2FORT - Opinions?

[Summer]

I think that there should be sharks in the water

 

[Sn1PeR]

I think that there should be sharks in the water

Now that would be pretty cool! I'm still waiting to see how the danger-fish in the new blackmesa works out. We played a cool pirate level on a road trip a while back that had the fish from half life 2 on it and it looked pretty awesome.

 

[jshotzz]

I like it the way it is, a good team can uber there way through the whole thing.

 

[RoosteR]

2fort is already too much of a sniperfest... the frist few things you suggest would only make it worse... lol....

+1. sounds like the OP is posting this thread on behalf of snipers everywhere . its already hard enough to cross the bridge with leet snipers, let alone taking down the cover so they can have open season? no thanks, taking the sewers takes too long haha

 

[LIZard]

- Get rid of the awning over the bridge. It takes away almost all the good sniping lines of sight and relegates snipers to countersniping.

This alone would make me cry. 2fort is already WAY to sniper friendly. Keep the bridge cover. Everything else seems like pretty cool changes though.

 

[Mithras]

Yes I also agree with others that the sniperage needs to be reduced on 2fort if anything, not improved. Without the awning, it's just impossible to cross the bridge without getting sniped.

I think maybe a ladder going up from the sewer would be good. I'm thinking of something going from the main open water part under the bridge up to the deck (something that would help avoid snipers but wouldn't force everyone into the choke-point in the sewers where SG's are often laying in wait). Or maybe a ladder going up the front face of each base to make it easier for non-soldiers to get up to the sniper battlements.

I also agree that one ammo/medkit supply point would help.

The only other main complaint I have with 2fort is that it's darn boring being an engie guarding the intel because it's too hard to nip out to other parts of the map to check out the action. That's why I think a catwalk (someone else's suggestion above) might be a good idea.

 

[Plork]

Ok. 2Fort is a classic map. Sure some things are different than it was originally like the cover on the bridge and the back/straight stairs instead of the elevator but it's primarily the same. These were added to make the map more compatible with the way each class is played in TF2. Then you have to factor in that 2fort was really meant for 12 vs 12, not 16 vs 16 which makes the map a whole lot harder. Then again this is Team Fortress. If you play as a team and have enough medics with ubers, there shouldn't be as many stalemates as there are.

I wonder if you threw it back to 12 vs 12 for a night if you would see as many stalemates.

 

[Jack Burton]

Add transparent bulletproof glass to sniping corners to reveal corner snipers.
Make the battlements terrain bumpy so that strafe-sniping is difficult.
Angle and add a few side boards to the bridge so spamming it is harder.
Widen the bridge to allow spies reasonable passage without bumping into people.
Add a few shadowy side crannies inside base for spies to hide in.
Add a few tiny ammo-boxes/health on the lower level for spies to recharge cloak.
Remove the stupid ramps at the main entrance to fort, just have level ground.
There should be no way for a single sentry to cover all entrances to second floor.
The water in the sewers should be shoulder-high all the way up to resupply corner.
The resupply room in the basement should be part of the respawn cycle.

And as a general rule for the whole map -- everything is too orthogonal, boxy and bland. I would like to see the designer of pl_cashworks take a scalpel and paintbrush to 2fort. It's a classic map, but it needs more nuances, nooks and crannies, rough spots, divits, odd angles, etc. And it is butt ugly. Spies and scouts are royally screwed, as well. The forts walls are too close for scouts to make a hasty retreat, don't have tiny health packs for scouts to grab for survival, have few spots to hide out for retreating spies. All-in-all, the map favors defense GREATLY. It should be nearly impossible to keep people out of your fort, hard to keep them off your second floor, but reasonable to defend the intel once they're in your basement. That would keep it at a near-frantic pace. I've set up sentries in the basement of an instant-respawn 2fort, walked away to use the bathroom and go get a snack, come back 10 minutes later to find myself still alive, with 5 kills by my sentry and the team scores still at 0-0. This is not how a TF2 game should play.

It would be neat if there were time-delay back entrances with secured gates on each fort. If your team is psychotic about defense, the alternative fort entrances (harder to defend than the standard ones) open up after 10 minutes of no one on the opposing team touching your intel. Once intel has been touched, timer resets and gates lock for a while.

