DUST Search - Environmental additions

Texs Red wrote:

Gorgoth24Reborn wrote:

In keeping with the OP's comment about gates, another urban map could be a central walled complex with a market in a depression (think megaton from fallout) in the middle of this complex surrounded by a desert. A gate would be placed very close to the market and a large, wide road lined with un-enterable buildings (the purpose of all of this to give the tank a perfect LOS into the market and the ground-level buildings around it) leading to the market.

To other sides of the market there would be multi-story buildings, one of which has the gate control at the top. The top of this building being extremely exposed.

The general idea behind this map is to entice players to drive a tank into this road and massacre everyone defending the central point. Given one central gate, the tank from each team will have to duke it out outside the complex to decide the winner. The losing team of this tank-brawl, seeing that their HAV lost, will scurry to close the gate and prevent the tank from entering or locking it into CQC with the enemy team. The exposed gate control at the top of the building also entices dropship pilots to drop pilots directly onto this point, or massacre anyone capturing/defending this point.

That sounds great in theory but what would actually happen would be something like this:
A) Tank enters city, enemy infantry weave through building interiors to be near the tank without it seeing them. They lay down nanohives then spam AV nades, tank dead.
B) Tank makes it to center of city for epic tank dual, tank is wasted by forge gunners on building room tops. Tank is dead.
C) Tank gets stuck on glitchy terrain and dies to a light pole.

In my opinion MAVs and LAVs would be the kings of vehicle CQC just from the sheer perspective that they should be able to much better avoid all 3 of those problems.


