Container City:

-Door must be destroyed to get to the dirty bomb/vacceine lab.

This one is fine. It works and provides an excellent incentive to blow/repair as it acts as a great choke point. For the attacking team, it ACTUALLY WORKS as a shortcut. Good design plan, and good implementation.

-Side stairs.

No. Bad idea.

-Side door

Wow. No.

Let me clarify. I know this shortcut was built to let Lights get above it, but the design doesn't work. If you are Light body and you get over the door, you will be killed by the enemies, as thats their spawn route. Even if you aren't, and all the guys are at the door, you won't have any good weapons to sneak up behind them without being spotted, and do damage. Stick with the charge on the wall.

Aquarium:

-Lift

Maybe I'm dead wrong, but I don't think anyone uses this.

I can't properly critique the Shipyard ones, since I haven't played that map yet.

Please add more below!

I found the stairs useful. Even though lights can take a path on the right, not everyone can. Also, that choke point bridge can be locked down easily and a flanking path is always a good option. Same thing with that side door. Lights can wall hop over it but heavies and mediums need some help to get around turrets and that annoying MG emplacement I know you can just climb over the wall to the right but a lot of the time there is someone there trying to spawn trap. I think the the shortcuts work well if you use them.

There are the main and side barricades in Shipyard. Those are good ones, too, since you can't protect both of them, so that's one of the better shortcuts.

Shipyard also has a second crane that lifts a bridge up, so Security can get straight from thier spawn to flanking the Missile. Lights can leap this gap without the bridge up.

Shipyard definitely has some of the best implemented shortcuts I've seen in the entire game, closing/opening any one of them really changes the flow of the entire fight. Now if only the hacking objective wasn't so damn hard...

All of the maps have at least one shortcut objective in them, except for terminal I believe, my personal favorite is the bridge at the beginning of reactor. Getting that svcker open can really screw over the defending team.

I've only run resistance so far, but I was wondering: can you use the lift in the aquarium to transport the hostage instead of taking him up that ramp? Also, in security tower can you take the pilot around to the left of the very first ramp and go under through the corridor near the command post? I've always that those ways might be easier to get through as the escorting team

The shortcuts seem fine to me o.o
The Resistance is usually busy defending the barricade, so you can open the door and kinda pop up to shoot off the guy at the turret etc

Ummm the side stairs actually cuts off a pretty nice amount of time running to CP's... and if you use it correctly, you'll end up in a covered area pretty quickly...

Side door is a bit weird, I agree :\

For the lift, I think it's kind of unknown because I didn't know until i stumbled in it.

I'm not sure why the side door is even there. Maybe to allow your team to flank the defenders? But then you can just shoot through the window, or meet death from above as a light sprays at your head filling it with lead .

Alternate Routes = more interesting gameplay.

All they do is focus on another choke point anyway, so it's not like there's multiple routes to the objective (when the obj. is easy, when it's hard there are usually multiples).
The side door and side stairs make for excellent support routes on Attack on CCity, even though the bot has to roll on down the choke point anyway.

The only thing I dont agree with on CCity as far as alternate routes go is the door behind the MG which makes building the crane too easy, you can walk right up to it with no resistance and that's just not fun.

Very few people use the lift, but when a couple of players do, it gives you a great element of surprise. Mainly BECAUSE nobody normally uses it.

And on CCity, I LOVE when I'm Security and my teammates are going for the shortcut, then as it blows up, I grab the case - the whole enemy team run into the shortcut path to blockade it, and fail to realise I'm going the long way around. So much fun.

I've seen the Aquarium lift used in competitive play, and heard of some pretty epic tales of it's use... it just doesn't seem to stick for randoms and casual players like the majority of us though.

Oh, also, in the early push, the side door on CCity can play a HUGE role - especially when there's someone manning the MG nest - You can get a Light around by climbing the containers, then getting up to the MG user's left side without being TOO vulnerable to it, but you have to cut really close to the Resistance spawn, and there's always a few enemies to try and get past. If you open teh side door, even a heavy can get around the MG nest, and once you reach it, you can take it over and it becomes a great tool for covering your Engineers while they repair the bot.

Exactly,
All these shortcuts play a vital roll, nothing is as frustrating as having only 1 path to your objective. You just gotta learn the value of each sidepath and know in which situations to use them. It's so fun having 4 humans flank the enemy team in CC and setting up turrets, mines and using their own MG nest against them, they'll never knew what hit 'em :disguise:

Definitely wrong. As an engineer, I fight my way to repair the lift controls, jump into the elevator and over the railing down to the lower level and set a gotlung turret up facing the end of the ramp where the enemy has their back turned. Everyone dead.

- F