CP Snowplow Final Version

[Crash]

1. Strip the map down so it's a standard A/D map.
2. In keeping the train theme of the map, the traps are instead replaced with large barricades/explosives/whatever. BLU's new goal is to clear the barricades off the track instead of walking the train down its path and freeing it from danger like a lemming.
3. When time runs out (and overtime ends), the train comes zipping down the track killing anyone in the way, crashes into the first barricade in its way and explodes.
4. If BLU clears all of the barricades, the train does the same thing but keeps going since there's nothing in its way. Zipping into the tunnel leading down the mountain in stage 1 or crashing into RED's explosive stockpile in stage 2.

Similar idea, but maybe instead of waiting to do the train at the end, have it exactly as it is now, even with the smashers, but have the hits just for looks. Have a timer that counts down with each stop, adding time after each capture. The goal is to capture each point and clear the path for the train to make it to the End of the Line™.

This keeps the map pretty similar but gets rid of the part that's presumably "confusing".

 

[Psychopath]

Similar idea, but maybe instead of waiting to do the train at the end, have it exactly as it is now, even with the smashers, but have the hits just for looks. Have a timer that counts down with each stop, adding time after each capture. The goal is to capture each point and clear the path for the train to make it to the End of the Line™.

This keeps the map pretty similar but gets rid of the part that's presumably "confusing".

Having it stop, even to a grinding halt, at every point just makes the train feel more like a prop than it feels like this deadly runaway that needs to be stopped at any cost. Hell, having it stop at all goes against what the short gave to that train's weight. Stopping it in the short took a lot of force, having to lose/gain that every time a point is reached just seems off to me.

That's just how I feel about it personally. Maybe others share that sentiment.

 

[fauks]

Keep the tracks. Make it standard A/D. Only show the train coming in high-speed when blu caps the last point.

 

[Toomai]

Played map for the first time today, for about 5 minutes (map time ran out shortly after I joined). Can immediately understand Valve's rationale of "confusion" for not accepting it - while I personally understood what was going on, it was pretty clear to me that a newer player would have no clue.

Two problems stood out to me. First, the train having the objective glow makes it stand out too much, taking attention away from the things that actually control winning (since, unlike every other map with a glowing thing, you don't win by touching it). Second, because the train meter and the timer are across the screen from each other (instead of grouped together), it's not quickly apparent that running out of time means the train gets hurt (as opposed to ending the round, like on every other map with a timer). Having the train meter just under the timer, perhaps showing "100 HP" instead of "100%", would probably help (if it's possible).

There was also a few players that got killed by the train-crusher/laser/etc and had no idea why they died. Probably because if you're not staring at the train as it gets hit, you may never realize exactly what's being done to it. If it were me, I'd put some flashing lights around five seconds beforehand, though I'd also be using the klaxon sound instead of an announcer countdown and synchronizing train poundings with a global timer instead of the HP system; I'm just rambling at this point.

PEDIT:

Keep the tracks. Make it standard A/D. Only show the train coming in high-speed when blu caps the last point.

To be frank, I think this might have been what Valve was expecting at the outset. I mean, I don't know how much attention they were paying to the project as it was moving, but it can't have been that much if they never gave you a strong thumbs-down at any point.

 

[Freyja]

PEDIT:To be frank, I think this might have been what Valve was expecting at the outset. I mean, I don't know how much attention they were paying to the project as it was moving, but it can't have been that much if they never gave you a strong thumbs-down at any point.

They playtested it numerous times both internally and with the mappers, that's how the gamemode ended up as it is.

 

[Lampenpam]

Jesus christ what are you expecting? An update ever hour? They're probably doing that already. The map makers are real people too, something a few of you in this thread seem to be forgetting. Seriously...

I expected a reply or at least a thanks and thought they either ignore my post or just don't get what i'm talking about.
But I appologize for my unpatience and rude post

 

[EArkham]

Is the snow that's on the various crates a prop or a displacement? I was looking for it in the EotL model pack and didn't see it.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

they're under props_snowplow as snowcrate_01

credit to Sexy Robot for them (and the oil drum ones)

 

[Pocket]

Having it stop, even to a grinding halt, at every point just makes the train feel more like a prop than it feels like this deadly runaway that needs to be stopped at any cost. Hell, having it stop at all goes against what the short gave to that train's weight. Stopping it in the short took a lot of force, having to lose/gain that every time a point is reached just seems off to me.

That's just how I feel about it personally. Maybe others share that sentiment.

This is another possible inherent problem with this update; someone came up with an idea for a video and then expected Frozen to make a playable thing out of it. It's almost the exact same problem that occurs with licensed video games.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

This is another possible inherent problem with this update; someone came up with an idea for a video and then expected Frozen...

And YM.

 

[Psychopath]

This is another possible inherent problem with this update; someone came up with an idea for a video and then expected Frozen to make a playable thing out of it. It's almost the exact same problem that occurs with licensed video games.

