Update: cp_steel received some fairly significant changes in the Summer 2023 update so I may have to revisit this video...

Steel is not THE best map, imo, but it's pretty up there, and definitely an overlooked gem. I think it's a great representation of an "old school" tf2 map.

If someone makes a Hydro x Steel map then that would require humanity to advance three generations ahead just to cap like 3 points in the whole map lmao

Y'know, the first couple of times I played on this map, I was super confused and put off, and every subsequent time, team strategy was basically nonexistent (cuz it's casual), so I never decided to play again This video's convinced me to give it a few more shots (perhaps in community servers instead where there's an ounce of coordination lol). Badwater's still my favorite tho

I like Steel a lot, but I think I would love it if people knew how to play it well. I can't blame them tho, its incredibly daunting going in the first few times and that non-linearity doesn't make itself obvious so most games will become a 5 point capture from A to E. But man, watching highlander matches on Steel is something else, seeing all the different strats being played out really showcases how versatile and fun this map can get.

The 2nd point is just pure pain, you’re always guaranteed to have 2 or more engies on that building

I played Steel on a community server recently, and our entire team was very coordinated. So was the enemy team. We played a few rounds. It was some of the best fun I've had in a while, and some of the best fun I've had in TF2 in general. It's not confusing if you can read signs.

I remember first seeing this map in like 2013 or 2014, but I actually loved its concept. It’s probably because of how much I love non-linear stuff in games because I loved the choice it gave you. I didn’t care it was more complex, because it was interesting. What holds it back for me imo is how small the spaces are late game.

I remember my first time I played steel, I accidentally went to point B instead of point A, but I found only one scout there, so instead of going back to point A, I had a duel with him in point B, and this kept on happening until our team capped point A.

shout out to liars. gotta be one of my favourite genders 🙏

I'm upset more maps don't take on the Steel formula. I'll admit, as much as I love steel, some parts of the map near the end are lacking. I would love more maps taking this idea and expanding on it!

Wonderful video about upward and how it’s the most dynamic payload map in the game. Keep up the good work

Also about being able to get the spy through the shutter door, you can get stuck on reds first spawn on upward if they cap second and uhm if theoretically you can coordinate engineers to hold a level 3 sentry, wait until just before they cap fourth, run out of the shutter door and place your sentry funny things can happen

I love maps that introduce twists. Steel, Standin, Hydro, Doomsday, are all fun maps that introduce new strategy and thinking due to their creativity. It makes me wish we got more PD maps, or even have arena brought back, due to how fresh it could make things. Even PASSTIME makes you think differently, in a good way.

13:29 When your teleporters suddenly cost 125 metal:

Steel is by far my favourite map, shame it takes so long to find servers running it. All personal bias aside though, I think it's clear the actual best map is pl_wutville

Steel is designed in the same way that the world map of Dark Souls is. It's confusing at first and you have no idea where the hell you are or going, but then you loop back to somewhere you've been before, and your mind is blown in the process. After playing on it for long enough you begin to appreciate all the different routes you can go and the strategic options they allow.

Steel is a very good concept and the layout is great but it's a nightmare to navigate the first 200 times because there are no visible points of reference or even windows to let players know where they are in relation to other familiar areas of the map. In that aspect it's just horrible, rather maze-like. Combine that with the new type of capture progression (a cool idea by itself) and you get absolutely overwhelmed players who won't think of the map very fondly afterwards.

It's all fun and games until you're stuck running in loops for the entire game as red.

Imagine he just used that image to show us a example of a good/bad map

I've been trying to become a Heavy main recently and when I played steel I had an amazing experience, what you stated on this video is exactly what i am starting to feel about this map, it's super fun and I am going to start playing it more often, this video came at the best time of my life ^^

Steel is a map that you can play for 50 hours and then realize "wait this place exists?"

