Major Update Speculation V31: Gamechanging Edition - Games

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50395721]You mean the most popular map of all time, across both TF2 and TFC? Yeah, that map must suck.[/QUOTE] Kim Kardashian: Hollywood makes millions, it must be a good game!

I just watched a video of all the skins from the tough break update and god damn all those skins are trash except the gentlemanne ones. If we are allowed to have pink ballonicorn sniper rifles, the actual balloonicorn might as well be visible without pyroland too.

I really wish we had just gotten paintable weapons instead. A scattergun with the wooden parts painted some inoffensive colour would have been nicer than one that looks liek a goddamn bee.

[QUOTE=Magypsy;50395814]Kim Kardashian: Hollywood makes millions, it must be a good game![/QUOTE] Weren't you one of the people creaming your pants over Hydro being added back to rotation?

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50395942]Weren't you one of the people creaming your pants over Hydro being added back to rotation?[/QUOTE] This is an oddly personal jab based on nothing I've ever said? Hydro is a very bad map.

[QUOTE=Magypsy;50395889]I really wish we had just gotten paintable weapons instead. A scattergun with the wooden parts painted some inoffensive colour would have been nicer than one that looks liek a goddamn bee.[/QUOTE] im pretty sure this was their original design when two cities was released - it's pretty indicative with the paintable shovels from Mhanko in spawn. I'm also pretty sure that was tossed out the window when someone thought that tiers and wear from CSGO would be a better route. And I'm just a little bit miffed by that.

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50395942]Weren't you one of the people creaming your pants over Hydro being added back to rotation?[/QUOTE] Who wouldn't cream their pants over that?

[QUOTE=Dragadur;50396299]Who wouldn't cream their pants over that?[/QUOTE] Yeah, Hydro has become one of my new fav maps to be honest.

Hydro was always my favorite map, but I could never play it hydro being added to rotation was important to me

hydro is misunderstood because you need <15 players to enjoy it and most servers went way beyond that

If the Valve default is 24 players, would they consider making 16 player servers exclusively for Hydro?

[QUOTE=ElderLolz;50396191]So you're saying that Hydro is awful, yet 2Fort is good?[/QUOTE] Exactly. Hydro is an unfun map where you either steamroll with no effort, or get stuck in a stalemate forever. 2Fort is a solid CTF map that has been around since TFC, and has always seen steady, consistant play that only occasionally slows down when people turtle particularly hard, but even then it never approaches the levels of gridlock that Hydro became infamous for. I can understand being tired of playing 2Fort if you've played it too much, but that doesn't make it a bad map, nor one that plays poorly. It plays pretty well, unlike Hydro which plays like ass. And you can see that in the historical popularity of the maps - people simply will stop playing maps that end up being boring slogs where the match never progresses and the timer eventually runs out. Hydro isn't some poor misunderstood special snowflake - it had plenty of exposure, saw lots of play, but eventually people got fed up with it when other maps proved superior and more enjoyable.

[QUOTE=Dr.Scrake;50395832]I just watched a video of all the skins from the tough break update and god damn all those skins are trash except the gentlemanne ones. If we are allowed to have pink ballonicorn sniper rifles, the actual balloonicorn might as well be visible without pyroland too.[/QUOTE] Most of the high-tier Warbird ones look alright (mainly Butcher Bird and Warhawk), they're the kind you would expect in a military setting

2fort... The intel room is behind the other team's spawn, and you have to go past their spawn to get to the intel, so capping is incredibly hard. Getting into the other team's base in the first place is incredibly annoying, as the sniper sightlines lock down the entire outside area. There's no way out when you fall in the water except a 40-second walk through sewers into your base or the enemy base. It just has so many fundamental problems, man.

2Fort has a whole bunch of horrible design decisions such as spawn rooms next to the main, single chokepoint where the defenders also have a height advantage over the attackers, Snipers being relegated to essentially one spot on the map doing absolutely nothing, more escape routes than attack routes in a CTF map, tiny corridors that get blocked by putting a building down and invite spam, a long route involving water that goes nowhere useful, that kind of stuff. It's played because it's a deathmatch map, not much more. Hydro has a lot of problems (the main areas designed for fighting not being the areas where teams fight, instead the bad spammy connectors), but at least there's multiple routes most of the time and some thought gone into it past "we put a roof on the bridge, it's a TF2 map now".

