56 replies to this topic

[Vellron2005]

Greetings everyone.

I actually looked for a thread where the newly released Caustic would be discussed, but didn't find any recent ones.. So, I'm making one now.

How do you like the changes that have been done to the Caustic Valley Map?

Personally, I think it was a good effort, but much could have been done better.

For me, the map looks waaay more cluttered now, the trees don't really fit into the rest of the environment, and the visibility in anything but clear day conditions is attrocious.

No vision modes help, since the map is to bright for nightvision, and too hot for heatvision. So we are left stuck with squinting our eyes at the monitor to tell rock from mech, or simply shooting the "red squares"

The worst though is the fact that the whole map doesn't feel "Caustic" anymore.. now its more "Primordial"

To explain better.. the map used to be "Venus as it is now", and now its "Earth as it was 4 bilion years ago"

See the difference?

On the upside though, the Nascaring has been discouraged somewhat, since it has become a bit less impractical.. but it still happens.

What are your thoughts?

Edited by Vellron2005, 08 October 2015 - 12:33 AM.

[madhermit]

I like the map. Once (read: if) people will finally get rid of the "NASCAR 24/7" mentality that majority of the old maps had, and stop clumping up, the new caustic valley has great opportunities for more interesting tactical play.

Though I have to agree the trees don't really fit with rest of the environment.

Edited by madhermit, 08 October 2015 - 12:51 AM.

[FlipOver]

Issue I have with that map:

1 - A crater is still at the center of the map - making it the focused part to fight, ignoring the rest of the map most of the time.
2 - The map size is small - Dropships hit the enemy when they fly off. That says it all.


What I like:

New visual styling - The old CV was too blend, with little visual things of interest. Now we have a more bumpy terrain (and more cover) with gas flames on the ground (or so I think that's what those blue flames are) and some more breakable objects


One thing others complain about and seem fine to me:

The bad visibility - I often use Heat vision to detect targets at long range and Night vision to see through smoke. It worked great in the previous version of the map and still works great now.

My personal overall take on the map:
It's a revamped version of a small map and without any significant size increase, there is still a limited set of places where someone can do battle most of the time. This limits strategy and engagement.
The visibility isn't a problem if I think that there are places in the universe where winds blow at thousands of kph or there is so much sand in the air that it's impossible to see anything past 1 meter, the current CV seems perfectly fine.
Personally I don't like the idea of all maps having a good visibility, removes a sense of diversity to the game.
The amount of "clutter" laid around is just another challenge to pilot the mech, if the map was bigger, the boulders and such could be further away from each other, making the map feel less of a piloting challenge.

I like it, could be better, could be much worst, but it's perfectly acceptable in my eyes.

PS - I usually tested the map as either a brawler or a sniper.

[TheArisen]

I actually liked the old CV. I feel that other maps were in more need of an update. The new one has taken some getting used to. Most of the fighting still takes place around/in the crater/caldera. The rocks on the outside of the caldera discourage nascaring but it's still the go to currently. Perhaps with time people will move on to new strats.

[KuroNyra]

A pretty nice map now.
The visual is excellent even if the trees should be burning.

But like IGN said
7/10 too much water

[Paigan]

Vellron2005, on 08 October 2015 - 12:32 AM, said:

Greetings everyone.

I actually looked for a thread where the newly released Caustic would be discussed, but didn't find any recent ones.. So, I'm making one now.
[...]

Forgive me for saying: looks like you did not.

Vellron2005, on 08 October 2015 - 12:32 AM, said:

[...]
The worst though is the fact that the whole map doesn't feel "Caustic" anymore.. now its more "Primordial"
To explain better.. the map used to be "Venus as it is now", and now its "Earth as it was 4 bilion years ago"
See the difference?
[...]

I had a similar impression.

On the one hand, the map surely looks nicer now. The original one was a little ... pale.
But I miss the "greeness". I wouldn't say "Earth as it was 4 billion years ago", that would be more like terra therma i guess. It looks more like sulferous rift (maybe intentionally).

On the other hand, we all do a little hard to adapt to change. Maybe the new map is indeed a better "caustic valley" and we're just a little stuck in nostalgia.

However:

Vellron2005, on 08 October 2015 - 12:32 AM, said:

[...]
On the upside though, the Nascaring has been discouraged somewhat, since it has become a bit less impractical.. but it still happens.

