Revamped Tier List (for soldier)

[Dukezilent]

The Tier List:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tG63iAX8WsBPWAb-UdT7_P7CScU9rd-KRLUkgvdXFuE/edit?usp=sharing

Hello everyone, hope you are having a fantastic day.
The main purposes of this project of mine are as follows:
To serve as a guideline for players who are unsure which maps to play.
To construct a criteria sheet that could be used to categorize each maps
To exclude demo maps and other impractical maps that can be discouraging for new players.
To re-evaluate and re-categorize maps that don't feel like the tiers they are claimed to be in the current tier system.

This project is not, in any form or degree, an attempt to eradicate or replace the current tier system which has been serving as a reliable and dependable reference for the jumping community. I also would like to state that the project is primarily geared towards novice and inexperienced jumpers. This is a part of my rocket jumping tutorial series which you can check out here:
This project is still a huge work in progress and I need the community's feedback to ensure that my tier system is on the right track. I will be more than welcome  and pleased to hear any forms of criticisms and feedback and please don't hesitate to contribute to this project. Please don't feel as if you need to be qualified to help because I firmly believe that opinions of beginner and novice jumpers would weigh more than the ones of professional jumpers for this project. (no offense to you hardcore gamers)

That being said, there are few other things that need to be addressed. First off, this new tier system was created without the users of the Original rocket launcher in mind. In other words, this is mainly for soldiers who prefer to use the stock over the original. Secondly, bonuses have been excluded from this list for the sake of simplicity. Thirdly, there will be exceptions to the 'no demo maps allowed' rule. Few mappers have managed to make their demo maps fun to run as soldier and these maps eventually will be added to this list down the line. Fourthly, when I first started working on this project, I decided to categorize each maps based on the "intended ways". However, I soon realized that this could get unnecessarily complicated since the "intended way" could potentially be a matter for debate. Therefore, I have opted to use the "easiest possible way" instead for this project. Fifthly, some of the things that are listed are courses, not the full map. Since there aren't very many tier 1 and tier 2 maps, I have decided to add some courses so that individuals in this skill range still have plenty of maps to choose from. However, courses that are higher than t2 will be excluded. In other words, everything listed above t2, will be the full map.

Now let's shift our topic to the list itself. C stands for course and s stands for stage (or level). Unlike how Tempus manages things, I decided not to go with l to indicate a certain jump of a map purely because I thought it looked ugly and I also used the term "level" for something else in the criteria. If the name of a map is colored in green, it means that it has been approved by me, an intellectual. If it is in yellow instead, that means it is just one of the courses of a map. You can look at the comments to see if it is also approved by me. Now you might be wondering, why did I go with the Tempus links? Well, it is simply because on top of very conveniently placed download buttons, the website also has other useful information in regards to the map. As you can probably tell, I didn't work on the "video link" section at all. Long story short, I was too lazy.

Please do keep in mind though that even within the same mid tier 2, certain maps will inevitably feel more difficult and challenging than the others. There is no way I can completely solve this unfortunate issue. However, the tier 1s are listed in the order of easiest to hardest. The rest aren't.

If you are highly intrigued by this and would like to know how this project was done, you might want to check out these two things out:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hokq1XCMJX6MSNxrJcqdF_FXHBjMvvFmXlCVyfSOqfs/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r7eJKShsSHUZf852Srefqe4Zktl9ipy0GNsCMrfjnP4/edit?usp=sharing
https://imgur.com/gallery/NTNhjrH

This is the criteria sheet that was used for my new tier system. I pretty much go in-depth with everything you need to know about how I categorized each individual map.

Again, I would highly appreciate any feedback
I will also try my best to answer all the questions.
Take care!

[Diabolical]

If your biggest motive is that demo maps are especially unfun to run as Soldier, then I don't see the point since most of those maps are t4 or 5 and won't attract newcomers in the current system. For t3 maps and below I think (from experience) that it works fine the way it is.

I can certainly name maps here and there that I would personally retier but I don't see the point in remaking it all from scratch.
I do however see the point in adding more than 6 tiers to have room for growing difficulty of maps being released over time.

Edit: I realised now that you are trying to remake the old forum tier list (that is so outdated that I forgot about it) So if that is what you are doing I suppose that is productive. I don't know how many people will actually use it when you are done, but yeah I am bothered by that outdated tier list too. Good luck!

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

[Dukezilent]

If your biggest motive is that demo maps are especially unfun to run as Soldier, then I don't see the point since most of those maps are t4 or 5 and won't attract newcomers in the current system. For t3 maps and below I think (from experience) that it works fine the way it is.

