i love this map

Unfortunately I'm not sure we get much power over whether it's smissmas exclusive or not. We would love it to be restricted to smissmas only, but I think that's up to valve i'm afraid

The gamemode concept and maps are cool.

The only thing that i'm worried about is that it might get added to all-year map pool. Please prevent that from happening. Keep it as a smissmas special.

Arbys: We Have The Meats

because nothing is more jolly and christmas-like than a bloody butcher factory.

Hm, guess you're right there. The end goal was always just to give people more assets to use to fit a wider variety of maps (since if you're making a normal map that isn't set in a cold environment, the ice statues would be out of place).
We'll discuss this internally, thanks for bringing that to my attention

I might be missing something here, but doesn't adding map during a summer event guarantees that it will get added to constant map pool? Wouldn't that be against the idea of keeping the freeze tag gamemode holiday restricted?

Once the Smissmas update drops (whether freeze tag is included or not) we will be making the prefab public so that people can make their own maps for it, then we will begin development on summer and halloween variants

BTW about availability of Freeze Tag mode: do you planning to release Vscript files on TF2Maps or somewhere else? And if it so, is it happening only after successful integration of mode in-game?

We would actually prefer if it was holiday restricted if it got in. This is something I wanted since I drew up the original design document, because it accomplishes two things.
1: It helps avoid bloating of the main map pool, which we know is getting rather chock-full now.
2: It makes it more of a special event when it comes around every year for smissmas. Right now (personally) there's no real reason to play smissmas every year like there is for halloween (contracts), so something like this would give myself and hopefully other people that feel the same way as me a reason to get excited for smissmas coming back, even if it's only for a little while

original Slaughter never got added and that's a shame. But we did get Laughter, its halloween version. Which is great.
I adore this version utilizing this year's "freeze tag" community gamemode. It's very fitting given this map is a literal meat freezer/processing plant. So it's very thematically appropriate even as a winter map, too. It's cold.

That said, because this version utilized the freeze tag gamemode, it will likely get locked out as a holiday specific map.
Which would mean both versions of this map are holiday maps.

And thank you for taking the time to try out the mode for yourself and having faith in our project, your support means a lot to me and the whole team

That's awesome, I see the vision with Aspen's inclusion.

This is also why I reached out to Void to ask if he would be down with including Slaughter in the map lineup, because it fit the themeing perfectly, and I already knew that it was a solid map gameplay-wise.

I knew that it was a risky move to ask Void to essentially repost Slaughter to the workshop for the fourth time, given how Prop Hunt was received by the community, but I stand by the choice, as it fits the theme perfectly, helps to round out Freeze Tag as a whole, and the map roster is widely varied in both themeing and unique gameplay spaces as a result, so there should (hopefully) be something for everyone to enjoy.

Sorry for the big wall of text! I didn't realise I had so much to say about this lmao (2/2)

Thank you for the kind words!
I understand that it's a little jarring to play on maps with warmer colour palettes (Aspen, Himalaya), so let me try and go a little further into detail about why these maps were included.
The reasoning behind these "brighter maps" is that from the get-go, we wanted maps that encapsulated the feeling of "cold, frost, chilly" without being strictly "christmas present spam, christmas trees, snow everywhere", if you know what I mean.

To this end, each mapper had their own idea of how to fit the "cold" themeing we were aiming for: For Himalaya, the idea was that you were at the top of a Nepalese mountain.
For Aspen, the mappers took heavy inspiration from the scene in the first Spiderverse movie with the science lab in the middle of the snowy forest. (1/2)

My only complaint, and this is really more of a nitpick, is that visually, I think this gamemode looks jarring on maps with warmer color palettes. I thought maps like Aspen played fine—good even, and I adore that map on other modes. But visually, I preferred playing freeze tag on maps that thematically matched the frozen body mechanic. Maps like Slaughter, Cryo, and even Speleo fit the gamemode really well, and I thought it was really cute. I can absolutely understand why some people would be skeptical towards this gamemode, but I urge people to try the gamemode out before voting. (2/2)

I'm always on the fence about new VScript gamemodes; sometimes they can be cool, but they usually end up feeling rushed or just unfitting for Team Fortress 2. However, after playtesting the gamemode for myself, I think freeze tag is a really awesome twist on arena mode and arguably fits into casual way more than the original. It may look gimmicky on the surface, but the revive mechanic makes matches feel really engaging post-death and becomes far more accessible to players of any skill level. For example, a Scout player who may be less experienced with the game can still benefit their team by making use of the class's faster capture speed, unfreezing teammates 2x faster. I also really enjoy how weapons like The Pain Train or The Dead Ringer are given more purpose here. (1/2)

@Agenttech4774 I think that it's better than you wanna imagine. Addition of such cooperative respawn mechanic can provide new interesting dynamic in long forgotten by it's fathers Arena mode. It's also playing on opposite side of "Saving people in the action" statement from Graveyard which implemented healing ghosts that, IMHO, felt underwhelming simply by the fact they slow and clunky to actually being helpful. Now you need to help dead players instead of opposite one which is kinda neat and not so gimmicky as it seems.

Oh, my apologies then sorry

I meant the guy below my comment here, but thanks anyway

Yes actually, as you can see from the trailer and flythrough videos each Freeze Tag map was tested extensively to make sure that they were all the best they could possibly be

Did you even playtested it at least...

I don't see how freeze tag fits into Team Fortress 2 seems to gimmicky and less serious compared to other game modes that sin't combat based objectives.

Slop reheated in the microwave

This is one of the more fun game modes of redsun. Hope they add it.

Sounds good, I'll be there.

Aar's server, linked in the "Where can I play Freeze Tag" thread has it in the rotation!
We'll also be playing a little bit of Freeze Tag tonight at midnight GMT, or 7pm Eastern Time.
Hope I can see you there! :)

Are there any servers running this version of Slaughter? Not sure how I feel about the new gamemode but I'm open to trying it.

I haven't played the mode on this map specifically yet, but I have played the map, and I've played a fair amount of the mode, and I can see how it would work really well. Freeze tag is a super fun twist on Arena, which is a mode I generally dislike, and this format made it enjoyable for me. There are a ton of really fun come-back moments that can happen, and each death creates a little mini capture point mechanic that are important to keep an eye on. You'll get times where there's a clump of frozen enemies in a small spot that becomes a really important spot to watch, as it could turn the tide of the game if one person comes in and thaws them all.

its arena respawn its sick

How does this fit in TF2

So this is where they have the meats