https://gamebanana.com/maps/192650
There are multiple mistakes with this map as a whole, and I will be addressing the majority of them in this thread.
(if you already have a general dislike for this map, then you should already know the majority of these reasons without needing to read them fully)
1. General layout of the map/(most)abusable strategies
At first glance, cinema is an incredibly small and condensed map consisting of 4 main areas where most of the fighting happens. The main theater, the small and narrow corridors, the ticketing area, and the projector room behind the Castle Crashers painting. The main theater is an all-out slugfest for high DPS classes to damage farm to clueless hales, and 50% of the fighting occurs in this main area. Right of the bat, this is a massive disadvantage to hales because of the room's small area, not to mention the low ceilings which immediately render explosive weighdown useless. Another area of the main room is the two vents to the left and right of RED spawn. Usually, engineers settle down in these areas, inevitably getting killed due to the lack of knockback sentries do to hales. However, after hales enter these vents, they are constantly getting stunned and pushed back by offensive classes and usually stay in there until their deaths, the exceptions being Vagineer, the Easter Bunny, and HHH because of his teleport (unless the hales are clueless and don't know how to rage/teleport, etc...).
However, this is far from the worst room on the map. Going through the corridors into the CC painting is a death trap for any hale who is unaware of the tele-fragging abuse of the room. When you go into the painting, you are teleported against a wall into the projector room, and if you have the unfortunate outcome of being stuck in a dispenser/sentry, you lose 9001 of your health, and then some if there is a medic ubering the engineer. On top of this telefrag choke point, once you exit the projector room, you are teleported right below the room, and have the possibility of getting stuck in another dispenser/sentry or player to get tele-fragged a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th time. When there are competent regulars on the server, this strat becomes easily abusable.
Now onto the ticketing area. The rails in the middle of the room have invisible walls that go above them, which means you can't jump over them. This leaves players and hales only able to walk around them in a square formation, or through the rails in a zig-zag. One strat that has become easily abusable is loose cannon demo with all 4 of their heads for maximum speed and health. You are easily able to keep walking around the rails in a game of ring around the rosie with hale while knocking the hale back if they get too close, and repeating the cycle. And even when your shield is gone and get hit once, there is a medium health kit and small ammo pack in front of the screen doors that open to the outside area when all secret buttons are pressed (don't worry, I'll get to that later). This draws out rounds for an ungodly amount of time when demo(s) are good and the hale has a significant amount of health left. I myself can't say that I haven't done this because I created this strat when the map was first added into the map pool.
Now the secret buttons I was referring to in the previous paragraph allow players to access the outside area into 2 more rooms. One room being where the cap point is, which caps incredibly fast even without a scout, leading to a bigger room with a lake and breakable glass walls to a large health kit. Both these rooms just waste time for hale searching for players, leaving the majority of the team still in the 4 main areas of the map. The majority of the player base doesn't know where all the secret buttons are, but sometimes the map glitches out and opens the doors without having all buttons being found.
The general layout of the map is pretty awful and usually results in long rounds if the hale isn't immediately killed in 1-3 minutes.
2. Player base reactions to this map
While Bottiger bases his map additions on popularity and statistics from other servers, generally, this map is dreaded by most regulars on VSH. Some players enjoy the map because of how janky it is, and the ease in farming damage, but overall it is not fun. The better regulars do not enjoy this map because of its general layout, and because of our selection of hales and their stats. Vagineer absolutely tears through RED with ease in one rage because of how small the map is, and the same can be said with the Easter Bunny. HHH becomes a walking tank and gives him a slight edge due to his climbs to catch up to players, abusing the rows of chairs, and close walls, all the while having increased range from the axe and reduced knockback. Since most players play in clusters on cinema due to the small space, CBS can easily pick off one player with one arrow almost every time and becomes complete RNG to who dies.
Generally, cinema being voted kills off the majority of the population of regulars who play daily, and will usually avoid joining when cinema is the current map. While it is important to continue to have players join VSH despite the map, I would say the net positive is lower than the net negative if the goal is to keep a dedicated player base to Skial VSH, rather than randoms who always join and leave after a few maps, returning maybe once a week.
