Why Offense vs Defense?

From an organized teamplay standpoint this eliminates the compromise of having to play defense at the same time as offense as a unit. When on offense all players on the team are now focused on the same goal- get the flag and bring it to the capture point, and try to get as many captures as possible during the round. Without the threat of the other team steamrolling back into your base you can take a lot more risks on offense. More aggression on offense makes for more entertaining exchanges.

Likewise for defense. Lock them down, get flag returns by preventing any further touches, 'reset' your defense if they do cap to prevent a string of caps.

The more you can intercept the offense before their jump the longer you can prevent them from capping. There are multiple routes they can jump the flag to your pit from so you want to have some forward defense. It's disadvantageous to just pile on the cap point.

The second reason for OvD is you can adjust spawn times independently for defenders vs offensive players. Since there are no concussion grenades to bring the offense to the front lines so quickly compared to the defenders, you need to provide a more equal footing via spawn times. In general both sides benefit from shorter spawn times. Dying still puts you at a disadvantage, but it's not so massively punished that you do absolutely anything to avoid it. This is not a careful battle for picks and incremental advantages with methodical pushes, this is a cap battle where high risk high reward plays (should) have bigger benefits.

On my particular map the Intelligence capture (destruction) area is a small above ground pit. This leads to more interesting and frantic holds near the cap point, and increases the skill required for a perfect capture amidst alive defenders. The offensive team would likely have a main flag runner most often (probably demoman or soldier for jumping), but if it's dropped near the point everyone will be trying to make plays on it. The other thing the small above ground pit does is make it so it's not a sure thing you can cap just because you get the intelligence close.

I don't expect a lot of positive feedback here. It goes against the established meta game of 6's, but for those interested in trying something different I'd appreciate your takes.

this looks awesome, good to see some potential variation in the game modes that are regularly played in sixes.

EDIT: I feel like snipers would dominate the shit out of this map

it's hard to tell from those few screenshots, but the sightlines are not really that huge actually, also with the relation of blue spawn to the base and spawn times I don't foresee a sniper really causing too many issues- They can certainly be effective though.

Wonky map. Great game concept. Awesome laser animation.

Not as bad sounding as you might think. Ran around the map a bit, seems pretty interesting. At the very least it makes for a fast paced/non-stalematey map. You basically have the equivalent of one point to push through, and then all you gotta do is land a player on the pit.

So my comments from what I saw running around the map:

On the + side, engi won't be as effective because there's so much back and forth.
On the -, Sniper will be mandatory on both sides. I think the yard area could use a lot of work, feels very bare and that's an enormous sightline.

I feel like the area between yard can pit is largely useless. Once the defending team loses yard they're going to pull all the way back so they can watch every entrance to the pit. Besides, that area is like well 2nd point complicated.

Last thing is there's a lot of prop usage, and little bits of terrain that would make it extremely annoying for soldiers to shoot or players to navigate, like the edges on the outside of the windows or the bleachers and tables in yard.

I like the idea though, would be really interesting to try playing on.

maybe we can give this map a run in the new map pugs

Hey guys,
This map is going to be played in a tf2maps.net gameday today around 2:00 PM PST I think:
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=20966
70.42.74.31:27015

I don't imagine it playing that well with random pubs since they will not be that adept at jumping the flag, but still it's good data for me.

I think a UGC playtest might happen Tuesday. Appreciate any feedback for those who check it out, thanks!

well i guess tf2maps.net restricts their ctf playtest to mp_timelimit 20 which apparently ended my map after 1 round. (10 minute round + halftime switch bleeds over enough that there wouldn't be enough time for a full 10 minute second round...so it just ended it). Hoping Tuesday test is more useful as there weren't very many people in this one anyway.

This map could be fun in 6s... But it seems like a guaranteed nonstop BLAST in HL. Great work.

tfc memories <3

This looks so cool!

from the small 6's playtest (at times it was 6vs5 and not too organized) there was some pretty fun capping action around the point but I realized it was a lot less frequent than I'm aiming for. Right now it's more that the defense has to screw up for someone to cap. I'd like to move it more towards the point where the defense has to constantly make good plays to stop a cap and is constantly on their heels. I think it showed that blu spawn is a too far away, even with instant spawn, so I'm already considering some changes there. (score finished 4 to 2).

The defense already makes their furthest holds at the periphery of their base (yard is not viable other than occassional disruptions), so I may go ahead and move the BLU spawn closer, and move the intelligence pickup location accordingly to up the pace.

I'm going to wait until seeing how it plays in the highlander format though because I can see some of these issues being negated by the presence of teleporters.