[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;511818]I still believe people only seem to like Dome so much because its new…
Honestly, I think its the worst map currently in the game…
Splitting the first objective into 1 of 2 possibles you actually increase the Rock, Paper, Scissors effect on the time outcome. This is going to leave the map fundamentally broken in competitive play due to the luck factor on the first couple of spawns. On top of that, each of the first two objectives only have one defensive entrance meaning it can be very frustrating to try and retake.
Even after the initial objective you are left with some serious problems.
The main paths are covered by 270 degrees of defensive overlook.
Due to the crappy first person camera alignment it is also possible to shoot up and down at people without being physically visible. Many of the trick jump spots are actually slower than the main path that comes out at the exact same location. The use of the grass totally masks the proximity mines making it frustrating to do anything even half quickly. You have very long range combat in a game where the weapons are very accurate.
Please do not be silly enough to believe that people truly love this map. People voted for it because it was the newest map and people was feeling refreshed when playing it. I can assure you, continuing on the current path is only going to result in more lost time and a very frustrated player base.[/QUOTE]
you need to have more faith in ppl. we are not that stupid, and blind, trust me.
WC, New Trainyard/Dome (interchange-able) , Bridge_alt are my top 4.
It obviously has it’s problems, but it’s much more fun than Battersea & Waterloo (absolutely horrible first stage), and it’s a far cry from the worst map in the game/any game (Underground runs away with that honor).
I am not known as a trusting person >.<
However, I base what I say off the number of people that on that Map Poll said that Dome was great and the best map in the game that are now posting comments in other threads saying that they hate the map now. We all have a bias when it comes to new stuff and its natural. Its not really that I don’t trust people its just that I more trust precedent.
Well we don’t have to leave that one on SD’s side of the fence.
If the testers brainstorm a bunch of map ideas together and work it out in a well-presented 3D sketchup geometry then it’s not that hard to make a UED blockout. The higher quality you (we) achieve, the lower the bar for SD to just adopit it.
For them it would mean a huge marketing story to tell. Document the process well and every gaming /tech / entertainment magazine will want to hear about your process. Hell, even Locki on a TED stage would be probable.
It’s just that the more initiative the community takes, the better the story becomes.
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;511827]I am not known as a trusting person >.<
However, I base what I say off the number of people that on that Map Poll said that Dome was great and the best map in the game that are now posting comments in other threads saying that they hate the map now. We all have a bias when it comes to new stuff and its natural. Its not really that I don’t trust people its just that I more trust precedent.[/QUOTE]
well, my thoughts on this:
all maps are bad/dont work properly.
but Dome doesnt have any clusterfu** issues, that all other maps have.
it has largest scale, and it has a LOT OF SPACE, that can become a good layout with some little tweaks.
maps like terminal, underground and whitechapel, bridge need HUGE changes in order to make them flow, they have very limited choices in all the layouts they had. it is very difficult to make things work if you have as little space as they do.
i mean we had how many versions of terminal? 6? 7? and non of them got it right exactly because of difficult initial layout.
[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;511830]well, my thoughts on this:
all maps are bad/dont work properly.
but Dome doesnt have any clusterfu** issues, that all other maps have.
it has largest scale, and it has a LOT OF SPACE, that can become a good layout with some little tweaks.
maps like terminal, underground and whitechapel, bridge need HUGE changes in order to make them flow, they have very limited choices in all the layouts they had. it is very difficult to make things work if you have as little space as they do.
i mean we had how many versions of terminal? 6? 7? and non of them got it right exactly because of difficult initial layout.[/QUOTE]
“You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Glottis-3D again.”
Maps are to small, there is no space at all, only spam and clusterfu** issues …
The maps feel smaller than they are as SD chop them up into small serial objectives - Beach on RTCW isnt massive, but it never felt claustrophobic, mainly because the entire map got played from start to finish (grab the forward spawn flag back and the offense started from the beginning again).
Again, Obj style serial progression in a SW sized map isnt going to win any design prizes.
