A late look at pass_pinewood
I have had a hell of a time finding a decent game of PASS Time recently. There’s currently a bug that allows a single player to crash a Pass Time server, and Valve’s tardiness at fixing this bug is causing the playerbase for this game mode to wither and die. The few times I’ve succeeded, the map either changed immediately to pass_warehouse or somehow was already on pass_warehouse despite what the server browser would have you believe.
It is genuinely possible that people just can’t wrap their head around pinewood, because it’s a more advanced map for sure. It takes some effort to navigate, unlike Warehouse which is relatively arena-like and practically funnels you in one of two directions. There are also a lot fewer jump pads and speed boost spawns, but the few that remain are very tactfully placed. The rainy alpine theme also leaves patches of shallow water for accurate players who want to negate fall damage after being boosted.
The scoring system had been advanced somewhat. Now there are three different locations where either team can score, but each one can only be scored on once. This lessens the effects of sentry goalies because the spot needed to defend is ever-changing.
My main complaint is that nothing has been done to lessen the fact that Scouts and Engineers are the hands-down kings of this game mode. Somehow it’s even worse here than on Warehouse. I saw a few Demoknights and Pyros on pinewood but no other class dared show its face for the (admittedly only a few) rounds I played. With the map organically nerfing Engineer, Scouts are ever-present and something really needs to be done. Problem is, I don’t have any ideas on what that could be.
To be honest, if scout were just banned from PASS Time or limited to one per team, the game mode would be pretty decently balanced. But putting that aside and talking about Pinewood on its own, it’s a damn fun map. I think I prefer it over Warehouse, and the development advances are encouraging because it shows the devs are getting creative and aren’t afraid to try new things.
