Please, remake stopwatch maps!!! (+Idea for chapel)

(Humbugsen) #1

I’ll take chapel as an example, because it’s the map I enjoy the least of all, because it’s too restricting and not tactical at all. The EV is the main reason for this.

So here is my idea how to change it:

ETchapel.jpg1368×769 219 KB

Basics:

  • Capture the forward spawn, which belongs to defenders at the beginning of the match (optional).
  • Destroy the wall to permanently capture the forward spawn (optional).
  • Steal EMP-charges from the building and secure them near the EV garage.

Additions:

  • A Trickplant at the wall should also be included (Like planting behind the wall, using the trickjump).
  • Stealing and delivering is possible without destroying the wall, using the trickjump.
  • Picking up the objective takes a little longer, returning a little shorter and delivering is almost instant
  • The forward spawn is located directly in front of the chapel. The delivery is between attacker and defender spawn
  • The chance to defuse/return route i added, is only accessible from the defenders spawn
  • (Side-objectives could be the good old command posts, decreasing spawntimer, placed in the
    middle between attacker and defender, to make the map even more dynamic. Also could imagine side-objectives that close/open certain routes for attacker/defenders, to balance the map)
  • Could add an EV escort after delivering, basically the EV rolling backwards from the garage

Now take a moment and think about how this map would play! and compare it to what we currently have

What do we need to realize this:

  • Forward Spawns (ET style)
  • Selectable spawns
  • ET spawnsystem (no “space to deploy”, but fixed spawntimes, and fixed spawnpoints)

Why?:

  • To make the map more interesting, diverse, dynamic and tactical. This kind of layout requires much more communication and teamplay, and you will loose for sure if you’re playing deathmatch style.
  • different merc speeds/hp will finally matter, because of steal and deliver.
  • Less focus on spam, because more mapspace is used
  • Spawnkilling is impossible/ can easily backfire
  • ETplayers will be happy

I am really bored by those linear and restricting maps, any chance to get something like this in the future?
Please bring some of the great stuff from ET back, every ET player seems to be really disappointed!

I’m not trying to bash SD or the game, I really like the game and I would be playing right now, but instead I’m writing a wall of text here, because there is sooooo much more potential and the 12-year-old ET is still a better game at the moment. PLEASE, don’t launch without changing those maps!

How do others think? Maybe I am just doomed to play ET forever? Any comment appreciated :smiley:

(fubar) #2

I’d much rather see EMP deliveries being reduced to one, rather than two. Goes for Trainyard as well really, and Terminal’s last stage. The maps are heavily defense oriented already, especially given the sync’d spawntimes, having to complete the last objective twice is nothing but a grind.

Either way, I suggest just waiting for the game’s release and community created maps. SD has never really… gotten it right. The maps have been complained about for years, it is obvious at this point that they want to stick to their initial idea, sometimes you just gotta stop fighting it and bend over.

(Humbugsen) #3

I think that would make it more luck-based.
I would really prefer stealing instead of delivering, it adds more tactics and doesn’t require you to spawnkill the defenders.
Like: Which route do i take after stealing? Who steals? The fast or the tanky? etc.
but i agree that it’s nothing but a grind at the moment

(Glottis-3D) #4

nice idea!

but

i’d change “- Steal EMP-charges from the building and secure them near the EV garage.”
to
“- Steal EMP-charges from the building and secure them in the Chapel”

and also this:
http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/41508-Whitechapel-Last-Object-Ideas

(Zenity) #5

No, I’m not. The maps are fine. Not great, but fine. ET had a lot of issues with its map design as well throughout its history. It took a LONG time to end up with the current ET map pool, and it’s still far from perfect.

Gameplay and flow on most of the maps is fine, and we have seen some fairly exciting matches in the tournaments. Where SD style maps really shine is that they have a consistent pacing that is neither too fast nor too slow. This is great for both tournament organisation, spectators, and keeping the game consistent on pubs. I do not expect them to ever make a 180 on this.

What I want to see is gradual improvements to the current maps, plus new maps which learn from what works best in current maps. In the long run, we will end up with a very respectable competitive map pool.

(Humbugsen) #6

[QUOTE=Zenity;528637]No, I’m not. The maps are fine. Not great, but fine. ET had a lot of issues with its map design as well throughout its history. It took a LONG time to end up with the current ET map pool, and it’s still far from perfect.