Not excited about new blockouts tbh. The most I’ve seen so far is bigger with some intentional trick jump routes, but the fundamental flaws are still there. Maps have a boring meta and the layouts don’t promote exciting and dynamic strategical team play. It’s still a chaotic grind through bottleneck A to bottleneck B. Side objs should feel more significant, but so far they’ve felt mostly unnecessary. At least one forward spawn should be present for each objective and in a separate location from the obj to allow for a spawn bias to the owner. Plus I think a variety of merc archetype dependent side objs should be utilized to help add to the definition of mercs and map strategies. We need things to break up the monotony in the map strategy. Relative to the topic of game modes, I find that the TDM feel I get in game is mostly due to game play meta and its lack of cohesiveness with the obj based focus.
You may remember Wezelkrozum’s map Highway which was praised by devs and even pushed to be included in the closed alpha build. This map was great, received really good feedback from the community and even had a bunch of people playing it on Wezel’s server.
Except it was SD’s side of the fence which stopped it from being included even for Execution. SD share the same side of the fence as Nexon, so they don’t actually have the full creative control of the game they said they’d have.
You belief couldn’t be more wrong then. I started playing DB after Dome had been created and it’s the only map I really enjoy playing.
While I definitely agree with the 2nd statement - there should be another way in the middle to go to both objectives, there is no way it will be a random luck stage when properly defended. Have you ever played 6v6 radar in ET competetively?
Allowing people to move faster towards objective is not the only point of trickjumps. Additionally, they are optional routes which bring you to less crowded spots. In Dome, they don’t always lead to the same location as you imply.
There isn’t as much grass as I would expect, but its existence is actually a positive side of Dome. What would be the point of mines if they were planted only in obviously visible spots? Maybe we should go a step further and add big “Be aware! I planted my mine here! Destroy it with bullets and go on!” signs next to them…
There are both close and long range fight areas. And that’s a yet another ‘yay’ which equals to no chaotic meatgrind through the whole map like in Underground, Terminal, Whitechapel or Bridge.
And why are you speaking as majority of DB players? I never noticed more hate towards Dome than towards the other maps - quite the opposite actually. Posts above mine and in Maps and Objectives forum confirm it.
Pixel, I probably missed it somewhere but why do you dislike Dome the most? I find the only difference to be the scale and wide open feeling. Aside from that I don’t find it any better or worse than other maps. The combat is a bigger mix of close/long range though, is that the reason?
[QUOTE=Seanza;511905]You may remember Wezelkrozum’s map Highway which was praised by devs and even pushed to be included in the closed alpha build. This map was great, received really good feedback from the community and even had a bunch of people playing it on Wezel’s server.
Except it was SD’s side of the fence which stopped it from being included even for Execution. SD share the same side of the fence as Nexon, so they don’t actually have the full creative control of the game they said they’d have.[/QUOTE]
Woa I totally missed that. That’s a marketing mother-lode right there.
Definitely all the maps sucks ! That’s a fact …
Trying to speak of this master problem since 2 years now but this is still the same boring corridors layouts …
I don’t have any hopes for the new blockouts (especially battersea …), and I don’t think few little modification about the actual map will change something … Just a big deception for the moment …
I also started playing DB after Dome was created. I believe that its the worst map and the only map I try and avoid playing.
While I definitely agree with the 2nd statement - there should be another way in the middle to go to both objectives, there is no way it will be a random luck stage when properly defended. Have you ever played 6v6 radar in ET competetively?
Nope I did not play ET competitively. However, I do believe that due to the lack of persistent stat tracking that some of the issues remained hidden. I would also like to point out that I do also think that competitive play will always have less of a luck factor involved due to full team communication and positions. Public however on multiple primaries DOES have a huge luck factor. If you are just aiming to create a competitive game and giving no care to public play then by all means go ahead and keep pushing for this kind of thing. Personally I would like public play to be the main priority in order to promote a more active competitive community in future.
Allowing people to move faster towards objective is not the only point of trickjumps. Additionally, they are optional routes which bring you to less crowded spots. In Dome, they don’t always lead to the same location as you imply.
Yes, I get that. However, I am talking about the effort that has gone into the trick jumps at the start of each spawn in areas of the map that are not used. However, I now believe that Dome is going to see a third objective being added so the areas I am talking about mainly will see see some foot traffic. That foot traffic will still be limited though as its going to be more of a travel spot than a fighting spot unless they have the next objective really close to the current second one. One a side note, I still believe that overall the trick jumps need to be made more reliable either via making the system more robust and giving the player more direct control over his jumps or putting more fail safes in with the map design. It is too easy to fail the most easy of jumps currently due to lag, bad collision and more.
There isn’t as much grass as I would expect, but its existence is actually a positive side of Dome. What would be the point of mines if they were planted only in obviously visible spots? Maybe we should go a step further and add big “Be aware! I planted my mine here! Destroy it with bullets and go on!” signs next to them…
It’s not about the mines being obvious its about them being noticeable. This is more of a problem with the game than it is the map. DB has been designed to be a very FAST game. Almost every single mechanic in the game has been slapped with go faster stripes. I personally feel that the faster the game gets the more fail safes that need to be put into certain things to ensure it maintains its flow. Having to slow down to a crawl and pull out your metal detector before approaching a C4 to defuse makes you a much easier target, costs time when time is critical and breaks the feeling of flow to the player. Even if the mines beeped faster based on how close a player was it would make things much better.
There are both close and long range fight areas. And that’s a yet another ‘yay’ which equals to no chaotic meatgrind through the whole map like in Underground, Terminal, Whitechapel or Bridge.
I assume that you have not played Dome when the defenders have a Aura + Rhino playing on every single MG Nest… It is actually kind of funny really… Takes 3 instant sniper head shots to knock him off the turret. or multiple people shooting at him… Problem is if you are shooting at him he can shoot at you and even if you kill him he will be right back up because of the Aura.
That is only one example with the problem of wide open routes. The thing that frustrates me the most however is when you need to be looking at multiple windows, roofs, doors and bits of cover at the same time and having to run for 20 seconds just to get back into the action if they are holding back at the objective. I am not saying that the long range in itself is the problem just the poorly designed long range fights we have in Dome.
And why are you speaking as majority of DB players? I never noticed more hate towards Dome than towards the other maps - quite the opposite actually. Posts above mine and in Maps and Objectives forum confirm it.
You have not heard this much hate towards Dome because the vocal minority on these forums are very loud. 95% of all the people that have played the game have already gone and are unlikely to come back. The remaining people are the people that like the game and/or devs enough to stay, so of course you can expect a very liner opinion on these forums. One thing I have learned over the many years of playing many alphas and betas is that maps are very rarely ever even close to as good as they are in blockout. Normally before the art pass starts you would think something like… “If this map is 75% as good as it is now as a block out it will be a good map.” so yes I am a little more harsh on the block out maps than I am with the ones with art passes.
Honestly dude, its kinda a mix between a few things.
Personally, I am always a little more hard on blockout maps because in almost every alpha and beta I have taken part in, the finished maps are never quite as good as the blockouts. So when the blockouts don’t feel “great” I know its highly likely when its finished its going to feel even worse.
The other big issue I have is stopwatch mode… Specially in public the multiple primary objectives end up being to random, the long walking distance from spawn means different weight classes end up more separated by the time they reach the combat zone and just small silly aspects of design. Stuff like having the only grass on the whole map to be where the C4 goes and having many routes covered by 270 degrees of overwatch.
Now as you know I am not exactly bad at Dirty Bomb and I also believe that for me personally Dome is the easiest map to complete both objectives on in the whole game. I would go as far as to say its the only map in the whole game that a single person can really have a huge effect on the overall outcome. I feel this is why a lot of the good players are liking the map currently as it makes you feel better than you do on other maps. However once teams are more balanced and stuff that will slowly get taken away. I would love to see some more competitive games play on Dome… I honestly believe it will end up with tears being shed though.
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;511921]
Now as you know I am not exactly bad at Dirty Bomb and I also believe that for me personally Dome is the easiest map to complete both objectives on in the whole game. I would go as far as to say its the only map in the whole game that a single person can really have a huge effect on the overall outcome. I feel this is why a lot of the good players are liking the map currently as it makes you feel better than you do on other maps. However once teams are more balanced and stuff that will slowly get taken away. I would love to see some more competitive games play on Dome… I honestly believe it will end up with tears being shed though.[/QUOTE]
I don’t think it really matters whether people perform better on the map or not, at least not for me. A lot of people get emotional after a frustrating game, period. I think the one thing that feels better is having some breathing room and zone separation, but most of the same issues are still there. You get shot from every direction on most maps though, just happens a lot closer up. It’s mostly because it’s a layout where all travel paths lead to a wide open meat grinder. Dome reminds me of a big hour glass, where other maps are commonly described as tunnels or parallel hallways. The one layout I’m still waiting to see is more of a tree branch layout, if that analogy makes any sense lol. I would like to have maps that are the size of dome (not necessarily huge open spaces though), but the way side objs and routes are implemented is absurd. It really feels like there wasn’t a lot of forethought into giving these meaningful purpose, but rather just putting them there because people asked for side objectives and more spacious maps. I still think that side objectives should open the most direct/safe routes to the objs rather than essentially being a parallel path or plain unnecessary, and we really need at least one capturable forward spawn to facilitate dynamic map control.
My ideal map experience is one of cause and effect and over/under extension, where in the decisions made during an offensive push or a defensive setup lead to a discernible outcome if successful. For SW to make sense as a mode, you need to feel like you can actually plan a deeper strategy than constantly bashing your head against a wall until it breaks. The same goes for defenders and how they choose to ‘run down the timer’. I’d like maps to feel as though they have multiple points of interest, each with their own risks/rewards when it comes to controlling them. The options of committing all efforts on the main obj or slowly gaining ground should be a reality for offense, and defenders should find some motivation to keep pushing the line forward or holding it beyond the main obj zone even if it comes at higher risk. That sort of stuff was the only reason why maps in previous games felt good even if they had sub par layouts or whatever, because the map meta carried the experience.
i see Dome as a blockout of a blockout.
like a very early pass on spacy several routes map with some vertical gameplay.
It surely needs a lot of work. most importantly on this:
-better frontlines
-ability to curve frontlines via better sideOBJs and Fspawns or just by concentrating on one of the flanks.
i mean some(most in 2nd half) buildings DO NOT HAVE yet any kind of micro layout for fights and are just empty boxes. the only reason for that i see is that it is a very early pass of the map.
I may actually write a new thread about this later but I think you touched on something that whilst I have been thinking about, I have not said much about… In the past I have mentioned my issue with the “Full Reset Effect” when a defending team full wipe the attacking team. The idea that whilst the time has moved on, for all intents and purposes, the gameplay has been reset back to the state it was in during the very first spawn wave. I personally feel that this takes away the feeling of progression and achievement from the player, also the simple fact that the game also turns into one about, well for lack of a better word, luck. I believe even this crosses over into competitive and pub play. Even from the older SD games you see this happen frequently in competitive matches. The attackers WILL complete the map, it just depends on what wave they complete it on. Mathematically, the attacking team has just as much chance of completing the objective on the first spawn as they do on the 4th spawn after a full reset. Now without taking away the idea of “play better then noob” I still believe that having this form of gameplay on a time based game mode is rather strange. Now I am not saying do or even try this but if Stopwatch was done on rounds where each player got a couple of respawns each, the overall result would be much more indicative of skill. Again, not saying do this, it sounds like a horrible idea, just using it to demonstrate a core problem…
So… Now I have explained that issue, let’s look at how to negate it. You will never completely get away from it because that is a fundamental issue with competing for time on a mode with a time limit and contains respawn waves. Having NONE reversible side objectives would be one step towards removing the “Full Reset Effect” as once an objective has been done the next spawn is technically never going to be like the first. Even making it a much longer/harder process for the defenders to reset the the side objectives would help this effect. As a starting point I would actually reverse the current way building side objectives work. Having the attackers by default having to C4 the pumps and having the defenders have to rebuild but at half the speed they currently do. Make it require more effort from the defenders to keep the side objectives none completed. Where possible multiple side objectives could be used as a patch to objective completion. I would turn forward from a capture point and have them as a hack objective meaning you make them harder to take and even harder to take back. Side objectives should in the long term make it virtually impossible, unless the teams are horrible imbalanced, for the defenders to hold for the full length of time.
