But for the record I love hydro about as much as dustbowl, which makes me sad to see it being underplayed =( Maybe if the cap points were more/less exposed people could enjoy it a bit more.

Engineers are always played, because bar none they are the most necessary class in the game. Not the most important, just that, no matter what the game conditions, it is required to have engineers playing in order to keep the game from becoming a blow out. They establish the defensive lines. They slow down the enemy’s offensive, remove the advantage that the scout had during the game’s first few minutes, and create the choke points. If your team becomes short handed, defense calls for engineer. If your team has the other pinned down in the respawns, someone goes engineer to setup a turret outside offensively.

So sure, scout and engineer plays all the time. Makes sense to me.

Soldier and demoman have rocket/grenade jump. This opens the map up so that they can go places the medic, heavy and pyro can not. I can understand why they’d be played more often.

That’s why I love pyro. He has enough speed to cut off a scout if you know where he’s going. Enough health to take a few shots and close the distance on an aware enemy. And a weapon that can make an entire squad of charging opponents stop and back up thus blowing their momentum. Ah the sneaky sneaky pyro.

Melee heavy only sudden death is one of mans greatest accomplishments.

As an Engineer I love putting up and taking care of my turret, but I’m also fond of sniping Heavies from afar. And being a Scout becase they can annoy people so much.

I found Hydro to be an okay map, though it’s the one I’ve spent least time on. It’s Dustbowl I totally suck at.

Without seeing a more detailed breakdown though, it’s difficult to tell whether I’m talking out of my arse here or not.

As for the blue/red split, I’m not convinced it is that statistically relevant. Then again I never did well at stats.

Although I think dynamic maps could work better eventually, Valve have a bit to learn yet though.

It’s wierd though how some things can be attributed to the simplest of things, like you say perhaps more new players pick red because it’s the first choice, but conversely I think that perhaps more people pick red first as a team choice, while the people who are actually playing in a sportsman like manner – and as elitist as this sounds, are probably the better players – choose the random door, and thus get put onto the blue team. Or as someone has said to me, even simpler: the blue door is the closest to the centre, so is the least amount of mouse movement used to get to it, and clicked first by people who just want to play.

It also doesn’t help that there are GIANT FLASHING ARROWS pointing to routes blocked off by LOCKED METAL BARRIERS, as if to say, “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be nice if you could get through here?”

It’s the mechanics of it. It’s because it is just two capture points, with both teams attacking and defending. Because there’s only one point to take, it’s quite possible to win a map segment within a few seconds of the start of the game, leaving both teams bemused.

But if that doesn’t happen, and both teams manage to dedicate some defense, then taking that control point becomes a horrible chore because it is so close to the enemy’s spawn point. There’s no attacker’s advantage like there is on the similar last points of well or granary. And unlike the two-point dustbowl mini-rounds, both teams have to split their attention between attack and defense, making it harder to maintain a momentum when you do manage to break through a defensive line.

So most mini-rounds go to sudden death. And almost all sudden death rounds end in Another. Fucking. Stalemate.