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Gorgoth24Reborn Kang Lo Directorate Gallente Federation 6	Posted - 2013.07.26 05:24:00 - [1] - Quote While I support the general premise of urban maps (would make a whole lot of sense on some planets) I don't think it should be a CCP Priority. Imo, more game modes should take precedent over more maps. Especially game modes like PVE content. I also pose the question to the OP, would you prefer more game modes or more map types? It's an honest opinion
Gorgoth24Reborn Kang Lo Directorate Gallente Federation 6	Posted - 2013.07.26 09:15:00 - [2] - Quote CCP Android wrote: I keep hearing the Urban map request. What would an urban map provide, functionally that we don't have in our current maps. Please don't open the MQ door. Its Richmond's room. Richmond is not supposed to be out of his room. :) It all has to do with the arrangement of cover. Currently, a lot of the maps seem to be based on large areas of plains and a central complex where all the cover is. And it gets homogeneous sometimes. Functionally, an urban map could reverse this. Example: Think of a domination game mode of an urban area centered around a central park with no trees and with rivers. In the center of the park is the capture point, surrounded by a "no man's land". Those advancing towards the capture point hide in the river depressions in the park, but are still perfectly vulnerable to high LOS buildings. Functionally, this means that instead of the domination of the capture point mainly to capture that area, the most important places on the map would be the high ground surrounding the no man's land. Now, let's say, that there are X number of "hot spot" multi-story buildings that provide great LOS to the capture point and other hot spots. This means that smart squads would move to those spots and fight over them. Some would specialize in shotguns to clear out these hot spots, other to prox mine the entrances to try and keep those shotgunners out, and even other to take advantage of the great LOS to kill people in the opposing hot spot and capture point. And, even more, people on the ground countering those people by trying to kill them from clever ground locations. The hot spots could also serve as their own capture points in skirmish, and the "no man's land" as the only good place to land a vehicle (albeit exposed). Another Example: The centerpiece of another map being a large warehouse with open loading doors on 2 sides and an upper catwalk. In the center of the lower warehouse lies the capture point. The "hot spots" would be the ideal places to spawn to get into the warehouse quickly (small, windowless buildings with their own capture points in skirmish). The houses would be on the 2 sides of the building without loading doors. Vehicles could shoot at people attempting to capture the point through the enormous loading doors. Conclusion: In both these cases the redistribution of cover and the exposed nature of the capture points is opposite to the way many maps work currently, and this reversal makes these maps functionally opposite with the emphasis being on taking high ground around the capture points instead of taking the capture points themselves. This mixture of vertical fighting and CQC makes for extremely interesting gameplay that would be a welcome break from the current Dust map-making philosophy
Gorgoth24Reborn Kang Lo Directorate Gallente Federation 6	Posted - 2013.07.26 09:40:00 - [3] - Quote In keeping with the OP's comment about gates, another urban map could be a central walled complex with a market in a depression (think megaton from fallout) in the middle of this complex surrounded by a desert. A gate would be placed very close to the market and a large, wide road lined with un-enterable buildings (the purpose of all of this to give the tank a perfect LOS into the market and the ground-level buildings around it) leading to the market. To other sides of the market there would be multi-story buildings, one of which has the gate control at the top. The top of this building being extremely exposed. The general idea behind this map is to entice players to drive a tank into this road and massacre everyone defending the central point. Given one central gate, the tank from each team will have to duke it out outside the complex to decide the winner. The losing team of this tank-brawl, seeing that their HAV lost, will scurry to close the gate and prevent the tank from entering or locking it into CQC with the enemy team. The exposed gate control at the top of the building also entices dropship pilots to drop pilots directly onto this point, or massacre anyone capturing/defending this point. Note: Each of these situations has something obvious to fight over. The central park is a perfect makeshift Airport for an invading force, the warehouse a supply station, and the "depression" in the complex being the only water for hundreds of miles.
Gorgoth24Reborn Kang Lo Directorate Gallente Federation 12	Posted - 2013.07.26 21:12:00 - [4] - Quote Texs Red wrote: Gorgoth24Reborn wrote: In keeping with the OP's comment about gates, another urban map could be a central walled complex with a market in a depression (think megaton from fallout) in the middle of this complex surrounded by a desert. A gate would be placed very close to the market and a large, wide road lined with un-enterable buildings (the purpose of all of this to give the tank a perfect LOS into the market and the ground-level buildings around it) leading to the market. To other sides of the market there would be multi-story buildings, one of which has the gate control at the top. The top of this building being extremely exposed. The general idea behind this map is to entice players to drive a tank into this road and massacre everyone defending the central point. Given one central gate, the tank from each team will have to duke it out outside the complex to decide the winner. The losing team of this tank-brawl, seeing that their HAV lost, will scurry to close the gate and prevent the tank from entering or locking it into CQC with the enemy team. The exposed gate control at the top of the building also entices dropship pilots to drop pilots directly onto this point, or massacre anyone capturing/defending this point. That sounds great in theory but what would actually happen would be something like this: A) Tank enters city, enemy infantry weave through building interiors to be near the tank without it seeing them. They lay down nanohives then spam AV nades, tank dead. B) Tank makes it to center of city for epic tank dual, tank is wasted by forge gunners on building room tops. Tank is dead. C) Tank gets stuck on glitchy terrain and dies to a light pole. In my opinion MAVs and LAVs would be the kings of vehicle CQC just from the sheer perspective that they should be able to much better avoid all 3 of those problems. I lack proper descriptive skills and was trying to make that situation brief. In Response: A) The "un-enterable" buildings described walling the road into the center market should have alleyways blocked by stalls, etc. so that the tank won't get ambushed from buildings in CQC while entering through this road. However the closer the tank gets to the market the more LOS buildings get to ambush the tank and vice versa. So, if a tank is taking fire, simply backing up the road would make for an easy escape since the further the tank gets back the less LOS the buildings have towards the tank. The road was also described as "short" so that the tank can back up to the wall quickly if under heavy fire and simply escape. It would only be by bringing the wall up that you could make the tank commit to combat long enough to kill it. The point being that the problem you're describing can be avoided with clever use of scenery. B) Since the only building in the area with a combination of an accessible roof and perfect LOS to the tank when it backs up to recover IS the building you're fighting over to open the gate it would seem to make sense that the people controlling that point wouldn't be shooting at the tank as it enters. Given how much CQC suits would dominate A/V suits in infantry CQC would seem to be a deterrent as well, not to mention all the rooftops in this area being extremely exposed show the obvious advantage of bringing a dropship for cover fire on the rooftops and CRU deployment directly to the important objectives. C) Can't fix that in level design, unfortunately I would also like to note that this "epic tank battle" would obviously prefer rail tanks over blaster tanks because of the ranges at which these tanks would standoff, but the rail tank wouldn't take advantage of the market are nearly as well as a blaster tank. Also, the CQC nature of the capture point and gate means that capturing the point would prefer CQC suits whereas taking advantage of the gate mechanic and rooftop LOS would prefer long rang and A/V dropsuits. A squad would best take advantage of the vehicle aspects of this map by combining a rail tank, a blaster tank, and a dropship. However, this leaves only 3 ground troops to capture the gate-point. Conversely, a CQC team with a swarm/forge guy and TAC-AR/Sniper guy w/ 4 CQC troopers would dominate the infantry war but be more vulnerable to dropships and other vehicles. Tl;dr This is a type of level design that aims at "specialization" (a main design principle of New Eden) by using scenery, traffic flow, and LOS to make areas of the map where one type of dropsuits excels and another fails miserably. Not to say that current Dust level design doesn't do this, just that Urban design elements can cause a different combination of these elements to produce different fighting conditions. It never hurts to experiment! I know CCP Shanghai is currently backlogged with imbalances and bugs, but level design is one of the few places where I've seen little outrage (in comparison to, say, murder taxis or how OP shield is in comparison to armor). Throwing us a new map type would be more welcome than another flavor of Kill Report and less time-intensive then bringing us another new game mode. Just my two cents, and I'm glad you guys are keeping all our suggestions in mind.
Gorgoth24Reborn Kang Lo Directorate Gallente Federation 12	Posted - 2013.07.26 21:15:00 - [5] - Quote SickJ wrote: Aero Yassavi wrote: Vertical and more means to get from point A to point B. Currently with the sockets if we want to get from one place to another we have to travel through a long stretch of flat land which can be hazardous especially with all the vehicles. With an urban map you could still have wide streets for vehicles but also buildings that we can run through or on top of parallel to the streets and other passages like perhaps subway systems or over-street railways that will get you from one base to another. It will give you the option of whether you want to take a mid/long range engagement approach or a close quarter approach while moving about. So, shotgun scout's paradise? Yes, but don't forget that they can't take advantage of clearing out high LOS buildings and are drastically more vulnerable to the explosives that would be spammed in such a map. Tbh, the best suit I could think of would be a Commando with a shotgun/(insert mid-to-long range gun here) and an enormous buffer, not a scout suit.