For me, absolutely not. It got WAY worse. However I don't think it's the map's fault, but rather more the fault of people's failure to adapt to a map with changed textures (... *sigh*), so they fall back into panic-frigthened mode and nascar the hell out.
Maybe it's also because there are simply a lot of noobs playing when a shiny new map comes out.
The map itself discouraging it ... mabe a little. Maybe not enough. In the end, it doesn't matter much, as it's the people that need to learn, not the map pampering them.

Edited by Paigan, 08 October 2015 - 01:47 AM.

[James von Stein]

I am not a forum guy at all, this is my first mwo post, but at some point the lid will fly from every box.

This should be about the Caustic Valley Map? Than we don't have anything to talk about, there IS no Caustic Vally anymore in the game!

And the real Caustic Valley the old great one was my favorite map! Better than all the others, it had it all.

So whats wrong with this map?

Its again way to small. And you should have known that as map creator for am MW game when an 50 kph assault can reach any point of the map within a minute. Theres something wrong when a locust with 170 kph cannot outrun the enemy team because there is no place to run too. When lights as whole are made useless by your designs. Or are scouts now front line fighters?
There are called scouts for a reason but here is nothing to scout, nothing to harass, or snipe.

In general let me add, in Conquest mode did you place the cap points too close together, so that the the map thats there when its there isn't used. See Alpine, see Forrest and so on.

There used to be good sniper spots on Caustic Vally with visibility of 2 km, where you could use a gauss and an ERL how its was meant to be used! Now on this map vis is down to 400 to 600 m??? So what are you telling us PGI? Forget tactics? Stop thinking? Flanking is useless! Do what the kids do on every other map - run in the middle and start shooting!

There are people here that complain about "nascar" well well. Battlemechs have been created to be the ultimate mobile weapons platform. The whole Mechwarrior is about mobility, yes i understand that you would like "Turrentwarrior" better. And it is so sad that many of the players don't get it that movement is the key to victory. But why is that so? Because they wont learn or because of the to small maps? In other games it works, you see players move trough all kinds of terrain, where you never had thought of you're self, here the possibility isn't there.

PGI don't you see that the quality of the matches is going down. New maps must encourage the players to move, to flank, to try new tactics, stay together as an lance. But you cater to the "lets play simple fraction", lets get in the middle and get it over with in 3 min. And that will kill the game.

And this map isn't even pretty. The new forest is clearly the best looking map, when the light is on! So yes you can do better. Which means to me that this map must have been rushed without beta testing and the result is the same disaster as before.

I could write on here but its time to stop. Let it be known that i had enough, no more $$$ from me. And this its not about Caustic alone that was only the last nail for the coffin, but about the general state of the game.

Get the game back to what the title said Mechwarrior Online.
Give me movement, give me space and give me tactics!

until than,

PS: and as an stop gap get the real Caustic Valley back on, should not be so hard to do!

[LordDante]

i dropped about 8 times on it now ...
and we ( PHL ) had a good time while playing there. OK some guys complained about the colors ( we told them to leave the LSD away and they would be fine ) but thats it.
every time when we managed to get close enough ( ac 20 range ) to the enemy to start brawling, we won.

i say its an improvement to the previous one. unless ur into gauss and er-laser vomit but thats not my style anyway.

Edited by LordDante, 08 October 2015 - 02:43 AM.

[Torgun]

While it's not a big overhaul, I find it is still a couple of things they added that improved it. The old Caustic had a problem with long open areas around the cauldron with no cover, which they have rectified and now adds more angles to peek and shoot from so making it overall more interesting. And cosmetically there's more color and variations to the terrain which is also nice.

[Speedy Plysitkos]

I must admin, if i get there "daily light" its beautiful map. but night there......

[xengk]

Only manage to drop in it about 6 or 7 times.
So far I like the new change, particularly the new ridge around E5.
The old ridge offer little cover and the slope is low enough that assault can walk over and drop on the other side.
The new ridge offer 3 point of access, one of each end and a narrow path near the middle. You can now pick off passing Nascars safely without them sneaking up on you.
It is alot easier to defend especially if the assault lance spawn near D6.

The pipes dividing the lake is also a good addition, if the enemy decide to hole up at F5, we can force a brawl without getting PPC/Goose/LRM to death crossing the lake and open ground.

