For those who dunno, we ran through a few new maps tonight. I just found these on FPSBanana and picked out a few that I thought were okay.

What did you guys think? Which ones stood out? Comments, hate language, reflections welcome.

(Also, keep in mind each map might play differently, so give it a 2nd chance if you didn't like it the first time. We'll be adding/removing bad ones according to how it does, feedback, etc...)

I enjoyed the little time I was in there... great graphics.. (I was lost in hell and fried in water)... then my little laptop fried and stuttered... but I did enjoy...

PS... OK WDF?... lets get a puter that will burn my face and not my hands... this sucker is "Fire, fire, fire... I'm burning"

PPS... great  job Leon Switch... sorry I'm unable to give a more constructive commentary but I did have fun...thanks...

...Not sure which one I was in (hope it wasn't one of CIAO's "crap")

strider was fun but I'm not sure how well it really works - defense just loads up on snipers and soldiers and wins, or they don't and lose.

the other map we played, the one with the AB caps that are above water in a bunch of buildings and then the C cap point way up above, was fun and seemed cool except that AB are really easy to capture and C is seemingly impossible because of the elevator choke points. I bet it could be done if half the offense went medic and built a massive uber rush, which is totally feasible since they can just sit in the elevator room and wait. 

Meridian is one of the coolest looking maps I've played, but it's not a competitive map and it's edging on a constant stalemate due to the design of stages 4 and 5 and the TC layout. BLU will never win stage 4 and odds are RED will probably never win stage 3 either, so the game will just be stuck between those two maps. Really, stage 4 is more difficult to attack than winning all 3 stages of Goldrush... and there's still one more stage after that. Oh yeah, the asymmetrical design of the huts vs. the robot is really bad. Though BLU should be able to win the first 3 stages without too much difficulty, it's hard for them to defend, though the RED intel is easy to defend, though accessible.

Fallout was so buggy I left during that map. That was awful.

And from the other night...

The crane PL map was interesting, but completely broken. The first stage only works in a small game because BLU will just be trapped inside the spawn any other time. The final stage is just laughable. BLU would have to push the cart past 16 sentries with perfect, difficult to attack positions on the last point in a real game.

CTF_Backwards was interesting, but really boring.



Really, though, tempest 3 should be 24/7 Avanti. You know it.

That was Meridian. Boulder's a dustbowl-style CP map.

cp_broma and cp_freezone_a2:

I don't remember which is which, but they were both pretty bad. Both were attack/defend. One had 4 capture points and the final 2 had little pictures on their icons. I don't really know how bad this map was, but it lagged crazily so I don't know. The other one was Gravel Pit style with 3 capture points. This one was absolutely terrible. BLU could capture the first two points even if RED was standing on them though not the last one. That's just plain idiotic design. Oh, and BLU can easily spawn camp RED while under cover, but I guess nobody else saw that.

pl_strider_b9

The idea isn't bad, but the execution is terrible. TF2 and HL non-flat objects don't go too well together. I think I spent about 10 minutes total getting stuck to rubble. Oh yeah, and the strider randomly instagibs everyone on the map? I don't know. Sometimes I left the RED spawn and was killed instantly even though the strider was still before the first point. Oh yeah, it also randomly kills you without any visual warning. I know the blue lasers are bad, but sometimes missiles just hit you through walls and kill you. That's pretty dumb. The health system, while interesting, is also broken. I think the damage done to the strider proportional to how far it is away from the final point. At the beginning I did 3 health bars of damage with just 6 rockets, but at the end I emptied 20 rockets at it from all angles and not even a scratch.

ctf_switch

This map isn't bad, it's just way too big. This map could easily handle 64 players. The 10 player game we had was just a whole lot of nothing. And I never could find the switch.

pl_strider 0/100

Still sucks. Worst map ever made, including 2fort. 2fort isn't actually a bad map, it just plays poorly. This map plays poorly and is inherently awful.


cp_oilrig 10/100

Wow, this is an absolute joke of a map. It sort of plays like BLU's respawn room is inside RED's and RED can fire in the entire time when BLU attacks the final point.


cp_redzone 50/100

Not really that good, not really that bad. The epic team stack was a bit of a turn off, though. The map is really confusing, though. The extra dead end rooms are kind of pointless.


cp_beamvalley 40/100

After taking 10 minutes to download, I was disappointed. It's far too easy for BLU to attack and win.


ctf_switch -/100

Still too big for ten-person games, try 50-60 people.


Stop putting these awful custom maps up. Yes, you can say that I hate every map. That's because 99.9999% of custom maps weren't made with map/team balance in mind. 24/7 Avanti is all you need to have a server full of good custom maps.

We know you have an Avanti fetish, you don't have to share it with the world every time a discussion about maps comes up...