34 replies to this topic

[Eboli]

I quite like Polar as a map.

The one thing that the extra space allows are a good number of pathways for a lance to move undetected for a nice flank attack. You can also do this on other maps but Polar really allows a lance to disappear and appear somewhere else.

Good light players have a lot of space to manuever and light vs light battles are a strong possibility.

I think PGI has done well with this map and whatever lessons learned from this map can be applied to future maps. I love the size and as others have stated a large multi-level City map would just be awesome.

Cheers
Eboli

[Wolfways]

How to fix maps:

Leave Polar alone, it's great.
Get rid of the central point on Terra Therma.
Just get rid of Viridian Bog altogether...or at least spread it out more.
Make every other map bigger and more open.
Done

[Lykaon]

from what I have experienced thus far on Polar Highlands is it's deceptivley NOT flat. There are tons of variations in terrain elevations that grant cover. One of the issues I think players have is it has no "hard" cover that is deep or tall enough to prevent LRM indirect fire. You need to play smarter not harder on Polar if you have LRMs incoming.

Radar Derper,AMS and ECM will help more on Polar than many other maps but the issue isn't not being able to break LOS. That is deceptivley easy on Polar.

There are two prime factors contributing to the assumed flatness.

One: it's all covered in snow so gradiation of terrain is difficult to detect at range.
Two: you can climb almost all the hills allowing less spacially aware players to blunder out of cover.

My take on the maps:

New forest colony: to much map real estate wasted on open water (around 24 squares of the map are water filled and near devoid of cover) and areas of the map that have no motivation for using or occupying. The central elevated zone divides the map in easily demarked "our side their side" seperation. The pass through the highlands is a serious bottleneck limiting it's usefulness.

exstend the beach front out over the water more allowing more of the map to be used. Fill this added beach with small and scattered cover like rocky outcrops more ship wrecks and container stacks. Widen the mountain pass to allow three abreast mech advancing. This would remove or greatly alieviate the bottleneck and make that route more viable. Then shorten the width of the mountain range in the center to allow a quicker path to be traversed along the "6" row and exstend the map out to the F5 and 4 and G 4 as a flanking path that is now opened due to reducing the mountain size.

Frozen city, well this needs to be enlaged by a good amount. (it's around 17 squares in size now the whole map occupies less space than the water filled unusable space on the new Forest colony).

after enlarging the map area the play area we have now is essentially the middle of the new map. I would retain the glacier with the ice caves but exstend it out into what is now D2 and C1 and 2. This portion of the glacier would not be caves and tunnels but icy canyons with large broken ice blocks that create plentiful cover but lack the size to hide an entire mech company behind. Think of it like an area of the map that is an icy version of canyon network that can be manuvered through to flank the enemy . Now the map has two general types of game play. Either urban terrain brawling or hide and seek canyon fighting.

Mining collective is easy,just enlarge the area to fit the newer map sizes to standardize the maps.

Alpine is also easyer to fix than it initially appears. overall the map's issues are almost entirely based on H8 H9 H10 and the I row's 8,9 and 10 squares. This hill is way to dominant of a feature granting a large zone of control.

First you reduce the height of the hill by around 50%. this allows it to still be a good possition but now it can be out flanked by gaining the higher ground around it. in particular the high ground at H11 and I 11. now you add in two more easier to climb access points. One located at I8 the other at the meeting corners of H9 and G10.

Canyon is much like mining collective it just needs to be enlarged to standardize the map sizes.

River city can have some of the central focus by opening up the map through the B row B4,5 and 6 specificly. Place another cluster of buildings in this area or exstend the forests and rocky outcrops here. This opens up a wider range of flanking options to both sides.

tourmaline just needs some spawn point and critical location adjustments. We need the spawn points pulled further apart to prevent the early match rushing. It is actually possible to engage the enemy in under 20 seconds on assault mode on this map and that seems like a waste of a large map to me.( blue alpah and red alpha lances are closer than 2 squares apart at spawning.) Blue base should also be shifted to I4 from it's current G3 local. Now open up F2 and 3 as well as Eand F 8 if you want to be ambitious as this can be designed to add additional lanes of travel and flanking cover.

Terra Thera's biggest and probably only issue is the player base being obcessed with running into the middle. With exception of Conquest game mode there is NO REASON to go there. A slight altering to access points to the middle reducing choke points and adding more cover in the interior can possibly at least make the inevitable middle fight more interesting than hide and poke the whole time being "spooned" by some idiot who doesn't know not to crawl up your backside.

Crimson straight..well this map simply needs to be bigger with more usable area to elliminate the D4 "saddle" region as a dominant area of focus. Open up the F 3,4,5,6 and 7 squares and connect it through the E6 square and fill this with more urban terrain.Some suffling of cap points and spawn locations may be needed to better suit thenew map dynamics.

Caustic Valley seems fine if a bit under sized. Perhaps widening the entire map circumfrance by a square and pushing all the objectives and spawns (keeping theta center) out into the newly created squares will eleviate some of the center focus of this map.

