I'll go through the map in single player later today and see if I can come up with any suggestions for gameplay improvements, mainly for defense on 2-2.
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EDIT: So, I've just had a look at 2-2 in single player, taking my previous play test in to account, the main two issues I hypothesized are as follows:
- Red's spawn is quite far from the final point for classes that cannot rocket/sticky/other jump, they have 3 choices, 2 of them involve going in buildings and up stairs, 1 of them involves going in to an open area, and running up and around the paths leading to the point, all of which can take longer than hoped for.
- Engineers could have an overly easy time defending the point with Sentries. I think there needs to be strategically positioned props, walls and other objects so that sentries will be able to defend certain parts of the final capture point's area, but not the entirety.
Solutions shouldn't be too difficult to come up with for this:
Making the area easier for Red to defend:
- This could take some altering, but a quicker way for Red to reach the final point, besides jumping or teleporters, would definitely contribute.
- Diving and blocking off parts within the area, making it more difficult for Blue to navigate to the final point, without making it so difficult that they either reach dead-ends or are defeated by impossible sentries.
Solving the issue of Sentry Spam:
- If things are easier for Red to defend, sentries will most definitely have an easier job of destroying Blue, even if they don't currently. As I stated in a previous point, placing objects and walls in certain positions in order to create blind spots for different sentry positions, this will avoid scenarios where all sentries will obliterate the flag holder.
- Height advantage can be important, but with Sentries it is the opposite: If you are below them, they can't knock you in to the air, and so you have an advantage (with an Ubercharge, of course). The current set up is fine for this, as Red have most of the higher ground, and so a Demoman could relatively easily fire sticky bombs from the ground to the point and wipe out sentries effortlessly.
So moving on, I've taken approximiately 8-12 screenshots of areas surrounding the final point (which a couple of screenshots of positions which lead to the final point), I've added rough ideas to some of them that could potentionally either make things easier to defend for Red or harder to attack for Blue, depending on your perspective of things
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Idea 1 - Additional Staircase
http://labs.topaz-games.com/kj/images/screenies/panamint/ctf_panamint_a160004.jpg
I feel that alot of players will choose to go to the open path, but they will then find that unless they can rocket jump in some way or another, they're actually quite far from the point and that the Scout is actually going to make it after all D:
This first proposal is an additional staircase going from the beginning of the open route to the same floor as one of the other staircases lead, this staircase would be seconds quicker than the other option(s) and thus Red would make it to the point sooner to defend.
Idea 2 - Blind Spots for Sentries
http://labs.topaz-games.com/kj/images/screenies/panamint/ctf_panamint_a160006.jpg
If I recall correctly, the area approximiately where #2 is was quite a nice spot for Sentries.
This addition would allow for players reaching area #1 to take the small jumping short-cut and avoid sentries thanks to the added fences.
The other problem was that the staircase leading up to the floor at #2 was also covered by the sentry, this new setup should make it very difficult for a single sentry to cover both spots successfully.
Idea 3 - One-Way Access Gate
http://labs.topaz-games.com/kj/images/screenies/panamint/ctf_panamint_a160009.jpg
As seen in Dustbowl, there are 1 or 2 gates in key-areas in the map where owning them will almost garauntee your team's victory, these key-areas have gates that only open from one side.
My proposal is similar, encase the area shown in the screenshot in to a building, and make the proposed doorway in to a one-way access gate, preferably in Red's favour.
This would cut Blue short of being able to reach Red's routes from spawn to point, and adding a building to the currently open-area would also force Blue to use other means to get to the point (as you can barely see from the screeny, Scouts on that level can double-jump straight to the point, or close enough to it)
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2 or more of these ideas together might not work, but individually they seem okay enough to me, but then I guess to know for sure, you'd have to test them with real people.
And these are only my ideas, I don't have a firm belief that they will work, I do hope that they help you in some way, be it simply using those ideas or coming up with an even better way of solving the problem.
Hope this helped, good luck again with the map!