symmetrical and fair for each team/class to push into/out of any location

it's a lot harder than you think

The map just need to jive with itself, be interesting, allow for fast paced gameplay, and get tested to achieve this and kneed out unforseen bugs.

Edit: Actually, basically, you need to be able to push from any point to any point. Each and every point needs to be attack-able and defend-able.

Especially for last, you need to be able to cap it without defenders being able to spawn and lemming onto it successfully (which is a stalemate) yet you need defenders to be able to push out to 2nd successfully (else it means either losing 2nd is losing the round or the game stalemates on last, though snakewater got away with this for a while).

HiGPS actually did a pretty good job on this topic. If I can find the link I'll put it here.

EDIT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3maAwUUG6U

More people willing to seriously playtest them, repeatedly, in early stages who then don't leave only toxic feedback.

Pretty much any mapper I know who wanted to map for comp has had negative experiences with how they and their maps were treated. TF2Maps in general lost the will to map for comp. Not worth the huge amounts of work and stress especially considering it's highly unlikely leagues will actually add your map to the rotation in the end.

So why would you make a comp map? It's no fun, really restrictive and basically impossibly difficult to have it be accepted.

What's wrong with cp_vanguard for example? How many of us even know what map that is?

This unfortunately is one of the main reasons why custom maps are quite sparse in the community, NA are more open to new maps but EU are incredibly tight lipped about playing and trying out new maps which is a really big shame.

I remember in CSS and 1.6 there were loads of new maps play tested and tried, when you searched for a scrim the other team wouldn't bitch and whine about having to play a certain map.

In regards to designing maps themselves, quite a few custom maps are incredibly good but I feel most are all lacking in good last points in particular, most are very much the same in some shape or form which is disappointing. I still think for this reason badlands is a really good map as it's one of the few maps that has a closed last point that really creates some intense last defense pushes, most these days have rather large open last caps that make for a very flat and bland last push.

spires

It can't be too easy for snipers

Not making them kill performance is really nice but not necessary (*coughcoughProviaductrc3coughcough*)

But honestly the only real thing to worry about i can you push/defend.

vanguard is super clusterfucky, it needs to be like cleaned up. Everywhere you look there's unnecessary stuff, the theme needs to be changed

Awesome. Basically:

- How many entrances are there into a room or area? 3 to 6 are good numbers.
- What's the quickest entrance to get to and through? You should be at a disadvantage to the team holding in the room/area.
- What entrance gives you the most advantage? It shouldn't be the quickest.

Edit: And the problem with vanguard is confusing aesthetics/lighting, unclear layout, doesn't follow above rules, lots of annoying invisible walls, and has way too many props, most of which don't add to the map and just rob frames.

I'm pretty tempted to try to make a map, but I feel like it would turn out awful and be a big waste of time for everyone involved. :<

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/newmapweekends

Need more mans to play new maps with. Last night was alright but we could always use more people and new maps to test out, don't get me wrong I love cp_sunshine but having more stuff to test and give feedback on would be awesome.

3 entrances connecting mid and second, and 4-5 on last

badlands, granary, snakewater and gullywash all have that property, and because of that the maps have been staples in comp since they came out

i really think people need to stop suggesting totally qualitative ideas and give something a mapper can actually work

p.s. everyone loves dropdowns

also do not put large warehouses in between every single control point

that's what scorpio did on ashville and metalworks, and it's why they're so stalematey

if you're going to put distinctly separate space between control points make it a yard and not an enclosed space

Source. Material.

Make sure the chokepoints are actually legitimately useful places to push from.

Don't make spongy flank networks -- it might seem like a good idea, but what's the last map like that which got popular? cp_steel, and it hardly counts because of its unorthodox concept and it's *still* too big for 6s.

In 5CP, 2nd point needs to be challenging to capture after an indecisive mid victory, but easy if you get a wipe; spires works brilliantly for this in a compact space, maps without them tend EDIT: to put the 2nd point oh flat ground in front of an elevated platform.

In 5CP, if you make points take too long to capture then you're the devil. This is actually considered an advanced thing, by the way, which is sad because using hammer is so hard in the first place that thought deserves to be put into the technical basics like this.

If your 5CP map is too large everyone will hate it. Just because all of the 6s classes are mobile doesn't mean that they have all the time in the world. Large maps mean wildly differing spawntimes or aggressively positioned forward spawns to make up for the distance one team or the other would otherwise be out of the game for traveling. Use badlands as the baseline for how long it should take to get to mid, and how much space there should be between each point.

Three of the very best 5CP maps in the game share an obvious formula: Open mid, elbow chokepoint going downhill into 2nd with a corner-cutting but disadvantageous flank, long 2nd point area with a spire, small warehouse/lobby system, boxed in last point room. This is such an obvious layout that it's present in TFC and some *quake* maps, for christ's sake. I'm not saying that formulas are the best thing ever, but if you're going to figure out what makes a competitive map good, you should really be looking at shit like this and disect it into its fundamental parts instead of theorycrafting baselessly about why pub maps *don't* work. Think about the dynamics between control points, and the ways that geometry and open space work. That's what some of the newer tf2maps 5cp maps are doing.

KotH maps need to actually promote DMing among a small number of players. This means to have some kind of focus point somewhere. Viaduct is a good example, with a ridiculous focus on the center and action areas that fan out into a chokepoint wall with a spawn behind it. More KotH maps in this general concept, like this and arctic, need to be tried out so that we know that there's diversity you can do with the layout. Yes, this even -- no, especially -- applies to highlander, because a lot of the classes are effectively immobile or exist solely to deny space, so you need to force them together to get the KotH DM fest to happen and not punish them with a long walk just because they died in a DM fest.

One of the reasons that the competitive community has been somewhat rude to tf2maps over the years is that a lot of people there repeated bringing maps over without listening to earlier feedback. Do you know how long it took for someone to make a legitimately good custom 5CP map? Gullywash. Go figure, the one guy who doesn't seem to listen to other mappers very much in public anymore has the best experience with tailoring a map to a niche's needs. I want to see the "comp players are mean!" streak end, because for whatever bit mean the people in comp are to mappers, the tf2maps community's little circlejerks are just as mean to brand new mappers for not getting what are supposed, apparent, basics, but not.

I'm not even going to get into HL because they haven't even figured out what form of payload map they like the most yet. It's definitely a lot easier to transition from pub maps into making HL PL maps than 6s 5CP/KotH though.

alright cool, cp_vanguard getting some feedback. here of all places! :D thing with comp mapping is that the feedback is hard to track down sometimes. it's easy to feel ignored as a mapper but don't let that keep you down. there probably will be a lack of feedback, but look at any stvs you get and do your best to figure things out on your own.

DO NOT MAKE IT GIGANTIC.

So many custom maps make 12 players feel like miniature toys. I'm not sure why map makers opt for gigantic over a more reasonable scale. You can go through the custom map forum and 9/10 new maps are simply too large.

I would just like to put a little more emphasis on this.

It takes a tremendous amount of testing and thinking to make a map suitable for competitive game play. Every little detail (especially on mid) can be exploited to gain an advantage (For example: A lamp being clipped (you can stand on it) on one side, but not the other)

After you build the basic structure of the map, you have to incorporate every change you make to the other side. Everything. No questions.

That's not even the hard part, either. You have to then texture it, make it look good, add props. It gets messy because some aesthetic things aren't physical, but you can hide stickies in them, giving one side an advantage.