69 replies to this topic

[Vonbach]

pattonesque, on 31 July 2022 - 12:38 PM, said:

you know what's interesting is that new HPG actually has an incredible amount of cover from snipers!

Lol.

Edited by Vonbach, 31 July 2022 - 12:41 PM.

[pattonesque]

Vonbach, on 31 July 2022 - 12:41 PM, said:

Lol.

snipers have a limited number of places they can safely reside on the walls. if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to this you can set up as a brawler in such a way that their LOS to you in the center is very limited. If you're playing a fast or jumpy brawler you can also approach them mostly unseen.

I know it's easier for you to pretend otherwise because the process of paying attention can reveal heretofore-unknown flaws in your own game, which does admittedly suck. But it's the only way to get better.

Edited by pattonesque, 31 July 2022 - 01:02 PM.

[MyriadDigits]

Vonbach, on 31 July 2022 - 12:33 PM, said:

"Nascar" just means actual cover from the sniper tards. Bring back old HPG and stop catering to snipers. There are other players besides snipers.

Ironically, Nascar is better for snipers because the brawlers in their mindless rush to run in a circle will completely abandon the cover from the snipers. It's free farm and part of why AC2 was so popular in maintenance mode.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

KDK Prime, on 30 July 2022 - 01:16 AM, said:

- "It would have less snipers compared to new one, because it's harder to get on walls!"
Except it's not hard at all, just takes a bit longer to walk if you have no JJs.

That time it takes matters, if it takes you 3 minutes just to get into position to do stuff, chances are you have already hurt your team which is why most people never bothered. That and I feel like there was less cover in the old one but I could be wrong on that part.

KDK Prime, on 30 July 2022 - 01:16 AM, said:

- "Bowl-shaped center sucks!"
The old one was literally the same and worse...
Yes, pls do 10 laps around the center while being shot in the back by 1-2-3 snipers on the walls, farming you for free.

What? You maybe saw 1 mech decide to run the wall because the barrier to do the wall was much higher, you couldn't just waltz your assault up a ramp to it. Even then, encouraging the wall is not really what should've been done. It never was and never has been interesting.

[Curccu]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 31 July 2022 - 06:47 PM, said:

That and I feel like there was less cover in the old one but I could be wrong on that part.

You are not wrong, cover was pretty much what edge of the wall offered due your elevated position plus there were few small covers and I'm not even sure if you could hide a direwolf behind those. Also out of bounds was pretty close everywhere except those spawn/base recesses.

[martian]

MechB Kotare, on 29 July 2022 - 11:28 AM, said:

Only if old polar and old river city are back too.

The old River City map was too small.

The original Polar Highlands map was good.

[I R O N]

Yes. ALL CLASSIC MAPS SHOULD BE AVAILBLE! Why whould you want less options? This game suffers from a lack of actual real new content. SO at least give us the full content thats already here. It costs you next to nothing.

Edited by I R O N, 09 August 2022 - 10:53 AM.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

Just put the old ones back in rotation and keep the new ones in rotation. Part of what keeps this game interesting is diversity of play styles. Some maps should be good for snipers and some good for brawlers. By reworking maps that were more challenging for long range, but good for brawl (you also can include the changes on Canyon as well) there has been shift to players feeling more comfortable in running more snipers in matches. As they will now likely get a sniper-friendly map. Trying to run short range heavies and assaults is now more challenging than before (due to greater sight lines) and so people run less of them. What we really need is for one play style not to be always optimal or close to optimal. Gauss/ Erlarge assaults should not be always able to do amazing with each map….otherwise we are just going to get matches full of those mechs on both sides. Which is boring.

Now, new polar is good and Vitric station is also good as every style can do well. Just my 2 cents.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I think the issue with the new HPG is that you can be shot more easily from long range from multiple angles and from assault mechs instead of just lights on the walls. If you try to flank the enemy in the middle, you generally are exposed to their snipers. The main cover from snipers is the overhead bridge in the middle and some of the walls. Taking basement doesn't get you close enough to the other side. Actually, it might be better if the middle area was covered more like the basement and the basement was more open structurally.

[pattonesque]

you could get onto the walls in old HPG with assaults (slower admittedly) and there's honestly plenty of cover in the center from the walls in new HPG. you have to be more aware of wallsnipers in new HPG but you can play around them

[1453 R]

Fatbro brawler pilots miss maps with a Central Cover Dingus because a gigantic, obtrusive Central Cover Dingus allowed overgunned, under-engined bloatboats that decided a 200-rated engine was all they needed in their 120-ton eleven-autocannon Thing to Moron's Bumrush the middle of the map without having to worry about long-range weapons getting in their way. Then the high-speed Toilet Flush Mambo around the Central Cover Dingus, in which two teams circle the CCD at ever-increasing speeds that begin approaching the speed of light by the end of the match, allows the overgunned, under-engined bloatboat to stand in one single grid square and farm damage because he never needs to touch his W key again.

