3 replies to this topic

[Serpentine Shel Serpentine]

I love the game but it seems odd that I'm this entire fictional galaxy at war there are only a handful of planets where the battles are fought and always in the same locale. I realize MWO is not meant to be an immersive MMRPG like Eve Online or other open world space simulations. But a little bit of inmersiveness and randomness would be nice. This sort of random generation has been done in other games and would add variety as well as "even the playing field" a bit for new players who don't know the current maps in detail. You could have as an option designed maps onlymor
Randomly generated maps only. Thanks.

[Generic Internetter]

1. Don't namedrop other games. Your point isn't wrong, it just doesn't go down well when people think you're trying to make MWO imitate another game.

2. PGI are notorious for focusing on what brings in the bacon: NEW MECHS. New maps and fixing the ridiculous reticule colours doesn't earn them any MC or real-life cash.
This, again, doesn't make your point wrong, just keep in mind it is unlikely to happen.

3. In many competitive shooters, the maps are handcrafted with careful consideration of angles, approaches, timing, etc.
PGI likes to pretend by releasing half-broken maps and letting the community field test them for a year or two until they can be perfected. The old Frozen City, Alpine, V-Bog all sucked until the community spoke out.
PGI are unlikely to go leaps and bounds above and beyond the established norm just to provide innovative and enthralling gameplay for the community. Nope... If CS:GO can thrive with the same dozen-or-so competitive handcrafted maps, then so can MWO.

4. If PGI really wanted to venture into the world of procedural generation, they could produce a tiling system that joins maps gridsquares together, instead of fluidly creating vertex maps and meshes. Having large pre-fab squares makes it much easier to re-use. This would be a very pleasant compromise, even if the key squares (such as capture points) are fixed.

If they put their mind to it, they could make some truly amazing semi-procedural maps which would most definitely give a much better feel for the gameplay, having to actually explore a planet you just landed on instead of memorizing the angles.

So yeah, thumbs up for your idea, but don't hold your breath.

[Serpentine Shel Serpentine]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments .. I'm glad I'm not alone in wishing for this. I get your economic points and agree with your idea of tile-based maps. Certainly that would be superior to the small selection we have now and would avoid randomly generated unplayable or very bad maps. I agree that some may not want the variety at the expense of "handcrafted" quality or competitive play, which is why I think giving players the option to choose from either pool would be a good idea. PGI could also monetize the maps by charging MC/Cbills to unlock them but that creates matchmaking problems, obviously, until you reach a critical mass of subscribers to the maps. However increasing long term playability ought to be a sufficient incentive, since it would make the game more enticing over the long haul for a certain sort of player. Similar additions would be RPG-style pilot customization, leveling and characterzation, more granulated than the tier and unit system, which I like.

If quality and playability of maps is the main concern, I feel that even just building up to about 30 or more maps using AI-assisted map creation which is then curated and finished by PGI, would provide a more immersive and expansive experience. Without mentioning other games or other developers, I think that such technology exists "off the shelf" and could probably be licensed.

[Nesutizale]

I think new maps and gamemodes are a longtime investment. With nothing new to the table games tend to stall, then fall slowly.
So it should be in PGIs own interest to keep the game fresh. We kinda see this in advancing the timeline.
This will keep the game fresh for about a year I would say. Then people will be used to them and the meta is kinda fixed...except there is some major nerfing.
A healthy mix of shortterm (Mech sales) and longterm goals (Maps, Modes, weapons) need to be done to keep the game interesting.

On a side note: One time for TT I used googlemaps and recreated the district my friends life in as a map. What a fun when they finaly realised that they just smashed their own house

As for procedural maps...I think you could use them as a base layout. Then you go in and handcraft some stuff.
I am partial torn between "realisticly not every battlefield is ideal" and "this is a game you have to balance it".
Personaly I would say lets try it. Create some "realistic" maps and lets see if its still fun and if people will come up with a tactic to play them.

For QP I see little trouble with that. People are mostly random with random loadouts and the attitude of "ta...tac...what?"
For FW this might be a problem. They heavly rely on knowing where the best approach is, how to block it and so on.

About complete randomized maps...that I think will be very hard to do as you would need a program that recognizes what kind of envvoirment can be put together (city and swamp don't mix well for example) and if there is clipping in geometrie and so on.
I highly doubt that PGI can pull that off. CIG currently kinda works on something like that and when they are done I would love it when PGI nocks at their doors and ask for the planet generator so we can have real planetary warfare but that is more of a dream then anywhere close to becomeing a real thing.
I mean just imagne a complete planet you can walk one time around with player dependent fronts, fortresses, spaceports...*starts to drool on keyboard* I think you get it

Anyway I still think that more maps will help PGI in the long run to keep MWO alive.

Edited by Nesutizale, 09 May 2017 - 02:20 AM.