94 replies to this topic

[KingCobra]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 December 2023 - 01:40 PM, said:

Kinda moving the goal posts here don't you think? If they are played less sounds like new maps aren't really necessary to keep players playing otherwise they would be voted more often don't you think? I'm aware maps are weighted, but I don't think it is a coincidence that certain maps have such a hefty pick rate.


Every game can have that, and honestly acting like TT players were the only dedicated player base in MWO is pretty disingenuous. The real question is what does it take to grow or maintain that player base and the answer to that can vary depending on what hooks people.

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Maybe you are just pushing the knife in further to make your point of view into a momentous plot twist? Every MWO player and fan is appreciated by me as if not I would have no one left to play MWO with.

I agree on the hook, but it takes more than hooking a player to your game it's called fun excitement and retention to maintain a long-term player base. Why do you think MechWarrior2-MechWarrior4 players stayed so long? mostly it was 24 unique Leagues and a Social environment plus 500 + playable maps and 20 + game modes and the same for Co-op and Faction play.

When MechWarrior 4 was closed on the MSN Gaming Zone thanks to Steve Balmer the player base was still close to a million registered and playing players. And I think if the MSN gaming Zone would have been left alone today those players would be playing a new updated version of MechWarrior4.

Edited by KingCobra, 20 December 2023 - 02:08 PM.

[KursedVixen]

KingCobra, on 20 December 2023 - 07:35 AM, said:

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NO its a great map is is one of only a few MWO brawling maps left..

what other brawling maps are there?

I like solaris... the tight quaters are fun and few people use the outskirts...


the only bad maps right now are the ones with holes you can get stuck in....

Though i strongly dislike caustic and terra therma (The old terra therma was better) I don't see why people hate alpine though I do miss the moutain battles that use to happen....

Edited by KursedVixen, 20 December 2023 - 02:39 PM.

[RickySpanish]

KingCobra, on 20 December 2023 - 10:26 AM, said:

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There only needed to be a few that wanted the mini map game voting system and they all resided in the main office but it's there and many now want this map voting system gone from MWO I have heard it on the forums and in game many times over the last few years.

Today I finally played the map Caustic. After over a month and it's been well over two months since I have played, and terra maps the list goes on and how is this good for the game? Random map rotation would be the best option with all the maps we have in MWO old and new to be played.

And yes i agree picking your mech after knowing the map and game mode would be better that is the way it was in MechWarrior4

Wrong. Map voting was asked for a lot, so PGI added it. People who want random maps back either didn't play back then, or are wilfully ignorant of how bad a system it was.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

KingCobra, on 20 December 2023 - 02:05 PM, said:

I agree on the hook, but it takes more than hooking a player to your game it's called fun excitement and retention to maintain a long-term player base. Why do you think MechWarrior2-MechWarrior4 players stayed so long? mostly it was 24 unique Leagues and a Social environment plus 500 + playable maps and 20 + game modes and the same for Co-op and Faction play.

I mean I played MW4 from 2005-MWO Closed Beta (2012 or 2013?) in NBT leagues. The multitude of game modes were more or less variations of the same thing which is what we have here. IMO the biggest thing that I think is missing is a game mode for casuals who just want to drop in and drop out like the old Mission Play servers. One of the cauldron members mentioned their hopes for essentially a battlefield with mechs and that sounds like something that be more like what you are wanting. The problem is just that would be such an effort that is has to wait for MWO2 and it isn't going to please everyone either. Some people enjoy the way mechwarrior plays currently, myself included. It's how I played almost all of my time in MW4 and I don't really care for mission play or battlefield. It was fun to play for like an hour or so and then it got boring really fast (especially since those mission play servers tended to attract more mechdads compared to others, so average skill level was generally...lower).

Was it nice to have that many maps? Sure, but I don't think it was honestly necessary for the longevity. New mechs, new weapons, new equipment, new features, etc. Stuff to add depth, variety, or just make things more accessible has typically been key things.

