Hi,
Just like sono, I have an irrepressible compulsion to comment on any map that promises a 2009-pilled experience.
I just watched a demo of the s1a1a playtest; although with it being low-playercount for all but the last round and with one team being 2 players down half the time, there's not a lot of useful insight.
Still, even with team imbalance or low playercount, you can still generally learn a lot about a map, such as where the lobby, forward hold and backward hold for each point are and how well the map respects them.
I like to start off with praise wherever possible.
In general, the microscopic design of this stage is very good! The routing is excellent; I couldn't recommend a single way in which you could connect each area to each other one better than the ways you've chosen, and there's evidence of very careful control over which entrances can see which other ones.
The only
potential issue (and even this is very small) with it is with rotate time, which I'll touch on later.
My issues generally arise with the macroscopic design, and even these issues are few in number.
What I mean by "macroscopic design" is stuff like respawn time, walk time to each point from each team's spawn and walk time between the two points.
The first, and most minor macroscopic issue I want to touch on is walk time to A for RED.
There's a massive disparity between RED's respawn time for A and B - 6 seconds for A, and 10 seconds for B. This is seemingly done deliberately, because RED's walk time to A is very long, whereas RED's walk time to B is very short - classic multi-stage stuff.
You see, I love 2009-pilled maps - but when I see someone claim to make a 2009-pilled MSPL map, I always internally groan, because I know that what I'll get is the same tight, square, winding corridor with occasional side doorways that just lead back into the same corridor after a while.
Of course it's possible to make a fun map in this way if you're smart enough -
pl_guzzle comes to mind.
But one thing these maps always get wrong is that since it's just a single tight corridor, RED can always build teleporters just behind each corner that become near-impossible for BLU to destroy, and since RED doesn't get a forward spawn, their walk time to A is always long enough that they NEED an invincible teleporter to defend A, or else they have no chance at all.
And if the distance between A and B is short enough that RED has an actually fair walk time to A, then B always rolls like a motherfucker.
In this sense mappers who want to make 2009-pilled maps can't win - they can either force the use of teleporters to defend A, or force B to be a roll point.
Except these mappers CAN win - they just don't know it.
There are two extremely simple solutions to this problem:
- Have a forward spawn for RED
- Have a shortcut for RED to get to A that closes after A is captured
Now, having a forward spawn for RED is against the holy scripture of the Cult of Casali. But having a shortcut isn't, cause Dario did it in both Dustbowl and Goldrush, in stage 3.
The next issue I want to speak on is the walk time to B.
In this playtest, BLU reported difficulty attacking B due to a long walk time.
This seems to be mostly cope to me, since RED never actually held any further forward than the designated forward hold area for B.
Normally, I would say to downplay the forward hold for a last point, but in my opinion that should only apply to the final stage of a multi-stage map.
So all is right in the world - or so it seems.
But, separately, the distance between A and B is also short.
Now, don't get me wrong. B never rolled in the demo, not even once. But you can tell whether a map is capable of rolling without having to
see it roll - you just check whether RED got the initial forward hold over B after A is captured.
I wasn't paying perfect attention in the demo, but it seems like most rounds RED did - despite the lack of an instant respawn. So that's pretty cool.
But there were still a couple of rounds where they didn't.
Now, that might just be a really bad RED team losing the initial fight at the forward hold, but it also might not be - I'll check back in the next playtest when there are more players.
You may doubt it, but this section is actually going somewhere!
If it turns out that you have to extend the distance between A and B in a future version of the map, the currently fair walk time for BLU to B will extend, and become unfair.
Therefore, you need a contingency plan for what you'll do then - whether that be a forward spawn for BLU, or a shortcut.
This is another reason why I always internally groan whenever someone makes another Goldrush clone.
The only reason why anyone thought having six (or seven!) control points in a map was a good idea was because Dustbowl has its B points roll fairly often (on the first stage almost every round), and Goldrush has them roll even more often, and on later stages.
If all the points on these maps were fair, people would be complaining about how much of a slog it would be to play through them. Plenty of people already do, WITH the roll points!
So, you need to make your points unfair for RED - but you need to give special care to HOW you make them unfair.
Long rotate and retreat times are generally the best way of doing so, but long respawn times combined WITH a medium-long walk time back to the point can also help.
As I said earlier, the corridor nature of these maps means that RED engis can cheat, and get rid of both the walk time (via teleporters) and the retreat time (via dispensers). But there's actually an even more pervasive isssue with corridor-style PL design, which is that RED can simply back behind a corner, and have incredibly quick retreat times to cover - if not necessarily health.
This leads into my only major complaint with B on this map - RED's rotate and retreat times are not long at all, neither on the forward hold nor on the backward hold. Especially since they have spawn doors and resupply lockers VERY close to the backward hold.
B also shamelessly steals most of Goldrush 3-C's design, with a bit of Badwater D mixed in. So, RED is given very strong defensive positions (as you'd expect from design elements taken from the finale of a PL map) - but this is only the final point of your first stage!
So, even though BLU's rotate and retreat times are short too (especially when attacking the backward hold), you get a point which is unexpectedly difficult for the 1-B of a multi-stage map.
A is also very uninspired. It's just a control point in the middle of the corridor, and a mixture of Rumford A and B. Since RED likes to hold around the corner of the corridor as I mentioned earlier, this generally means that BLU caps before even half of RED is dead. This does admittedly make the point very difficult for RED to hold, but it also makes it lame and un-exciting.
The first point of the first stage will be played in every single round, so it's
critically important!!! that it is both original, and the most fun point of the map - so that players are shown from the start that your map has a unique flavour, and every time they load into the map, they're immediately greeted with a mood-booster of the finest calibre.
The solutions to both B being hard and A being unoriginal are actually very simple.
You'd think that the points would need massive redesigns, but they don't.
All you need to do is make this stage the second stage of the map, and build a new first stage which is more original and less difficult.
That way, you get to keep B the way it is without it being unbalanced, and you get to keep A the way it is without the first point of your map being unoriginal.
I've attached a VMF to this post - I've heard it's pretty easy for BLU, and the guy who made it is pretty cool, and it's up for adoption.
Maybe it could become the backward hold of the A or B point for your first stage?
I betcha the guy who made it believes that map design is no one's property, and wouldn't ask for credit in any way, shape or form.
I like to end my feedback posts by hearkening back to the praise I started with.
I've talked a lot of shit in this post, but in truth it's when a map is highest in quality that I work the hardest to find things wrong with it, and I really do think that this is a
fun PL stage (and you know I don't call maps fun lightly), and leagues above the average """"2009-pilled"""" clone of pl_goldrush.
Keep up the good work!
Multi-stage payload too.
Payload Enjoyers Rise Up