Other ideas are having the user triggered respawn waves that we have spoken about in the past. I would actually say just speed up the attacker respawns over time. However that causes set times throughout the round where it is optimal to push/defend. So I think a player triggered system would be much better. As they are now, they have very little effect on the outcome of a round (I assume thats why they was designed this way) however, I believe they should have an outcome for both teams. I firmly believe that it is very possible to decrease spawn times, increase action whist removing the meat grind and frustration.
Lots more but like I said I may make a thread about this soon.
“Having NONE reversible side objectives would be one step towards removing the “Full Reset Effect” as once an objective has been done the next spawn is technically never going to be like the first.”
so basically lets take more from ET and ETQW.
totally agree on that!
for example, on VOlcano 1st OBJ you could c4 1 or 2 or 3 entrances into the area, completely changing the frontline each time, making it harder for defence. and on top of that there was a forward spawn for each team (reversable sideOBJ).
[QUOTE=Seanza;511905]You may remember Wezelkrozum’s map Highway which was praised by devs and even pushed to be included in the closed alpha build. This map was great, received really good feedback from the community and even had a bunch of people playing it on Wezel’s server.
Except it was SD’s side of the fence which stopped it from being included even for Execution. SD share the same side of the fence as Nexon, so they don’t actually have the full creative control of the game they said they’d have.[/QUOTE]
People can make geometry in UDK now and it could be imported to the game, but that’s the extent of it. The following would still need to be resolved for each map:
[ul]
[li]Applying Dirty Bomb game rules[/li][li]Applying Dirty Bomb spawn system[/li][li]UI support[/li][li]Loading screens[/li][li]Legal/ownership issues of player content being added to the game[/li][li]Making sure the block-out supports our modular level art process[/li][li]Ensuring the map is built to the game’s scale (Raste’s Marble Arch map was quite close here, Highway was not)[/li][li]Primary and Secondary objective gamecode/scripting support[/li][li]Several hundred other things…[/li][/ul]
We’ve not added these maps to the game because of any sort of ‘creative control’ issues, they’re not in because there are a host of production, process and legal issues around them and they’d take a lot of effort to resolve, effort that is better spent elsewhere right now.
If we had an SDK that was ready to go for map making this would be less of an issue as more tools and instruction would be available for map makers and the process from block-out to playable map would be much quicker and easier, but SDKs are huge complex pieces of work that take many months to produce and we don’t have one right now.
We like custom mapping, it’s a good thing, but it’s not going to happen right now and that is for very practical (not conspiratorial) reasons
This is going a bit OT from new blockouts and I posted about this recently but the main issue I think with side objectives isn’t the lack of reversability but the big difference on construction versus destruction times tied in with location. Some of the worst examples are the gate on Trainyard 2nd obj and the gates on Underground 1st obj. 40 second dyno objectives should be permanent only, currently an engy can repair it again in about 4 seconds (with the repair perk). This descrepency needs to be much less than 10x for rebuildable objectives, even 2-3x. The trainyard gate rarely lasts more than one spawn wave before its insta-repaired and takes around 3 to destroy for little benefit. This gate also makes it easier to spawncamp the attackers as its facing their right-hand entrance which leads to the inaccessibility issue. This area is so fluid that a ‘satchel charge’ insta-destruction may even work better here (and move the entrance out of line of sight to the ammo room) as long as it doesn’t take too much focus away from the main objective.
Not a fan of reducing spawn wave times for bad attackers, seems like too much of a crutch to me to counteract current spawn time / objective distance issues, unless we add an ET style command post so the attackers would have to earn the privelege. Make the maps bigger and add more forward spawns instead.
Pub games are largely about luck and full wipes are mainly irrelevent because the wiped team is generally not communicating or together, ending up in a distributed lemming rush. The maps are generally tight so defense has time to hole up and pick off the lemmings. There are usually only two options so two groups of 3 semi-decent players can lemming kill all day. The big variety in merc movement speeds also makes it hard to stick together.
Just had a thought - vsays for ‘left’, ‘right’ ‘centre’ etc would be useful to initiate grouped attacks. A lot of players won’t or can’t use comms so this might be a nice alternative? In comp you /kill and try a different route but the linearity of most of the maps limits your options. Dome is a breath of fresh air here as there are more than two routes but maybe too many currently (last objective being the exception where again only two routes in…) 3 is the magic number…
