290 replies to this topic

[Garran Tana]

Randomised spawn points (few more options to the current ones) would do a favour to the gameplay. It would change a bit how you play, as people go to locations knowing where a lance is spawned. It would also make scouting mechs more important to the team.

[DeadWeight18]

Re-use of the current assets:
- Thermal Teras as moon biome
- Polar highlands with meadows and bushes to hide / blocking line of sights
- Solaris City in daylight with some more lower buildings
- Cut done map of Alpine Peaks

[il1il]

Tourmaline desert invisible walls all over the rock walls especially in the center.

Canyons sight lines are too long in too many directions on the upper level and if you are not on the upper level your in a venerable position for ambush. the map is basically a punishment for any one who doesn't run jump jets and ppcs.
One fix would be to add more separation in the center of the map while pushing the spawns to the sides of the maps instead of the corners. While increasing visual distinction of ramps.

Hibernal rift needs one of the spawns fixed similar to canyon spawning in the corners is the problem.

Polar is a map people complain about because of lrms this is a problem with the nlos of lrms not the map. Also the center of the map lacks cover on one side of the approach to domination.

Hpg outer wall scaling wall breaks the maps sight lines. Increase the out of bounds to include the entire outer wall

The center of mining is too exposed to the rear of the map consider changing the cover to inverted double wall for solid cover to require a push to control it.

Frozen city night classic puts all the assaults on a far left spawn that is indefensible and gets overrun quickly.
most spawns that are problems happen because assaults spawn in a far left side. put them center or bring spawns closer.

Placing the domination point in a valley like it is in frozen city creates an unpredictable game mode similar problem happens with assault on the same map.

Assault on crimson has only 1 winning strategy I recommend banning assault on crimson

[KRZZPFFF]

Right now I am always hesitant to play mechs that go less than 60 kph because when I do so way too often I get left alone and killed by a bunch of lights before I can get even close to the battleground. If that could be fixed by working on the spawn points that would be great!

[Seth Kalasa]

1. Domination mode: domination area should have different position if different matches.
2. Return good ol’ Therra Terma back.
3. Rework old maps as you did with Forest Colony and River City, make new textures (Alpines), expand the area (Canyon City).
4. Add different daytime to the all maps. For example, Canyon City Night and Alpines Night (Or Dawn, Sunset) would be fantastic.
5. We need a new map which would be a mix of Polar Highlands and Canyon City but with green environment.
6. Different weather on all the maps ( except HPG and Grim Portico I guess) would be interesting too.

[MechWarrior414712]

Not too many unbalanced maps in the game in my opinion, but there are some. I don't count FP maps as I don't play the game mode. My points:

-Optimization for certain maps
-The few outlier maps should be remade

About optimization; Everyone knows forest colony new & solaris run like dog. It's like -20 fps compared to other maps. This game itself is hard to make run with high fps in the first place, so people running 50-60 drop in to the 30's or 40's. Low fps makes the game hard to play. Avoid that. Forest colony itself is a bit too big for what it is, or more like some spots are bad to fight in so they never see action, such as the north side of the "nascar rock". Spawn travel times are too big too, you spawn way too far from the middle. For solaris, map design itself is ok, but it laggs.

About balance; A little bit of forest above but it's not such a big deal as some maps. People complain about canyon nascar but that is not the maps fault, its player mentality doing the nascar instead of holding key positions. Crimson is the most unbalanced map in my opinion, whoever spawns southwest has the advantage since they can take the island & they also have a lrm umbrella and can hold top, while other team has either the ramp, tunnel, or saddle. All equally awful places to approach from. South can turtle. Remake or remove this map.
Polar is another problem map, because it's so open. How about not making it so open? Could redesign it to be more like a MW5 ice map with those cool canyons, which also have cover from above with an icy roof, with just enough space to drop down there.

[Amro One]

Nascar proof maps, yet they want 8v8. guess they never played in the BETA.

The same map with snow, night and day was a awesome and quick way to get more maps and game play in.
Honestly wish all maps had these 3 affects in them.

[Seth Kalasa]

Garran Tana, on 17 November 2020 - 01:28 AM, said:

Randomised spawn points (few more options to the current ones) would do a favour to the gameplay. It would change a bit how you play, as people go to locations knowing where a lance is spawned. It would also make scouting mechs more important to the team.

If you're in the light mech maybe it will work. But imagine an assault spawning in the middle of enemy wave... I expect a lot of whine about that. I think better not random spawn points but few fixed with the ability to choose one.

[Seth Kalasa]

Give the community an Editor to create maps. It's been discussed and it's really viable idea.
It will help this game A LOT.
I don't like comparison with the Counter-Strike, but one of the cool features there was a lot of community created maps, some of them were crazy, but that was really the thing!

Edited by Seth Kalasa, 17 November 2020 - 06:24 AM.

[L1f3H4ck]

Maybe make some of the snow maps not snow? Like, a green version of Polar? Rolling Highlands maybe. You could add a large scale base in the middle, turning it into almost a city map.

[Lieutenant Hedgehog]

I think Maps should be one of the top priorties for improvement. It sounds like there's a lot of low hanging fruit too.

Improvements that will keep Quick Play fresh and varied

I'm mostly just quoting what's already been said:

* Faction Play maps in Quick Play --- I want that crazy blue sun level! Just making these playable in Quick Play would make a HUGE difference. That's like 30% more maps.

* Existing maps at varying times of day and weather conditions. Mining Collective/Solaris City at day time! Canyon Network with a sand storm! Anything to spice up Grim Plexus / HPG !

