Radiant, Wetwork, and "Smallville" have been added to my review page with vids. From the time we stopped playing to now I have not stopped uploading videos from this lobby and the last video is @ 70%. I really hope you guys enjoy the vid recaps, just wanted to be fair and not just post a few and leave others out to dry. Edit: I did get a nap in there, or maybe two, not gonna say non-stop but pretty close, haha.
Okay, sorry everyone. Just realised how mean it is not to leave feedback. MOONBASE While this hangar style room looked amazing, it was very open. There were plenty of los blockers and that helped a lot. Perhaps i would try constructing a central building rather than use a prefab building, as although the round bunker is familiar and very functional, it engenders ppl lobbing nades in by the dozen to try and clean out the hill. ASSAULT This was fun. Fairly standard base to base vehicle ctf, but you added some interesting features like the wooden shack in the middle, and the long bridge across the chasm. I tried taking the flag that way but i got ****ed up.A little Reminiscent of LCG Dome, I think that possibly the sniper ridge might be too good an overwatch position, i kept getting teamshotted from up there. Personally I think the bridge wall is a little, you might be best trying to build a wall of your own with turrets etc. Moar tests needed. PIPE DREAM i enjoyed this tombo. The wierd came from the unusual lighiting that frequently made players appear as black as night and therefore hard to spot. I had no difficulty in findind power weapons and made the most of the sword and BR combo. The lifts are good but debate rages over whether or not you should place them over the entrance, as it prevents you nading up or down the lift. Especially importantwhen you think about me camping there as i was with thie sword, with nades coming up it would be a lot harder. INTERCHANGE Still beautiful, still so epic. Still jealous. I suppose the main item for this test was rockhog vz lady gauss. I didnt have too big a problem with either but the threat level was greatly reduced with the rockhog. For me the most impressive visual asset is the overpass. That bit actually functions as a bridge and gives a nice lump of highground. There is just one area inside the building adjacent to each base that looks unfinished, like a mashup of different walls and tunnels. It where an extraction beacon is, dont ask me the number. SALVAGE Oh i got this this time. Its not as big or random as i thought. TBH i still struggle to think of it as a ship, i will have to go into forge and fly up to appreciate it. I dont jetpack, its unholy but i hear you stopped folks just hopping across with it. Binary Rifle was good fun again, probably a little OP but thats half the fun isnt it...i still am not sure if the bottom area is essential. Ony seemed to get used for escapes. The lift from bottom was anice touch though. I suppose you can get down there with a flag and run it some of the distance but it seemed kinda superfluous for a map with such potential. IMMA DO SOME MORE MAPS IN MORNING GOODNIGHT ****ERS
So i finally got home from work and decided to look at the videos. Even though this wasn't technically in tcoj tombo broke my map on exile. It seems tombo is quite good at breaking my maps. Anyways i am retiring moonbase though i might take the aspect of the outer area. i may test again on assault tho. Recap in about 3 or 4 hours after i relax from work. Edited by merge: These are my opinions. just cus i didnt like things doesn't mean other poeple didnt either. i actually havent read what other people wrote. But overall this was a frustrating night for me. i also am bad at commenting on good things so unless i use words like hated and horrible, i generally enjoyed the games Moonbase. i think we had too many people for this map. this map also went through a yaw 1 degree switch and i tried to recover it but i don't know if i got all the pieces. nobody could find the snipers or the other weapons. time to retire this from tcoj Assault-I was not very happy that the only way the flag was take was the back way. i did go weapon crazy on this map but i sorta like that. maybe i will remove the ammo. the ghost was the only vehicle used. plus the spawning frustrated me i think the away zone is in the center and there are not enough points. i clearly need to merge the zones Is should have just done slayer for both maps. Pipe Dream- I really dislike almost all of this map. The lift was very predictable and going up it meant certain death. i found it hard to go between levels. I saw people with PV and couldn't get to the level they were on constantly. I hated the center pipe things you could fall into but not go up. the top level was ok but the only way to get to it was to take "death lift." Santera- The initial spawns were bad. I don't know if you put enough down. I didn't like how the lift put you past the flag capture.I would have like to land on it or at least before it. I found it peculiar walking into a room with 2 rocket launchers. Other then that the map was alright. Although i got 1 kill and lead my team with point with 2 flag caps. maybe raise the flag caps to 5. You should switch the warthog for a ghost because its placement is too in the middle for 2 people to go there. Contrary to what nutduster said i still like pent better then both these maps. I wouldn't mind playing a newer version of this however i think you should abandon pipe dream Interchange- this is clearly not an extraction map. I feel that gametype took away all the cool parts of the map. I also blacked out during the ctf and we lost because of it. I think the rocket hogs were less effective then the gauss but better then the normal hogs. I like the rocket hogs better. i would like to see a mantis test. it doesn't flow with the street but i think it would be fun and be somewhere in between the gauss and rocket hogs effectiveness. Salvage- I still think the bottom is a bad area. i like the rest of the map but ugh the bottom just seems pointless. 