64 replies to this topic

[-Halcyon-]

Any map that employs a "king of the hill" mechanic needs to be redesigned, and currently we have three of them.
First to the hill wins the match usually.

Whatever happened to flat, open spaces.

[DocBach]

I like river city on skirmish the best and a toss up between caustic valley/terra therma the least.

[East Indy]

Favorite: Tourmaline Desert. Big, beautiful, has the right mix of elevations and obstructions providing lots of variety.

Least favorite: Toss-up between Forest Colony and Frozen City. Cramped, funnel-like, predictable.

[Davers]

Maps I dislike: RCN, Frozen City, Forest Colony. I just really don't like the visibility (or lack of). I get serious headaches if I get these maps too often. Forest Colony used to be so nice; now it is like fighting in pea soup.

Maps that have become boring: HPG, CS, Alpine, RC, FCS. These maps make me wish I could do more 12 mans. Maybe there would be different strategies for these maps. So much of Alpine and CS are wasted space.

Maps I like: FCN, Canyons, TT, Tourmaline. I like that there is good visibility. I think most playstyles are well represented.

[InspectorG]

Well, some maps are difficult for certain builds.

But for a game that is also supposed to be a kinda a sim, one needs only look into history to find soldiers griping about living conditions during war.

Its warfare people, not a swim at the country club.

"Commander i dont wanna fight here, too many LuRMS, im going home".

"Its too hot, im going back to the dropship for a drink"



I would like to see more variety in maps though.

[Votanin FleshRender]

I love Mordor. It's one of the two maps I actually have close to a 50% win there.

HATE HATE HATE Alpine, and to make it worse, it's by far the map I drop on the most. If my team starts in Skirmish on the S and E side, it's over before it starts. Alpha and Bravo go charging up to the hill, and by the time me and the rest of Charlie gets there, we're always down 3-5 mechs. I've begged them to wait for us, or to try something different, but I always get ignored, or told the hill is important and we have to have it. But it never ever works.
Conversely, when my team starts in Skirmish on the N and W sides of the map, I think I do win more often than not... but for some reason I don't start on that side very often. 75% I'm on the S and E.

[Roughneck45]

River City night is hands down the worst map.

I enjoy everything else, Crimson Strait is probably my favorite.

[Bishop Steiner]

I LOVE HPG.

Mostly because of the sound effects. Nice immersion. I do find the HPG Dish "hat" to largely dictate game play, much as the Derp Ring on Trampoline Desert, Candy Mountain on I'll-Pine or the PugZapper on Terra Derpa and such seem to dictate where 90% of battles are fought.

But aside from that nit, I like the size, and possibilities, along with the atmosphere (or lack thereof!).

Probably would rank them in order, first to worst......

1) HPuG Many-fold
2) Dire Straits
3) Popsicle City Night
4) Where'smybloodyHillClimbModule Network
5) Caustic
6) Popsicle City (Day)
7) Terra Derpa
8) Trampoline Desert
9) Forest Colonic
10) I'll Pine
11) Cold Forest Colonic
12) Claustrophobic City
12) REALLY Claustrophobic City (Night)

[Mecheart]

So far I enjoy the larger, more open maps by far. The ones which give you a few moments to breath, for scouts to do some recon, where one can admire the scenery before enjoying violent destruction. Alpine Peaks is likely my number one--or it was--until several recent maps where everyone decided to snipe everyone else until the two minute mark. Lots of rarely used nooks and interesting areas on Alpine. Crimson Strait is fun too, but again, it seems most fighting takes place in the same few areas. HPG Manifold is a recent favorite. Had a match recently where everyone agreed to run into the basement and defend. In the last few minutes red team rushed inside, and I was the last mech standing. Very intense.

For some reason I lose more matches on Frozen City, and die more often on Forest Colony. Matches seem the most disorganized on those two. Likely it's the speed at which a disorganized team pays the price on these maps.

Terra Therma I enjoy, save for when several players on my team get lost, die and put our team down two or three within the first few minutes.

The River City maps in my opinion are the most straightforward in terms of grouping with the rest of the team and knowing where the enemy is within a very short amount of time. The nighttime version can be quite intense.

Tourmaline Desert, Caustic Valley and Canyon Network are maps I also enjoy. Lots of terrain to use to one's advantage. These three probably rate second most fun in my book.

Two things I'd like to see on future maps: much larger play areas and more weather. Maps with fog/heavy rain could get interesting.

[Screech]

Worst map, Caustic. Just too much of a herp derp paradise.

Best map Frozen City Night. Just a solid map that allows varied play styles to work and lacks the snow storm, which I personally dislike.

