52 replies to this topic

[JediPanther]

Sucks. Plain and simple. Nearly semetrical maps with only one or two areas of focus. Does any one really fight anywhere besides those single areas like h10 and g9 on alpine? Probabily not. All the maps have one or two areas every single match people shuffle to be the first one two and fight in. It's almost like those old civil war movies of just two armies lining up, staring each other down then blindly walking into each other firing. The maps are far too big and a lot of wasted space. They would be better done with three grids alone. Walk into the center from your starting grid and fire.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

JediPanther, on 26 December 2014 - 09:27 PM, said:

Sucks. Plain and simple. Nearly semetrical maps with only one or two areas of focus. Does any one really fight anywhere besides those single areas like h10 and g9 on alpine? Probabily not. All the maps have one or two areas every single match people shuffle to be the first one two and fight in. It's almost like those old civil war movies of just two armies lining up, staring each other down then blindly walking into each other firing. The maps are far too big and a lot of wasted space. They would be better done with three grids alone. Walk into the center from your starting grid and fire.

Ugh! This is the reason why Alpine is one of my least fav maps in skirmish, and I don't even like skirmish!

[Shiroi Tsuki]

Anjian, on 26 December 2014 - 08:25 PM, said:

I said before in general the maps suck, though there are a few that I like (Alpine, HPG Manifold, Tourmaline, Canyons). The problem is that the maps seem more ideal for an FPS rather than a tank warfare map. They tend to emphasize mayhem by funneling teams into bottlenecks, thinking that brawling is fun, as opposed to the element of mobile armored warfare maneuver that tanks enjoy. If you see maps in World of Tanks and War Thunder Ground Forces, they are rich in multiple avenues of attack. Bottlenecks destroy a mech or a tanks main tactical advantage which is mobility; it turns games into big predictable meatballs of battles, as opposed to one that has tactical depth. As a result, much of the map resources are wasted, battles are predictably concentrated in a small section of the map, where you can see all the blob battles happening. This is what struck me when I first played those tank games --- your team spreads out to protect center and flanks; the collapse of a front can lead to the overall defeat of a team. You don't move in one massive mob to the center with lights skirmishing in the flanks.

The CW maps are a step in the right direction, especially the Sulfurous rift, as it really forces you to make full use of the map resources.

Surprisingly, maps in Mechwarrior 4 are quite open, and I remember they are more fun to play with. Especially the map where one team spawns inside a fortress and another team spawns outside of it. Its the map also used in the final mission of the game where you assault the baddie's castle, hopefully with a team of assault mechs like Dire Wolves, Atlas and Mad Cat 2 (90 ton Mad Cat).

Another problem with MWO maps is that they are too complicated. All those detail and enviromental objects only slow down a mech, block shots, trap feet, create an overall negative player experience while wastefully consuming GPU and memory resources.

I would like to add that Wargaming.net (World of Tanks maker) has to be commended for having the creative courage to continuously modify maps if they are not up to snuff, and if the map is just bad, to retire it completely out of rotation. Not all of WoT's maps are good, some suck but they would try to fix them in a fundamental way or get rid of them. I like to PGI to approach their maps with the same care --- fix them or retire them.

I agree! I'll admit, in my opinion, BF3's Tank Superiority maps are far more superior than MWO maps. An example is Bandar Desert. Basically, it follows the standard "3 route" map design. The center is very open, but gets you to the objective way quicker. Assuming that you spawn on the US side, going on the left provides you excellent cover and hides you basically from the whole map, but the terrain is short and rocky. This means your MGS might get stuck in one of those rocks and you'll be forced to bail out and get a new one, and the other risk is that if you fall, you will be out bounds and you will die, 10 seconds is not enough to get you back up.
On the right side (personally my fav route), you'll have to cross the open, to get to the Artillery base. Securing the artillery base provides you excellent cover when sniping. This is also CQB, so infantry may be able to take out a couple tanks in here.
What I'm saying is, (ignoring the objective in the middle of the map) each section in the map is something that you want to fight for because when you secure it, you gain a strategic advantage, and it's not something you have to.
MWO's current map problems is that the center is always being fought over like it's a must, when it's not.
TL;DR: BF3 Tank Superiority Bandar Desert is a great example of map design in terms of vehicle combat. MWO's map design revolves around that one section in the map TOO much, and that's a bad thing.

[Sarlic]

I can't state enough how poor the maps are in Mechwarrior Online. Not all of them, but most of them are so poorly designed.

Especially when it's related to the Solo Que and perhaps even C.W.

Edit: I know this is an old thread, but i couldnt find one with decent pictures. Guess i i will have to make one on my own.

Edited by Sarlic, 26 February 2015 - 04:58 AM.

[NextGame]

Shiroi Tsuki, on 26 December 2014 - 04:57 AM, said:

What are your thoughts on MWO's current maps? What kind of maps are you looking for? Also, what kind of play style do you prefer in general?