HPG Manifold, well what can I say I like this map the least of all of them and it's largely because of the railroading the map causes with the spawn location and overly foced center centric design. This map has around 23 squares of area but in nearly every match only 5.5 squares are ever used.And the skirmish spawn locations nearly garuntee this will ALWAYS be the case.
the center map has an interesting playstyle it's just that there isn't enough of it.

I would open up C3 and 4 as well as F6 and E7 filling this area with more structures similar to the interior. think putting a bit of "Vitric Forge" in these newly opened squares. I would also add two new openings into the center one at C3 and D4's meeting corner and the other opposite in E6/F6 meeting edge. This should open up options for mechs that lack the ideal hardpoints for hill humps because fighting uphill in the middle of HPG is a pain in the actuators if you have low slung arm weapons. You now have the options of hill hump or alley fight in the newly opened terrain.

Now we have Veridian Bog to discuss. Well obviously this map is filled with mecha toe traps. That needs to go.Destructable terrain can fix a lot of this. as well as a thoughrough check for snagging terrain and invisable terrain hitboxes.

[H I A S]

@Sulla: I hate Crimson. When you play conquest and get the Spawn on the Islandside you can controll 4 of 5 Cappoints while you sitting @ the Island.

Same for Alpine.

Most of the Maps have one strong side.

Edited by arivio, 28 January 2016 - 04:02 AM.

[XX Sulla XX]

William Mountbank, on 28 January 2016 - 12:18 AM, said:

I agree with pretty much everything you said except for:



I actually wish for more weather effects that block long range visibility. On some maps its far too easy to catch glimpses of the enemy when they're far outside sensor range.
The interesting thing about HPG I would say is that it has two central features. It's not always a good idea to go below, but a lot of combat does happen there and it allows mechs to sneak behind groups holding the high ground. The main problem is that AMS and seismic penetrate the structure unnaturally.
Polar is only 'flat' if one spends the whole time on top of the hills and not in the ruts.



I guess you could say that the 'central feature' of MC is actually a basin, or low ground, so it encourages movement around the periphery rather than directly to the middle. Maybe this is something PGI can use in future maps to inhibit centre rushes.

Yes a lower center could be good.

Wolfways, on 28 January 2016 - 03:10 AM, said:

How to fix maps:

Leave Polar alone, it's great.
Get rid of the central point on Terra Therma.
Just get rid of Viridian Bog altogether...or at least spread it out more.
Make every other map bigger and more open.
Done

Why not just make them all flat and empty haha.

arivio, on 28 January 2016 - 04:01 AM, said:

@Sulla: I hate Crimson. When you play conquest and get the Spawn on the Islandside you can controll 4 of 5 Cappoints while you sitting @ the Island.

Same for Alpine.

Most of the Maps have one strong side.

Both could do with some changes I agree.

[H I A S]

Yeah, for sure.
Btw: I like Canyon and Caustic balancewise.
Polar is fun to, but you can only play mid to short well, when you are fast enough.

[Sjorpha]

I don't really have a problem with any of the existing maps by themselves, it's when you put them together that you get too many "flycatcher" scenarios with fighting happening around the maps central object, mountain, crater, citadel and so on.

I think making a few variants of each terrain type would remove the problem from my perspective. Let's say there were 4 different "mordor" type maps, and they had different layouts, I wouldn't mind fighting in/around the crater 1/4 of my drops on "planet mordor" if the other 3 were different.

Frozen, Alpine and Polar already makes for a nice little collection of "ice planet" maps. Add one more and you have a decent ice planet set.

Now imagine if you had those little collections for each terrain type and voted for that terrain type instead of specific map, you know you're going to the "ice planet" or the "crimson city" or "mordor" but you don't know which part of it you'll end up playing.

This would be even more relevant for a future planetary terrain type in CW.

Edited by Sjorpha, 28 January 2016 - 04:24 AM.

[Varvar86]

I love to see how Polar highlands make people think about how limited older maps are. No central hot-points and "leading to the center" terrain obstacles make players think more. We definitely need and update of old maps.

[GrimRiver]

You pretty much nailed in on the head with everything, except terribad therma it's the worst map I ever played ever.

It promotes bad PUG play due to magnet center that NOBODY ever pushes and hangs at doorway, inviso walls that take 90% of shots and super high heat that even melts some AC builds and some super high angles that punishes mechs with ST/CT mounted weapons.

It's only redeeming quality is it looks cool(no pun intended).

I wish it was removed outright.

[XX Sulla XX]

GrimRiver, on 28 January 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

You pretty much nailed in on the head with everything, except terribad therma it's the worst map I ever played ever.

It promotes bad PUG play due to magnet center that NOBODY ever pushes and hangs at doorway, inviso walls that take 90% of shots and super high heat that even melts some AC builds and some super high angles that punishes mechs with ST/CT mounted weapons.

It's only redeeming quality is it looks cool(no pun intended).

I wish it was removed outright.

