382 replies to this topic

[Regina Moon]

The biggest issue with most of the maps is that most of the game modes don't service them. They're impressive maps to look at and have a lot of space to move around in and make strategic plans and such, but it doesn't really mean much when most people pick Domination/Skirmish/Assault, meet in the middle and have a slug fest. I feel like the maps need to be smaller overall or have a bigger variety in game modes that make people go somewhere else in the map

[Zephonarch II]

Changes to Gamemodes I'd like to see:
Assault - make a cap victory rewarding AND make cap zones easier to snipe at/ less concealed. Compensate the Rate of Capture nodes/ Light cappers.
Incursion - Remove it or make "pick-up" items on maps as defensible zones for entire teams so map passive buffs can be used as objectives (Like domination circle or Conquest cmd posts)
Domination - Expand circle radius on some maps (Crimson Strait)


Large Map changes:
Alpine Peaks: Complete overhaul, Make the giant mountain the Domination circle/ Center of the map, spawns equally distanced from it, climb time equal so no "no man's land MG42 scene" plays out unless if teams are lazy to take it, Surrounding area as flanking zones/ lesser sniping hills? Change it plz. it feels abandoned.
Terra Therma: [Remove it or overhaul it] cause most of the map is unused and people get lost/ separated from teams due to "flanking" around the ENORMOUS mountains. Add lanes up the Volcanos. Idk. Be creative with it. Go nuts. Have a pizza party and redesign it.

Solaris City: Area around exterior could be better for snipers. The whole center zone is huge and beneficial to brawlers so why not make open roadways on the outskirts of the city??? A few buildings outside for meds/ lights to scout around, utilize the 2 rivers like it were Mechassault 1-2's river city maps, make bridges on those as cover.
Frozen City: The valley is a killzone for teams that dont commit to left or right lanes. Center could be friendlier for brawlers from sniping sidelanes.

Medium Map changes:
Crimson Strait: Make Tunnel wider. Make it a brawling zone that can be exploited by the side tunnel entrance and more platform openings. Shift Domination circle over that mainly and expand it for outside area. 50% brawl tunnel/ lower platform--50% flank/poke upper platform around mountain.
Hellebore Springs: Accessibility overhaul. Once you fall off the mountains, you feel lost so more long rampways back up can alleviate pressure and keep the Springs as a vertical battlefield rather than just an elevated battlefield.
River City: Expand Upper City (Epsilon to Gamma) so more traffic can go there. Reduce traffic to Citadel. Citadel was always a popular area to fight on for brawling, but Sigma-Eps make the map predictable cause no one fights there unless if its a flank or the endgame sweep. River City should have 2 potential zones to fight over imho. I mean... why have nuclear power plants near Sigma if you dont fight over it? Gamma is the Spaceport, so that's valuable. but other than that the "City" is just a spaceport hub.
Rubellite Oasis: Change the theme. We already have crystalline themed maps (Tourmaline, Grim, FWC, Rube, Vitric, Hellebore I think has some purple crystal structures)... Make this a desert map. Tourmaline is the only desert map with sand, easy to spot mechs on. Rube (and imo Grim too) have problems with being too dark grey/brown. Sand could make the map pop imo and be a big Tourmaline Ship graveyard cause that's what I think when I see Rube show up.


Emerald Vale: Remove SOME of the rocks on the sniping cliffs. Make it scarce and open like HPG Manifold's sniping walls.


Small Map changes:
Ceres Metal Scrapyard: Make it brighter AND make some of the valleys in between hills wide enough for 2 assault mechs. Its narrow bruh. Map is nearly perfect for all roles otherwise and all areas can be used to shift the fight in (EQ helped expose its potential for whole region tbh. Make Ceres the new template for maps/ map changes imo.)

Forest Colony Classic (Both versions): Make tunnel bigger. lol But I'm serious. Make it bigger. It is made for BING BACK BAWL if it were redesigned for 12v12 instead of Classic's 8v8. 12v12 rn on it is a chokepoint nightmare. More tunnel/cave entrances maybe? for the larger zone?
Frozen City Classic (Both versions): If the tunnel is used to flank a team before the enemy has even gotten to their positions... then simple: Make the tunnel LONGER. No exits other than near Sigma and Gamma, AND overlooking Dropship as if its a "reward" for lights and mediums(or Atlases) who win the tunnel duel. Dropship crow's nest should be inaccessible via most JJ lights unless if its like a ~100m JJ enabled Cheetah or Spider.

