CP stoneyridge rc2

[xzzy]

My favorite health pack on the map is the one in the trench below A.

I've seen several people (in various forms of being shot or burned alive) jump off A trying to land on the health pack.. and cratering a few inches shy. It's a pretty subtle troll.

 

[Crash]

I do think we could reduce the health packs a bit, maybe just shrinking the size of them in spots. Like the one inside the shed outside of spawn could probably be a medium, along with the one in the courtyard outside of Red's spawn. The rest aren't bad though, I think.

But yeah, that one in the trench is prime. It's dangerous to go for it because of the splatter, and because you are so low compared to the surroundings. I like the contrast. It's got a really good risk vs reward, beyond the healthpack, even. Pushing through there gives you some good cover and penetration if you can make it through without drawing too much attention.

I like that trench.

I don't know if I like hearing "Ding" said over and over...

But I do like the ornament hit you get about 15 seconds in.

I might get tired of it, but it's really funny to me still so it doesn't bug me.

Yeah that was a sweet hit, I was so close to doing it again to the same guy a bit later, too.

 

[grazr]

The thing you need to consider is that having too many health packs prevents you from controlling player flow.

By having a small health pack in one area and a medium in another gives areas a certain probability factor regarding enemy or friendly activity and allows players to make certain gameplay predictions and specific tactical choices such as which direction to fall back to if they run out of health or ammo. Having a ton of mini health packs everywhere makes gameplay messy and convoluted because it dilutes tactical choices and predictions.

Maybe i should write a tutorial on methodical health and ammo placement.

 

[heyyou]

The health placement is something that was heavily focused on during early test stages, but should definitively be revisited again - especially when it comes to size. Good point about competitive too.

Crash, I think the two you pointed out were the two I've questioned a lot. We'll drop them down to mediums and test in the next version. I've also thought about dropping the one in the rocket room down to a small.

 

[xzzy]

Yeah, it's hard to say if it really needs changed.. the map has a hundred hours of play testing at this point and health hasn't been a huge issue. Defense gets pushed back in pretty steady increments and offense has to coordinate better as they move through the map which is pretty much exactly what you want.

But watching Crash's video made me notice how rapidly a scout can scoop up a ton of health in a really short time, and the more I think about it, the more the whole map seems like that. Is it reasonable to delete some of the health entirely, and maybe upgrade the ammo drops to encourage the use of dispensers?


Like, if you compare to granary, everyone knows where the big health packs are. They're landmarks on their own and you can usually find a number of hurt players in the area looking to recover. Pill bottles are sprinkled all over the place and are strategically placed to absorb "travel" damage.

Maybe we should identify where we want team rally points to be, and save the big health packs for those areas?

Or maybe leave it exactly like it is because it's tested fine so far.

 

[heyyou]

Maybe we should identify where we want team rally points to be, and save the big health packs for those areas?

This is how most are currently.

I found recently that the amount of health in stoneyridge is actually pretty close to gorge. Not that gorge is our ultimate goal, but we can use the unknown amount of testing hours they put in direction-ally for this map.

I think the couple of changes I put forward should work fine. I have a couple of small health packs I'm thinking we should take out also.

 

[Boylee]

Small health packs are the most difficult to place in my opinion. The tendency (at least for me) is either to spam them everywhere or hardly place any at all. When I'm actually thinking about small health packs cogently I tend to think of them as something to place when players are complaining of a lack of health in an area and not before.

Grazr, write that tutorial man.

 

[Crash]

I was think that we could even go drastic and try bumping those two health packs I was talking about down to smalls. I do feel like we have too many right now. I'm going to make an overhead map that shows where each is, because I think it'll help point out how close they are together.

 

[heyyou]

I'm going to make an overhead map that shows where each is, because I think it'll help point out how close they are together.

This will be helpful... and scary to see. I know there are a couple of healthpacks that are pretty close together. We will fix.

Also, might not be a bad idea to do the same for Gorge - just as a good comparison.

 

[xzzy]

Since Crash was being TOO SLOW I went ahead and did it, because I was curious.

http://xzzy.org/files/games/tf2/stoneyridge/stoneyridge_health.jpg

Didn't inline it because it's a 300kb beast.

The more I look at it, the more I'm undecided. The most health is clustered near offense's spawn room, and I've never seen defense dominate in this region. Those two medium kits are my biggest concern.. they're both on a natural scout loop and might make them too annoying?

I'm not sure what to do.

I might do one for gorge later, though it's more of a pain because I don't have a vmf for it.

 

[Crash]

Yooou son of a bitch.

http://www.ueak.net/crash/maps/cp_stoneyridge/StoneyOverview.jpg

At least I did ammo too.

edit: You missed one! Suck it!

 

[xzzy]

But I used the totally awesome tf2 font.

Suck that!

 

[Crash]

http://www.ueak.net/crash/maps/cp_stoneyridge/StoneyOverviewNum.jpg

Eat a dick, I just added numbers at Hey You's request, and he saw mine first.

I win.

 

[heyyou]

Ok kids, don't make me turn this car around.

So I've been thinking about this a lot today. Here are my thoughts:
-Remove the small health at 9 (take away red's height advantage over A slightly, for this spot)
-Lower the full health at 12 to a medium
-Either remove 15 or lower the full health at 2 to a medium
-Maybe lower 13 from medium to a small (Blu generally uses this pack, I think it would help slow down the attack on B)
-Haven't had any issues with ammo, I think it's fine.

Thoughts?

 

[xzzy]

I think one of 2, 3 or 4 needs downgraded a level.

(3 could probably be eliminated entirely as an option too)

 

[Crash]

Removing 9 sounds good. Definitely try out 12 being a medium. I think lowing 2 to a medium for now is an ok change for the next version. Maybe later we can even test getting rid of 15 AND having 2 a medium? 13 to a small sounds good, Blu does seem to have an easy time taking B at times.

On ammo however, I do think we could handle some tweaks. Granted I rarely play engineer, so I could be off base. Although I do play a lot of spy and there are some pretty brutal spy chains. I think 4 could be a small, as well as 5 to improve this. It might be a good idea to bump 11 up to a large, actually, so encourage that area to be the go-to engy nest on that section. It seems to work well right now, but takes a lot of effort to get up there and get it started. I think the larger kit will help this.

 

[xzzy]

Also, since I got stuck on this last night and it got me killed, which is completely unacceptable, someone needs to either clip off these stairs, or add more brushes so the stairs curve into the wall:

The lamps can probably be deleted.

(there's some wasted faces in there too, and those light bands come from it being a func_detail)

 

[Crash]

Those stairs are such a bitch because of how they are angled.

 

[xzzy]

Instancing could help with that, as it allows you to build on the grid in one window while placing and rotating the results however you want in another window.

(though it's complicated a bit by our completely nonexistant revision control. Manually passing around a vmf certainly works, but if the file list grew we'd have issues)

Odds are one of us will just have to suck it up and fix the stairs like they are.

 

[heyyou]

Lets just make it a ramp.