I can certainly name maps here and there that I would personally retier but I don't see the point in remaking it all from scratch.
I do however see the point in adding more than 6 tiers to have room for growing difficulty of maps being released over time.

Edit: I realised now that you are trying to remake the old forum tier list (that is so outdated that I forgot about it) So if that is what you are doing I suppose that is productive. I don't know how many people will actually use it when you are done, but yeah I am bothered by that outdated tier list too. Good luck!

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

Thank you very much for responding. I would like to clarify that I do NOT intend to go beyond t4. This list is meant for beginner jumps and if you are competent enough to run t5, then i suspect you wouldn't need this. Thank you again for your generous contribution.

[CHRIS :)]

whoaa cool, thanks for doing this!

[Dukezilent]

whoaa cool, thanks for doing this!

Thank you very much for the kind words. I really appreciate it!

[VAVLIE]

I dunno, most of this feels like copy pasting infos that are already available elsewhere. A good part of the "extra comments" are also super subjective or sometimes misleading.

[Dukezilent]

I dunno, most of this feels like copy pasting infos that are already available elsewhere. A good part of the "extra comments" are also super subjective or sometimes misleading.

Thank you very much for being honest. I completely understand where you are coming from, so I would like clarify few things. The extra comment section is meant to be highly subjective and is in a very early stage of development. If you would like to avoid subjective opinions, you are more than welcome to simply ignore them. I would also highly appreciate it if you could point out which of the comments were misleading. Again, I was looking for descriptive criticisms, for I acknowledge the fact that without involvement of the community, this project would be seen as a pity attempt by an amateur. In terms of the "copy and pasting," I would have thought the same if I were you, so let me further explain the goal of this project.

I believe that the best way to learn anything is by slowly increasing the difficulty of the subject you are attempting to master. To put it succinctly, it is better for a beginner jumper to learn rocket jumping in t1 or t2 maps rather than t5 maps. Now what if you are an intermediate jumper who can complete a good majority of t2 maps with ease? It seems most fitting to move onto t3 maps. However, with the current tier system, you are unable to identify which of the t3 maps are the best for these kind of players. I would certainly not recommend more challenging t3 maps such as jump_fizzydrink. As you probably already know, the biggest problem in the current system is that even within the same tier, certain maps are bound to feel more difficult. I plan to minimize this issue (i dont plan to eliminate it since it is virtually impossible) by separating the current existing tiers into 3 parts: low, mid, and high.

TL:DR: I just want new jumpers to have less trouble finding a suitable map for their skill level.

[VAVLIE]

If the goal is to guide new jumpers towards the right maps, in my opinion the best tool is to just provide a short list with a handful of good learning maps. I have my own list I send to anyone asking for "good beginner maps", other people probably do the same.

Stuff I more or less disagree with in the comments:

- I wouldn't say jump_adventure has bad regen, it's just outdated. Mappers do things differently now. Imo it serves its purpose just fine. Also while you might be more likely to kill yourself on this map than on others, using buddha, gunboats, hurtme or whatnot is a good thing pretty much any time you jump offline, as not all mappers think of buffing you for syncs. Also I don't see any "stupid maze" on c3 of adventure.

-Took me a while to understand what you meant by "go up" for jump_rush.

-If you're gonna call out maps for having bad lighting, might as well point out the fullbright maps. I personnally never thought orbital was too dark, but you definitely forgot jump_exile in that category though.

-jump_excavation first course is actually intended for scout. Also tbh, even though it's really far from today's standards, this map is fairly well made and really ambitious for its time. There's some pretty unique and interesting stuff in there.

-This is more subjective, but i don't always agree with what you considered a "good map". Most notably, even though jump_beef is a classic, it's in my opinion a pretty garbage map to learn to jump on, especially considering the number of good beginner maps we now have. I wouldn't consider fastnfar a really good map either. Also what you call "bad maps" i'd probably just call "old maps".
Old maps are not necessarily bad, they were just made with different mindset and standards than today (like abusing props or using a different regen system), so you'll find a decent amount of awkward jumps but there's some fun stuff in there still. This being said quba's maps aged really well.

[Dukezilent]

If the goal is to guide new jumpers towards the right maps, in my opinion the best tool is to just provide a short list with a handful of good learning maps. I have my own list I send to anyone asking for "good beginner maps", other people probably do the same.

Stuff I more or less disagree with in the comments:

- I wouldn't say jump_adventure has bad regen, it's just outdated. Mappers do things differently now. Imo it serves its purpose just fine. Also while you might be more likely to kill yourself on this map than on others, using buddha, gunboats, hurtme or whatnot is a good thing pretty much any time you jump offline, as not all mappers think of buffing you for syncs. Also I don't see any "stupid maze" on c3 of adventure.

