81 replies to this topic

[General Solo]

This game is free to play so they use a different bussiness model to pay to play games like call of duty 9 (No 100 million dollar budget.) Founders generated 5 Million or so.
I think user maps are out due to Licensing requirements
So i believe they have to balance making money (mechs make more money than maps) with user expectations
Because if the money runs out its game over
We just have to be patient
Should be 2 new maps by April/May this year if all goes to schedule
I vote qualitiy cause you can imagine all the bad feed back if a crappy map was released

[Corvus Antaka]

Keep in mind that maps & sizes need testing & evaluation to see how gamemodes play out on them, (like conquest). I myself want more maps badly too, hopefully once PGI nails down solid map sizes & layouts, etc, the community & / or PGI will be able to churn more maps out quicker.

[Coolant]

Awesome thread. Much needed. Quantity, Quantity! mix in a quality every now and again, but even if a quality map is done once a month it would get sooooo boring after so many repeats...then it doesn't matter if it's quality or not. Need several new maps....game is sooooo stale. If not for obstacles we can go to where the action is blindfolded. Mercs - hundreds of maps. Release the tools for player made maps!

Edited by Coolant, 25 January 2013 - 09:48 PM.

[Tarman]

I'd rather have a larger selection with less tuning, more along the quantity end of the slider. I want a wide variety of battlefields, and I'm less interested in their metagame imbalances as I am in wanting to face a lot of tactical choices based on the drop zone. In a larger game this would be partially mitigated by pre-planning, like dropping onto a cold world but not knowing the local landscape. I'd totally take a map generator for that kind of warfare. I fear no asymmetric battlefield.

[Thirdstar]

Tarman, on 25 January 2013 - 09:50 PM, said:

I'd rather have a larger selection with less tuning, more along the quantity end of the slider. I want a wide variety of battlefields, and I'm less interested in their metagame imbalances as I am in wanting to face a lot of tactical choices based on the drop zone. In a larger game this would be partially mitigated by pre-planning, like dropping onto a cold world but not knowing the local landscape. I'd totally take a map generator for that kind of warfare. I fear no asymmetric battlefield.

What this guy said.

[l33tworks]

Lightfoot, on 25 January 2013 - 08:57 PM, said:

Quality. Why would you compromise game quality for a quick fix? Crappy maps will come back and bite yer butt because you'll just get half of the players not using them. One day "map" will be a player selection and not auto-selected.

miscreant, on 25 January 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

I want both, and I want them fast. (No Vote)

How come other developers can make maps faster, and better than PGI?...

Well I guess this is another thing I wanted to bring up. Are the maps we have now considered quality? (I would give PGI the befit of the doubt and assume they tried "quality" with the 4 we have now), If thats the case, Many players don't like many of the "quality" ones already. And just putting together mash ups of a big map as that falls under the quantity category be seen better than the ones we have already.
So if what makes a good map is so trivial, and can't be forcibly acquired with more time or effort , isn't better to just have more maps, period?

Either way spam =win

Edited by l33tworks, 25 January 2013 - 10:13 PM.

[Inconspicuous]

More maps, even if they are very plain and boooooring!!!!

[Thirdstar]

Somewhat trollish idea but how about a 4 map pack for say 3000 MC? Everyone's happy!

[jrgong]

ill take either at this point

[l33tworks]

jrgong, on 25 January 2013 - 10:55 PM, said:

ill take either at this point

That's a vote for quantity good sir.

To sum up best, say by 2014, would you rather have another 8 maps total along the lines of the 4 we have now. or +30 new just really random ones, even if they have problems.

The first is a vote for quality the second quantity.

Edited by l33tworks, 25 January 2013 - 11:18 PM.

[Joe Mallad]

I would take quality over quantity but right now the quality of the maps just sucks. Sorry PGI... but the maps all end up just a Brawl fest and each map has its 1 or 2 spots that basically funnels the two teams into that brawl. There is not much in the way to allow for many unique tactical situations. Its always either a base rush or a rush to that one or two spots on the map that gives the advantage and again... you end up just brawling in that location. Besides that... how is it that most mech can not step up on things that are only a few feet high and get stuck? Why is my 100 ton mech not able to at time plow through something and the littlest thing can stop me from moving? Can we please knock trees over and out of the way so we can create a firing line?

