5 replies to this topic

[-VooDoo-]

The only people I know that like this new rendition are sniper addicts. This map is hot garbage and every time it comes up I am temped to just turn off my machine. Now there are a lot of maps I am not too keen on, but when a map makes you feel like quitting the session when it appears, something needs addressing.

[Void Angel]

I just waited a good ten minutes to play the event queue today - and it was not fun. The entire place seems like one giant sniper bowl, with the only alternative being to hide under the central structure and hope they get bored enough to come inside and get you. Sure, there's plenty of stuff to hide behind; but usually someone else can shoot you from one side or another, from up on top of the Sniper's Rim.

Now, I'm a fan of the original Polar Highlands (with the giant caveat that it needed more LRM cover.) People hated the original Holar Pielands because everyone looked at it and said, "hey, that looks flat, this must be a sniper/LRM map." If you looked closer, though, all that deceptively flat-looking, rolling terrain allowed a covered or concealed route to anyplace you needed to go, and match wins favored the team that kept moving over the static sniper strategy. Because the fact was, once someone got around the side of the low, rolling hill you were using for cover, there was usually no place nearby for you to run and hide.

This map... doesn't feel like that. It feels like the enemy's area is set up in a giant arc of overlapping fields of fire that control most of the playing area. Because, well, that's how it is. And if your team can't maintain sniping superiority, it becomes fun only for the other team (remember that old meme with the Atlas pushing a giant rock uphill like Sisyphus with the caption "I'm having fun?") Now, maybe as I get used to the map I'll find out tips and best practices to make me like it better, and I'll try that, but my first look was a full 20-minute match of annoyance and pain. The only people having fun were the snipers and LRMboats, or the Lights that were specialized to prey on them.

I don't want to be hyper-critical, or say that it's a totally garbage map - but it does feel that we've solved the problem of snipers getting up on the wall and being annoying by letting everyone get up on the wall to be annoying.

[Void Angel]

Found it - also, does anyone know a place that doesn't try to trick you into paying for image storage, or post stupid watermarks across your pictures?

[C337Skymaster]

Void Angel, on 02 October 2022 - 09:02 PM, said:

Found it - also, does anyone know a place that doesn't try to trick you into paying for image storage, or post stupid watermarks across your pictures?

Discord (for now, anyway)

[C337Skymaster]

Reporting specifics anywhere I can until it gets addressed and resolved: the wall area immediately in front of the giant antenna is shadowed, so you cannot see the 'mechs that are up there (it's too far away to use heat or night vision when you're on the far wall). Meanwhile, the far wall is backlit by the sky, making it child's play to locate and shoot 'mechs located there. Thus, the sniping aspect of the map is completely 1-sided, and only one team ever gets to make proper use of it. The original HPG solved this problem by having the out-of-bounds line hug the front face of the wall. You could move around up there, but you were on the edge of the wall and completely exposed while doing so.

[C337Skymaster]

And I completely agree about Polar Highlands. That was a really fun map before Francois ****** it up. The one concession I'd make is to remove Domination from that map (from most maps, for that matter), since it limits the fight to the flattest area of Old Polar, and restricts the fight to relatively undesirable or one-sided terrain on most maps where it takes place. Old HPG was the one place where Domination made sense, because that was already the mode of the map, anyway. It makes no sense on the rework because you're adding an itty bitty antenna one kilometer from an absolutely massive one, and the itty bitty one is the one we're killing for?