TF2 Mapping Case Study: Snowycoast's First Chokepoint

If somebody asks me "Are all choke points bad?", my answer is a definite no.

Chokepoints are one of the most hotly debated subject when discussing about map design of any first person shooter. It is extremely important to understand what a chokepoint does to utilize it. 

According to the Official TF2 wiki, chokepoints are "any enclosed space, corridor, or area where large numbers of players are forced to pass through, with no alternate routes."

Most chokes of tf2 actually have alternative routes but they are for flanking.

In this series,(if I decide to continue) I will go over some good and bad chokepoints because I get the feeling that the biggest problem of cp_hazyfort is the chokepoint I added. I will hopefully be able to fix the problem of the map as I go through other good and bad examples of chokepoints.

To start off with, we have pl_snowycoast. I think this choke is a good example because blue team has a good chance of going through. Fighting around this choke is not really frustrating as either team. It can be tight in some cases but I think it is a chokepoint that works.

The first point of Snowycoast

This is the first point of pl_snowycoast. There are actually only two routes blue players can take to proceed. The flank is sometimes a choke by itself because of how enclosed the area is. Soldiers, Demos and Heavies can easily blast away enemies in the room on the right. Pyros can also work well in the right flank because, again, the room is small.

Pretty crammed

The white cross represents health pack and brown arrow represents ammo pack. This is the route each teams can take. 

This next screenshot shows the distance from the choke to the close health packs.

Not only blue has 3 more health packs compared to red, the distance they need to travel is much longer in some cases. Despite blue's spawn being very close to the chokepoint, blue was given 5 health packs to work with which may sound quite absurd. 

A unique feature of this choke is that there is a large health pack right next to the choke point.

I think this health pack is a very interesting feature as it can be used by both team given the right situation. In most cases, it will be used by blue players who took a lot of damage from pushing the cart. They are given immediate cover and a large healthpack so that they can return to the cart very fast. It can also be used by some red players who are very offensive. For instance, a red scout can take the health pack to continue harassing without losing any time in doing so. In most of other maps, players would have to take a longer route in order to gain this much health.

The medium health pack on the left is helpful for blue team engineer who is trying to set up a quick dispenser for their team. Although blue team would have to fallback quite a distance, the dispenser is very safe from most threat other than spies because of how far it is from the chokepoint. This place is almost a counterpart to the red's strong sentryspot on the other side of the building.

To talk more about useful dispenser spot, there is this area:

The fence prop covers the area just enough to protect the blue dispenser from all the spamfest. The low fence provides useful cover for long ranged classes like sniper. Combined with the small health pack, it is a very strong holding area.

If not this doorway on the right...

It is pretty much only way to avoid the extreme projectile spam for both team and it is very likely for red team to flank using this route. So the dispenser spot mentioned above is balanced. A general high-risk-high-return.