104 replies to this topic

[SirDenOfYork]

Maps can make or break a game, Devs. listen up....

[HRRxStormBringer]

Indirectly yes, Maps can make or break a game. I agree (despite the fact that you may be being facetious).

SirDenOfYork, on 04 February 2013 - 06:06 AM, said:

Maps can make or break a game, Devs. listen up....

[tvaughanx]

So yea they need to release some new maps they haven't released a new map sence the game went open no adding snow an turning the lights off does not count as a new map. Just annoying that all we have been getting is hero mech's. it should not take 4mths to make a new map considering i can personally make cry2 maps in about 2 weeks by my self so........
I dont care about ppls forum post defending them or not just want pgi to know my wallet is off limits till you guys release some content i don't have to pay for.......

[DeadlyNerd]

Volthorne, on 03 February 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

Those 100 heroes and 100 items are relegated to 5 different roles (wait, isn't there some other game with roughly 5 roles of its big stomps 'mechs?), so that factor is irrelevant. You'll still get teams running the same optimal composition, maybe with different heroes or slightly different item builds, and they'll still run the same optimal strategy.

Your point is actually a non-issue.

You better go search for your logic, cause I think it ran away and left a note that it doesn't want to be found.
Your post made none.
Talking about roles? brawler,scout,support. That's 3, not 5. Algebra's a *****. Maybe weight categories. Nope, still 4 and not 5.

Who's talking about teams here? See, there's this thing called Pugging. No not walking your pug, but playing as a solo, or a group(of friends), player to have fun. When having fun you don't use "optimal composition", you use what you want to use. When playing for fun you expect VARIETY, meaning maps here, because no variety means grind and grind is never fun.

If you're so confident that maps don't mean squat then why does your precious LoL have 3 maps agaisnt 1 in DoTA, and still fails to be more popular.

Edited by DeadlyNerd, 04 February 2013 - 07:43 AM.

[Corvus Antaka]

I'm sorry but those of you "against" player created maps for MWO are seriously off base.

Mechwarrior is a combat simulation across planets. planets. That means that any kind of planetary features are all the map we need.

As far as map "balance" goes, you act as if the current maps are somehow perfectly balanced for each team, when in fact, exisitng maps favour 1 or the other base / cap nodes already.

I know that making nice maps is easily within reach of this community, just as I know that many successful multiplayer games and single player games have tons of quality content & mods that player created content gave to that game and it flourished.

It is not rocket science making maps, And I for one would prefer the option to drop on PGI maps AND player created maps in my map rotation.

It would not be hard to add in map packs for the future, if you have the maps, if you choose to play them you can, if not, you can keep playing PGI's 4 maps instead, and keep your precious "Balance"

But stop acting like player created maps and content ruin games. Mods & player content gave mech4 years of extra life and much improved quality. The entire elder scroll series flourished on mods. No game has ever forced player onto player created content.

I see some people here acting as if player mods & content causes some wild imblanace, when quite in fact most often player content improves upon what game developers initially give a community.

There is 0 excuse for PGI to not allow player created maps. and also 0 excuse for those of you against it - no one is forcing you to play on player created maps.

As far as I am concerned, if the maps have bases spaced appropriately, and conform to a basic size standard & gamemode standard set by PGI, they would be happily accepted.

This is afterall norespawn, so we dont need to worry about spawn killing, and beyond that, well, quite frankly, it is up to the 8 battlemechs and their pilots, and beyond spawning 1 base 1000m on a hill and the other base directly below it in a killzone, I do not buy any of this whining that player created maps won't be balanced, etc etc.

[w0rm]

http://mwomercs.com/...r-devs-updated/

[HRRxStormBringer]

Those maps would be awesome.

w0rm, on 04 February 2013 - 08:42 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...r-devs-updated/

[miscreant]

Personally, I will not spend another dime on this game until we have at LEAST 10 maps. (not variants)

We need:
-LARGE battlefields
-Sci-fi locations / Alien worlds (not earth-ish maps like we have)

It already sounds like the next two maps will be featureless and Earth-like, Alpine and Desert?...Come on.

Obviously the devs/map guy do not think outside the box, and struggle with the maps. Of course I have not seen
these maps but they sound very much like Earth based terrain.

Sad, this game had so much potential - as most of us were starving for a quality Mechwarrior game, but if they
don't step up map releases to one per month, this game will surely fail.

My angst with the lack of maps is purely based on my affinity for Mechwarrior - but they chose the wrong engine (can anyone say UE3?) and they are struggling with bugs and crashes after all this time. Perhaps the IGP should have put this game into the hands of a more polished development team.