Don't get me wrong maps, are included in that, but we are also probably talking about the 2nd most time consuming thing (1st being features) and it doesn't directly contribute to income flow either so the benefits of them can get lost in the financials, especially if you aren't continuously tuning maps (PGI struggled with map design for quite a while, I mean how many places can your mech get stuck by some small piece of terrain) because I don't know of a single game whose map was perfect on the first draft (meaning people will likely not like it initially).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 December 2023 - 03:28 PM.

[Bud Crue]

KursedVixen, on 20 December 2023 - 02:35 PM, said:

what other brawling maps are there?

Besides Solaris, I'd say brawling can, more often than not, be strong on Bog, Mining, Crimson, Polar, Rubelite, Hybernal, Tourmaline (yes, you'll get hit at range for the first few minutes, but once you close in the center its often brawl heaven), and of course Frozen classic; vitric too, but its on the edge (it helps a lot if you are in a group).

Of late, I'd say Forest, Canyon, Caustic and Grim are maps where brawling can be enjoyable about 50% of the time; Hellebore is on the edge here too (if things go right it can be brawl heaven but more often than not, things don't go right), and to a lesser extent both Terra Therma and whatever the new Tera Therma is called.

For my money the worst brawling maps are River City (yes it has the buildings area and the islands (aka the park) but the overwatch positions feel way too strong given the range available these days and by the time you get into the cover of the buildings a sub 70 KPH brawler can lose as 30 percent or more of their armor), Frozen, HPG (bring back old HPG!!) and Alpine.

Edited by Bud Crue, 20 December 2023 - 03:55 PM.

[MOPCKOE]

I LOVE SOLARIS CITY, JUST USE YOUR BRAIN SNIPING **IOT

[RickySpanish]

the check engine light, on 20 December 2023 - 03:25 PM, said:

Well, do tell. How was it bad? Come on. Qualify your statement.

Are you serious? lol. Why on Earth do you think? Because players had no agency in map choice, obviously. Honestly of all the 'prove it or ur wrong!!' hills to die on, asking why not having agency vs having agency is bad is just...

[Quicksilver Aberration]

the check engine light, on 20 December 2023 - 07:56 PM, said:

Might as well ask where my agency goes when I want to play Bog or Crucible and get a 5 map streak of HPG instead. Getting Hellebore requires an act of Congress. Terra Therma got picked once and I figured someone somewhere lost a bet.

That said, there is a reason no one picks them. Hellebore is a pretty awful map.

[Saved By The Bell]

I dont want HPG in a row and hate it.

Bring back old HPG.

Edited by Saved By The Bell, 20 December 2023 - 09:52 PM.

[KursedVixen]

the check engine light, on 20 December 2023 - 08:09 PM, said:

HPG's popularity is utterly unwarranted. I can see why Mining gets picked. I can see why Rubellite gets picked.

HPG is shite. I see nothing redeeming in it. I see nothing redeeming in getting it multiple times in a row. I would absolutely rather play Hellebore or Crucible. I like Crucible. I like Terra Therma. I will play Bog over and over again with zero complaint, and Vale can go **** itself too while we're at it.

i prefer the old HPG at least then it was special to be on the wall and you didn't see assaults up there.

[MrMadguy]

Oh, I thought it would be one of that "I'm pro player. It's boring to play on good maps. I wanna play on bad one just to troll everybody else, lol".

Map/mode voting was implemented, because devs created lots of Meta maps. Map for snipers, map for LRMs, map for Lights. Problem is - some Metas are good on any map. Snipe Meta for example. But brawlers become completely useless, if map doesn't suit their Meta. So, overall players prefer balanced maps, that equally suit all Metas.

That's how voting works. Majority of players choose map/mode, that suits them. That's it. Devs decided not to remove their unpopular Meta maps and replace them with good balanced ones. There is two way to play them: 1) Majority of players agree to play on them 2) You can eventually get map you want via stacking vote multiplier. But then don't wonder, if quality of match will be bad due to some players not being able to play on this map properly. Some may even leave or suicide, if map is completely unplayable, such as Alpine Peaks.