Gameplay and flow on most of the maps is fine, and we have seen some fairly exciting matches in the tournaments. Where SD style maps really shine is that they have a consistent pacing that is neither too fast nor too slow. This is great for both tournament organisation, spectators, and keeping the game consistent on pubs. I do not expect them to ever make a 180 on this.

What I want to see is gradual improvements to the current maps, plus new maps which learn from what works best in current maps. In the long run, we will end up with a very respectable competitive map pool.[/QUOTE]

for me they feel like a gameboy racegame where you don’t even have to steer


I just don’t get the feeling of real teamplay, I had in ET. It feels more like a spammy deathmatch ala TF2.

Where is the problem with ET maps? Maybe a bit defender biased overall, but that could easily be changed

(Rémy Cabresin) #7

Just give the community the tools(we know UDK is but dimensions etc, the old post got lost a bit) they need to make custom maps, we don’t need a Workshop like system persee(apart from testing offline/debug mode). Allow the makers to send it to SD, the Devs review the promising projects internally(could even have DirtyCups do showmatches on them) and do optimization etc(where needed) and when they have 3 promising projects they add them to both public and competitive mappools for about a month or two. After which there is a voting system for the community and the number 1 voted gets added to the game permanently. I would suggest two votes, one ranking for public play and one ranking for competitive play as some maps will only work for pub and some are only great on comp.

(montheponies) #8

Yep, would love to give it a go. Don’t want two objs though, unless both are available simultaneously. Goes without saying that I dont want either of these to be milk jug style delivery - nice fast clean doc steal and transmit. Seriously if you were to contrast the current mechanics with RTCW you would think DB was the 14 yr old game (stop, press f to pickup, run without shooting, drop so you can shoot, press f again to pick up, press f again to deliver and worse still press feckin f to return).

I’d love SD to incorporate a formal method of bringing custom maps into the standard map pool - said it before, this worked really well with CoH. Bearing in mind W:ET pretty much settled on custom or re-hashed RTCW maps for competitive SW.

(Humbugsen) #9

Well I think the maps should allow at least some minimal tactical decisions.
In my example you can at least decide: Rush forward spawn, flank forward spawn, plant at the wall, do the trickjump. Or mix those and try to set a trap.
Right now it’s just: Repair the EV and frag
it gets boring very fast

for defenders the same, they’re basically only fragging and disabling the EV.
in my example they really have to coordinate their defense. If someone does a sneaky plant, who defuses and who protects the forward spawn? Who and how many spawn back, when someone managed the trickjump?

it’s such a different feel

so true xD
and yeah delivering is really annoying and should take less time.

maybe a escort could be added to “my” version of chapel, basically the EV rolling backwards from the garage.

(yakcyll) #10

[QUOTE=Humbugsen;528620]I am really bored by those linear and restricting maps, any chance to get something like this in the future?
Please bring some of the great stuff from ET back, every ET player seems to be really disappointed![/QUOTE]
Not sure about how the actually good players feel about them, but I am, surprisingly even for myself, enjoying the current maps immensely. There could be a bit more thought put into balancing them (coughspawntimerscough), but I really can’t complain. And seriously, you can’t with a straight face bring up ET as a reference when you say that these maps are ‘boring, linear and restricting’, 'cause you’re just making a joke of yourself.

As much as I agree with you, I don’t think that argument holds here; the maps are currently the least of problems that make ET a better game.
Imo maps don’t need rework-like changes right now, what’s more important is that their flow is clear, smooth and balanced. While variation is needed and the CP-like objectives (hacking) and other new mechanics are probably on the way, I’d much rather we got some solid work done in order to not have any of the maps in the current pool feel like a grind for either side. Or, if it is meant to be like a grind, make it long, engaging and worthwhile, not feel like one’s punching their head against a wall.

(Humbugsen) #11

I’m talking about maps like Radar
as a defender you can: go for the CP, rush for the forward spawn, flank the forward spawn or plant at the wall
you could even ignore the forward spawn + wall and win the map by taking the CP only.
In chapel it’s just: repair the EV

and did you even read my suggestion?.. is it more or less restricting than the current one? I think your the one who is making a joke of himself :frowning:

