Well, you all know Sword Base. That Map where you're always exposed, Grenades are spammed, and it's about who controls the upper part of the Map. Well, i wanted to change this. The Question is: How can you fix a Map with it's Gameplay completely broken? Well, read my List of Ideas. - First up, Sword Base should be more like Boarding Action, so Teams can only spawn at one side. A team can invade the other side, but they won't respawn there so as the Blue Team you can't easily conquer the Yellow Lift Exit and camp there. - To even further split off the Map, a Soft Kill Zone sholud run trough the complete middle of the Map so people have to think if they'll cross to the other side or not. - The path that leads to the Yellow Lift Exit should be completely blocked off with Crates so nobody can cross there. - All paths in Sword Base go to the other side while they should lead to the same side, bt only a different level. This can be achieved using Teleporters, Gravity Lifts and some blocking off with Crates. - Combat should be less focused on Melee, AR, Grenade, Shotgun and Energy Sword spam but on ranged Weaponry. This can be achieved by putting more Ranged Weapons on the Map. -There should be no neutral Weapons that both Teams could get access to. This was a great error that must doesn't work with Sword Base. Players shouldn't be able to bullrush from the begin of the Game to the other side and steal all good Weapons. - Some Weapons, like the Shotgun, should have it's ammo decreased. - The Energy Sword should be replaced by a Hammer. Those are the main changes that i would like to see for a Sword Base that should work better with CTF, TS and Assault. These are not changes that should be brought to MM and the original Sword Base but for a Custom Map.
I believe Psychoduck and Erupt forged a wonderful remake of Sword Base that implements some of these changes alongside many others. The preview thread is around here somewhere.... Caucasion Invasion is also working on a Boarding Action remake. You should check them out sometime.
Sword Base isn't "completely broken." It's a fine map with a couple of problem spots (mostly yellow lift room). This laundry list of changes isn't fixing Sword Base, it's making something else entirely - something which is basically Boarding Action redux. And I hated Boarding Action. It's interesting that you complain about being "always exposed" and then basically worship at the feet of a map where getting pelted by long range fire 70% of the game was par for the course.
The only thing that needs to change is that the red team should spawn on the bottom floor like the blue team and the sword and shotgun should not be on the sameside of the map, both should be on the bottom floors aswell to prevent people from whoring them on the top floors. Everything else about sword base is fine, spawn system, sniper and nade launcher placement. Even the lifts, i rarely use them to go up anyway. And if you are smart, you will only go up a lift if your team controls that side.
Sword base is fine in it's current state and one of the few non btb maps I like. I don see any reason it needs to essentially be turned into boarding action. Then just make the map.
The soft kill idea would make CTF impossible, so none of that. The crates blocking gold lift would render it unusable, so none of that. The hammer has lunge AND an area of effect, making it worse than the sword. Sword Base is now awesome with the addition of the sniper rifle.
Upper bridge is the main path, if people cant cross it, it will just promote camping even more. Dead ends on maps are never good. And a sword can be blocked, a hammer cant.
None of those changes will help... at all. Well, I lied. Lowering Shotgun clips to 1 spare would be good. Though it might already be like that. Can't do 0 spare because there's a sword.
Changing the red team's initial spawn would help alot, but then shotgun needs to be moved. It would be a fair fight then to gain control of the upper levels, sniper and nade launcher.