382 replies to this topic

[Avicron]

the poll would have been much more informative had it allowed 3 picks per category. i dont have a single favorite but i have 3 or 4 preferred maps of each size. Similarly a few maps i don't care for but one i really do hate which is Ceres Scrapyard.

[JumpingHunter]

Thoughts about maps and gamemodes:

Best map - Hellebore Springs

I dont know why so much people hate it, but it's basically the only map that actually allows some levels of tactical maneuverability. It's inte nse verticality is doing great job at actually making JJs a great investment in mobility, and not slight damage spreading tool at best and useless weight dump at worst. Plus the map itself is not the Cauldron/Bowl-like, ulike HPG, Canyon or some other, so you dont get instantly torn apart by snipers if you are somewhere in center of map. Plus it's very distintly colored, and most mechs are decently visible on it. Should i say it is also just very good looking.

In general, ALL other maps (maybe aside fom solaris city, in some regard) should get more verticality and more covers. Solving Sniper meta issue is essential, and more vertical variety will allow more interesting tactical maneuverability.

Worst map - Alpine Peaks

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, but it has to either be reborn or removed, because it's current state is just a sniperfest with a bit of LRM sprinkling on top.

in general, ALL maps should get rid of most of their large empty spaces, because it only giving unreasonable amount of power to sniper meta. Good balance of snipers means that snipers are going out of their way to get to good position that corresponds to current situation of battlefield, they work to get to good position in time, and they are rewarded with bascially uninterrupted target shooting. In current map design of most maps, snipers are just hanging around spawn area in safety and shooting those who try to traverse the map and get closer to them. So maps should get less empty fields and more rocks, buildings, pits, natural trenches and etc.

Best gamemode - Conquest

I think it is the best for one reason - it divides teams in smaller groups. Instead of murderballing the enemy team, which leads to games like 12vs3 or 12vs2 in terms of frags, conquest games tend to make groups of mechs (not just lances) scatter around the map and fight on their own, and its always more fun to fight in 4vs4 or 2vs2 fight than in 12vs12 big shootout.

You feel yourself more valuable and less reliant on your teammates, while in bigger fights your role is simultaniously gives too much responsibility (snowball effect due to big firepower and smaller TTK of large group fights) and too small emotional reward (even if you do damage, enemies circle around and you are not getting any VISIBLE results of your actions, you just shoot and then die, or suddenly realise that there is a 10vs2 score and you're winning or losing badly). Smaller fights are more fun, more rewarding in terms of visible results (even if you died, you can still see how your teammate finishes your killer in his open CT right after he got you, and you know that you helped), and also just provide more room for some flanking maneuvers and general positioning, because even if your flank got interrupted, you just dont DIE INSTANTLY because you got simultaniously shot by 12 enemy mechs, you have much more room for error. And much more lies specifically on your shoulders too, so you have a reason to stay alive as much as possible, because there literally might be no one else to back you and your single teammate after your death.

You get much more agency in smaller fights, to shorten things out.

In general, ALL gamemodes should encourage people to flank and spread more, because it's just not really fun to bash your head against the wall of 12 enemy mechs over and over again, i think all gamemodes have to include some range of valuable objectives that everyone can get do. Conquest does that better than anythng, that's why i think it's the best mode.

Worst gamemode - skirmish

Dont get me wrong, simple fighting is great, when you just have to beat the crap out of your opponent, but it ALWAYS gets to 12vs12 wall against the wall fight, where even smallest mistake leads to you losing half of your armor and structure instantly, and even smallers of losses leads to snowballing victory for enemy team. Similar to what i wrote about conquest, it's good to have smaller groups engaging eachother, so skirmish with it's murderballs is just so unfun to play in.

In general, ALL gamemodes should actively discourage stacking lots of mechs in one giant groups. Make flank routs more narrow but more numerous, make team damage MUCH more punishable as a negative action against your own team, and make mech collisions more damaging, since people always tend to get very-very close to eachother for some reason. spread spawns across the map much more, make it harder for lances to group up, or, finally, make XP and CB rewards for various actions decrease drastically when too much mechs are getting too close to eachother. Discourage players from murderballing, and skirmish and other skirmish-like gamemodes will be much more enjoyable.

General thoughts

NASCAR has to be eradicated, it's a very bad habit from very start of MWO, and it should go away. Make maps have MUCH less circle areas in their geometry, make maps assimetrical, make players actually WORK to get to comfortable position, either unnoticed or through some fighting.

Plus, it would be great if we could swap our mechs within one chosen weight class depending on maps. It is very, VERY stupid that we have to just pray for not getting in Alpine Peaks in brawling atlas or other assaults, or to not get to Solaris City as an LRM boat. It's just dumb. Giving players ability to get useful machines in their appropriate enivonments will make game MUCH more enjoyable. No more pain when you realise that you have to get LoS for your LRMs in Solaris or that you literally can't do anything as a brawling Atlas in Alpine Peaks. It's a MUST-HAVE feature.