2 times the flags went down there 2 times the flags were returned. Also, i fell outside the map on the bottom and didnt die. you need more kill zones or move the rocks around. You should put more power weapons on the bottom other wise you won't be seeing me there. and even then the elevated position of the top i can pick off the bottom guys when they get them. I didn't black out on this map, but hulk clearly didnt know the map and took a wrong turn. Oh i also found it confusing getting up from the bottom level once i was there. Bleached- I blacked out for 2 whole flag captures by your team. But otherwise this is my second favorite map of yours behind octave. but yeah i feel like i didnt get to even play it. Freighter map- So basically i though this map was awesome but the gametypes didnt really work. FFA with more then 6 people is really frustrating. i don't really like ffa at all, except with that modified gametype of yours. the one flag was way too long a trip also it forced you to spawn on the top area and sit around. it might have been cool with a sniper but i didnt have a sniper. It felt like the other team got bored and didnt go for the flag on defense. I would have loved to play team slayer on this. Archway- First i wanna say this, the ctf gametype we played was horrible. The fact that the flag returned in 15 seconds basically meant that you could only go around the edges of the map. also the fact that it was 15 minutes long made me just want to stop playing. i was like not caring at the end out of pure frustration due to the sniper that was dominating our team and the limited routes we could take and the length of the game. part of the reason the sniper dominated us was because there was only two routes to take. This map needs railing as many people fell off. this was also a very big map with large lines of sight. which isn't bad but i would like to see more cover in the center. This map has potential but its current version is somewhat lacking. Radiant- This map was the same, i didnt notice any changes. I would recommend moving the objectives in the center to the bottom level. i feel like there is way to much action in that top area. because all route lead to there. Its a good central point but not good for objectives It's about this time that i good yelled at by my gf for hogging the tv and yeah that was basically the night for me
Just checked out the video of Cyborg's Daybreak. Very nice looking map, and it appears to promote good gameplay. Sorry I missed getting to try it out.
This map was designed from the ground up for 1 Flag. The whole idea of assaulting the ship and everything. I was originally worried that the map would be to small. That's why we have this lobby. So I have already started and remaking the entire ship with the same idea and concept in mind. The ship is now about 60% the length of the original and about 80% width of the original. I moved the ship quite a distance farther away from the island so there's more time before the banshees get to the ship and eliminates the whole jet packing down idea. I removed the respawn up top so you will no longer respawn up there. You still initially spawn up there so the amount of players determines the amount of banshees you will get hit by. I will have to back this up with a lot of anti-air. Probably be adding a few rail guns and maybe a splaser. I will also be making the flag a tad bit easier to get to. I'm also making it easier for non-jet packers to get on top of those crates. The main building on the ship has grown much taller so it can be seen anywhere on the ship for a reference point and to feel more like a freighter. You can only access just as high before though and jet packing on the roof has now been eliminated. The side rails of the ship have been removed except up front so you can't just simply run down the sides and avoid the crate area entirely. Plus most freighters don't have side rails anyways, it's straight drop-off. As far as gametypes go, I know you may not like FFA but this is a FFA paradise with those crates. Just ask Nutduster, he'll tell you this is a dream environment. You constantly have players close to you and the ability to constantly sneak up on the and flanking provides so much fun other than direct BR/DMR battles the whole game. 1 -Flag will play much much better next go around with the changes. I will also be supporting SWAT, Regicide, Team Slayer, KotH. I hate Dominion and Extraction but I may just add the objectives for those games to support it for those who are fans of the gametypes.
