62 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

People tend to prefer visibility and decent layouts over temperature, but as a sheer coincidence the cold maps tend to offer better visibility and layouts much of the time. Cancer Valley and Mordor, for example, have absolutely atrocious visibility, Cancer Valley has a layout that makes Nascar even more cancerous than it normally is, etc.

You'll see that Tourmaline and Oasis tend to get voted a decent amount, because unlike CV and Mordor, they aren't steamy piles of garbage.

[Barkem Squirrel]

One word
HEAT!
The other thing is laser vomit and many UAC's firing almost like a macro.
Your SRM bombers some times get hot and they are more open maps also, so some people will not chose those due to LRMs.

[Luminis]

Mechs with lots of DHS actually do well on hot maps. Try getting a 5 UAC4 Anni to cool down on Rubelite and you'll see.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Do faction play.
No democracy so problem solved on map diversity.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Good hot maps like Tourmaline and Rubelite are voted for quite frequently.

Old Terra Therma was a *********** of a chokepoint. New Terra Therma is a *********** of a chokepoint, but the overhead map is so awful that you can't actually identify any terrain from it and just have to have the whole thing memorized.

Averen, on 25 May 2018 - 02:24 AM, said:

IMO caustic is a fine map. Don't get why people got a problem with it, was fairly popular a few years ago.

The current layout and spawn locations heavily encourage caldera nascars. On top of that the bad visibility, heat, and poor sightlines in the center all hurt long-range alphawarrior builds.

[Bud Crue]

Hmmm...my experience is more mixed than the OPs; at least from the perspective of playing only group queue:

While certainly the most popular map (from a frequency as well as a preponderance of the votes it gets) is a cold map in the form of HPG, right up there popularity-wise, is a heat neutral map in the form of Mining Collective, followed by the fairly hot map of Canyon Network.

Next most popular is another heat neutral map: Crimson, and then the cold map of Grim Plexus. Again though, right up there in popularity are the toasty maps of Tourmaline and Rubelite.

The next set of maps that I see picked with some frequency are admittedly all cold maps, but which in hindsight of each match seem more often than not picked in a concerted effort to LRM troll (polar) or a large group running a sniper/piranha theme (Frozen Domination or Alpine). Caustic (hot) comes next and it seems like it gets picked a lot when the groups are large (and thus running light) to take advantage of the nascar potential.

The rest of the maps (and I’ll put Caustic down here too) seem to be selected as a consequence of “least bad map out of a selection of bad maps” and is closer to random as they all seem to get grouped together with River (neutral) nearly always wining, then Caustic (if no big groups are on) then Bog (hot), then Forest (neutral), then Terra (hot).

I would have thought Solaris would have been high on the poularity chart, but so far it seems to get picked rarely even with the event going on. Not sure why, maybe all the supposed new players not liking it form LRMs or maybe the much discussed poor performance of the map on some folks’ machines. Got to give it some time.

To my way of thinking I suspect maps are popular not for what they provide in terms of heat or cold affects but rather the variety of play and play styles that they make viable (E.g. Forest, Terra, and to a slightly lesser extent Bog, all suck for everything as there are few clear firing lanes for trading, and brawling relies on NASCAR or peak and poke around a couple of key points and thus the games are almost always the same and that sucks), their size (smaller is more popular than larger as you get to start shooting things sooner), and clarity (face facts...pretty maps, or maps with environmental “flavor” take a back seat to being able to see your target).

In any case, a map being hot or cold seems a pretty secondary concern, if not mostly irrelevant to its popularity, at least in group queue.

[LordNothing]

i had a fairly recent game (within the last month) where to deal with all the campy lermy maps i got my ppc warhawk out of mothballs. of course the first map to come up after that was terra therma. i end up getting an absurd amount of damage and 3 kills. turns out that build, which is essentially a walking heat sink, does not really care how hot the map is.

the thing people dont realize about heat is that it effects the other team as well. so it pretty much comes down to what team has better heat management skills. any player who would vote against a hot map must really doubt their heat-fu.

[Bud Crue]

Also:

8HML Nova. Right at home.

[Spare Parts Bin]

Crimson Straights, Viridan Bog,Solaris City,Frozen City,Rubellite Oasis are great maps. I like most maps excluding Polar Highlands. Ambient air temperature is only one piece of a large complex puzzle. Terrain placement and how it lends itself to the weapons meta and current tactics of Quick Play players is the largest portion. People love LRM or Guass friendly maps, they love nascaring.

Hope this helps.

[Flutterguy]

LordNothing, on 25 May 2018 - 03:53 AM, said:

the thing people dont realize about heat is that it effects the other team as well. so it pretty much comes down to what team has better heat management skills. any player who would vote against a hot map must really doubt their heat-fu.

The counterpoint to that is when voting you only know what loadout you have and not what anyone else has. I tend to run very cool loadouts and rarely vote Terra Therma because it sucks, but if anyone votes TT because they think their heat-fu with laser vomit will win out they are just screwing themselves.

[MTier Slayed Up]

Because Terra is a dark/red blended mess that scars the retina. Seriously, I can't see wiener on that map.
Caustic I avoid for quickplay shoes-for-brains that want to nascar the entire match...Though this is more of map design flaw.


That isn't to say I'll avoid maps like Polar LRM lands or LRM Peaks.

Some maps are generally not fun to drop on.

[Athom83]

Khobai, on 25 May 2018 - 12:19 AM, said:

because democracy fails.

if they got rid of map voting then all maps would appear in the rotation an equal number of times. which is exactly how it should be.

