Grinder (CP)

[drunkie]

I really enjoyed myself on this map, the game play idea behind it is very solid. Few things that you might wanna tweek.

Shorten the cap times of A and B.
- When pushed back into your HQ to defend, because of the short cap time of HQ you cannot get a good amount of people out to recap A or B. Dedicating to many people to the recap leaves your HQ way under defended. I would suggest shortening these cap times (maybe shorter if HQ is unlocked then when it's locked?). If a scout / spy can sneak out for a backcap that would force the opposing team to get there faster, this would make the team defending the HQ to be able to push on them a bit and relock their HQ.

More routes and interesting layouts between A and B.
- I found the lone canal of a connector to be a bit boring. If you where to expand on the gameplay around that connector area (adding buildings, routes, height variance etc) I think this is where the fights on the map could really shine.

Sentry spots at the HQ.
- To me there where too many hardcore sentry spots. The amount of corners with depth in them made it so that one uber couldn't win the game. I think I saw 4 spots which where real strong sentry positions that caused a lot of the lag in action when fighting for the HQ. I believe that one uber should have the opportunity to win a game, and I really find it a bit to hard to cap HQ with only one uber; thats a personal design theory tho - others might now agree.

Just some things i thought about when playing, really enjoyed the map tho.

 

[Chilly]

Sentry spots at the HQ.
- To me there where too many hardcore sentry spots.

I would just remove the ones alongside the ramp. Those will lift and push attacking ubers as the move over the top, which makes them hard to destroy if you don't see them there. I think other than that it didn't seem too bad as far as sentries go. I'd just lower the cap time by 1 second like you mentioned so spies can progressively cap it even with sentries around. It'll force the defensive sentries into more predictable locations.

 

[Icarus]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

HQ cap time will probably stay the same, and I'll fill in those gaps beside the big ramp.

I'll add some more metal as well.

Next alpha will be a near-detailed one, so don't expect to hear from Grinder for a while.

 

[Fearlezz]

Played this map yesterday. Great fun. It was not only the challenge to capture the points, but also great fun trying to defend or take them back from your enemies.

I thought it lacked some healthpacks though. I found some small ones but they didnt really help me out when I was at B defending.

Also the HQ's, I feel its way too open, someone over at the other end of the CP can snipe you when you try to run and cap it. Also I would add some paths going pointing straight to the CP. Since you have a unique cap structure (the glass) where you can only enter by one way, I believe more paths would give the enemy a better chance of capping it. The only ones that managed to cap it when we played was either a spy or a scout.

Last thing, those sentry spots at the HQ they are not good, you can take them out from distance and they'll kill you if you even get close to them.

Good map, looking forward to it.

 

[Icarus]

True, I'll probably make adjustments to those as well

I've never come as close to good balance before than this!

 

[Sgt Frag]

I should probably make it a point to leave comments sooner as I tend to get a little foggy on them after a day or two.

I really liked it though, was fun gameplay and pretty intense having to decide to defend or cap, it really pushes you to cap but if you don't defend its over.

I don't really have any crits, layout is good, seems really balanced, no major flaws/mistakes. Looking foward to a detailed version.

 

[kankle_king]

Here is our demo form a 7v7 pick-up yesterday. YOu can read some of the comments from the in-game chat to get a feel of what we thought. One comment was: Scouts ninja capping is the only thing that this map depends on really... and it's also just not very much fun because cap A and B take forever to cap, which is a necessary thing for this kind of map, but it's just straight up boring to sit on the cap points for that long.

http://tf2f.sishgupta.com/tf/demos/auto-20090308-1945-cp_grinder_a2.dem

 

[Icarus]

Here is our demo form a 7v7 pick-up yesterday. YOu can read some of the comments from the in-game chat to get a feel of what we thought. One comment was: Scouts ninja capping is the only thing that this map depends on really... and it's also just not very much fun because cap A and B take forever to cap, which is a necessary thing for this kind of map, but it's just straight up boring to sit on the cap points for that long.

http://tf2f.sishgupta.com/tf/demos/auto-20090308-1945-cp_grinder_a2.dem

Thanks, I really needed this.

Yeah, I agree, it doesn't look too fun on pugs atm. The cap times were too long and the only finishing caps were by sneaky scouts and spies.

Do you think there would be any way of saving Grinder in pugs? I was thinking of reducing the cap times to 2/3 of their current, but I'm afraid it would just turn into a game of who-can-back-cap-faster.

I guess this shows how little I play comp

If it's not salvageable, it's OK, this map is still really fun on pubs.