344 replies to this topic

[reflectorjones]

Please put old HPG back into the rotation as well.

[Void Angel]

JumpingHunter, on 13 August 2023 - 01:29 PM, said:

The complete oppositee of Hellebore - no additional distinct covers, no vertical variety other than few very high rocks only avaliable for very jumpy light sniper mechs, basically it's an empty field with nothing to fight for. I don't understand how this map wasn't reworked for SO long...

It was, years ago. The result was the original Polar Highlands. Thing was, Alpine was everyone's least favorite map back then, too - until the exact moment that PGI announced it as the next map in the rework cycle. Suddenly, Alpine became a great map, and we love to vote for it, and WhY ArE YoU BrEaKiNg YuR G@m3/1! Eventually the rework of Alpine became so different (because its problems are so severe that it was difficult to also maintain the feel of the map, I think) that PGI simply left Alpine in the rotation and introduced the Polar Highlands as a new map^* - at which point people quickly stopped voting for Alpine any more...

The continued existence of Alpine Peaks stands testament to the bloody-minded obstinacy of certain MWO players.


*: Originally, Polar Highlands was a deceptively open-looking map consisting of low, rolling hills with a few buildings scattered around. I liked that it made you maneuver to win, but it had no meaningful tall cover to deal with LRMs, occasionally making the map a brutal hell if you ran into PuGs with a lot of LRMs and a Light to be spotter. Eventually PGI had to rework it to its current state.

Edited by Void Angel, 14 August 2023 - 12:43 AM.

[FatManBlue]

Daeron Katz, on 01 August 2023 - 05:11 PM, said:

Ceres Metal Scrapyard will receive an update this month.

I want to be able to mount a spot light on my mech or at the least a miners helmet.

[AtomCore]

proposal to do domination map like this one:https://imgur.com/a/d2dQ0UR

[EMKorD]

the check engine light, on 13 August 2023 - 08:26 PM, said:

I think Solaris only feels smaller because of all the chokes and general stuff filling it.

More like because all the action is happening in the domination circle and around it, regardless of gamemod.

[Elizander]

Incursion feels silly when you wipe the enemy team because it ends the moment the enemy base is more damaged than yours. The fun thing about Incursion for me is getting extra c-bills for blowing up the enemy base, but we're cut off from doing that in certain situations.

The incursion buff durations also do not fit well for the speed at which mechs tend to die. It makes little sense to expect players to constantly run off from fighting to active them. Make it a one and done. I prefer that the Incursion buffs be activated once and last much longer, making it more worth the risk of having your lights esplode.

It might be even better for match pacing if the buffs can only be activated from say, minute 2 onwards (give the slow mechs time to get into position to support the lights).

[IronSpirit]

Scrapyard is the same buggy map as Vitric Station was, in the same way 6 downloads out of 7 everything is displayed bright pink. But Vitric Station was fixed and now there is no this bug. Scrapyard it's a trash map in every sense of the word, where players collide over short distances.

The old problems of the game of non-registration of damage have not yet been fixed, it is not very effective to play with PPC when 30-50% of your damage simply does not register, the enemy does not even feel that you are attacking him and attacking you.
I also noticed that it often turns out that the whole side, the whole team does less damage because the damage is poorly registered. I thought it was a problem with bad players on my team, but it turns out it's also a bug in the game that just won't let you deal damage. I recorded several videos of such cases, with different weapons, ballistics, lasers, PPC everything is subject to this bug. I even played against a team that couldn't deal damage to us normally. I see that the PPC hits me, there is a sound of hitting, but there is no damage or almost none.

And of course there is no balance in the game, on Tier 1 it’s mostly dry wins or dry losses, 7-9 games out of 10 are losses in less than 5 minutes, because it is impossible to play with vegetables in the team against a good team of players that just erase everything in their path. And since the game goes by quickly, you have to play on your best builds, with the highest damage, in order to maximize the impact on the result of the game, but this also doesn’t help much, luck with balance decides more.

[TheCaptainJZ]

C337Skymaster, on 12 August 2023 - 06:08 PM, said:

So my proposition was: put the 'mechlab "load" button in the loading screen, post vote. You're locked into that specific 'mech (AS7-D, or TBR-S, or what have you), but you can pick a different saved loadout to put on the 'mech for that battle. Long range? ERLL/Gauss/LRM. Short-range? AC/20/SRMs. But the chassis remains locked when you hit "launch".

I like this idea. It gets around the tonnage problem which is a variable used in the matchmaker. They'll have to create a mech loadout slot. And make it something unlockable with mech xp (no cbills). You'd have to buy all equipment in the mechlab though (or take from inventory).

