79 replies to this topic

[Mechwarrior1441491]

Maker L106, on 22 July 2017 - 07:01 PM, said:

You know what Polar Highlands doesn't have? Trees... Tress for ******* millenia. I'd rather be doomed to play Polar for the rest of my goddamn career as a MWO player then ever set foot back into Bog or Forest Colony. I might not be the best player, I might not even be "good" but I'd at least like to be able to see the things shooting me in a game with 50 ft tall mechs and thermal / nvg modes... Between the clutter that is Bog and the "wtf clutter that is Forest colony I do not understand the vitriol for the maps that don't face **** you with trees.

I dislike HPG due to its basic meta, but its a hell of a lot better than the two greenery maps. Forest would be good if they brought in the deforestation committee to clear things up. Bog, same thing minus some of the vertical cover placed therein.
But no **** that, Polar Highlands, the map with clear sight nearly 100% of the time, minus the negative space in the trenches and hills for cover... That's gotta go. wtf.

I have come to the conclusion that people who talk crap about Polar have coming straight from checkers or Candyland and have very little experience in actual games.

[chucklesMuch]

I don't mind polar, and depending on the game type I really like it.

Ie Conquest I find really enjoyable on both polar (and alpine), domination not so much... unless CW/FP.

[ocular tb]

chucklesMuch, on 22 July 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

I don't mind polar, and depending on the game type I really like it.

Ie Conquest I find really enjoyable on both polar (and alpine), domination not so much... unless CW/FP.

I don't like the map overall, but I do agree some modes can make it much better to play on such as Conquest being more enjoyable than Domination. I probably wouldn't mind Polar as much if it didn't get played so darn often.

And having just gotten out of a match on Terra Therma, I have to say that map irks me more than Polar Highlands. Ugh...that map....

[Maker L106]

ocular tb, on 22 July 2017 - 09:55 PM, said:

I don't like the map overall, but I do agree some modes can make it much better to play on such as Conquest being more enjoyable than Domination. I probably wouldn't mind Polar as much if it didn't get played so darn often.

And having just gotten out of a match on Terra Therma, I have to say that map irks me more than Polar Highlands. Ugh...that map....

As terrible as it sounds, i'd like old therma back. The new ones not as bad as some but the older one IMO played out a lot better.

[AssaultPig]

polar is a bad map; it's way too featureless which makes playing it repetitive and boring, and the terrain is way too favorable to long-range poking

[Mechwarrior1441491]

If it's favorable to long range poking, how do my lances always manage to use the trenches to work our way up to their line or even get behind them?

Not every environ should be covered with clutter which barely let our mechs maneuver. Heck, on Bog, I'm curious why any Commander would send in troops to oppose enemy in that mess. Let them hump around in muck and wait for them to come out.

Not sure why people are afraid of realistic battlefields that encourage fluid combat.

We deserve an actual Lunarscape and possibly some grassy plains. I'd prefer a set of Terran Maps. I'm sure we'd all like the outskirts of Cairo, Desert and Pyramids.

A stalingrad style Battlemech facility would be great. River city touches on it, but not enough.

Edited by Mechwarrior1441491, 23 July 2017 - 05:49 PM.

[Vellron2005]

MrMadguy, on 22 July 2017 - 04:09 AM, said:

I don't play this game very often, but new tech is something, I would want to try. Collected some MCs during previous event. I've been wanting to buy Top Dog for a long time already - just have been waiting for sale. So here is sale and I've bought it. Ok.

Then I saw FP event. I haven't been playing FP for a long time already due to obvious reason - it was terrible. Boring maps, unbalanced modes, no matchmaker, IS, being much weaker, than Clans. But now, when we have QP modes in it, it should be much better. So I decided to give it a try.

And guess, what happened? Yeah, very first match - Polar Highlands Assault. My 'Mechs weren't brawlers this time, no, nothing to complain about. They all had around 700m of effective range. But this map is simply unplayble. You try to hit somebody, but enemies just stand in a line and shoot at you via ER-PPCs/ER-LLs all at once, like at shooting gallery, and at exact moment, when any enemy player spots you - LRM rain starts from around 4-5 'Mechs at once, that simply one-shots you within split second, even if you try to use cover.

