Poll #1 – Most Underrated Maps for eCTF

Sauerbraten is a game with an overwhelming abundance of maps. For those of you interested in numbers, we counted 197 (!) in the official release!

Both a blessing and a curse, this variety leaves players with the challenge of finding the most suitable maps for matches. Over the years, some have been established as indispensable constants such as reissen and forge, while others are in their shadows.

Our question is, what are your favourite underappreciated maps for 3v3 efficCTF matches?

The voting is in the right sidebar, if you haven’t noticed it already. You can select up to three options. The poll will run all through October.

Your map’s not in our selection? Let us know in the comments!


This is the first issue of our weekly poll series.

We will return with the results and a new question for you next week.

Stay tuned!

7 Comments

  1. star

    Although my favourite of them all is catch22, when you’d ask me what the most underrated map would be, it’s definitely eternal_valley. It’s beautiful designed, in such a way that it still keeps the looks under texreduce 8.
    If you are the attacker, you can leave the base quick and vanish between the houses and on the defender side, there is still the possibility to catch up with a flagrunner. Two of the most wanted qualities of an eCTF map.
    I know lots of rifle safe faggots of you may argue: ‘bla bla you can just stand there and rifle’. whilst this might be true, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll perform very well. Like with all open maps rifling is a crime, but on eternal_valley, there is always a corner you can’t access, such that someone else will stick a rifle up yo very sorry ass. Furthermore, fights on the rooftops are just plain fun. They are not about who can shoot the most shit out of his guns, but also who has awareness of his surroundings – which is not quite the effic turbine way of life.

    Reply
  2. Fohlen

    Honestly the most underrated map is definitly bad_moon …
    Awesome fun for 3v3 and especially for 2v2 (except the spam to be balanced more).
    Hard to do fast-piece flagruns without being spammed ofc so it’s bit more of a challenge than the other maps.

    Reply
  3. Walker

    In my opinion the most underrated eCTF map is arbana.
    It offers fast flagrun possibilities, reaching almost the speed level of reissen. The Different levels between the two bases and the higher middle disable riflewhoring, as far as possible.
    On the first view(s) it might look to simple, but there are a lot of ways and possibilities to use them, The design might be quite simple, but its neither a unlevely design nor does this affect the gameplay in any way.

    Another really lovely and quite well playable map is catch22, it might the make time to ghet into this map then it would take for simple maps, such as twinforts, bad_moon or arbana, but if you have a feeling of how to move there you could reach a really high qualtiy of gameplay and tactics.

    On the last point i would like to mention that i totally dont get why people like to play twinforts. Its capture_night with obstacles, which where placed to avoid pure rifling games. I don’t think these obstacles do this job very well, what the mainly do is forcing the flagrunner to take longer ways, which provides his hunters the possibility to easily catch him (especially with the rifle, because they have a lot of time to aim).
    I am sure people know i dislike this rifle based gameplay in eCTF, but i still would rather play capture_night than twinforts.

    Reply
    1. star

      Yes, arbana is also very high in my personal list, you really have to watch your step or you’ll get killed without mercy. It was about time that the flagstone/autumn architecture of a map found a playable design. Despite it being a t-chen map, the spawn points are for the most part okay.
      @ twinforts: I totally get what you mean with them doing a bad job! There is this arc way in the wall, where a very stupid placed block resides and also the border of this arc is a place where you get stuck every time when you try a flag run there. Still there are fast and awesome flag runs possible, but the obstacles aren’t doin the runner, nor the killers a big favour.

      Reply
  4. Joran

    Great idea making a poll for this! The variety of maps that we actually play in clanwars is too small and therefor I’m getting pretty bored after 3/4 games. It’s great to see that people started playing other maps like catch22 and twinforts more and more, but I really don’t think these maps are good for clanwars. Twinforts especially is more of a map to play on public servers. As walker said it’s just capture_night with obstacles. Bad placed objects, like the trees.
    In my opinion bad_moon is definitely on one of the first places in the list of most underrated maps. Playing on bad_moon just doesn’t get boring since it’s a relatively small map and sometimes it’s even possible to win before the 10 minutes are over… however, it’s not easy to flagrun on bad_moon since people are apparently using a lot of nades on that map. I also like garden very much but the in my opinion the map is simply too bright. And the last map I would like to notice is eternal_valley. I agree with what Star said and I personally think eternal_valley is one of the nicest maps Sauerbraten has to offer.

    Reply
    1. star

      I don’t think that bad_moon is a good ctf map. Flag runs in fact are very easy and blunt. My record there is a bit above 3 secs… I must however admit, that It’s quite hard to defend the flag once you’ve taken it and there is a put situation. My experience on this map is, that it’s a rather confusing non coordinated game play due to it’s size. For me this is an indicator of a map designed for the random noob, which is kinda evident referring to the use of nades you described above. I get it though why most folks like this map: rifle whoring is definitely the most efficient strategy combined with rocket/nade spam.
      On a side note: going the teleporter way for a flag run is the poorest choice one can do. It sets you back to the end of the map and makes you visible for everyone. Then again, there is just one option to escape the map, which is through the front door, where the spawn points are located. You can’t use the jump pads either, as they slow you down too much.

      Reply
  5. notas

    Bad moon sucks. Catch22 is pretty sweet, I played it in a mix for the first time the other day and I see what all the hype is about, definitely deserves a spot in a map pool. I can see why arbana could be a good map, although personally i hate playing it (though I admit I’ve only played pubs) and i really hate looking at it. Impossible to aim on, 10x worse than nmp8 imho.

    Star’s case for eternal_valley is so eloquent and moving that despite having naysayed it in the past, I would be pleased to give it another shot. In fact I agree with pretty much everything Star has typed in this thread.

    Reply

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