BackWash

Unofficial Review

Hey, I just thought I'd help a guy out and give you that review you requested. Sorry that it's not from the official guys, but I think they're just a little busy. I hope that my judgement can still provide you with the feedback that you were wanting. So, without further ado, here it is:

Enjoyment:​

To be honest BackWash promised little more than any other map does: some ground and some cover with some weapons lying around so you can shoot at the other guys on top of that ground and cover way over there. And when I say ‘some cover’ I mean some cover. There wasn’t enough and this affected the enjoyment in the areas of both gameplay and aestheticism. My biggest beef (not a euphemism) with this map is the Purple and Orange FX you have put on. I couldn’t see a thing and had to remove them myself before continuing through the map. The different elevations of the map are decent and provide a little bit of variation in the geometry. Most of the main power weapons are present as well, so that box is ticked. Over all, BackWash is a decent enough map, but nothing really wowed me.

Enjoyment Rating: 4/10

Balance​

Using the jetpack as their tool of destruction, someone easily could find unfair vantage points with the sniper rifle in hand (praise god if they ever happened to find it) and pretty much ruin the game for everyone else. In small doses, such areas are good, however they must be planned before hand and taken into account when balancing a map. In the case of “BackWash”, pretty much everywhere had a roof on which you could settle down and rack up some killing sprees. For all of the weapons you seem to have left the respawn times at their default. If you want the map to be balanced, you need to make weapons like sniper rifles and hammers have a respawn time of roughly 90-150. Only lower level weapons should be kept at the default, otherwise as soon as you kill a guy in a vantage point, he's gonna respawn and be right back up there with a sniper rifle before you can really get you bearings. You have succeeded in balancing the placement of weapons and the geometrical symmetry also helps with the balance. The hiccup with spawning (mentioned later under Durability) affects the balance as the Blue team may spawn closer to the power weapons, giving an advantage over the red team.

Balance Rating: 6.5/10

Durability​

There were no kill zones or safe zones of any kind in this map, which allowed me tochoose a jetpack loadout and hover on down to the small rock islands several feet below the actual map. Unfortunately I could easily escape and therefore compromise the sense of professionalism that should be present in all competitive maps. You have placed many, many initial spawn points for each team, however you have been a little counter productive since you have placed respawn areas around only a small area of spawn points (for the red team at least. The Blue team's spawn area doesn't even encompass any (re)spawn points). This means players will only spawn (and respawn!!!) within the boundaries of the spawn area. Get those few respawn points lined up with the crosshair of a sniper rifle and there’re going to be spawn kills galore. However, in the overall picture, even though it is very much possible to escape, it's not like the map is completely riddled with problems such as this. If those issues are cleared up it'll pretty much hold up against anything people try to escape.

Durability Rating: 2/10

Aesthetics​

I have to say that I've noticed that you have placed almost every object to the closest unit in the Edit Coordinates menu. This tells me that you have done the best you can in order to get this perfect. And the results are pretty beautiful. However, I can’t help but get the feeling that you have left this map with the bare essentials when it comes to decoration, with only a passing glance of attention paid to detail. In some areas such as the Tunnel Braces and the Large Walkway Covers the map starts to look pretty good. However the areas in which I feel you have lacked include the places in which the mounted turrets spawn and the red and blue bases. In all of those areas there are simply bridges and platforms with very little cover. Perhaps you could place columns over the seams of connected railings (see built-in maps such as The Cage as a reference point). These would not only make the map more pleasant to play on, but if executed skillfully enough you could double some pieces up as scenery upon which players may dance their beautiful jig of death. The placements of the Blue and Red lights are appropriate and add a nice effect over the rocket launcher area connoting the danger of the no-man land that lies between both bases. There are a few ledges such as the ones in the main bases which have not been closed off by railings. These look pretty ugly and make the player feel uncomfortable (and disappointed, since these ledges suggest that they actually lead somewhere). Some pieces, particularly some bridges that have been phased into one another, have identical height values. When the heights of two identical objects are the same, the game doesn't know which one to show to the player. I'm sure you noticed the odd flashing that this causes. To remedy this you could either press A (while grabbing an object) extremely soon after pressing RB, or you could go into the B button menu, edit coordinates and make the height 1 unit more than what you want. As soon as you press down to make it the correct height, try to deselect the object ASAP (which is smashing BBA almost as fast as you can). This cuts short the movement of the object so that it actually moves about 90% of the distance it usually does, leaving it a fraction of a unit above the other object. If you do it right, the difference in height should be unnoticeable.

Aesthetics rating: 5/10

Originality​

There wasn’t that much innovation, but when there was it turned out pretty awkward and uncomfortable. The areas with the man cannons going up what you may refer to as a tube, were both unusual and had very bad flow. These areas were a bit squished and there’s nothing that people enjoy more than a smooth ride through a man cannon. Perhaps you could revise the whole concept and maybe find another method of getting up top to the walkway (perhaps stairs!). As I said before there wasn't that much that BackWash offers other than the usual set of pieces and weapons. There weren't too many features that made me think, "Wow, that was clever." or "Oh-ho, that's cool." because as a whole the map was pretty standard.

Originality Rating: 3/10

Average Rating: 20.5/50 (4.1/10)
Overall rating: 4.5/10

Additional Pointers​

As a rule of thumb, very few FX are actually good thing to have in a competitive map, as they tend to leave players visually blind. With the exception of FX such as Colorblind, Next Gen, Old Timey and maybe Purple (if its not paired up with another FX) I’d stay way clear of that sub menu unless you’re trying for a really arty screenshot.

You have dropped a blue initial spawn point in the water. That is a problem for obvious reasons.

The placements of the Sniper Rifle and Gravity Hammer were pretty unusual and unpleasant looking if I'm perfectly frank. In both cases I felt that the weapons were placed as if they were Easter eggs, because it felt like they didn't melt into the rest of the level like all the other weapons. A weapon precariously balanced between two blocks is not a weapon which is saying to me, 'Come on, pick me up. It'll be fun!'

In Free For All or Multi-Team games, due to the placement of respawn points, there may be some issues when it comes to balance and proximity to weapons. Maybe you could think that one through again. You might find the beginning of a game on BackWash is a little crazy in more of a FFA situation.

I hate to make you feel bad, but I can’t say that I would really play this map again or keep it on my hard drive for long. Honestly, it’s just because the map doesn’t have any particular appeal. I’m sorry that I can’t help you out on that one, because that’s really something you need to figure out by yourself. Think, “What is it that I want from this map?” and go where you need to from there. Good luck man, and keep at it.

 

Glad to hear it!