to sneak up behind red very easily, which is at least 2 too many. I plan on retooling the basement route to come up behind the main sentry nest, which should make fights more dynamic, make it a little harder to sneak behind red, and make the basement route not completely redundant.

The canyon is... interesting. There is a lot of health and ammo in the canyon, which I put there to give blue a stronger forward hold. What I did not anticipate is that it would also give red a stronger forward hold. This is actually kinda neat, I think! Some people got really upset about it because there's just a single choke that blue has to get through, which is apparently "bad design." I plan on adding a secondary route for blue to help them break through more easily, and to keep combat more interesting.

B is... interesting. The main route up to the point seems like it plays decently. I saw blue engineers being somewhat effective, which is something I tried to encourage with the copious amounts of metal around the map. Unfortunately, it is only one route of many. The flank area is just not super useful, which is a shame, since it takes up more space than the building. You get very disconnected from your team and are easily picked off by the bulk of defense sitting on the point.

I plan on moving the B point to the center of the building, and raising up the exterior ground. This should make the exterior more relevant in the fight for the point, for both blue and red. This also gets the point further away from red spawn, which I think is a good idea, and I also think it will look cooler.
 
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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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s1_a3 test notes:

A: Basement is marginally more useful but still not great. Sentries dominated the point and taking them out should be easier. I think the most elegant way to achieve this is to just remove the door that lets red get into their little cubby so easily. Not only is a sentry in the building very powerful, but it is currently trivial for red to hole back up in there when they've been cleared. Making it harder to access should allow blue to make more permanent progress on attacking the point.

One thing I noted is that sniper doesn't have a lot to do on this point. None of the sightlines are particularly long or wide. I also noted that a soldier/medic combo on the roof was pretty hard to take out. As such, I plan on retooling the low ground spawn exit so that blue snipers can get a more protected view onto the roof. This will also give red snipers something to do - take out the blue snipers.

Canyon didn't see much play this time around. Not sure why! Last test may have just been an exception.

B: Placing the point in the middle of the room kind of worked but also kind of didn't. It definitely encouraged more dynamic gameplay, but it was also just kind of awkward for red to defend. Sentry angles were hard to predict. Also, there isn't enough space between the entrances into the building and the point itself, so red's main defensive strategy was to hold forward rather than holding the point itself. Red has a lot of medium health kits to rely on for this strategy.

In the feedback, someone suggested moving the point further back into the building, which is where it was before. This makes sense and was an option I considered when sketching ideas for the layout. I wanted to try putting the point in the middle to see if it would work, and I think this test helped show that it is not the greatest. In addition, I'm making the building longer overall so there is a bit more room to breathe.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a4

A:
-closed a door so that red can lose ground gradually instead of all at once
-reworked lower spawn exit to provide more gameplay space and give snipers something to do
-closed the funny window
-added a funny window
-moved fence out a bit
-added platform near fence
-increased cap time from 15 to 20 to give red more time to set up after losing the point
-lowered blue respawn time from 8 back to 6

B:
-moved point further into building to make it less awkward to defend
-reworked upper route...

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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s1_a4 test notes:

A: Removing the door for red to access the room helped make it so blue could take control of the room, but it also made it just that much easier for red to hold from behind the point, which was not fun to deal with and should not be an effective strategy. If blue clears the room, they should be able to take the point easily. To that end, I plan on reworking how red enters the area so that they are on a low ground and have much less of a corner to hide behind. Demo sticky spam will still be effective, but the demo will also be in a much less safe position when doing it.

Also noted, as always, was that blue's spawn is too close to the point. I'm not exactly sure what the criticism here is other than that it feels wrong, which I agree with. Prestige suggested moving blue spawn further down the hill, so that blue has an uphill battle. I think this is a good idea. I can envision it working something like this, where blue has a main path direct to the point that is fairly open, and a more close-quarters path up the side of the cliff that allows them to attack the room from behind.

1653868820737.png


Canyon: Readability suffers in this area. I'm adding some ghost lights to boost the ambient a bit.

B: This point is fun for red but "miserable" for blue, to quote some feedback. Moving the point further into the room definitely helped with creating more obvious sentry spots, but the sentry spots in question are really close to the point. It plays very awkwardly. People seem to enjoy the underground route, though it felt kinda cheap to be able to wipe red with a single uber phlog pyro because they weren't watching a route that they might not even know exists.

