87 replies to this topic

[Heavy Money]

pbiggz, on 02 May 2021 - 12:31 PM, said:

Thats not a problem. Different kinds of builds on different maps is a good thing. I think this is a case of us not having had a nice thing for so long that everyone is scared of what having nice things might actually be like.


Not really. Its a feelbad every time.

Having everyone play the optimal mech type for a given map every time will make the game extremely 1 dimensional. Part of what keeps things fresh is needing to work with what you've got.

[pbiggz]

Heavy Money, on 02 May 2021 - 01:10 PM, said:

Having everyone play the optimal mech type for a given map every time will make the game extremely 1 dimensional. Part of what keeps things fresh is needing to work with what you've got.

If the game were the way it is right now, wherein we have no respawns, perhaps that would be the case. Running through a dropdeck of 4 mechs would mitigate that issue, and i really don't think its much of an issue anyway. I think we all need to be pushing for respawns in quickplay.

[Heavy Money]

pbiggz, on 02 May 2021 - 01:12 PM, said:

If the game were the way it is right now, wherein we have no respawns, perhaps that would be the case. Running through a dropdeck of 4 mechs would mitigate that issue, and i really don't think its much of an issue anyway. I think we all need to be pushing for respawns in quickplay.

Yes, I'm talking about if you choose 1 mech from a dropdeck after seeing the map and game mode but still only have 1 life. If you have respawns and would cycle through your whole deck each match, that'd be a different matter.

Edited by Heavy Money, 02 May 2021 - 01:17 PM.

[-Mean Machine Angel-]

ALL SNOW MAPS ARE AN ABOMINATION !!

[pbiggz]

Priests and Cannibals, on 02 May 2021 - 01:19 PM, said:

ALL SNOW MAPS ARE AN ABOMINATION !!

Nighttime snow maps are cool.

[Valiant Warsmith]

No other map is so completely skewed towards the poke and sniper weapons at eye-level meta than this one. These mechs and builds already do great everywhere else, this map is just stupidly in their favor. LRM's aren't really a problem, although there are times when it gets out of hand.

It is terrible for brawlers or any mech that doesn't poke for a living.

A good map can accommodate all play styles and can swing between play styles throughout a match. We all know which maps are well made and this one just isn't on that list.

[pbiggz]

Valiant Warsmith, on 02 May 2021 - 02:11 PM, said:

No other map is so completely skewed towards the poke and sniper weapons at eye-level meta than this one. These mechs and builds already do great everywhere else, this map is just stupidly in their favor. LRM's aren't really a problem, although there are times when it gets out of hand.

It is terrible for brawlers or any mech that doesn't poke for a living.

A good map can accommodate all play styles and can swing between play styles throughout a match. We all know which maps are well made and this one just isn't on that list.

I think the bulk of this conversation has been that polar actually IS well made. This game does not have a pre-match lobby to adjust or swap builds before a match, and this game does not have respawns. Both of those sins are sins for which polar, alpine, terra therma, and many other under-played maps die. If your time on Polar as is has been consistently that bad though, you need to consider changing how you play.

[Nayru]

honestly polar conquest is probably my favourite setup in the game

and if i force it in your match with a ludicrous multiplier say hi

but it really is a mode/map that pretty much enables anything to work, even had snub urbanmechs going not anywhere near as fast as my piranha corral it on a might-as-well-be infinite map and burst it to death over and over

i'll never understand hooooow anytime i looked back it was 80m closer but such is the way of it

on the respawn note i have no idea why matches have to be 5 minutes (barring a shadowcat/flea) and a one-shot where if your round's ruined instantly by some triple snub instantly blowing your piranha's leg off or run around a corner into a twin hgr headshot your round's ruined instantly and your mech is locked the entire duration of it because **** you i guess

dropdecking should be the norm, matches should go on longer, objectives should be more substantial and maybe if people didn't get clapped out of the round right off the bat by 6 ppc stalkers way back then and that's that we wouldn't need ghost heat + 12v12, not that those do anything but exacerbate people's issues whether they realize it or not

[Brom96]

Mech being locked out fo the game is a bit of a bother.

pbiggz, on 02 May 2021 - 02:59 PM, said:

I think the bulk of this conversation has been that polar actually IS well made. This game does not have a pre-match lobby to adjust or swap builds before a match, and this game does not have respawns. Both of those sins are sins for which polar, alpine, terra therma, and many other under-played maps die. If your time on Polar as is has been consistently that bad though, you need to consider changing how you play.