2fort is great when I just want to fuck around and DM on a late night with nothing to do It doesn't work as a serious map in the slightest though

2fort is a fucking great looking map that really encapsulates TF2's core artistic inspiration. Great map to spend hours DMing on, sucks for a short serious CTF map.

[QUOTE=Johnny Joe;50397021]2fort is a fucking great looking map that really encapsulates TF2's core artistic inspiration. Great map to spend hours DMing on, sucks for a short serious CTF map.[/QUOTE] Yeah, that goes for a lot of early maps. Compare that to something like Gullywash, which is really weird looking aesthetically, but plays great.

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50396807]Exactly. Hydro is an unfun map where you either steamroll with no effort, or get stuck in a stalemate forever. 2Fort is a solid CTF map that has been around since TFC, and has always seen steady, consistant play that only occasionally slows down when people turtle particularly hard, but even then it never approaches the levels of gridlock that Hydro became infamous for. I can understand being tired of playing 2Fort if you've played it too much, but that doesn't make it a bad map, nor one that plays poorly. It plays pretty well, unlike Hydro which plays like ass. And you can see that in the historical popularity of the maps - people simply will stop playing maps that end up being boring slogs where the match never progresses and the timer eventually runs out. Hydro isn't some poor misunderstood special snowflake - it had plenty of exposure, saw lots of play, but eventually people got fed up with it when other maps proved superior and more enjoyable.[/QUOTE] 2fort's interior areas are too cramped and the hallways are too long and narrow, the medkits and ammo packs are sorely misplaced and the bridge area utterly lacks them, there are several badly designed hub rooms that make sentries too good since most everything entering the base has to go through there no matter what path they take, the spawns are misplaced and the bridge area lacks any sort of intelligent sniper cover sans the bridge roof which doesn't address the issue of snipers countersniping forever+camping spawn. I mean fuck I could go on but I think I typed enough, the map is absolutely atrocious and I have no idea how can anyone defend it as a good ctf map. If anything it's a good dm map for classes like sniper, pyro or engineer, but as a spy, soldier or medic you will suffer and no matter what you do, playing seriously to cap the intel is bullshit avenue.

2fort is shit because the gigantic sniper sightlines promote chokepoints in the sewers

[QUOTE=Johnny Joe;50397021]2fort is a fucking great looking map that really encapsulates TF2's core artistic inspiration. Great map to spend hours DMing on, sucks for a short serious CTF map.[/QUOTE] behh even for DM it's dreadful. where's the deathmatch when you have no room to move around? Everything is a tiny room or hallway.

What are the chances of us getting an update today?:cry:

Don't touch 2fort and dustbowl, they are classics, they are still there only as a reminder of early days of TF, nostalgia is the only reason to join 2fort or dustbowl server

how would you fix 2fort though? just make the corridors into proper rooms or what?

I have a few friends who like 2fort, I'll never understand it. Whenever I join them, I feel like I'm having fun in [I]spite of[/I] playing on 2fort, not because I'm playing on 2fort.

[QUOTE=Croc Shock;50397352]how would you fix 2fort though?[/QUOTE] Remove snipers, engys, pyros, and demos from the game. Trust me, I've spent the better part of ~7000 hours in TF2 solely on 24/7 2fort servers. edit: not even fucking joking, the map plays so much more dynamically and is way more fun by getting rid of those classes.