Returning to random map rotation would be disaster. Only players, who play universal Meta, such as snipe/light Meta, want it to return.

[torsie]

Voting from more maps would be also cool, not only noone wants to play the purple trees map but it also appears on the list like once a day.
There is a survey on this forum about your favourite maps and they are divided into Large/Medium/Small, so it could always offer at least 1 of each size or 2, deciding between 6 maps instead of 4 cant be that much more of a chaos.

Or maybe if you could see those vote % before you vote? When I see a map that I dont like or dont want to play, usually the snow maps, I will vote for something like the grey map, but if I saw that its 30% on grey map and 29% for some other cool map that I didnt see for a whole day, I would vote for the less played map instead. That grey map is cool but playing it 58 times in a row gets a little bit boring .

Now when I cant see the vote, I have to vote for the more obvious choice, instead of risking it with my personal favourite and ending up with something I dont enjoy playing.

[aardappelianen]

i just wish i had a way of knowing wich maps to expect, so i could actually get my mechs in there that i built for them.
as a new player getting to learn all the maps from all spawnpoints was really hard and now after of being gone and back there are still maps that i don't know very well because they are so rarely played, what makes matchmaker decide wich maps to offer ?

personally i would want to have all maps on their own que, but we need more players for that i guess

[ScrapIron Prime]

aardappelianen, on 21 December 2023 - 07:05 AM, said:

i just wish i had a way of knowing wich maps to expect, so i could actually get my mechs in there that i built for them.

This has been a long debate. Personally, I feel that selecting your mech to go along with the map would further reduce penalties for specialist mechs. On some maps your mech might reign supreme while on others it is handicapped. Eliminating random maps would completely kill off the idea of a mech that can do anything besides brawl or snipe.

[KingCobra]

RickySpanish, on 20 December 2023 - 03:23 PM, said:

Wrong. Map voting was asked for a lot, so PGI added it. People who want random maps back either didn't play back then, or are wilfully ignorant of how bad a system it was.

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It was not the random map selection everyone I knew loved it what they hated was the check box system before launching into a game it was cumbersome to say the least about it.
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Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 December 2023 - 08:06 PM, said:

That said, there is a reason no one picks them. Hellebore is a pretty awful map.

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I think it's more about TTK Like I have said there is not a map in MWO that I hate and yes some have bugs some are tacitly more difficult but for most MWO players it's all about how fast and how many kills they can get so they pick the maps they have low TTK and fast kills.
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Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 December 2023 - 03:27 PM, said:

I mean I played MW4 from 2005-MWO Closed Beta (2012 or 2013?) in NBT leagues. The multitude of game modes were more or less variations of the same thing which is what we have here. IMO the biggest thing that I think is missing is a game mode for casuals who just want to drop in and drop out like the old Mission Play servers. One of the cauldron members mentioned their hopes for essentially a battlefield with mechs and that sounds like something that be more like what you are wanting. The problem is just that would be such an effort that is has to wait for MWO2 and it isn't going to please everyone either. Some people enjoy the way mechwarrior plays currently, myself included. It's how I played almost all of my time in MW4 and I don't really care for mission play or battlefield. It was fun to play for like an hour or so and then it got boring really fast (especially since those mission play servers tended to attract more mechdads compared to others, so average skill level was generally...lower).

Was it nice to have that many maps? Sure, but I don't think it was honestly necessary for the longevity. New mechs, new weapons, new equipment, new features, etc. Stuff to add depth, variety, or just make things more accessible has typically been key things.

Don't get me wrong maps, are included in that, but we are also probably talking about the 2nd most time consuming thing (1st being features) and it doesn't directly contribute to income flow either so the benefits of them can get lost in the financials, especially if you aren't continuously tuning maps (PGI struggled with map design for quite a while, I mean how many places can your mech get stuck by some small piece of terrain) because I don't know of a single game whose map was perfect on the first draft (meaning people will likely not like it initially).