Nobody else misses maps with a Central Cover Dingus. And frankly, nobody should be okay with decisions that allow assault 'Mechs with 200-rated engines to continue completely and utterly ignoring the drawback supposedly inherent to their cripplingly godawful lack of mobility. Old HPG can stay gone. Old Canyon can stay gone. Old Caustic can absolutely stay gone.

No more Central Cover Dingus maps. Frankly, once Piranha gets the courage to turn off every game mode other than Conquest and finally puts paid to overgunned, under-engined bloatboats in addition to No More CCD as a map design principle, this game might actually start for-real improving.

[Brizna]

All classic maps that have come back had something different about them that the new maps don't... not quite the case with HPG "classic"

[ScrapIron Prime]

Brizna, on 11 August 2022 - 12:20 PM, said:

All classic maps that have come back had something different about them that the new maps don't... not quite the case with HPG "classic"

Entirely the reason I’d like to see ye olde Polar Highlands. There’s no other map like it and, with the exception of Domination, fights are always in different locations on that map. (And even that could be addressed by making 3 sets of Dom circles + spawns.)

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 11 August 2022 - 10:46 AM, said:

No more Central Cover Dingus maps. Frankly, once Piranha gets the courage to turn off every game mode other than Conquest and finally puts paid to overgunned, under-engined bloatboats in addition to No More CCD as a map design principle, this game might actually start for-real improving.

None of this makes sense. The ring incentivizes slow moving long range because there is no cover for you to really bother repositioning half the time. Just get up to the ring with your 4 Light Gauss Faffy, turn on your stealth armor, and stand there doing nothing for 10 minutes until your team is dead. Or stand there with a 6-8 ERLL Supernova, 4 ERLL 2 Gauss Whale, or 2 ERLL 2 Gauss Night Gyr and plink away for free damage until your team either dies or wins. Map design made this issue worse, look no further than Frozen City where you have a giant killzone in the center of the map. Speed won't save you if the enemy has guns online.

I can get behind conquest, if they'd fix the placements and/or spawns on maps. Tourmaline's is probably the most egregious where one team basically gets pick of the strong positions.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 11 August 2022 - 03:59 PM.

[Vonbach]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 11 August 2022 - 03:57 PM, said:

None of this makes sense. The ring incentivizes slow moving long range because there is no cover for you to really bother repositioning half the time. Just get up to the ring with your 4 Light Gauss Faffy, turn on your stealth armor, and stand there doing nothing for 10 minutes until your team is dead. Or stand there with a 6-8 ERLL Supernova, 4 ERLL 2 Gauss Whale, or 2 ERLL 2 Gauss Night Gyr and plink away for free damage until your team either dies or wins. Map design made this issue worse, look no further than Frozen City where you have a giant killzone in the center of the map. Speed won't save you if the enemy has guns online.

I can get behind conquest, if they'd fix the placements and/or spawns on maps. Tourmaline's is probably the most egregious where one team basically gets pick of the strong positions.

This. Most of the new maps are like this a toilet bowl with a shooting gallery in the middle for the sniper tards.
Having the devs cater to snipers just gets old. There are other ways to play in the game besides snipers.
Its simply boring to play and its not fun.

[MechB Kotare]

martian, on 08 August 2022 - 11:49 PM, said:

The old River City map was too small.

Dude, in most cases, 90% of those nice shiny big maps is not even being used, because most people just prefer to run towards the opposing team in direct line, thus making the rest of the map almost completely empty.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechB Kotare, on 12 August 2022 - 01:43 AM, said:

Dude, in most cases, 90% of those nice shiny big maps is not even being used, because most people just prefer to run towards the opposing team in direct line, thus making the rest of the map almost completely empty.

It also doesn't help that they block off the outer parts of the maps to isolate them and pretty much make them worthless areas. Plexus and Forest Colony come to mind where there are giant landmasses that cut off parts of the map and create just an isolated pathway around the map for no particular reason.

[1453 R]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 11 August 2022 - 03:57 PM, said:

None of this makes sense. The ring incentivizes slow moving long range because there is no cover for you to really bother repositioning half the time. Just get up to the ring with your 4 Light Gauss Faffy, turn on your stealth armor, and stand there doing nothing for 10 minutes until your team is dead. Or stand there with a 6-8 ERLL Supernova, 4 ERLL 2 Gauss Whale, or 2 ERLL 2 Gauss Night Gyr and plink away for free damage until your team either dies or wins. Map design made this issue worse, look no further than Frozen City where you have a giant killzone in the center of the map. Speed won't save you if the enemy has guns online. I can get behind conquest, if they'd fix the placements and/or spawns on maps. Tourmaline's is probably the most egregious where one team basically gets pick of the strong positions.

