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If you want to keep your sanity, do NOT play 32 man instant respawn ctf_turbine
So I like playing on turbine (it's the capture the flag map with the vents and white walls, if you don't know). I'm aware that turbine is not a very well designed map, what with the severe lack of ammo packs, unfunnily long sniper sightlines, tendencies to favor turtling engies, and the vents (also known as the death traps). But for some reason, I keep coming back to it. Maybe it's because it was one of the first maps I played when I began tf2. Maybe it's because the middle area is actually pretty well designed and is great for death matching. Maybe it's for the sheer satisfaction you get when you do run the flag back and forth three times. As a heavy.

Then I played on this Skial server, and all of that classic turbine charm was whisked away in half an hour of random crits, crushing defeat, and spam. And when I say spam, I mean SPAM SPAM. I honestly don't know what I was thinking or what I was expecting, but I felt like I was in the trenches of World War I. Seriously.

For starters, our team had 4 engineers and 4 demomen, so I can only imagine how the other team was feeling. So first, I decided to join the cool kids, and play engie as well. I set up on my usual turbine spot, on that relatively large ledge with the health pack nearby the intel. It just so happened that there was another sentry set up directly below mine. And another directly south of mine. And another one somewhere else (probably a mini). Needless to say, we were suffering from hypersentria. Our team was literally going nowhere. We were constantly slinging projectiles in the other team's general direction, like monkey throwing poop in a cage, only to have the other team beat us back with stickies and headshots (the typical "3 sniper" team comp, although on a 32 man server, this is not much of a detriment to the team), only for us to prevent them from destroying our sentries, only to have them....I think you get the idea.

I got bored of engie pretty quick, so I decided to go battalion's backup soldier, since I knew we would need that sentry protection. Our team needed some firepower, right? My first task was to break through a sentry nest that had been set up to the left of our vent exit. Shouldn't be too hard with the backup, right? Well, I forgot to take into account other enemy players, who constantly clogged up the vents, forcing me to end their miserable lives (they gave me rage for my meter too!). One time, the knickknack from the sentry actually pinned me right outside the vent exit, leaving me plain and bare for the enemy team to rip me to shreds. So I failed in this endeavor, since some medic and his uber buddy ended up destroying the nest before I could come back in time (which is saying something, considering the length of respond time).

It was at this point that I was auto balanced from red team to blue team.

After recovering from this....annoyance, I continued my push forward as soldier. And now that I was on red, my team held the middle area, and was pushing back blue into their left entrance. All we had to do was destroy their sentry in there, and we would be all clear to get the intel (yes, after all this time, I almost forgot that we were doing all this effort just to get a briefcase become some old ass lady on the microphone told us to do so). But once again, this was easier said than done, as they had 2 demos, a pyro and a medic clogging up the area. I couldn't hit the sentry because of the pyro, and the demoman's kept vomiting stickies all over the floor, forcing me to retreat. It took me there blows of the backup to finally get a good enough push to destroy the sentry, only to get blown up by stickies. And by the time I got back to the front lines, red team already had a level 2 up in the SAME EXACT PLACE, and the demos with their sh*t eating grins and the pyros who kept on pushing me back EVERY GODDAMN TIME....ooh boy, you can tell this was the point that I started to lose my sanity.

After this, everything kinda became a blur. One of the red guys went vaccinator medic and pocketed a pyro, which allowed him to destroy me with explosive resist. That medic also pocketed a heavy, who was annihilated easily by my relatively competent team (heavies are surprisingly ineffective on turbine, probably because of the extreme sticky spam and sniper sightlines). I probably died around 5 times in these few minutes. It was a constant cycle: go to the front line, get some damage, get some kills, get out spammed, go back to the front lines, repeat. This was true trench warfare. And just like Paul Bäumer in *All Quiet on the Western Front*, I just became very tired. I wanted to stop. I wanted to go home (ok, I was playing at home, but that's besides the point). I even started to accept the monotony, so I stopped before I got sucked into the Skial vortex. I quit the game, and closed tf2.

So now here I am, an hour after this hellish experience. I have vowed never to touch an instant respawn OR a 32 man server again. And if you enjoy either of these, then I completely do not understand you. And if you do decide to be brave, to take the plunge and try one of these servers out, I leave you with a warning: you won't have fun, but you can make a helluva story out of it!

Author: shivj80

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/4kgm50/if_you_want_to_keep_your_sanity_do_not_play_32/
http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comment..._your_sanity_do_not_play_32/?ref=search_posts