ImperialKnight, on 22 March 2019 - 08:34 AM, said:
no one is arguing about having a "right way" to play the map, of course there is. no one is arguing about how to counter LRMs, saying "just close the distance and punch their face in" is easy, when you're not the one getting focused. no one is arguing there are ways to "manage" the map, sure bring ALL your ECM and AMS
But all these does not stop it from being an objectively badly designed map
Actually, they
are arguing about a right way to play the map. They're insisting that the map is so bad that it should not exist - mostly because of LRMs. Another way of phrasing that claim is that the map is so bad that there is no right way to play it other than by slugging it out with Long Range Missiles.
It is this claim that is objectively incorrect - and, equally objectively, you have misunderstood at least some of the objections offered to this position. Hang on, I'll explain.
What myself and others argue is that while situations do exist where your team can get smashed with no counterplay (due to random arrangement of teams and the selection bias of builds brought,) those cases are far more rare than the map's detractors think - and that in most cases the map is well-playable if you use the terrain. Polar Highlands' terrain is a lot like places in the American Great Plains; it
looks flat, but there are dead spaces out there you could move an army through. Polar Highlands doesn't have deep canyons, or giant trees, or enormous rocks throughout most of its' area - but it does have those gently-rolling, deceptively flat-looking snowbanks. And this
throws people, because it requires new solutions to what they have long since stopped thinking of as a tactical problem.
I have to pause here and talk - briefly - about tactics. In nearly all other maps, players have tall-cover objects and terrain features to hide and move behind. Canyon Network is a great example of this - and of the playing style such terrain inspires. In PuG play, a match generally consists of players moving toward contact with the enemy team, stopping when they make contact and then jockeying amongst all that high cover for either position of fire superiority, then finally closing in on the enemy team once both sides have taken some losses. Most of the match takes place at that middle stage - and that stage revolves around the availability of high cover.
So going back to Polar Highlands, players are suddenly confronted with a new type of terrain, where nearly all the tactical solutions they've come to think of as just "how you play" are solutions to problems that either don't work, or
don't actually exist in the map they're playing. Problems like: "How do you deal with a choke point when the enemy team is spread out on the other side of it?" "How do you deal with incoming LRMs when the team isn't moving?" What is the best way to maneuver to gain an advantage over the enemy?
All of these questions pose tactical problems whose solutions are different on Polar Highlands than on any other map (except Viridin Bog in some cases, but I digress.) There is no cover tall enough to physically block LRMs over the
vast majority of the map; defilading cover is much different, with no easy means to reach alternate cover in response to a flanking force. Players see a map with none of the tall-cover objects and terrain they know and love (how often does Canyon Network
fail to be selected when it's up for a vote?) - and they conclude that "this is a sniping map with no LRM cover! This Map Shpuld[sic] Not Exist!"
That conclusion is wrong: its premise - that this is a map only good for sniping and LRMS - is incorrect, and so the conclusion that it should be thrown away is invalid. This map is a
mobility map. The lack of good cover for camping means you have to move - but I'm telling you, the map gives you the ability to do this (that's why "just close the distance and punch in their faces" is an objectively wrong characterization.) Yet this invalidates a
lot of people's playing styles. It feels wrong to them because they've never had to deal with this kind of terrain over the whole map before - and frankly they've arrived at their current set of tactics by social influence and trial-and-error. Yet the map isn't bad, it's just different - and after a lot of maps that require very similar tactics, it's frustrating to watch people scream for the map to be erased rather than learn from it.
It is the curious task of Polar Highlands to demonstrate to players how little they know about the tactics they believe they understand.
PS: We're well aware of the problems that can arise on the map - where one team has a scouting capability that their enemy doesn't have the 'mechs to counter. That's a legitimate problem with the map design, which might be solved by just deepening the low routes into trenches in places. But this is a problem to be solved, like bad starting positions giving one team an advantage; it doesn't destroy the value of the map. And I've personally had my teams just
assume that they were screwed from the get-go and then proceed to make that a reality by trying to camp out at one of the refineries before getting picked to shreds. Not just once or twice, either; I'm talking match, after match, after match, after
match. It's taken a huge hit out of my enjoyment of the map, because so many times I have to try and drag my kicking and screaming teammates down the path to victory - only to see them often refuse to listen to me and then blame me for the loss.
That's why I keep responding to these threads.
Edited by Void Angel, 24 March 2019 - 10:09 PM.
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