[Keeshu]

Personally I don't like doing number ratings, and there's many specifics that I love/hate for each map so it's hard to compare them. I'll give it a shot though. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the best, 5 being a "I have no strong feelings one way or the other".
Overall based on looks and gameplay
9 Tourmaline
9 Terra Therma
8 (10 [aka must have] with nostalgia bonus) HPG Manifold
8 Frozen City
7 Forest Colony (8 with snow)
6 River City (+1 for night, +2 if you include Splatcat shenanigans nostalgia)
6 Crimson Strait
6 Canyon Network
4 Caustic Valley
3 Alpine Peaks

Since I like to leave things off on a good note, I'll explain Tourmaline last and start off with Alpine Peaks
I like Alpine Peaks for the snow and mountains, and it looks pretty nice and simple, just how I like snowy mountain stuff. However, Alpine Peak's gameplay is why it's hurt so bad. Everytime I play this map, it always feels like rock, paper,scissors. Whoever has more long range weapons is at a severely high advantage, since you'll be out in the open for such a long time before you can get even close to the enemy. It also takes a long time to get around the map even if you're in a fast mech.

Caustic Valley looks pretty nice for the style it's going for. Not a style I like, but at least it looks pretty nice. What hurts Caustic Valley is that it almost always feels like the same match everytime since everyone always huddles around the crater in the middle. It's rare that people go fight away from the middle, unless it's conquest, but even in conquest people fight around the middle very often. Though it's just a minor complaint

Canyon Network is a decent looking map, a bit boring for me in general, but my love for jumpjets and getting out of combat quickly makes this map stand out for me. While I'd award more points for giving me an excuse to use Jumpjets, I'll leave it at 6 because there are times where I don't get a chance to use jumpjets on a mech. At that point Canyon Network becomes a little interesting because I either snipe and hide, or try to find a way to ambush, since it's usually somewhat easy to sneak up on the team. However, there are times where if I'm using a short range build, I end up sitting there the majority of the match while the rest of my team gets picked apart one by one because they keep getting focus fired trying to attack, moreso than other maps.

Crimson Strait is a map I need to play a little more of to get a firm grasp of whether I like it or not. It just seems to not want to pop up in my queue much. However, it usually ends up with people trying to go into the tunnel and getting their butts kicked for trying to do so. It has a nice balance between cover and open spaces.

River City is a pretty old map, but my most fun times in MWO are playing Splatcat on this map.
Hopefully Mikelat doesn't mind me borrowing his video to show what I mean.

And it made me feel OP, and like the TF2 spy back when I could easily sneak up on people.... Can't sneak up people as well in 12, too many eyes everywhere. https://imageshack.c...atcatsarenotopp (on a side note, free trial ends in 30 days for imageshack? Welp, time to find a new image site to use)
Just enough ammo for 36 Alphas. That's all I needed
As for the map itself. I like all the cover it provides when I play a close range build, and there's plenty of sniping to do. I like the way the map looks. The only major thing keeping it down is that it's annoying to wait for the sniper dueling to end when you're close range.

Forest Colony seems like one of the most balanced maps when it comes to what builds you have, though it does seem to favor long range users a little bit more. The scenery is nice and has quite a bit of variety. I love the snow version, because I love snow, and it also means the map will be cooler. The only reason why it's not higher rated is because there's nothing really special about it.

Frozen City has plenty of places for long range and short range mechs to shine here. The map is cold so everyone can just keep spamming as long as they want. I'm not sure why I don't like the map more, but i think it's something to do with the builds, they look strange. However, That's probably due to all my settings being on the lowest setting. I'm always happy to see Frozen City when I get it.

As for HPG Manifold, whether I'm specialized for long range or Short range I can stay on top to snipe people, or go in the center for short range combat. I love this map's looks because it gives me a massive nostalgia ***** for the Core homeworld from Total Annihilation, especially since the way the center part has those "hills" is something that happened in one or two of the TA maps. The different sounds is also a nice touch for this map

When I stopped playing Mechwarrior 2 and Quake 2 when I was a kid, I went to RTS games. Age of Empires 1&2, C&C Red Alert, and Total Annihilation. AOE was my favoirte (so many options, and has a good map editor) TA was the one I'd play the 2nd most often. Considering TA is the only other game that I've played that had mechs in it for a very long time, playing as a mech in something that looks like the core homeworld is just awesome. Quite a few of the "K-bots" look very similar to the clan battletech mechs (Rocko, Jethro, A.K., Storm, Thud, Pyro, Spider [looks like tarantula in MW2, but long and 2 more legs]. Though now I have exposure to Inner sphere mechs, Pee Wee, Zipper, and the Commanders look like the IS mechs).


