So out of curiosity I opened dm2.map and decided to try to come up with "better" dm2 for duels (never considered 2on2 nor 4on4, they are out of interest).

If anyone is interested in how to make dm2 a bit better duel map, give me your suggestions in this thread.

In a couple of minutes I came up with following changes:
removed the spawn point at water area:

This should decrease the chances and effects of respawn fragging at nailgun/tele area.

added one additional nails pack:

Preparations for attacking ra-mega area should take a little less time.

moved rockets pack at ra-mega down to low-button

Should force the player who decided to camp ra-mega to leave that area for a short moment periodically, gives a chance to the attacker to try to steal the rox every time it spawns.

Problems to resolve:
1) Camping at tele behind closed bars isn't solved anyhow in my map yet. I don't know what to do about it. So far the biggest concern. I think it's the biggest issue of this map.
2) By moving the rox pack I made it possible to grab rockets very easily when you run out of rockets anywhere nearby; before you'd have to go via low-stairs, while your opponent could take shorter path via low-button and attack you or even steal the rox from you with a RJ; on the other hand now you are a bit trapped in there, you either have to RJ up to enter ra-mega, which gives the opponent a short moment to attack you, or you have only one way out, back to low, where you can get flooded to death with rockets of your enemy
3) There are still 3 close spawn points available for respawn fragging - 2x @ tele, 1x @ ng, maybe one at tele should be removed too?
4) Maybe one additional nail pack somewhere wouldn't harm anyone? Maybe instead of the removed spawn point at water?
5) Roof area above high-tele / gl, should I make it impossible to hide in there? I don't remember seeing this exploited, so I guess I won't bother. I don't want to change the layout of the map anyway.

If you have any opinion on any of these problems on any other problem you think should be addressed, post it here. Things I will never agree with:
- adding LG
- removing one of the megahealths - two MHs is another thing that makes this map unique .. in a good way
- changing the layout (as in moving walls, etc)

I don't intend to try to force this map into any tournament, I don't even know if I'll release this map at any point. So far it's mostly a theoretical project.

Ad.1 Make the bars never go down while somebody is camping the tele
ad.2.Don't bother
ad.3 If you insist, the spawn at tele (close to bars) might be removed
ad.4 Definitely.
Ad.5 Don't bother, nobody plays that way now.

The button leading to RA/Mega (the one closing the plates above lava) should be silent.

I still don't like the idea of changind the old dm2 but this is my feedback if I were forced to say my opinion.

Proposal for problem 1:
What about moving the tele so that it's right behind the bars i.e. if you want to camp at tele you need to somehow keep the bars open by either obstructing one of the bars all the time or keep pushing that button?

Imho, changes like these should not be done on the map, but rather in the mod, your current changes could be fixed with a different .ent file placed on the server. If the bars needs haxing, then it's still possible to do it in the mod. We do this on other maps already, eg. aerowalk.

Personally I don't really like the idea of changing the map after so many years. However, it can be fun to see what ideas people can come up with.

I think this is a good iniciative.
Similarly ztndm3 suffered changes which resulted in a new map ztndm3q which is/was a popular duel map in usa. Often played in tournaments instead of ztndm3.

To move the ya/tele teleporter closer to the bars seems a useless idea since the player still can hold still below the bars. Unless some more power is added to the bars making them powerful enough to kill!


And i vote to remove one of the tele spawn points, as well as the one at water.

keep it up! Dm2 is just too good to be ignored

Remove teleport and make stairs to high rl

Yeah I vote for removing the water and one tele spawn. The rocketpack does not really play a role in my opinion. And nail ammo is fine, but ill never use it anyway. I would speed up the nails of the nailgun to make it a bit more stronger than sg, but this is another topic.

* Remove a tele spawn, and add one spawn point to high rl instead.
* Remove the bars covering YA @ tele completely together with the button opening it, but keep the rest of the area as it is. One less effortless spawn frag possibility, as well as camping tele ya being much less efficient.
* Make the button at the spawn point of low-rl open the door to ra-mega as well. One more less effortless spawn frag possibility, as well as easier to attack RA/mega.

Remove bars all together.
Remove a spawn at YA-tele.
Move the rox pack even further away from RA-MH, I would say down to the corner.

Heh and my suggestion to simply remove one item to eventually drive out the ra/mega camper got immediatly dissed... In my opinion ammo is the worst item to use in attempt to make it possible to drive out the ra/mega camper. At some point of the game, the score can be even, and then one of the players can get a few spawn frags and go sit in ra/mega, with say 99 rockets in his pocket. Then, even if you did remove the ammo pack, he is never going to have to come out during the rest of the game. In my opinion, it's either the mega or ra, that needs to go.

I would start with as little changes as possible, and see how it plays out.

dm2depressed.bsp where all the buttons are constantly depressed.

Change tele so its like the armor-cages in big, but the opposite? So you open them and get squished if you don't go through in like what, 5seconds?

Make bars stay up all the time at ya/tele.
Maybe another spawn in bigroom.
Maybe block tele at ra mega.

What Rikoll said.
Hey this map might get any good this way.

I don't want to go off-topic, but if the qw-community is really open-minded toward this I also suggest changing some spawnpoints on ztn. Ztn is a great map, but it's a bit too easy spawfragging from hallway. 1 less spawnpoint at rl/mega for example would be allready quite helpful.