Haven't explore much of line 2 yet.

Light still nascar around the caldera as usually, and it is even harder for heavy/assault to keep up due to more clatter.
The clatter also introduce more brawling to the map, many of the rock can now harbour assault mech. They saved my Atlas bacon a few time from LRM, PPC and UACs.

Edited by xengk, 08 October 2015 - 03:07 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Lack of vision is not really an issue, it is really caused by nightmode, daytime has very few vision problems. Vision problems also can be resolved by using Night Vision, it actually works on Caustic now when it used to not, Night Vision is not too bright.

Cluttering is a good and bad thing. Good because it prevents the race around the caldera, bad because it currently makes JJs a requirement until people figure out new ways to maneuver on the map.

The main problem is Psychological on the players' part. On certain maps, most players go to certain spots.

Alpine - the Hill roughly around H9/10, I9/10. They do this even when it is wrong and you tell them not to. Example, Alpine Skirmish, a team starts in the J11, L9, L7 grids with the Assaults in L7. J11 and L9 lances go to the Hill and get wiped because the Assaults were so far out and no one wanted to do it different. Seen it happen including just yesterday, it is very rare that they go somewhere else even if you tell them. I have seen times when someone says in chat or VOIP to go somewhere else but 50% of that time a number of players ignore the commands and still go hill then get wiped.

Forest Colony - Despite the new map size, players still go to the old arch area now in G9, sometimes they may go water in the J row, all on the EXACT SAME SPOTS from the smaller Forest Colony. I have yet to see a fight happen in say E8, G13, L11 or H5 for example.

I can list others but I am sure this is clear. I have seen plenty of times people try using chat or VOIP to try new plans only for the team 50% of the time to ignore those like on Frozen City Assault when someone said we should stay around D3/4 and defend, players instead went either C3 saddle or near C4 thus spreading the team out and leading to a wipe.

Caustic is the same thing. So far on the new one, players are mainly going D3 to the side of caldera, not so much D4/5 anymore. Whole portions of the map still go unused. Rocky terrain seems to have made people in non-JJ Mechs even more scared because of fear of exposure.

Problem is the players more than the design.

[Rhaythe]

Caustic before:


Caustic after:

[Alistair Winter]

Like many MWO maps, it's really pretty. But quite poorly designed in terms of balance and varied gameplay.

[BattleBunny]

Copied post from other thread, but I really want the devs to read this so here it is again :


A lot of the new cover makes for different firing lanes and most of my old favorite peeking corners or moving lanes are gone.
it feels a lot like a new map.

So please.

PLEASE!

Put both old caustic and new caustic in rotation. We had forest colony snow and forest colony, we have frozen city night and frozen city day. Can we please get a caustic valley old and caustic valley new?

And while we are doing this, Put the old forest colony back in rotation as well, on a low frequency. I miss the old maps! we need more maps! Variety is the spice of life!

Edited by BattleBunny, 08 October 2015 - 05:09 AM.

[Screech]

Really has been the worst of the new/re-done maps. Hope this is just a bump in the road and the steps backward are not repeated.

[PhoenixFire55]

Old Caustic was different, unique, with lots of open spaces and little cover. It gave advantage to long range mechs (Gauss/LRMs, etc.). New Caustic is just the same as all other maps except Alpine and TerraTherma, and promotes laservomit mid-range meta even more. It is a bad change. Trying to make all maps "a little bit of everything" is a worst possible idea.

If changes were made to prevent "nascar" they did the exact opposite as it became much harder for slow non-JJ mechs to move around ...

[mark v92]

instaid of throwing in anoying rocks but not changing the layout they might aswell make it full nascar:


the only thing that changed is that assaults get stuck more and get left behind even easier

Edited by mark v92, 08 October 2015 - 07:49 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

mark v92, on 08 October 2015 - 07:48 AM, said:

instaid of throwing in anoying rocks but not changing the layout they might aswell make it full nascar:

the only thing that changed is that assaults get stuck more and get left behind even easier

Bah, you forgot the pit-lane! But yeah, I agree.

[Juodas Varnas]

I just wish they stopped with the dynamic day-cycle nonsense already...
Especially since they don't seem to be able to fix the stuttering during the transitions (and let's just ignore the fact how ridiculous the speed of the cycle is!)