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And I'm going to try to focus on the stuff that's not really obvious, for the most part.
In no particular order.
It's a pity what happened to the statues in River City. Ideally, they should have been either destructible terrain or placed in such a manner that they didn't cause constant collisions. But we still have these little sculptures around the Citadel, which are a great detail. I mean those short pillars with faces on them.
People talk about minimally viable product, but PGI map designers didn't really have to put them there. The map would have looked great without them, they're more of a little treat than major eye candy.
In my eyes, this is another simple, but very beautiful detail. Instead of just plunking a building down on a flat concrete surface, they made some stairs and a little plaza below, shielded from the traffic on ground level. This really makes it look like this city was partially built for people (i.e. pedestrians), instead of simply being a playground for giant mechs.
It's hard to show this on a photograph as opposed to video, but this is a very complex structure, with a pool of water at the bottom. Again, a very nice little visual treat that goes totally unnoticed in the heat of battle. But it's cool to stop and look at.
This is a great spot on Mining Collective, mostly out of bounds. But for old school Mechwarrior fans, I'm sure this reminds a lot of people of old Mechwarrior games, and scenes like this. I still wish MWO had more MW2-style maps, in terms of aesthetics (not layout).
Some of the coolest parts of HPG Manifold - a map that is not generally praised for its beauty - are the few areas of mixed scale - where you see the transitions between large-scale structures and human scale. I would really have loved to see a lot more of that. I also really like the use of yellow light to break the monotony of a metal structure on a grey moon. I don't think they should have bathed the whole map in yellow light, like they did with Mining Collective. But a bit more colour, as seen here, would have been great.
When we get the next map based on HPG Manifold assets, I really hope they insert more of this stuff. These habitation units with stairs, intersections and parked vehicles are so full of character and interesting to look at. And they work really well to establish the scale of our giant mechs, to make us feel big in an otherwise desolate environment.
While Mining Collective is a great looking map, I really think they've done it a disservice by only having a night version and no daylight version. Furthermore, the combination of yellow-green, red and blue light all over the map really bothers me, particularly the yellow-green light. But above is my favourite part of Mining Collective, It's got a lot of nice white light and it's really easy to look at.
I don't know how many people notice this stuff in-game, but there's some really nice animations on Alpine where the wind blows snow off the rooftops of different structures. Some sound effects would have really sent a shiver up your spine too, but at least we have some great visuals. A nice detail I really appreciate.
This is my favourite part of any map in all of MWO. This is just sublime. It's got everything I look for in a Mechwarrior map.
- Plenty of room to move
- It has elements of small scale objects, making your mech look big by comparison. Cargo bays, trucks, etc.
- It's easy to see where your mech can and cannot move.
- There's a narrow platform that is clearly not meant for heavy traffic or huge battlemechs, but you can still walk there.
- It doesn't have any poorly placed indestructible pillars or rocks to crash into. In this case, all the trucks are placed along the edge of the platform, so they provide great visual cues without being disruptive.
- It looks real. It's like something you would see in a real city, it doesn't look like a fake backdrop.
Unfortunately, this part of the map doesn't get much attention. It's really pretty though. Notice the great architecture, the streets, the cars, the trees. The train station is great, and I really love the railway on Crimson Strait. I could have shown 30 pictures of it, to capture all the great details. I really wish we had a map with a railway as the center focus, with a big train station, many parked trains, tunnels, train depots, etc. Like the trainyard in Counterstrike, but roomier.
In some ways, this isn't a great piece of map design. It doesn't look quite as organic as other parts of Crimson Strait or River City. It's a big flat slab of concrete with buildings on top, and it's hard to imagine this as a part of a real infrastructure, with traffic, pedestrians, cargo haulers, etc. It doesn't look quite alive. But it still has some really great attributes, particularly in terms of scale. This shows that small scale urbanization with a gas station, cars, parking lots and that big garage that is reminiscent of the original MWO reveal trailer, where the garage gets smashed by the Atlas shooting the Warhammer.
The final pic is a weird one, I know. But I really love the snowy roads on Alpine. I wish they were a more central part of the map. You don't notice them too much when you're playing, I think, but they do cover some long distances. They remind me of playing in sandboxes as a kid, and making long roads in the sand, using the wheels of toy trucks. And then you'd make the sandbox into some big industrial zone, where trucks would follow the roads to pick up sand from the diggers and dump on the other side of the sandbox. Erm... anyway. I like these roads. (And I like sandboxes)
Anyway, I don't know if this was in any way interesting or entertaining. But I felt like making a little positive appreciation thread.
One of the things that really gets me excited about PvE is the ability to play the game slow and take the time to enjoy the beauty of mechs in lovely surroundings. When playing MWO, you rarely have time to stop and appreciate the aesthetics outside the testing grounds. So, really looking forward to PVE in 2016, hopefully.
Edited by Alistair Winter, 06 May 2015 - 12:38 AM.
