12 replies to this topic

[Bulu]

When i hear people here talk about map design i remembered a phrase of someone of Piranha, a couple years ago, saying that as maps are not monetized they cant pùt too much effort on them.

I remember being horrorized by the statement at the time

How can`t they see, how important maps are?

Or, maybe they are right and are doing the best thing? Just wondering

P.S: The CW maps are hilarius XD

[Sarlic]

You mean hilarious terrible...

[Vandul]

Sarlic, on 26 April 2015 - 12:30 PM, said:

You mean hilarious terrible...

Mine moved when I read that.

[TLBFestus]

"I fail to see the relationship between diverse, varied, entertaining map selection and a happy, paying player base. Can you explain this?" ---said someone at PGI obviously.

[LordKnightFandragon]

TLBFestus, on 26 April 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

"I fail to see the relationship between diverse, varied, entertaining map selection and a happy, paying player base. Can you explain this?" ---said someone at PGI obviously.

Yeah, I guess that does explain every development move PGI has made.

Deep, engaging gameplay with fun objectives and lots to do: Can we monetize it? no....ok its out
Good, diverse, amazing maps: money? no? ok its out
Mechs, can we monetize them? yes? Ok...make 10 packs a year and sell them more then the normal person would be willing to pay, people will buy them
Good NPE, does it pay? no? ok...newbs will figure it out!

MWO 2017: Light Q: 0%, Medium Q: 0%, Heavy Q: 0%, Assault Q: 0%

[Morganism]

I used to test maps for Halo 3 with Bungie. I was lucky because a friend was working closely with them and I was living with him and playing competitive Halo during that time.

After a few games I realize how poorly the maps were designed. In particular CW (Emerald Tiaga is probably one of the worst designs for a shooting map I have ever witnessed for a multitude of reasons, and it's NEW)

To turn this into a truly Strategic or tactical shooter they will need to alter the map pool significantly. As it stands the maps are very small with poor spawns for Quickplay, encouraging death ball gameplay.

And in CW they are pathetic. They ruin the balance of their own game by forcing players to face up and fight each other in poorly designed TIGHT spaces. This encourages the meta that exists there as well. And with no mechanisms in place to help spawn camping many new players are turned off by a single stomp.

There is a lot of work that needs to go into this game and one of the top priorities should be to optimize the fields in which this game is played. There is not a single map in the pool that I can say I am happy with. They are all pretty poor and encourage terrible meta gameplay (non-interactive with single spearhead fighting point).

If we want to see diversity in gameplay maps are a great place to start. But they are certainly not an end all be all to the quirkified metagame that is being imposed upon us (especially IS).

I would hope to see some more, DECENT maps placed in the pool. So far these are sad.

I've been meaning to do a full analysis, but Tukkaid has me working for points.
After this experience I will surely be able to discuss this in greater depth.

Edited by Morganism, 26 April 2015 - 07:42 PM.

[Fate 6]

Morganism, on 26 April 2015 - 06:51 PM, said:

Emerald Tiaga is probably one of the worst designs for a shooting map I have ever witnessed for a multitude of reasons, and it's NEW

This, IMO, is the biggest problem. They didn't give it good spawns and it's the 5th map. They should have known by now how to set that up and yet they just go along with development despite the problem. It seemed like the spawns on Hellbore indicated their knowledge of improving map designs and then they went backwards.

[mark v92]

For me the worst map in CW are Emerald Taiga and Sulfurous Rift.

On both maps once you go trough the gates the first thing you enter is the defenders drop point (even before a gen)
This just screams spawn killing.

Why go for the objective when you can take out 1/3 of the enemy from that location?
Drop points on Taiga are pretty isolated aswell which makes it even easier.
(While its nice that Rift has 3 gates, the middle gate has no use because you can spawncamp from the other 2 gates)

So far Hellebore Springs is my favorite.
Enough room inside the gates, objectives before the dropzone and grouped drop points.

Grim Portico is pretty nice aswell only kinda crowded at the gates and gens are behind the dropzones. Which again promotes spawnkilling instaid of going for gens.

Boreal Vault has enough room behind the gates but the gates themselfs are a deathtrap. Its sometimes even hard to get to the gate as the defenders can shoot all the way trough the alley if the gates are open.

(edit: and why are the trees on Taiga so fugly? Not at all like on other maps)

Edited by mark v92, 26 April 2015 - 07:18 PM.

[Ace Selin]

Taiga.. dem trees is real badl

[Mister Blastman]

Vandul, on 26 April 2015 - 01:08 PM, said:

Mine moved when I read that.

Uh, no. They are bad. Really bad.

They're the aborted remains of DOTA which, itself, is the aborted remains of a good idea, which... is emergent, dynamic real-time strategy.

Instead we're left with a funnel of three corridors. It doesn't get much worse than that.

[Morganism]

Boreal Vault is also a joke IMO.

It's a far worse Blood Gulch (from Halo). The weapons are optimized in a way that everyone practically has sniper rifle range from the get go (if they want to have it) and due to this assaulting the gates alone can be a struggle vs multiple long range lazer vomit mechs.

The map is far too small to require any strategy for defenders.
On offense literally have to conga line in every time while having Artie and Air Strikes dropped on your head. The defenders not only have superior position due to the gates, they ALSO get high ground and defensive turrets. I would love to see how a competitive team breaches without knowing to cheese out some type of light rush (which is counter intuitive to game balance on so many levels).

Boreal is a terrible map in it's own right, but Sulfurous and Tiaga are the worst offenders.

The trees literally hurt my eyes. Did they pull them from a 16-bit game?
Honestly, they are so annoying and mostly a disadvantage for the defenders who have to deal with them when the offense pushes in.

[Ragtag soldier]

emereld taiga just needs an art pass (or the trees to be replaced with destructables) and it'd make for a fine map.

boreal vault on the other hand is such a shooting gallery for defense that they should just can it.

and of course big up to sulfourous rift for being the easiest map to spawn camp in the game! heck, they shield the spawn campers from the defenders with that ridge and those long buildings!

[Mister Raven]

Ahem.....

You can't have a good game with bad maps.

No matter how good a game is, it needs good maps to support it's game play.


burrrp..

if theyre so hard to make just release an mwo sdk and if some one makes a good enough map then pgi will uhh.. use it. After dev review of course.

Edited by Mister Raven, 26 April 2015 - 10:01 PM.