146 replies to this topic

[Nomad One]

So the middle got a whole lot of choke points and terrain to hide behind, while you left the rest of the map pretty much bare and more or less unchanged?

I guess there's no improvements to be seen on the "utilizing the other 80% of the map" front.

[Roodkapje]

Mixed feelings here :

- I am sure the new map will be just fine to play once we get used to it...
- The original version was just fine and my favorite Domination map : I call it the Classic!

All of those saying it was bad just need to learn that the big open is a bad place to look for cover!

And NO : I am NOT a LURMer or ER PPCist !!!

My favorite weapons : SRM/MRM/Streaks and most of the Dakka weapons!

[Tom Sawyer]

Dead horse but new maps? Stop updating old maps and giving the song and dance that the no one can program the engine anymore.

Oh who am I kidding. Mech pack anyone

[KH Slaine]

You went too far with the towers/rock spires. They need to be reduced by 2/3rds in my opinion. Polar Highlands served a purpose prior. Most maps serve to be strategic to certain weapons/play styles. If a map is more conducive to LRMs, so be it. Add SOME cover but what you did is too much. I.M.H.O.

[Mochyn Pupur]

Spent 45 mins on new Polar - what an utter cess pool!

Gave up with the various bugs and poor map design after first 20 points, however, to illustrate

1. Immediate damage to my Dire after being dropped on top of a building then sliding down for 2% damage on legs - area I8/9 with H8/9

2. None of the buildings showing on the mini-map

3. None of the buildings showing on the expanded "B" map

4. Terrain blinking in and out of view walking along I7 - J7 causing a building to flicker due to ghosting of the afore mentioned terrain issue (perfect cycle rate to induce a fit btw.)

5. Terrain pallet significantly off from original background; in places literally looking like blocks of pale blue and white with no meshing

6. Snow caps levitating above some of the fuel tanks

7. I5 area, what looks like a reasonable slope stops the poor Dire almost immediately

8. Road/path between I6 to H5; the low wall is un-mountable and forces a long, exposed walk around through a grossly restricted pathing route

etc., etc., etc.

This is an Assault destroying map with so many rat runs for lights or fast mediums to hide behind, that anything slow or cumbersome is dead in the water. No amount of torso slew is going to allow slower mechs to keep anything small or fast in view. Ramps are far too exposed for long range mechs to easily strip/core out from behind. Building clusters are so tight in areas, that again, anything small has a get out of jail free card AND ability to immediately get behind the slower mech that was try to fight it, while having virtually full cover . . .

This isn't a simple "I don't like the new map gripe", but one with the start of a litany of issues that clearly suggests it has not been play tested or debugged, nor is it one that offers any form of "balance" as part of the rebuild with the way it supports virtually any mech, other than assaults or anything else that is engine restricted.

If PGI really want to use this abomination, then take it down, make it work, then reintroduce it with bugs and crippling design errors removed.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

had a couple of matches on the new map, but so far: great stuff


2 things I'd like to highlight, so maybe a few tweaks could be done:

-people can and still nascar on it.
is it smart? hm..
is it possible? yeah.
maybe some trenches could be changed so that the simple "circle" is broken? maybe a few walls could be raised here and there to block that?
yeah, I know: it's not the map's fault. it's people. but we can't patch people..

-skirmish. hunting down that last stealth-mech that hides (or mech that hides in general) WILL be a P.I.T.A.
maybe you could just code it so that polar always comes with 2 objective-modes to choose from, but no skirmish?


again: great work, and keep it up

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 22 June 2021 - 01:27 PM.

[DeltaWhite]

Cant pass thru this 2 structures with heavy mech and the space is enough to do it
<blockquote class=[color=#FFFFFF][/color]

[Wild Wolves]

PeppaPig, on 19 June 2021 - 04:09 AM, said:

Looks good until you realise that this is a death trap map for any slower mechs or non-jump capable mechs with the ruinous channelling and vertical cliff sides - this is what was destroying FW maps where combat was forced through choke points.

