290 replies to this topic

[Honeybadgers]

Every new map should be designed to break nascar. If a new map comes out and the nascar happens, retune it ASAP.

Also, I think we just need a TON of new maps. I know they're not fun to make or direct revenue-generating, but they do keep players coming back.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

im thinking ,thats only a New rework map comes in this Year or nothing and the Studio closed from EG7 to the end of 2021

[Big Tin Man]

A map suggestion from an old vet... 2 choices on the voting screen + Random

And bring back classic Terra Therma. I miss those stupid brawls in the caldera.

[Alreech]

Honeybadgers, on 01 January 2021 - 06:41 PM, said:

Every new map should be designed to break nascar. If a new map comes out and the nascar happens, retune it ASAP.

And then the players just down vote the non-nascar map in favor of HPG, Canyon or Mining.

Edited by Alreech, 02 January 2021 - 06:33 AM.

[Voice of Kerensky]

I read and thought a lot, and played even more (unlike all PGI employees combined).
It seems to me that not only the design of the maps leads to infinite NASCAR, but also ABSOLUTELY the same and symmetrical tasks for both teams. It seems to me that the same tasks for both teams and the design of the maps are equally 50/50 at the root of NASCAR.
Where does NASCAR begin?
1) Since both teams are forced to move at the beginning of the match to a certain center (or bypass a certain center) because .... I said above. Same tasks.
2) The second stage of NASCAR begins when the Lights begin to fulfill their natural role on the battlefield, namely, to look for opportunities to inflict a flank attack, go behind enemy lines, provide tactical information for their team.
3) Mediums also connect to Lights. It is natural for them too.
4) The Heavys, looking at the mini-map, realize that they are about to smell of kerosene (after all, the Lights and Mediums are gone), and follow the Lights and Mediums.
It's all. The mechanism of the classic NASCAR beginning is described.
What remains in this situation for the Assaults? Or get up and stand to the last (last standing). Or, I will say figuratively, as they say here in Russia: if you cannot prevent - lead!
When the PGI removed the arrows with the direction of movement of the mechs from the mini-map, this was the first blow to the Assaults. Pilots in Assaults lost the opportunity to notice the movement of their team in time and adequately respond to a change in the tactical situation. As they say in Russia again, they cannot keep their nose downwind.
The second blow to the Assaults was a decrease in their mobility (synchronization and desynchronization of the engine). Now Assaults, simply due to the technical limitations of their angular velocity, often cannot fight off a fast and lagshield target in close combat (yes, yes, this is about an Assassin, a Vulcan and a Commando with their crooked hitpoints).
The third blow to Assault was the introduction of the skill tree. Previously, when pumping mech, you received all the bonuses of mobility (movement speed, horizontal and vertical torso angular velocity, maximum vertical and horizontal torso rotation angles, anchor turn), accuracy of fire and cooling. Now there is no. Now we are forced to pumped modules that no one ever needed, for example, shock absorbance, hill climb, speed retention (max 50 kp/h haha), improved gyros, target info gathering. But the really useful modules were torn apart and scattered into a thousand pieces. Where radar deprivation, seismic sensor? Torn apart and scattered into a thousand pieces, mixed with useless rubbish. And the ECM? Where is the ECM? That is, now we have to spend 1 ton of weight, 2 (3) slots and 13 nodes, what has the ECM earned? Are you seriously???
The fourth blow to the Assault was the combine of the solo and group queues in quick play. All the old problems were supplemented by an absolutely insane spread of assols in different lances. If before combining the queues you always knew at the assault that you would drop into the lance of Charlie or Bravo along with the Assaults and Heavys, and the Lights and Mediums in Alpha, but now ... Yes, you guys know everything yourself.
Now, probably only the PGI thinks that everything is in order. If Russ Bullock still doesn't know that Firestarter is no longer a powerful metamech... By the way, thanks to Russ for the recognition. I, even if I had set myself the goal, could not more clearly express my incompetence in this game.