I bet its not actually Badwater and he used a screenshot of Badwater just to suprise us when he says "It's actually NOT badwater"

Steel was the map my competitive Highlander team played in our finals match in RGL Newcomer Playoffs, and it was a really tense match against a team we had played and scrimmed with many times during the season, and it was an amazingly fun night when we finally won the playoffs game.

imagine the video starts and it's 2fort

This video is really funny man, thankfully we all know that Junction is the real best map in the game

I think E’s existence as a weakness for red and something they have to at least keep in the back of their mind at all times is an incredible balance decision, if this were a more traditional attack defend map it would just be dustbowl but it’s all on the same map, a map known for its chokey highly defensive advantaged playstyle, but i often find that because E is vulnerable at all times it becomes CRUCIAL for blu to pressure E at nearly all stages of the game to force red to split their defenses to some degree, a sentry on E while blu is pushing into C is a sentry that isn’t helping red defend C whatsoever, but depending on how blu plays it might be entirely necessary to keep something like that at E and stretch red thin

This map WAS my first experience in TF2, and somehow as a noobie, I just adored how cheeky this map was, and as a mediocre player to bad player atm, I had fun finding the ability to flank, distract, and just explore this winding map. The final push to E is WHY I got into this map hard, it was exhillerating to attempt the backcap with a montly crew of players. cp_steel is without a doubt my top 5 favorite maps of all time period. I want a 24/7 steel server.

I’ve been playing tf2 for about a year now, and only just played on steel for the first time last month. The concept of the choices of which point to attack was really cool to me! Plus, had a lot of fun defending E as pyro with air blasts and detonator jumps. Wish more people would play it!

Players wern't ready for steel, they still arn't.

Interesting how BADwater basin is the BEST map

YOOOO STEEL BROS KEEP WINNING Always loved this map to death because of how unique it is and how many routes it offers

i unironically agree, every time i play this map i forge a new core memory

Personally all of my experience on steel has been negative, long, drawn out games of attack defend where one choke is managed and blue caps A immediately and just can’t push through, then later the final cap takes forever and is very annoying, tbh I like upward the most

Valve: *haha let’s add a cool different way to play on this map* elmaxo: _this is the best thing I have seen in my entire life._

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for cp_steel ever since I first played it. It was complex and hard to wrap my head around, but as I started to learn how the map works, I gradually came to adore it. It's not my favorite, mainly because so few are willing to put the work in to learn how this amazing map works when they can pick a less complex map like Badwater or Upward.

Steel: Almost over the moment it starts Dustbowl, Badwater: Extremely based on stalling and pushing (its never fun) Everything else: *Oh god please no, how did they get into this game*

I love non-linear maps and I wish there was a map with as much depth to its design that steel does. One of my fav ideas for a map that I don't think has been made is a vertical version of steel where each floor has a cap and it allows for more of a flowy type of movement. Also truck gang

Best thing about Steel for me or how much power it gives to engineer, especially on offense because of the distance from spawn. It gives the ability to the engineer to become 'silent commander', entire round can be shifted because of teleport placement and thus apply pressure on enemy team in specific place

I think a worthy follow up video would be how you'd "fix" Steel to make it more less confusing and more accessible.

Steel+classic snipers = perfection

This is the first map I have ever played in TF2 back in 2014. I always loved it.

point b is SO defendable that even spies can't get behind the front lines, point A might as well not even exist, and a huge chunk of the map is very tight, like the caves in dustbowl.

13:12 I love how they all have the classic. CLASSIC CULT!