Also I would like to add:

Since this is still BETA (chuckle), why are we not beta-testing the new maps?...

[Oppresor]

focuspark, on 21 January 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

The verification of the maps is the long pole so you're not helping here. Also this isn't SC2 map creation isn't so simple. Maps are a lot more than just polygons. You have height maps, collision maps, vertex streaming, texture grouping, and a ton of other things to consider. Better to be volunteer mapakers for PGI than to open up map making hy building community tools.

Focus is 100% right. I had some involvement with visibility and elevation databasing back in the early 90's and know how much time went into that. We are talking months of work here to get it right.

Another option would be to expand existing maps. The way I see it is that our current missions only last between 10 to 15 minutes; you just get started and its all over. If the maps were extended, progressively, the missions would also become longer.

Imagine a conquest mission where it is actually necessary to use your light Mechs as scouts to recon the base locations because of the time that it takes your Assaults to reach them. This would also mean that whoever takes command of the lance (and someone would need to) would have to allocate fire units to specific bases. Wow! at last we have strategy.

[miscreant]

Oppresor, on 04 February 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

Focus is 100% right. I had some involvement with visibility and elevation databasing back in the early 90's and know how much time went into that. We are talking months of work here to get it right.

Another option would be to expand existing maps. The way I see it is that our current missions only last between 10 to 15 minutes; you just get started and its all over. If the maps were extended, progressively, the missions would also become longer.

Imagine a conquest mission where it is actually necessary to use your light Mechs as scouts to recon the base locations because of the time that it takes your Assaults to reach them. This would also mean that whoever takes command of the lance (and someone would need to) would have to allocate fire units to specific bases. Wow! at last we have strategy.

Months of work?

Perhaps IGP should have hired the MWLL guys. No way should each map take that long, especially if they are using a robust map editor - oh wait, they chose Crytech, my bad, I keep thinking they are using a mature engine like UE3.

[HRRxStormBringer]

miscreant, on 04 February 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

No way should each map take that long

This.

(god, I hate using that, but it's sooo appropriate).

[Simbacca]

Please give us a night time Caustic Valley - it would generally force players to use the night vision more often (as all the in map heat will severely interfer with the thermal view.

[Volthorne]

HRRxStormBringer, on 05 February 2013 - 07:24 PM, said:

This.

(god, I hate using that, but it's sooo appropriate).

If its so appropriate then YOU go and build us some ******* maps if you think you can do it faster and better than PGI. You have four months starting now.

Edited by Volthorne, 05 February 2013 - 10:38 PM.

[Fooooo]

miscreant, on 04 February 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

Months of work?

Perhaps IGP should have hired the MWLL guys. No way should each map take that long, especially if they are using a robust map editor - oh wait, they chose Crytech, my bad, I keep thinking they are using a mature engine like UE3.

The cryengine has a very good editor. In-fact its one of the best SDK's ive worked with in regards to creating maps. I prefer UE for most other things, and IDtech2-3, but thats because I grew up playing around with both of those engines.

Cryengine is very powerful and flexible, and the enviroment for editing (as an artist) is worlds above most others, most aren't even live, which means constantly loading stuff up to check what it "really" would look like in game.....you don't have to do that with cryengine.




As a side note,


It takes me about 5-10 minutes to get a basic map layout done.

Specifics inside.......

Spoiler

That includes only the basic texturemap + heightmap ready for import into cryengine.

No specific features designed for the level itself. Like flat spaces to take buildings, or bits of terrain made to "fit" certain things (like say the airport on rivercity, or the upper city vs lowercity heights etc etc. )

That takes much longer to do, and pretty much requires some kind of idea of what the map is supposed to be or play like, and then trying to conform it to that requirement.

Most times you will also have assets made specifically for that map, although some things can be universal, like barricades , some shrubs / grasses / rocks etc etc.....these also take time to produce, which then have to be added to the map all conforming to the requirements / design of the map.

When you get down to the nitty gritty, it is quite a long process to get a good map ready for release. At least, release of a certain quality.

They could take that 10 minute texturemap+heightmap, slap 2 spawns and bases on it and send it out the the players, but that would not be professional imo..

Edited by Fooooo, 06 February 2013 - 05:15 AM.

[Noth]

miscreant, on 04 February 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

Months of work?

Perhaps IGP should have hired the MWLL guys. No way should each map take that long, especially if they are using a robust map editor - oh wait, they chose Crytech, my bad, I keep thinking they are using a mature engine like UE3.

