koth_firstaville

KotH koth_firstaville a2a

Download
Overview Updates (2) History Discussion
Tiftid

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
aa
Sep 10, 2016
617
477
Hi,
Since no one else seems to care about your requests for feedback I decided to step in.

My initial impression is that this is a very strong effort for a first published map.
There's evidence of very careful control over which areas can be seen from where - the beginnings of good map design.

Another thing that seems immediately obvious to me is that this map is very derivative of koth_highpass.
This is where some of its larger problems arise - both from copying koth_highpass too much, and not copying it enough.

1) The point area is too open​

1725153635205.png


Because the bridge is raised above the level of the ground in its arena, it means that you can easily snipe across the entire arena.
There is cover; but there is no way to actually approach the point without exposing yourself to at least two different sniper angles.

In KOTH, we generally want to keep players safe from the enemy team until they're practically touching the CP trigger.
If we don't, we get boring rounds where the first team who takes the point holds it for the entire round because the enemy team can't even reach it to retake.

Designing your arenas in this way also unfairly biases combat in the favour of Snipers.
Generally in TF2 you want to segregate close-range and long-range combat into separate areas of the map, so that all classes have a chance to thrive and fight who they have the most fun fighting.

Let's look at koth_highpass to see what it's doing right in these two regards:
1725154042103.png


2) Routing problems​

If the team who owns the point (let's say RED) really wants to stop the other team from winning, all they need to do is hold this area:
1725154196461.png

Here, they can watch all of BLU's entrances to the arena while hardly having to even move, and they have various methods to quickly retreat to cover and health.
Meanwhile, if BLU wants to retreat to cover and health, they don't have to walk too long for cover - but if they want health, they have to trudge all the way back to the single medium health and ammo kit in their lobby, which most players won't even notice on their way to the point.

This is probably the most common thing for even experienced KOTH map designers to get wrong.
You want to keep BLU safe until they can touch the point (or fight RED players who are touching the point), right?
So don't let RED hold an area that's further forward than the point.

One simple way to solve this is to give the attackers routes that lead directly to the point and are separate from their other routes.
This is actually exactly what koth_highpass does:
1725154692649.png

This is actually one of the areas I think koth_highpass is the weakest in.
Even if the attackers get this easy route into the point area, the fact is that the defenders can still hold at the bottom of the hill, and watch all of their entrances without really even needing to move.
The area under the point also gives the defenders a fast and easy retreat to cover and health that the attackers simply don't have.

Although briefer than I'd like, hopefully this post has inspired you with some ways to make your map more favourable for attackers, and therefore more of the frantic back-and-forth we all like to see in KOTH.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom