I think gravelpit requires way too much team coordination for it to be week 4(my reasoning behind that is that some teams haven't really gotten that click between each other for said coordination, don't forget the many roster changes that occur during the midseason). If anything koth_viaduct and cp_gravelpit should both be in the later weeks when the people who work on matchmaking establish which teams are on a similar level.

Is it even still worthwhile to have maps exclusively played during a single week during the season? Randomizing both the matchups and the maps makes the game far more interesting, as it (likely) requires proficiency on multiple maps simultaneously. Additionally, viewers and players alike aren't forced into watching/playing a week's worth of a map and growing stale with its flaws (e.g. snakewater last, gravelpit everyone, granary mids).

I think playing different maps each game would increase the competitiveness of the leagues (as the teams who can practice their positioning the most or employ their tactics the best can't focus exclusively on the one map) and reward teams for their continuity (as a team that has stuck together and practiced on each map is obviously benefited). You could see teams sell out and practice exclusively for perhaps the stronger opponent, perhaps allowing for a higher chance of an upset in the match with the lesser team.

I don't actually play competitive TF2, and I'm guessing this idea would be poorly received by those who do because of the ease in finding scrims and warm-ups before a match when everyone shares the same map for the week. But in the scrims I view from streamers, teams usually get in multiple best-of-5's so taking turns on the maps could still happen. And maybe teams wouldn't so often play so exclusively with their scrim "partners" (Top Guns/Mix^ and HRG/tri hards), which I think is a good thing.

I've always been one to think that variety is the spice of life. That being said I do think that GPit, while a well-rounded A/D map, offers more of a roadblock than anything in the early part of a season. At the same time it's pretty much the best link we've got back to Highlander and Pubs and careful thought needs to be put into what should replace it if it must be removed from the schedule.

ETF2L utilizes a two-leg match format with each leg being on a different map, however they draw from a smaller map pool so I'm not sure how well it would work if you tossed in maps like GPit or (3)cp_Standin to the mix.

It's either take away gravel pit and expand on koth, or take viaduct out and replace it with a/d.

The best would be to have the game evenly divided between the 3, but there is just not enough good maps to do that. We should focus on one or the other and try to get that going instead of having a bunch of cp maps, 1 koth, and 1 a/d.

In my eyes, viaduct > gpit any day. Once koth has got the same respect as 5cp we can move on to new things.

Ozfortress does the same thing. Two maps a game (third being a tiebreaker, this differs from ETF2L), but only one game a week.

To the point made earlier about throwing away a KOTH map and making it two A/D maps, that doesn't make
much sense. Viaduct has proven itself to be a balanced, fun, and continually interesting map. I can see us having more KOTH maps in the future. KOTH_Ashville wasn't a home run but something can come eventually.

Also another interesting discussion point is that we could either go with 8 maps of 5cp, OR we could create an interestingly balanced map pool mix. Something to the effect of 2 5cp maps, 2 KOTH maps, 2 A/D maps, and 2 cp_standin style maps. This is a better reflection of TF2 and the wide variety of map types that the community offers.

Do you see the problem here? There's too many map types. It's too confusing from a player's point of view. There's no possible way to properly prepare for every map type given the limited amount of practice time available to teams.

My opinion? Get rid of A/D and KOTH maps all together. They can be phased out over the course of a few seasons if necessary. Other professional athletic and esports DO NOT have the issues we have because the competitive game only has one style of "court" or game-type. For example, League of Legends has other maps but they aren't played in leagues for money as the "Main Game."

What I meant was that would have to happen if we would want to keep gpit. So obviously gpit would be phased out because viaduct is soooo much better.

8cp or 6cp+2koth are both viable ideas. One or the other.

There is probably a reason why there is so many 5cp maps and not much else.

If KOTH is closely matched it makes for some good ass overtime endings

Lol at complaining it favours experienced teams more. Yeah of course it does, and that's a good thing! Teams should be rewarded for having better chemistry and sticking together, not just mashing good DM players together every time something goes wrong.

The 1 map a week thing is much better and ETF2L will probably move to doing that too, because you can practice the map on that week easily and dedicate more time to it than juggling a few at once.

And I think there's nothing wrong with gravelpit apart from it being very long and a bitch to schedule/scrim on. Apart from that it's a very fun map which shouldn't be excluded from the map pool just because it's not 5cp. Whilst it doesn't have the same variety in the transitional plays as a 5cp map does, and almost everything is set, it really emphasises the fact that you have to have better execution of your tactic and your counter-tactic than the other team and I like seeing that.

heres how i see it

cp is a nice balance of who has the better teamfight and who has the more organized push
koth is much more teamfight heavy
a/d is much more dependant on organization

in cs there are definitely maps that are more prone to T/CT/AWPs/retakes/rotations so being better at certain parts of the game can really help

It's nice to have variety

#bringbackturbine2013

I would agree if not for these big notable exceptions:

StarCraft 2 has different maps and different starting positions for matches, could be facing off across the entire map or looking north/south for your opponent.

Tennis has a couple different surfaces for the court, requiring adjustments in playstle.

In motorsports no two tracks can be truly identical, each has unique characteristics and suit different driving disciplines.

---

Alright I'm nitpicking, but the point is you can have variances if people learn to accept them. Which unfortunately there isn't a clear consensus on that in Comp TF2, hence why we revisit this argument seemingly all the time.

i think there would be less upsets and 2-0s on gpit if people actually pugged on it more. I bet there are a ton of people that go into ESEA having only played gpit in 6v6 a couple of times at most.

i think a new, totally different KOTH map would be sweet.
Theres one that Phi was working on, its jungle themed, and looks awesome, but in the end, it has the spawn, a house in the middle, and a flat point.
Like something really different. Idk what it would be...

just my idea. and also, i hate gpit. and i love 5cp, but some new map would be cool

Actually the greatest FPS eSport has different arenas (Quake). DoTA and SC2 do have some variation. Different maptypes are just a result of how TF2 is. If you really wanted to be like some games with 1 type of map, why not standardize tf2 to reskins of Badlands?

The problem with this as an example is that we've been lobbying ozf to change to 1 map rounds for ages :P

I think people are far too hung up on the idea of making sure there is "a wide variety" of map types - it shouldn't be about squeezing in an A/D or a KOTH map, the focus should be on assembling the best possible 7 or 8 maps for competitive play. The way the game currently stands the majority of players seem to feel that gravelpit doesn't fit in such a list - and for that reason it really should be excluded from the map pool. It seems like the community is determined to hold on to the past where gpit was a much more exciting map to play and resulted in some exciting upset matches - which is one of the biggest problems with gpit because no matter how good you might be at the map, there is too much of a "random" element with the A/D format.

@Slin - I really don't think a map deserves to be phased out purely due to one-way scores - and I think that removing A/D and KOTH altogether is a ridiculous suggestion. The way the game is currently played Viaduct is easily one of the better maps in the competitive pool, and the issue here isn't arising from the fact that the game has variety, it's arising from the unwillingness of the leagues to listen to the community about which maps are best for competitive tf2.

tl;dr - gpit is old and stale, focus should be on the best possible map pool regardless of format - if another good A/D map comes out that deserves to get a spot then it should, same for any CP/KOTH map.

personally, i've never hated the map, but the main problem is that there is only one a/d map and one koth map. it's pointless to scrim or pug a map that is uncommon in the map pool and therefore benefits you less to practice.

for anyone who used to play back when turbine was around, we had the exact same problem. everybody hated the map because it was the only ctf in the map pool, causing nobody to want to pug/scrim it.

think of it this way.
with the current map pool:
pugging ANY cp map - allows you to practice mechanics featured in 75% of the map pool
pugging an ad or koth map - practice mechanics from one map in the map pool

in my opinion, the best solution I can think of is to add more koth and ad maps to the map pool. if this happened, people wouldn't be so opposed to playing them outside of ESEA week and it wouldn't be disruptive in the middle of a season. the only problem with this solution is that there just aren't any viable koth/ad maps that have been well tested to add in to the pool.

we need to focus on ways to test new maps with high level players and get good feedback from them

I'm curious about this. Right now, I believe that playing new maps is like playing gpit: no one wants to do it because they can just play Badlands or whatever.

@aporia:

I'm not saying one night of scores justifies ruling a map type out, but I'm simply using it as a catalyst for discussion.

@turin:

OK sorry I misworded my argument. I meant variety in game type not maps. But the point still stands -- do we need a variety in game types? As a community we've already ruled out things like CTF, Payload, and cp_standin domination style.

I love 5cp and I love KOTH. Gpit is interesting but honestly isn't all that fun. especially if you're someone stuck off classing to engineer or something. If we could get more KOTH maps i would be very happy. As far as ESEA map rotation goes, maybe having 5 5cp maps, and 3 koth maps in the rotation? I think focusing on some more KOTH would do some good as they tend to make some close nail-biting games without taking away fun like Gpit can.

Just a snippet here, but in seasons 12 and 14 Gravel Pit was week 4. In Seasons 11 and 13 Gravel Pit was week 5. Disparities of one week isn't that bad, and I don't recall the Gravel Pit week of season 12 being as horrendous (albeit I was not active that season)

@lansky

What is the correct ratio to have in an 8 week schedule? 4 cp, 2 KOTH, 2 A/D? 3 cp, 3 KOTH, 2 A/D?
Does that really balance things out? Or does it make it harder to have all of the maps well practiced.

This problem happens frequently in ETF2L -- they play two different maps each week for ~7 weeks. Many teams in ETF2L complain that they don't have enough time to practice, so they just pick one map to get good at and then improvise on the other one.

I'm afraid that is what would happen in NA TF2. You'd play 2-4 weeks of a map type, then swap over to a completely new map type. Or worse, the maps would all be mixed up so that from week to week the game type changes. How are teams supposed to build up their skills that way?

@slin

I don't think there's a lucky number as far as how many maps to have, but it's obvious that just having one of a certain map type is a poor decision.

It's unrealistic that we'd find solid additions in both AD and KOTH game types, but what I'd really like to see is one more KOTH introduced somewhere in the pool (possibly in place of gpit) so we can see if teams would be more willing to familiarize themselves with the KOTH game mode, such that its considered standard to know how to play it.

You're right that problems will still exist if things stay the way they are now, where everyone pugs 5cp the majority of the time. This would obviously be bad for teams when they suddenly have to face a new game type mid season. However, if more of the other game modes are introduced (likely KOTH since most people hate gpit as it is), the community would be more likely to familiarize themselves with the game mode.

There wouldn't be a problem with people "swapping to a new map type" because the KOTH maps would be commonly played outside of matches in scrims, pugs, lobbies, etc. The problem with gravelpit is that nobody plays it outside of matches. I think most people can agree that they'd like to see more KOTH in the rotation, but the issue is there aren't any viable alternatives yet.

I'm gonna have to agree with Lansky on both points. Koth and AD won't get attention from teams unless they're more relevant to the overall outcome of a season. And when they're only played once, they aren't. Koth definitely has a better shot at producing some good matches, and there's a wider pool of maps to choose from.

I'd like to see some of the lesser competitive leagues like UGC, CEVO, and even IGL to force encourage their teams to play matches on experimental maps. There'd be a lot more feedback that way.

People keep saying gravelpit is good for spectators but I very much dispute this.

Firstly, all the teams of equal'ish skill always opt to use the same strategy. And it seems on RED it's devolved into 2 strats, Ironman (which rarely gets used) and the standard B hold with 1 offclass.

If gpit is the real "test" of strategies then watching the same strat being executed time and time again is not really a good way of showcasing that.

Gpit is a test of team chemistry and timing, why teams do well and why teams do badly even though they're running the same strategy is something that comes down to timing and comms. To convey that in a stream is very hard, especially using only 1st person POVs and no mumble comms. In fact, it's also really hard to convey with those tools. As a comp player myself I know when it comes down to troubleshooting why we are doing badly on gpit, a cursory glance at the demos won't reveal it like the other 5cp maps, we have to go deeper, watching the same demo from different POVs, recording comms and listening back and getting opinions from higher div players. It's not something that can be communicated in a stream and I think it actually alienates new to comp players.

Secondly I would argue that gpit is actually horrible to new spectators. There's too much nuanced rules of thumbs that are being employed for new to comp players to know why teams do something. Case in point is the give up A approach RED always takes, it just doesn't make sense to new players and it also doesn't make sense as a map. Why play a make where 1/3 of it is basically never used and is always a formality?

The above is from the perspective of a spectator, specifically leaning towards someone with little to no comp experience. I think it's a very dangerous road to walk down to start playing maps that are not in the official pool as it would just alienate the pub community more. People can wrap their heads around 5cp, KOTH, but if we start introducing maps like Standin as has been suggested then it's going to be very hard to convey that in a stream. Hell, it was hard for me to pickup and play.

I'm a little bit sad about the response to non 5-cp maps among my team. I love viaduct, but if I bring it up they are like "ok if we have to Kenneth". Suggesting gpit is just out of the question. The map gets played one week in scrims a season, and that's it. There's no opportunity to practice it, so no one plays it.

I agree, the answer is more maps, not less. When we add more, people aren't learning how to play G-pit, they are learning to play A/D. Player's aren't learning to play viaduct, they are learning to play KOTH.

I'd be more willing to push KOTH a bit more though, I think it's a good game mode if good maps can be made for it.

I'd be keen to at least get rid of the tiebreaker. 1 1/2 hour is a bit long, and it generally will be dragged out to 2 hours if the teams are disorganized.

honestly i don't see the problem of having different map types in the mix, it makes the game more interesting to watch and play in my opinion

i mean if you look at highlander they have to play pl/cp/koth/5cp with a much more varied map pool

so overall i don't have a problem with gpit of anything alternative to 5cp

It's simple, we replace gpit with koth_ashville