I would agree and add that we need more maps like those. Mordor has always bothered me not because of the heat, but the light. I can live with it, however.

Also, I am glad we see Polar and Alpine in voting more often since the patch.

[pbiggz]

Brom96, on 03 May 2021 - 06:42 AM, said:

Mech being locked out fo the game is a bit of a bother.


I would agree and add that we need more maps like those. Mordor has always bothered me not because of the heat, but the light. I can live with it, however.

Also, I am glad we see Polar and Alpine in voting more often since the patch.

environment heat was nerfed to like 5% of its original values, so i don't consider that a real critique anymore. With real drop decks, and maybe pre-match lobbies, environmental effects could be turned back on so that players can take cool builds on hot maps and so on. Planning around divergent conditions has always been a big part of mechwarrior, and the fact that its lost in this game is a shame.

[Wid1046]

Heavy Money, on 02 May 2021 - 09:43 AM, said:

Polar is a good map. You are correct that its skewed towards long range mechs. This is to balance out other maps that are skewed towards close range, like Solaris City.
[redacted]

On Solaris long range mechs can still play even if they are forced to peek and poke. On Polar most short range mechs are now forced to wait (or else suicide Leroy Jenkins style) until the battle lines close enough for the mechs to get in range. So people that have a short range loadout have to wait without anything to do for a prolonged period. And this is after one of the longest walks of any map just to get close enough for even the long range mechs to begin to play the game.

Maps that are boring for people are more likely to get them to switch games.

[Darian DelFord]

Valiant Warsmith, on 02 May 2021 - 02:20 AM, said:

Please flush the Polar Highlands map to the forgotten dumpster that Alpine Peaks currently resides.

It is a terrible map that DOES NOT accommodate all play styles, thus it is a failure of map design.

I play a Flea with 6 Small Pulse lasers..... you don't hear me complaining when I drop on this map. In fact I turn that into an advantage... especially in conquest mode..

[pbiggz]

Wid1046, on 03 May 2021 - 08:13 AM, said:

On Solaris long range mechs can still play even if they are forced to peek and poke. On Polar most short range mechs are now forced to wait (or else suicide Leroy Jenkins style) until the battle lines close enough for the mechs to get in range. So people that have a short range loadout have to wait without anything to do for a prolonged period. And this is after one of the longest walks of any map just to get close enough for even the long range mechs to begin to play the game.

Maps that are boring for people are more likely to get them to switch games.

If you're a brawler and you suicide rush on polar, you are doing it wrong.

Its certainly a harder map to play, but there are plenty of places you can bait people into a knife fight.

Im not saying the map is perfect, but I think if we want to critique the maps we have, we ought to do it for a good reason, with real critiques, and proposals for real solutions. This is why i am harping on the idea of respawns and dropdecks in quickplay.

[Wid1046]

pbiggz, on 03 May 2021 - 09:20 AM, said:

If you're a brawler and you suicide rush on polar, you are doing it wrong.
[redacted]

I'm not saying that you should suicide rush on polar, I'm saying that most brawlers (some lights excluded) are forced to wait and that not waiting is pretty much equivalent to suiciding your mech. My point is that having some of the players be forced to sit around, twiddling their thumbs, being bored will cause some of those bored players to switch to another game. Being boring is bad for player retention.

[Heavy Money]

Wid1046, on 03 May 2021 - 08:13 AM, said:

On Solaris long range mechs can still play even if they are forced to peek and poke. On Polar most short range mechs are now forced to wait (or else suicide Leroy Jenkins style) until the battle lines close enough for the mechs to get in range. So people that have a short range loadout have to wait without anything to do for a prolonged period. And this is after one of the longest walks of any map just to get close enough for even the long range mechs to begin to play the game.

Maps that are boring for people are more likely to get them to switch games.

There's plenty of strats that can be done on Polar to let a team move up closer and get their brawlers in earlier. But they require teamwork, which is the real problem.

This is why the Cauldron and new map guy have been talking about adding some more cover and stuff to it. If they can mitigate this problem a bit then I think it'll be a really solid map.

[Wid1046]

Heavy Money, on 03 May 2021 - 10:03 AM, said:

There's plenty of strats that can be done on Polar to let a team move up closer and get their brawlers in earlier. But they require teamwork, which is the real problem.

This is why the Cauldron and new map guy have been talking about adding some more cover and stuff to it. If they can mitigate this problem a bit then I think it'll be a really solid map.

