- Sep 10, 2008
- 2,245
- 1,210
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Overlook
Gameplay|1
Class Involvement|5
Style|6
Optimization|5
Average | 4.25
Gameplay:
I really hate how messy the gameplay is in this map. Hyper fast respawn times, cramped, complex out door spaces and cramped, complex corridors really inside really bother me. What gives with the insanely long spawn room? No sense of pacing, bad flow, Overlook always just ends up something resembling a DM grind-fest.
Piling up the intels on your desk might be a cool gimmick, but they don't have collision. Players can hide stickies in there or put sentries on the other side that you can't see but it can still shoot you.
Class:
This map is a playground for soldiers and scouts. Plenty of heights and tight spaces to ambush and spray splash damage all over the place. Demomen can take advantage of the way too many numerous chokepoints.
Playing medic on this map is really annoying! There is no where you can escape to on mid. All the cramped spaces and hiding nooks and crannies on mid make it really easy to get assassinated by scouts. All the access points into the intel room are tight chokepoints, and sentries hiding behind a pile of intels are really bad.
Style:
Overlook's strong point. Your detailing is top-notch. Save for a couple of confusing indoor parts (Vents and spawn), I always know where I am going. I am completely convinced that this is an actual location in TF2. Your facade, has been executed very well, and the goal of each team is clearly laid out for you. I particularly love your indoor spaces.
However, your facade is nameless, and is very much just a generic concrete industrial installation... for some reason build partway into a cliff. (I also don't get why there is an elevated desk in the middle of the room... surrounded by a glass floor)
Optimization:
I get minor but noticeable FPS drops on this map, particularly looking towards one end of mid from the other. My FPS is mostly steady around 60-70, occasionally dropping down to the 40-50 range. Thanks for keeping the filesize small.
Final Thoughts:
While I must commend you on your detailing, I find Overlook to be fine example of what I hate about a lot of custom maps.
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Landfall
Gameplay|3
Class Involvement|3
Style|6
Optimization|6
Average | 4.50
Gameplay:
Landfall's gameplay was decent, but it's pretty obvious that you don't play/don't care too much for competitive play. Mid is designed in such a way that it's really hard to see anything coming. Enemies from the extreme-height catwalks can literally rain down anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on the ground. Pushing and holding are both annoyingly difficult.
There are just so many surprise flank routes everywhere its impossible to keep track of where everyone is. Having the intel so close to the spawn room (and in full view, too!) was a poor design choice. You're pretty much asking the attacking team to spawn camp them for a while in order to grab the intel.
Do not have your spawn points facing the wall!
Class:
Scouts, demos and soldiers have free feign over the mid. Everyone else, on the other hand, are left out to dry. There are absolutely no escape routes for a threatened medic. Being forced onto the ground floor (which will happen very often) is suicide. Because of how inaccessible and how high the catwalks are, you won't be able to heal your team if they're up on the catwalks. If they come down to help you out they're at a massive height disadvantage.
Really, I think it's the extreme catwalks you have networked across the entire map that ruin it.
Gameplay:
Landfall's detailing is gorgeous. There is nothing I could say that anyone else haven't already. Direction is clear: the subtle differences in colour tones between the two sides make sure I'm never lost. The giant tree in the centre acts as a landmark which acts as a guide.
Your outdoor detailing is awesome, no doubt about it, but your interiors are repetitive and empty. Your spytech areas are rather small, but it's enough to get away with a convincing story. I don't understand why there is an intelligence briefcase right out in the open, in the middle of your cover operation. For a logging/paper company, it's funny that they only have one saw in the entire campus. The rest your rooms look like nothing more than generic storage areas that serve no real purpose.
Optimization:
Your optimization is great, I get a steady 60FPS and I never go below 50fps. The map still draws more than it needs to at mid's sightlines, but that can be easily fixed with a more effectively placed occluder (the one you already have is a good start, but it can be better).
Final Thoughts:
You told me before how much you didn't really care for competitive play. And it shows. I'm sorry
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Mercy
Gameplay|3
Class Involvement|5
Style|5
Optimization|7
Average | 5.00
Gameplay:
A compact and relatively simple layout gives Mercy a really, really fast pace. I like how there is still room for strategy, but not how layout was done. The intel room feels like a trap because it's just so easy to flank them and hole up in the back rooms. Even then, it's still pretty frustrating to break into the room because of the upwards slope and the proximity to the spawn (which also leads to the occasional spawn camping).
Why did you make the intel room a big staircase? It's a sponge for splash damage and makes attacking the intel room more frustrating that it already is. Making the area immediately around the intel nobuild makes no sense either. They're just as annoying (if not more) on the staircase than the cap area.
Class:
It's really cramped, but it's not terrible. Sentries and heavies work a bit too effectively, though. The staircase really eats up splash damage and makes it hard for soldiers and demos to do much.
Style:
Solid detail, but a lot of the style has just been copied from from Double Cross, and lacks a personality of its own. Navigation is messy in the areas behind the bases because of the multiple overreaching flanks and the one-way door. The window opening was also really hard to notice, and it was really hard to tell if anyone was behind it.
Your forest skycards look like they're being used backwards. They're supposed to be used so they look like they're fading away with distance fog. Mercy makes no attempt to explain why the intel would be there, and if anything nefarious was about at all, save for a small, modest detail room. You have a clear transition from cover operation to spytech base... except the base is barely even there. It's odd to see the respawn visualizers set away from the doors like that as you don't expect it.
Optimization:
I get a smooth 80FPS throughout the map. Thank you.
Final Thoughts:
Not a bad map. I can have fun with it sometimes, but other times it just gets too hectic.
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