 

[Captain Ashton]

I'd like to see some changes. While 2fort is a great map as it is, its just too boring when you've played it as long as I have. I've definatly played at least 30 hours on that map alone (not necesarily our servers) and an edit of it would make it alot more interesting.

 

[QB]

ROFL!? 30 hours. I've played over 700 hours on 2fort alone.

Say what you will about me for that, but 2fort is THE classic TF map.

 

[KuNai]

Add transparent bulletproof glass to sniping corners to reveal corner snipers.
Make the battlements terrain bumpy so that strafe-sniping is difficult.
Angle and add a few side boards to the bridge so spamming it is harder.
Widen the bridge to allow spies reasonable passage without bumping into people.
Add a few shadowy side crannies inside base for spies to hide in.
Add a few tiny ammo-boxes/health on the lower level for spies to recharge cloak.
Remove the stupid ramps at the main entrance to fort, just have level ground.
There should be no way for a single sentry to cover all entrances to second floor.
The water in the sewers should be shoulder-high all the way up to resupply corner.
The resupply room in the basement should be part of the respawn cycle.

And as a general rule for the whole map -- everything is too orthogonal, boxy and bland. I would like to see the designer of pl_cashworks take a scalpel and paintbrush to 2fort. It's a classic map, but it needs more nuances, nooks and crannies, rough spots, divits, odd angles, etc. And it is butt ugly. Spies and scouts are royally screwed, as well. The forts walls are too close for scouts to make a hasty retreat, don't have tiny health packs for scouts to grab for survival, have few spots to hide out for retreating spies. All-in-all, the map favors defense GREATLY. It should be nearly impossible to keep people out of your fort, hard to keep them off your second floor, but reasonable to defend the intel once they're in your basement. That would keep it at a near-frantic pace. I've set up sentries in the basement of an instant-respawn 2fort, walked away to use the bathroom and go get a snack, come back 10 minutes later to find myself still alive, with 5 kills by my sentry and the team scores still at 0-0. This is not how a TF2 game should play.

It would be neat if there were time-delay back entrances with secured gates on each fort. If your team is psychotic about defense, the alternative fort entrances (harder to defend than the standard ones) open up after 10 minutes of no one on the opposing team touching your intel. Once intel has been touched, timer resets and gates lock for a while.

If 2fort was to be ever updated, I'd love to have those ideas implemented. Corner snipers that bodyshot are annoying.

 

[Snuffleupagus]

If you really want to fix the main problem that you're hinting at (corner snipers), then fix the left door frame on the battlements so that snipers have to be completely exposed to shoot from that location. Currently, a sniper can see completely and shoot from that location while only exposing an arm and maybe a shoulder. On the right side of the battlements, take away the piece of corrugated tin on the end that comes back towards the back wall. This will help accomplish the same thing as the fix on the left while still providing a decent amount of cover to engies or other people that have taken refuge at that location. Overall, feel free to experiment, but don't change too many things at once, or you'll never be able to track pace changes accurately.

 

[=[Ga]= AutoDMC]

One note on taking away the awning over the bridge.

I do realize that TF2 characters are slower than their TFC and FF counterparts, and Valve's hack was to put an awning over the bridge, artificially reducing the angles of attack from snipers.

Why do I say it's a hack? because there's always one thing that bothered me about the bridge on 2.0FORT... RED BUILT IT.

In a game so awesome because RED and BLU have completely different design philosophies (RED makes barns and BLU makes factories), it always struck me as odd that the 2.0FORT bridge has a wooden floor AND awning. Why did BLU let RED build the bridge? Why did they let them build the awning? My belief is that Valve went "Oops! Too many headshots!" and instead of making it harder to play sniper they made it easier for everyone else to cross the bridge.

Y'all are also forgetting another thing about the bridge: the bridge is it's OWN AWNING if you travel through the sewers. Even without the awning (and if the ideas of a wider bridge and side-ledges were taken into account), trying to snipe people who are taking the sewer route is nearly impossible, unless they're really really dumb.