Once again, a map created not so much for MWO but for death match arena games etc. where you can bounce along or up walls with little or no effort. Polar Highlands wasn't perfect, but there was plenty of cover if you used it with a modicum of though, rather than just running to the centre.

While I don't doubt Francois's pedigree in designing platform maps, he has again shown he does not appreciate the mechanics and interplay of MWO and mechs. The last thing we needed was another Canyon update, but here we go again - poor.

Funny the old Polar was just that for anything slower or lacked ECM, you basically had next to no cover and having you're team defend you till you reached a safe point was tough to begin with. (Especially if they had closer range setups also). This newer map added something it solely needed and thats more cover routes in the trenches. Extra buildings is nice but on the old map all it took was one enemy with stealth armor and narc to tag one slow mech trying to get to the team to be a free kill. I played Jenner IIC alot (Srm version) if I got that map I always scouted out the corners to intercept the lights trying to get behind team on starts (There is alot of them due to how well known it is to get a few free kills or even remove some enemy assaults from the fights early by tearing through their armor teams on start just from LRM hammering them before they get into safety... which honestly took forever to reach and offered little to no cover as it was.)

Edited by Wild Wolves, 22 June 2021 - 02:42 PM.

[Mochyn Pupur]

Wild Wolves, on 22 June 2021 - 02:38 PM, said:

Funny the old Polar was just that for anything slower or lacked ECM, you basically had next to no cover and having you're team defend you till you reached a safe point was tough to begin with. (Especially if they had closer range setups also). This newer map added something it solely needed and thats more cover routes in the trenches. Extra buildings is nice but on the old map all it took was one enemy with stealth armor and narc to tag one slow mech trying to get to the team to be a free kill. I played Jenner IIC alot (Srm version) if I got that map I always scouted out the corners to intercept the lights trying to get behind team on starts (There is alot of them due to how well known it is to get a few free kills or even remove some enemy assaults from the fights early by tearing through their armor teams on start just from LRM hammering them before they get into safety... which honestly took forever to reach and offered little to no cover as it was.)

If you played the old map properly, there was tons of cover for any size or weight. Your comment about playing a Jenner IIc kind of reinforces why many people are saying they like the new map because its giving small/light mechs an even bigger advantage than before - new map is designed for them and to cripple slower/larger mechs with unpassable walls, invisible blockages partly covering gaps between building and the huge amount of additional cover the new map provides for smaller mechs to fire and hide while the bigger mechs still stand exposed to fire.

Of course, on the old map, anything too slow was always left behind as wolfpack bait, that was more a result of poor team play than the map terrain itself, but the new map has introduced this vulnerability to anything not fast enough or agile enough to either return fire or get to any semblance of cover before its picked apart by a light or focused on by more than one mech because of the insanely poor route channelling and cover vulnerability that has been built in to this map.

[MechNexus]

Had two matches on nuPolar and safe to say I love it. The presence of proper cover and more defined terrain is an absoloute game changer - more ways to break line of sight, brawlers now have an easier time, mechs with lower slung arm mounts have an easier time, and it generally feels kinder to all playstyles, while still seemingly favouring long range slightly. It's lot more interesting to play on, and i'm now genuinely excited to play on it wether i'm in my usual PPC mechs or giving them the business in a brawler. Cracking job.

[An6ryMan69]

The map certainly looks good....but that's the end of what's good about it.

The original Polar Highlands was a great open concept map, that allowed players with long range weapons and tactics to be effective, while still allowing the proper use of terrain and movement for close in-fighters to be surprisingly effective at winning matches, if they played smart. The map was a nice change to the preponderance of brawling-oriented maps we see in this game.

The new Polar Highlands takes the spirit of the original and trash cans it. This map plays like a tragic series of sudden, in-your-face ambushes. The frenzied meatgrinder that matches on this map invariably turn into, with combat outcomes being determined far more by who-randomly-surprises-who at spitting distance, than by tactics or teamwork, leaves a player frustrated at losses they couldn't prevent, and feeling unsatisfied with victories that came more through chance than anything else.