(yakcyll) #12

[QUOTE=Humbugsen;528671]I’m talking about maps like Radar
as a defender you can: go for the CP, rush for the forward spawn, flank the forward spawn or plant at the wall
you could even ignore the forward spawn + wall and win the map by taking the CP only.
In chapel it’s just: repair the EV

and did you even read my suggestion?.. is it more or less restricting than the current one? I think your the one who is making a joke of himself :([/QUOTE]
Don’t want to be picky, but Radar is an exception. In many other cases it is just that one objective you have to clear before you can proceed, like Goldrush stage one. You can draw N-to-N relationships between DB and ET maps, but it all makes little sense, after all they are actually quite similar. The flow in DB counterparts is not as neat because the geometry isn’t quite as complex (on Goldrush or Radar, or most of the maps really, you had multiple different paths and flanks towards the same objective; while this argument can be applied to DB maps too, it just doesn’t feel right). Your suggestions are all pretty good ideas, but in all honesty, they constitute an actual rework of the map, which might very well fail for reasons similar to those behind Chapel.

Also, didn’t mean to be mean there, but it seems quite obvious to me that it’s not just the objective design that makes Chapel linear and restrictive, but the whole space design. You have those alternative walkways and such, but they don’t seem to be contributing anything but increasing the time that takes to get from point A to point B; when you exit them, you get into the same contested points without actually creating a flank in most cases. If we only consider how the objectives influence the flow, then I argue the maps feel about as linear and restrictive as ET ones. I might be just dumb here, I don’t know anymore.

(Humbugsen) #13

[QUOTE=yakcyll;528677]Don’t want to be picky, but Radar is an exception. In many other cases it is just that one objective you have to clear before you can proceed, like Goldrush stage one. You can draw N-to-N relationships between DB and ET maps, but it all makes little sense, after all they are actually quite similar. The flow in DB counterparts is not as neat because the geometry isn’t quite as complex (on Goldrush or Radar, or most of the maps really, you had multiple different paths and flanks towards the same objective; while this argument can be applied to DB maps too, it just doesn’t feel right). Your suggestions are all pretty good ideas, but in all honesty, they constitute an actual rework of the map, which might very well fail for reasons similar to those behind Chapel.

Also, didn’t mean to be mean there, but it seems quite obvious to me that it’s not just the objective design that makes Chapel linear and restrictive, but the whole space design. You have those alternative walkways and such, but they don’t seem to be contributing anything but increasing the time that takes to get from point A to point B; when you exit them, you get into the same contested points without actually creating a flank in most cases. If we only consider how the objectives influence the flow, then I argue the maps feel about as linear and restrictive as ET ones. I might be just dumb here, I don’t know anymore.[/QUOTE]

fair enough.
I agree with what you’re saying about flanks, also trainyards first stage for example you can flank yes, but it’s too easy to be spotted, flanking doesn’t really help anything.
I just wanted to show a way how to make a currently boring map (in my opinion) very interesting (for me) and it’s not even that much to rework. Some parts might be not used as much as before, but that’s fine in my opinion. so the space design isn’t necessarily the problem.
And also I’m talking more about stopwatch! I think the maps are “ok” for objective.
A stopwatch match currently is always either complete the whole map, then spawncamp, or first spawncamp, then finish the first objective.

I definitely think Radar should be used as a reference on how to make a good stopwatch map.

(BomBaKlaK) #14

Maps ? are you talking about maps ? :penguin:

(Humbugsen) #15

yes, because almost every time I play, I get mad about them :smiley:
and I’m playing objective mode although i would usually prefer stopwatch

(Nail) #16

this one ?

[quote=“Nail;3881”]here’s some extra info as guidelines

may or may not still be relevant

"

"

(Rémy Cabresin) #17

[QUOTE=Nail;528730]this one ?

[quote=“Nail;3881”]here’s some extra info as guidelines

may or may not still be relevant

"
"[/QUOTE]

Yea I know about that post thats the one I meant, but I doubt those measurements are still accuracte this is from what 2013? Early 2014? At least having someone from devs post an up to date set of tips/dimensions would be nice :stuck_out_tongue:

(LiNkzr) #18

To be honest I think DOME could actually be a good map to play on, it’s wide, a lot of side objectives and choices to do when it comes to pushing / objectives. It’s too large, yes, but it’s not that bad of a map to be honest.

(Nail) #19

[QUOTE=adeto;528732][QUOTE=Nail;528730]this one ?

Yea I know about that post thats the one I meant, but I doubt those measurements are still accuracte this is from what 2013? Early 2014? At least having someone from devs post an up to date set of tips/dimensions would be nice :P[/QUOTE]

pretty sure dimensions would still be accurate, that sort of thing gets set in stone early

(titan) #20

Need to change that 1st objective to 1 deliver instead of 2… it’s such a grind sometimes