I mean, you hit on one of the big points against the whole 'Snipers are Ruining MWO Forever' thing - bad snipers lose games. Or rather, bad snipers don't affect games, because they faff around nine hundred meters behind the fight dealing three hundred whole damage to the two or three guys that don't know how to identify lanes of fire and find cover, and the whole while their team is playing one man down. A really good assault-weight sniper is a Problem, yes - but I'd argue that a really good assault-weight pilot is a Problem regardless of the range they opt to play at. That quad minigoose Fatner, in the hands of a pilot that knows what to do with it, is going to be super dangerous, yes. So's a dub-20 quad-snub Fatner that can deal forty pinpoint damage per click with two clicks to donate at a time in the hands of a pilot that really knows what to do with it.

Yeah, some maps do better than others; nuCaustic can be tricky (if in part because people cheat and use client-side mods that remove the obscurement on the map), but I've never really had this issue on nuHPG. Now admittedly I'm down in the muck in T4 where nobody knows how to aim, but you don't really have to be a master marksman to deal damage with Gause rifles at long range. Get a grip on the basic skill of leading your targets and you can land those thirty-damage chunks pretty reliably, especially against larger, slower targets. ERLL "snipers" in T4 are no such thing, sure, but frankly I can only recall a few games in total where a wall sniper on nuHPG has been relevant. Sure, I'll acknowledge that's very likely to be different in top-level organized play, but that's not where the vast majority of the playerbase is.

Plus, players who park their ERLL keister on a ridgeline behind their team and poke without paying attention to anything else are leaving themselves super open. I distinctly recall, this last weekend, finding the exact same quad ERLL MAD(II)-4A two games in a row, maneuvering for High Ground to do laser poking things. I was piloting my new Rocket Hibachi* and even without jump jets I picked the guy off with impunity in both games because he had no escorts and his ER lightsabers were helpless in the face of close-quarters weapons going one-thirty in a dead sprint. This was in Emerald Vale and Crimson Strait rather than nuHPG, but I imagine in nuHPG someone would've picked him off as well. Wall snipers are super noticeable for the most part outside of aforementioned stealth Fatner or the equivalently ******* stealth Thanatos with normal goose, and once either of the Stealth Bois are known to exist their miserable DPS/pressure means there's not much they can do. Yeah, higher-tier play is likely to have better organization (sort of, slightly) and people who can better shield a sniper, but it's also likely to have someone who can countersnipe right back and get the wall puke to either back off or leave your team's brawlmonkeys be.

Fully acknowledging that I am a casual turdburglar, I just don't see this omnipresent issue everybody keeps harping on with snipers. If you see a sniper, just snipe him back or get close to him and gut him. And if the sniper's good enough to make that really difficult? Well gee golly willickers Batman, I think he's earned it.

A really good long-range fighter that knows how to effectively engage at long range deserves to be able to do that, I'd think?

*I am super disappointed in myself for not buying this thing earlier. It's amazing. Reminds me a lot of the old, ooold glory days of the Shrimp Boat, when a fifty-ton Inner Sphere 'Mech with two SRM launchers was a top-flight terror of the battlefield. Turns out being able to hit 128kph in sixty tons of metal with enough missiles to worry even assault 'Mechs and the ability to mess with enemy heat bars is super good. Little iron-plated ball of spite and gristle is oddly super flexible given its focused/limited armament, mostly because it moves fast enough that its range limitations aren't generally a super big deal. It's an awesome sniper hunter, mostly because it's light 'mech fast in short bursts and it has enough armor to not really care if you wing a few peep or goose slugs into it while it's rollicking your general everything with accurized missiles. It's a workable Fatty Escort and able to adequately dogfight/drive off light 'Mechs, absolutely bully things smaller than itself while nimbly escaping things too big to bully and look for an angle to play Striker, instead. I love it, and if it was the Platinum C-Boosted Hellfire instead of the HLF-A I might actually havee bought a Platinum pack.

[MyriadDigits]

1453 R, on 12 August 2022 - 07:42 AM, said:

nuCaustic can be tricky (if in part because people cheat and use client-side mods that remove the obscurement on the map)

Very likely this isn't a cheat or mod, but a user.cfg edit. For better or worse, user.cfg edits are specifically addressed in the Code of Conduct as being perfectly legal to use.

[1453 R]

I get that. But there's cheating and there's cheating. The obscurement is very clearly meant to be there as part of a balancing effort on the map, something you need to play around. Removing it may not be 'cheating' by rules-lawyer standards, but it's definitely cheating by Spirit of the Game standards.