Where is Kong king

I really like Steel, but it feels too easy for the Blu team in my opinion. The basic strategy is to just do 2 pushes (one big and one small, one goes to E) and generally at least one will succeed (which either results in Blu winning, or Blu gaining an advantage + extra time). If Red is evenly spilt, almost all of Blu should stick together so that half of Red has to deal with all of Blu. If Red isn’t evenly split, the bigger push should be aimed at the least guarded point; even if a huge push on E at the start fails, the chaos will result in an easy A and B cap when E is super close to being capped. Blu controls the pace of the fight, and in a non-competitive setting, it can be difficult for Red to react fast enough (although uncoordinated Blu teams can get stuck on C or B). C is the most interesting point to me because it stops the cap of D, and main routes to C and E are close together, making it easier for Red to guard both (even then, there’s the less-used A-D / A-E route). I wouldn’t say it’s completely unfair, and it is still fun, but the majority of the time I see Blu win both times in a match.

while steel does require strategy, as a comp player I feel once a meta is discovered you can't really change anything. Flank holds A combo sets up B. When B is capped go soft hold C with combo. And then after C is gone you just have combo on D and everyone else on E. Which sound like a lot but once you figure out your job its veryits very it's very simple

After watching this video I thought about how similar steel is to breath of the wild. They’re both none linear and you can technically go straight to the end.But taking more time makes the final boss/point much easier.

Lol bad vid lol 😂

I can absolutely understand your points about this map, but I don't agree with you. Steel is undoubtedly the most dynamic map TF2 has to offer, with so many moving parts. But this isn't necessarily a good thing, yes it allows for immense big brain strategy but if you try to analyse what makes a map good you shouldn't just consider the highest level of play. I would argue that fun is the most important factor, how fun the map is to play for all players. So first off let's look at the majority of TF2's players, casual players. Steel is incredibly confusing to people who aren't willing to learn it, often making you get lost, leading you to point E without even knowing what the fuck you're doing, it's cramped and choky around the last point to the point of it just being irritating and to most people, this isn't fun. Compare that to something like Upward or Badwater, even a new player can pretty easily grasp that the cart goes along the track and you can just follow it to the front lines. Which map do you think most people have more fun on? The simpler (but still incredible) map that you can grasp and learn easily which still has things like flanks for Scouts and Spies, still has sightlines for Sniper, chokes for Demoman, huge trimp/sticky/rocket jump spots for Demomen/knights and Soldier. Still has ambush spots for Pyro etc, or the map which has these things in more defined areas (this is the area that's good for demo, this spot is good for pyro etc) which is a lot harder to learn and kinda necessitates you think a lot harder. Now obviously there are the higher level players we need to consider too, the ones who do want to learn Steel and do want to employ many of the big brain strategies you talked about. Is something like Upward or Dustbowl bad for them? Do they get bored of them? No, of course not. Upward and Dustbowl are still extremely enjoyable and can still employ those big brain strats to a lesser extent. Obviously Payload and Attack/Defend are pretty different game modes with different strategies, but there is still fun and competitive matches to be had there. So it begs the question, what is the better map? One which is frustrating for newer players, overly complex and requires you to organize pushes with your team (aka something near impossible to do effectively in a pub, the most common type of play) and has massive strategy potential, or one which is simple to grasp and still complex to master (but not to anywhere near the same extreme), can be enjoyed in both pub and competitive scenes, by new and old players for a good time. I may be a not very good chill player (never even touched comp, little over 1K hours over many years), but when you consider that one map is a lot easier to have fun on, easier to learn, still has a learning curve for comp players (to a lesser extent) and more enjoyable for most players; and the other map takes a lot of time to learn, requires a pretty big brain you need to engage and for most players is too confusing to be enjoyable, I'll easily say Upward or Dustbowl is better. (Shout out to Steel for not letting Red have the last point literally right outside their spawn, that's a massive issue I have with most attack/defend and it's always a relief when there aren't like 4 engineers with endless metal on last, that's easily the worst part of most maps and I'm thankful af that Steel doesn't have it. Also I think I swapped from talking about Upward and Dustbowl to just one of them at times? So uhh pretend I'm saying the best map is whichever one your favourite is idc. Sorry for the massive essay in the comments but this video was really well made and I wanted to share my thoughts)

Steel makes me feel like a rat in a maze, it's the only map in the game to cause me actual emotional distress.

this gives me the idea for a massive ctf map where you have to cap 3 or 5 separate intels, and it could also have a pd version.