If they put some additional cover in it to allow brawlers to close in on the opposing side without getting annihilated and move the spawns closer so that you don't have to spend the first few minutes playing a walking simulator than the map could actually be good. The issue with not being able to do anything as a brawler for an extended period of time is by far its biggest problem, with that fixed people may still not consider it to be their favorite map, but at least won't hate it.

I've heard only good things about Francois so far, so if he and the Cauldron are working on this map and have plans to make it so that brawlers can actually contribute at all stages of the game, then I'll trust them to succeed in fixing this map.

[Vlad Ward]

Heavy Money, on 02 May 2021 - 01:10 PM, said:

Having everyone play the optimal mech type for a given map every time will make the game extremely 1 dimensional. Part of what keeps things fresh is needing to work with what you've got.

Honestly, I feel the exact opposite.

A huge part of what holds QP back is the fact that it's 100% impossible to properly coordinate loadouts and strategy with your team. Armchair Star Commanders may scream "PUSH!" over comms, but if half your team is using mid-range ballistics and PPCs (or, heaven forfend, LRMs), they're wasting oxygen.

Anyone who plays comp knows you don't just optimize for the map, you also optimize for the rest of your team.

Add in respawns and suddenly you're also able to optimize for counters to the opfor

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 May 2021 - 10:39 AM.

[pbiggz]

Wid1046, on 03 May 2021 - 10:23 AM, said:

If they put some additional cover in it to allow brawlers to close in on the opposing side without getting annihilated and move the spawns closer so that you don't have to spend the first few minutes playing a walking simulator than the map could actually be good. The issue with not being able to do anything as a brawler for an extended period of time is by far its biggest problem, with that fixed people may still not consider it to be their favorite map, but at least won't hate it.

I've heard only good things about Francois so far, so if he and the Cauldron are working on this map and have plans to make it so that brawlers can actually contribute at all stages of the game, then I'll trust them to succeed in fixing this map.

My argument is that as is, you do not have to wait, even as a brawler. Maybe the only exception to this would be a 48kph brawler like an annihilator or a fafnir.

That said, moving spawn points and objectives close together turns a big map into a small one. I STRONGLY oppose any effort to do this. It is literally a waste of money. As is, the objectives and spawn points and tendency to ball up, nascar, or toilet bowl in the middle of the map amount to each match wasting 80% of the space of the map. Adding cover might help, but it will only help existing teams to more effectively ball up, close on each other, and toilet bowl in the middle of the map. Ao many of these maps suffer because there are no respawns. So many of these game modes suffer because there are no respawns.

We need to be critiquing these maps correctly. That means looking for deeper causes to problems, not simply treating the symptoms.

Respawns would transform the way we play MWO. Dropdecks and pre-match lobbies would transform the way we play MWO.

I think we're due for that transformation.

[Brom96]

Hey, with no respawns, I get out of the game where it is clear the others in the team are clueless or don't care about the team play at all quickly. Usually you can tell where it will go in first minute. If we had respawns, I would have to either suicide or waste my time playing pointless game. That's the reason I just tried FP twice and concluded it is boring and dumb way to spend the time. Watching paint drying is more fun then that.

[pbiggz]

Brom96, on 03 May 2021 - 11:17 AM, said:

Hey, with no respawns, I get out of the game where it is clear the others in the team are clueless or don't care about the team play at all quickly. Usually you can tell where it will go in first minute. If we had respawns, I would have to either suicide or waste my time playing pointless game. That's the reason I just tried FP twice and concluded it is boring and dumb way to spend the time. Watching paint drying is more fun then that.

With respawns you have a chance to perform even if you make a mistake. Your team is the same. The attitude you have towards it just tells me you're nervous about having something nice just because we have never really had it. That seems to be the case with alot of stuff. This game has such glaring gaps in functionality, but if you propose fixing them, people will get nervous because change is scary!!! Part of the reason people can be so disappointed with their team is if a single person makes a mistake, suddenly you're down a man, and the other team is up a man. That can easily turn into a stomp if it comes early enough or one team gets lucky/unlucky, and if you died, all you get to do is watch. With respawns you could get back in the action. So I reject this notion that watching paint dry is more fun. You cant complain that matches are too short and wait times are too long, and then also complain when someone proposes a change that would extend your effective play time inside matches.

If you have tried FP any time in the last like two or 3 years, you probably had a bad time. FP hasn't been much worth playing since they gutted it with the phase 3 rollout. About the only way to make it worth the time is find a group and drop when they have matches lined up. Dropping alone is a death sentence, and thats assuming you even find a match, which is unlikely.

Edited by pbiggz, 03 May 2021 - 11:26 AM.