Any response?
I don't exactly like it either. It's too large, snipers and overweights can hit a boss from across the map, which, while the former is how the class is supposed to work, some bosses can't get over to the said snipers before they jump in a teledoor to escape/end up dead from major sniping damage. Too little cover, larger teledoors were nice, but the spawn points are all over the place, and there's plenty more that are either confusing, or the smaller ones to ensure someone can always escape. It was a pain for me to keep the party together to finish that map, so I haven't even considered trying to remake it.
Moving onto this 'Blizzard' map. Just to confirm I wasn't judging it too harshly at first, I decided to play enough rounds to get a boss turn before I wrote this. A little while ago, Redconer wanted me to look at the Blizzard map, I thought to bite, why not.
I pointed out plenty of areas that Demoman/Rocketman/Firebug can easily get to to camp on. Examples include every single tree in the arena, the top of the capture point, and a certain wall you can continuously jet back onto(I also believe you can do this on the treetops, I've yet to test). It isn't the fault of the class, it just doesn't have enough push.
Another example is the three 'outposts', I'll call them. Context is that I remarked some areas were a bit empty during my visit, how they needed something more and then the 'outposts' were created. It is also possible to camp in all three of the 'outposts', considering they use doors. It isn't a problem, until Kaje has to kill someone inside, or other players have to rat out the last one alive who's stalling. Penthesilea might be able to via smash damage.
I would also like to point out that the tank turret is both hard to reach to a degree, only having a single short path with no cover whatsoever and can shoot the tank detonation - which - is nowhere near the actual fight and is rather hard to get to if you're in the midst of combat as the boss. The map looked nice, but it doesn't play nicely. Everyone is stuck between the normal/boss spawn, the capture point, and the tank turret.
Almost every location I listed above, Rotondo(the zombie tank) cannot get to. But what of his shockwave attack? The ramps on the trees and other areas have a certain collision which essentially makes a player immune to damage, or they are incapable of being hit by said shockwave attack, it might also be added that it could very well be too high, so Rotondo isn't even within range to begin with. Personally, this map wasn't finished and put out too soon. I've been dealing with other stuff like being sick and I wasn't there long, so I wasn't able to fix the minor details. Another note I would like to add, is that it goes against the guidelines of making a map stated in the OP:
+ Layout! Make sure there is no significant areas that a boss couldn't simply jump up to normally.
- Avoid making accessible areas that are isolated from the main body of the map.
+ Hide chests!
- They should be cleverly hidden, not in plain sight.
I believe there are about 25 chests, plenty of which I came across just sitting there in mid round. I also had to change the skybox from snowing, because snowballs were being used as part of combat. While it's fun to play around with, hitting someone covered in snow with another snowball deals about 1k damage, which can quickly make the boss easy prey. Either the skybox changed, or I'd have to go with a fillcan to find every white block available to make it a few shades darker, which would be a pain and make the map look ugly. I'll sort this out tomorrow and fix what I can, but I am not pleased in the slightest.
Poll