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Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]
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phanakapan Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2011 10:24 am Posts: 289	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] the main problem is the giant near vertical hills placed at random all over the map. large scale means more coordinated action and more time for chasers to intercept, but only when the terrain of the map doesn't promote lightning fast routes from every direction and have horrible terrain directly around the flag stand followed by jagged crap everywhere else which makes chasing completely impossible. if everything was mellowed and smoothed out and the giant hills were used purposefully to direct action in specific areas of the map, it would actually make for a great map. the only hill that does this on the new map is the center volcano, but it isn't wide enough to prevent straight up back caps or front caps so it sort of fails in this purpose. the wide open flag stands really need to go too...
Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:12 pm

Wobberjockey Beta Tester Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:30 am Posts: 8726 Location: In a handbasket, heading somewhere	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] faramir wrote: Since Wobberjockey is either dancing or sleeping... I get to start the map feedback topic. thanks for the pickup. linked (and the correct answer was fumbling around for my morning coffee ) _________________ original art at http://tinyurl.com/shazbotsig The Tribes READ ME. Quite possibly the most important thread you'll never read
Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:14 pm

Copain Beta Tester Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 6:33 pm Posts: 180	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] The amount of speed you can get to cap the flag (Even as a medium (Raider for instance for those who hate the base turret location), the huge open gen room (With plenty of hidden entrances) with the gen being smack dab in the middle at the bottom, the Radar being so high up it takes awhile to get to... the flag stand with a nice murder hole for Jugs to shoot into.. A ramp to go up/down and keep speed for flag.. Why on earth would anyone defend on this map? I'm not harassing you Hi-rez, but please make the Defense not have to suffer this much... There's so many ways to attack and so many things that punish being a Defending Tech or other various classes. I know Sents are normally OP and all, but here they seem punished for defending because of all the curves and walls that will hide flag grabbers (And also block Tech turret shots). Please PLEASE mess with this map a bit. Anyway, to provide feedback that the developers will bother to read, The middle volcano has an easily exploitable error in which you can ride a vehicle down into the bottom of the volcana and not die in it. You can then hop out of the vehicle and move around freely. In a Tank or Jug (When we learn angles to fire it and hit bases) you could see that this would be exploitable. EDIT: In my second go my bullets wouldn't act normally form the lava, I suppose this was a safety feature to prevent abuse, so ignore my latter point. I really hope more will be changed about this map than bug fixes though _________________
Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:17 pm

Firesphere Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:07 pm Posts: 55	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] not sure if anyone else feels the same way, but this map is far too dark for my liking... the terrain just lends itself to not see the enemy unless they have an arrow on their head... lighten it or change the color somehow.. just feels wrong at the moment.
Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:52 pm

frznvimes Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:09 pm Posts: 1381	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] The good: it's a big map with lava. The base radar is somewhat protected thanks to its location. The turrets are near the flagstand. The base is not at the bottom of a crater. You spawn in the boondocks. The bad: the turrets barely do anything because of all the ways they can lose line of sight and have their tracking reset. The generator room is ridiculously big and open. It feels like a cage fight instead of base defense. Bases are not friendly to heavies trying to get around. You can place turrets in the enemy generator room. A big ramp right behind the flagstand that means you can do a front-to-back grab and then a 180 without loosing much speed, but it's harder for defenders to follow you (no conduit+tall ramp means it gives a large advantage to people running into it at speed). Turret placement at the top of the ramp (and on the various structures around the flagstand) is unfriendly to defense. You can place on a flat surface that doesn't really cover anything. You can't place on or near a ledge that looks down to cover a larger area, on the broken pillar ramp by the stand, etc... The structures around the flag stand don't really block cap routes, but they do block line of sight for defenders. Terrain in general seems unfriendly to chasing. Kind of flat near the base and then further out it gets jagged. This means that it's hard for defenders to pick up speed from the flagstand, and that you need to start a good amount of speed to quickly traverse the midfield without getting slowed down a lot. _________________ vawlk wrote: I was telling my son today that back in the day, we could kill our teammates and he was like Last edited by frznvimes on Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:40 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:05 pm

root Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:30 pm Posts: 856	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] I love the overall art style and "attitude" the map has. MAJOR issues: 1. Spawn points are too far away from the flag for defense. It takes literally 10 seconds from spawn to get there (that's an eternity considering how floaty this game feels), and god forbid there's a capper going towards their base... you are SO far away, and the time it takes to gain speed is just crippling. 2. Flag stand puts the defense at a huge disadvantage. It's open enough for cappers to EASILY grab the flag, but there's enough crap around/over it for defense to have a hard time defending against incoming cappers. 3. The terrain highlights the horrible state of light defense chasing right now. I'm barely making it over the midfield hills while cappers are EASILY scooting over. All in all, this map exacerbates the current problems of defense/chasing. I hope you consider these points, because right now I think I'm going to leave whenever the server hits this map.
Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:55 pm