P.S. Sorry for the many letters. I understand that I have left the declared topic. But the PGI many years did badly. They have confused the problems of this game so much that one problem pulls another. With each new patch, they applied all their strength to deepen and confuse all the problems, to kill the game.

[Alreech]

Voice of Kerensky, on 06 January 2021 - 02:04 AM, said:

Where does NASCAR begin?
1) Since both teams are forced to move at the beginning of the match to a certain center (or bypass a certain center) because .... I said above. Same tasks.
2) The second stage of NASCAR begins when the Lights begin to fulfill their natural role on the battlefield, namely, to look for opportunities to inflict a flank attack, go behind enemy lines, provide tactical information for their team.
3) Mediums also connect to Lights. It is natural for them too.
4) The Heavys, looking at the mini-map, realize that they are about to smell of kerosene (after all, the Lights and Mediums are gone), and follow the Lights and Mediums.
It's all. The mechanism of the classic NASCAR beginning is described.

Your are right with everything of that, but you forgott the main reason:

12 vs 12 with random teams, dissolved after each match.
In Solo Quickplay you don't know you teammates, you can't coordinate and you don't give a dam about your teammates.
NASCAR works best as tactic with such "teams" so it's not a bug, it's a feature, and the players like it.

There are plenty of game modes in MWO without NASCAR:
Solaris, Faction Play and former Group Quickplay.
And the reason why the are not as popular as Solo Quickplay is that you can't just NASCAR in them, or they actual force the player to act as part of a team.

Removing NASCAR and forcing the players to work as team would kill Quickplay.
Solo Quickplay is unchanged since the open beta, it was a wrong design for a tactical shooter when and now it's too late to change it.

IMHO the only way to get rid of NASCAR for players that don't like it would be a new "Group Quickplay" mode:

• Small groups of 4 players
  
• "Group Tiers" for balancing (calculated from player tiers)
  
• 4 vs 4 / 8 vs 8 / 12 vs 12 match size depending on number of groups aviable for fast & fair matchmaking
  
• map size & game modes depending on match size
  
• Drop decks for faction selection Clan / IS (earning faction rewards possible)
  
• Clan vs Clan, IS vs IS, Clan vs IS matches
  
• Group tonnage for 4 vs 4 or Scouting Drop Deck (no respawns)
  
• Drop decks for tonnage balancing & respawns (less tonnage & mechs than Invasion Drop Decks) in 8 vs 8 & 12 vs 12

[50 50]

There was an idea about having a map based within a jumpship and essentially fight through multi level cargo bays.
Think the mech factory map from Solaris but with additional bays so it's essentially a long narrow map.
Have multiple different doorways to get through on different levels, various and walkways and areas for cover.
Might be different.

Adding Classic Terra Therma is an easy to do item.

Some remakes of existing maps?
This would be ok if we ever started using biomes for planets and wanted to only use certain tilesets to represent it.
Having enough maps for each tileset allows for some diversity while maintaining a theme.
That's even handy for something like a Christmas event and limit the match maker to only snow maps for a week or something.
Play all the tropical ones in Summer.

Few of the maps could use a bit of tweaking as well, particularly for Siege.
A brand new Siege map might be nice and something like that could be combined with an event and give aways etc in FP.

We could actually have 'event maps' that are only in circulation for certain events.
eg: An actual Tukayyid map used for Tukayyid events.

Lots of options really.