Also, realize that the awning over the bridge destroys any chance of making a successful defence against snipers from the bridge. It's a two way block. In order to build a sentry, you have to place it so forward that snipers are blocked by the front of the fort in almost all circumstances. Demos have to get really close to the fort to launch granades up to the sniperdeck. Snipers can't stand on the bridge and snipe the deck. Solders almost can't get a decent angle against snipers from the bridge; they have to be right next to either fort's front. Heavy Weapon People can't spam the sniper areas from the bridge. Once you get under the awning, you now have to figure out how to get OUT.

Here's the way I imagine defense to work in a bridge-awning free world:

Companion Cube Snipers countersnipe each other. The reduction in functional cover on the sniper deck, including the transparent walls (I like that idea) means that you can't cornersnipe, and when you do snipe, you've gotta make a target of yourself. This, oddly enough, I believe, would make Companion Cube Snipers more useful; as reduction of cheap sniping lines of sight will require them to get better at the game.

An assault over the bridge starts with soldiers spamming the sniper decks with rockets. The splash damage makes it hard to get a steady aim; snipers can decide to duck behind the wall for safety and/or pop up to take shots, thereby opening themselves to countersniping.

Heavy Weapons People emerge and move forward, spraying the deck and the doors with custom tooled cartridges. This keeps the enemy at bay and allows demos to go forward and lay waste with granades.

Engineers rush forward to build sentry guns to cover the front of the fort, and build dispensers.

The low wall along the front of the sniper deck blocks line of sight down the front of the building unless you step forward, into the aimbots of the sentry guns. You can countersnipe with your back against the wall, but to be effective against the ground, you must walk forward, therefore exposing yourself to counter-fire from the ground.

 

[ack]

The thing that I hate about 2fort (and ctf maps in general) is the HUD tells you where the intels are at. It makes it to trivial to tell which exit path (spiral or long stairs) the enemy is using after they take your intel. If you are in the spiral and that is the path they are taking the HUD will tell you when they are about to come around a corner.. pop off a few rockets/grens right before they do and they're toast.

They really need to make the location of your intel unknown when a player on the other team is carrying it.

-ack

 

[QB]

With the speed of all classes but scout/medic being SO low, the "radar" for intel is meaningless. The classes that matter can't respond to a threat to the intel unless they were already watching both exits. If they're already watching both exits, then the radar doesn't mean so much.

If a group capable of getting TO the intel is coming out, they will get out as well. People trying to solo the intel (scout, soldier, spy) shouldn't get a free ride. It's already almost TOO easy to cap the intel as a scout.

 

[ack]

With the speed of all classes but scout/medic being SO low, the "radar" for intel is meaningless. The classes that matter can't respond to a threat to the intel unless they were already watching both exits. If they're already watching both exits, then the radar doesn't mean so much.

I do it as soldier, the slowest class..

If they're watching both exits, then they aren't using the HUD radar. You know early on which way they are going and you start going in that direction to intercept.

-ack

 

[Neurofo]

1). Make 2fort a cp map, where the capture point is the bridge.
2). Get rid of battlements.
3). Make the entrances into the fort wider.
4). Add stairs to go the opening where the water is.

 

[Summer]

Now that would be pretty cool! I'm still waiting to see how the danger-fish in the new blackmesa works out. We played a cool pirate level on a road trip a while back that had the fish from half life 2 on it and it looked pretty awesome.

Sure sounds like it! :O Half Life 2 fishys Amazing!

 

[bobtheworm]

I think most of those ideas are horrible. If you take away the awning then you take away the only thing that keeps engies honest and thats a scout rush through the battlement. If you remove all cover from the bridge and battles, it will just take one good sniper (lets say Kaela) to keep the other team in their base.

Honestly if you are having a stalemate in 2fort it means that 1. Medics are not doing their job 2. Spys are not doing their job. 3. Scouts are not doing their Job. 4. you have turtled and you deserve your fate.

2fort is about constant pushes. You have to keep the other team on their heels. Changing a map to make this easier is not going to change the stalements. It is just going to help some class get a better chance at killing while limiting other classes. 2fort has been around since the original tfc, i think they have made enough tweeks to insure equal balancing.

Also, stalemates are a blast to play.

 

[Lord Kreuger]

I'll say it: class limits

although that would probably magnify the crybaby element by a factor of 10

example"OMG, UR A HORRIBLE SNIPER. PLZ LEMME SNIPE. K THX"