7:22 "responsible for mossrock" Is this some kind of achievement that he got in his life? He made a completely trash map Fr mossrock is so unbalanaced. There's so many wrong things on this map: the train on last, the sightline snipers get from being next to the spawn to one of the only chokes you can push last from, the fact that red team spawns legit on the last point making it so easier for them to defend, the fact that sniper is too good on this map So good actually if you want to push A and their sniper is good, you cannot contest the flank, since it's opened, and have to push inside where there's 1 big choke The fact that on the first point's ramp there's a black hole that makes you lag in place since this map has been released, yes idk how to call that but it's a pretty stupid bug I could go on and on. So telling that this guy is a "good mapper" because he made MOSSROCK is wrong. What about the other maps he made, Im sure that if you say he's good he must have released other maps that (I hope) are better than mossrock Srly I hate this guy's work for making this trash of a map. So don't just tell that he's the mossrock guy that shit doesn't make him a good mapper AT ALL

Thank you youtube for removing the dislike feature so I had to sit through 15 minutes of a video essay to determine that it was a waste of time. Do agree that there’s a high potential for strategy and being an outlier on how it plays, but in practice games end up being prone to pubstomping, with A’s difficult defence leading to an early B cap and E right afterwards with red not really being able to deal with what is essentialy blue spawn being 5 seconds away from the main cap, and even in balanced teams it takes too damn long, to a point where it takes half an hour to finish off and teams end up being 4-6 people each from disconnects. Do agree that more people shouldn’t be discouraged from the layout, and it is a good map for stupid baby strategies that would get you instagibbed on any other map. Still better than turbine for comp though.

i love this map, i played on a server that kept picking this map for 4 or 5 rounds and it was really fun

10:50 Yes, I totally understand what that comment about Medic is supposed to mean. Genius.

2fort better

NGL, Badwater is my go-to map when I play TF2. It’s plenty spacious, there are several chock points you can either take advantage of or out maneuver and it’s a payload map so it makes things more exciting whether you are playing offense or defense.

Quite recently, I've seen the creator of Steel, Fishbus, playing on it in a few TF2 games. I checked his profile and it was the real deal. I said "Fishbus, what are you doing here playing your own map?" He just said "Let me cook" What a G.

I hate steel, since it requires (as you said) coordination. Wich you don't usually get in a pub. Also, there is ALWAYS someone trying to back cap. So it's defend E all game or lose because the rest of your team doesn't understand it. Another point is that the back cap option gives blue a big advantage, red has to answer with at least two people on E to make sure they succeed, otherwise the game is lost. Meaning you'll most likely fight outnumbered on the other caps as red.

I imagine in comp steel must be a very diverse and fun map to play. In the uncoordinated, unbalanced scene of casual however, this map quickly becomes hell.

I’ve never actually played this map before, so I can’t really draw conclusions on this video’s validity beyond saying the concept of the map is intriguing.

Don't forget that strategizing is gonna be a thing for the RED team as well here, coordinating a defense is really fun here

I call this the no pop filter max era

Nothing feels better than that elusive last point coordinated push on a casual server

“Tf2’s most confusing map.” Hydro: allow me to introduce myself

I played this map once, and now I remove every nonstandard attack defend map when I queue

I know the layout well from playing engie vs medic zombie survival on that map but it’s kinda hard for me to get into cus of its lack in free space and it mostly consists of narrow hallways that make some classes stronger than others

dude hearing a love sosa parody in a tf2 video is now my favourite thing of all time

I just want to say that i really enjoy dustbow - it force you to actual teamwork, but stell is also great for that

1:03 I’m not even new and it still explodes my brain lmao

Literally every pub game of payload I've ever played has been a total roll one way or the other. You can tell which way the game will go by the first point

I like the fact that you can just go straight to E and possibly even trick new players who will be defending the other points.

