The Thompson House (Coldwind Farm)

Peanits

We'd like to know what you think about the Thompson House map, part of the Coldwind Farm realm. Please leave any feedback you have concerning this map as a comment on this thread. Your feedback can be as brief or detailed as you'd like!

NotJared

Generally, I think Thompson House's balance is okay, but the main Thompson House building is incredibly problematic for Killers to chase and patrol through and its mere presence lends itself to making the map consistently slightly favored for Survivors in many small ways, that add up in the end.

The breakable doors are an enormous time sink, and if you don't take the time to break them then the building is even stronger for Survivors. The upstairs window can be very strong, and the fact that there's only one way up to the generator in Main and almost no opportunities to sneak up on survivors because they can hear you coming for so long gives them ample time to hide or pre-run and makes it a HUGE time sink to merely check on the generator. In addition, the house only orients itself to get upstairs one way, and it is mildly labyrinthine downstairs to orient myself in the right direction to find my way up, which only wastes even more time. In addition to all of this travel just to get upstairs, I have to travel almost just as far just to leave the building unless I take the one dropdown hole up top. The whole building is just a massive waste of time for Killers, and the window upstairs is generally very safe for Survivors (despite the holes on the sides of the building, they're pretty strong setups) even if a Killer does find anyone.

I recognize that adding more ways up and down from the building could potentially create even more problems, as now Survivors with a high vantage point have easier access to getting out of the building and out of danger even faster via more escape routes. However, I think careful planning and adding more routes to access the

Every single time I get this map as Killer, without fail, it is a better idea for me to completely ignore the main building unless it is one of the last 3 gens, because of how much of an enormous waste of a time sink it is to chase through. Committing to ANY chase by patrolling the generator upstairs in main, I am almost always guaranteed to lose one other generator on the map.

Since the corn tile filler pallets have been recently added to Coldwind maps, the map has generally been much better to play on as Survivor.

I agree with everything mentioned about Thompson House by AMGC here:

@AMGC said:

The Thompson House is a slightly survivor favored map that carries problems from its realm and has a long shape that makes the generators hard to defend. The 5 corn exclusive fillers tiles (where only a few weak filler loops spawn) in the middle of the map push the gameplay towards the edges of the map (where the strong loops are lined up) and also protect the survivors from being in the line of sight of the killer (which will make the killer waste more time patrolling).

Coldwind Farm always had a very unique ruleset for its mazetiles, having both consistency and good distribution. Ever since the patch 6.6.0 (hidden mazetile RNG change that affected over 20 maps), The Thompson House would always have 2 jungle gyms (classic pallet & window mazetile), 1 pallet gym (classic pallet only mazetile) and 1 LT (classic double window mazetile); if main is located North, one of the jungle gyms would be placed at the pair of mazetiles on East side and the other at the pair on West side, granting the map with good distribution of safety. Unfortunately, the last Coldwind Farm update ruined this ruleset and now the good distribution is not assured and there is a huge disparity in strength given that now you can have a second LT spawn, randomly removing one jungle gym so one trial can have 2 jungle gyms and another can have only 1.

The realm Coldwind Farm is known for having very strong safety yet not a very high amount of pallets, favoring skilled survivors over killers since the limited amount of safety is enough to excel but the less skilled survivors can be at a frustrating disadvantage. This unfair and unfun gameplay loop is enabled by the filler loops, their low amount yet overwhelming safety grant the survivors too few loops to play with and don't allow the killer to outplay most of them (unless their chase power does). All the haybale filler loops are safe and some even trick the killer into attempting mindgames when the survivor can see them over the loop (but the killer can't see the survivor). The plank focused fillers overall lean more towards semi safe except for one that is excessively large with a tractor on one side and a very large L shaped long side (this loop is absurdly safe). The new corn located fillers are unsafe but they dont weaken The Thompson House at all since they aren't replacing other loops and instead add on top.

https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/9DBNKPY8RQ2Z/the-thompson-house-feedback.png

The realm Coldwind Farm should receive nerfs to the strong fillers while increasing the pallet density to compensate (and therefore make the gameplay more interactive with more loops for the survivors to use yet more room for the killer to outplay them).

The map The Thompson House should recover its old mazetile ruleset or one similar to it, in order to increase the consistency and distribution of safety. The length of the map should be reduced to give the killer a better chance to defend the generators and the amount of mazetiles should remain as 4, no less than that.

Malkhrim

One thing that I really dislike on this map is the distance between hooks. They are spread so far apart that sometimes you just can't hook a survivor when they fall near the area where another one was already sacrificed. Hooking a survivor should never be impossible by default.