Posted 10 September 2015 - 08:59 PM
Re-doing Alpine? Why? It's a decent map. It's only failing may be that it's a little too open, VERY little. Maybe make the hill of death less distinct. But Alpline, Tourmaline and Valley Network are classic combos of breakup and openness. These new maps, Forest Colony in particular, are cluttered, snaggy and foggy and all in ways that do not setup good mech battles.
PGI took the wrong approach to map dynamism. Destructible terrain should have been a low priority. What was needed was programmable variety in variable drop points, variable base and collector locations, variable exclusion zones, releasable exclusion zones. Just these would add huge variety to otherwise "stale" maps. You could get a lot more mileage out of Alpine if the base wasn't ALWAYS behind the mountain of death. Consider:
1) Six, for example, possible drop points arranged at sixty degrees of separation around the map periphery and...
2) dropping mechs together, not scattered across two kilometers.
The whole map would get played over the course of several matches.
PGI said they're getting positive feedback on Forest Colony. From whom? That map is a clutter disaster which singly convinced me to stop driving lights. It incorporates all the lessons learned from previous map complaints. Unfortunately, the lessons were of what not to do.
Snags. It took forever to get rid of the silly statues in old River City. PGI then promptly doubled down on snagginess with Viridian. Stumps you can go though or can't, stumps you can go over or can't, branches you can walk right through or can't. Viridian also introduced stairs that are stairs and stairs that aren't stairs.
Ground cover plants. Useless and abundant on Forest. Much of it is taller than my Locusts. If it obscures vision and nothing else, it is game irrelevant and should not be there.
Trees. Yeah, I know, it's "Forest" Colony. Still, we didn't learn from Taiga. There are too many of them. This is where BT ground infantry would be fighting not lumbering ambush magnets.
Night. People loved River City Night so much PGI decided to bring it back in the form of dusk and dawn transitions. Thanks.
Pea Soup. By this time Frozen City should be the last relic of the pea soup atmospherics infatuation. But no. It was initially so bad in Viridian they "had" to tone it down. Old River City was detested for its areas of thick, screen-washing smoke/haze. Forest Colony has it thick enough to cut with a knife at transitions. There should be only two types of atmospheric hazes. One, a light effect to simulate distance - but never obscure. Two, smoke columns (NOT area effects) which should block vision. Really, why build a pretty map and then wash it out with fog??
The result of all this is confused, unconventional fighting on Forest. If you stop for a second in a light you may get cored by an unseen and unseeable enemy. A LOT of blind fire with or without instrumentation goes on. Just watch guys blast away at a hillside because they've got lock on red behind the hill. ECM is the OP weapon on Forest.
Generally, mech battles are direct-fire, I-see-you-you-see-me fighting. If someone gets the drop on you, you know you can spin around and see him slinking behind a corner - or worse, staring you down. The reason that many dislike LRMs is because they're the only indirect fire weapon in the game. All other weapons require exposure and possibility of counter-fire. Not on Forest. He may be a thousand or two hundred meters away. But when you spin around to the fire direction, nothing. Trees, foliage, fog and ECM. Better move.
The point to this long post is to remind PGI that I'm here to fight mechs, not maps. The trend towards cloistered maps is a bad one. Forest is a beautiful map. It's not a good mech battle map. Alpine is good map. Don't mess with too much.
4
fat4eyes, on 10 September 2015 - 04:55 PM, said:
