305 replies to this topic

[ChapeL]

HPG Manifold: "big" map and only a tiny bit ever gets used.
Terra Therma: Only one valid tactic ( or is it because people always do the same thing?)
Alpine Peaks: Same as above
Forest colony: Huddle near the boat or near the hills like poor bloody infantry or die
River City ( both kinds) Huddle near the citadel
Frozen city: (both kinds) Meat grinder in the lower city (this map should be 8vs8)

If I had to pick only one of the above I'd be hard pressed. Map creation is one of those areas this game still needs a lot of improvement in my opinion. Hell I'd pick HPG... this week.

[Spr1ggan]

For me it would currently have to be mining collective. I've crashed so many times on it before being able to any fighting and rejoined only to find I'm dead with a 0 score.

If PGI can fix that then I'd probably switch to avoiding therma. Sick of the ramp camping idiots blocking each other and not supporting their teammates in the centre.

Edited by McHarg, 06 October 2014 - 05:57 PM.

[Tarogato]

Keeps the votes coming, this information could be useful, we're getting a nice trend.

[ To all those that asked "why no poll", two reasons:
1. General Discussion is the most popular forum and most likely to get attention, so I posted here.
2. Without a poll, more people are likely to explain their decision rather than just vote and walk away. ]

So, the count so far is:

River City(s): 20 votes: poor visibility (night), poor spawns, small size.
Terra Therma: 15 votes: boring tactics, hot, bland graphics.
Alpine Peaks: 9 votes: lack of cover, large size (suggested: add tunnel)
Mining Collective: 7 votes: framerate, crashes, boring tactics.
Forest Colony(s): 7 votes: small size.
Frozen City: 5 votes: framerate, visibility.
Caustic Valley: 4 votes: lack of cover, bland graphics.
HPG Manifold: 2 votes.
Canyon Network: 1 vote.
_______________________________________________________

My thoughts so far...

Framerate: the number of people mentioning this in regards to Mining Collective surprises me, I thought I was the only one suffering. I feel like this should be rather high priority for PGI because if this thread is any representation of the community at all, it would seem that a fairly significant amount of people might be affected - too many to ignore.

Poor visibility issue: related to quality of thermal imaging, seems players are unhappy with it, prefer the old version, or experience frame drops while using it (I fall into the latter category myself)

Small size: because they were designed before 12v12. These maps could be expanded. I have ideas, I'd love to forward them to the devs. An alternative solution is to bring back an optional 8v8 with that queue restricted to the smaller maps. Let me know what you think of this idea, I bet it could work without too much trouble, but would have to go through substantial community review before implemented.

Large size: get over it, this is Mechwarrior. We need some maps that provide opportunities for tactical scouting and large scale company advances. That said, the largest maps we have need some tuning to encourage these decisions, I talk about that below.

Lack of cover: for Alpine this makes sense, and I would say to you, "Deal with it." For Caustic, I feel there are two solutions possible. 1: add the trees back in while implementing a feature where trees can break LoS. 2: increase the terrain depth/add features to the terrain mapping. Personally I don't think this issue is worth attacking because lack of cover is an inherent result of natural terrain, and it only makes sense that every once in a while we have to fight in these sort of conditions.

Boring tactics: this could call for significant or minor renovations to maps or revision of spawn points. As for the revisions, Mining Collective is new, and I don't really think there will be a need to change it probably ever. Alpine could have a couple tunnels added, but this would have to be done very carefully. Alpine's "hill" could be altered in any variety of ways to make it less of a focal point and encourage more of the map to be utilised. (post your favourite idea!) Terra Therma's caldera could either be altered to make it more open and less of a choke hazard, or just move the entire caldera to a side of the map so it's not center. (post thoughts on this!)

Spawn points: this is a topic I feel very strongly about and should be a priority for PGI in my opinion. There, I bolded it, it's my personal number one.
- At least two sets of spawn points for each gamemode on each map. The variety this would provide will really freshen the game up and keep people interested in playing MWO. After a while, you tend to get used to spawn points and the game just becomes predictable, old, and stagnant.
- Alternate locations for bases and conquest points. For instance, Assault mode bases could be placed on Alpine at M7, E8, or K12. Combinations of these could make for matches that use parts of larger maps that go largely ignored. How about Conquest points at H13, H9, M7, etc. Lots of opportunity for variation here.
- River City bases: have three sets of Assault mode bases. 1: the current one, 2: B2 vs D4, 3: B4 vs D2. See? Variety.

[aniviron]

Gotta be Alpine. 20km squared and not a single cm of cover. Every other map has a place for mechs of all range brackets, at least somewhat, but Blake help you if you brought SRMs to Alpine.

Eddrick, on 06 October 2014 - 05:10 AM, said:

Frozen City

Kills frame rate and has very little visibility

Sgt. 'Deadeye' Unther: Hit the H key on your console now... you can really see a man's fear in thermal.

[aniviron]

Tarogato, on 08 October 2014 - 08:25 PM, said:

Poor visibility issue: related to quality of thermal imaging, seems players are unhappy with it, prefer the old version, or experience frame drops while using it (I fall into the latter category myself)

Small size: because they were designed before 12v12. These maps could be expanded. I have ideas, I'd love to forward them to the devs. An alternative solution is to bring back an optional 8v8 with that queue restricted to the smaller maps. Let me know what you think of this idea, I bet it could work without too much trouble, but would have to go through substantial community review before implemented.

Large size: get over it, this is Mechwarrior. We need some maps that provide opportunities for tactical scouting and large scale company advances. That said, the largest maps we have need some tuning to encourage these decisions, I talk about that below.