-Took me a while to understand what you meant by "go up" for jump_rush.

-If you're gonna call out maps for having bad lighting, might as well point out the fullbright maps. I personnally never thought orbital was too dark, but you definitely forgot jump_exile in that category though.

-jump_excavation first course is actually intended for scout. Also tbh, even though it's really far from today's standards, this map is fairly well made and really ambitious for its time. There's some pretty unique and interesting stuff in there.

-This is more subjective, but i don't always agree with what you considered a "good map". Most notably, even though jump_beef is a classic, it's in my opinion a pretty garbage map to learn to jump on, especially considering the number of good beginner maps we now have. I wouldn't consider fastnfar a really good map either. Also what you call "bad maps" i'd probably just call "old maps".
Old maps are not necessarily bad, they were just made with different mindset and standards than today (like abusing props or using a different regen system), so you'll find a decent amount of awkward jumps but there's some fun stuff in there still. This being said quba's maps aged really well.

Thank you very much for being more descriptive as I requested. If you don't believe jump_adventure to have "bad regens," please explain which maps you would ever consider to have bad regens. I would like to also point out that I am evaluating the maps according to the standards we have today. I am also not judging the maps based on the date of their release; just because a map is new, doesn't mean it's good and vice versa. If I had to make an analogy for this case, it would have to be the cultural stereotypes we have.

For instance, Canadians are often thought to be quite polite. There are multiple factors, such as cultural values and practices, that might have caused this. However, the sole fact of you being a Canadian doesn't automatically make you polite. But, it still wouldn't be completely wrong to say that being a Canadian is somewhat linked with being polite. Likewise, simply because a map is old, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad. However, there are several other factors, such as limited mapping knowledge and experience, that can cause an old map to feel a little lacking and unrefined to some players. To say that there is absolutely no correlation between a map being old and a map being bad, would be an incorrect analysis of tf2 jump maps. Take the second last jump of the first course in jump_quba for example, I have seen many beginner jumpers struggling on that part of the map for quite awhile. Let's talk practicality. There is very little to gain from finishing that jump because you normally don't have to be that precise with wall shots in other beginner maps. In fact, it's usually more or less a luck when a beginner jumper does pull it off since a good majority of beginner jumpers are not very familiar with how the rocket doesn't actually come out from the center of the screen (I am referring to the stock, of course. Regardless of what weapon they use, I still don't think the jump is very practical purely from the beginner's standpoint). They are better off practicing in jump maps where the margin of error is much more forgiving. Trying to learn to be more precise can always come afterwards. I am sure jump_quba was a great map when it first came out, but it is no longer the case. I am not saying quba is a bad map, but it seems like the older a map is, the less likely it is for me to recommend it as a good beginner map. But to end this section of my reply, I would like to say that there are notable exceptions among the old classic maps.

In terms of "stupid maze" for adventure, thank you for pointing that out. I believe it was a copynpaste mishap. I will also make sure to add "dark map" to jump_exile. Again, I greatly appreciate the criticism. Jump_excavation was excluded specifically because of the scout course. If that part of the map were to be removed (from Tempus), I might re-consider my decision. If you want to know why Tempus removing the map is so important to me, you will eventually figure it out once I reveal everything I am working on.

I am sure there were few (perhaps many) things you didn't agree with, and frankly that is completely fine. Disagreements are nothing out of ordinary and I am just mighty pleased to hear what you thought of the project. Again, you have my thanks for taking your valuable time to point out the things you didn't like.

P.S. I forgot to talk about jump_beef. I must admit I was pretty biased when I marked it as a good map because it was the first jump map I played on. If more requests of the same kind rush in, I will definitely change it. Many players told me that it's a pretty solid map for beginners, but it is also quite possible that they were biased just like me. In terms of lighting, I am not calling them out for having bad lighting but for just making it more difficult to see. If a player is trying to learn the timing for speedshots, a map that makes it harder to see the platform wouldn't be adequate. To me, practicality comes first before the visual aesthetics.

P.S. #2 I just realized that you are Canadian and I don't want you to take this the wrong way. I am not saying you are being impolite

[Ladyboog]

tl;dr

[Dukezilent]

tl;dr

i like anime and you should too

[Dukezilent]

Updated to a2 (its a joke)

A HUGE OVERHAUL for my tier definition stuff (the google docs one)
Added roughly 9 maps to the list. (an update soon to add more maps)
Deleted few courses
Deleted all 'good maps' comments (green still means good maps)
Other minor changes

A huge thanks to vavlie for giving me useful feedback.