-Really loving Ceres, Crucible, sometimes FWC, New Polar, Vitric, and Hibernal (compared to Canyon Network) btw PGI. Latest changes on maps and mech/weapon balancing is amazing rn. Very balanced. Teamplay is a must every game now. Specializing to roles is great but roleplay with Snipers/Brawlers/Light-supporting/Med-supporting is very "balanced" overall rn. Improving undervoted maps should be priority rn. Very proud of MWO and its development as a F2P. Grind isn't terrible rn imo.
-Zephonarch_ii

[KursedVixen]

I see no point to incursion other than a faster way to experience Faction play.... If i wanted to play faction play i'd play faction play....


On another note can we put the turrets back in assault to deter lights from just capping the base? we have the INcubus-3 i think and the spider 5v which can cap a base in a few minutes if left alone i think it should have to deal with turrets.. which are not that hard to deal with.

[Alphaeus]

For a long time I've thought that we don't need a ton of new maps, we need multiple ways to use the current map set. Maybe it helps to think in examples by map and game mode:

Forest Colony Domination - I've seen some complaints that we don't see enough of the fringes of some maps, including Forest Colony. Personally, *I* do; but "we" don't. One solution would be to create multiple spawn point sets for the same Domination point, so that people are coming from the water at both ends of the map. (It's water on three sides but the current spawn points put one team in the water and one team on land. Create a second set of spawns at 90 deg. from the current set and put *both* teams in the water.) Another solution would be to randomize the Domination point a bit. Not a ton, though. What if there were three Domination points for two to three sets of spawn points? We'd have approximately 6 different ways to play Forest Colony Domination, so voting FC-Dom would still maintain an element of surprise. And you wouldn't have to design a whole new map.

Alpine Peaks Domination - FWIW, I think Alpine's a great map. It turned sour when the Domination point landed in a valley because now, even on Skirmish, teams trudge into that same stupid valley. Reorient the spawn points and randomize the Domination point and you change the psychology of the way that map is played. Sometimes the Domination point could be in that valley; but other times it could move a few hundred meters to the top of the peak at I9 and we'd have a much different match. It's also worth pointing out that in Skirmish, I used to convince my team to take H12 or L3 and hold it. When they followed one of those plans, we usually won. But these marginal locations are often overlooked because teams play for the middle with the assumption that controlling the middle makes victory likelier. On some maps that's true; on others, it's a surefire strategy for a team's mass death (think Mining Collective's central platform or the valley on Frozen City). Players have to learn to pick terrain features, not map positions. And Alpine forces that issue. The Alpine hate is a symptom of players' uncreative thinking about strategic positioning, and of their hurry to engage without thinking about where or how to do it.

Terra Therma and Terra Therma Crucible Conquest - First there was Terra Therma. Then there was (New) Terra Therma. Then, based on (Old) Terra Therma, came Terra Therma Crucible. (Old) Terra Therma's central volcano is still somewhere on the margin of (New) Terra Therma; but we never fight there. Ever. And Terra Therma Crucible's central volcano is much more interesting than the central lava floe trench on (New) Terra Therma. I don't see why we can't just cut (New) Terra Therma and forget it ever happened. Terra Therma Crucible is a much better map. But this raises one problem: Conquest. The cap points on TTC (and this applies also to Polar Highlands and several other large maps) are so far apart that the team with the fastest light 'mechs usually wins. This is a Matchmaker problem: my Urbie gets matched against an Arctic Cheetah and I can't keep up, even though both are technically Light 'Mechs. Assuming it doesn't already, the Matchmaker needs to offer Conquest only when it's matched teams by fastest 'mech's top speed and number of 'mechs above a particular speed. (It's not enough for my team to have 2 ACHs if the other team has a group running 4 VPRs or 4 BKLs).

Canyon Network v. Hibernal Rift (All Game Modes) - The chief difference between Canyon and Hibernal is temperature. We all see that. Net effect: Am I sniping with lasers, or am I sniping with ER PPCs? And that's an important difference. What's annoying, since the terrain is so similar, is how different the grid coordinates are. We all know they're the same map, so just make the grid coordinates the same too, can't you?