ToxicNinja Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 1:52 pm Posts: 35	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] At first I was like: Holy s*** this map looks so cool After one round I was like: This is worse than bella omega. I get that the hills are suppose to be rough because it's all broken up and volcanic but its not functional, there's a huge dip right before the bases which just ruins all of your energy. The volcano has some terrible ski paths going down it, one of them takes you straight into a terrain doodad ontop of a big hill. The spawns are so far back it takes you forever to get to the base. The generator room is bad. The raised generator is bad enough, a terrible design idea. But then you also have to deal with these access paths that would take too much energy to climb. In general this generator makes infiltrator useless. I like raider too, but I hate being tight-cast into playing. The turrets are just terrible, absolutely terrible. The radar is too high. Again, looks cool, not functional. You can't even shoot it without scaling the whole building. On the plus side it looks really cool. That's worth something I guess. Either way, this map needs to be pulled and fixed ASAP. This is the first time I've started leaving games just because of map coming up.
Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:11 pm

GTWgOOse Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2010 2:46 am Posts: 239	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] And that is why we need community maps. There is always going to be some one that hates this or that and we all need a place we like. Otherwise those people will leave. "The volcano has some terrible ski paths going down it, one of them takes you straight into a terrain doodad ontop of a big hill." It has some terrible ski paths? One that leads you into a rock? Is the map skiing you or are you skiing the map? :facepalm:
Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:16 pm

frznvimes Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:09 pm Posts: 1381	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] The lava in the bases looks more like a circulating roll of cloth painted to look like lava than actual liquid rock. It would be nice if it bubbled a bit or something. Base turrets behave VERY strangely on this map. You can put tech turrets anywhere, including the enemy generator room and flag stand. Suggestion for alternate flag location, one floor up. This makes it a bit more defensible and interesting. It also puts the flag defenders in a higher position from which they'll be able to gain a little more speed/height when they start chasing. From above: add a small roof to protect from strikes directly on the stand, but dosen't stop mortars from coming in from an angle. From the side: add 2 more pillars to make the opening gap slightly smaller so that it can be blocked by a force field, but still larger than the spacing between other pillars. By using pillars instead of a force field it means that the faster a capper comes in for a side-to-side the straighter their route will have to be, if they come in slower they might be able to maneuver between pillars. Make the bottom part below the stand a lava pool. Video showing what some simple routes would look like (I just kind of improvise, these aren't really planned out). Most notably they would force the grabber to actually travel through the air so that defenders would have a bit of warning and it prevents turrets from losing line of sight and not firing (turret locations would have to be changed). A back-to-front from above grab is possible, but very difficult (you have to go through just the right place) and suitably rewards the capper with cover on the approach. You can go under the stand for a back-to-front, but you would sacrifice speed/energy by going over the lava and then up the ramp. A front-to-back using the ramp will cost you a bit of energy to fly over the lava pit if you're not going fast enough and be a bit risky as you could get deflected into it. Basically, the idea is that there are various routes open, but each one has advantages and disadvantages, particularly depending on what the defenders are doing, the status of the generator, and how skilled you are at skiing. Suggestions for generator room changes Keep the general layout basically the same but add lots of large natural stone pillars going from the ceiling to the floor, as well as more/longer stalagmites/stalactites. This creates cover to maneuver around, a bit of a vantage point from standing on the catwalks versus standing at the bottom among the rocks, and makes hovering around high up difficult/risky/a place to hide for a second. Instead of having the generator on top of a platform, put it on the inside like a small bunker. This makes it so you can't just stand where ever you want and shoot at the generator, giving the defenders a couple main places to watch without bottle necking the attackers (as on the current Bella Omega). _________________ vawlk wrote: I was telling my son today that back in the day, we could kill our teammates and he was like
Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:02 am

dsiOne Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 10:14 pm Posts: 327 Steam Gamer Name: dsi1	Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF] Might be a bit of new-toy syndrome talking here, but d*** this is the best map yet. Love the atmosphere, love the big hills that you can go from 0 to 200+ easily, love the architecture, love the flag stand (though my OCD demands me to say center the flag even though I know why it's off like that), and that 180 degree ramp to/from the flag is great fun. _________________ 100% Inheritance: It's 100% Intuitive and 100% Natural. \|\| Add Targeting Lasers Having to aim from a reference point that doesnt exist is not an intuitive or newbie friendly feature, and it will hurt the game in the long run
Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:34 am

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Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

Author

Message

phanakapan

Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2011 10:24 am
Posts: 289

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

the main problem is the giant near vertical hills placed at random all over the map. large scale means more coordinated action and more time for chasers to intercept, but only when the terrain of the map doesn't promote lightning fast routes from every direction and have horrible terrain directly around the flag stand followed by jagged crap everywhere else which makes chasing completely impossible.

if everything was mellowed and smoothed out and the giant hills were used purposefully to direct action in specific areas of the map, it would actually make for a great map. the only hill that does this on the new map is the center volcano, but it isn't wide enough to prevent straight up back caps or front caps so it sort of fails in this purpose. the wide open flag stands really need to go too...

Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:12 pm

Wobberjockey

Beta Tester

Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:30 am
Posts: 8726
Location: In a handbasket, heading somewhere

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

faramir wrote:

Since Wobberjockey is either dancing or sleeping... I get to start the map feedback topic.

thanks for the pickup. linked (and the correct answer was fumbling around for my morning coffee

)

_________________

original art at http://tinyurl.com/shazbotsig
The Tribes READ ME. Quite possibly the most important thread you'll never read

Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:14 pm

Copain

Beta Tester

Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 6:33 pm
Posts: 180

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

The amount of speed you can get to cap the flag (Even as a medium (Raider for instance for those who hate the base turret location), the huge open gen room (With plenty of hidden entrances) with the gen being smack dab in the middle at the bottom, the Radar being so high up it takes awhile to get to... the flag stand with a nice murder hole for Jugs to shoot into.. A ramp to go up/down and keep speed for flag..

Why on earth would anyone defend on this map?

I'm not harassing you Hi-rez, but please make the Defense not have to suffer this much... There's so many ways to attack and so many things that punish being a Defending Tech or other various classes.

I know Sents are normally OP and all, but here they seem punished for defending because of all the curves and walls that will hide flag grabbers (And also block Tech turret shots). Please PLEASE mess with this map a bit.

Anyway, to provide feedback that the developers will bother to read, The middle volcano has an easily exploitable error in which you can ride a vehicle down into the bottom of the volcana and not die in it. You can then hop out of the vehicle and move around freely. In a Tank or Jug (When we learn angles to fire it and hit bases) you could see that this would be exploitable.
EDIT: In my second go my bullets wouldn't act normally form the lava, I suppose this was a safety feature to prevent abuse, so ignore my latter point.

I really hope more will be changed about this map than bug fixes though

_________________

Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:17 pm

Firesphere

Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:07 pm
Posts: 55

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

not sure if anyone else feels the same way, but this map is far too dark for my liking... the terrain just lends itself to not see the enemy unless they have an arrow on their head... lighten it or change the color somehow.. just feels wrong at the moment.

Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:52 pm

frznvimes

Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:09 pm
Posts: 1381

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

The good: it's a big map with lava. The base radar is somewhat protected thanks to its location. The turrets are near the flagstand. The base is not at the bottom of a crater. You spawn in the boondocks.

The bad: the turrets barely do anything because of all the ways they can lose line of sight and have their tracking reset.
The generator room is ridiculously big and open. It feels like a cage fight instead of base defense.
Bases are not friendly to heavies trying to get around.
You can place turrets in the enemy generator room.
A big ramp right behind the flagstand that means you can do a front-to-back grab and then a 180 without loosing much speed, but it's harder for defenders to follow you (no conduit+tall ramp means it gives a large advantage to people running into it at speed).
Turret placement at the top of the ramp (and on the various structures around the flagstand) is unfriendly to defense. You can place on a flat surface that doesn't really cover anything. You can't place on or near a ledge that looks down to cover a larger area, on the broken pillar ramp by the stand, etc...
The structures around the flag stand don't really block cap routes, but they do block line of sight for defenders.
Terrain in general seems unfriendly to chasing. Kind of flat near the base and then further out it gets jagged. This means that it's hard for defenders to pick up speed from the flagstand, and that you need to start a good amount of speed to quickly traverse the midfield without getting slowed down a lot.

_________________

vawlk wrote:

I was telling my son today that back in the day, we could kill our teammates and he was like

Last edited by frznvimes on Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:40 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:05 pm

root

Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:30 pm
Posts: 856

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

I love the overall art style and "attitude" the map has.

MAJOR issues:
1. Spawn points are too far away from the flag for defense. It takes literally 10 seconds from spawn to get there (that's an eternity considering how floaty this game feels), and god forbid there's a capper going towards their base... you are SO far away, and the time it takes to gain speed is just crippling.

2. Flag stand puts the defense at a huge disadvantage. It's open enough for cappers to EASILY grab the flag, but there's enough crap around/over it for defense to have a hard time defending against incoming cappers.

3. The terrain highlights the horrible state of light defense chasing right now. I'm barely making it over the midfield hills while cappers are EASILY scooting over.