* New spawn points to keep you on your toes

* Shrink Polar Highlands so there's less wandering around aimlessly before contact

* Re-tile/re-skin a few existing maps, like Terra Therma, which is actually really unique terrain and just unpopular due to the heat. Make a Rubellite Oasis with water, or a heavily forested Caustic Valley. Get creative

* Speaking of heat, there's too many cold/snow maps and they're too popular. The above improvements could help balance this out

* Add turrets in new places, specifically in central/popular/high traffic locations. This could break up NASCAR-ing by making it dangerous to do so. As is, Turrets are easy to avoid because they are in predictable areas at the edge of the level which you have little reason to visit unless required to do so to finish a match.


For more stretch goals, I would love to see entirely new maps introduced. I think MWO actually has some very unique Maps -- the idea of fighting in these huge mineral deposit levels, like Tourmaline Desert for example, is such a cool and unique environment. So I'd welcome seeing what the PGI team comes up with.

Imagine like a CAVE level, which severely limited the power of LRMs!

And this may be out of scope / too difficult to implement, but a community Map Editor or some ability to implement community created maps would be incredible. This is an older game on an older engine so it feels like there must be some way to make this happen.


Regardless I think Maps are a major area for improvement and increasing the variety here will definitely improve player retention

Edited by Lieutenant Hedgehog, 17 November 2020 - 07:40 AM.

[Volraththefallen]

We need 5 new maps, not just 1. We also need a new map every 3 months so people don't get bored of the game and leave.

[Deathshade]

A great way to get the community involved in a pseudo mod for MWO would be to allow for a standardized map import by PGI.

1. You establish what the map, textures, environment can and can't contain for the proposed map.
2. The community creates map, textures, and/or environment for import.
3. Pseudo mod leader verifies and approves community map import to MWO.
4. MWO uses community map to speed up map creation process. (rinse and repeat. Also with Mechs)

[Horseman]

Daeron Katz, on 16 November 2020 - 01:08 PM, said:

In this thread, lets discuss ideas for updating or adding to our current maps in MechWarrior Online, such as:

• New Community-Driven Map (Community input from start to finish)
  
• Update Unbalanced Maps
  
• Spawn Point Fixes

Spawn points would be the first thing. We have maps like Frozen Classic where certain slower spawns are in a position that more often than not leaves them royally ****** three minutes into the match. Swapping them with a faster spawn or moving the spawn location elsewhere entirely would help.
And yes, I think playing around with the bounds, objective positions and spawn locations to make more than one version of each map could be interesting, at the very least it would make the matches less predictable from the outset and increase replayability.

And, Terra Therma Classic please? It was fun.

Edited by Horseman, 17 November 2020 - 09:57 AM.

[Ult9876]

Lockheed_, on 17 November 2020 - 09:50 AM, said:

I would be excited to see new maps, but I would also love to see some reskins. I think Hibernal rift turned out amazing.

Re-Skin ideas:

• More green maps:
  
  • Grim Plexus with forests. Turn the white spots into small lakes, possibly one or two smaller creeks.
    
  • Same thing on Caustic Valley. Possibly as a cloud forest a la new Forest Colony, with a fog/cloud layer at caldera height.
• More non-green/white maps:
  
  • Grim Plexus as a farmhold. Low-height cornfields along the slopes in which you can still see 20-tonners move.
    
  • Vulcano version of one of the Classic 8v8 maps that have been introduced to the game, in particular Forest Colony Xlassic (in addition to bringing in Classic Terra Therma).
    
  • Desert/Sulfur version of Forest Colony. Replace trees with non-climbable vertical rock formations.

Edited by Ult9876, 17 November 2020 - 10:38 AM.

[Jungle Plague]

I would like to see a reasonable-scale urban map (Solaris is neat - but the buildings are so big it is basically a really-steep-mountain map). And I think it would be best if they cut the game mode down to 8v8 (but that is neither here nor there).

I think it would be excellent if they took River City - and just drew hard boundaries around the river/citadel. Force the players to be in the cities, and have a short, in your face, block-by block close quarters disaster of a fight.

[BigBadVlad]

A number of good ideas already. I also have suggested Faction maps in QP. Heck the patch would be relatively small cause everyone already has the assets downloaded! I enjoy playing on Faction Maps cause i rarely see them because I don't play in groups very often because of the groups you run into so Faction often tends to be stompy.

[Jables McBarty]

Domination is a missed opportunity to mix up gameplay on pretty much every map IMO.

I put forward a proposal for River City in particular a while back (https://mwomercs.com...age__p__5623032).

Domination is the one game mode where you know with 99% certainty where the action will take place. Instead of putting the Domination Circle in the exact same place firefights usually already happen (the "top" of Mining Collective, the central plateau in Forest Colony, the hills in PH, the Citadel in RC, the Radar Dish in HPG, the Caldera in Caustic Valley etc.), you can put them elsewhere and get a novel set of gameplay.

Some starting proposals:

• Crimson Strait - Circle in C3, spawns in D7/E7 and G3/G4
  
• Forest Colony - Circle in F11, spawns in K10/L10 and G7/H7
  
• HPG - Circle in F6, spawns in E3 & C5
  
• PH - Circle in J6, spawns in E7 & K12

[Ballistic Panicmode]

Something that's been on my wish list for a few years: QP maps based on the forested hills part of Emerald Taiga and the cratered area of Vitric Forge.

[Reno Blade]

• New Community-Driven Map (Community input from start to finish)
  -> nice idea, but hard to master due to many different ideas.
  Maybe just have multiple ideas where people can provide input (e.g. Map1 -> add mountant in A2, Map5 -> lower size of the canyon to 10meter)
  
• Update Unbalanced Maps
  -> Alternate map version was also a thing some time ago.
  Flooded canyon (e.g. everything is below water in the lower level)
  Deeper canyon (e.g. everything is scaled 2x larger)
  
• Spawn Point Fixes
  -> Alternate spawn points randomly assigned per launch would keep games more diverse