What does everyone think of the maps?

[TsN_WaCKSteVeN_GLB]

First off, lemme say what an awesome job u guys did on the maps. They are great on release. I’m sure you get harassed a lot about everything in the game, even though it’s a FREE GAME AND EVERYONE SHOULD BE THANKFUL IT’S SO AWESOME ON RELEASE. I think the game is a huge hit already, and will probably get even more popular and more competitive soon. That being said…I’m curious if there are there any plans for updates to the maps or any plans to release new maps? A few maps seem semi-imbalanced. I still think it’s too early to tell, but just from my initial reactions, there tends to be a lean on some of the maps towards one side.

[Hanlon]

I really reallly dislike rhine and trainyard, all the official maps are super though

[Steltek]

For the official maps, railgun is biased against the Axis (note the ridiculous spawn camping that occurs) and radar has some FPS issues on older graphics cards (damn you GeForce 2 shakes fist).

Fueldump, Battery, and Oasis are my favorites. Goldrush is pretty good except I tend to see a lot of airstrike spam, which isn’t my idea of a fun game.

The balance is pretty good on all the maps (except railgun) and offers a huge range of tactics to try. Sneaky wins, innovative D, choke points, and large areas for crazy melees.

For the new maps coming out, I haven’t had a chance to try them yet. I plan to soon. I definitely want to hear some reviews. It’s going to be hard to live up to the example set by the official maps.

[Pamper]

I don’t think any of the maps are really balanced, except Oasis. Fueldump is close, if its the start of a campaign (without level 3 axis fieldops). I don’t mind the fact that they’re unbalanced- I just take that bias into consideration when evaluating how well I did.

But then again, I usually play on high-population servers. 10v10 or more. Organized competitive matches are 8v8 or lower, right? If a map is balanced for one particular setting of (player count, respawn delay, and FF), then it will be unbalanced if you change any of those settings.

<u>More players, shorter respawns, longer campaigns, and no FF all favor defense.</u>

It’s obvious why more players helps them- playing 4v4 or less, offense always seems to win. In a 20 minute game, they get 40 tries to kill all the defenders. If on any one of those attempts they kill them all, then they can probably win (or make a permanent advance) (if their engie is still alive). Defense can only win if they have someone survive each and every wave. But with many players (I played on 24v24 once) you can only walk a few steps before running into an enemy to fight- offense can’t gain much ground that way.

Shorter respawns helps for 2 reasons: time to reach the battlefield, and dynamite. Offense always has longer to go to reach the fighting area, so their time_to_fight = respawn_period + travel_time_to_frontlines. (On GoldRush, the travel time gets as high as 20 seconds). Defense sometimes has zero travel time (if the objective IS their spawn), so they can start fighting after only respawn_period. Therefore lower respawns help defense. Also, there’s dynamite. If you respawn in less time than it takes for dynamite to go off, you’ve got a much better chance to defuse it.

I’ve played on servers (AZ_LINUX_2) that use 12 second respawn, and defense can never lose. On 60 sec servers (which are very rare, and usually have limited lives too), offense is much easier. After 5-6 tries we manage to kill the whole Axis team, then plant the gun control when they have 32 seconds left, and it explodes before they even respawn!

Longer campaigns are quite popular. Everyone wants to be able to be able to try for Colonel or beyond, so players love a 6 map cycle which gives everyone more XP. However, this favors defense. The powers that are enhanced most by more XP are big explosive attacks like arty and panzer. The longer you can keep arty going, the easier it is to defend. A level 3 fieldops not only has arty which lasts twice as long (20 seconds from first puff to last blast), but he can shoot them faster- a second barrage can be started just 10 sec after the first, instead of the 30 sec someone without Advanced Signals would need. (assuming you’ve got a command post- and defense usually starts wih a command post)

FF off helps defense too, but this kinda surprised me until I tried it in some games. I had expected that if offense could throw an airstrike on the enemy base and then charge in as it was exploding, they could assault more effectively (instead of Allied engineers having to wait for Allied arty to stop before they can run into the fueldump). However, most of that benefit applies to defenders as well- and defenders have “objectives” that can be hit with airstrikes, so the boost to airstrike helps them even more. Axis can actually camp people on top of the tank (even sitting in it) and still drop bombs there. All of the spam-based defenses become stronger- you don’t have to choose between filling a chokepoint with rambo-medics and airstriking on it: you can do both!

Detecting spies is easier with FF-off too: don’t even bother, just shoot everybody!

[Pamper]

radar has some FPS issues on older graphics cards (damn you GeForce 2 shakes fist).

After getting ET, I upgraded from GF2 to a GeForce FX5600. Previously I’d only been able to fight on radar when inside bunkers. Strangly, I was always able to help my team- I’d usually go medic and run away with the radar parts. By jumping around and healing myself I could get back, even with only 8 fps.

