I think Hell Hunter was actually cooking with this one. It played poorly at game night but it could be fun with between 3-6 or so players as long as they have some idea of what to do. For a modern example, this seems kind of like a proto-Straftat map.

To elaborate on this, a very lazy and reductive literature review of the "sniping" maps leading up to 2006 (when this was released) would likely reveal a very simple taxonomy: Sniper City-esque "Commie Block vs Commie Block" and WWII-like "Hill vs Hill" maps. In the Commie-block vs style maps, players spend their time peeking in and out of windows while scanning the opposing building's exterior for enemies, and either trying to avoid being ambushed by players in your own building or hunt them down yourself. It's really no different to modern luxury apartment living, really. In the WWII-like maps, players mostly snipe from some kind of hill or terrain map separated by a valley or canyon. I don't have a funny comparison for this one - let's just be glad RF doesn't have drones or any kind of combined arms mechanics.

Micro maps (which are commonly "sniping" maps today) and rail maps existed but neither really relate to or fit cleanly into the "genre" of the two maps above. Micro maps are closer to something like Sniper City in that the amount of extreme verticality leads toward some of that "hunt your neighbors" style gameplay and the extreme sizes lend well towards sniping. However, most of these maps have a lot going on that is definitely not sniping. As for rail maps, the rail, unlike the PR or Sniper, gives away your position when fired. Rail-only maps were therefore not usually "sniping" maps and were mostly boxes, spheres, and so on - where everyone would spawn with plain view of each other and the gameplay was mostly just aiming.

The issue with both Sniper City and WWII-like maps is that after you play them for a bit they typically become quite boring. There's not really a lot of unique or interesting game-play going on in them and it's often quite easy to figure out or guess where someone has spawned - which gives away half the battle, so to speak.

With Dead of Winter, Hell Hunter spawns players in the sky so that it's not as easy to tell where they have spawned. This mostly prevents pre-aiming spawns and spawnkilling in general. And when spawning in the sky, players can airstrafe to where they want to go with some limitations: either to one of the map's climbable sniping towers, or to any landmark they recognize on the way down. The towers are even lit on the top with red lights so that you can see what to aim for while falling. The overall design here seems to be based around the idea that at the start of the game, if there are only a few players playing, it will be hard to know where your enemy has spawned. And when you kill someone, they could potentially come back into the map anywhere. The choice of PR only with no armors is apt for this kind of map, assuming you don't play with anyone that's drumming: the PR takes between 1 to 4 shots to kill, depending on where each shot lands, which gives players a bit more time to react when they're shot once. If the map had the actual sniper rifle, gameplay would be a lot less interesting - a player that dies will know where their enemy is, roughly, and would try to come back into the map in an advantageous position to kill their enemy immediately. It would only take one shot, and this cycle would likely repeat for as long as players are able to remember each other's whereabouts.

If Hell Hunter had placed spawns on the ground or throughout the map instead of in the air, none of this would be the case. Instead, whoever spawned in a tower or on high ground would simply destroy as many unlucky low-ground spawners as they could before dying. And with direct view of the spawns, many positions in this map would be completely unassailable. You'd need to just hope you spawn high ground next to the guy on top of a hill or tower to be able to kill them, and this map would otherwise become a simple game of maximizing the amount of time you spend pre-aiming spawn points. If there were no high ground spawn points, then it would simply be a race to high ground (or race for a bit, turn around and kill anyone that spawns behind you). Finally, with no low ground spawn points, you'd be simply scanning the horizon or plane for enemies in a one-dimension, highly aim based way. The "sky spawns" approach instead offers some kind of compromise where game sense and movement can matter somewhat.

So while this doesn't play well with a huge server full of people, for obvious reasons, I think it could actually be pretty good as a fun/casual map with a low playercount, assuming that everyone realizes they can airstrafe off spawn to where they want to go. It's more interesting in that respect than 99% of the sniping maps made for RF, even if it's never really going to be something I'd enjoy a lot personally.

One caveat here is that in lower player count games, if players have very good aim, it may be possible to consistently spawn kill falling enemies. But I can't really fault the mapper for this too much and it should still hold up as long as you aren't playing with or against crackheads.

Lastly, to end on a different but related note: I have said this before, but map design is actually just game design, because in reality every map in a multiplayer PvP game is actually a different, and specific game unto itself. This map is therefore an example of the author manipulating what they knew of RF's "base" game mechanics to try to build a very specific kind of game experience that is otherwise not achievable with more conventional map design. In some sense, this may be a unique "genre" of map on its own within RF - alongside micro maps, assault maps, aim maps, tunneling maps, rail maps, and so on.

And another bad news that was never mentioned in the description is the ridiculous spawn point placements above the map instead of on the ground.. what was he thinking? Not recommended.