pl_timbermill_rc3c Showcase Stuff:
stage 1, A:
- Powerful far-away sightline for snipers that leads to main exit routes of blue base. This sort of sightline would be fine for a side route, annoying for main route.
- Powerful straight sightline for snipers in side route also - through door up stairs.
- A lot of one-way doors, closed doors, hard to find your way around at first.
stage 1, B:
- Choke immedietly after A was dangerous because while sideroutes exist that go past it, the side routes were not obvious enough. The one to the right of this choke (from blue perspective) is hidden in the building leading in a different direction. This type of choke also seemed a bit too dangerous for the 2nd point of the map.
- Side route in question had a room to its right that felt odd, dead end with doors that show second stage, not sure if important at first glance, confusing.
- High ground around capture point may be too powerful for defenders, but if blue used the side routes more it might be okay. As it stands it was a battle of attrition that wasn't fun for the attackers.
stage 2, A:
- Exiting out top exit as blue was annoying since you ended up having to go back downstairs anyway to leave base.
- First building cart passes through was not fun to combat people in. Area was dark and hard to see players. Hard to see entrances leading into the area because nothing in particular catches your eye. Blues were able to get in all over the red team through all the different entrances.
- Detailing in this building on the side, through chicken wire felt like it wasn't 100% not a combat area. If the base of the chicken wire fence had a foot-high border it would feel less distracting. Use of props were creative though.
stage 2, B:
- First section leading away from A point felt good to attack, details looked good also. Defenders should maybe be given more time. Perhaps use barnblitz's instant defender respawn mechanic when a point is capped using a game_forcerespawn.
- Defending this point was difficult for the same powerful sightline reason as exiting blue spawn in the first area of the map where there is a deadly sightline over main exits of the base. Either sniper is all the way back in this direction near the cliff, where he is out of the gameplay space that you'd concern yourself with, or he is standing closer in the dark tunnel where you can't see him anyway. Light up the tunnel and the room above it more.
- Box route leading up the left side (from red perspective) could use more boxes so other classes can use route apart from just scouts, could be cool.
- Ability for blue team to take a lot of high ground behind red team was very annoying for defenders - they would have to fight from two directions and would lose often. This may have been an error; there is a gate door in the upper floor near red's base that seems like it was supposed to be a one-way gate for red team since red spawns very close, but the gate can be opened from both sides. Blue team is able to push from their upper-floor one-way gate door of their own above the tunnel when red isn't paying attention and can push all the way back through this second gate door and take control of red easily.
- Leading red to the highground areas could be better.
- The capture point pit is open before the cart gets there - open to a deathpit. This isn't particularly useful for anything beyond killing people who aren't paying attention. Funny, but also annoying - should be sealed until cart gets very close, or just in the finale animation entirely.
stage 3, A:
- The low ceiling of the area give mobile classes a difficult time.
- There wasn't many routes for attackers to try to flank sentry positions. The sentry positions felt good for defenders, but attackers need more opportunity to exit their base.
- Finding ammo for non-engineer defenders was difficult, since the large ammo was taken by engineers often, and the small ammopack on the bridge is hidden behind some barrels.
- Walk times for defenders were too short: 8 seconds for defenders, 8 seconds for attackers. Maybe increase defender spawn times a bit if you don't want to redesign the area too much.
stage 3, B:
- This point didn't get played much at all, after blue took A they just rolled through here. This could be a manner of us just having to play more rounds on the map however.
stage 3, C:
- The cart seemed to roll in too quickly before red could get set up adequately so gameplay here didn't last long. It feels like blue has a lot of options for attacking - generally this is the other way around (good ways for defense).
- We didn't use the underground area much. For defenders there is a section in the bottom area where it just leads to a dropdown from the blue section, but for red players you don't notice this so it's just a dead end if you go through it all. A one-way gate here may be okay here, but better signage may be fine just.
- You can't stick stickies on the last section of ground. You can do what I did with my discovery map and just coat this surface in invisible prop_dynamic garage doors so that you can stick stickies on the prop_dynamics - and then just disable them when you blow up the ground at the end.
Conclusion:
The map shows prowess in hammer; you use a lot of techniques and detail ideas throughout the stages. However there were inconsistencies in clipping and detailing throughout the map, some spots looked good, but there was a general feeling of not-good quality in the rest of the areas. It seems you may have made the jump to the polishing/detailing stage a bit too quickly before buffing out the weird gameplay of some areas. It can be improved. We aren't going to add this to the showcase section yet but the map may be ready if you can fix the gameplay and detail oddities in each stage.
Feedback from the server.