*Flashbacks to when "random" maps would put me on the same map 7+ times in a row*

[Weeny Machine]

Two reasons:
1. L4z0r b04tz!!! Spam, spam, spam lolololol
2. Trump hates hot maps...(unless there is oil)

[Necroledo]

DrtyDshSoap, on 25 May 2018 - 04:18 AM, said:

Because Terra is a dark/red blended mess that scars the retina. Seriously, I can't see wiener on that map.
Caustic I avoid for quickplay shoes-for-brains that want to nascar the entire match...Though this is more of map design flaw.


That isn't to say I'll avoid maps like Polar LRM lands or LRM Peaks.

Some maps are generally not fun to drop on.

That's an interesting point. My personal experience is that I don't usually have much trouble picking out mechs in "messy" maps such as Terra Therma, Caustic Valley or Viridian Bog, but maybe it's just a matter of eyesight and screen specs/configuration: I can understand we might have different experiences due to differences in these. In addition, I kind of enjoy the added challenge of fighting in a messy environment over a "simple" urban one.

Agree on the nascar; it's one of the things I least enjoy when they happen. Although I believe that if an organized and/or communicative team is aware that the enemy team is preparing for nascar, they will be able to react and reposition themselves into a more advantageous position. About nascar and Caustic Valley, I wonder if having a field of volcanic chimneys and/or large rocks around the center caldera could help against nascar, since line of sight would be often cut and players would have to maneuver around them.

Edited by Necroledo, 25 May 2018 - 05:28 AM.

[process]

FupDup, on 25 May 2018 - 03:15 AM, said:

People tend to prefer visibility and decent layouts over temperature, but as a sheer coincidence the cold maps tend to offer better visibility and layouts much of the time. Cancer Valley and Mordor, for example, have absolutely atrocious visibility, Cancer Valley has a layout that makes Nascar even more cancerous than it normally is, etc.

You'll see that Tourmaline and Oasis tend to get voted a decent amount, because unlike CV and Mordor, they aren't steamy piles of garbage.

Precisely this. Throw in River City and Forest Colony onto the trash pile too.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

People seemingly vote for cold maps more over hot maps not because of the heat, but because of the map layout, explaining why tourmaline gets picked rather often while places like alpine peaks are more rare. People tend to hate caustic valley because of its big central ring that supports NASCARing around the map indefinitely. Terra Therma used to also have a big central area that people didn't enjoy, but now is a bit different but still has some biases against it.

Laser builds are actually relatively better on hot maps rather than cold maps due to their high heatsink count, meaning that they lose a much lower percentage of their cooling than a low heatsink build. For example, if the map has 0.5 heat generation and your mech only has the base 10 heatsinks then you lose 25% of your cooling, meanwhile a high alpha build with many more heatsinks is likely losing only around 10% of his.

Many people like to assume that its just people who are bad at heat management and high alpha laser build players avoiding these maps, but the facts don't line up.

[VonBruinwald]

It boil down to three things:

Heat management - They can't manage their heat levels because they're play style is based around...
Alpha strikes - Which involves maximum damage in the shortest time frame and coincidentally maximum heat in that same period. This is typically compounded by sacrificing heat-sinks for more alpha, and becomes more apparent by their...
Lack of skill - to manage their heat levels by chain-firing, weapon grouping or patience when under pressure to cool off.

Of course, many of the players who fall under this umbrella will find any other excuse to justify not voting for hotter maps with the go to being map design/performance rather than admitting they need to improve. Much in the same way people will run Clan-Tech and simultaneously claim it is inferior despite it being superior as a whole (the exception being a few over-quirked mechs on the IS side).

[Nyte Kitsune]

As many have said here, the primary reason people avoid the maps the OP mentioned is HEAT. Lots of the meta players use laser vomit. Lasers are hot and a hot map plus lasers = dead mech. Though some, like myself can manage our heat better than others. I took my 4 ER Lg, 4 Lt MG Rifleman into Terra Therma and did quite well (3-5 kills and like 600+ damage, was I hot, yes, yes I was, but I managed to not over heat and shut down and somehow managed to keep from getting killed, though my armor did get a little thin in a few places.

Some here would say half jokingly "Git gud!" and though true, many either can't or choose not to manage their heat and rely very heavily on Alpha Strike Builds, which on a hot map is pretty much a death sentence. In all honesty I think PGI needs to penalize those who "Alpha Strike" more heavily, 1x You shut down, 2x time Damage internal structure, 3x Mech explodes. I Battletech (yes, I know, this isn't Battletech) A mech that alpha stiked as often as player do here would have killed the mech after 2-3 times.. once if a Nova or Supernova tried it. Believe me, I tried it in Battletech and the older Mechwarrior games, those 2 would instantly die if you tried to Alpha with either of them.

Sadly PGI was overly generous with Alpha Strikes and allow players to Alpha 2-5 times before it kills you mech (If fired in succession) which is silly, An alpha strike is meant as a last resort, not a normal method of attack, though with certain builds it can still work, AC's, Gauss, Sm Lasers, but hotter weapons like PPC's, Lg and Med Lasers, Boated and alpha'd should be a last resort to fire them at once where the alpha can turn the tide at the expense of heavy damage or destruction of your own mech.

[Alan Hicks]

Energy weapon users may avoid some hot maps some times but not all of them. If using an energy or high heat build, you just chain fire and rarely use the hated laser vomit.

So, people should not be avoiding hot maps but only preferring convenient temperature normal or cold ones.

Personally I do not care about the map heat, just the layout and how it plays, if its bad I would rarely or NEVER select it (cough cough Viridian Bog, RIP. So pleased you might see a ghost first than that annoying one.)

[VonBruinwald]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 25 May 2018 - 05:48 AM, said:

People tend to hate caustic valley because of its big central ring that supports NASCARing around the map indefinitely. Terra Therma used to also have a big central area that people didn't enjoy...

So what's with the love of HPG?