[Jobalisk]

Please please please rerelease the classic terra therma map

[Sare204]

I mostly play Quickplay, and as a result I have never played any of the FP or Solaris maps. Id love to see them introduced to Quickplay
I support map voting removal. if only to increase time to drop

Map reworks:
-Alpine peaks: usually result in a boring long range poking match in H7 that isn't much fun to me. Not every Chassis can utilize the mountain height advantage effectively or in a reasonable timeframe. Maybe at a "Crimson Straight" style tunnel through the Mountain that connects the two sides?
River City: Increase usable cover between the sides. Maybe add a wrecked Freight ship to break LOS when mechs are trying to cross river.
-Terra-Therma Classic Please
-Desert City: Hot Variant of Frozen City
Solaris City: Rework layout to reduce "Traffic Jams"

Additional Map Styles:
-Rolling Plains: High grass, to provide semi visual cover for lights. interspersed Farming settlements and Patches of trees provide solid cover, cleared roads to interconnect them. maybe have a river cut through to add visual variety.
-Tropical Jungle: In the "Stepped Mountain" style of Veridian Bog but make it much more vertical/ More levels of engagement. Maybe two main mountains as the feature but a valley between the two with multiple lines of sight and cover on all levels.
-Alpine forest: Kinda like polar, but dense patches of trees and low to medium height variations
-Coastal/ Islands: lots or exposed roads to connect them. multiple exposed "sniper" style overlooks.
-Caves/Mines/Cavern: I would love to see an open top Cavern map with a large crater in the center. Lots of stalagmites, stalactites and general Cave'y cover. Should be large enough that its either a poke game across the crater or the team will have to push one way or the other. High potential to use Tunnels
-Urban: Ruined City/ Intact city. Lots of low building cover for brawls, long sight ranges to affect Brawls from a distance

Map Design Considerations:
-Integrate Jump Jet abilities of mechs into map design process. allow more verticality/options for those who choose to utilize JJ's and enjoy how it changes Tactical options.
-Low-G environments: +1 (Improve Jump Jet effectiveness, Reduces Falling Damage)[/color]
-High-G environments +1 (Reduce JJ effectiveness, increase fall damage[/color]
-Add randomly applied Weather Modifiers to Existing Map styles (Rain/ Sandstorms/ Ash storms/ Fog) Adds visual variety/ complexity to maps already in game.[/color]
-Add Day, Night variants to existing and future maps. Remove Dynamic Day/Night Cycle to save processing power.
-Optimization pass on all existing maps. utilize techniques to increase map memorability without overloading Special effects to achieve the same effect.

Edited by Sare204, 07 January 2021 - 08:51 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Bring back classic Terra!

[JohnConnorMacLeod]

Hi all,
maybe it has been proposed before but why not show the spawning locations on the map in the lobby during the "waiting for players to connect"-phase? This could lead to more fruitful precombat strategy communication between the players and, thus, generally improve the will to communicate during the following combat. For me, the most frustrating matches were those with no or only sparse communication. In my opinion, the overall player experience will benefit from encouraging players to communicate during the matches.

Cheers

[Alreech]

JohnConnorMacLeod, on 09 January 2021 - 02:53 AM, said:

Hi all,
maybe it has been proposed before but why not show the spawning locations on the map in the lobby during the "waiting for players to connect"-phase?

That was suggested multiple times in the last years, and PGI didn't bother with it.

Also on the bigger maps the "spawn points" are outside the map in the drop ships, so on those maps the landing zones would have to been shown.

Quote

This could lead to more fruitful precombat strategy communication between the players and, thus, generally improve the will to communicate during the following combat. For me, the most frustrating matches were those with no or only sparse communication. In my opinion, the overall player experience will benefit from encouraging players to communicate during the matches.

Most players in Solo Quickplay don't want to communicate and give a dam about their team mates.
Just showing Spawn Points won't change that.

[Jobalisk]

One thing I'd really like to see (In addition to the rerelease of classic terra therma) is a rerun of the Sarahs Jenner charity Event. The inner sphere Jenner has always been my favorite mech, and as someone who started playing this game at the tail end of 2013 its always annoyed me that I missed out on such a great addition to the Jenner line. It would also be a fantastic way of raising some more money for charity, something especially needed with all the Corona issues happening at the moment around the world.

[Caboose30]

I'd like to see Canyon Network expanded, maybe with different seasons. I'd also like to see some of the Faction Play maps made available for PUG drops.