Lack of cover: for Alpine this makes sense, and I would say to you, "Deal with it." For Caustic, I feel there are two solutions possible. 1: add the trees back in while implementing a feature where trees can break LoS. 2: increase the terrain depth/add features to the terrain mapping. Personally I don't think this issue is worth attacking because lack of cover is an inherent result of natural terrain, and it only makes sense that every once in a while we have to fight in these sort of conditions.

"Deal with it" or "Get over it" is a pretty crappy rationale for saying something is okay. I could just as easily say "Deal with it" for the poor visibility and small sizes of some maps, and there's really no defense against that argument you can make either.

Instead, maybe come at this from the perspective of a game that is looking to achieve fun balance: While maps like Crimson, River, Canyon, and Frozen all have lots of close combat fighting areas, they also have plenty of open sniping areas. Because you can't choose which map to drop on, this promotes a long-range sniper meta, as there are maps like Caustic, Alpine, and Terra that have plenty of long range combat but almost no opportunity for brawlers and infighters.

I'm also going to give you a "Deal with it" about the poor visibility; it's clearly an intentional design decision that's meant to make people who wish to play at long range actually have some sort of challenge. There's also the fact that old thermal vision was just clearly superior to night vision and normal vision in every single scenario, resulting in many players never ever turning it off and the game being dubbed 'BlueVisionWarrior Online." The current iteration of thermal vision is highly useful in quite a few instances on more than half the maps, but it also has drawbacks, meaning it's actually a choice that has consequences playing with it on or off.

[Tarogato]

aniviron, on 08 October 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

"Deal with it" or "Get over it" is a pretty crappy rationale for saying something is okay. I could just as easily say "Deal with it" for the poor visibility and small sizes of some maps, and there's really no defense against that argument you can make either.

Instead, maybe come at this from the perspective of a game that is looking to achieve fun balance: ... there are maps like Caustic, Alpine, and Terra that have plenty of long range combat but almost no opportunity for brawlers and infighters.

I'm also going to give you a "Deal with it" about the poor visibility; it's clearly an intentional design decision ... BlueVisionWarrior Online." The current iteration of thermal vision is highly useful in quite a few instances on more than half the maps, but it also has drawbacks ...

Fantastic points, esp. concerning the self-sufficient balance of the maps on an individual basis - and I gladly accept your "Deal with it" concerning visibility. Many people in all games detest the levels with low visibility, but I for one welcome the immersion and challenge it brings. I'm slightly irked by the FPS drags that thermal and night vision bring for me, but it doesn't bother me that much - I just play without them, and curiously enough River City Night is my best performing map for W/L ratio (1.77) - I would have never guessed it before looking at my stats. It beats River City (0.90) by a factor of two, so it's not a fluke, somehow. My next best map is Crimson (1.38).

Edited by Tarogato, 08 October 2014 - 09:59 PM.

[AssaultPig]

alpine, not a close decision really

therma is kinda annoying too, but at least there's some cover

[Kavoh]

Terra Therma

[BattleBunny]

im torn between alpine and terra therma. alpine is easily fixed by changing the spawns though. or deleting the mountain.

terra therma gets my vote as that map plays out the same most of the time.

[skorpionet]

I vote Frozen City Day due to huge FPS drop.

[STEF_]

Mining col.= Boooooring always the same brawling matches, booooring always the same spider/raven/ecm hiding.

EHY! River City night/day is my fav map, and a lot hate it!!!! LOL


Edit: I also love Alpine... and I'm seeing a lot hate it because it's big. I don't if those player know, but quite every players want bigger maps, because the ones we have are TINY!

Edited by Stefka Kerensky, 09 October 2014 - 01:59 AM.

[Muffinator]

Absolutely terra therma. It is the only map I want to quit match every time it loads. Sooooooo tedious both graphic wise (its black) and gameplay wise (one tactic)

[Satan n stuff]

My vote goes to Canyon Network.

[Lily from animove]

river city night.

[TexAce]

forest colony, I can't see **** in there...its one big clump of dark grey and brown matter. Heat vision deosnt help at all. Neither does NV, it really hurts my eyes.

Edited by TexAss, 26 October 2014 - 04:01 AM.

[MrMadguy]

Quote

Terra Therma: 18 votes: boring tactics, hot, bland graphics.
Alpine Peaks: 11 votes: lack of cover, large size (suggested: add tunnel)
Mining Collective: 8 votes: framerate, crashes, boring tactics.

Pretty much this - maps are placed in the exact order, I would place worst 3 maps in MWO. While River City - is ok. But may be it's just because I don't play anything, except Skirmish...

[C E Dwyer]

I can't pick one because most of the maps problems are caused by the players not the maps.


River city is despite its small size and its only real defects are being able to shoot spawn to spawn, and assault your virtually in range of the other teams turrets, is a good map, there are plenty of ways it can be used but, people do the same tired thing over and over, anticlockwise ring a rosey until both teams have swapped places, with the slow ones being butt ***** by lights.

ok maybe I do have one

Ice city

those bloody snow storms get on my nerves whats the point in playing a map where everything is grey (heat vision) when it should be ermm white with windows and textured

Edited by Cathy, 26 October 2014 - 04:28 AM.

[Hillslam]

Ok I lol'd

[Spiralcrisis]

Caustic Valley. It's so bland it hurts my eyes.

[ShinobiHunter]

Frozen city for sure. Boring, visibility sucks, and it lags. It's one of the few things in the game that makes me want to disconnect from a match. Mining collective isn't far behind it. It just lags way to bad.