After playing a few matches of CTF on Abandon- and discussing it with friends. We’ve felt that the current orientation of teams on the map leaves Red Team severely disadvantaged in games. The major fault is that the ‘Red’ side of the map gives much more practical cover to flag stealers and the Red Flag is effectively much easier to remove from the area. Red Players respawning after having the flag stolen often have no line of site and little chance of interception due to having to navigate around the main building in order to make it across the map.
Compare to Blue team- who have much more visible sight lines in the open area when respawning, their flag- while more open- allows defenders to easily see approaching enemies in almost all instances- Red team attackers usually must give themselves away in advance if they plan on grabbing the flag. Blue team also has an easier time accessing the main ramp to intercept players and traverse the map.
In my personal experience on the map, from what I can remember, I have been on red team on all but my latest game on Abandon- my latest game, being Blue was noticeably easier and as with previous games, simple grabs of the Red Flag and knocking it downstairs made it extremely difficult for Red to effectively defend, coming down to a matter of time before it was simply picked up again and moved- Blue team was able to win with 5 captures. While Red managed 1-2 despite keeping the firefights relatively even, kill for kill.
Wondering if anyone else feels the same about this- post your experiences and feedback from your own games and discuss.