Almost all 'Mechs were lost without doing any significant damage - second was lost without doing any damage at all. Just waste of time. So I even decided to ragequit at that point, but reconnected soon after, cuz one of my 'Mechs had broken loadout and I needed to fix it anyway, but this 'Mech was locked in match.

Result? I will never try to play FP again. NEVER. Thx PGI for great "new player experience". PGI is best at providing worst possible match, as first match of the day or even of whole career, that just instantly drives players away from this game.

Hahahahahahahaa... here's a great example of not applying that good old "Adapt, survive, thrive" Clan Wolf motto.

Sorry, but I'm not sorry for LRMing you.. Next time, bring a mixed build, or use a better strategy. Polar has plenty of cover if you know how to use it, and plenty of ways to counter LRM boats (I play one, so I know my weaknesses). True, it's difficult if you have a bunch of potatoes that don't listen to good plans, but hey, you just chalk that match as a loss and play again..

Saying "Never again" is just a childish way of not dealing with your problems, or more so, dealing with them by sweeping them under the rug.

Grow up.

Adapt, survive, thrive.

[Lily from animove]

Pariah Devalis, on 22 July 2017 - 04:17 AM, said:

So you managed to avoid all the negative terrain cover to break line of sight, wandered into open firing lanes, got nuked because of your failure to utilize the low ground and smart approaches, did the exact same thing four times in a row,and are blaming PGI for poor map design?

I'd get it if you took nothing but brawlers and were complaining about how difficult it can be to use them on that map. It can be a little frustrating. However, Polar is a great map with plenty of cover, if you don't b-line it directly at the enemy. There are low ground paths that let you totally avoid skylining yourself. Even if an enemy got missile lock on you, it isn't like you need to buy a module anymore for radar deprivation, which neuters LRM platforms the moment you break LOS.

I see this complaint a LOT. People whining about perfectly valid maps because they take a shallow approach to movement on the map. For example, people saying Frozen City isn't a map you can brawl in, when all they need to do to brawl there is just stay the hell out of the valley in the center. Change how you consider moving on the map (both that and Polar), and new options open up.

sounds like Protatoe gaming XD

I can seriously not undertsnad how people active in the forums still complain like this about polar even after we tried to explain them like 10+ times HOW and WHERE to do this map. Its like they don't wanna try and just keep going with their daily professional potatoe gaming.

Edited by Lily from animove, 24 July 2017 - 03:42 AM.

[Insanity09]

Although I don't really care for Polar, it has it's merits. I can't see eliminating it as a good move.

With a halfway acceptable team, and good use of terrain, most mechs and builds can do okay. Yes, it does favor certain builds and mechs over others (LRMs & high mounted long range, for two), but most maps do.

However, there is one map that stands out to me as massively favoring certain builds and cruelly punishing all others.
Alpine. Go long or go home.

Except for long range builds (and I mean 1KM+ range builds), the map is far, far too open I have found myself longing for an eject button in some QP matches when I've got a slower (say, less than 90kph) shorter range build.
While it is possible to go around and maybe, maybe, get close, that is, practically speaking, not feasible for most mechs (anything on the slower side), and it depends highly on no enemies happening to look in your direction while you do it. Or with a good team giving you cover while you close distance it might still work, but I had a hard time typing that without laughing wryly.

Maps favoring certain builds/mechs is fine, but they should all offer some scope for everything. Alpine doesn't.

Picture a match down to a slow short-mid range build, with a faster longer range build on the other. On most maps, there could possibly be hope for the slow mech, find a decently covered area, a trench, something and it would be possible to pull a victory; on Alpine, if the fast mech is at all smart, you'll never be able to touch it, auto-lose.

[B0oN]

PGI, hear my desperate plea :

FIX THE PLAYERS PLEASE !

[ocular tb]

Maker L106, on 23 July 2017 - 04:32 PM, said:

As terrible as it sounds, i'd like old therma back. The new ones not as bad as some but the older one IMO played out a lot better.

