Marj, on 28 September 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:
That's the point. Currently if you don't spot the enemy team on alpine within 1 minute you know exactly where they're going to be, no scouting required. The maps need to be big enough that not spotting the enemy within 1 minute doesn't tell you exactly where they are. Terra Therma does this with terrain, but thanks to the bases you can't actually use the terrain to surprise the enemy. You're stuck defending your base or you'll get capped. Moving out to engage the enemy in anything slower than a fast medium means you can't defend your cap. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if fast mechs could be relied on to defend caps, but that's not the game most people want to play, so cappers get ignored.
If PGI wants to keep capping they need to make defence fun. Shooting big stompy robots is fun. Standing on a cap for 5 min to see a potential capper spot you then run back to the main fight because they know they can't beat you isn't. And no, telling people not to use half the mechs so they can get back to the cap in time isn't an option. Getting back to the cap only to have the capper run off means you have to STAY on the cap for the rest of the match, you can't fight because there isn't enough time left on the cap to get back if the capper returns. If someone wants to play an atlas they should be able to without gimping their team, just like they should be able to play a spider without gimping their team.
MW4 required scouting. The maps were big enough and the terrain varied enough that finding the enemy took effort. Note the caps are a real problem here, not map sizes. The enemy MUST either defend their cap or rush yours so that drastically limits where they can go. This basically eliminates scouting apart from locating single base cappers...which very few people do anyway. It also limits a whole host of other tactics that take time to set up.
If you're not standing on the enemy cap or between the enemy and yours you lose. It devolves into the mech equivalent of trench warfare with 2 opposing sides pounding on each other from defensive positions. The most advanced tactic is the odd flanker, but even then it's often not possible for people to flank properly (get behind the enemy without being noticed).
Personally, I'm sick of it. I still play a few games every so often to grind up mechs, but even that's losing it's appeal (partly due to hit detection issues). There are so many ways that have been suggested to deal with "one last spider troll", there really isn't any excuses. It doesn't even have to be TDM, king of the hill would work if they made capping risky. Have the cap in a very exposed location with no oil rig to hide behind, any capper is completely exposed to sniper fire/LRM's. That alone would allow much more flexibility.
TLDR: We desperately need a game mode that allows MWO to be the thinking man's shooter it was supposed to be.
You hit the nail on the head, but not until the very end of your post (and touched on it briefly in the third paragraph). Literally every thing else about it was pretty much white noise. You're right, the issue is mostly not the maps but the game modes. I completely agree there.
The problem is also more of map design rather than map size. Making a bigger map where you have a chance of not seeing the whole enemy team for all of the 15 minutes isn't a solution. With a bit of tweaking to most of the maps, you could add another one to five approach routes with almost no effort (say, an underground highway-type deal on River City. Or a narrow, deep section of the lake on Forest Colony that you could hide a Dragon or the like in; Maybe also make that log-bridge thing just outside the caves on Forest Colony also actually go somewhere? You know, the one by the base with all the shipping containers).
CancR, on 29 September 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:
You can try to fudge the math anyway you want, but both have the same measurments, and the board for the table top have more hexes in the vertical and horizontal, thus is clearly larger.
Let's go back to 1992 size maps...they where huge.
I'm not sure what "boards" you're using, but clearly you don't understand how area is calculated (I'm also not actually sure you understand math in general, considering how you say I'm trying to "fudge" it - does that even work in that particular context?).
Yes, let's go back to the "1992" map sizes becau- OH WAIT, MECHWARRIOR 2 DIDN'T HAPPEN UNTIL 1995. Oops. I guess we're stuck with the maps from MechWarrior 1. Thanks a bunch. It's going to be SO fun walking around on a sheet of black and not being able to climb hills.
Edited by Volthorne, 29 September 2013 - 10:17 AM.
2