Hey unrivaled - first of all, thanks for the feedback. Now let me see if I can change your mind, even a little bit. This is a modified version of the concept sketch I originally drew up before I built the map. The shape here is a little off from the finished version, but this is more or less how it fits together, and more or less the right proportions for everything: Open red circles are the flag stands, purple circles are mancannons, yellow circles are teleporters. Arrows represent movement, one way or two depending how the arrow is drawn. The black arrows go from top level to bottom (the drop shafts); the gold arrows go from teleporter to teleporter, upstairs to down or vice versa; the purple arrows are the lifts and are strictly upstairs movement. The red patch in the middle is the bottom level. The reason the bottom level is meaningful is because it turns a 2-dimensional design which is basically a ring with two extra connecting points into a 3-dimensional one with a lot more ways to move around. Imagine for a second that the red area wasn't there, along with the teleporters and the four drop shafts. What you end up with is a simple ring with a kink in it (the ring actually redirects to move through the ship at the top, because there are no mancannons up there), and then two extra connectors at the bottom from the ship to the neutral platforms. You also end up with only two ways to get out of either base - the mancannon or the bridge into the ship - though there's a third way in, jumping off the ship's wing. And then there are three ways in or out of the neutral platforms. This makes pretty much every area on the map except for the ship easy to camp and control, and makes movement completely predictable. Now add back the bottom level. You can drop down from any of the four upper platforms; that adds a third way out of the bases and a 4th way out of the neutral platforms. You can teleport down from the neutral platforms as well (a 5th way out). You can teleport up to the neutral platforms as well (a 4th way in) and lift to the ship (5th way into that power position). This was all conceived as an important part of the design for movement, flanking, etc. If I take it out it would basically be necessary to re-think a large amount of the top level, because that design is extremely basic without all those routes that connect it to the bottom. Also, you're incorrect about the flag runs. I personally ran the flag, untouched (not one bullet hit me, I don't think) from the base, down the drop shaft to the bottom, to the lift up to the ship, and then across the bridge to my base. So that's one successful out of three. In a single test those numbers don't mean much, but I don't think those are bad odds! The main thing though is not that the bottom should be a surefire way to score, but that if you know the other team has guys in the ship or on one of the neutral platforms, you can take your chances with a drop to the bottom which will be at least temporarily safer. More importantly though, the bottom doesn't just exist for flag runs, though that's mostly what we've been testing. It's important for flanking and unpredictable movement in slayer and other gametypes as well. So even if it was useless for CTF, I still would not want to remove it. Hope that makes some sense, and also I hope the diagram makes it a little more clear how the bottom connects back up. It can be confusing in a game because the levels are big and far apart from each other, but the layout is actually quite simple - there are two teleporters and one lift down there, arranged in a triangle, and the two teleporters go directly to the neutral platform nearest to them. -- About the rocks/kill zones, I will take a look. Because of the odd shape of the bottom and the fact that it's smaller than the top level, I've had a hell of a time making sure everything is kill zoned properly. In fact I've run out of kill zones! But I might be able to do something more with hard safe zones that overlap.
Yep. As a matter of fact, I don't like FFA (I hate constantly having kills stolen from me, or being killed while I'm fighting with someone else, and those two things happen non-stop in FFA games). But I did like it on this map. It plays really well, and the layout and size of the ship make it less annoying than a lot of FFA games because more of your battles will be 1-on-1.