Forest Colony Classic and Crimson Strait (All Modes) - I don't think FCC is a bad map; but it's only a half-map. What could you add to the far side of the cave so that we have a fourth line of attack? As it stands, the options represent various amounts of exposure: water (very exposed), land (somewhat exposed), cave (not all that exposed but beware a KGC!). FCC suffers from the same problem that Crimson Strait has: there aren't enough lines of attack. In (Newer) Forest Colony, the semi-recent updates solved this problem by breaking down the mountains at G10/H10, and that's been a huge improvement. For a long time I've thought we need an opening along the G or H line on Crimson Strait. As it stands, it's a half-map like FCC.

Litter Problems - I wonder if other players would agree: we have too many maps with crap lying around. Not building-height crap, just low-level stuff that, IRL, a Battlemech would trample. This stuff could slow us down; I get that. But hanging up a Dire Wolf on some pumping station in Solaris city that only comes up to the 'mech's knee? Bogus. Same with rocks on some maps and a million little things on River City, Crimson Strait, Frozen City, and the central City in Polar Highlands. I realize this would require a lot more graphics work (now you have to make *crushed* versions of every small outbuilding), but I've stopped voting for Solaris, River, and Crimson over this issue. Some players hate the Polar pre-mission trudge. In the same way, I shouldn't have to focus more on driving than shooting when I'm in a fire-fight--especially when the obstacles aren't realistically enough to stop my 'mech.

Free Worlds Coliseum (All Modes) - I've seen some Free Worlds hate today and although I don't agree, I understand it. What players seem to miss is that above the toadstools the map is a different game, regardless of the mode. I wonder whether it'd be possible to make it slightly easier for larger 'mechs to jump jet onto the toadstools, especially from the edges, or whether we could decrease gravity there by just a bit so that jump jets would help more 'mechs reach the toadstools. (Might need a higher wall, then.) I've been running the ACH a lot lately, and it's made FWC a really fun time.

I think the last few maps you all have produced are amazing! People clearly love Vitric and Emerald, and although I've seen some Hellebore hate today I actually think combat there's been evolving, which shows people are thinking about it in new, interesting ways. (Maps shouldn't pander to habitual play and I think that's the heart of all the NASCAR complaints a few years ago.) Ceres will be good when the pink patch comes through (but is it really a "small" map??). Thanks for all your work to keep MWO engaging. The development pace is good and the quality makes me willing to spend dollars on the game monthlyish. Keep it up!

Edited by Alphaeus, 02 August 2023 - 08:59 AM.

[Baucke]

Interesting that Incursion is doing so extremely bad, although the format just doesn't work that well as intended, while Conquest in my opinion shows more extreme fluctuations in the experience one makes, depending on whether the teams have an eye on the captures and how the light mechs are divided up.
To me Incursion only suffers from the fact that tank barriers are placed on gates that are too small.
But well, the main thing is that everyone always presses "R".

[Lorerunner 118]

I feel like Alpine Peaks is a bit misunderstood, even as someone who usually plays mid-range/brawling 'mechs and is sent to the low spawn more often than not. I used to hate it because of the snipers, but now I hate it because whenever it gets selected I expect to be dropped in a team that has no idea how to counter snipers.

Alpine Peaks has a route on the low ground to avoid getting sniped to death. It actually has counters to the sniping. But I will get teams where everyone thinks the best idea is to keep peeking the bottleneck at the base of the mountain and slowly get whittled away rather than flank wide.

Every time I get a win on that map it's from a successful protection of brawlers from the snipers, either because the enemy team didn't know how to snipe or because my team broke wide and avoided the sniping.

So I don't hate Alpine Peaks as much now that I know the map a bit better. I think its insanely high placement in the poll as "least favorite large map" is a testament to how annoying snipers are and how difficult people find it to properly counter them. It takes good positioning. And as powerful as the new Legendary 'mechs or the Stone Rhino may be, good positioning remains the meta.

[Daruwind]

A few ideas:
-would love more 3D maps...mining collective sort of, but more ramps more levels, more balcony. Solaris City but that has too narrow corridors, and all platforms are too high. More tunnels like Crimson..
-random on maps items. For example resource points are always same location. Make them randomly pop up around so scouting has reason. Some random ramps or blockades or stones so not every time it is the same. Imagine domination radar at random place of Alpine for example.
-Bigger influence or temperature? Improve night vision...so there is any reason to use it.
Bonus:
-Solaris arena was dead end, what about possibility to have battler royal like 8-last-man-standing, 12, 16 heck even 24 at max? Would it be possible? Think even 8 people on Rubelitte/Tourmaline would be enough,completely new experience...