I'd like the old version back too. It wasn't my favorite map but I never thought it was as bad as people made it out to be. Not sure why all the hate for it. But now we got a worse version (in my opinion of course) that gets played even less than the original. Apparently the new version isn't any more liked than the original- and I'd even wager that it's less liked but we're stuck with it and the original is gone

Bring back all the old maps (new River City is probably fine but I'd be okay with the originals of those too!) and make map selection random that way they all can get more equal play time.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

George Armstrong Custer hated the "Little Big Horn " map ...bad Indian-Clan Experience of the Map

Its give very Bad designed ideas in the maps ,Spawnpoints in Alpine near L9 against Hills to shot from above ,Spawnpoints and Bases in Crater like Incursion Tourmaline or the Wall/Building blocked Spawn in Crimson bei the Railway stations

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 24 July 2017 - 02:42 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Maker L106, on 23 July 2017 - 04:32 PM, said:

As terrible as it sounds, i'd like old therma back. The new ones not as bad as some but the older one IMO played out a lot better.

not terrible i can totally understand it - I hated Terra Therma for a long time until i realized it was the best Conquest map out there.

[ocular tb]

Karl Streiger, on 24 July 2017 - 02:15 AM, said:

not terrible i can totally understand it - I hated Terra Therma for a long time until i realized it was the best Conquest map out there.

Conquest was fun indeed. I actually think in hindsight it had a lot of merits overall. I liked how you could break off from the main group and get into smaller skirmishes and with all the high terrain you didn't have enemy LRM interference like you might encounter on a more open map like Polar. It had decent visibility, places where both long and short ranged weapons were good, didn't have a bunch of ground clutter to get caught up on (there was some but not as much as the new one), and most of the paths were wide enough to move around others comfortably. And since there was a lot of ways to get around the map, you rarely seen those long, drawn-out long range pokefests you typically see on the new Frozen City.

My crusade is to get the old maps back. I miss them the most out of anything in this game.

[LowSubmarino]

Polar is a great map.

There is LOS-cover but there isnt a lot of effective physical cover vs eg LRMs.

To stand a chance against a mediocre or semi good or even good team it is important to understand a few things in mwo which most average pug players dont really understand.

Your real cover on such a map where you are basically exposed as soon as someone can get a lock on you is a team with lights and mediums on the flanks and in your back and also up in the front that covers the slow, fat mechs vs spotters and especially vs UAVs. Which will rain down terror and estruction on your head and end you if a team ignores both of these features and tactics in mwo.

If your team is a standarf QUICKPLAY-pug team that wanders about aimlessly in a nascar train it will get hammered to death by a thousand little locosts and lights or spotters in general that just stand a few hundred meters away to the side of your blind, stumbing nascar train and stares you down.

Looks at you and your doods, gets solid locks and you will taste explosive terror raining down on you.

To counter that a team needs members that understand this specific concept.

The team itself provides LOS-, ECM and Fire-/Supressing-Cover. They need to understand their roles and how to cover each other and how to use terrain or they will die as soon as the opposing team has a little more skill than an AI-Bot-Team from one of the first pc games multiple decades ago. Theyll crumble.

Lrms are so effective in QP games because the most popular strategies center around blind, stretched out, mindless, terrain and cover ignoring nascar trains that have only one aim.

Find and engage exposed enemy mechs that have their back faced towards you as soon as possible to get quick, easy kills and also to just shoot your stuff and kill stuff as fast as possible.

All other aspects, strategies and elements are completly neglected.

If you compare mwo to other standard shooters, the defensive and offensive abilities of the various weight classes and mechs allow for a pretty deep and complex amount of strategies.

A good team that faces another good team will crush the opposiition if they have one good spotter which the other team does not have.

If two other teams are basically on the same level apart from one team fielding two dedicated players that constantly and nonstop scan for uavs and take them down in nanoseconds, guess which team will destroy the other team.

If two teams are roughly on the same level in terms of an understanding of formation, movement and aim skills, but one team has several players that dont unerstand how sucidial silhouetting really ist, the team that does not brainlessly silhouett will win in such an overhwelming way, that it seems they were playing 12 infants that were born 2 hours ago.

Silhouetting is the one thing that brutalizes a lot of players in every single game.

I see a lot of names I see all the time. Players I might have seen for years already. Some legendary founders, ppl that I have seen field many different mechs etc. etc.

Those players could prolly blindly navigate many of the maps.

And yet, I see how they approach parts of the map where it is highly likely they are standing right in fron of the entire enmy team. Just one ridge, one hill or one corner is separating them from a 100000000000 alpha right in their faces.