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But you're not the whole player base in MWO some players like a variety of game modes to keep the game interesting even with the 4 we have only 2 get picked a lot Domination and Skirmish I wait days sometimes to even play the other 2 game modes and in MW 4 they had actually 20 different game modes not variation.

To be honest I don't know why PGI did not take all the Mechwarrior4 maps and just remake some of the better ones it would have been less time consuming a project.

I played in NBT/MWL/VL/MWA/and 16 other leagues all of its life playing on GB=GhostBear.DC=Draconis Combine and CYT=Clan Coyote we had a blast. There is still one old Buddie and teammate of mine playing MWO out of 300-1000 old players I knew when we all started MWO .

I would still recommend they go Random map rotation add all the old and new MWO maps into it and make game modes random as well then work on a bigger verity of new game modes. to enhance MWO game play.

[Saved By The Bell]

How about change vote: select one map, you dont want to play.

May be smth new?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

the check engine light, on 21 December 2023 - 06:57 AM, said:

HPG appears conspicuously absent from that voting list unless I overlooked it.

It's the second highest voted medium map, behind Mining. Hellebore, Caustic, and Crimson pick up the rear on the medium maps which also makes sense, I don't remember if the vote was before or after they adjust Caustic but it was pretty awful before.

I would say now Caustic is better than what it was voted on in that poll.

KingCobra, on 21 December 2023 - 09:06 AM, said:

I think it's more about TTK Like I have said there is not a map in MWO that I hate and yes some have bugs some are tacitly more difficult but for most MWO players it's all about how fast and how many kills they can get so they pick the maps they have low TTK and fast kills.

Hellebore being awful has nothing to do with TTK, it has everything to do with it pretty much being two trains smashing together and no really good ways to rotate. Hellebore is somewhat like Forest in that 50% or more of the map goes unused, the difference between the two though is that the other parts of Hellebore are unused because they are no man's lands that offer no reason to venture into them. The canyon maze that is to the south for example is just absolutely pointless other than wasting people's time.

KingCobra, on 21 December 2023 - 09:06 AM, said:

But you're not the whole player base in MWO some players like a variety of game modes to keep the game interesting even with the 4 we have only 2 get picked a lot Domination and Skirmish I wait days sometimes to even play the other 2 game modes and in MW 4 they had actually 20 different game modes not variation.

Deathmatch vs Attrition was the main ones which were skirmish with different point schemes, which is what most of the game modes boiled down to. Not saying that CTF or the mission plays weren't picked, just saying 20 badly design modes does not make a good game just like we saw with Incursion or Escort. With no server browser you have to be careful about what game modes are allowed in each queue. Ideally you would want to group game modes for each queue based on the type of player that it attracts. So for people like me, conquest and domination are all I really need for a good no respawn game mode (skirmish is the worst and assault generally plays worse than the other two objective based NR modes).

Mission play, CTF, Siege, etc all fit the more casual style of play that I think people want so that being in a more casual queue would make sense. However this is the point I'm trying to make, what we are talking about is attracting players that want to play stompy robots differently from me, and appeasing them is fine but you have to be careful from trying to branch too far because different audiences have different desires and it can be hard to balance that (which is why you have to focus on your core audience).

The video game industry and the world have changed A LOT since the MW4 days, expecting people to be successful by going back to the old model I think is a fool's errand. That said, I think games like Counterstrike have found a balance for that by allowing both custom maps, server browsers, and matchmaking to co-exist and provide options. One can only hope that if MWO2 comes to fruition, that is the model. However I will say this, with matchmaking, map voting is the way to go.

Saved By The Bell, on 21 December 2023 - 09:20 AM, said:

How about change vote: select one map, you dont want to play.

May be smth new?

I mean what you are talking about is pretty much map vetoes which how typical games do map voting, it just takes longer.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 December 2023 - 09:39 AM.