Thats my main gripe with FFA. It take to long and is noisy so you attract attention. Therefor someone walks up to you and kills you and the guy you were fighting most times. I also don't see why the same strategies couldn't be used in team slayer as well. Plus with instant respawn. Most maps don't have enough spawn points for you to spawn out of the action and get free kill. While it is fast paced i find it much more enjoyable to work in a group and use the backroutes while your teammate is distracting the enemy. I never really liked FFA in any of the halo's but in halo 4 it seems much worse than past halo's. Which is why they don't have a FFA playlist. I also think that shrinking this map will make FFA worse but it will make one flag and team slayer better. I would rather play oddball and extraction then free for all. This is just my feelings and the fact that the regular regicide playlist still has some population means that not everybody feels how i feel. The main reason i liked your modified FFA was because you could kill fast. And while kills were still stolen. It happened far less. The ability to kill fast and then go to another fight is the only thing that will make FFA enjoyable to me
Here's my take on your map since this style of map is right up my alley and I have actually been thinking about making a space ship for a map so I might be of some use. To start off, I understand you reasoning behind the bottom area for more movement options but it is just so far off put. It gave me no reason to go down there and actually makes taking the bottom more of a hinder. The map design is pretty small and would be much quicker to take the direct route over jumping down and taking a teleporter. If you just ran straight from the jump down point to the teleporter receiver node it would be much faster. Plus jumping down makes you more exposed. I would do one of two things here, ditch the bottom area or make the ship much closer to the ground to where it seems more like a bottom level. I don't see the reasoning to blocking that area off with rocks, I would just put a soft kill box surrounding the playable area. Running away on the asteroid provides no benefit and just takes you out of the match pretty much. A soft kill box would keep players from running off. If you do decide to ditch the bottom area then I would make it a ship flying through space with nothing but space underneath it. The next big change I think is having those flag stands so close makes everyone want to take the most direct route 70-90% of the time. You have to give the player a reason to take that outer route. I think the only reason I used it was because I was still getting use to the layout and don't pay attention to waypoints much. Having so many "divides" and mancannons along that route makes it risky and much more defendable. If you look at my version of your layout, I would suggest eliminating those mancannons on the sides plus the divide and just making the sides each one big winged hall. This would provide much better flow as well as cover. To touch on my layout some more, the dark grey sections so be completely enclosed all around except for entrances/exits to "section" off the map more and provide better aesthetics to make it look more like a ship. I think the only way a player will know they're playing on a ship is by an overhead view in the screenshots. In game it feels like a wacky platform floating above the ground. I think making those "wings" feel more like wings and making the **** pit into and actual playable cockpit would add that touch. The arms attaching everything should be wide open and feel like just an attachment for the ship. If you decide to keep that bottom area I could would suggest having the ship slightly angled down on one corner to resemble a crash and have that lower corner merge into the terrain a little. This would make it feel more like a crashed ship. I would really recommend just moving the ship into the open space and making the roof above the wings a playable area as well and adding cover up there. To get creative you could also add some gravity zones to make the "outside" attachments and roof areas low grav zones and inside the ship active gravity. You could also angle the gravity zones sideways so when you're outside you're constantly getting pushed to the back of the ship to resemble movement. You could do both and make jumping and manueverability up there harder to make it more balanced. BTW, that green circle represents a teleporter and I think it should be the only one and no other jets or mancannons other than the one shown. That teleporter can be an entrance or an exit to wherever but not a two-way. That's my take on the map. I really see a lot of potential here and like the design but in game it just seems so confusing and doesn't feel like a ship to me. If you want I can help more or help forge or w/e. We can tag-team this ***** or if you're happy with how it is now that's cool to. Edit: Also I added fins to the flag areas to make them a little harder to grab and increase aesthetic appeal. I also think there should be a fin on top of the cockpit that is the same dimensions as the others but this one will go vertically and have the two thruster engines on each side of the vertical fin.