[Ghoja]

New map and revamps... One of the things that has struck me as odd (at least for Quickplay) is that none of the maps have a scale that requires a 15minute match. A long match is usually over in half that time. Usually within a third. Well, if people were to use a strategy other than "Run to the middle and circle (aka nascar)" then they could actually use the 15min. Usually if the 15min IS used it's because someone is running away just trying to protect their KDR. What really started the problem of Nascar? "Run to the middle" Along with convenient placement of usually large cover there. There are now heavies out that can close to double the speed of most assaults. These compounds the issue. I will also say, that the devs are NOT to blame for the nascar issue. Yes, to a limited extent they are with a few maps that actually seem to have been designed with that in mind, but ultimately, it has resulted by player choice. How to fix it? Relatively simple. Assaults and heavies just need to not bother going to the middle of the map. Usually, lights and mediums will notice the lack of weight (if they're any good) and try to not seperate from the group. It isn't on the devs to fix a player made choice issue. I do think the time limit for matches, regardless of maps, should be reduced.

Bottom Lines:

-Reduce the QuickPlay time limit by 3-5min. (maybe add it to time delay before a match unless all players are "Ready" to cut it short)

-Add some cover to the valley in the "new" Frozen City.

-More high temp maps.

-HPG Station should be changed to ultra high temp. There is no air to circulate to bleed heat.

-Increase the heat from jumping. (Off topic, but oh well.)

Things I would like to see but probably won't:

-Light structures that are destroyable and collapse if jumped on. (Dealing extra fall dmg)

-Forest fires from lasers/flamers on destroyable trees. (If for no other reason that to allow lasers to clear them, though IR registry and possible heat transfer to mechs walking through the torched tree would be nice) Could be used tactically to mess with lowlight and IR vision, but mostly to allow lasers just to destroy them.

-Patches of unstable ground (uneven terrain table top) that immediately slow the mech walking/running over them or have a max speed attached to them based on difficulty to navigate. (Yes, this is to slow fast mechs, not so much assaults, also given recon meaning somewhat)

-More hotspots like the lava in Terra Therma.

-Have multiple possible drop sites for each map that is randomly selected at drop, a pool of 3 or 4 would be nice, but even just 1 alternate would help)

-Use subgroupings for map selection. (I.E. a general Polar selection would randomly give Polar Highlands, Frozen City (any of them), Alpine Peaks, etc.) I know you would like to have the stat info each map, but you went to far. Also, some maps like Alpine could be used in multiple general headings (I.E. Polar and also in Mountainous.) I could subgroup every map and come up the general map select terms, but I don't think those should be disclosed.

Edited by Ghoja, 17 January 2021 - 12:40 PM.

[SorCobra]

As new map a Moon City Map would be great ,also just a new Lunar Map would be awesome. HPG Manifold is the best Map of all ,hopefully a HPG Manifold II could be created.
I guess however every new map would be a mighty improvement to the game, the more maps the better it is.

Polar Highlands is terrible because it has not enough cover and is a missile boat map that kills the game somehow. Maybe some bigger Buildings could help somehow to create some cover hotspots. The main problem is the fun killing of this map if you have a close or midrange weaponry ,and second fun killing is the tracked and attacked by 200 LRM´s and more without a spot to run for hide after being tracked.

[Gwahlur]

You're just ****** when you spawn there as assault, fix it

[martian]

Gwahlur, on 18 January 2021 - 10:21 AM, said:

You're just ****** when you spawn there as assault, fix it

Do not worry. PGI mentioned about four days ago that they might change some spawn points ... in a few months.

[Elizander]

martian, on 18 January 2021 - 10:40 AM, said:

Do not worry. PGI mentioned about four days ago that they might change some spawn points ... in a few months.

It also depends on available resources.

[prettyflacco]

Haven't read all the suggestions, but my top suggestion to add new life to the game is change where the circle is for domination mode. There are a lot of interesting features and areas that we rarely engage with on a lot of the maps. Centering the battle around underexplored areas would be fun I think and require the lowest effort from the devs.