Blue probably needs a forward spawn. I anticipated blue being able to hold forward a lot better than they actually did, and I think walk times are a major contributor to that problem. I've been avoiding a forward spawn because I want the canyon to be more than a cakewalk for blue, but the walk time to B pretty much necessitates a blue engineer with a teleporter to keep blue in the fight, and given that I might be making A larger, that problem is only going to get worse.

I might move the CP back to the center of the room. Moving the point further into the room took it from "indefensible" to "unattackable." (Neither is actually true, but some players certainly felt that way.) Given the building's shape, I don't really see any other way to make this work, and instead I should investigate ways to make defense of the center CP less awkward.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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I took a shower and had a think about B. I think the issue I'm running into is that putting the CP in the area up against the windows makes it difficult to work other routes into the space. A long outer flank means being outside the building, which I haven't found a good way to do yet. The interior side of the point more or less has to stay as a wall, or else the two teams run into each other too quickly.

The solution I have in mind is to move the point further into the building. This allows the windowed area to become the outer flank, and having that be inside means I can give the flank height advantage over the point - something that was impossible to do with an outdoor flank. This also means I am no longer constrained by the geometry of the window room for building the main choke, so I have some more freedom.

Doing this will require a decent amount of reworking the building geometry and will probably take a while, but it is better than any other ideas I've had.

1653874369765.png
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Additional thoughts on A:

I don't think putting blue further down on the hill will work. For one, I'm trying to add as few buildings as possible to this point for thematic reasons, and I don't see a good way to give blue fair height differences without adding buildings. In addition, putting blue further down the hill makes it a shorter path to go to red's entrance into the area rather than the point, which I foresee being an issue in a layout this open. Blue scouts will have too easy a time skipping A.

Instead, I think it would be best to change blue's approach to the point so that they come at it head on rather than from the side. This should improve overall flow and will also allow for the route through the building to act like a flank instead of the main route.

1654017392337.png
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a5

A:
-adjusted red entrance to area so they are on low ground, helping ensure they cannot hold once the building is taken by blue
-redid blue approach to point
-removed basement
-lowered blue respawn time from 6 to 3

B:
-reworked building entirely to be considerably larger and have more distinct routes
-added blue forward spawn

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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s1_a5 test notes:

Pretty much all changes made the map more fun.

A: The new staging area makes this attack and defense more fun. Red gets a temporary forward hold that also allows them to retreat safely, so forward holding isn't particularly risky. Blue's approach to the point is more dynamic. Red can still too easily hold around the corner from the point even without the health and ammo that used to be there, resulting in one round where blue captured A and got their forward spawn even though red was still more or less holding the area, which lead to spawncamping. I'm going to shrink this area so it is easier to flush red out.

B: This is a lot more fun now that there are more distinct routes. One particular thing I was worried about was that the main attack and defense of the point is more or less a 180 degree turn around a thin wall, which in my experience is usually not very fun. This wasn't as big of an issue as I anticipated, as many players opted to take the outside routes to get a better vantage point on red's defense, rather than throwing themselves around a blind corner. Engineer definitely has trouble setting up on this point and I'd like to add a more obvious sentry spot, but I've yet to find a good place for that. I'm just going to give them a full ammo and see if they can figure something out.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a6

OVERALL:
-more pseudodetailing
-brightened sun ambient
-adjusted small ammo locations for spy

A:
-added third route
-moved setup gates forward for better visibility out of spawn
-reduced area in corner for red to hold behind the point
-made point low ground area 128 units larger
-shrunk building ramp because it just felt too big
-changed small health on roof to small ammo

B:
-added rock arch over entrance to canyon to stop jumpers. I would prefer to still allow this, but it is currently...

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a7

A:
-removed a health/ammo combo from canyon to make holds of A from the canyon more difficult
-changed health and ammo in low ground near point to mediums to give red some more resources for defense

B:
-pushed point further into room and to low ground to create sentry spot / red hold area, redid red routes into building to fit
-enclosed some flanks in rooms to make demo spam less effective and universal
-added trick jump for red up to display case area

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Idolon updated Dixie22 with a new update entry:

s1 a8

A:
-no changes

B:
-reworked red spawn and entry to point to feel more natural and separate main path from sentry nest
-flipped locations of basement and art gallery for thematic reasons
-opened basement route into sentry nest
-subtle adjustments to height variation for wheelchair accessibility

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Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106

Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106

Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106