Edited by Daruwind, 02 August 2023 - 09:28 AM.

[Tarteso]

Biene Maja, on 02 August 2023 - 12:58 AM, said:

For what its worth, Free Worlds is a lot better with the iron mushrooms.

Anti-lurm umbrellas are the stupidiest addition ever in a map like this, more especially in such number.

On the other hand, why bother in sort the maps as large, medium or small, if most of the action take place in the same and relatively small zones over and over? Which is caused by: too much cover for the tactical use of sniping and missiles; continuous suppression of long range missile systems use; mostly no tactical alternatives beyond the "coordinate group" thing, which ends usually as a troglodyte-short-range mass stomp anyway

[Radar Glitch]

Incursion comes up so rarely it votes itself out. Might be more useful to ask what the next least favorite mode is.

[JPeiper]

First, thanks for asking all of us, it avoids the One or Two who shout and scream making PGI think there is a problem when there is'nt (like a lot of things at moment).
Best maps for me are River city being my favorite as all game styles can be played there and there are not many maps you can brawl and snipe on, heavies can plod and lights can run without being sniped/lrm'd to bits (with a bit of thought ! ) Emerald vale great too for similar reasons.
I dislike Hellbore and Solaris for excluding mid and long range weapons, LRMs useless on both and rad dep makes it worse. Hellbore is set up for lights with jjs and Sol for brawling only.
My votes where based on me playing almost always assaults, and playing a 100T lrm boat about One in Ten games (for a change).
The new Ceres map is good but could use being a bit brighter and some scattered buildings/cover from lrm's would be good as I can lerm a mech to bits with a lock and he can't hide....
All game modes fine except incursion, a lot of programming time must have gone into this but it really is a pain in the *** to play !
Anything that stops Mechs fighting/manuvering is bad , like incursion where you spend time getting out of the base then re forming to fight, then having to tramp over and do 1 dam to the other base...Maps that make weapon types or mech types difficult or useless to use like Hellbore/Solaris very bad as players quit. Game resolution is fine, we can see well enough to fight and any upgrade to Unreal 5 (!) would exclude a bunch of players for no real return.
See you in the field....

[Ninjah]

I'll keep it short. All maps have spots where mechs can get stuck and collisions on some are really bad. Really annoying.

[Mochyn Pupur]

Scrap Yard has potential, but the shading and colour choices/saturation makes it unplayable for anyone with impaired vision. Simply not an option to try and go to settings and change gamma/brightness each time going into and out of a match there. To put it into perspective, think Game of Thrones final season and the utter failure to maintain the cinematography of all the previous seasons, then have the lead designer say it was everyone else's fault for not having an industry specialised media centre . . . .

[KursedVixen]

Baucke, on 02 August 2023 - 08:53 AM, said:

Interesting that Incursion is doing so extremely bad, although the format just doesn't work that well as intended, while Conquest in my opinion shows more extreme fluctuations in the experience one makes, depending on whether the teams have an eye on the captures and how the light mechs are divided up.
To me Incursion only suffers from the fact that tank barriers are placed on gates that are too small.
But well, the main thing is that everyone always presses "R".

My biggest problem is ti feels too much like faction play and that peopel tend to shoot holes in their own wall.

[Ronbo]

Alpine Peaks is , while being one of the most open, tank/mech relevant maps, needs more buildings for cover so more avenues are viable for both teams.
Frozen City I agree, add buildings or something in the valley of death, otherwise dom is a fish in a barrel. Or move the dom circle.
Polar Highlands could be a little smaller, and more buildings on top. The center city is where the fighting happens anyway, maybe move the dom circle somewhere else for variety?
Caustic Valley problem is the out of bounds need to be more defined and not have it on the hillside where we are trying to go up and over, I forget the grid location. Maybe put rock formations with the outofbounds on them to be more defined. The Dom circle is sooo hard to see on map.
Solaris, while a least fav generally, does have the city CQB style. Maybe if every engagement didn’t revolve around the center, maybe break it up to different parts of map?
“Incursion game mode would be improved if the power cells were replaced with Conquest-style capture nodes, with each corresponding to a different perk. With this change, Light and Medium mechs would need to fight for control of a perk, rather than grabbing power and then running AWAY from the fight to "power up" a perk. I think it should be easier to swap control of a node than in conquest.”
I agree with mortilus on this one. Or, just take the nodes away, make it a true base assault with more turrets or something. Most of us don’t know how to play, Ive always bypassed the nodes and either went for mechs or the base. YOLOing on incursion is fun when the team does it. Or attack/defend mode.
Domination, maybe move the circle somewhere on certain maps like Alpine, solaris, polar, etc.
Conquest I only like when in light or medium mechs, but even then there isn’t a huge bonus for those doing the objective in this game. Hence, why its usually just skirmish unless enough decide to change up and do the objective to win. Which has been fun, but would be better to get lights and mediums to do the objective when cant do massive damage, thus score goes down.

