Raste;
So ask yourself in every important location: “where am I?” and try to describe it in 4-5 words top. If you can, your location is unique enough, if not then you need to give it more character.
Due to the nature of pickups this is always “flak” “shock” “belt” in arena fps. You can describe areas in 1-2 words. In other game types, perhaps, and in other games players give areas unique names. cs examples of banana, upper dark, lower dark, pit, goose, yet even these can be tied to the bomb site letter – short A, long B. etc – disconnected from any of your four points. Locations become pickup names because they are usually unique. Problems only arise when dm maps have doubled up weapons – in ctf maps doubles are handled via “their flak” vs “our flak”. Depending on the map double up in dm could be handled by high/low or similar. Only when this is not applicable do players need to look for more ways to describe things. The two shocks on temple for example – belt shock and amp shock. Easy. The map decorations will never come into it overall potentially cause confusion.
Take the outpost as an example. I only know the thing in the smelter room is a smelter because someone at epic called it that on a stream in the past. That is “shock room”. Done. If I had never heard someone call it the smelter I would wonder at they at the smelter or the drill – that is not really a drill.. and more a laser?
The pickups are concise, descriptive and for most cases, especially at lower levels are perfectly fine.
Now, having said that there are cases where additional information is required. How would one describe a player coming from rockets to belt on temple via the high route? Hm. This may need a name/descriptor, but this is at a much finer granulation than “what room am I in” scenario most players look at when trying to get their bearing. This level of naming may occur when players play together for competition. “Rockets to belt high” would suffice. Items again, but the relation of two. If there are particular routes that stand out and occur over and over then giving them unique identifiers might be beneficial – but this is going to the level where players do crazy stuff – my rtcw:et team named parts of a particular map after sections of the digestive tract. Nothing to do with the map or geometry.
This is not poo-pooing your four points at all, in fact I agree with them, but I don’t agree that they need to be done just so players can describe where they are – they can do this simply by looking at pickups.
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