Meridian

TC Meridian rc3

  • This map is featured! Our best maps, all together in one place for your viewing pleasure.

ChickenLover

L2: Junior Member
Jun 28, 2008
95
19
Played this for the map test day. I think the level felt pretty solid. Really the only thing I don't like about the level is the huge filesize, but I think you're not going to get around that considering the large amount of custom content the level uses.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
In the test i heard alot of people complain about the robot being too hard to defend. I was on blue though so couldnt realy judge about that but the robot was captured quite often.

Also, as this was the first time i played the map i suffered from the newbie effect of not knowing where to go and walk the wrong way many times in some stages. Especialy in the base with the huts i had that. On other stages it was fine though.

But as usualy the filesize is something that bothers me, 50+mb zipped is very much (i find 30mb alot already but in a TC_ map 30mb is just not big enough). Im trying to get this map to be played on the ukcs servers where it will be played in a 32 playing IR situation. If the map works for that it will work everywhere. In the tf2maps test areas were captured often which is a good thing so i expect it to work on the ukcs servers also. The filesize however was worth for the map, a tc map cant be small or its not good.

Oh, and ingame we had quite some jokes of maps that would be made when your map reaches valve status... koth_robot, plr_robotcarts, ctf_2robots_as_flags, cp_well_with_all_props_as_robots. and so on :)
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
ukcs servers where it will be played in a 32 playing IR situation. If the map works for that it will work everywhere. In the tf2maps test areas were captured often which is a good thing so i expect it to work on the ukcs servers also.
...no. It won't work the same at all :/ When you don't have a rest time to make a go at the intel while the defense is respawning... stalemates galore.
 

Caliostro

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 6, 2009
261
110
Ihere it will be played in a 32 playing IR situation. If the map works for that it will work everywhere.

No good map should -EVER-, under any circumstance, be balanced for 32 man IR. NEVER.

First issue, 32 men. As stated several times by Robin Walker and team, the game was designed, budgeted and balanced for 24 players. More players tends to break balance in favor of "spam" friendly classes and overcrowd areas in maps that would otherwise be perfectly fine.

Second issue is Instant Respawn. No half-competent team will ever loose their defense in an instant respawn server. There's just no way to. You actively gotta TRY to suck to loose your defense. Simply put, in normal respawn servers you need to kill the enemies in order to temporarily remove them from your way, gaining you time to get to the objective. In IR servers, since everything respawns after it dies, there's no buffer time for the offense to grab the intel and get out (or cap a point, or push a cart) before more people come strolling by raining rockets, grenades, fire and bullets. There will ALWAYS be enemies crawling around by the truckload, since killing them doesn't really remove them from the game at ALL.

Now, in order to balance a map for IR servers, you need to basically FORCE the players to be removed from gameplay (by, for example, creating a long path from spawn to defense point they can't avoid), which in turn massively unbalances them for everything else because, on normal respawn servers, you'll still be forcing players to take that extra delay, on top of their respawn delay...

So, I'm sorry, but you're very likely to find that in that server, meridian will stalemate a lot... Like every other map...
 

The_Ulf

L6: Sharp Member
May 26, 2009
399
115
No good map should -EVER-, under any circumstance, be balanced for 32 man IR. NEVER.

First issue, 32 men. As stated several times by Robin Walker and team, the game was designed, budgeted and balanced for 24 players. More players tends to break balance in favor of "spam" friendly classes and overcrowd areas in maps that would otherwise be perfectly fine.

Second issue is Instant Respawn. No half-competent team will ever loose their defense in an instant respawn server. There's just no way to. You actively gotta TRY to suck to loose your defense. Simply put, in normal respawn servers you need to kill the enemies in order to temporarily remove them from your way, gaining you time to get to the objective. In IR servers, since everything respawns after it dies, there's no buffer time for the offense to grab the intel and get out (or cap a point, or push a cart) before more people come strolling by raining rockets, grenades, fire and bullets. There will ALWAYS be enemies crawling around by the truckload, since killing them doesn't really remove them from the game at ALL.