[TubbyToast]

-Ceres Metal Scrapyard has eveything a good map needs in my opinion ( long/short range lines and flanking routs)
-Solaris City i would like more if the fps where higher... or remove the center city part and place it into the middle of frozen city
-Crimson Strait needs different spawns or another tunnel idk
-the old shader on Forest Colony Classic did a better job hiding the outdated graphics now it has this aquarium to it similar to river city
-in the end i had great rounds on every map and i love them all

* put the bases in incursion closer together so attacks and defences can actually happen with enemys around

Edited by TubbyToast, 02 August 2023 - 11:21 AM.

[Aram Banjo]

So Incursion is about to be fired... I am sad, with Escort the only gamemode with a pinch of innovation.
I want Escort back...

[muhtekwr]

I think game modes need to maintain some sense of variety. Conquest forces players to do something other than form a death ball, and I think this is a good thing.

The problem with Incursion is that it is assault with more steps. Most modes end when all enemy mechs are destroyed, but in incursion players still have to lumber over to the enemy base and shoot something.

Perhaps incursion can be saved by making it a variation of domination. Place a single base in the center of the map that both sides are trying to destroy. The base can be a third faction with walls, and turrets, and will even call in air strikes to kill both player sides. If you want to add new features to the game, the base can be surrounded by mines that detonate and damage mech legs. Like the turrets, the players can shoot the mines to destroy them (but they can't be locked on to). The mode will keep track of how much damage each side deals to the third faction's base, and the winning team (if time runs out, or the base is destroyed) will be the team that dealt the most damage to the third faction base. The match will end upon base being destroyed, allowing the match to end without the timer running out or having to destroy all enemy mechs. If all enemy mechs are destroyed, then the match will end as soon as the surviving team deals more damage than the enemy team. If the surviving team fails to do more damage than the enemy team before the timer runs out, then the dead team will still get the victory.

I think Escort can be brought back if overhauled. The original escort didn't prevent the players from forming a death ball. This can be fixed by having multiple escorts per faction. In this new escort, each lance has an escort, thus three escorts per side (so a total of six on the map when counting both sides). Each lance's escort will take a different route through the map, never intersecting with another escort from the same faction. Each escort's path will intersect a single escort from the enemy side. The escorts in question will be different mechs based on the average tonnage/speed of the mechs in the lance. Thus players won't know what mech will need escorting. In the old escort, it was the same atlas each time. In this new escort, the randomly selected mech will be disguised like a player. The idea is that the players won't be able to tell which mech is the escort mech, so they have to shoot all five mechs in each lance. I don't know if there are any limitations to the number of mechs in a match, but if an extra six can fit in, then this new escort mode shouldn't be a problem.

[BlackWing88]

Frost_Byte, on 01 August 2023 - 02:54 PM, said:

Hello everyone!

Here are some polls on your favorite, and least favorite, maps and game modes. We'd love to hear the community feedback about what you like or dislike about current maps and modes so we can help work forward on making new maps and improvements to current ones!

Of course, don't just vote in the poll. If you have more thoughts, I'd love to read about them in the comments!

i absolutly love the new scrap yard map

[TheCaptainJZ]

Incursion makes a lot more sense as a mode with respawns and a longer game timer. It would even be a candidate for unlimited respawns. But then it should be moved to FP or EQ.

[Khyber Vorchavski]

Incursion has always been one of those game modes that has its place.. And that place is FACTION play.

Cant forget the Long QP wait times just to get your base Overrun by the whole team and No one on either side gets any Damage.