Average. Some are good, some are bad, and different people have different opinions on which.

I like that when a map is added it usually tries to add a bit of variety in some way over the top of what we have, but I wish we had 10x the number of maps we currently have.

[Vandul]

I dont mind the map designs. Every map will have its strategy. Maps dont have to be perfectly balanced. Strategies have to adapt to things like conditions, terrain, lance/company make up, etc...

That being said, they ______really______ need to fix the invisible hit boxes/obstructions that these maps are littered with. HPG and Mining Collective are really just awful in this regard. Cool looking maps, until you need to look down and shoot.

Then, not so cool.

[Lynx7725]

I read through the replies in this thread and it appears many are thinking in terms of FPS and armour terms. In the Battletech world, tanks do exists. As in conventional vehicles on wheels, treads or hover lift skirts.

Ton for ton and dollar for dollar, tanks are way more efficient than Mechs at delivering firepower. Cheaper, carries more, uses less strategically important material. Given the same amount of resources, on open maps, tank forces have a big advantage over a mech force.

So why use Mechs? Think about it a bit. And then take a look at the map designs in that light -- and consider what if PGI decides to implement AI not as Mechs but conventional vehicles.

[Blood Rose]

Mwo's maps.... Ugh. I love this game but the maps are atrocious to the extreme.

What we need are maps with less central focus points and corridors. Maps like MW4

And city maps. Real city maps, not the **** we have now. Our current ones are maps with a little bit of city and vast focus points. Like River City with its river and basilica. And Crimson, with its massive mountain and huge docks (why are they that big anyway, do they drydock ships there or something?) and large open straits. We need real MW4 style city maps.

[Lynx7725]

Blood Rose, on 26 February 2015 - 10:05 AM, said:

And Crimson, with its massive mountain and huge docks (why are they that big anyway, do they drydock ships there or something?) and large open straits. We need real MW4 style city maps.

Actually as docks go, Crimson's kinda small.

The real problem is that Crimson's harbour is too shallow. That ship couldn't have sailed in -- it'd have grounded way before it got anywhere near the wharf.

[DaZur]

Blood Rose, on 26 February 2015 - 10:05 AM, said:

Mwo's maps.... Ugh. I love this game but the maps are atrocious to the extreme.

What we need are maps with less central focus points and corridors. Maps like MW4

No offense but there is no such thing as map design that does not foster patterned engagement points...

No matter the design philosophy, players will form formulary routes and common engagement points. Yes, absolutely good map design can effectively steer players in various ways but the reality is after a map is played a dozen times or so, players begin to form routine habits which in turn lead to predictable play mechanics.

We humans are creatures of habit no matter how intelligent we fancy ourselves...

[Hellen Wheels]

Remember when we could change the gravity and temperature on maps in NetMech? Good times. You could change the gravity to where a Dire Wolf could barely move...or make it a flying space battle, if you had JJ and low enough gravity. Good times. What did we have, eight maps? But nearly unlimited options to play with. Maps with no borders, yet practically no one would "run and hide" (and if they did, they were simply not welcome to play anymore in your league.) And we had collisions / DFAs. Rear / side / downward camera. All driven by DOS on analog 14.4 baud modem, if you were lucky. Almost 20 years ago. I'd pay a monthly subscription fee to have that kind of functionality in MW:O, but I guess that is LosTech.

Edited by Hellen Wheels, 26 February 2015 - 10:35 AM.

[Cyberiad]

Appogee, on 26 December 2014 - 05:10 AM, said:

What MWO really needs are procedurally generated random maps.

Imagine a universe where each planet offers different maps and different battle conditions. This would offer true variety for players, the true need for scouting and situational tactics, and better simulate real world battle conditions ... never as artificially even-sided as map designers try to make them.

War is hell. Battlegrounds are asymmetrical. Dealing with it would add hugely to the variety and fun.

Long prior thread on this here:
http://mwomercs.com/...ng-and-prosper/

I've made a post before about how to generate terrain using a density function and a procedure documented by Ryan Geiss called cube marching:

http://http.develope...gems3_ch01.html

The code is available from the website and doesn't have any restrictive licensing that would prevent PGI form using it. The whole procedure is described pretty well so you don't even need their code to be able to implement it. It only takes a day to implement even from just reading the description without looking at their source code, although creating the lookup tables is an extremely tedious process so I copied those. The tri-planar texturing described in the article is also a most satisfyingly elegant way to texture a random 3d terrain.

Edited by Silicon Life, 26 February 2015 - 10:41 AM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Maps are to choke pointy, to small, to many players on each of them.......all seem to have a copy paste area that everyone goes to every time....

Alpine is the map PGI should be trying to emulate and fix up.....massive map, little bit of everything, expound on the bases, add some forests, lower that massive mountain in the middle some. Add paths and stuff up the massive hills on the north end of hte map...really expand that map to be a super map, rather then these tiny little arenas....