- Thread starter Defcon
- Start date
MM1011
L1: Registered
- Apr 15, 2023
- 31
- 14
Hi! My community has been following this map closely since _a5, and I wanted to share some feedback. Our community is 32 player fast respawn, but I notice that our respawn settings (5 seconds) seems pretty close to the numbers you throw out in your changelogs, so while our experience is skewed I do not think it is excessively so.
The main issue we encounter is with B. It is very hard for BLU to take the first corner on B right before the train bridge area. RED generally controls the far battlements (by RED spawn, no easy BLU access), the train bridge, the valley under the bridge, and that first corner around the rock column. We are finding that it is very difficult to displace RED from enough of these locations to make good progress. BLU's new left flank tunnel is easily spammed out from a variety of locations, and the raised lip means that an uber through it is often launched vertically by sentries. The underground one-way is a powerful flank, but it means an attack is sandwiched between the rock column and the far battlements. Attacking the rock column area from the long ways means you have to push pretty far under enemy fire into a wide open area RED can just scatter in, minimizing impact. Attacking the train bridge directly itself generally works for a little while but RED reinforces that area faster than BLU.
Generally, the most consistently successful strategy we've seen is for BLU to build up a base on the far right flank in the building before the train bridge and cap roof and pushing from there, but it tends to be unintuitive and hard to pull off on a full server as the map design naturally funnels BLU down the middle and left.
Without suggesting anything specific, I would say BLU needs a stronger advantage when it comes to fighting over the middle of the point. This could be accomplished also by weakening RED's advantages, instead.
Big fan of the map, looking forward to future revisions!
The main issue we encounter is with B. It is very hard for BLU to take the first corner on B right before the train bridge area. RED generally controls the far battlements (by RED spawn, no easy BLU access), the train bridge, the valley under the bridge, and that first corner around the rock column. We are finding that it is very difficult to displace RED from enough of these locations to make good progress. BLU's new left flank tunnel is easily spammed out from a variety of locations, and the raised lip means that an uber through it is often launched vertically by sentries. The underground one-way is a powerful flank, but it means an attack is sandwiched between the rock column and the far battlements. Attacking the rock column area from the long ways means you have to push pretty far under enemy fire into a wide open area RED can just scatter in, minimizing impact. Attacking the train bridge directly itself generally works for a little while but RED reinforces that area faster than BLU.
Generally, the most consistently successful strategy we've seen is for BLU to build up a base on the far right flank in the building before the train bridge and cap roof and pushing from there, but it tends to be unintuitive and hard to pull off on a full server as the map design naturally funnels BLU down the middle and left.
Without suggesting anything specific, I would say BLU needs a stronger advantage when it comes to fighting over the middle of the point. This could be accomplished also by weakening RED's advantages, instead.
Big fan of the map, looking forward to future revisions!
Hi, thanks for playing the map and taking the time to leave such in-depth feedback! What community are you from? If the server records STV demos it would be very helpful to have access to those so I can directly observe the issue you've described.
Unfortunately if I'm correctly understanding that the respawn times on this server are always 5 seconds for both teams, I suspect that actually has a pretty devastating effect on BLU's ability to push B in particular. BLU's intended spawn time on B is very short to compensate for the relatively long distance from their spawn to the point, and vice versa for RED. Giving both teams the same spawn time essentially reinforces the inherent advantages/disadvantages of each team's spawn location, allowing RED to hold much more aggressively and retake lost positions much more easily than they could normally.
I'm thrilled to hear that communities like yours are adopting the map, but I want to avoid making balance decisions catered towards servers with modified spawn times and team sizes so the map balance is not skewed in normal gameplay. I have observed a few less extreme cases of BLU struggling to push B on stock servers for some of the reasons you mentioned, so I will investigate ways I can potentially adjust the layout to mitigate this. I hope future versions of the map don't suffer from these problems on your server, but if it's possible to modify spawn times for individual maps in your rotation I highly suggest making them the default values on Phoenix for a better gameplay experience.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the map overall despite the issues and thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. Please don't hesitate to reach out again if you have any additional comments or feedback.
Unfortunately if I'm correctly understanding that the respawn times on this server are always 5 seconds for both teams, I suspect that actually has a pretty devastating effect on BLU's ability to push B in particular. BLU's intended spawn time on B is very short to compensate for the relatively long distance from their spawn to the point, and vice versa for RED. Giving both teams the same spawn time essentially reinforces the inherent advantages/disadvantages of each team's spawn location, allowing RED to hold much more aggressively and retake lost positions much more easily than they could normally.
