At the end of the catwalk pipes, there are lips to pass before stepping on the roof of the forts.
Kyle was messing around with a heavy and then stated that the map harshly favoured scouts. I asked him why he said that, and he replied that they were the only ones able to navigate over the lip when getting off the pipes, while most other classes couldn't transition from the pipes to the roof. Turns out Kyle had never learned the art of crouch jumping (which allows you to jump onto obstacles a bit higher than just regular jumping) and this lip required a crouch jump to get over. When designing and testing the map I simply took it for granted that everyone knew how to crouch jump.
I could have just left the pipe-to-roof transition alone and hoped that everyone who plays Crevice would eventually learn the art of crouch jumping. However, this route was a main route in the map and should be accessible for all players. What if a group of non-crouch-jumpers tried the map and decided it was bad just because a main pathway was blocked to most classes? I decided that crouch jumping was not a fundamental skill of the game and changed the transition.
I had to raise the ends of the pipes, but I wanted to keep the middle the same height to allow for triple jumping scouts to reach it from a level below. So, I sloped the ends up to match the lip. The change was great. The transition now felt smoother for all classes AND the map had more aesthetic depth to it.
This just shows the importance of testing with many different people and playing styles to knock down any poor design assumptions.
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