Pickup placement

[ThatOneOwl]

While working on my map, I came to the point, where I must sprinkle around some pickups, so that players would be able to progress further into the enemy territory, wtihout the need of going back to their home base and resupply.
The question is: how do I add pickups the correct way? In particular, I have the following questions:
1)What's the optimal amount of pickups should be placed on a map, and what kind of pickups? (more like "what's the average amount of pickups apperars on every map?")
2)What distance should be between the pickup spawns?
3)Should different pickup spawns have a clear line of sight between one another?
4)How do I choose the place for a pickup?

 

[FloofCollie]

On Attack/Defend and Payload maps, health is usually strategically placed around so that attackers can fall back to it. Often each separate route will have its own quantity of health for attackers to use, and changing the amount in each can influence how popular each is. Generally attackers have more health available I believe.

Alternatively, use health as something to fight over, like a lot of the ones in Upward.

Generally I either place ammo next to health for player convenience or near to popular defensive positions.

Check out this video for more information and a better explanation:

View: https://youtu.be/dI8G-vwzWIY

 

[Yrr]

placing pickups is basically about where you want to aid pushes and holds

health gives the team controlling that area an advantage
ammo gives the team controlling that area staying/setup power

if theres no health they gotta back up when they take too much damage
if theres no ammo they gotta back up after a certain amount of time because they run out of ammo

the sizes help determine how strong or loose this hold is

putting pickups where people don't already go will usually make them go there, but will also expose problems with areas not already designed around being a push/hold spot

additionally there's thinking about engineers building and rollout health, but those usually work themselves out or make themselves apparent if theyre missing


imo you wanna keep larger healths away from things like objectives and "no mans land" combat zones because they give the team controlling that area too much power, you also probably want to avoid rewarding holding an advantageous spot with additional advantage in the form of larger pickups for the same reason

in koth for example you want the team holding the point to have to fall back eventually for health and ammo

in arena, you mostly want to keep pickups small because larger pickups have significantly more importance in that mode, a full healthkit is a complete do-over for someone and that's absurdly powerful

 

[Another Bad Pun]

Valve has said that sometimes they will just put pickups where players like to hold

 

[Yrr]

yea if u can guess or observe where people hold thats pretty much the easiest way to get the first lot down
(altho u prob dont wanna test a version that doesnt have any cause that will be 100% of the feedback)