I think Terra Therma could be made to work. Its just the terrible central feature that hurts it. I would rather the center be open and low.

[GrimRiver]

XX Sulla XX, on 28 January 2016 - 06:55 AM, said:

I think Terra Therma could be made to work. Its just the terrible central feature that hurts it. I would rather the center be open and low.

If the center was made open and low then I can most definitely deal with it, but as it stands now...I try my hardest to avoid that map, even by racking up a 10x to vote against it if I can manage it.

I don't like doing it either because somebody put work into that map for other to enjoy.

[XX Sulla XX]

GrimRiver, on 28 January 2016 - 07:01 AM, said:

If the center was made open and low then I can most definitely deal with it, but as it stands now...I try my hardest to avoid that map, even by racking up a 10x to vote against it if I can manage it.

I don't like doing it either because somebody put work into that map for other to enjoy.

Yes some one put a lot of hard work in to that map and really all maps. I think they just need people that understand map design a bit better.

[Blhurr]

Highlands is perfect. It is exactly what the meta and the game itself needed. Now there is some risk to going 100% close range loadout. It encourages players to take mixed range platforms to account for the mixed range maps that are available. You can still specialize but you better hope your team has enough mixed range to cover your specialization or you are disadvantaged. Most of my highlands play throughs end in a brawl. Still good to have close range at mid to late game.

I have already seen the playerbase adjust their thinking so that the map plays just fine if long range plays long to start and you close the range when you have the advantage. The team with sufficient mix range of tech and skill to use it wins.

It is also probably the only map where recon really matters. There is sufficient space to scout, redirect main force and get away without dying immediately for your efforts. It's the only map whatsoever where 1k plus weapon tech has a role. That's refreshing.

This map is the only map that has forced me to respec a good number of my stable mechs thereby reinvigorating the game overall.

Edited by Blhurr, 28 January 2016 - 07:34 AM.

[Jables McBarty]

Wow, lots of great ideas here

Sjorpha, on 28 January 2016 - 04:22 AM, said:

Now imagine if you had those little collections for each terrain type and voted for that terrain type instead of specific map, you know you're going to the "ice planet" or the "crimson city" or "mordor" but you don't know which part of it you'll end up playing.

Yes Please!

Lykaon, on 28 January 2016 - 03:58 AM, said:

Caustic Valley seems fine if a bit under sized. Perhaps widening the entire map circumfrance by a square and pushing all the objectives and spawns (keeping theta center) out into the newly created squares will eleviate some of the center focus of this map.

This got me thinking--it' be interesting to expand the map by two squares, but only on one hemisphere. This puts the volcano off-center. Teams would spawn equidistant from the volcano, and could rush for it, but wouldn't be required to? I personally like this map as it is, but once this off-center center idea occurred to me I had to write it. Maybe do this for Alpine, where the central feature causes more complaint (though after about 10-20 games on it I learned that the hill is not as dominant as it seems--just have someone lay down covering fire from G6 while the rest of the team pushes G8>H9)

On the whole I like PH. It encourages map and positional awareness (out of position = dead) though if you get Narc'd you are done for. Not even worth running. But I like that it encourages more role warfare with scouts foraging ahead; also there's not much more walking than in other larger maps--in FC or RC you spend several minutes walking TO your team. In PH you spawn together so you spend several minutes walking WITH your team.

I think Canyon feels big even though it isn't. I'd leave that and Mining Collective for last to update.

My big complaint is Frozen City (mostly because it's most-picked for me). Right now the spawnpoints force Assault Lance engagements in the B4/C5 intersection, and while you could mix up the action a bit with spawnpoint changes, the map itself is too small to do much. Some people really like it because it's one of the few places where you really get to play amongst buldings--River City is usually a sniping game across the river, and Crimson Strait a brawl in the underpass--so rather than add more canyons like Lycaon suggests I'd like to see an overall increase of the current size. That gets us a better Frozen City and a newer urban terrain to fight in.

Also Viridian Bog is way too small for the play style it encourages. I like the brawliness of it, but want to see a few more lanes where you can choose to try to flank your opponents.

Cross-posting these discussions where spawnpoint changes are suggested to change map balance on Alpine Peaks and Forest Colony.
https://mwomercs.com...ate-discussion/
https://mwomercs.com...pawn-locations/

I'd like to see Viridian and Frozen City expanded to make more engagement options--spawnpoint updates won't change their restricted playstyle. AP and FC need the spawnpoint changes to compensate for feature-specific and location-specific gameplay, possibly this could make Crimson more interesting too. Otherwise I think the rest of the maps are pretty much good as-is and would rather see new maps than updates to existing ones.

[pyrocomp]

Jables McBarty, on 28 January 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

Wow, lots of great ideas here
On the whole I like PH. It encourages map and positional awareness (out of position = dead) though if you get Narc'd you are done for. Not even worth running.

Haven't yet tried that stunt but people claim that powering down affects narc, e.g. it is still active but do not broadcast. In case that is right you can significantly reduce incoming damage just to some volleys. Well at the cost of being sitting duck.