arena_byre_72_a3 - a lot of people were confused when we would rush the points and win the round very quickly. it was odd that rushing the points was the dominant strategy instead of arena's regular combat. otherwise it was pretty fast paced and you always felt like you were in danger which I particularly like in videogames - stress. didn't really use the theme.
arena_doge_72 - I think I heard this was a joke map made in 2 hours, but if it wasn't it actually plays like one! map is too small, and becomes unfun at second round. didn't really use the theme.
arena_egan_72 - alien too weak in late round. probably should have cut the damage resistance and gave blue minicrits. increasing the red respawn timer i guess was a bad decision but maybe thats the moral is that if you have 24 hours left in the 72 hour contest and you're making a new mode and your map plays 'pretty good' understand that it's risking a lot to change the gameplay around again even if you think it will fix the mode.
arena_loggery_72_a5 - too flat and open to have much meaningful combat for most classes, it also made the routes feel pretty spaced apart and therefore predictable where enemies were. thats something that arena is great for - predicting where the enemy will show up. thats why large spaces where you can see all routes are bad for arena (this was a large complaint from many players on [arenafortress]).
arena_mhanko_72 - gets boring too fast cause theres not enough variation in the routes. I remember mentioning to exagerrate the building geometry outward into the middle and it seems you did slightly, but I meant like 4x as much as you ended up doing - really shifting the space to change sightlines / gameplay. you mentioned you wanted that sniper balcony because it gives good sight over the point, and that's true, but it was a very tough spot to counter so it was too powerful.
cp_alex76_72_a4 - good, last too hard to attack it seemed some rounds. didn't really use the theme.
cp_crashinburn_72_a4 - A seemed too hard to attack because the only ground route onto the point was at the back, past all the sniper & nests. people seemed confused where B was in relation to the doors from A, also it was pretty dark around B / C. There was a side route onto C from the ground but it was in total shadow so not many people seemed to notice it, so C usually had the same problem as A - ground routes only from back - past nests. didn't really use the theme.
cp_discovery_72_a1 - layout is confusing because the hud shows its a pyramid capture point map, but its actually just a line of points - confusing. last always seemed to go too quickly, I dont think there was ever defense put into that, maybe it was because people couldnt find it or it wasn't a major-enough place in the map.
cp_googugajoob_72 - I didn't really play this enough to judge the gameplay much. Mid was very dark and I had trouble counting the number of blue guys I was facing outside. Mid itself seemed scary to go onto because it was very open. Some people mentioned that the map was too large, but I'm not sure if it was or not because of my small amount of playtime.
cp_mt_toast_72 - like the feedback mentions, you did SetTime instead of AddTime on capture point 1 which just imploded the second capture point's gameplay. didn't really use the theme.
cp_snowstation_72_a8 - really good, good ammo/health placements, first is somewhat hard to attack, supposedly no engi setups at first (donut said this in a test so blame him if its wrong). didn't really use the theme though.
ctf_encounter_72_final - I don't like ctf so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Like in regular ctf maps I felt the intel room was far away and boring for the people inside it, like they were very disconnected from the battle. I liked the overall layout of the map, I think even scorpio's standin-styled rooftop map & this one have cool spaces and feelings. I guess I felt like it was a bit tedious constantly running around the central structure either trying to find gaps in defenses or to look for the flag carrier, the gameplay of ctf is 2boring4me in general.
ctf_miniscus_72_a4 - hard to retake control of your own base, might want to do a ctf_converge and put the spawn behind the flag room so you always face the right way - would also keep the confusion of 'oh im going the wrong way' down, cause that happens a lot initially. I kinda liked the bridge section's gameplay, how it let a lot of players out into the middle but it was difficult to take immedietly. The water mechanic was kinda neat but I don't see what it has to do with 'war of the worlds' to be honest.
ctf_orange_reclaim_72_a1 - too small and hard to understand. seemed like random placement of objects instead of any meaningful combat ideas or even routes for that matter. I guess good attempt. Its pretty normal that a mapper's first few maps are 'learning the ropes' - you'll get better.
ctf_redplanet_72_a4 - the map is pretty fun, good balance, it seems you took a lot of inspiration from converge which is good. the map seemed to get old kinda quickly, but even that happened on coverge. Im not sure how you'd fix that though tbh. good idea for the theme, but maybe it wasn't so obvious that there was a big ufo above the map - I only saw it after my 4th time playing.
koth_farm51_a2 - my fps was pretty poor on this map, mid was prop-spammy and otherwise flat to fight on, people were always on the same level seeing that the doors leading to mid were all on the same level. the green glow on mid made it really hard to tell which team people were on. the map layout was initially pretty confusing because the buffer zone ends without any view to the point or any specific way onto a 'main section' (look at lakeside/viaduct buffer zones).
koth_fredrik_72 - I didn't play this map enough.
koth_korea_72 - the map is small, no buffer zone between point and spawn so if you take control of the area right infront of point - you also control the spawns. no respawn room visualisers so you can just walk right into enemy spawns.
koth_launch_72_a7 - pretty fun map, had a cool finale. was actually bright enough to see team colours! (we joked about this in-game after playing a lot of dark maps). didn't really use the theme of 'war of the worlds' though.
