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Doomsday introduces us to the new official gamemode, Special Delivery, which is basically King of the Hill with a flag in a separate spot that you need to bring to the point. On paper it sounds like a map that creates two fighting areas but you end up concentrating your momentum around the point anyway. Two major flaws in how it was implemented: once picked up, the flag must return for the other team to pick it up and the point I mentioned before about how everyone ends up at the rocket anyway.
When one team picks up the flag it's theirs until the "short" 10-15 second timer resets it, at which point someone has to go back to the spawnpoint and pick it up again. As long as your team keeps touching the flag you can't lose. I don't mind this, but it makes it very hard to lose once you pick it up the first time. It provokes a lot of fighting around where the flag is, rather than where it's going to go if it was dropped to neutral. Not to mention, it puts more emphasis on controlling the flag zone. It could be improved.
But the two point system also fails because most players will go to the rocket anyway. Once the flag has been picked up there's no use waiting around the flag zone anymore. Most of the routes out of the flag area are all cramped and easy to be killed in, but there's 4 routes that don't require jumping and 2 additional ones for soldiers and demomen, meaning that if someone gets the flag they're probably also getting out. Since the goal is to bring it to a control point, the flag will likely be there, and once it's dropped, it will stay there. It adds a small dynamic of flowing gameplay, but it makes it a little tedious to have to go back and get the flag when you've returned it (and usually there's little resistance there, even if you walk from the point to the flag zone.)
Let's talk Doomsday in particular: the control point is an elevator, much like hightower, and also like hightower it gets annoying. It's a long slog to get to the top, but once you're there, it's very hard to access it. Having even 2 players at the top of the elevator makes it very difficult to jump onto it and defend.
The map also feels unfinished and untested. There are some large sightlines and a lot of paths go unused because there are much better routes to take or they're just not visible. For example, there's a spawn exit here:
I had no idea this even existed for most of the rounds I played, and even when I discovered it, I still never used it because the elevated area to the left has another spawn exit that puts you in a much better position above any enemies that might be in the lower area. Not that there would be any enemies there because that's only used for going from the flag zone to the rocket, and usually only used by one person. But why didn't I know it was there?
Because this is how you approach it. You have to make a left around this corner and then make a right in order to get to the door. However, any player coming through would immediately see the other door and walk through it before they notice the arrow. The tunnel is slanted so that you come out walking in one direction, and continue to walk that way because you don't see the other door and the other door is useless anyway.
I do like Doomsday because of its large arenas. The rocket area is great to fight in.
It's open but it doesn't feel like you're exposed all the time. There's plenty of height and plenty of space for soldiers to jump around in, a few side routes for scouts, spies, and pyros, and some good corners for engineers to set up teleporters and dispensers, while very few places to put a sentry gun that can lock down the point without contest. However, it suffers from a bunch of problems. For one, this sightline:
This sightline can see all the way from the entrance to the flag zone to the rocket's cap point. There's nothing you can do about a sniper standing here while you're fighting near the rocket, and it provides a lot of vision. This could have been fixed by adding a grain elevator between the blue building on the left and the gray building in the middle, which retains the open feeling of this area and the rocket while cutting off this line.
Furthermore, I've mentioned in the past that Arena and KOTH are opposites in how they use pickups: Arena maps have very sparse health to promote hot spots, while King of the Hill has a lot of health with little ammo to promote offensive pushes and slow down engineers. It looks like Doomsday has made another entry in this:
These are right next to the rocket area. There are 3 full healthkits and 2 small healthkits within a short walk of the rocket. There's also two medium healthkits between the flag zone and the rocket. I think there's more health on this map than there is in all of Badwater. I think there's more full healthkits than in any other map to date. This could have been a medium health kit and it would have the same draw, but because it's full it makes it disheartening to nearly kill an enemy and then pop he's full health again.
And speaking of that second screenshot: that is a deathpit. You will get tricked by this deathpit at least once. You will pick up the healthkit and walk straight into it. Why is it there? Because behind me is an exhaust pipe that flings players into it when a team launches the rocket. Does this work? Not really. More often than not you'll get stuck on the sides until the trigger_push turns off.
Here's the flag zone. I like this area. It's great to fight in because of all the terrain and junk. I'd like it more if you spent more than 30 seconds here. Once the Australium can be picked up, you're not coming back unless you're here to pick it up after it returned, in which case there will be no fight. Everyone's at the rocket. You might bump into a scout or a soldier, but usually there will only be one guy, and even then it's smarter to just take the briefcase and run. It's hard to contain the enemy in this space when there are so many ways out.
Also, see that pipe? I never went through that pipe. I saw other players take it (and then murdered them because it's very cramped.) Why didn't I ever go through that pipe? Because the middle route leads to a bridge that is high up and gives you a massive advantage, is shorter than the pipe, leads directly to the rocket, has a full ammo pack and two small healthkits, and it's not a pipe. I don't like pipes. I didn't like them in 2fort and I don't like them here. If you recall earlier, that pipe lets out here:
The problem is that it takes longer to go through the pipe to get there than it does to go through the higher routes. So if you do take the pipe and someone sees you, they can meet you at the exit and kill you because you idiot you're stuck in a pipe! The only advantage you get is that the pipe has a medium healthkit in it. But the two smalls heal you for nearly the same amount and aren't as dangerous!
Doomsday: gamemode needs some work and the map needs some finishing touches. It's very barren (as has been pointed out) and there's a lot of useless routes. Pickups could use some rebalancing especially. At the moment everything feels very rushed. Still a good map, I like the dynamic element the flag brings. If it were a little better it'd be my favorite map in TF2.