[Grey Hook]

ScrapIron Prime, on 21 December 2023 - 08:34 AM, said:

This has been a long debate. Personally, I feel that selecting your mech to go along with the map would further reduce penalties for specialist mechs. On some maps your mech might reign supreme while on others it is handicapped. Eliminating random maps would completely kill off the idea of a mech that can do anything besides brawl or snipe.

I understand that creating a system that rewards specialized mechs might end up “punishing” generalist mechs, but isn’t that more realistic? (not that realism is the main concern in a fictional setting with walking tanks, etc). But it’s more intuitive to how humans think, regardless of setting.
When getting ready to leave the house, how do you decide what to wear and bring? A person doesn’t look at all their clothes and decide what to wear at random. They think: What am I doing today? Will I be inside or outside? Do I need to bring a lunch? What is the weather like? Am I going to work? Am I going to a wedding? How long will I be gone for? Do I need my laptop, or my work boots? etc, then they decide accordingly.
MWO’s current mech/map selection order is more like this: First, firmly decide what to wear. Once you’ve committed to going out, you are given a vote between 4 scenarios. “Ok, this time it’s… “Best Friend’s Wedding”, “Yardwork”, “Hit the Gym” or “Ice Fishing”. Hope you’re dressed appropriately!
It is awkward to arrive at a wedding in gym shorts (and small comfort to know they would have been equally useless for ice fishing). But it is very frustrating when one has invested in a perfectly good tuxedo, knowing that there were times they would need it, but it’s hanging in their closet.
This is the current situation in MWO. And while I often enjoy playing generalist, mid-range mechs, I don’t think “just bring generalist mechs” is the right answer. In a game that offers such a deep level of tuning and customization of equipment, having a mission/map/mech selection structure that punishes effective use of the customization features feels almost cruel.
My proposed solution is to simply change the order in which the players make decisions:
1) choose which weight class you will drop in, for matchmaking purposes.
2) vote for the map and game mode, like we do now.
3) once the map and mode are determined, choose which of your mechs (from your chosen weight class) you will deploy in.
Yes, everyone will still have maps they like and ones they don’t. (I personally dislike Solaris City, but others love it there). But they get a fair vote, and if their favorite didn’t get picked they can at least bring the right tool for the job.

Edited by Grey Hook, 21 December 2023 - 09:55 AM.

[Saved By The Bell]

Well, I am collecting votes, and vote against HPG all times. I am holding votes, if no HPG. So do the same and be saved from premade sniper defeat.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Grey Hook, on 21 December 2023 - 09:54 AM, said:

I understand that creating a system that rewards specialized mechs might end up “punishing” generalist mechs, but isn’t that more realistic? (not that realism is the main concern in a fictional setting with walking tanks, etc). But it’s more intuitive to how humans think, regardless of setting.
.
My proposed solution is to simply change the order in which the players make decisions:
1) choose which weight class you will drop in, for matchmaking purposes.
2) vote for the map and game mode, like we do now.
3) once the map and mode are determined, choose which of your mechs (from your chosen weight class) you will deploy in.
Yes, everyone will still have maps they like and ones they don’t. (I personally dislike Solaris City, but others love it there). But they get a fair vote, and if their favorite didn’t get picked they can at least bring the right tool for the job.

I hear you. But consider this... how much worse would HPG Manifold be if there were 8-10 snipers on each team instead of 2-3?

Perhaps a bit of a compromise? Make every player use their drop decks. Build it out with 250-260 tons for 4 mechs like you do in faction play. You pick one of your drop decks and try to find a game. Then when you see the map, you choose one of the four mechs from the drop deck you have selected for the game.

With that, you're still going to have decks comprised of "my sniper, my brawler, and the two mechs I never intend to select", but its better than just picking anything after you see the map.

And it would encourage players to buy drop decks again, since Faction Play is just a shambling corpse of what it used to be.