That loose cannon dodge at 1:18 is insane

You get points for making me say "Are you fucking crazy?" out loud

Glad you made a video on this map because while I don't play it much, I do find it to be one of the most interesting ones in the game. Love that Point E is always open and could potentially win the game after capping the first point, really unique for a CP/Attack/Defend map

There's one very simple, but very harsh truth about cp_steel that is always a deal breaker for me. Team coordination and communication is not optional, it is mandatory for anyone to have any fun. This element is extremely rare, especially since valve neutered f2p's ability to communicate.

13:46 Hydro: allow me to introduce myself

Are you familiar with cp_standin? It's the 5cp map with just three points that can be capped in any order. It shares a lot of the same strategic potential of cp_Steel, and is probably one of my top 5 favourite maps in the game. So unique and underrated, I wish they added more maps like it.

Steel has been my favorite map for years and this video perfectly puts my feelings and thoughts on the map into words. I'll definitely be sharing this video whenever a friend of mine asks why Steel of all maps is my favorite.

This is a really weird version of dustbowl...

i remember playing highlander in steel/iron back in the day, and Steel being both exciting and daunting to play on. Many fond memories of walking around that map for hours planning routes and learning sentry and sticky spots, etc

I still feel like you're a bit of an underrated TF2 KZfaqr that deserves more credit, recognition and respect : )

Steel wouldn't be so confusing, if more maps functioned like it. It's a staple that capture points function in a linear fashion. A -> B -> C but Steel is different. You can skip directly to E and win the game, HOWEVER capturing A -> B -> C progressively makes taking E easier. It's an interesting design for a competitive environment, where the defending team has to allocate players to take out an opponent sneaking into E, but I think the attackers would have a huge advantage on that map, given they can divide the enemy team like that. It doesn't sound fun. It works in pubs though, had the mode only been ingrained into the mindset of the playerbase. The simplest solution would probably be to hang posters in spawn, that shows the layout of the map, and what capturing different objectives would result in. And I do know that the game does have an informational video playing the first time you enter a new map, but most people skip those, or forget they exist.

9:44 hey, it's Bonk Drinker!

The devs missed the opportunity to add an achievement called "Shortcut" basically is capping the steel final point without capping the others points That would be challenging

Honestly, when I first began playing TF2 I was a CP_Steel hater, but as I decided to test myself by only queueing for the maps I didn’t play, I started noticing all the cool stuff about it. Easily one of my top 10 favorite maps.

the truck gang song better than french montana's whole album fr fr

After the context of the chucklenuts podcast, it makes sense elmaxo's fav map would be CP

Cascade is my favourite right now. i just love the movement possibilities with the winger

One time we chose to go all scout and rush E. The enemy team had no idea we were going to do this and it actually worked lmao.

13:32 Holy S, what a great transision.

I will say, one of the best feelings in tf2 is pulling off a full defence of e after blu captures all other points

As a highlander main i aprove of everything brought up in this video really brings steel to life, also as a side note the editing good stuff really well done. (this is one of my favourite maps however it cannot beat 2fort lmao)

That Chief Keef reference though! I had to check the video release date to see if it was uploaded in 2011, only a decade divorced so pretty relevant I guess

Gotta love hearing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon music as background tracks. Very glad RT brought it back! :)

I was thinking "This better be Barnblitz or Steel" and my man came through

1.5k days since a major update, yet this absolute chad is still pushing out content.

I think the confusion problem is just so horrible on steel that it can’t be the best map. I’m absolutely sure if some community mappers made a version with robust signage and guidance for players, people would like the map. It’s just not possible to play in casual when red team can’t find point e half the games. It’s a fixable problem but not a problem I expect to be fixed.

So many good memories on steel. Remember coming home from hs just to grind out some games from it.