Complete Moria VI

Hello,

Moria has always been one of my favorite maps, so I'm happy to see someone reworking it again to try to make rotation. That's also why I decided to come look at yours and give my two cents of thought.

Moria, since its conception, has always had three major issues: archer, soldier, and longevity. I know this from experience, as my team always used to pick the original Moria, and we got to deal with these problems in matches. I like how you've made the map shorter, as it should make the gameplay quicker. From what I have seen however, is that your map may have taken the same route that I did when attempting a rework in 2017: addressing archer a lot, but completely forgetting about the power of soldier on the map. And what this led to for my rework was stale games where soldier had free reign over the map, and archer didn't have much use due to all I created to stop it. With your map, you seem to have also put all sorts of sandstone walls and whatever in the way of archer, so it is extremely difficult to do anything with it to stop offense.

This brings about even more issues, because it gives soldier an outlet to wall climb on these very structures that were created to stop archer, giving it more ability to wall spam. Moria in itself has always been a flawed map, due to the soldier class existing. I feel that the only true way to help in this regard would to make the pillars into coal ore on some remake, but that would ruin the aesthetic appeal.

But let's forget about that rambling, all I'm trying to say is I think you may have done what I did and tried nerfing archer too much, when in reality the existence of some archer OP-ness, while annoying for offensive classes, is overall a good thing for a map. See blackout in this regard. So, maybe try removing some sandstone cover you added. Especially those aqueduct looking walls towards the middle of the map, they seem very annoying.

Now onto the flagroom. I think what you've done here is probably taken a step back from the original Moria flagroom and made it harder to capture. Moria, whenever TBF played it competitively, would be lucky to get only one capture on the map, or just none at all. That flagroom had five entries, left, right, middle, top, and the secret tunnel (which was probably the best entry for the map because all the others were extremely flawed). What your map has done is removed two of these entries, probably the two most powerful ones. Your map theoretically has just two, easily defendable entries to the flag, because one of the three is right next to spawn and is the defensive entry. Now, I'm not saying bring back the secret tunnel, because it was a little gamebreaking and annoying for defenses. However, I would strongly suggest adding back the top entry into the flagroom, with a sponge going up to it on the ground outside. Maybe even, along with the top entry, find a way to make an entry elsewhere, which my rework tried to accomplish in that weird tunnel thing hiding behind the water wall. Because right now, it seems that Moria VI will be harder to capture on than original Moria, due to the fact that the existence of two decent defenders can completely stop anyone from even coming through the two entries and getting close to the flag.

I hope you enjoyed my essay, I didn't intend to write much at all originally...
Everything else with the map is fine.

 

I totally agree with you about that. With the roaming classes, and the small entries into the flagroom, I think it will be pretty hard to steal the flag. If it's hard to steal the flag, it will also be hard to get out of the flag room with only 3 entrances. So I would definitely suggest to modify the flagroom to make it less defense biased.

 

Since @Bath_Maintenance is not active at the moment, I'll be posting updates for this map.

Spoiler: Here are the changes I've made according to feedback:

- Removed the center path cover


- Removed the barriers on the center roof for accessibility
- Created tunnels through the roof into the flag room


- Added sponges and soul sand patches inside and outside the flag room for easier vertical mobility

Thanks for the great feedback! @cammanduh @Swit2427