And yet they stumble right on top of the ridge and get shredded in nanoseconds.

Because just like the necessary cover that a team must provide vs spotters and also uavs, this is an ascpect that most mwo players I see in QP dont understand.

You will melt instantly if you go ontop of a ridge when it is very likely that many enemy mehcs will have clear LOS on you. Or you peek around a corner wich anything that is slower than a shadowcat with ecm on masc steroids or a locust and you will get instantly crippled or killed.

Yet I see even players I have seen for a long time constantly do that.

The players in mwo are more arcade players and dont like to pay attention to their surroundings.

A team that unerstands those concepts and plays accordingly will destroy basically any other team out there except half a handful of teams that understand those things too.

Polar is a great map.

But it is unforgiving when it comes to the arcade nascar - playstyle of most mwo pug players. If you stumble about aimlessly on polar youll get massacred. Again and again.

On other mechs like river sicty of canyon or mining or also frozen city and other maps you can be spotted and you can have an army of uavs hovering right above your head. Thousands of lrms come your way but you can just stay somewhat close to cover and step behind a building or hill or something else.

On Polar this wont work. If you are in range and nobody covers vs spotters or uavs....you are dead.

its not the map. The map is great. One of the few real sniper friendly maps and one of the few maps where it is absolutely emphasized that you wont stand a chance vs anything but the most ineffective and skillless arcade kiddy nascar team if you ignore team play, ignore los-spotter-cover, ignore uav cover, ignore terrain.

That simply wont work on Polar.

But seriuosly.

If there is a uav device over your head or something as advanced as a battlemech has its sensors locked right in your ***, what do you think should be the consequences?

I mean....of course you, your mech, your mothers hopes for you and everyhting you had planned for your life will end right then and there.

If you and your team simply and stoically ignore that those things are real solid threads then its you and your teams fault you get massacred. Not the maps fault. The map just allows all those features to be followed by the full blast of consequences, should a team choose to ignore them.

A team that covers the flanks and backs vs spotters and shoots down uavs immeditaly is perfectly imune to 99,9999999 % of all lrms fired their way.

And a team that doesnt single file and individually silhouette vs 100 ac 20s and a kazillion gauss and ppcs but instead pushes over the ridge simultaneously and with a wide firing line, will kill an lrm heavy team so brutally and overhwwelmingly that those players will prolly never again in their lifes reiy on lrms. Knowing full well, that those weapons systems only ever work against the very weakest of the weakest of the QP pug players.

Anybody wilth some skill will take them out with one hand and half asleep while being so drunk that they see 5 screens in fron of them when there should be only one haha.

[SmoothCriminal]

I always enjoy polar - mostly because you always get one or two mechs that forget about whack-a-mole trading and get chewn up easily.

It sounds like you are one of those people.

[sycocys]

Polar is probably my favorite map and I only run SRM/MPL-ML or AC5/10.
1. It's large, not large enough for 12v12 but the best we have gotten so far.
2. Actually has multiple paths that work for the map.
3, All weapons systems work, and really makes you have to learn the map to be good at it.
-- also no hard terrain counters to all combat. They are nice sometimes, but it gets old when that's how every single map has been built.
4. Scouts are actually useful!
5. NO CENTRAL/FIGHT HERE STRUCTURE!!!

If only every map could be as large and open, maybe a little less flat and keep the no forced central fighting points we'd have a pile of pretty fun maps to play on.

Edited by sycocys, 24 July 2017 - 05:41 AM.

[R Valentine]

Try playing an Annihilator on Polar. There isn't a hill tall enough.

[Mystere]

Maker L106, on 23 July 2017 - 04:32 PM, said:

As terrible as it sounds, i'd like old therma back. The new ones not as bad as some but the older one IMO played out a lot better.

No, it does not sound terrible, Removing it from the first place is what's terrible.

[Pariah Devalis]

Mystere, on 24 July 2017 - 07:14 AM, said:

No, it does not sound terrible, Removing it from the first place is what's terrible.

I liked the old TT... except for the center. Everything about that map was fantastic. The art, the colors, the atmosphere. Except for the crater in the center. If they had replaced that crater with more of the hills and volcanoes that stud the rest of the map, it would have been perfect.