[Saved By The Bell]

I dont like to play the same maps all time. Especially Grim Plexus and Canyon Network.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I have thoughts about all the maps but they're not looking for that kind of feedback unfortunately.

As for modes,
Incursion introduces some nice ideas, but it doesn't play to it. What I'd like to see is variants of the other modes where you add things like a radar tower that either side can capture. It can either do the radar sweep thing, though a little more often, or be a sensor range thing. Same with jammer, and same with a dropship. Any one of these could be used in another mode, or a sub-mode. There's also the small jammer things from Escort. And turrets could be brought in for any mode too, even skirmish. These things would work better on the larger maps of course.

I'd like to see the base for assault turned into a bigger incursion-type base, with areas on all the maps designed for it. The capture square could be at least twice as big, and be a different structure than a mobile command vehicle too. I'd love to see destructible wall used too, but the design we have feels silly and forced. Give us normal "Jersey barrier" type destructible walls of different heights. I'd love to see more of a MechCommander design to maps.

Have a power generator that, when destroyed, knocks turrets offline or closes gates. Make gates so they can open and close and be captured by different teams. Maybe we're getting into Faction Play territory now, but let's start by seeing if we can put radar on the map that can be controlled by either team.

[Lionsroar]

Interesting, some of the maps that require the most skill such as Alpine aren't rated highly, although others that require skill such as Grim and canyon are rated well. While some of the maps the maps that require the least skill such as Solaris and Hibernal are also highly rated.

(By skill I'm referring tactics not your skill as a pilot in a brawl...)

In my humble opinion, Hibernal and Solaris are the 2 worst maps in the game. They require very little skill and favor the pilot who brings a fast high alpha mech to pick off slower mechs. Both become NASCAR wastes of time.

[C337Skymaster]

the check engine light, on 12 August 2023 - 09:12 PM, said:

Better solution. Anyone who did NOT vote for the winning map gets to swap to a different loadout or different chassis in the same weight class.

A different chassis is going to screw with the matchmaker ten times before Sunday, and it's already screwy enough. Same chassis, different loadout, is the most we can accommodate before we dispense with the matchmaker entirely.

[C337Skymaster]

TheCaptainJZ, on 14 August 2023 - 11:54 AM, said:

I like this idea. It gets around the tonnage problem which is a variable used in the matchmaker. They'll have to create a mech loadout slot. And make it something unlockable with mech xp (no cbills). You'd have to buy all equipment in the mechlab though (or take from inventory).

They don't have to create anything. They simply have to provide access to the "load" button from the mechlab in the drop window, at which point it's up to the player to have previously saved different loadouts on that chassis. It's the player's option to save as many or as few as they wish, and the player's fault if they saved 100 different builds and can't find the right one in 10 seconds. As for equipment: you'd have to buy it ahead of time. It'd be like it is in the 'mechlab: if you can't afford it, it just won't save, and will revert to whatever you had previously. You won't be unequipped, you just might be non-meta.

the check engine light, on 14 August 2023 - 02:31 PM, said:

Hibernal and Canyon are nearly identical barring Hib having fewer options to get out of the trenches. A lot of people seem to play them nearly identically.

Hibernal IS Canyon, with added snow, and created before Francois took a machete to Canyon. Hibernal, at this point, is Canyon Classic with Snow and an extra dropship (and a couple extra ice ramps).

Edited by C337Skymaster, 14 August 2023 - 05:37 PM.

[Finex Dragon]

Hi, I think I'll start talking in order from the maps I like the least to the ones I like the most, and from big to small.

Solaris City has the issue that it nullifies, especially in modes where you have to fight close to the center like Domination, mechs with long range miciles. It has the problem that when playing you choose the mech and then the map (I would say that if it were the other way around I had chosen other maps) in general if we choose the mech first and then the map I think the maps should be subject to a filter, is this map capable of supporting all types of game play?

With Emerald Vale luckily it doesn't have the problem of not supporting all game play, but it does have some annoying issues. The trees is one, too many trees that obstruct vision making and that causes the problem of suddenly meeting the opponent, which only favors close combat mechs. Another problem it has is that the mechs that use the high flanks are isolated, it would be nice to have an extra ramp to access the high flanks.

Vitric Station unfortunately is also one of the cases of choosing the mech first and then the map. Although it is said otherwise, it is a map that hurts long-range play, high positions that favor ranged shot exchanges have no cover to shoot and fall back into cover. I also feel that it is a map that has areas restricted to only mechs with the ability to jump that could have access ramps that would not harm the playability of the map at all, such as the walls that are part of the area of the spon, E2 and A2 for team1 A5 and E5 for team 2

Frozen City I like it because you can play all kinds of builds on that map, all the game modes work well, it has good spon points, maybe not the best but good.