I'm thrilled to hear that communities like yours are adopting the map, but I want to avoid making balance decisions catered towards servers with modified spawn times and team sizes so the map balance is not skewed in normal gameplay. I have observed a few less extreme cases of BLU struggling to push B on stock servers for some of the reasons you mentioned, so I will investigate ways I can potentially adjust the layout to mitigate this. I hope future versions of the map don't suffer from these problems on your server, but if it's possible to modify spawn times for individual maps in your rotation I highly suggest making them the default values on Phoenix for a better gameplay experience.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the map overall despite the issues and thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. Please don't hesitate to reach out again if you have any additional comments or feedback.
MM1011
L1: Registered
- Apr 15, 2023
- 31
- 14
No problems, we understand that our settings leave us unable to properly use a lot of maps and I don't expect any changes necessarily catered to us! The community is FITH (server ip for direct connect 216.52.148.223:27015) and our discord is fith.co/discord. We generally get phoenix in once a night for now, so while we don't have any demos to share you can probably come on on any random night to check it out yourself, if you'd like.
- Dec 15, 2013
- 531
- 799
Hey! Just wanted to say this map has been one of my favorites to watch progress. I played on the first few alphas and again yesterday. Its amazing how much progress has been made. You've done an excellent job making distinct, unique capture points and the theming is great! I've always wanted to see a map with tall red rocky spires. Your finale is also appropriately grand, it really feels like the round is coming to its climax. Most importantly, its fun as hell. Best of luck!
Not to detract from the fantastic work that Defcon has been doing, but I don't think "everyone else is bad" is the right way to go about praising someone's work.
The intention was mostly comedic hyperbole, though I recognize that an /s probably would've done the post good
SteveN
L1: Registered
- Jul 16, 2017
- 6
- 6
Hello! I found something I wanted to note on the map during an earlier casual game day on the TF2Maps server, since the feedback plug-in was disabled I was told to leave it here, thank you!
These two parts of the map aren't clipped and allow you to place stickybombs inside them
These two parts of the map aren't clipped and allow you to place stickybombs inside them
Miki
L1: Registered
- Feb 10, 2022
- 46
- 47
Congrats on getting accepted, I'm a fan of Altitude and Phoenix has been a lot of fun to play. Phoenix has been thoroughly polished and I couldn't find many issues worth bringing to attention. These issues are very minor, so if you have a bigger reason to recompile Phoenix, consider looking at these two screenshots.
At final, this clip brush seems misplaced and it can block movement when it visibly shouldn't.
BLU 1st spawn, these bottles have shadows on which look wrong sitting on the bench (also, the little birdy KrazyZark uses was replaced with a generic prop I noticed)
This one isn't a bug, rather I want to praise this triangular clip brush for smoothing the corner without becoming a platform, so good job on that (I'm stealing it).
Phoenix is part of the strong map selection this year, and it's in my top 3 maps of the update. Great effort, it's surely an inspiration to many of us.
At final, this clip brush seems misplaced and it can block movement when it visibly shouldn't.
BLU 1st spawn, these bottles have shadows on which look wrong sitting on the bench (also, the little birdy KrazyZark uses was replaced with a generic prop I noticed)
This one isn't a bug, rather I want to praise this triangular clip brush for smoothing the corner without becoming a platform, so good job on that (I'm stealing it).
Phoenix is part of the strong map selection this year, and it's in my top 3 maps of the update. Great effort, it's surely an inspiration to many of us.
I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times already, but congratulations on your map being accepted!
Here's a few minor visual things I noticed
You can see a tiny bit of light leaking through from the backsides of these displacements by the last point
Coords: -1315 1747 -195
Can be seen from in bounds too ^
While we're still over here, if you rocket jump while against the left wall you can see a tiny bit of a hole in the world where the displacement ends where the road curving up and the ground to its left meet. (slightly up and to the right of my crosshair)
This barrel up by the last point has some kinda weird vertex lighting. I unfortunately forgot to get a picture but there's a similar issue in one of the barrels near C (i think by the path leading from the flank route that comes in from outside? the area with the max health kit)
Coords: -3694 1291 343
The lighting on this wall near B is kinda blocky? its not super noticeable due to the sun spread settings
Coords: 700 -380 324
You can see this seam near blu spawn where 2 displacements with different textures meet
Coords: 4853 1274 4
This wall near C uses a horizontal wood texture instead of a vertical one like the rest of the building
Coords: -2135 -1090 0
These last ones mostly make sense for optimization reasons but there's a few things i'd change, plus some weird oddities.
you can also see some nodraw from the top of these support areas, but its high enough that its not a big deal, and hard to see unless you intentionally launch yourself into the skybox with a few stickies
Coords: -3435 1008 832
same location, but turned the other direction, for these ones you only need a rocket jump from one of the roofs at last, and you can get a pretty good view of some more nodraw. The cliffs make sense, but the bridge with the dump truck on it can even be seen by classes like scout, if they jump towards it.
