[CTF] Sky Islands

(Updated map) v1.2

Older verisons
1.0 (480x240):http://i.imgur.com/iOpzy.png
1.1 (380x108): http://imgur.com/cTalb

Floating Islands that graze the skies above, and the abyss that lies underneath. A 262x108 map, with many paths to take.

Each side has a drawbridge, and outpost, stone, trees, some gold, and are both very secured with bedrock to prevent any sudden griefing.

A direct attack to the other side? Take the high ground? Go low, and sneak underneath to take them by surprise? The amount of paths are endless. Be sure to have builders to aid you on your routes.

Also, you could try to claim the riches that lie at the bottom, but be warned, for they are not only just for you: The other team has the same opportunity to swipe it from you. Fight for the right to own all dat bling!

Who will cross the chasm to claim their opponents flag first?

Basically my first map, I was trying to make floating islands, but they kept getting easily destroyed when you try to remove a block from it, even with wall backgrounds. So after a little experimenting on what triggers their falling demise, I built more secured islands. Then the map with huge gaps in between made the map rely upon the builders too much, which would result in stalemates and slow matches. So to make it fairer to the other classes, you can hop across the smaller platforms to get on the bigger lands. I want to see opinions on this map to see if this is playable/good/bad or whatnot. I will try to fix the map if there are any concerns.
*CHANGELOG*
*v1.1 - Due to concerns about size and balancing, the map has considerable shrunken and become mirrored.
*v1.2 - Causes too much lagging, map is once again smaller, and took out some of the background dirt.

 

You could make a small version... :D

 

Thank you, variety is the spice of life.

True, symmetrical is usually the way to go if you want to balance a map properly and was my plan initially, but lots of little tweaking here and there became so tedious, I figured "forget about it". To be truthfully honest, I got kinda lazy around the end and just did my best to make sure that each path was accessible with as little trouble as possible: The goal became to make sure that each round wasn't going to be played the same, one path wasn't going to be taken everytime; Instead of forcing to suffer walls and towers, you could take another path if you get roadblocked by the other team. The balancing factor in this map is position: you're not always safe when there's another open path that leads pass your defenses. Symmetric, although simple and effective, gets repetitive and dull pretty fast.

 

Looks interesting. Thing is that huge of a map will lag to no end on most servers.

 

Too big? Hmm, I shall work on it compressing the map into a smaller version of it. What's a reasonable size for an average map?

 

In case of this particular map, around 260x200 I think.

 

Thanks for all your input. The map has now been updated and is linked at the top.

 

This map bans every player on my server everytime it loads :s

It did it twice today.

 

I'm not sure why it would do that (nor how to fix that)? Please tell me more about this; are you sure it isn't the hacker detection acting screwy again?

 

Maybe I set the ping limit too low, and the map is so huge that it makes everybody's ping skyrocket, and they get banned.

But if I set the ping limit higher then it lags too much.

The map looks great though. Maybe you could make a similar one but smaller ? :)

 

Gah...I'll try again and figure out how to keep the map's design while shrinking it. Thanks for the quick response.

** Map is now updated **