Dude, no offense was taken. I was making a statement really... The whole concept of judging a map lesser because pieces are not used in a new/interesting way is silly. I call it forge snobbery, as its something only a forger would find issue over. As for Noooch's Crypt, he could get away with using inclines for walling on his map due to the segmented nature of the map. Despair on the other hand can not because of the lines of sight on the map... Adding such pieces for walling would hinder the frame rate in splitscreen to an unacceptable point. That aside, between the simple layout and the splashes of color and the use of rocks the break up the monotony of grey, the map is aesthetically adequate in the sense that it is pleasing to the eyes and also aids player orientation. The map does have one notable feature that sets it aside from others though... And that's the invisible roof. The map comes with a built in handicap for the jet pack. No JP abuse on this baby.
haha yes us forgers tend to get a little picky. I can understand that, its no big deal anyways. Just some good ol' Forge Snobbery as you would say I do know of one other map with an invisible roof, Asphalt. I thought the idea was pretty genius. Its amazing that more people aren't doing it because it takes a lot of the kill zone stresses out of a map.
I played this the other day and I ran around on this two nights ago and tbh I think it's a step down from the Coliseum version of Despair. The main flaws I saw were: -The newest version is even more open than its previous versions. The Coliseum version of Despair was open within each room but more segmented from each adjacent room while having LoS accessible from the opposite side, and that's what made it work for Hill, in that you could keep your distance and shoot the hill from one spot. It made setups more hard to achieve. With this version, not only is each room just as open, but now a lot of LoS have been opened up, and it lost that intricate balance of adjacent vs. opposite LoS. I saw that you made two of the ramps go back behind a wall instead of in front of the platform, which was an improvement. -This kind of stems from the previous comment, but Top Mid is now just a death sentence. With the entire map compacted inwards along with the aforementioned openness, it makes getting a LoS on Top Mid a really quick endeavor, which makes it even weaker. I would suggest at the very least mirroring the cover on all corners, seeing as how the cover isn't much and it wouldn't become too overwhelming. I believe it's basically .5x.5 of space you have to work with while taking cover on each side. -The orientation is still a bit hard to get used to. You did a good job with incorporating the Covenant Crate in two of the rooms, and maybe to further that, you could add a Human Crate in the other two rooms to help newer players distinguish even better which rooms they are in. Other than that, it's nice to see you persist with a design. Hopefully you can get it to where you like 100% so that you have a solid map to roll with once H4 begins. Real quick too, I was walking around on the newest version of Select, and you have a gap on one of the sides in the lower Basement areas. It's near one of the lifts and it's where a Brace Large meets a Platform XXL. Just thought I'd let you know.
I appreciate you taking the time to play it. Rather surprised that you did to be honest. Thanks man. Responses in bold.