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I don’t think anyone has complained about badwater being broken enough to justify it having a pro version.

It pisses me off to see such baseless and non-constructive feedback like “you ruined it” after this guy has spent more than a month working on it. I’m not asking for your feedback to be positive, but if you’re going to be negative, at least have the courtesy to explain why you don’t like it, otherwise you really shouldn’t bother.

I like the doors on first and second being always open, as it promotes getting a roof hold; so many teams refuse to go for it just because the hold on third is so strong.

Quoted from Bloodis

I just feel like the thing about this “pro” version is to just focus on almost all the changes to be made on the third point for the attackers, it’s not even that hard to push but most people don’t ever execute it well so they complain about it being too hard to push and too easy to defend, when all what the attacking team needs is aggression from 2nd point to 3rd, or teamwork from both soldier and demoman to put down the sentry. I highly doubt it could survive 3 LnL pipes and 4 Direct Hit rockets at the same time, especially if your support classes are focusing on killing the Engineer.

The ramp going to the upper deck is really poorly done, especially the wall covering it. (really, just look at it, it’s not even an actual wall)
The open house looks really awkward, if it can be called as a house anymore without a wall that has just been cut off, and it looks very easy for scout, soldier or spy to flank from with the small wall covering it.

The catwalk for the attackers connecting from house to boiler seems fine, and the open doors at first, but other than that there’s no other use for this map, it’s useless since Badwater like how it is already, is perfect, it does not need any changes, and I don’t think anybody ever, except for some Americans who play in UGC Steel lack of teamwork, have complained about it.

Hello! Thanks for the feedback. I definitely agree that quite a few of my changes don’t look very good at the moment – like I said, it’s basically an alpha at the moment, and there’s a lot of refining and detailing I’d have to do at some point once I felt comfortable with the changes.

Now, in response to the people who’ve said that Badwater is basically perfect as-is, if that’s your experience with the map, I can’t really dispute it. However, when I proposed the idea over at UGC and on Reddit, there was a nearly overwhelming amount of suggestions for changing 3rd point, as most people seemed to agree that it’s unnecessarily difficult to push given both the sentry and sniper sightlines.

Furthermore, after speaking with some UGC Plat players, I came away with the impression that (to paraphrase what one person told me) the only reason for BLU to ever take 3rd is if RED makes a mistake, rather than through any merit of their own. The opinion differential here may be due to a difference in how Badwater is played in NA and EU, but I couldn’t really speak to that. In any case, I also personally wanted to make a pro version as I felt that the new trend of ignoring 2nd completely and holding 3rd alone for 3-6 minutes (somewhat lower for Plat teams, but still notably high) wasn’t really healthy for the map, hence my attempt to weaken 3rd slightly and strengthen 2nd. You’re of course more than welcome to dispute that last point, as it’s my own personal opinion and didn’t really have as much of an impact on my decision to try and revise the map in the first place.

In case you’d be interested in seeing the original threads I posted to gauge interest in the project, here are the links:
http://www.ugcleague.net/forum/showthread.php?31521-What-would-you-want-to-see-in-a-pl_badwater_pro
http://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comments/2sk7wy/what_would_you_want_in_a_pl_badwater_pro/

Anyways, thanks again for commenting!

Quoted from HartzFartz

IMO removing the gates on first is a mistake because it gives Blu more attacking routes before Red can setup at all.
If on normal badawter REd falls out and goes to roof they only have to deny one route to get a proper hold onto roof untill the cart gets capped.
In this version BLu would just need to get a simple player advantage on first to get 2nd for free since Red wont be able to cover all the routes to 2nd.

Edit: badwater isnt even played in ugc lol

To address your first point, in my experience (and study of other matches), by the time a RED team has fallen back to the staircase by 2nd point, BLU has already capped and flooded the roof. The fact that RED has to cross a long sightline with height disadvantage to retreat at all is also a problem. With the doors removed, at least RED now has a chance to retreat on their own terms and time, without putting their Medic at risk, and without giving up a height advantage crucial to setting up in the first place. With the way things are now, RED must take a longer route than BLU to the point that they intend to defend.

To address your second point, Badwater’s been played in UGC for the past 14 seasons or so. They rotated it out this season to make room for Borneo and Swiftwater, but it’s such a popular map that I can’t imagine them not bringing it back.

Fuxx, you came to this conclusion playing against teams that are even worse than you (somehow). 3rd is really hard to push against a GOOD team that has fully established their defenses and don’t make stupid mistakes. Not impossible but just very hard.

To address possible future changes, it seems that a lot of people don’t like the addition of the ramp and/or sightline blocker on 3rd. Would there be a notable resistance to removing those, but keeping the BLU-side catwalk + open house wall? My main interest here is giving BLU proper options when pushing into 3rd and preventing the sniper + sentry from dominating so utterly. If too many people think that giving BLU direct access to attic is the major problem here, I’d be more than happy to remove that specific change while still keeping BLU’s options open through the other changes.

How to destroy Sentry behind the Window on 3rd: Cow Mangler

Seriously it works, since dispenser is blocking Spy’s way to get upstairs, it removes a need for a Pyro to stay near Engie, hence Engie won’t be able to do anything to prevent Charged CM shot from hitting his sentry. Then you have a demo spamming Loch n Load pipes onto the sentry and it’s down. Or when your team pushes in to 3rd, tell solly to “Zap” their sentry and it will render it useless for 3 or so seconds which will be an easy target for your team Demo.

Cow Mangler is underrated on Payload maps, people rarely use it so Engie mains almost never expect it, let your Soldier use it for 3rd Pushes and it’s an easy target.

And if your spy needs to destroy that pesky Dispenser that is blocking his way, no problem, go behind them > decloak in a little house (with a small health kit) and just gun down dispenser, I was surprised that some Lobby Spies had brains to do that :^) .

Also there are 0 complains or maybe there are but not enough to make a pro version official for HL, in addition, decompiled and then re-compiled maps can cause some serious fps lags, I am already experiencing them on Viaduct and Barnblitz, don’t want to deal with it on Badwater.

fyi to all the people that reposted: by “ruining it” I meant that there could have been a legit _pro version with all the minor fixes one can dream of, including shadow fixes, fixing stairs dmg bug, altering respawn times, relocating metal and health in 3rd; and maybe even removing that celling above 3rd-to-4th choke just anything other that what has been proposed would have worked, sigh.