382 replies to this topic

[13Tradesman]

I think Alpine peaks gets a bad rap, depending on the game mode it can vary quite a bit... but ultimately I do see the issues: bad choke points, bad spawn points (these can be rearranged...map is huge), absolute high ground positions, unbalanced sides, and limited cover from sniping/LRMing. Most of these issues can be resolved with a bit of TLC.

Hibernal rift also needs TLC... especially on domination...so the ring around the rosie can end...very fixable...would like to see more bridges...would NOT go for the polar highlands solution.

Hellebore springs...TLC again...not enough areas for pass through on parts of the map...if you fall there is no easy way to get back up quickly...could use mech lifts or elevators maybe...parts of the map see little if any use sometimes too, partly because of spawns, but also lack of objectives in those areas....always after spawn you go up the winding ridge to the center...never down in the valley to move across the map...unless you are in a fast light mech with jump jets...but that's certainly not me.

Grim Plexus needs a complete do-over: changes in spawns, added cover across map, more usage and accessibility of bismuth towers... those are currently too close together, too steep...limiting usage to mechs with decent jump jets/campers...I want to see more options for climbing), Terra Therma feels like a lost cause...no matter how you change it, it seems it will remain bad...same with caustic valley.

River City gets a big thumbs down for too many sniper/camper spots that favor advanced zoom...absolutely HATE how easy it is for snipers to take pot shots at players crossing the river. Haze and lighting also obscures vision for those trying to hit back snipers. Lots of potential with changes to spawn locations, added cover for river crossing, more structural "bridges" or crossings going across the map.

Edited by 13Tradesman, 02 August 2023 - 08:13 PM.

[TubbyToast]

13Tradesman, on 02 August 2023 - 08:05 PM, said:

River City gets a big thumbs down for too many sniper/camper spots that favor advanced zoom...absolutely HATE how easy it is for snipers to take pot shots at players crossing the river. Haze and lighting also obscures vision for those trying to hit back snipers. Lots of potential with changes to spawn locations, added cover for river crossing, more structural "bridges" or crossings going across the map.

make the river deeper so mechs would vanish inside the water and enemeys must also stay underwater to receive a signal.

[TW-Luna]

Thinking on it some, and making an assumption here, I assume the devs have heatmaps of player movement across the different maps. It's really a maybe, maybe not thing.

But after the poll is finished, would love to see a post talking about if they're happy with current player usage of the maps. As many posts have pointed out, a number of maps (and we only get one vote for best/worst) have issues where the fight takes place in the same spot, every time, almost no matter what the game mode is. Crimson Strait, Forest Colony (new), Grim Plexus, HPG Manifold, and River City come to mind in terms of maps where the fights are always concentrated in I would say the same 20% of the map.

[Thorqemada]

I did not vote, i am not in the pool anymore, but seeing Tourmaline being voted well for makes me happy, it is one of the maps i had the most fun on!

Seeing Domination on the other hand a favourite gamemode - ugh....


Stay well everyone!



PS: Players will hate something regardless so it is not a bad strategy to give them something to hate on thus the other content must not suffer player displeasure for the sake of showing player displeasure!

Edited by Thorqemada, 03 August 2023 - 01:54 AM.

[A Nephew of Kerensky]

I really enjoy Vitric, but I believe it should be considered at least a Medium sized map.

[McGosy]

F i s s i o n, on 02 August 2023 - 07:47 PM, said:

There's been talk and promises made (since at least January to my knowledge) regarding increasing the dom circle time with faction play and other drop deck variants from 1.5 mins to 2.5-3 mins - this allows more opportunity for come backs and making it back in the circle without the game ending too early, while you can still win based on the timer if it's a close game. Please make this happen in the next patch

Indeed Domination mode is a problem for Event Queue Drop Deck matches and Faction Play. The Drop Deck situation itself forces teams to not loose overview and map control, for not getting stomped in their dropzone areas. Currently teams in Faction Play have 90 seconds to get there after a wave mechs is gone. There is a lot matches people asking teammates to step OUT of the circle to not end the match after 6 minutes, cause waiting times are long there and ppl want to kill more mechs and play the game instead of winning in couple minutes for a 20-25min waiting to get in lobby for FP. Domination mode in Faction Play is a big "bumper". Give it way more time, or remove it, or remove it for a centered beacon to get radar or lill artillery asisstance for ur team would be more enjoyable to play.(not the tom pls)

-Domination circle on Caustic-minimap is too hard to read, pls change domination circle color or the map color for the minimap to make the circle visible there

Edited by McGosy, 03 August 2023 - 12:02 AM.

[BiteyFerret]

I am okay with certain maps favoring certain types of loadouts, it keeps things fresh, however too many maps feel like they were designed to -only- be viable with some systems and offer no means of playing around that handicap. This is mainly a problem with long range maps, where short range builds have the option of a) walking into the open and get slowly killed by blue lasers and LRMs while being unable to do anything about it or b ) not participate in the fight. Don't even get me started on soft cover like hills that LRMs arc over. Thanks, I hate it.