You do realize that MWLL had 6 years to get all their maps right? In 6 years if the game is still going it will probably have more in house made maps than MWLL.

[HRRxStormBringer]

Volthorne, on 05 February 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

If its so appropriate then YOU go and build us some ******* maps if you think you can do it faster and better than PGI. You have four months starting now.

No need to get angry. Are you not capable of engaging in civil discourse? Is anger and aggression your only outlet? In any case, I suspect you're a young teenager, so your vitriol is excused.

I'm not a graphics artist/programmer - if I were, I would. Ofcourse, you didn't elect to read through the thread, and instead decide to cherry-pick a single sentence, but, to re-iterate, once again:

If it's taking 4 months for each map, they're doing something wrong, is the point. Case and point in Fooo's post. I'd rather have 10-18 good maps instead of 4 "perfect" maps (after all, it is beta, remember?), and it seems there's only 2 new maps on the horizon. Me, and many, many others are bored of replaying the same maps ad nauseum. They sure as hell have time to pump out a new revenue-generating mechs/bobbleheads/colours/features/equipment/skins/etc/etc/etc/etc every two-weeks/month, but new maps are nowhere to be seen.

The game's in a great state - and it was before this patch - but the repitition of maps is overwhelming. They need to re-allocate their priorities.

Edited by HRRxStormBringer, 06 February 2013 - 06:51 PM.

[HRRxStormBringer]

Sigh. I can't believe how much better the MW:LL maps are. This saddens me.

http://mwomercs.com/...mpared-to-mwll/

[Volthorne]

HRRxStormBringer, on 06 February 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

No need to get angry. Are you not capable of engaging in civil discourse? Is anger and aggression your only outlet? In any case, I suspect you're a young teenager, so your vitriol is excused.

Capable of civil discourse? Completely. Balls dropped? About 6 years ago (you can "check" the age of a person by hovering over their profile pic). Anger/aggression my only outlet? Only when you continually ***** about the lack of maps and keep making asinine comparisons to games that are YEARS older.

Quote

I'm not a graphics artist/programmer - if I were, I would. Ofcourse, you didn't elect to read through the thread, and instead decide to cherry-pick a single sentence, but, to re-iterate, once again:

If it's taking 4 months for each map, they're doing something wrong, is the point. Case and point in Fooo's post. I'd rather have 10-18 good maps instead of 4 "perfect" maps (after all, it is beta, remember?), and it seems there's only 2 new maps on the horizon. Me, and many, many others are bored of replaying the same maps ad nauseum. They sure as hell have time to pump out a new revenue-generating mechs/bobbleheads/colours/features/equipment/skins/etc/etc/etc/etc every two-weeks/month, but new maps are nowhere to be seen.

You keep making these statements saying "this is wrong" and "stuff is going too slowly". Case in point being Foooo's post? I don't frigging think so, and if you do, then you clearly didn't read the whole thing fully OR properly (and I'm tempted to say both). I've had to make custom graphics for a website project for my university course, and it took me a week just to get all the textures done, and then another few days to assemble the buttons (yes, BUTTONS, which are not even that complex compared to a large number of other things).

I would rather have four maps (and variations) that run SMOOTHLY and have FEW FLAWS as opposed to lots of maps that will drop my FPS down to 10 and have a decent assortment of errors (this includes terrain not being "solid", textures not loaded properly, invisible walls, etc.). If you want mediocrity, go play CoD, I can guarantee that they have EXACTLY the kind of maps you're looking for, only reused from the previous title.

Quote

The game's in a great state - and it was before this patch - but the repitition of maps is overwhelming. They need to re-allocate their priorities.

Ah yes, the classic "developers can do all the jobs regardless of their specialization" fallacy. I don't want the netcode tinkerers touching anything but netcode, and the balancing team shouldn't even look at the mapmakers. I can guarantee bad **** will happen if teams get reassigned.

[Thornfoot]

This is Beta. Give us some maps so we can beta test them. If they stink - we will let you know. If there are problems or issues, you will hear about it from us! Flood the servers with new maps and let the Open Beta testers.. well, TEST!

[blinkin]

Thornfoot, on 11 February 2013 - 01:15 AM, said:

This is Beta. Give us some maps so we can beta test them. If they stink - we will let you know. If there are problems or issues, you will hear about it from us! Flood the servers with new maps and let the Open Beta testers.. well, TEST!

problem is there are a lot of people who throw hissy fits whenever the game doesn't run perfectly. i agree with you but i think allowing anything that is not flawless will likely cause problems.

it might just be the obnoxious minority that screams any time their KD takes a hit, but their is lots of shouting any time we actually test anything.