Payload is one of Team Fortress 2’s core game modes and home to some of the game’s most fun maps. Any fan of Overwatch will be familiar with the concept — push a payload to an enemy base to win: one team attacks, another defends. Of course, Team Fortress 2 did a lot of the development on the mode and its map design years before Blizzard’s game was released, and Valve’s maps set the standard by which all others would be measured. We’ll be covering the five best Payload maps currently available in Team Fortress 2 (TF2) in this guide.
The Five Best Payload Maps in Team Fortress 2 (TF2)
Making a great payload map is no easy feat, and both Valve and the TF2 community have long been working to make some of the best the industry has to offer. For this list, I’ll only be pulling from maps Valve has officially added to the game (accessible via the Create Server option in the main menu), as there are too many still bouncing around the Steam Workshop community to properly categorize.
Badwater Basin: The Best Overall Payload Map
Badwater Basin remains the high-water mark that all other payload maps need to meet. It offers verticality, wildly varied gameplay opportunities, five entirely different capture points that require different strategies to both attack and defend, and some of the best combat flow in any FPS on the market. I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours playing Badwater, and in that time, I’ve only managed to scratch the surface of what you can do there. To me, there is nothing better in TF2 than a competitive match on Badwater Basin.
Gold Rush: The First Payload Map in Team Fortress 2
Gold Rush showcased how much teething it takes to get a Payload map right. In the months and years after its release, Valve made continual, sweeping changes to many of the map’s most important features. These included several overhauls of the sniper’s nest in the first section, more than a few adjustments to the final point, and hundreds of smaller optimizations that keep Gold Rush as a valuable blueprint for any payload map going forward. I think it still has a lot of rough edges even after all the updates that can’t be addressed without rebuilding it from the ground up, but doing so would rob the map of its charm and character and I love it all the same.
Pier: A Classically Inspired Community Payload Map
Pier is the first of two community-built maps on this list, and while it made its way onto the scene more recently than any of the others, it holds its own as one of the best payload maps in the game. The map lacks the flair of Badwater or the rough charm of Gold Rush, choosing instead to rely on its mastery of the mode’s fundamentals. There are multiple side paths for flanking, lower and upper sections with hiding spots for Spies, and plenty of open spaces for flying Soldiers and Demomen. Engineers have strong positions to hold, and none of it ever sacrifices the need for a Payload map to constrain troop movement to keep the pace up. What Pier lacks in standout moments, it makes up for with solid design across the board, with few, if any, truly weak areas to complain about. I’m happy to play it back to back, as the map functions on such a high level there’s little reason to not enjoy it.
Swiftwater: The Best Community Payload Map in TF2
If Pier is the ultimate expression of payload map design fundamentals, Swiftwater shows what’s possible when you take things up another level. Like Badwater, Swiftwater’s various points are all incredibly distinct both aesthetically and from a gameplay perspective, with some offering creative uses of verticality or cheeky hideaways for the sneakier classes, as well as excellent flow regardless of where you’re playing at any given time. Some areas even create the same sort of emergent gameplay found on Badwater — particularly the first and final points, which are as rewarding to attack as they are to defend.
Upward: Valve’s Newest Payload Map
If Badwater Basin experimented with how verticality and angles can change how a payload map works, Upward was the result of all that research. Every point has some raised sections that offer new gameplay opportunities and strategies, with the first being the most traditional. Every point after does something different with the upper and lower levels, whether that’s cordoning off the cart and the high ground on second, giving the defenders a literal hill to hold on third, or flipping the script and providing both attackers and defenders with a height advantage on last. There’s also a lot of play beneath the main action, whether through tunnels, dropdowns, or entire subterranean areas that give the likes of Spy and Pyro some sneaky ways in. While I don’t think it quite matches Badwater Basin for overall quality, Upward is probably the closest anyone has ever come to matching that iconic TF2 map.
Those are our picks for the best payload maps in Team Fortress 2, but if you have some other TF2 picks, let us know!