[QUOTE=Croc Shock;50397352]how would you fix 2fort though? just make the corridors into proper rooms or what?[/QUOTE] The answer already exists, at least for an inspiration on how to make a new variation as no one knows who the original author is anymore: ctf_2fort_engi_power The Engi Power edition of 2fort does the following changes: -Makes the roofs able to be walked on and buildable, accessible by rocket jumping or by using a staircase near the spawn door on the left. This gives more diverse sniping positions, but these sniping positions struggle to see anything besides the other roof, making them great for sniper vs sniper and keeping those players more occupied with each other than with the other classes while still giving jumping classes an easy way to dispatch of them. -Adds staircases to the sewer discharge pool, allowing you to not only climb from the water to the first floor, but also another staircase to get on the roof -Makes the roof have a flattened mid section filled with crates and ammo and health, this gives you a resting blind spot that also protects you from snipers on the barracks and the roof -Adds a staircase in the elbow of the sewers that leads directly to another sewer with a staircase into the intel rooms, this gives significantly more opportunities to approach the intel than normal 2fort because this new sewer path is filled with junk usable for cover and is dark enough to make the player approaching the intel have an advantage not only against the defense, but an easier way to see if there are sentries in the room. The way the staircase into the intel from the sewer is set up is in such a way that normal 2fort sentry positions do not properly cover both the normal and new sewer approaches -to compensate this, the glass room behind the intel desk is now accessible and buildable in, while the overlooking supervisor room that is above the opposite side of the room from the intel is also accessible by blast jumping, giving wrangler engineers a unique sentry spot and soldiers and demomen the ability to protect the intel by themselves without the need of an engineer being present. It's a really fun map (for comparison, I don't like the original 2fort) that I wish more community CTF servers adopted or if someone got around the whole "no one knows the original author" issue by making something with similar aspects, independently. [T]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/510379051511977226/698FA45597400A51DC0091BD92EC6708FE01D387/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|637:358&composite-to=*,*|637:358&background-color=black[/T][T]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/510379051511976057/C8800108C7952A6B1D771787E0C8C73AD339A05E/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|637:358&composite-to=*,*|637:358&background-color=black[/T][T]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/510379051511976450/169D455EC2F6FA0C76C846E33BEE6FDFCECB22FF/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|637:358&composite-to=*,*|637:358&background-color=black[/T]

Wow, based on your description, the biases inherent to that map are staggering. The mapmakers clearly don't like Snipers, so they get rid of the normal sniping lanes, and replace them with meaningless sniper decks that are purposefully isolated from the rest of the map, designed to keep Snipers away from the action by having them waste their time having pointless sniper duels that accomplish nothing. Holy fuck, talk about being condescending assholes. Basically they're treating Snipers like a bunch of rowdy children and making them sit at the "Kiddie Table" in the corner to keep them out of the way while the "grown-ups" sit at the big table and pretend they don't exist. Cripes! Meanwhile, it's obvious these guys just [I][B]love[/B][/I] playing as Engineer and turtling all day, but got bored of always building their nests in the same old places. So they added new places to build, and took the old traditional nest locations and moved them a little to keep things fresh. "Oh, but there's a new path to the intel! And there are stairs out of the sewer!" Great! Fresh new chokepoints to build nests in, and they're guaranteed to see action. Because if you're a Turtle-Engie, the thing you hate most is setting up a nest in the same boring old spot and then never having anyone stumble into it and die.

To be fair, most 2fort snipers just want to snipe other snipers anyway, it's pretty much the only reason market gardener soldiers even get away with shit there. Sniper is one of my most preferred classes to play as and I found the map much more enjoyable as him because if I wanted to sniper ditto without going to a sniper-only server, I could and if I wanted to play as a normal sniper, I could actually use places like the new sewer and be actually useful without just staying on the barrack or near the bridge. Also, despite it's name, dealing with Engineers is actually easier on engi power, rather than harder, because they don't just need to seal off the room on the other side of the intel near where the two default paths merge and call it a day. On the flipside, Engineer, as you said, has a lot more turtling spots now and it makes his positioning more diverse, too. All of the classes benefit from the design of engi power, not just Engineer. Spy has way more sneaking paths and hiding spots, Sniper has more positions to stay, Engineer has way more spots, Soldier and Demoman have new paths to take, Scout has a way to get to the barracks from the first floor and thus bypass the entrance near the spawn that people constantly place sentries in, Pyro has more Neon Annihilator spots and spots for general ambushing, Heavy has more hidden locations to travel (including the sewer path, which gives him an easy way to the intel room without crossing the spawn area that is basically required for him in normal 2fort) and Medic gets many of the benefits for mobility options of the other classes. By the way, the normal sniping positions are still there so saying that they "removed" them is a tad extreme, the snipers that play on the map prefer the roof on their own accord.

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50397847]Holy fuck, talk about being condescending assholes.[/QUOTE]alright mate, settle down all they did was make a map