koth_notrushed_72_a2 - too small both horizontally and vertically too, as a result the map gets boring quickly because of lack of combat variation.
koth_probed_72_b1 - neat idea! I know the feeling of new-gamemode-72hour-unbalanced, and I bet if you had another 30 minutes to work on this you could have just tweaked the uber time on ufo-exit players, cause that was pretty overpowered as people have mentioned in the feedback. it was also possible to gently nudge yourself towards the exit inside the ufo and collect the uber but not teleport away, which could be abused as you were standing right next to where enemies popped out of. the map layout seemed okay.
koth_something_72_b1 - the point is broken and never unlocks, as Im sure the feedback has pointed out 10 times. the map felt pretty cramped with the new buildings you added near mid, and that low route at mid still seemed cramped as we mentioned a few times. the hdr bloom was also pretty bright. you can alter the bloom scale by sending your env_tonemap_controller an input from a logic_auto at the start of the round for SetBloomScale 0.1, for instance.
koth_spoil_72_a4 - I didn't play this map. (I played previous versions, but thats not really fair to judge on).
koth_waytoofuckingfast_72 - map played well, I liked the one a way doors actually, felt like a unique koth map which is rare. didn't really use the theme.
koth_yacan1_72_a1 - weird to fight in because of all the different-height brushes cutting up the space. mid was really open and made it scary to stand on while you capped, unlike lakeside where you at least have a side building to fall back onto, or to just simply step off the stairs backwards. the upper floors were pretty dark, I made note of it in the feedback.
pl_amairo_72_a4 - awkward to defend areas, not enough indication of whats behind a corner or a wall, lots of surprising sniper sightlines and deathpits that we accidentally walked into.
pl_goldblum_a2_72 - this map is too large overall. and with no player clipping you can just sticky jump to the end of it you want. to get a good sense of scale try experimenting with how far a no-charge sticky bomb fires. see the distance in a regular payload map, and compare it to your's. its not the most elegant way to compare scale, but its not bad, and its easy.
pl_inari_72_a5 - was fun. seemed first area was capped too quickly, same thing about third. second felt pretty great. I know you mentioned that "I cant make it any more obvious" to turn left out of that forward spawn, but because its facing the wrong way it still happened that people went the wrong way, including me at times where I wasn't constantly looking at the signs. third point seems to go too quick for blue because although there is a large upper structure around the top of it, I dont think red even noticed it before they lost control of the building. dont think I ever actually went up there. the height around last might have been a bit extreme since people in the top room were shooting at people below them who seemed to never look up, but otherwise last felt okay.
pl_martialkombat_72_a3 - good your lighting isn't pale and gray anymore! I liked the gameplay on this map *up until last), it was possible to hold first and win but it was difficult and only happened with a strong defense. last felt tedious to defend, it wasn't fun I think because you don't get many intricate spaces to hold in, just the UFO top which is in line of many snipers.
pl_smash_72_a2a - when we played this people kept timing out, everyone except me, was really suspicious - so I only played previous versions of the map - which played pretty fine up to last which was sniper heaven it always seemed like.
pl_smileyship_72_a6 - very spammy intro, 3rd point, and last point - I remember feedbacking that in previous versions.
pl_starward_72_final - I remember not many people using the side exit for blue when attacking last, probably just didnt notice it at all, maybe thats not a big deal but it wasn't rare that red could push blue back to their forward spawn. attacking last was pretty spammy and the sniper sighlines were pretty rough how far back they stretched down the main path. also my fps while standing on last waspretty bad.
plr_micnax_72_a4 - I didn't play this map. (I played previous versions, but thats not really fair to judge on).
plr_vanilla_72_b5 - the invisible UFO floating around the map killing people was pretty annoying, but at least it was a guaranteed killing machine. the map seemed too easy to roll once your cart got to the straight path at the end.
sd_hd_kaptan_kul_72 - I didn't play this map.
sd_wich_72 - sometimes breaks, hard to see people through the trees when standing on ufo hill because the colours all blend together, hard to see snipers in general. second time playtesting this map it caused everyone to losed connection, not sure if server issue but every other map ran fine.
@All maps, make sure you checkout your associated feedback page available
here. Lots of stuff people aren't mentioning here is in there.
My top 3 maps:
ctf_redplanet_72_a4
koth_launch_72_a7
pl_inari_72_a5
So the problem I had with this contest is same problem a lot of people had with the last 72 hour contest - which is that the theme really sways towards one specific style. In the last contest it was a particular gameplay format (setup time - kinda boring), and in this case it was a
detail format and not really a
gameplay format (it took me a long time to think of how 'war of the worlds' can be turned into fun gameplay). Considering in 72 hour contests we always say that we judge a map's gameplay more than its detail, it seems a bit weird that the detail pretty much became the theme of this contest. Even, I can, just like the last 72 hour contest, count on one hand how many maps really fit the theme, and not just in half-assed detail (ufo prop hovering above mid).
I think the problem with vote turnout is that a lot of people feel obliged to play every map before they vote, and with 36 maps that probably felt difficult for a lot of people. I didn't play all the maps, and I don't think anybody did in a server with other people.
