I love Hydro I think its great but I know a lot of people don't.

So vote away......

Hydros good imo.
It's gravelpit and dustbowl I'm not all that fond of

I love all of the stock maps apart from cp_well

HYDRO!!!

hydro beats gravelpit any day though the end cap points are a tad too easy to cap

No! Its rubbish! Just a deathmatch map based around whoever caps the middle first. Its very rare the other team comes back form that. Same with Well, plus well is far too big. I used to hate dustbowl but people are getting better at it so theres actually a chance of the attack winning. All 3 are rubbish though unless the whole team co-operates and plays CP rather than DM. All it takes is a couple to go sniping or deathmatching and you're badly outnumbered and done for.

My opinion is if you want to play deathmatch then HL2 has a perfectly good deathmatch mode built in. TF2 is objective based and that should always be the intention. Playing the game any other way can tend to "break" it.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw class limits appearing on servers soon too, 1 sniper max, 2 engineers max, 2 hw guys max and so on. I think we can all agree that a map full of snipers, a base full of engineers or a walking wall of healing flab with chainguns is a bad idea for gameplay? Just a shame people can't be relied on to reach this conclusion themselves.

i meant when played properly in equal teams or in a clan based enviroment hydro well and dustbowl work well sometimes the deathmatch can even provide the needed distraction as whilst say half your team is distracting almost all of theirs the other half can be capping.

you can't tell me 2fort is any better because ive seen more sudden deaths on that map than any other map if the games werent supposed to be partially deathmatch why did valve make it so, now im don't intend any offence but if you want a game like you described team work, objective based, no deathmatch surely counter strike or battlefield 2 are more up your avenue.

but i do agree with you that even if you have 3 of the best players they can easily be brought down by their own team, perhaps im jsut being stupid but isn't the clue to teamwork in the name or do people really believe that TF2 doesnt actually stand for anything. You will never get class limits from valve perhaps soon someone will make an addon to do it but valve wouldn't do it they're unpopular enough as it is.

WARNING!!! ESSAY BELOW!!!


2fort I like simply because its kinda old school . For that reason alone it'll always be my favorite of the new maps. It also means that I prefer the classic maps over any of the new ones. This isn't to say they aren't good, its just my preference if I had to choose because I'm a sentimental old coot (emphasis on old).

Class limits I was referring to on public servers. This was more to stop stacking (5 snipers on 2fort balcony earlier today for example) ruining the game for everyone. There were always servers with no class limits, I just chose to play on ones where there were. In 99% of circumstances it never made any difference to the people those servers attracted as they were there for the same reason anyway. Kind of like comparing an open "melee" server to an open "clan" server. Don't take these as stated absolutes either as there's no such thing, Ive had good games on standard servers and rubbish games on limited servers. You can just sway it in the favour of whichever ethos of play you personally prefer by picking your server carefully.

I remember all the "discussions" back in the day over deathmatching. I also remember when UKTFCL made it illegal to midfield deathmatch in clan games for 3 seasons due to it ruining the gameplay. Blue offence weren't allowed to attack red offence and vice versa.

I hate CS with a passion rarely felt outside of religious fervour. I hate the single life per round and the whole preservation of health and distance of combat concept it encourages. I hate the slow pace of the game with everyone camping behind boxes with guns that go through walls (which also encourages cheating). I hate that if the other team wins the first 2 rounds you have handguns against assault rifles. And most of all I hate the immature nature and elitist attitude of a lot of the players. I'm not meaning to tar with the same brush, and I'm far from condemning people who play it. Infact I used to play it until beta 5.2 when it started becoming increasingly realistic. Games are a form of escapism to me, not a parallel of reality. If I wanted reality I'd just go out instead . Not to shoot people of course...

Now with games Valve have to appeal to new players. This means that the ideal game would be easily accessible, but have more to it if you wanted to invest the time and effort to make more of it. Hence the ability to run round like a loon deathmatching and watching everything explode / burn. Now I don't want this taken out as you need new players in a community or it will start to stagnate. But its also why I choose to play on the HH server where the overall standard of understanding of the game is higher, and if a new player does appear people are willing to help them grasp the concept of the game instead of scream "AHAHAHAHAHA N00B!!!11". When I first started playing TFC I spent a LONG time on the newbie servers (once I figured out what a newbie was :p) running round shooting everything that moved. It wasn't until I saw a single clan player conc jumping as a medic pick apart our side single handed I understood how much more tactical and intense you could make the game, and so moved to more advanced servers. That's when it really bit me - its the tactical bit I enjoyed, and thats what I still look for in games.

I'm still struggling to get to grips with exactly what TF2 is meant to be. As you said bud its easy to play as deathmatch, and people can do very well playing like that. As you mentioned you can win the game by deathmatching. In old TFC this wasn't as easily possible due to bunny hopping, conc jumps and no respawn delay - living under constant attack and pressure meant a clearly defined attack and defence was needed, and if a single part didnt work in harmony with the whole it all fell apart and you lost. Usually badly. However in TF2 the attck pace is slower - stats show it admirably. I remember in my TFC days I was pulling around 9 frags a minute as defensive soldier, regularly scoring over 100 in a 15 - 20 minute round. I'm lucky to see 9 opponents in a minute on TF2, let alone kill them and i've only been over 50 score a few times. I've yet to see anyone reach 100 in a fairly contested game. Also the weapons clearly defined what class was attack and what was defence. Attackers generally had accurate weapons that did poor damage (medics shotgun excluded) and secondarys - ie grenades that didn't damage your opponents defences necessarily so much as force a hole through. To make up for this you had little to no health and the "defensive" classes weapons were usually good enough to give you a good kicking 9 times out of 10 on splash damage alone. You just had to make your one chance count. Nowadays I get my arse handed to me on a plate by the first scout to sprint up to me and blow it off with a single shot point blank. It means if you are good with a specific class you can do anything with it - attack, defence or deathmatch. New puzzles - as yet i've not found the solutions though! Still, not willing to give up just yet. I'll give it a few months, see how the clan games go (HLTV rocks) and see if its the sort of thing I want to do. Its really just whether it'll become the only game I play (again) or an occaisional mess about on public servers with friends.

Plus, well its a hoot innit?

Anyway, sorry for boring you, I'll be off to the server now .

Vote not !!!

hydro is pretty cool although sometimes it's way too easy to cap the points, rushes just win...it makes a nice change to some of the other maps though

i lvoe 2 fort too... mainly for the same old school reasons, partly because its just a small, high scoring map, everyone feels like they're doing well as the kills stack up.

I was just wondering if anyone had played the Crysis multiplayer yet? From the reviews ive read it sounds like it has a similar 'far ranged' combat system to CS:S which worries me a little. Some reviewers said they had little time to use their abilities as they were being shot from a distance within a few mins... maybe they just needed to get good

Hydro is good for me bar a couple of the near-base configurations...