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.

VERY interesting idea, seems fair to me!

[EMKorD]

River City domination has really unbalanced spawns with next to zero cover from the south-west side.inside the circle. Also east side just seems to have more cover in general in any mode. The large open gap between sides is really annoying when you play on any non-sniper mech. On Frozen City you at least get lots of different covers there and detours around to mitigate that, on River City - you just don't.

Mining collective is really fine EXCEPT when annihilator or something with similar top speed gets dropped on the leftmost drop area (on both sides). Both those drop areas has to be moved somewhat closer to other ones.

Incursion is fun and people have to stop hating it.

Hellebore... You know, there can be such thing as "too much verticality". There is some merit to this map and lots of places in it. Just not the ones where the main action usually is.

Both forest colony classics has to go or be redone from scratch. Why they have separate vote counts anyway?

HPG Manifold was awesome before last rework on it. After that - somewhat okay map, but not that great. Ramps to the walls are a great addition, but the middle section is too messy now.

Polar Highlands. I don't know why, but it seems that I always get the west starting area, and almos never the east one. Since now all the action is in the center, even when it is not domination, I just don't see the point for outer areas to even exist. Just make it smaller then and move spawns closer to the center to save all of us much time.

To my knowlege, incursion game mod is not available on every map for some reason. I think it is time to disable domination on some maps as well. Like alpine peaks and frozen city. And to disable conquest on maps like Grim Plexus.

Speaking of Grim Plexus. Invisible walls on some crystalline hills have to go. It is always confusing when you try to jumpjet your way over some thicc cliff only to find out that you actually can't just because.

Alpine Peaks has nice geometry overall, but lacks something for people to like it. Maybe detailing, some more settlements or something like that?

Emerald Vale. At first it was confusing as any new map is, but after everyone gets it, I'd say that it is the greatest map in the game. Flawless, perfect. Great job making it!

UPD: Oh, and I didn't know Solaris City was a "big map". It is really medium and maybe even a little bit small-ish.

Edited by EMKorD, 13 August 2023 - 03:51 PM.

[reflectorjones]

Please put old HPG back into the rotation as well.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

EMKorD, on 13 August 2023 - 03:46 PM, said:

River City domination has really unbalanced spawns with next to zero cover from the south-west side.inside the circle. Also east side just seems to have more cover in general in any mode. The large open gap between sides is really annoying when you play on any non-sniper mech. On Frozen City you at least get lots of different covers there and detours around to mitigate that, on River City - you just don't.

Mining collective is really fine EXCEPT when annihilator or something with similar top speed gets dropped on the leftmost drop area (on both sides). Both those drop areas has to be moved somewhat closer to other ones.

Incursion is fun and people have to stop hating it.

Hellebore... You know, there can be such thing as "too much verticality". There is some merit to this map and lots of places in it. Just not the ones where the main action usually is.

Both forest colony classics has to go or be redone from scratch. Why they have separate vote counts anyway?

HPG Manifold was awesome before last rework on it. After that - somewhat okay map, but not that great. Ramps to the walls are a great addition, but the middle section is too messy now.

Polar Highlands. I don't know why, but it seems that I always get the west starting area, and almos never the east one. Since now all the action is in the center, even when it is not domination, I just don't see the point for outer areas to even exist. Just make it smaller then and move spawns closer to the center to save all of us much time.

To my knowlege, incursion game mod is not available on every map for some reason. I think it is time to disable domination on some maps as well. Like alpine peaks and frozen city. And to disable conquest on maps like Grim Plexus.

Speaking of Grim Plexus. Invisible walls on some crystalline hills have to go. It is always confusing when you try to jumpjet your way over some thicc cliff only to find out that you actually can't just because.

Alpine Peaks has nice geometry overall, but lacks something for people to like it. Maybe detailing, some more settlements or something like that?

Emerald Vale. At first it was confusing as any new map is, but after everyone gets it, I'd say that it is the greatest map in the game. Flawless, perfect. Great job making it!

UPD: Oh, and I didn't know Solaris City was a "big map". It is really medium and maybe even a little bit small-ish.

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

[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.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

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.

I seriously think all it needs is more visibility of the terrain itself. Improvement to vision modes would be nice but that's not map specific. I'm gradually learning which spots I am likely to get snagged on, some cleanup there and invisible barrier fixes and I would call it good.

Edited by the check engine light, 14 August 2023 - 07:07 AM.

[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.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

I could see reducing disliked map frequency maybe ameliorating frustration but I would really hope to see improvements made rather than them being swept under a rug, and even then it's going to still be up to personal tastes. I don't even mind that people dislike Hellebore and I would rather they be allowed to opt out rather than have the map sunk.

[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.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

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.

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.

[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.