I think there's been some confusion - the centerpiece of the map is the only "ship." The ring around the outside is a fixed salvage station that doesn't move around, has no engines or wings or anything else of that sort. It floats because... **** it, this is sci fi future world. It's not supposed to feel like a ship because it isn't a ship. It's a station where ships are disassembled. I get what you're talking about design-wise, but basically that's not the map I want to make. I like the one I've got and I think for being an unusual design it's playing pretty well. The bottom level is as separate as it is on purpose; to reiterate a point I keep making, it's supposed to work much like the space area on Zealot did. That's the reason I kept it so physically distant from the station; it actually should make you safer to be down there (though it also means players use it less). I hope you guys will change your minds about this somewhat as we keep testing it. But even if no one else ever ends up liking it completely, I'm happy with how it came out, and I like the way the pieces of it fit together. The only thing I'm not fully excited about is the outer boundaries of the downstairs area, but I really don't like just using soft kills as outer walls either. If I had auto-turrets like they use for the outer markers on Snowbound, or the sentries on Sandbox, I might be tempted to use those instead of hard walls, but I really am not fond of invisible magic walls that players have to figure out where they are. Actually, if I could make maps with no soft kills at all, I would. A lot of my maps in Reach were completely enclosed for that reason, but enclosed maps generally look crappy in Halo 4... The reason to take the outer routes will hopefully become evident as we test the map more, unless I've really failed as a designer. Did you ever play Avalanche in Halo 3? It was basically a horseshoe with one alternate route from base to base, called the keyhole. This is a poor-looking overhead view of the layout; bases are at the top left and right, the keyhole is in the middle toward the top, and the horseshoe curves around the bottom. The keyhole is obviously, by far, the most direct and shortest route from base to base - but it's also by the far the most dangerous (as you can also tell from the image - that's a heatmap, so all those yellow dots in the keyhole are people getting killed). Teams would hold it down all game long and sniper rifles spawned on either side of it. If you were running a flag alone it was actually better to take the longer outside route, using a series of teleporters and lifts to speed up your run; it still took a little longer than the keyhole but it was also a lot more protected, and less likely for players to be out there on foot. Salvage was conceived as a spin on the same layout, with the ship in the center playing the role of the keyhole, and the floating platforms forming the horseshoe. The reason there are so many mancannons and not a continuous ring is that it enables you to move faster around that longer path - just like Avalanche. You can actually run a flag through the ship OR around the ring in about 25 seconds... I timed it. (It's roughly the same amount of time to take a flag downstairs and back up the lift or a teleporter, too. All of this was planned out pretty carefully.) So if people play the map like I expect them to, the ship will be held down frequently; it's a key neutral area with access to all four parts of the ring, elevation, and a power weapon spawn inside. If that plays out that way, the outer ring will actually be the LESS risky route, as will the lower level. I've also done a little subtle psychological work by putting the flag stand closer to both the mancannon and the drop shaft than the bridge to the ship, so if you're in the base with one or more enemies, you're probably not going to make a big deal about trying to go for the most "direct" route; you ought to take the closest one that gets you farthest away from the enemy in a hurry. Now if I've failed in the design and people just ignore the central ship, I'll have to re-think some things.
Well that's just your take on FFA. You shouldn't judge the map and say FFA sucks here just becuase you hate FFA. I'm a huge fan of FFA and always have been just because I like the concept of no teams and seems more of a even fight because I like a battlefield full of players with a lot of 1v1's going down. It's a game of who's the best killer, and that's why Nutduster does so well in the FFA games we play. Yeah everyone hates kill stilling and makes FFA not fun. That's why this map supports it so well. It divides everyone apart so much that encounters with another player are instant death or a very short engagement without worries of some "stealing" your kill when the only effort you placed into it was shooting off a couple rounds. By intsant death I mean encounters are very CQB based and results in CQ weapons and hand 2 hand. Doesn't really give player a chance to escape. This takes away chasing down an enemy you have been pursuing for a portion of time and having some other player in the path put one in his head and earn the kill. The two ends of the ship are divided off as well and give BR/DMR fans that option as well with the areas being more open. FFA should only consists of like 6 guys and we played with like 10. Making the ship 60% length will not make FFA worse b/c FFA should be played with less players anyways. That makes sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was just going off your sketch.
No worries, my sketch powers are pretty rudimentary. By the way, I really like that we're getting into this kind of detailed debate about map designs. I hope you guys don't mind my walls of text - I usually have a lot to say about basically everything. But this kind of conversation can only improve us all as designers, so to me, this is the real meat of the lobby. By the way, the outer platforms were originally supposed to be enclosed more like you suggested, to resemble a real space station - but that map is big and uses a LOT of objects. I couldn't in good conscience do the design the way it was originally thought up. I even used impact corridors for my outer walls on those platforms and I'm still pretty much out of blocks, bridges and walls... but yeah, I did want them to have ceilings and feel more like real structures. Just wasn't possible this time.
