26 replies to this topic

[Red Shrike]

If anything, at least make the FP maps huge. And with huge I mean Polar Highlands but potentially bigger without forcing everyone in 200 meters or less engagements.

[CygnusX7]

This thread has me thinking about the original forest colony.. Kind of miss that little playground.

[Agent of Change]

So this thread was brought to my attention in a side discussion. And i know i'm necroing an old thread but fact is the OP made come great points and my hot take is that I believe that Polar heights might actually be the best map in MWO.

It's scale is such that it feels like being a Mech in a realistic environment. It has enough terrain variation to allow move under cover and allows for both long and short range engagements. maneuver is possible, it's a more 'open' design that doesn't particularly funnel players into hot spots.

It just seems we should look at map design and mission design a bit more because both of those things could go a long way to combat 'balling' and every match being more or less a clone of the last, fighting in teh same places with the same tactics everytime.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

Polar is perhaps the best designed map they have to replicate actual fluid combat. We need more like it. Sprawling hills of the British Isles, the deserts around Cairo and the Pyramids, an actual Tukayyid map, which would mostly be bridged rivers, hills forests. Lots of inspiration in the novels. I do feel we need more of the actual battlefields, especially Terra.

[SCCOJake]

I think the reason Polar is such a good map is because it doesn't force or restrict any build types and given a half decent team you can run almost any tactics you want. The terrain variation is the key to this. The shallow channels that run across the map allow mechs to advance without being spotted for the most part, but they also force a team to stay in the low ground if they don't want to be spotted. This means they can be ambushed if they aren't running flankers/scouts. You can stand back and LRM to your hearts content yes, and that can be annoying, but a couple of decent ECM mechs can really tamp that down a lot.

I would argue that just reskinning the map for different environments might almost be enough to improve overall game play. A temperate version with pockets of trees (normal sized trees not the 100,000 foot monsters on Forest Colony). This could give light mechs a unique opportunity if they were allowed to advance without being spotted and offering new areas to hide, even "in plain sight"

I think a little more terrain variation might be needed, but on the whole its a map that feels like it could be real and that you are driving a giant battlemech, and not just playing literally any other FPS in a tight confined space.

[JediPanther]

Canyon network is my favorite map simply because it has less space and less objects to render so my fps and game play is slightly better. When you got a fast mech with jump jets canyon has a lot of options other than pride rock. Alpine can have good battles when you can get the zombies that are qp pugs to actually follow to a new scary place on the map they don't even know is there. D8 has three very hard inclines for choke points but take a while to navigate without jump jets. Then you can always fight on radio tower and the h 10 mountain because no one remembers the counter grids to them any more.

[Requiemking]

For me, it varies based on what mech I'm running. For brawlers and pit fighters I prefer the likes of Canyon Network. For Light running either Polar or Viridian.