All in all, this map exacerbates the current problems of defense/chasing. I hope you consider these points, because right now I think I'm going to leave whenever the server hits this map.

Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:55 pm

ToxicNinja

Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 1:52 pm
Posts: 35

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

At first I was like:
Holy s*** this map looks so cool

After one round I was like:
This is worse than bella omega.

I get that the hills are suppose to be rough because it's all broken up and volcanic but its not functional, there's a huge dip right before the bases which just ruins all of your energy.

The volcano has some terrible ski paths going down it, one of them takes you straight into a terrain doodad ontop of a big hill.

The spawns are so far back it takes you forever to get to the base.

The generator room is bad. The raised generator is bad enough, a terrible design idea. But then you also have to deal with these access paths that would take too much energy to climb. In general this generator makes infiltrator useless. I like raider too, but I hate being tight-cast into playing.

The turrets are just terrible, absolutely terrible.

The radar is too high. Again, looks cool, not functional. You can't even shoot it without scaling the whole building.

On the plus side it looks really cool. That's worth something I guess.

Either way, this map needs to be pulled and fixed ASAP. This is the first time I've started leaving games just because of map coming up.

Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:11 pm

GTWgOOse

Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2010 2:46 am
Posts: 239

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

And that is why we need community maps. There is always going to be some one that hates this or that and we all need a place we like. Otherwise those people will leave.

"The volcano has some terrible ski paths going down it, one of them takes you straight into a terrain doodad ontop of a big hill."

It has some terrible ski paths? One that leads you into a rock? Is the map skiing you or are you skiing the map?
:facepalm:

Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:16 pm

frznvimes

Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:09 pm
Posts: 1381

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

The lava in the bases looks more like a circulating roll of cloth painted to look like lava than actual liquid rock. It would be nice if it bubbled a bit or something.
Base turrets behave VERY strangely on this map. You can put tech turrets anywhere, including the enemy generator room and flag stand.

Suggestion for alternate flag location, one floor up. This makes it a bit more defensible and interesting. It also puts the flag defenders in a higher position from which they'll be able to gain a little more speed/height when they start chasing.
From above: add a small roof to protect from strikes directly on the stand, but dosen't stop mortars from coming in from an angle.

From the side: add 2 more pillars to make the opening gap slightly smaller so that it can be blocked by a force field, but still larger than the spacing between other pillars. By using pillars instead of a force field it means that the faster a capper comes in for a side-to-side the straighter their route will have to be, if they come in slower they might be able to maneuver between pillars. Make the bottom part below the stand a lava pool.

Video showing what some simple routes would look like (I just kind of improvise, these aren't really planned out). Most notably they would force the grabber to actually travel through the air so that defenders would have a bit of warning and it prevents turrets from losing line of sight and not firing (turret locations would have to be changed). A back-to-front from above grab is possible, but very difficult (you have to go through just the right place) and suitably rewards the capper with cover on the approach. You can go under the stand for a back-to-front, but you would sacrifice speed/energy by going over the lava and then up the ramp. A front-to-back using the ramp will cost you a bit of energy to fly over the lava pit if you're not going fast enough and be a bit risky as you could get deflected into it.
Basically, the idea is that there are various routes open, but each one has advantages and disadvantages, particularly depending on what the defenders are doing, the status of the generator, and how skilled you are at skiing.

Suggestions for generator room changes
Keep the general layout basically the same but add lots of large natural stone pillars going from the ceiling to the floor, as well as more/longer stalagmites/stalactites. This creates cover to maneuver around, a bit of a vantage point from standing on the catwalks versus standing at the bottom among the rocks, and makes hovering around high up difficult/risky/a place to hide for a second.

Instead of having the generator on top of a platform, put it on the inside like a small bunker. This makes it so you can't just stand where ever you want and shoot at the generator, giving the defenders a couple main places to watch without bottle necking the attackers (as on the current Bella Omega).

_________________

vawlk wrote:

I was telling my son today that back in the day, we could kill our teammates and he was like

Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:02 am

dsiOne

Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 10:14 pm
Posts: 327
Steam Gamer Name: dsi1

Re: Map feedback - Temple Ruins [CTF]

Might be a bit of new-toy syndrome talking here, but d*** this is the best map yet. Love the atmosphere, love the big hills that you can go from 0 to 200+ easily, love the architecture, love the flag stand (though my OCD demands me to say center the flag even though I know why it's off like that), and that 180 degree ramp to/from the flag is great fun.

_________________
100% Inheritance: It's 100% Intuitive and 100% Natural. || Add Targeting Lasers
Having to aim from a reference point that doesnt exist is not an intuitive or newbie friendly feature, and it will hurt the game in the long run

Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:34 am