Idea Planning to make a map balanced mostly around Competitive/League play, got any tips?

I've had a bit of interest for mapping for MCCTF. I'm a pretty heavy competitive gamer, so I'd like to make something that appeals to the competitive crowd over here. Something that'd work well for league matches.

What I need is opinions. What classes do you think are overpowered in competitive, and what classes are underpowered? What rules do your matches use (class bans, formats, etc.)? I plan to balance my map to nerf/buff these classes and to support the play that most league formats use.

Currently, my rough idea for the map follows a 3-lane system, with a bridge in middle that hangs above a pit with another bridge that goes below the upper level of the map. Mid is a very open map with the bridge being fairly narrow, giving Ranged classes an easy sniping ground and a lot of room for Ninjas to Ender Pearl. This bridge is also the shortest route to the enemy flag, however. The left and right flanks provide more cover, but take a longer, wrap around kind of approach. The bottom bridge.

The flag rooms will be deep inside a stronghold/fort, to allow Ninjas to easily maneuver to the flag but to make it harder for them to ghost cap and get easy points.

What do you competitive players think of these concepts? What do you want to see in a map?

 

I'm planning on making a CTF map that is optimized for being more balanced for competitive play. Something that competitive CTF teams here can use in their leagues. I'm not necessarily making a map that will "make CTF more competitive", rather I'm making a map that is good for the competitive play that leagues here use.

As for the mid of the map being open, what I mean is:

The midfield of the map is separated into multiple different lanes, the middle one being a large bridge that is open to Ranged attacks.

The idea is that you have multiple different options of trying to approach the enemy base. The bridge is the most dangerous, but it's also the fastest route. The side routes are longer, but are more tunnel-like, meaning it's harder for ranged classes to have as much dominance. This gives a balance of different approach styles for teams. Whether or not it works in the end is up for testing, but I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said the "middle lane is a very open bridge".

Here, I mocked up a quick diagram to give you an example of what the middle of my map would be like. Note that it's not to scale and that side routes are probably going to be more complex than just alternate tunnels, but I made them like that for explanation's sake.

 

Yeah, the mock-up I did is not indicative of the final product, just a demonstration of some ideas I had. For example, in the final map the bridge will be on top of another bridge which can lead to the other routes. This gives more mobile classes like Soldiers, Elves, and Ninjas an extra method of mobility by taking a side route, going to the bridge under mid, and jumping up on top of the main bridge.

A lot of popular maps often have some semblance of multiple paths, but usually they're only separated by a bit of water.

At the end of the day, my map is still just a map, and it will have elements that are similar to other map's. That's just because most of the maps in the game are already pretty good. However, I want to take extra focus on designing my maps so they're more viable in the competitive format, where teams will have communications through Teamspeak and where there are class limits. It might not have huge variations from the maps that we already have, so this map in theory would be pretty decent for regular play as well. I guess I'm just overcomplicating what I truly mean, which is just "let's make an awesome map guys". I just want some feedback from people in competitive leagues telling me what they like about the current maps, what they don't like, and what they think of my current idea.

Thanks for your feedback though! I'll take it into account while designing the map in the future.

 

Yeah, I will post screens of the map itself while I'm building, but before I start working I want some feedback on current maps so I know what and what not to do.

 

Got any advice and/or feedback? I want to build a map based on what the community wants. What do you like about the maps in rotation? What don't you like?

Thanks for the support though!

 

Sorry, league was the wrong word. I just meant match play.