I'm going to look like a massive tool for bringing up my own maps but it might have been cool to see ultiduo_sacred and ultiduo_acropolis possibly considered. What follows are just my own opinions but I think Grove is among the only interesting maps here besides the two mainstays. A bunch of these are very uninspired remakes of either Standard (bridge above point) or Balloo (some nipple with slight variation) with a different visual theme. Also that mess Bunkalow is so cluttered and busy. I think it's awful for ultiduo and would work better with some kind of 3v3 koth.

Mature, dedicated gamer with a top-level Day of Defeat pedigree. Always trying his best and improving. By this point he's got some good experience to lean on. He's a natural flanker with reliably strong aim who loves to fight and is always ready to jump into the fray. My only criticism is that he's a bit quieter on the comms than I'd prefer but at the end of the day he gets shit done. Good guy and great friend <3

I started playing this game in 2008 and back then, and from the start, pyro did insane damage. If you caught some flames as a scout you would often die to afterburn if you didn't immediately turn around and run or a healthpack wasn't nearby. It did nearly as much dps as heavy. Heavy is slow and you move around him while he points while pyro was fast and he moved around you while hosing you down. It was a really stupid concept that you could just kamikaze rush at a person or into a crowd around a corner and pretty much guarantee to kill one person as you died (unless it's a heavy or [buffed] soldier). If you could at least somewhat point your crosshair at/around enemies then you could do this. It's very frustrating and unfun to have this happen to you and then as you get better it becomes boring to do when you realize how skill-lessly easy it is to at least trade 1 for 1 (talking about pubs here of course).

They realized this way was stupid and many years down the road they changed how pyro worked and direct flames did less damage. To burn people you actually had to sort of aim at them for a brief amount of time and ambush and flank them (so you got the surprise and first hits before they could react).

And what have they done now? They made pyro feel like 2007 again. Except worse since you are rewarded for flailing around. Really disappointing. And don't get me wrong there were a lot of positive changes all around in this big update but still wtf. Seems like it would be so easy to just make the flame hit boxes tiny and focused mostly near the center of your crosshair so you had to aim your flamethrower like a somewhat forgiving, laggy projectile LG. And the Dragon Fury gun should be a 'flame shotgun' with most of the damage concentrated in the center as well. But knowing Valve changes will take years or maybe never occur so pubs are now more annoying than ever :(

Tirlby the turtlebee (not to be confused with the old alias of community gem 'catface') was pretty decent last time I saw him play. He's also always been smart and really nice. If he gets back into the swing of things I know he'll get back up to speed and be a great asset to your team.

Smart and good. Experienced badass veteran.

https://clips.twitch.tv/NimbleUglyChoughPogChamp
view from TFTV

Strong gamer

3/4 of the way through our somewhat poopy season we needed a pocket and Murkscribe was up to the task. He carried his weight pretty well at the high open level and that's impressive. He's been working his ass off on his mechanics and so he's improved a ton at that (though he could use to be less of a tricky gunboating bombing bitch in dm as he's learned all he can from that). As far as decision making you can't fake experience and so he still has work to do. Most of the time we didn't let him command us and learn from his mistakes and Panacea and I made the calls and he followed and filled in his role well. Some times he did make calls and some of them were great but plenty of them were not so great... but that makes perfect sense. For the most part he has a good idea about what's going on in the game at all times and what needs to be happening and he's a smart dude.

He asks a lot of questions. Like a lot, non stop. That's generally a good thing showing that he has a good mindset and attitude but sometimes they're rather silly and it's hard to tell the difference between trolling or real questions. Like he might ask really obvious stuff or he'll ask a question where the answer is a meaningless opinion but he's expecting a 'correct' answer so the entire set up is bizzare. Or the mumble will be talking about something (like say about mak living in California) and minutes into the conversation he'll be like "Wait mak i have a question, where do you live?" Like dude were you listening at all or just planning your next question? Oh yeah and sometimes he's still too down on himself and not confident.

Overall he's a great, nice guy who works hard, has a good attitude and deserves your tryout. Thanks a lot Murk for playing with us and basically salvaging our season <3

Rework the phlog into a lightning gun type of weapon. The phlog has always been a horrible gimmick that's really unfun to play against. This LG should have extremely mild pushback and have quite limited range (think Quake Champions at the absolute max). It should also have significant damage falloff so it can only melt people hard at a close range but is very mild at a distance (then it's only OK if your tracking is godlike). Once the beam has touched you for x amount of consecutive ticks (units of time) without breaking contact you catch on fire and start taking afterburn damage. This rewards skillful tracking.