Now, in order to balance a map for IR servers, you need to basically FORCE the players to be removed from gameplay (by, for example, creating a long path from spawn to defense point they can't avoid), which in turn massively unbalances them for everything else because, on normal respawn servers, you'll still be forcing players to take that extra delay, on top of their respawn delay...

So, I'm sorry, but you're very likely to find that in that server, meridian will stalemate a lot... Like every other map...

True this.

Also, the engine starts to lag up past 24 players.
 

Icarus

aa
Sep 10, 2008
2,245
1,210
Maps that only work with 24 players are lame. You can act like 24 players is the _only_ way to play TF2, but you're shutting out a large chunk of players.

...not that Meridian can't work with 32 (haven't tried yet)
 
Last edited:
Apr 19, 2009
4,460
1,721
Meridian works on 32 man, just not IR. I hate it how people lump 32 player servers with IR, not all of them are. 2f2f has never been IR and never will be. That being said it does tend to break smaller maps like Juction, but Meridian is big enough that stalemates are not all that common. Also it has gotten better with each version.
 

Wegason

L3: Member
Aug 16, 2009
147
64
Any team size over 10 per team breaks Junction, its a map more suited IMHO for servers with less than 20 players.
 

Caliostro

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 6, 2009
261
110
Any team size over 10 per team breaks Junction, its a map more suited IMHO for servers with less than 20 players.

IMO Junction is just broken, period.

Couple of engineers, couple of pyros, a medic and a demo or soldier and you can turn one of the points nigh uncappable.

Junction is very pretty, but way the fuck too tight... Maybe for a 6 vs 6...
 

mdawgmike

L1: Registered
Jun 7, 2009
40
18
First issue, 32 men. As stated several times by Robin Walker and team, the game was designed, budgeted and balanced for 24 players. More players tends to break balance in favor of "spam" friendly classes and overcrowd areas in maps that would otherwise be perfectly fine.

Just because 24 players is "the standard" doesn't mean maps shouldn't be bothered to be balanced with 32 as well. There's countless 32 player servers out there, and it tends to be the more popular pick for many. That plus it's now officially supported by Valve I do believe.

Meridian is one of the few CTF style maps I've played where it doesn't stalemate constantly with this amount of players...and it's definitely leaps and bounds above 2fort, which doesn't seem playable with any more than 16. It's right up there with Aerospace (whatever happened to this one?), Runway2, and Turbine in terms of playing smoothly.
 
Last edited:

Shmitz

Old Hat
aa
Nov 12, 2007
1,128
746
I will say this about instant respawn: Originally spawn times decreased until they were instant in the last couple minutes of a round. Hydro does this and I suppose it's to increase the sense of urgency, but with Meridian's CTF mechanic it resulted in nobody ever capturing the intel once spawn times had gotten that fast. So not just based on conjecture, but actual experience with earlier versions, I can confirm that on instant respawn servers, Meridian will stalemate constantly.
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
I will say this about instant respawn: Originally spawn times decreased until they were instant in the last couple minutes of a round. Hydro does this and I suppose it's to increase the sense of urgency.

And in Hydro this is what causes the horrible stalematefests as well. Keep them as they are :)
 

Popo

L1: Registered
Jun 13, 2009
43
29
Hello there, I've really been enjoying tc_meridian on the TF2Au Reddit server and I've got to say this is the most original idea for a map I've seen for a while.

Once you've learnt the paths, (cue people bitching about not being able to find their way around the map the first time they've played it,) it's alot of fun. Now my biggest criticism however, would have to be the textures on the huts in the village. It doesn't look fantastic, there is something off about it. Perhaps too bright for the TF2 palette?

Additionally, with the final boat stage for blu you are able to fire over the walls of the village and score some easy early game kills :(

I'll have more comments to add later, just thought I should give you my first impressions of your wonderful map :) Cheers! Here's hoping you get this into more server's rotations.
 

Timberjaw

L2: Junior Member
Nov 6, 2009
71
19
Is this map still in development? We've played it a few times on my server and the general consensus is that it's quite good aside from the tiki village (which doesn't really live up to the visual quality of the rest of the map). RC is probably way too late to do anything about that, but I'm curious if there will be a _final version of this map.