To be honest that sounds more like a miscommunication issue than anything else. The short has the base premise of a runaway train. The first iteration of the map had players following a slow-moving train and guiding it down different tracks, the more-recent iterations have people following a fast-moving train that stops every 200 meters or so. Neither of these are implementations are close to what the original premise was.

I get that there was a bias toward making the train the focus from the start, but actual gameplay doesn't follow a fast-moving train like the sniper and scout did in the short. YM tried early on and failed to create something worth keeping, future iterations held that ground on following a train; I don't know if it was stubbornness or tenacity in trying to make something work but, putting things bluntly, it didn't. Half of the short's focus was on stopping the train and even then it was a climactic ending and not an ongoing event that characters followed around for its entirety. That's what the map should have been geared towards if it wants to keep true to the train thematic without creating wonky gameplay surrounding it. It's not nearly as bad of a problem as what licensed games have, since the characters in the short are still the same characters in the game with no changes made, but it's definitely something that should've been flagged down early on.

 

[Pocket]

That's just it. Some things are just impossible to implement within the framework of an existing game, even if you did have the resources to produce a brand-new gamemode. When Valve made Doomsday, I'll bet you almost anything they came up with the concept for the map first and wrote a story around it. That's how game design is supposed to work, and it's why licensed games usually don't.

 

[BigBros]

Why this feedback didn't come in through early alpha and beta still baffles me... Obviously people have negative/positive feelings about the map, so why didn't you make it heard before it got denied?

 

[YM]

That's just it. Some things are just impossible to implement within the framework of an existing game, even if you did have the resources to produce a brand-new gamemode. When Valve made Doomsday, I'll bet you almost anything they came up with the concept for the map first and wrote a story around it. That's how game design is supposed to work, and it's why licensed games usually don't.

They say: "We make a map fun, then once it's done do a second art pass after we've thought up some cooky explanation for it's story"

 

[fauks]

Why this feedback didn't come in through early alpha and beta still baffles me... Obviously people have negative/positive feelings about the map, so why didn't you make it heard before it got denied?

It being an unnecessarily complex timer was mentioned quite a few times, right from when the TF2Maps play test went public.

 

[Toomai]

Why this feedback didn't come in through early alpha and beta still baffles me... Obviously people have negative/positive feelings about the map, so why didn't you make it heard before it got denied?

Well this is why I personally never provided feedback or even looked at the map before the update:

1. I knew there was a map called "cp_snowplow" being headed by a tf2maps.net staff member that was getting a lot of testing time on the server.
2. I knew there was an upcoming update related to the upcoming community video known as "End of the Line". I believed this would be a Valve update that would be headed with said video.
3. I figured that if these two points were indeed related in some way, Valve would have an iron fist around the testing due to being 100% committed to adding said map with the update.

Clearly, number 3 here was the tripping point.

I wonder if Valve has a cache of newbies that test every update before it goes live, and the people that run that cache aren't allowed to communicate with the people that make/approve the content.

 

[Psychopath]

I wonder if Valve has a cache of newbies that test every update before it goes live, and the people that run that cache aren't allowed to communicate with the people that make/approve the content.

To be fair, even without a group of new players one can piece together why it's confusing.

• It functions as an A/D map with more things going on visually than normal.
• Train HUD is spread across the top and bottom of the screen instead of all relevant information being paired up. I know it'd have been cluttered but splitting attention like that doesn't turn out well.
• Train has a healthbar without immediately implying that the train doesn't take damage when shot at. This was especially prevalent in early alphas when the train was literally just the MvM tank. A common videogame precedent is that anything with a healthbar can be attacked and destroyed/killed; this defied that precedent.
• Train has the payload cart glow, which draws focus toward the train instead of the control point nearest it. In practice, the train is ignored while the control point is focused on. If anything should be glowing it'd make sense for the active control point to do so.
• There's no indication about the train recovering health after a point capture or maintaining its current damage when transitioning to the next stage.

 

[xzzy]

The train mechanic isn't the only confusing part of the map, and I think people fixate on it way too much. We're well beyond the point where it's useful to harp on the topic further, the creators are probably well aware of everyone's opinion and generating more of it isn't going to be useful.

The map itself has some issues with routes and pathway signaling, nothing major, but still stuff that needs to be looked at.

The second point on the first stage for example, I watched several players new to the map cluster through the one way door for long periods trying to take down a sentry, never discovering the wide route over by the cliffs that would have offered a clear line of sight to attack the nest.

I saw other problems with players just flat out getting lost (which on a linear map is pretty impressive) or mindlessly grinding against the same chokepoints, but I wasn't really watching the game with an eye towards generating feedback and didn't think to make a note of what I saw.

I don't know if the map is still seeing layout revisions but that's probably a more beneficial topic for people to make a zillion posts about.

 

[Doctor_Lazlo]

So, uh, how much work's been done on lowering the entity count? Just curious.

 

[PuddlesRex]

Issue with bots

So, I generated the navigation meshes for both parts of the map, the issue is that the bots can't recognize that the map is a Capture Point map, they think that it's a Payload map, therefore they don't go for the caps, they just huddle around the train. Any recommended fixes for this?