Because it’s relevant, here’s my post from the Jolt Forums. It is purely with clanwars / good public servers in mind. A lot will already have been said so forgive me if I cover some things again - it was written with a different set of readers in mind :
New Map needed NOW
There’s another post about Caen going on but I’ve started a new thread for this because it’s important. As far as Caen is concerned, we have special settings running on the BiO server which use most of the competition settings but, as of yesterday, I’ve removed the map from the rotation.
I understand the amount of work that goes into making a map, but in order to get one that’s suitable for competition, the developer can’t just walk away once it’s bug free.
FFS, someone please make a decent competition map. There are so many that have been produced but from what I’ve seen only Supply Depot qualifies as one worthy of competition. Caen could have been, but it never got updated. Venice has been tweaked a great deal for use in the U.S. leagues but I’m not convinced yet and the file size will always cause problems on a public (18Mb+)
For what it’s worth, here are 2 important pointers for a decent aggressive map :
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Avoid creating one or two choke points that are easily accessible from the Axis spawn (assuming Axis are defending). Obvious, but clearly not THAT obvious judging from most of the maps we see.
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IMPORTANT. Use this basic rule of thumb to work out how defensively biased the map is. If you’re not interested, then don’t bother reading it.
If the time taken for Axis to get to objective from spawn PLUS difference in spawn cycle is LESS than the time for Allies to get to objective from their spawn then it’s a DEFENSIVE map. If it’s MORE then it’s OFFENSIVE.
i.e. If a player from each team both die near the objective, which one is more likely to get back there first ?
Ok, here’s a couple of examples to clarify.
Radar - Axis spawn is 10 seconds slower than Allied. However, it takes almost 10 seconds to get to East Radar from Axis spawn and only about 15 from the command post. Difference in travel time (5s) is less than difference in spawn cycle (10s) - Offensive map
FuelDump (Old) - Axis spawn again 10 seconds slower than Allied. Takes Axis about 10 seconds to get to FD but took Allies about 30. Difference in travel time (20s) is greater than difference in spawn cycle (10s) - Defensive map.
FuelDump (New) - Allies only take about 10 seconds to get to FD from CPost. Suddenly this means that Difference in travel time (0s) is much less than difference in spawn cycle (10s) and that’s why it’s such an offensive map now once the command post is built.
OK, enough of the examples - you can see for yourself why Supply Depot works much better than the other maps. You can also see why Caen was so awful with the old spawn cycles.
We DEFINITELY need a new map ASAP.
Mappack, nice idea. But we need ONE good competition map very soon or it’s going to start to get boring…
You know a good map almost straight away - as soon as I saw Supply Depot I put it on, despite the fact no-one had it, because it was obviously going to be good.
If I felt that the map worked well I’d speak with the admin of Efterlyst too because getting the top players playing them are as good a way as any to get maps officially recognised.