There are multiple mistakes with this map as a whole, and I will be addressing the majority of them in this thread.
(if you already have a general dislike for this map, then you should already know the majority of these reasons without needing to read them fully)
1. General layout of the map/(most)abusable strategies
At first glance, cinema is an incredibly small and condensed map consisting of 4 main areas where most of the fighting happens. The main theater, the small and narrow corridors, the ticketing area, and the projector room behind the Castle Crashers painting. The main theater is an all-out slugfest for high DPS classes to damage farm to clueless hales, and 50% of the fighting occurs in this main area. Right of the bat, this is a massive disadvantage to hales because of the room's small area, not to mention the low ceilings which immediately render explosive weighdown useless. Another area of the main room is the two vents to the left and right of RED spawn. Usually, engineers settle down in these areas, inevitably getting killed due to the lack of knockback sentries do to hales. However, after hales enter these vents, they are constantly getting stunned and pushed back by offensive classes and usually stay in there until their deaths, the exceptions being Vagineer, the Easter Bunny, and HHH because of his teleport (unless the hales are clueless and don't know how to rage/teleport, etc...).
However, this is far from the worst room on the map. Going through the corridors into the CC painting is a death trap for any hale who is unaware of the tele-fragging abuse of the room. When you go into the painting, you are teleported against a wall into the projector room, and if you have the unfortunate outcome of being stuck in a dispenser/sentry, you lose 9001 of your health, and then some if there is a medic ubering the engineer. On top of this telefrag choke point, once you exit the projector room, you are teleported right below the room, and have the possibility of getting stuck in another dispenser/sentry or player to get tele-fragged a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th time. When there are competent regulars on the server, this strat becomes easily abusable.
Now onto the ticketing area. The rails in the middle of the room have invisible walls that go above them, which means you can't jump over them. This leaves players and hales only able to walk around them in a square formation, or through the rails in a zig-zag. One strat that has become easily abusable is loose cannon demo with all 4 of their heads for maximum speed and health. You are easily able to keep walking around the rails in a game of ring around the rosie with hale while knocking the hale back if they get too close, and repeating the cycle. And even when your shield is gone and get hit once, there is a medium health kit and small ammo pack in front of the screen doors that open to the outside area when all secret buttons are pressed (don't worry, I'll get to that later). This draws out rounds for an ungodly amount of time when demo(s) are good and the hale has a significant amount of health left. I myself can't say that I haven't done this because I created this strat when the map was first added into the map pool.
Now the secret buttons I was referring to in the previous paragraph allow players to access the outside area into 2 more rooms. One room being where the cap point is, which caps incredibly fast even without a scout, leading to a bigger room with a lake and breakable glass walls to a large health kit. Both these rooms just waste time for hale searching for players, leaving the majority of the team still in the 4 main areas of the map. The majority of the player base doesn't know where all the secret buttons are, but sometimes the map glitches out and opens the doors without having all buttons being found.
The general layout of the map is pretty awful and usually results in long rounds if the hale isn't immediately killed in 1-3 minutes.
2. Player base reactions to this map
While Bottiger bases his map additions on popularity and statistics from other servers, generally, this map is dreaded by most regulars on VSH. Some players enjoy the map because of how janky it is, and the ease in farming damage, but overall it is not fun. The better regulars do not enjoy this map because of its general layout, and because of our selection of hales and their stats. Vagineer absolutely tears through RED with ease in one rage because of how small the map is, and the same can be said with the Easter Bunny. HHH becomes a walking tank and gives him a slight edge due to his climbs to catch up to players, abusing the rows of chairs, and close walls, all the while having increased range from the axe and reduced knockback. Since most players play in clusters on cinema due to the small space, CBS can easily pick off one player with one arrow almost every time and becomes complete RNG to who dies.
Generally, cinema being voted kills off the majority of the population of regulars who play daily, and will usually avoid joining when cinema is the current map. While it is important to continue to have players join VSH despite the map, I would say the net positive is lower than the net negative if the goal is to keep a dedicated player base to Skial VSH, rather than randoms who always join and leave after a few maps, returning maybe once a week.
For these reasons, and hopefully the reasons that will be added in support, vsh_cinema should be removed for the general longevity of the server and community.