Additionally, you might notice some other weird things in this image, like a flat plane through the hole by the dump truck. For some reason i can't possibly figure out, that one displacement from the little rest area at the first point is rendered. Its not in the PVS, I've been trying to figure this out for a solid 15 minutes but it doesn't make any sense.
There's also 2 lines rendering through the 3d skybox in this image (over one of the trees to the right of the middle of the screen), which as it turns out are the rails from the building by C.
You can also see 2 displacements from the cave area next to it, but its a bit harder due to backface culling and the cliffs in the way. If you go high enough they'll render through the 3d skybox tho. Same thing as above, i don't get it, especially because NOTHING else from this side of the map renders. I even went over there after locking the PVS (r_lockpvs 1 from one of the roofs at last in my case) and depending on the angle i was looking at sometimes the displacements would stop rendering????
Speaking of those rails at C, if you go high enough (its very high) at the corner before entering the building with C, you'll see this area, with a rail just stopping before going into the other train, and then next to that, another rail (same texture on the same brush) just going through the building and doing the same thing. Plus a good bit of nodraw, there's a tiny bit at the end of the main rail because the rail is a bit lower than the wood brush around it, and it looks like the water towers have no tops as well? Once again so high up that you can probably just skip this one tbh
Coords: -2204 -1151 1134
Hope this helps!
Here's a few minor visual things I noticed
You can see a tiny bit of light leaking through from the backsides of these displacements by the last point
Coords: -1315 1747 -195
Can be seen from in bounds too ^
While we're still over here, if you rocket jump while against the left wall you can see a tiny bit of a hole in the world where the displacement ends where the road curving up and the ground to its left meet. (slightly up and to the right of my crosshair)
This barrel up by the last point has some kinda weird vertex lighting. I unfortunately forgot to get a picture but there's a similar issue in one of the barrels near C (i think by the path leading from the flank route that comes in from outside? the area with the max health kit)
Coords: -3694 1291 343
The lighting on this wall near B is kinda blocky? its not super noticeable due to the sun spread settings
Coords: 700 -380 324
You can see this seam near blu spawn where 2 displacements with different textures meet
Coords: 4853 1274 4
This wall near C uses a horizontal wood texture instead of a vertical one like the rest of the building
Coords: -2135 -1090 0
These last ones mostly make sense for optimization reasons but there's a few things i'd change, plus some weird oddities.
you can also see some nodraw from the top of these support areas, but its high enough that its not a big deal, and hard to see unless you intentionally launch yourself into the skybox with a few stickies
Coords: -3435 1008 832
same location, but turned the other direction, for these ones you only need a rocket jump from one of the roofs at last, and you can get a pretty good view of some more nodraw. The cliffs make sense, but the bridge with the dump truck on it can even be seen by classes like scout, if they jump towards it.
Additionally, you might notice some other weird things in this image, like a flat plane through the hole by the dump truck. For some reason i can't possibly figure out, that one displacement from the little rest area at the first point is rendered. Its not in the PVS, I've been trying to figure this out for a solid 15 minutes but it doesn't make any sense.
There's also 2 lines rendering through the 3d skybox in this image (over one of the trees to the right of the middle of the screen), which as it turns out are the rails from the building by C.
You can also see 2 displacements from the cave area next to it, but its a bit harder due to backface culling and the cliffs in the way. If you go high enough they'll render through the 3d skybox tho. Same thing as above, i don't get it, especially because NOTHING else from this side of the map renders. I even went over there after locking the PVS (r_lockpvs 1 from one of the roofs at last in my case) and depending on the angle i was looking at sometimes the displacements would stop rendering????
Speaking of those rails at C, if you go high enough (its very high) at the corner before entering the building with C, you'll see this area, with a rail just stopping before going into the other train, and then next to that, another rail (same texture on the same brush) just going through the building and doing the same thing. Plus a good bit of nodraw, there's a tiny bit at the end of the main rail because the rail is a bit lower than the wood brush around it, and it looks like the water towers have no tops as well? Once again so high up that you can probably just skip this one tbh
Coords: -2204 -1151 1134
Hope this helps!