Even though i never really played reach. The main difference, i think, between zealot and your map is that a small elevated position works far better then a small submerged position. Also, the fact that you created the map gives you insight to the bottom level. I think that first time players will find it confusing and not use that section of the map because of this. I still find it confusing and i have played a few times now. I remember going up a lift and thinking i was going to go to my base and i wound up in the middle of the ship. I would lower your whole top level as it seem too far away from the bottom. thats alot of work but it might help considerably. I also hate that i can see the ground level from different points and then go down to the level only to find that i am outside of the map. Maybe you could make the ground level bigger and put a speed trait zone there.
ive been trying to keep my walls of text down... i have felt like asking for individual threads for each map as i have many questions about peoples comments (the majority being for my map, but a few others) but i dont want to commandeer this recap thread [br][/br]Edited by merge: think this is a good idea. oh, i liked the side bits where they overused? i thought it was just me doing it? i understand why you would though i'm looking forward to this next week
I agree, which is why I'm going to some lengths to explain the thought process behind it. Hopefully as people understand the layout better they'll use it more. I think it's a good sign that Audience and I (who have seen it the most, in non-game situations) actually go down there frequently for various reasons. We'll see how you guys take to it in weeks to come, because I still have a lot of tweaking to do - at the very least I'm going to be messing with kill zones and maybe looking at a different approach to the boundaries of the bottom level. On the point of elevation vs. submersion - that's actually why this was designed the way it was. If you remember Zealot at launch, there was no kill zone in space and people would just go camp there. They had to add a soft kill to the entire area to fix that. I had the idea to do the opposite on this map because I figured, no one will camp in an area that seems much more vulnerable. However, because of the huge distance between the two, it shouldn't be THAT vulnerable - except to binary rifles. If it was much closer to the top level, as it would be on a more conventional design (e.g. Midship, or the bottom mid on Zealot) it would be more heavily used, but also a lot more vulnerable to getting shot from basically everywhere. It wouldn't achieve the effect I was going for, in other words. But I might try a different build for testing purposes just to see how it would play. I could lower the entire upper level close to the asteroid, change the outer boundaries a lot, and perhaps convert the drop shafts to lifts or something... I'll have to think about it. Yeah, I don't really like that either. If I had bigger rock objects I would have made the outside of the lower level more obviously a place that you shouldn't go. I might try messing with that layout. The biggest problem is the cut-in made of rocks, where the big lift is; maybe I should just expand that outward and make it more of a flat wall that is closer to the shape of the upper level. I guess the lower part doesn't really need to have the same forced horseshoe-shaped flow as the upper part; it won't help you run a flag faster or anything.
i have been toying with an idea of trying to make the top, the middle of a new tiered map using nutdusters suggestion of making it a lot more open between levels. i made this when halo 4 just came out, so with a few months of forging under my belt think i could do much more with it but it would be ground up redesign. the hog side is very much for me - not the vehicle. there are not many spawn points over there, one or two maybe. i like being able to flank. its open, out of the way. and the time taken makes up for likely being able to get from base to base without dying. plus i could use that area for sniper spawn, giving them something to fight over, whilst keeping it out of my way! (its also a hill and extraction location for other gametypes adding a bit of variety) it offers snipers some good lines of sight, but not a dominant position. if you stay there the whole game could pass you by. man, i like using those landing pads but why the **** cant they have smooth layers! (you may have noticed i am a little obsessed with 3 room buildings too.....) i had considered using blocks to smooth them out but i am really to close lighting errors on sanera that i though it more prudent to test the layout before fixing small problems i have discovered my error in trying to time delay the roof for spawning (must remember to turn spawn at start to false!) i'll give the map a look this week and see if i can make a version i am happy to test again.
Yes I played this map a lot and the original, Sidewinder, and really liked the design. Taking that direct route does apply more risks, however, the main reason this design worked so well because the outer large open area supported vehicles where movement speed could be greatly increased plus your packing more heat. Think about how the map would play without vehicles. Next to no one would use that outer route because it would just take longer. Now your version is much smaller in scale and think it plays nothing like sidewinder/avalanche. I also try to think of how the map will play by the most competitive of players. The distance between both flag stands is very short. So short that it would be easy control that route and force the team to spawn at the other end of the ship. On avalanche even the most direct route was quite a bit of distance and taking a vehicle that route would be pretty stupid most of the time. This is just how I would look at it if it was my map. This map hasn't been very competitive yet gameplay wise as people are still learning the map but I think gameplay will change up dramatically once people have experience on it.
