Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

Hellstone
ICS  [developer] Nov 9, 2015 @ 8:26am
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Since the comment box has 1000 word limit, i will post this reply here temporarely:

For Buswolley i'd like to clear few things: This map is ment to be different from the others. It combines most of the horrors from previous years into single map causing terror and chaos. After i heard Valve is not going to make halloween map for this year, i got 3,5 weeks to do something for people to play for halloween. A lot of people did the same thing. Valve decided to picked 4 maps from ~80+ maps that were tagged halloween.

I don't follow trends if there are any. I wanted to make something different. This is payload, the maps you mentiod are KOTH and there hasn't been actual payload map before. You can't just stop timer with payload, because there isn't one. There is round time and it's game over for BLU if it runs out and we can't have that while boss is on. KOTH works differently. Also if the timer would be able to stop, BLU would just go to cart wondering why it doesn't move. This isn't a one big area same for both teams. It's really hard to make everything work properly. I already divided the map into 2 parts at start, because it was too big.

After HHH spawns, it can move anywhere it wants to. The idea of bosses is to harrass both teams as much as they can. You can kill them if you do teamwork but rarely no one does and thats not the point either. It's about pushing the cart or stopping it from being pushed.
You can also leave those bosses alone or lead HHH to the enemy team area. Monoculus will also attack both teams and if there are 2, RED defended poorly before the last cap. Otherwise they would never spawn at the same time. It's the end game at that time. They will hit BLU as hard as they do RED anyway.

The ghost itself is an unique feature, and you are supposed to use spells to get rid of the players pushing it as well as teamwork - sentries, rockets, stickies, heavy and other means. Not just by going in front of the cart to stop it. Shoot instead. You can also backstab people from it, even easier now after update that decreased the area of spooking.

Thanks for your opinions. I've received a lot of feedback from the map and most negative grief is from the ghost itself but that's ok. Not everyone likes it but it's the same for both teams when teams swap. I've also received a lot of positive feedback, infact more of it than negative. Good thing for 3 of you is that you don't have to play the map if you do not like it and you propably won't be seeing this map untill next halloween after 3 days, if at all.
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I personally like the ghost. It makes this map feel unique. I hate it when maps are simply reskinned like ctf_2fort_invasion with almost nothing added. I hate it so much I try to make them stand out more in my {LINK REMOVED} during offline play. For example I added a {LINK REMOVED} to gorge_event. My point is I like to encourage the type of stuff you tried to do.

You tried to make it feel different. This feels like a true boss rush. I personally think you should have replaced the second Monoculus with Merasmus to make it truly feel like a boss rush but I still like it.

I appreciate the fact you tried to really make this map feel different. It felt like every other map added this year didn't really add much to make it stand out. You made an effort to stand out and I applaud you for that. With that said keep doing what your doing.

I really hope your original millstone map gets in eventually because it seems pointless to add the event version without adding the original along with it. Not to mention the balance issues wouldn't be as much of a problem if people could play a version without the event stuff.

Seriously though. You did a fantastic job.
Last edited by Showin; Nov 9, 2015 @ 5:33pm
ICS  [developer] Nov 9, 2015 @ 9:49pm 
I actually considered adding Merasmus into the map but due to it not working properly, i decided not to go with it. It would only hit people and players who turned into bombheads couldn't ram it and explode - they just were not able to do that. Also it would never go throwing bombs and such.

I'm actually in the progress of updating millstone, the original version to play better. I finished it up at the beginning of the year but in playtests through summer and now with this one, i've collected much of feedback and i know some things what require changing. I don't think Valve has any plans of adding the original though but still i'm going to finish it up hopefully this month already.

Thanks for the kind words!
76561198219109208 Nov 10, 2015 @ 8:57am 
Well considering you managed to get this map into the game I figure it would be easy to fix this if you ask valve to make a few commands non cheat restricted and just make them server side instead. Then you could use the "point_servercommand" entity to get merasmus to work without the problems you encountered.

Set the following commands to these variables to disable the merasmus bomb thing.
tf_merasmus_bomb_head_per_team 0
tf_merasmus_bomb_head_duration 0

Set this command to a relatively high number to stop merasmus from hiding.
tf_merasmus_should_disguise_threshold 9999999

If valve lets you modify these commands without enabling cheats then I think you can fix every problem you encountered when trying to use him.
Last edited by Showin; Nov 10, 2015 @ 8:57am
Pimp Skeletor Feb 3, 2016 @ 5:15pm 
I actually loved this map. And I'm glad it made it into the game, while others might hate it, I, as an experienced Boss fighter (Mann Manor was my ♥♥♥♥) enjoy the challenge.
I find playing RED much harder than BLU for obvious reasons but it feels much differently than normal payload gameplay. Not to mention the Bosses which spawn as BLU progresses even it out as at least the Monoculi are dogdable from RED Spawn
And I'm so glad the Skeletons got some spotlight this year along with Gorge 'n Gore as their effect failed on Helltower
By combining all of the years of Scream Fortress, it creates a great nostalgic feeling along with the challenge of fighting all of them while paying attention to the main game. In other words, multitasking, Mann Manor, anyone?
As a boss fighter, I'm glad to say you've created quite the fun and unique challenge embodying Scream Fortress and I hope to see more of your Map Making in the future
ICS  [developer] Feb 3, 2016 @ 10:29pm 
Thanks, i appreciate the kind words! I also think that players just didn't realise that you can actually defend well as red team. We'll see if they have improved in strategies in next halloween.
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