[SauceTQ]

I want Lunacy. And Frostbite.

Edited by SauceTQ, 25 January 2013 - 11:30 PM.

[Jman5]

AC, on 25 January 2013 - 07:48 PM, said:

There was nothing wrong with Caustic before all those damn pipes and other crap was added. We don't need maps that are spammed with crap. Maps with nice terrain and nothing else have been a staple of MW for as long as I have been a live. I would be fine with multiple simple nature maps.

I disagree that we don't need it. Stuff like pipes along rocky terrain make it more complicated which is a good thing. It adds depth to the map and rewards experience. So for example, knowing exactly where the pipe is low enough to walk over and where you clip it and get stuck is something you learn by experience. Not knowing this can mean the difference between life and death.

The more complicated the maps, the higher the skill ceiling is for playing that map and the longer life this game has.

[thehwdge]

The freshest would definitely be random generated terrain, weather and temperature for each map
but not random generated maps if you get what im saying

[Chief 117]

Comunity warfare is going to be really strange if every planet's capitol is going to be River City :/
Just give us dozens of maps, make them as fast as you can as basic as you can, or even make a random map generator so that each planet we fight over has 1 unique map. Then, after the dust settles you can slowly update the maps with some extra bits, a wreckage there, a rock formation here and so on.

[Nightfangs]

I voted quantity... just let the players decide which maps are worth playing.
The more maps there are, the higher the probability that some of those are good.
River city night could be as perfect as possible, I just don't like "thermalvision-maps" and never want to play them again.

[EvilCow]

Quantity then quality, maps can be improved, details added. The priority at this point is to get some variety.

[Zeke Steiner]

Need more maps that favor long range builds to throw a wrench in the brawler meta. If the weapons don't have Asymmetrical balance, than the maps need to be the 'extra little something' to help balance them.

[Wolfways]

mwhighlander, on 25 January 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

The problem is, right now we really don't have much of quality or quantity.

Sure the map details are nice, but lets take Frozen City for instance. That map layout itself is utter frigging garbage!

I hate Frozen City, not only because of the blinding white which basically forces me to use thermal but also because it's the most obviously unbalanced map in any game ever.
If you start at the south base your team has the huge advantage of being able to watch the crash site (where most combat takes place, at least in assault) and tunnel entrance, yet the north base has a tunnel entrance very near it and far away from the crash site, forcing that team to split up to guard both areas.

As for quality or quantity...i say quantity.
It's nice to even just see different "worlds". I don't consider day/night/sunny/rain to be different maps, but i do think it would be nice if all maps had these variants (I'd love to play River City in heavy rainfall ).

[Xavier Davion]

I make maps, its called level design. Whoever told you you could make up a map in about 2-3 hours must be using just the bare minimum, nontextured, bsp brushes. No skydome, no optimization, and no meshes whatsoever. Basiclly you have a bunch of cubes and cylinders on a flat bsp plane, with one dominant light so you can see. There are a lot of steps to making a map.

When you go to make a level you don't just pull the design out of your arse, you have to plan it out. What kind of level is it? Does it have daytime/night setting? Is it cold, hot, raining, snowing, what kind of weather? Is it inside or out. How about the light source, is it a moon, the sun, steet lights, no lights? What path choices are you going to give the player? Are there choke points?

Next is texturing the map. Okay based on your 2-3 hour estimate lets make everything a sand texture. Got a mountain, its made of sand. Got a lake, sand. Each texture, especially on terrain has to be layered. If you use mudbox to make the terrain then you have to drop it in a model program, uv it, then texture it. Some maps can have 8-9 layers of textures if they are gonna be quality maps.

Now comes the meshes, the buildings, trees, etc. Sometimes you can prefab them or run procedural systems to add them. Most times though they need to be placed individually, especially in this kind of game with urban areas. Those need to be made, uv'd, textured, collisions added.

Then comes the lighting, setting LoDs, Optimazation (so people don't QQ about lag etc), and then checking it for bugs. I'm sorry anyone that makes a level in 2-3 hours is making nothing but junk. I'd rather wait for two good maps that have detail and substance over a bunch of **** maps that are just tossed out so they can have something to play on. I'll take quality over quanity anyday. People been playing to many orange box TF2 maps...

Edited by Xavier Davion, 26 January 2013 - 01:25 AM.