Here's a terrible quality video of someone showing the "Microwave gun" in use in the original Soldier of Fortune game.
https://youtu.be/tkhLceIngEw?t=2m24s
I can see the phlog functioning somewhat like this and it even incorporates fire so it fits pyro.

I know a few of these guys and some only a little but they're all nice folks and sharp-minded, ever-improving gamers. Somewhere in the realm of mid open maybe (idk)? Give them a shot! <3

That's right. Probably a bit. Like viaduct.

I'm not really sure what this means but I remember you were quite good at this map.

Edit: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667287202
Damn this screenshot is from April 2016. We take our time, ya know...

Ultiduo Acropolis, a collaboration between myself and Bereth.

This is my second attempt at a TF2 map (the previous being Ultiduo Sacred). Just like with Sacred I designed the alpha and roughly envisioned a theme which Bereth then brought to life with detailing and fleshing it out. This map was quite a bit of work for him due to the amount of displacements everywhere. We have an interesting work relationship where I'm like a screenwriter trying to convey to the film director how I want the movie to end up while he puts some of his own twists on things and tries to talk me out of some of my implausible or difficult ideas. In the end though I think the process creates a cool result that bears both our influence and we can take some pride in.

The map is a simple stone bridge next to/over a very deadly and tall cliffside set in a fantastical Greek-type location. The main inspirations for the theme are the backdrop of Nina Williams in Tekken 2 (Image 1, Image 2) as well as some exaggerated landscapes such as seen in the movie 300 (Image 3, Image 4). If anyone remembers those silly tf2 balloon_race maps the cliffs there were also on my mind when I was imagining the theme (though the scale on this map is not quite as immense).

The standard ultiduo map and balloo are excellent maps so, once again, I have no reason to make clones of them and would instead rather try something different and risky. Another guideline that I try to stick to is to keep things simple so that the focus is streamlined on the gameplay. Though I'm aware of a bunch of other maps that have this feature the main standout gimmick here is the death cliff. Usually a player gets forced off once or twice in and entire game as it's not that easy to blow people off when everyone is aware of it. That does, however, set up some interesting mind games as the threat of falling forces tense ammomod style battles over the point. On occasion there's a game with tons of falling which is pretty hilarious. I distinctly remember one time megaboy just kept throwing everyone off the cliff repeatedly. Another unusual decision was to go with mirror over rotational symmetry. Obviously this is less ideally balanced but I think, like on viaduct, this is interesting. Due to the large and open nature of the map Medic is extra strong here. Also the map is much fancier and prettier if you have your 3D skybox enabled (r_3dsky 1).

Going off the cliff edge should (in theory) trigger screaming from the characters. This is great when it works but there are two issues with it. First is that soldier has two screaming sounds--One is just that, appropriate screaming, while the other is him cursing Mersasmus for being a bad roommate which has no context and makes no sense. This is because the screaming was first released with a Halloween map where you could fall into a long 'bottomless' pit. The second issue is that there seems to be a cooldown with regard to characters' voices. Usually if you go off the edge it's because damage pushed you off and there was a corresponding pain yelp that your character produced which then means the trigger won't immediately activate its screaming voice line. Often times you can make it all the way down before the cooldown wears off. Sadly this means that overall the screaming trigger rarely works as intended, though people playing this seriously would kill bind as soon as they realize they're going down anyway.

Thanks again to Bereth for being awesome and working on my maps and a huge shoutout to the dozens of teammates, friends, and other people who have playtested this map over the months (almost years?) that it has been in development.

https://i.imgur.com/s4BedZl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/j1Hi89u.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/WIfPodf.jpg

Download
BZ2(for server owners)
Steam Workshop

Flames remain broken and DF is just too easy to use. I'm not saying it's so OP that it would wreck in 6s all the time but I think there's plenty of situations where you could use it now and do decent but with minimal effort. The projectile is mega fast and the size of a refrigerator and if any amount of it hits then it hits full force (and then rate of fire goes up and oh yeah 40 round magazine). Really, as suggested, it should be a 'flame shotgun' of sorts where most of the damage is concentrated near the middle and gets notably weaker at the outsides. Another fix would be to leave it how it is but not make it speed up rate of fire.. rather always shoot slowly.

Yes. Noodle around on a guitar or piano until you're shredding that shit.