HPG Manifold I think it's an excellent example of how to improve a map, I recently found an old video of that map and although it was entertaining, the way it was played before I think it was very limited, I think it's one of the few maps thatI wouldn't make any changes to it at all.

I chose Forest Colony Classic Snow a bit to give it more love, I saw it with very low percentages and because I like that we have old and unchanged maps back, not like what happened to poor Terra Therma that it's okay to change it but I think that made many changes. The good thing about Forest Colony Classic Snow in particular is that it's rather icy, giving any type of build the freedom to drop restrictions and play more freely.

Edited by Finex Dragon, 14 August 2023 - 10:36 PM.

[Rebel Ace Fryslan]

Oh dear, the results are consistent with wha the weakest players and non-team players want.

not a good result for a tactical team game.

[JumpingHunter]

Lionsroar, on 14 August 2023 - 01:42 PM, said:

Interesting, some of the maps that require the most skill such as Alpine aren't rated highly, although others that require skill such as Grim and canyon are rated well. While some of the maps the maps that require the least skill such as Solaris and Hibernal are also highly rated.

(By skill I'm referring tactics not your skill as a pilot in a brawl...)

In my humble opinion, Hibernal and Solaris are the 2 worst maps in the game. They require very little skill and favor the pilot who brings a fast high alpha mech to pick off slower mechs. Both become NASCAR wastes of time.

I disagree. Firs off, Solaris is actually the least NASCARy map i've played on, at least i have decent matches with proper medium-sized group fights on it more often than anywhere else. Don't know why, it might just be my luck. Hibernal is probably the smallest map in MWO, and while it does lower positioning skill requirement for some of the slowest assaults, you still have to know where to go and what to do in order to be useful. And because snipers are slightly less of an issue on both Hibernal and Solaris, it actually leads to much more open-minded gameplay, and not just trench warfare where everyone are afraid of moving. So your argument sounds more like "Hibernal and Solaris are worst because they don't force everyone to cover in trenches or behind rocks for 90% of the time and instead give people ability to actually use their mechs in actual brawls or mid-range shootouts". They lower required skill of avoiding Sniper Meta-slaving laser boats, but not a single other skill.

Second, i don't see how Alpine and Canyon are skill-based maps. For Alpine it's always LRMers and clan ER LL snipers who win in about 80% of matches, and other 20% of games don't have them winning because too small number of players actually brougth sniper weapons with them. So if there are long-rangers on Alpine, there's bascially no competition. Aiming is a skill, sure, but it's bascially the only skill you have to use to be good at Alpine if you're a sniper, and if you are a brawler or mid-ranger - you will have to sit behind cover for half of the match time and wait for enemies to come to you. Or do Area 51 rush strat and lose half of your team - still not much tactics required. As for Canyon - its THE most NASCARy map in game right now, i can't remember any other map with so NASCAR-inducing layout from my memory right now. So blaming Hib and Solaris in being NASCARy while claiming that CANYON is skillful map, that's not right. Should i remind you that both Alpine and Canyon, UNLIKE Hib and Solaris, don't have nearly as much LRM covers, so if anything LRM-dodging skill is hindered on former two maps more than on latter ones.

[Strelok7]

Xoury, on 01 August 2023 - 05:35 PM, said:

I think the forest colony classic / snow and the frozen city classic / night could've been merged into one option, it kinda seems how people are voting for them

BIG no-no

[Strelok7]

Just remember, MWO has a broad range of age groups. You not gonna appeal to the 2020 era kid in the same way you gonna appeal to the 1980s kid. Adding is the way to go, not eliminating. Modifying is risky; you instantly alienate a certain percentage of players. The goal of "better" should minimize alienation.

[Strelok7]

Time for Incursion update? I am picturing:

• One base only
  
• Blue attacks / Red defends.
  
• Extra defense lasers on the outside of the base.
  
• Grab a battery pack to boost the power of those lasers. from med laser to large laser capability.
  
• Red team steps out of the base to meet the blue, depending on the outcome - Red keeps pushing out or retreats inside. Party all around.

[Void Angel]

FatManBlue, on 14 August 2023 - 01:12 AM, said:

I want to be able to mount a spot light on my mech or at the least a miners helmet.

Searchlights actually are standard equipment on Battlemechs by canon tabletop rules - that's a topic for Features Suggestion, but I'd vote for it!