Zalon: I thought using .ent file changes the map on given server forever, without possibility to play on the original one. Not sure though, I should probably RTFM.
blAze: well yeah, I want minimal changes too, for me those 3 I got so far are "less" than removing megahealth. Good point with the 99 rox in pocket, I guess it's impossible to go as far as dm6 goes, with only one rockets pack; on dm2 there are uh.. 4 of them? on the other hand there's maybe more spamming in dm2 .. i guess i should check some demos if players tend to get 40+ rockets after time

I don't really see the point to remake dm2. I can't see what's the problem really is. There's one thing that people does not seem to understand by it's original design.

It's all about timing both the mega. The enemy hiding in tele behind bars will die if the opponent player have 200/250 and know what to do.

But it's surely fun to add another map to qw. but it's really lame if this would have replaced dm2 in tournaments..

Bars should not be up at all times. Because if a player successfully ambushes the one going for tele, he should be rewarded.

I think moving the teleporter closer to the bars might be a good idea. Because that would give away the position of the camping player and make sure bars stay open some seconds after slipping thru.

JohnNy_cz: what about simply moving the mega to low? This way you could still try to time and control 2 megas. But the guy camping at ra would be at bigger and bigger disadvantage the longer he would camp. Instead of having to do a desperate suicide attack, the attacker could eat away the campers health with quickly placed rockets, without giving away frag himself. Eventually the attacker would have access to 2 megas and ra, while the camper would be slowly running out of health, unless he manages to sneak out to low healths and get back without getting caught.

As raket says, the tele camping is not as big of a problem imho. There is only ya there and once he is forced through tele he can no longer know if the opponent will attack trough tele or circle back to 2x ya. It doesn't create a similar situation where both know exactly where the other one is, but the attacker can't do anything because it would be almost certain suicide.

Raket the problem is that it's boring to watch nine and half minutes of one guy sitting at ra/mega and the other one waiting for him to come out of there. If that's how you wanna play dm2, then at least use timelimit 1 minute so we don't have to wait 9 minutes to see the "exciting" last minute suicide attack.

dm2 has traditionally have access to a lot of rockets and I would not take that aspect away by reducing rockets. The only thing I'm concerned about is the total stalemate situation where both players just sit on their hands and do nothing for the whole game. I don't mind watching defensive play, but by moving the mega outside of the ra/mega box we would force some movement into the game at least once in a while.

I remember Timber hiding there for several minutes during TGI, but as mentioned modern QW is a lot different to what it was like back then.

If it has not been a huge problem I wouldn't touch it. Imo you'd make only the most crucial change(s) now, and see how it goes. If you manage to sell even one change now, fixing smaller problems later on should be childs play. The biggest obstacle right now is going to be the people who accept change only over their dead bodies, even if deep down they know there is a problem with the map.

I think even "small" changes like this would ultimately completely change the way dm2 is played, so I doubt players who dont wanna swap it out for a kenya map (like me) would think changes like these are a better option

Dm2 is just the best drama-map there is You are defending every single frag because you know every death can be extremely lethal with all the spawnfrags. So removing those spawns doesnt seem right to me.

Agree with Blaze on the rockets thing, if you make rockets more accessible, there is a good chance there will be too many in the game.

"Fixing" the tele camping would remove all the extreme adrenaline moments, where you are a few frags down and you're chasing your opponent. You can say whatever you want, but both running and chasing are really difficult, especially when you're trembling cause there's not much time left and I always enjoy seeing how players handle it. Same really goes for mh/ra camping imo: its NOT as easy as it looks or sounds.

Not sure what the other things were, but these were my main concerns I'm afraid the whole pacing / idea of the map will change, and I personally wouldn't like that.

Havent read all post but I think you should remove gl. Its a spamming tool only and less rockets (ammo) would be nice too.

Nice post, Reppie. How about a comeback by signing up for the upcoming Ownage tourney?

In my eyes dm2 has 3 issues (hope that's a politically correct word :p), in no specific order:

1) On even score with evenly skilled players, there is no incentive to attack.
2) Defending is too easy/simple.
3) Luck with spawnfrags can be decisive because of the low scores and the possibility of string of bad spawns.

(Discussion about whether they actually are bad things etc. can go to the Ownage thread on qw.nu news)

There are plenty of changes that can be done to lessen these issues, but the hard part is keeping the original style and feeling of dm2.

I think the smallest change that would make a difference, would be allowing easier attacking to ra-mega (and nothing else). There are various ideas how to do this posted already. This wouldn't directly help with 1 or 3, but when attacking is easier spawnfrags naturally matter less and you need less of a skill advantage to play offensively.

My personal favorite change though, is getting rid of the mega at ra-mega. It deals with ra-mega camping nicely, you can just keep dealing small bits of damage since the camper can't replenish his health. Unfortunately this would likely change the flow of dm2 duels a lot, and might be considered too big of a change by some. Or maybe I'm just too pessimistic

Just by moving the mega a few meters to the corner between low rl and and the opening side door that leads to ra/mega, you would allow somewhat even chances to fight over it and a skilled attacker could keep the camper from replenishing his health with it. Timing of 2 megas etc would remain the same. Imo this is the smallest change to game dynamics that would still unlock the total stalemate situation of ra/mega camping, where the camper has all the advantages on his side.

I absolutely adore the idea of Reppie's come-back. Dude, just do it
Moreover, I also agree with Reppie's remarks

ok how about a trigger brush inside the low tele area, so as long as they sit in there, the bars stay open. You could still have the bars stay open for 3-5 seconds after they go through to provide chase opportunity.