Interestingly, both radar and railgun have fps problems for different reasons. Radar’s abundant foliage overstresses the graphics card’s ability to draw alpha-blended textures, so your gfx card is the limiting factor. But railgun is a CPU-limited map: most of the drawing effort is based on calculating which surfaces are potentially visible. The video upgrade didn’t help me on railgun much; there are still a few places when I can drop to 20 fps. If I got a 3Ghz CPU, I think I’d do better.

[Dragon]

About the only map you don’t see much spawncamping on, is Radar, as both Allied and Axis spawns are generally far enough away from the main fighting area. That is, you don’t have to run thru/past them to get to the objective.

I would have liked to have seen some more thought go into these maps for Clan play, but still and all, it’s a free game, so it’s still well done to SD

[TsN_WaCKSteVeN_GLB]

But then again, I usually play on high-population servers. 10v10 or more. Organized competitive matches are 8v8 or lower, right?

yep. i’m referring to 5v5-8v8 where the game really shines. anything above or below that kinda ruins the game, imo.

radar has some FPS issues on older graphics cards (damn you GeForce 2 shakes fist).

Have you tried any graphical tweaks? I play matches with almost all of my settings on low. http://www.rtcwonline.com/dummies/tweaking.htm -this is a great page for rtcw stuff. it shows great examples of what the best players use for settings to squeeze out the highest fps that they can, which is a big difference once u reach the higher levels of playing.

About the only map you don’t see much spawncamping on, is Radar, as both Allied and Axis spawns are generally far enough away from the main fighting area. That is, you don’t have to run thru/past them to get to the objective.
I don’t really think radar is super-balanced. It’s pretty damn hard to defend against a good allies team. Even when placing landmines correctly, and in odd locations…it’s still difficult to defend on radar without spawn camping the allies at their intial spawn. It’s almost impossible to stop the dynamite from being diffused and covert ops really own that map and the axis hard.

[Mystiqq]

well…
goldrush seems to be good. radar is good but at expense of FPS which makes it no good :).
i personally do like oasis too. railgun is just lame…
might be that ive played all these maps too much. they all seem a bit “used” or “old”.

cheers
mystiqq

[Emon]

Is it really necessary to be a total ass kisser in every post reguarding the quality of the mod? The staff is not going to take offense because you don’t like something… you don’t have to suckup so much.

For the poll, I voted yes, most of them are balanced. It seems like there are two that are really unbalanced, and one that can be unbalanced either way, depending on the adeptness of your team. So in a six map it’s almost perfect.

[Steltek]

To clarify: GeForce 2 MX . I get 5 FPS on Radar when standing still looking over the field or the road. I get a slide show (<1 FPS) when I use the binoculars or sniper rifles. This is after doing all the tweaks I could find and the ones I knew from Q3A. I get marginally better framerates on Railgun but I doubt it’s a CPU problem, I have a dual AthlonMP machine on Linux (I use a stripped runlevel for games, all system resources go to the game).

Nah, the maps are just too much for such a crappy video card. I need to go grab a cheapo GeF4 Ti4200 or something. They’re like $90 now, right? Maybe less, I dunno. I need to go check Pricewatch.

---

To get back on topic, the maps really do seem balanced to me. It was pointed out in another thread that defense seems to get the advantage because you can have total idiots running around ignoring the objectives but they’ll help just by fighting around the base. The offense have to have a coordinated effort. Sneak a covops in, blow some key defense away, rush in force, get medics/fops to patch up the attack, and then go for the objective. Think about all the games where you’re missing a key class or there’s a general trend of apathy. Hell, I remember being CovOps on Battery with a uniform and NOT A SINGLE engineer came to the backdoor with me. I eventually got whacked by a rifle grenade and that ended that. All the apathetic/idiotic Axis players? All they have to do with is throw grenades down the beach. There only needs to be a few good Axis players to guard the back door or satchel the ramp.

The maps seem imbalanced because the Allies can’t muster the intelligence/teamwork necessary to win.

[TsN_WaCKSteVeN_GLB]

Is it really necessary to be a total ass kisser in every post reguarding the quality of the mod? The staff is not going to take offense because you don’t like something… you don’t have to suckup so much.

I try to be as nice as possible to people who do things for the community like this, and receive a huge pile of stupid complaints.

[Simply_D.E.A.D]

I really do like Oasis and Gold Rush.
In my opinion, these two are very well balanced!!!
And the best maps of the 6!!!

Beach is to damn hard to win as allies (not on a public server though…)

Railgun is kind of fair, but i do not like this map. Just fragging, no tactics!

Fuel Dump is too huge, too long, and too frustrating:
Either you are winning fast by sneaking in as cops+engi or
you are not winning at all, as long axis is playing not too bad!

And that is that

S!MpL!