Maps, Map design Feedback

[Lt_PeteMitchell 920]

On 04/05/2023 at 16:53, RedBullBF2 said:

Good morning,

 

why was a map tampered with again? The hills previously used for sniping have been locked. On the opposite side, the hills were of course not blocked. There is now an imbalance during the game again, as with the Middle East map.

 

Suggestion:

You either pull through these restricted zones for both sides or just leave it as it is.

 

 

+1  

 

B5 in particular was one of my favourite spots  

[Kaiserman69 1]

On 08/05/2023 at 08:18, Lt_PeteMitchell said:

+1  

 

B5 in particular was one of my favourite spots  

I loved taking my flak 37 up there. Just found out the change a couple of minutes ago. I will no longer play Japan from that spawn side. It's the only thing I liked doing on that map. Glad I didn't reup my premium during the sale. The maps are bad enough. I'm tired of Gaijin changing them like this. It wasn't an op area. Planes decimate you up there.

[S3b5 94]

It feels like there's been a general trend to "fake" maps that are only loosely based on real places, and these lead to a feeling similar to the uncanny valley, for me anyway. These are mostly concerning the air "map" of each location, as that is the one with the most area visible and so it's easy to notice if the well detailed ground map takes place in just a void. Maps like Southeastern City, Pyrenees, and Golden Bay just feel as if they are pockets of polish surrounded by nothing, and I'd hope to see more maps that are closer matches to their real life counterparts. 

[Real K Soze@live 407]

In the hope that this thread will be read by somebody with the power and willingness to improve the game play experience i would like to point your attention on 3 maps in Air RB (relevant for prop tiers) which need a revisal.

 

A. Operation Iskra

B. Golan Heights

C. Staniza of Krimskaya

 

My examples A and B gives experienced players an "unfair" advantage and C ist just another example of an unbalanced map.

 

 

Details:

 

A) Operation Iskra

 

This map is on of the 4 old Air RB maps with 4 non-respawning bases. After having successfully reported the way too low bomber spawn altitude:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/LwFZQ5SgN8Jt

I created an additional bug report, addressing the "hidden" air spawn for non-air spawn fighters:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/IqchmeRkf1OY

 

Basically experienced players know about the hidden air spawn, newer players not. Not good as the airspawn itself and the airspawn location makes it too easy to intercept enemy bombers and/or creates an unfair altitude advantage vs the enemy fighters.

  

 

B) Golan Heights

 

This map has useless airfield aaa. Experienced players know this, newer players not:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/PXVP0G7n1WWu

 

Same unfair advantage for more experienced players as you can easy kill enemies on the runway without getting killed or even damaged by af aaa. Not good. Either remove useless af aaa or implement same aaa as on other maps. This issue is now known for over a year, i saw various bug reports about this map.

 

 

C) Staniza of Krymskaya

 

Classic unbalanced map regarding ticket impact of ai planes. One side has useless ai planes early game - the other side has highly effective ai planes spawning in after 20 minutes on a very large map, even if you know that they will spawn - they kill your tickets faster than you can kill them:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/E9v7hdmVTpgW

 

To make this flaw even more crazier: There is something like a trigger event connected to the late spawn of the Hs 129s. So sometimes (ofc if you need them in a disadvantageous ticket position) they simply do not spawn at all; over the years i have collected dozens of losses without player interactions and just a handful of times they actually won for my team. I mean it is quite frustrating to have 1000 points ticket lead after 22 minutes and after 24 minutes you have a ticket disadvantage without any PvP interaction.... 

 

 

[RealMajorHavok 208]

Berlin: another map rendered useless.

 

As part of the many recent changes to perfectly good maps, Berlin is now utterly one sided in favour of the north spawn - the river side.

 

Previously both forces had protection near their spawn and could move out into the map under protection. On the north side you did not become exposed until you moved out from behind the large berm, and on the south side there was a similar hill on one side and a row of buildings on the other.

 

The recent changes have reduced the size of the hill on the south side spawn, and broken it into pieces. As such, the north side players can fire almost into spawn, and can fire into several open locations on the east side.

 

As a result, the north side now wins almost every match.

[llSolitairell@psn 5,730]

11 minutes ago, RealMajorHavok said:

Berlin: another map rendered useless.

 

As part of the many recent changes to perfectly good maps, Berlin is now utterly one sided in favour of the north spawn - the river side.

 

Previously both forces had protection near their spawn and could move out into the map under protection. On the north side you did not become exposed until you moved out from behind the large berm, and on the south side there was a similar hill on one side and a row of buildings on the other.