If you want to trade your Highlanders and Dire Wolves for Mist Lynxes and Piranhas, and roll the dice on jumping the other guys before they jump you, then vote for this map. Otherwise.....don't.

Edited by An6ryMan69, 23 June 2021 - 01:10 PM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

I have a slight issue with the balance of the two intended sniper nests so far. The northern one is extremely good, nice overwatch over the center, especially in Conquest mode.


But its southern counterpart has blocked sight lines all over. Compare the two screenshots, both are looking directly at Gamma, in the very center of the map.

[Leone]

But both are fairly equidistant from the spawns. So far skirmish, conquest, domination and assault've all had east/west conflicts. In that case I fail to see a problem with one sniper nest having a higher over look than the other.

~Leone

Edited by Leone, 24 June 2021 - 04:22 AM.

[Kodan Black]

MechNexus, on 23 June 2021 - 09:51 AM, said:

Had two matches on nuPolar and safe to say I love it. The presence of proper cover and more defined terrain is an absoloute game changer - more ways to break line of sight, brawlers now have an easier time, mechs with lower slung arm mounts have an easier time, and it generally feels kinder to all playstyles, while still seemingly favouring long range slightly. It's lot more interesting to play on, and i'm now genuinely excited to play on it wether i'm in my usual PPC mechs or giving them the business in a brawler. Cracking job.

Yeah, this is a big improvement. Now if you could just make Caustic Valley not awful that would be super. Polar is now a map I'm voting FOR!

[Roodkapje]

PeppaPig, on 23 June 2021 - 02:57 AM, said:

If you played the old map properly, there was tons of cover for any size or weight.

Yes, but that involved actually using your brain in the game and most players just seem to be W+M1 players as the Team Fortress 2 players use to call the Pyro players!

Quote

Of course, on the old map, anything too slow was always left behind as wolfpack bait, that was more a result of poor team play than the map terrain itself.

I have seen too many of those and I guess that's why P.G.I. had to fix the map instead of some kind of system that would motivate the players to be better at teamwork :
- Pop UAV's.
- Scan & Spot more with R and E the whole time.
- Take care of the slower Heavy and Assault players in their team.
- Protect those players against Light/Medium mechs when needed...

You know... like... playing the game properly!

[Daneel Hazen]

I thought it was cool.

A warrior should adapt to any change!

Or something.

[Big-G]

It's definitely a steep learning curve unlearning old LRMlands and adapting to this new one

[Arkhangel]

Still a good one.

Also, for all the LRMers whining, most actual LRM kills are made within 600m anyways, so losing your ability to bombard while SITTING STILL at max range shouldn't really be a problem if you're in any way a competent pilot.

That's really the main different between a LRM Boat and a LRMtard. LRM Boats actually move, and reposition so to better bombard. Which the new map actually still allows quite nicely.

[Tarteso]

Arkhangel, on 25 June 2021 - 03:07 AM, said:

Still a good one.

Also, for all the LRMers whining, most actual LRM kills are made within 600m anyways, so losing your ability to bombard while SITTING STILL at max range shouldn't really be a problem if you're in any way a competent pilot.

That's really the main different between a LRM Boat and a LRMtard. LRM Boats actually move, and reposition so to better bombard. Which the new map actually still allows quite nicely.

Map is not bad. Problem is, targets are now covered behind terrain or structures 95% of the time at any working range, so LRM play is useless and the reason why the old map should be avaliable again. After all, LURMing wasn´t so good nor OP to justify this bold replacement

[Tarteso]

John Bronco, on 21 June 2021 - 05:55 PM, said:

HPG has a giant central feature that dominates the entire map and ensures bad gameplay.

I mean, obviously, but you asked.

Bad gameplay? It is one of the most popular maps.The obvious central feature has three levels, which ensures some options in tactics (nascar is just one of them and can be countered), and it don´t nullify completely any game style. It also allow different places to fight. My point is: don´t mess too much with old maps most people are happy with, just ADD new ones (or reworked ones) for variety