Here is a list of all my ongoing projects H2 Beaver creek-Completed H2 Gemini- Completed H2 Lockout and H3 Construct- Completed- Edited versions of other peoples maps Assualt- In testing Moonbase- Retired Chimera - Nearing Completion Black Brior Manor Flood- Testing Black Brior Manor Slayer- 100% built untested The Clash Test- Retired The Clash Round 2- 50% built Creepy Clash- 10% built Skygarden- A forge slightly resembling Kamino from star wars, 20% built Abandoned- 100 percent built- Abandon 2 v 2. Exiled Hero - testing - Exile 2 v 2 Pegasas- 100% built- Haven 1 v 1 or 2 v2 Drifting away- Adrift 2 v 2 - 50% built Smash derby- Mini game similar to Crash up derby- Concept and idea formulated erosion ftx- Race. A race on erosion- Concept formulated
Speaking from personal experience, that's not really the case. I was a frequent flag-runner on Avalanche (less so on Sidewinder - we didn't play it much) and would usually take the outer route whether or not I had a vehicle to pick me up. The reason is simple: once you grab the flag, you can either take a hard route to the keyhole, which exposes you pretty badly to anyone at ground level outside the base; or you can take a lift to outside the base, which gets you away from immediate defenders but exposes you about as much as it's possible to be exposed. Orrrrrr... you can teleport out to a protected location miles away, where another 20 yards or so takes you to a lift that flings you down to nearly the midpoint of the map. In a fairly short amount of time you've gotten very far from the base, with cover between you and where you came from. The rest of the run is more of a slog, but it's a fair trade-off for the amount of ground you can cover so quickly and safely. Now you're correct that this map doesn't really play the same way due to size and no vehicles, but the design principle is similar. I did change it up because you're correct to suggest that Avalanche would play very differently without vehicles. That's why my direct route (the ship) is basically in the center of the map and farther from the bases - it's not such a direct path and requires more circuitous travel. For the same reason, the outer ring is tightened up and mancannons let you traverse it much more quickly, as opposed to the vast open plains of Avalanche. Here's an annotated overhead shot, as opposed to my crappy sketch: As you can see, if you want to go through the middle the flag locations require you to backtrack a bit, then go up into the ship to literally the midpoint of the entire map (the lift takes up physical space behind where the ship's engines stop, so you have to route around/above that blue dot to get halfway back to your base). That's why the timing works out the way it does - the flags appear near each other and the ship appears to be the quickest path, but it's a bit of an illusion. The flag being where it is is meant to discourage the player for just falling for the illusion - it takes twice as long to go around the bend and start up that bridge into the ship as it would to just drop down the shaft or jump on the mancannon. And hopefully after players have experienced the other routes a time or two, they'll figure out that they are equally viable routes, and perhaps less hotly-contested (depending how the other team is playing the map, of course). I wouldn't be opposed to moving them even further away from that route, too. I thought about putting them on the 4x4 corners you can jump to from the ship's wings. That makes the drop shaft and mancannon even more desirable exits, and the bridge back to the ship harder to get to. (You can't jump back on to the wing, by the way. Due to elevation you can't really even make that jump with sprint.) That could be true and if it's a problem, further testing will hopefully reveal it. But to some extent teams can always take control of a CTF map. Adrift is a good CTF map but it's not hard for an aggressive team to dominate the enemy base and attic; if they do this, they have an easy flag route and your team is forced to spawn somewhere else, usually on the lift balconies. Hopefully though, you have angles to attack and take back your base, and spawn proximity on your side. In the case of Salvage, if enemies control the ship and your base, you'll mostly spawn on the opposite neutral platform or on the lower level; either one should give you ready access to the ship and your own base. And if you and an enemy kill each other, you'll spawn closer to your flag than he will. That's why holding enemy territory on any good map with static spawns is tough to do for more than a minute. I believe that would be the case here as well, but if I'm proven wrong about that, I'll make some adjustments.