 

The recent changes have reduced the size of the hill on the south side spawn, and broken it into pieces. As such, the north side players can fire almost into spawn, and can fire into several open locations on the east side.

 

As a result, the north side now wins almost every match.

 

The south spawn was always at a massive disadvantage on Berlin due to the North spawn buildings providing cover to snipe anyone going to the west side of the map, in addition to how horrible it was to get to the central and eastern cap points from the south spawn as well.

[DaBeaster1 6]

Ash River's South West spawn is broken. It can and is being easily camped from the rock in the images. I suggest raising the rock wall protecting spawn. Cause this rock may be an easy piece of cover but it's the whole section that can be easily used to camp the SW spawn. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

[sefhyro 14]

more and more maps that had sniper locations barely used by the majority of players are now D!ckBl0cked by the xxxx GAIJIN TEAM, thanks xxxx!NG a lot, litle by litle these ID!OTS are ruining the game...
 

map rotations SUCK, more then once I ended up in THE SAME MAP in LESS THEN 1h of gameplay...

ALSO, I ALWAYS END UP IN UPTIERED BATTLES...

.|.

[PzII_is_a_Crutch 359]

Why does Gaijin continue to redesign maps ostensibly to address spawn camping, but yet they continue to create new maps like Abandoned Town where you can easily snipe people in or just exiting their spawn?  

 

[richthofen122 1,455]

Just why does the Map Berlin exist? It is hideous and an insult to germans. Below you have an average match of Russian Bias+Map design. Also, Russia and Germany fighting on the same team in a WW2 Berlin, I find this very annoying as a german. 

 

[GeekyOptics 6]

Any plans on hiring map designers? Only game I've ever played where you can kill and get killed right at the spawn because you have a clear sight of their spawn. 

[cortbowan@psn 225]

Poland has become unplayable when you get the right hand side/eastern spawn. 

 

With the changes to the winter map its now even worse than the summer version…unbelievable.

 

Map now banned for me.

[Untergangsmelder 549]

On 06/06/2023 at 16:03, PzII_is_a_Crutch said:

Why does Gaijin continue to redesign maps ostensibly to address spawn camping, but yet they continue to create new maps like Abandoned Town where you can easily snipe people in or just exiting their spawn?  

 

 

Die faster. Lose money faster, sell more premium .  The Russian logic/solution of fair play.

[PzII_is_a_Crutch 359]

13 hours ago, Untergangsmelder said:

 

Die faster. Lose money faster, sell more premium .  The Russian logic/solution of fair play.

 

Right, but then why do they dev waste efforts continually adjusting existing maps?   I mean, they just changed Ash River... again.  The map (like many others they've messed with) was better and more fun before they started adjusting it maybe 6 years ago.  Is it simply because they want the win/loss between Blue and Red for any given map to be as close to 50/50 as possible (rather than simply accepting a ?  And what does it tell them if they continue to fail to achieve that?  And is that in aggregate or do specific tiers carry more weight?  I've been suggesting for years that the real problem is that they try to use the same maps for both high and low tier battles (maps that work well at low tier don't necessarily adapt well to high velocity, high lethality apfsds).  Ash River was a great map for low tier tanks... it was only when we got into Cold War and Modern Era tanks that they started constantly fiddling with the maps (and not only the maps, but tank traction).  And yet, they create more maps that suffer from exactly the same problems.

 

To your point, however, I can see where they prefer small maps with high tier tanks as it results in fast short battles, even though most of these small maps aren't particularly fun with high tier tanks.  Unfortunately, we keep playing them, so they have little incentive to change their strategy.

[PzII_is_a_Crutch 359]

On 15/05/2023 at 17:52, DaBeaster1 said:

Ash River's South West spawn is broken. It can and is being easily camped from the rock in the images. I suggest raising the rock wall protecting spawn. Cause this rock may be an easy piece of cover but it's the whole section that can be easily used to camp the SW spawn. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

 

 

 

Personally, I think these kinds of criticisms are overdone and part of the problem.  If the enemy team gets to this vantage point, it's because your defense has failed (or if early in the match, your team has failed to station a defender on that hill).  Often, if the other team reaches this point the match is effectively over anyway, especially with high tier tanks.  You've essentially been pinned in your spawn.  And you can also pin the other side in a similar manner (the other side may be a bit more defensible, but you're pretty much stuck in that riverbed, and either have to move quickly while having invuln to another spot or be pinned). 