I feel every map should have enough *small, hard cover that makes it possible to assault an undefended sniper spot (artillery should never be safe when alone. You're playing a long range, unpunishable build, you should require active defense to be kept safe), where you don't die to a single mech just because the only point of approach is a slow plod towards them in the open. There needs to be a downside to playing a long range build beyond "it's kind of boring".

* by small I mean cover where you can reasonably move from cover to cover. In theory Solaris City has lots of cover, however because that cover is The World's Biggest Buildings and it takes most mechs 30 seconds to walk from one side of cover to the other it makes actually playing it tactically (changing cover, moving around to flank, etc) impractical, because you need to fully commit into that move and are likely too slow and dead if the opposing team spots you mid move. The 12v12 matches already make being out of position punishing enough without also adding "and now your cover has turned into a gauntlet where you're shot in the back for +15s" to the mix

Edited by BiteyFerret, 03 August 2023 - 12:43 AM.

[CwStrife]

F i s s i o n, on 02 August 2023 - 07:47 PM, said:

There's been talk and promises made (since at least January to my knowledge) regarding increasing the dom circle time with faction play and other drop deck variants from 1.5 mins to 2.5-3 mins - this allows more opportunity for come backs and making it back in the circle without the game ending too early, while you can still win based on the timer if it's a close game. Please make this happen in the next patch

I really hope they put faction play style drop decks on the quick play maps/game modes. If anything they should just remake Faction Play into that mode, it would probably get a ton of attention then.... the objectives and all that bs never really worked out.

[MelchiTzedeK]

All maps have its advantages and disadvantages. We can chat all days about them all, but what makes a good map and good game mode is the abilities to add strategic plays... which means by adding bot turrets, tanks, bombing runs, elemental suit after eject from the mech... etc, etc, etc... By adding new elements to the game creates an excitement and new ideas in battle. For quick play there should be at least 2 drops on mechs. The winning team should be won by the amount of damage done and timeout, or destroying strategic primary and secondary objectives. Very similar to Faction, but more intense play with bot turrets, tank, bombing runs etc, etc... Create a game mode is all out war with more battle technique in mind. Quick play is okay, but there has to be more to it than just killing each other off one by one... it gets old pretty quick. The game mode need something different like capture the flag... like in the old days of mw3, mw4.... it's more fun running around with a flag and some someone is trying to shoot you down. There is nothing wrong with having Elemental suit after ejection and trying to stay alive. Just a thought.. and perhaps the future of mech war will some how make it more interesting. If I have a good game engine.. there are so many possibilities... Hopefully the future of Mech War will give something more interesting. Thank you all. See you in the Battlefield.

[__PLASMA__]

I think we
need a kind of drop decks for QP which can only be earned in FP and then have the effect that you can create your decks as e.g. brawling deck or long range deck or light mech deck and select them before the QP (like in the EQ) and select them then be available as mechs to make it more interesting I think the map vote should be dropped. then the people would have the possibility to at least adapt the mechs to a map and situation.

I have in mind to somehow make the game modes (FP/EQ/QP) much more dependent on each other, maybe that will help?

maybe it's just an idea that you might try in the EQ? the most important thing is that people don't get too serious about changes and please don't forget to have fun first.

for competitions there is compplay

with kind regards

__PLASMA__

[C337Skymaster]

Gagis, on 02 August 2023 - 02:43 AM, said:

I'm a bit surprised by how popular Skirmish is compared to other game modes. It is the one mode that provides no incentive to fight and potentially lets stalemates happen.

Skirmish is the one mode where all you have to do is fight, and you can't be defeated by someone paying attention to the actual mission objective and sneaking around the fight to steal away your overwhelming victory while you bludgeon your hapless opponents. Assault has mixed feelings because on the one hand: it mostly plays like Skirmish, but with an alternative to hunting down that stealth light 'mech that's been kiting all match, but that stealth light 'mech can also steal the match if he's paying attention and you're not.

Nobody seems to like the two modes where you actually have to employ strategy and tactics, which is odd (and very disappointing) given this franchise is all about strategy and tactics.

[C337Skymaster]

CwStrife, on 03 August 2023 - 01:21 AM, said:

I really hope they put faction play style drop decks on the quick play maps/game modes. If anything they should just remake Faction Play into that mode, it would probably get a ton of attention then.... the objectives and all that bs never really worked out.

Go play Faction a few times. Particularly, go play against a coordinated opposing team. Then go play a few QP matches where you get stomped, 12-2, or 12-0. Now consider you got stomped 12-0, and you've got three more waves of 'mechs you have to fight those same opponents with, before you can be released to go to another game. This is why Faction Play died the way it did: you get a group of Pugs who just want to play the mode and have fun, and they get matched against a team that's there to win as hard as possible, and the end-of-match kill ratio is something like 18-48, and 6 of the 18 were ejections because they ran out of ammo.

QP lived while other modes died because of exactly that scenario, which is why it's a very bad idea to bring that scenario to QP.

[sycocys]

In my opinion the 2 biggest problems is that most of the maps are too small - most were/are too small when designed with 8v8 in mind and then 12v12 got jammed onto them.