Terra Therma looks very good. Which is strange, because almost always I hate volcanic/firey levels/maps in any video game I play, I can't even think of any others off the top of my head that I like. Perhaps this is because there's a lot of black and the sky is dark as well. Gameplay wise, I always thought it'd be the same with battles being in the center all the time when it first came out, which did happen. However, now that the map has been out, I never know where the main fight will happen, and most of the time the good fights happen outside of the center. Also, I love the incredibly hot heat, because it makes me feel like a better pilot when I'm not overheating, and I see everyone else shut down (though this map promotes Ballistics too much. Playing a Cataphract 4x has been some of the most rediculously easy times I've ever had kicking butt in MWO. Made me feel like I'm cheating).


Tourmaline is in my opinion the best map. Probably the most balanced in terms of what range weapons you have, and the cover you can take, the cover is quite different over the maps too. Whether I'm using a long range, or short range build, I feel like I'm not at a disadvantage. The map looks very nice in general. This map only gets a 9 because I'm not a fan of desert/wreckage stuff being mixed in.... I should try playing this map with the Pyre Light theme from MW2 (Track 11, the music in the first Wolf Mission. Also a desert themed level, with some wreckage in it. but dang that track is one of my 2 favorite tracks in the Mechwarrior franchise [not including MechAssault, I'm a sucker for rockin guitars])

[Eddrick]

My least favorite is Frozen City. I get the lowest FPS on that map and it is a Snipers hell. My favorite is Alpine Peaks for the exact opposite reason.

[Soulscour]

I think they should bring back river city prior to the redesign and have it as a third variant. the one before they redesigned the ramp and with the borders extended out to the far hill

Edited by Soulscour, 05 May 2014 - 01:26 AM.

[Flaming oblivion]

I like tourmaline / canyon network most seem to have the most options open to them . And maps where its possible to come back from what looks like a loss (on some maps I feel going 4 down you've pretty much had it) Worst maps crimson is the absolute worst its so god damn predictable most of the map simply isn't used. not a fan of frozen city either , even with night/heat vision whatever with all the buildings visibility on that map is appalling. Not saying my issue with frozen city isn't partly my fault but cant tell you how frustrating it is to think your safe. Your heat vision night vision radar and eyes say there's nothing there. You toddle out right into a atlas and 2 victors and get thrown 40 metres across the map , your allies find you on the floor with your mechs under wear over its head, Frozen city is awful for this

Edited by Flaming oblivion, 05 May 2014 - 01:34 AM.

[SharpTooth Steiner]

I refuse to play Alpine, the volcano, and the one that looks like the Star Wars death star. If players in private matches can pick maps, then I know someone has the ability to program the same feature into public servers. This is not an Alpha but it certainly seems like one. No offense.

If this game just came out last month I would play along and run those maps. Im not an assht. But selecting maps is pretty basic stuff.

Edited by SharpTooth Steiner, 05 May 2014 - 01:51 AM.

[Soulscour]

SharpTooth Steiner, on 05 May 2014 - 01:49 AM, said:

I refuse to play Alpine, the volcano, and the one that looks like the Star Wars death star. If players in private matches can pick maps, then I know someone has the ability to program the same feature into public servers. This is not an Alpha but it certainly seems like one. No offense.

If this game just came out last month I would play along and run those maps. Im not an assht. But selecting maps is pretty basic stuff.

I do not want that. If you build an overly hot mech then deal with the hot maps that are dealt to you. If your mech doesn't have jumpjets then deal with canyon network. If you are very slow then deal with the big maps. I do not want to deal with metabuilds that take advantage of map selection.

[Kilo 40]

SharpTooth Steiner, on 05 May 2014 - 01:49 AM, said:

I refuse to play Alpine, the volcano, and the one that looks like the Star Wars death star.

how exactly do you "refuse" to play them?

[SharpTooth Steiner]

I see your point Soul. But I could care less if I win or lose. Some of these maps are just... tedious. Im not going to describe all the things I hate about all the maps, but not being able to select the map or the server that you want to play on... the people you want to play with.... This is just really strange for a multiplayer video game.

[SharpTooth Steiner]

Kilo 40, on 05 May 2014 - 02:03 AM, said:

how exactly do you "refuse" to play them?

I press escape, quit match, then play now, and start the next map. Sorry to sound sarcastic but im not sure i understand your question? lol

[Flaming oblivion]

SharpTooth Steiner, on 05 May 2014 - 02:20 AM, said:

I press escape, quit match, then play now, and start the next map. Sorry to sound sarcastic but im not sure i understand your question? lol

He was bating you into admitting you break the rules I think. That said I'm not sure that is breaking the rules haven't don't it but if it was why have the option ....