 

Tanks getting to this vantage point rarely happened early in matches when games were 16x16, but with the increase in matches (again, typically higher tier) where the matchmaker pushes a game forward with 10x10 or fewer, this is now much more common. There are other maps which are similar (getting pinned behind either team's rockpile spawn on the western side of Sinai for example).  Honestly, I think the spawn camping criticisms are unproductive and may be (in part) what causes them to alter these maps. 

To that point... this spot on the hill where the enemy is sniping from (in your picture above) used to be far more defensible because there was a rock outcropping defensive strongpoint up on that hill that the friendly team / team spawning on this side could use to snipe at the enemy team, cover the cap where the airplane used to be, and also defend their spawn.  It was introducing high level tanks into this map that made that a real problem (because the sniping position was very strong and could target tanks sitting in/near the enemy's NE spawn as well as many other points on the map).  Consequently, they modified and ultimately removed that a few years ago, and we've seen an endless stream of map modifications since then (none of which have improved this map for high tier tanks IMO, and most of which have made this map far less interesting for lower tier tanks). 

 

Consequently, my position is that no amount of additional changes will make this map better.  Despite the many changes they've made, it's still easy to find numerous cross-map sniping spots due to the elevation differences.  What they've really done is channel the battle into smaller, more predictable channels, making battles less interesting and fun.  The real problem is and continues to be including this map in the rotation for high tier tanks.

 

And we should stop complaining about getting spawn camped when it's effectively the result of the enemy team crossing the map to the point where they are on your spawn's doorstep.  You've got three choices... respawn there and cope, use the other spawn, or don't respawn.

 

Finally, back to my point above, the best thing Gaijin could do with Ash River is limit its use to lower tiers / WW2 era tanks, and revert many of the changes they've made.  Even if you're camped at lower tiers, the lethality of the guns is such a single hit is less likely to be a kill shot.  And when it comes to cross map sniping (even into a spawn) the velocity of the rounds means that sniping cross map is quite difficult and only successful with high probability when enemy players are stationary and have allowed their invulnerability to expire.  At high tiers... well, yeah, not even remotely the case due to round velocity and lethality.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by PzII_is_a_Crutch

[Untergangsmelder 549]

42 minutes ago, PzII_is_a_Crutch said:

 

Personally, I think these kinds of criticisms are overdone and part of the problem.

 

 

 

After 9 years, to act as if it was just a small mistake is pretty naive. Spawn camping is built into the game on purpose. Their new map shows that once again clearly.

[PzII_is_a_Crutch 359]

1 hour ago, Untergangsmelder said:

 

After 9 years, to act as if it was just a small mistake is pretty naive. Spawn camping is built into the game on purpose. Their new map shows that once again clearly.

 

The same is true with people quitting out after one death and the increasingly poor match-making that results in unbalanced matches.  They want matches to be faster in order to get people back in the queues faster, even if the games are far less fun and interesting than in the past... so when people quit out early (often as a result of the increasingly poor matchmaking), while they get tank locked as a result they usually have at least one tank available (the one that got killed) or they can switch to another nation.  There are obvious solutions to that which they've not enacted (which = tacit acceptance if not encouragement) because it speeds the turnover for new matchmaking.  My theory is that the only reason they don't eliminate the tank lock entirely (which has been around for years, and comes from a time when they initially did care about players quitting out early) is that the player base would figure out they don't care and get really piѕѕed.

Edited June 17, 2023 by PzII_is_a_Crutch

[sefhyro 14]

CONGRATULATIONS FOR F*CKING UP THE JAPAN MAP EVEN MORE, THE REMAINING EXPOSED SNIPER LOCATION FROM THE SOUTH SPWAN AREA FOR C CAP IS NOW D!CK BLOCKED WITH F*CKING ROCKS ANY REMOTE CHANCES OF ANY DEFENSABILITY NO LONGER POSSIBLE UNLESS IN A FULL FRONTAL ASSAULT, I WONDER WHO WAS THE R*TARDED PIECE OF SH!T THAT DECIDED THAT PUTTING 25S COUNTERS INSIDE THE GROUND BATTLE MAPS A GOOD THING, F*CKING STUPID...
THIS IS 1 MORE MAP ADD TO THE SH!T PILLE...


YOU ID!OTS WANT TO DO LIKE WARGAMING???
WHAT'S THE F*/CKING POINT OF MAKING NEW MAPS WEN TO TRANSFORM OLDER ONES INTO SH!T SHOW CORRIDORS?