The second and equally big problem is that ALL off the drop/spawn points are bad. Some of them are bad combined with the maps being way, way too small for 12v12 like mining collective.

The drop points should be designed to push the game away from deathball and into lance v lance. Especially for modes like conquest and incursion - changing the drop points could actually give these modes an identity.

Incursion you should not be spawning at the back of your base all in a ball, move the drop points forward to at least the gates if not outside and spread them out.

Conquest should 100% be 3 lances dropped to compete for 3 points to start out the match.

---
Individual maps -
Alpine is still ****. The map combined with the bad drop points have never made this map any good. Its a huge map with play designed against using 80% of it and the one spot that you are pushed to utilize is massively unbalanced for one team.

Mining is way too small (of course the other classic maps as well), really needs to be expanded on the outside. With caves?
Solaris is a find your way out Denny's placemat maze.

New Forest needs that mountain range that cuts off the FOREST deleted.

The bigger maps just get super boring because the drop pointes are so bad and encourage deathball.

[nopempele]

Several points I'd like to raise.

The maps.

The Canyon Network is generally great, except for the Assault modes where drop points are hugely imbalanced. One team gains a huge advantage by moving left and taking an unassailable position from which it could safely snipe the other team.

Alpine is just killing fields for campers to exploit, any other mechs have no roles there. Extremely boring and annoying. I wonder if moving spawn points could improve that a bit?

Solaris City is OK for all but LRM boats, which are completely useless there.

Caustic Valley used to be fun, the new version is not. It is so bland I cannot really remember anything about it.

Basically all the "new" versions of the maps (Forest Colony, Frozen City, HPG Manifold, Terra Therma) are somehow worse and less fun to play than their original versions. Like both new Forest Colony and Frozen City have lost their indicative tunnel feature, new HPG Manifold has now camper walls all around it, and the new Terra Therma is a nascar around the central location rather than a stand-off the original version used to be. And bigger does not mean better.

And the greatest, most fun and versatile map after all these years is still the old Tourmaline Desert. Please don't ruin it.

The modes

Of all the modes I think Incursion feels underwhelming currently. It is almost impossible to win by destroying the base so one might not bother with anything other than killing mechs. Which makes it a more prolonged (and thus more boring) Skirmish due to how spawn points are farther. Maybe re-think it as a Conquest spin-off rather than an Assault one? What I mean is that instead of two opposing bases you would have more smaller ones scattered across the map that you can capture (they start as neutral). Those bases when captured could give you some extra advantages (like those temporary ECM/Radar and maybe something else like extra strikes or coolshot replenishment).

[Mechwarrior2342356]

I'd make a suggestion for new modes if I were confident they had a chance of coming about.

E: you know what why not

Since QP tends towards being chaotic anyway let's have some modes that lean into that.

A twist on Conquest where the cap points are randomly placed. Each side is charged with chasing down a series of supply drops, starts out with many, caps are quick, have something like a 2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 series of cap points.

Incursion being asymmetrical with attackers having cappable buffs and defenders having repair points, attackers have a limited drop deck, defenders rely on repair-rearm points.

Edited by the check engine light, 03 August 2023 - 06:49 AM.

[avenger cannon]

Incursion is like the better version of Assault.

[LGBTQIAplus Ally]

It was hard for me to pick my least favorite large map because I don't like many of them, and it was hard to pick my favorite medium and small maps because I like most of them. Hard to keep a team together in large maps with a direwhale going 1/3 the speed of lights.

[McLaine]

I'm no fan of Incursion.

I do think the Radar Jammer, Radar, and Strike boosting instalations would be cool added to flags on conquest tho, such that control of the flag gives you control of the instalation.

Likely too much coding tho.

Edited by McLaine, 03 August 2023 - 07:28 AM.

[Kroont]

Bring back the ESCORT mode....
( uuuuuh, but that is not fair....., YES RIGHT , WAR IS NEVER FAIR !! )

[MrMadguy]

Why don't you analyze ingame voting?

Problems are exactly the same, as they've always been.

Maps. You make PVP game, not PVE. Gameplay >> environment diversity. Your game has certain game mechanics. Don't forget about them. Cover is essential. Effective range is essential. Routing is essential. Just don't make maps, where half of 'Mechs are useless dummy targets. Don't make Meta maps, that cater to certain builds (Lights for example). Another thing - is waste of time. We play 'MechWarrior Online, not WalkWarrior Online. It shouldn't take 30-50% of match time just to see other team for the first time. We all understand, that for online game developers it's more profitable to waste more time for lesser reward. But for us it's opposite. That's why big maps are almost useless.

Modes. Don't try to fix, what isn't broken. Players prefer to kill other players. This game is about it. It's PVP game. Period. What game modes should try to achieve - to create some points of interest in different parts of map. Also to prevent players from griefing. That's why it's better to finally add engage timer to Skirmish. Objectives should make sure, that team can win match, if other team's player(s) are wasting time, hiding, trying to use starvation tactic or perform some other non-sportive actions. What modes shouldn't do - turn game into ObjectiveWarrior Online.

Edited by MrMadguy, 03 August 2023 - 08:14 AM.