I also think that the map feels overly congested. It was never a simple or open map, but the ns2 version just feels so cluttered and claustrophobic....
You started this screenshot/spoiler thing, so don't go running away under the cloak of righteousness
A) It was actually a sincere attempt at presenting a rebuttal to your claim, along with personal accounts and the care of taking the time to make screenshots and persuade you to consider a point. You don't want to play the nitpicking / detail oriented game with me.. Despite what you may assume of my abilities as a play tester. It's just too easy for me.
A screenshot of the room that is most similar to ns1 and does not have crates
See what i mean?
So unless you have a counter argument to my point, can we just drop it now, because it's a bit silly, and i don't want to continue this game you've created by counting every single crate on the map versus rooms and corridors - I'd rather you provide a rebuttal if you don't agree with my point, after taking the time to observe it.
I haven't played the original ns1 eclipse for at least 8 years. I have to say, within 2 short rounds I had the layout down in my head and all those fun memories came flooding back.
Looking forward to practising this for comp games!
It is in my opinion both beautiful and well crafted. Thank you!
Would it be that hard to put arrows pointing to areas on the walls at turns? They do that in every building built today...so I feel like it's not a stretch for the ns2 realm...
@Jonacrab map looks stunning, i have never played the original but from the games i played on this version i must say the crates provides vital cover for both marines and aliens. I think they are scattered in a good way around the map in a way that does not create repetativeness in my opinion. It is never to cluttered like some may say BUT towards marine start the corridors are very repetative and feel almosty to copy/pasty, Some walls and ceilings need to be beveled in to create more room, rise some of the roof panels in the middle of the corridors for skulks to sit and ambush in, running in a straight line for 10 seconds before you can land 1 single bite on a marine just dont work.
The roof is just as flat as the floor here:
if not even flatter.
I understand you want to be loyal to the original map, but some ns1 things worked for ns1, now other ns2 things will work for ns2, and giving us more space vertical and horisontal will give marines and aliens room to be creative and not restricted wethin the bounds of the straight corridors. Im not saying add vents, this map have plenty. Just hollow out roofs or extend sides of corridoors to allow skulks to sit halfway trough, closer to their pray or heal up instead of running a full 100 meters towards next cover that is another long corridor.
blindJoin Date: 2010-04-17Member: 71437Members, Squad Five Gold
Although Elodea did choose a negative connotation in his wording (you call it whining), he got some legit points which shouldn't be discarded as a whole just because of his attitude. As a disclaimer, all my listed thoughts below are only result of playing the map a couple times on public servers. I might be terrible wrong and withdraw my statements in a couple weeks again- those are only initial impressions.
Given the hallway architecture in Eclipse, I can't help myself to have the same claustrophobic feeling. Positioning options are mostly terrible and this map is a wall-jump heaven.
I can understand (or rather, imagine/theorycraft) why it turned out that Marines still won majority of games in your playtest group. You could go through all 10 Scrajm's commandments or do a little comparison to existing maps. I choose second.
Eclipse is a 4 tech point map like Veil, so let's take a general Veil gameplay analysis at start. Veil vastly plays around nanogrid control and every marine commander needs a game plan how and when to deal with it. For aliens, it is their balance savior since without it, they had a terrible res situation. Late game usually evolves around control over nano/system with constant pushes to get those gates down while a 3rd hive option is blocked by nature. Given the layout res biting as well as pressure is harder for both teams (just take an average of rts killed per minute through all matches - while for example summit goes often above 1 rt/min when aliens play well, on veil 0.7-0.8 rt/min seems to be more a good measure for excessive rt biting).
Now look at Eclipse. Most RTs are easy to access for marine pressure by traveling time in relation to alien defense distance (their basic counter traveling time to react) and there is no mechanic like nano (2 easy defendable RTs at start far away from hive) in veil. Thus I understand you had to make engagements easier for skulks throughout 70% of the map. The given result is that I just don't want to play that map as LMG marine. Kinda feels like rushing SG tech is only option to fight good skulks in most crucial travel spots. Even so, the interesting fighting mechanics in NS2 (for me at least) are game sense and positioning skills. We are used to fight in mostly clean defined hallways/rooms without the lack of space while aliens try to abuse the - rather rarely seeded - "easy engagement areas" (like glass hall way in summit). Some of the screenshots provided by Elodea show how much the skill ceiling for positioning got dumbed down in the map, especially when it comes down to maximizing distance, luring skulks into disadvantaged spots and get a nice marine spread between each other within the group (and still have a good shooting angle!). I feel like I wander 70% of the time in glass hallway with an extra crate.
Just think of how you play summit/tram/veil/jambi/biodome and need to get good team effort for ambushing/rushing marines in those maps and then compare it to the engagements you have had during your playtesting jams. I simply can't believe it felt the same for you. But again, I need to get more experience myself on that, so I put it more as a question then: didn't it feel different? Or doesn't it affect gameplay so much since PT isn't comparable to a scrim/pcw/match? I'd especially love input from the prem players who participated in it.
Jonacrab's post helped me understand the decision making around the map structure a bit, but wouldn't it be possible to alter game balance with other tricks without changing the whole map layout? Bottom line I just dislike playing eclipse in its current state as marine and that would be a shame since it was surely a heavy effort and it generally does look very nice.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited December 2013
Nice feedback, blind.
Just to clarify something : there's a play testing team, and then there's a map testing team. Map testers much more represent competitive play with highly skilled players, whereas play testers typically will reflect how pubs will play out.
Now, I'm no prim player, and I can only speak for PT, not MT, but what we saw (and the feedback given) early on was that things were too cramped in many areas. As the map began to be fleshed out more /gray boxes dissipated, this changed in some areas.. And in some it remained the same. (generator monitors, hallways from and to South loop or alpha access)
Eventually we discovered that exos and onos were less viable on this map due to either the very cramped sections (exo death) or the very very long hallways (onos death), which sort of led to putting all chips into fades and shotguns /jps (for speed, not height).
We also discovered that some areas absolutely needed more cover due to their design (hallway from hive to core access, which has none right now).
So from my own interpretation, i guess the issue stems from : How to maintain the artistic style and layout of the original, without allowing for a) complete marine dominance b) cramped corners everywhere..
What's the lesser evil? The occasional crate in a big wide open hallway, or cramped corners? The only alternative to these two that I can tell are windy /lazy medium turns repetitively placed throughout the entire map (such as marine start hallways.)
Unless there's something that hasn't been considered, i guess?
Also, i found elodea 's screenshots to not adequately reflect actual positioning that a marine would take. For instance, I would've had my back up against the wall in that south loop shot - but again, I'm no pro. *shrug*
Thanks for the clarification, it was directed towards both groups, with focus on MT.
Whatever balance issues you go through, I wouldn't start with exo/onos - the game evolves from lmg/skulk and needs first be addressed to this. In all maps there are less favorable places for onos to be which isn't a problem at all (take warehouse in tram, flight control in summit and countless others).
But I agree that balancing a map without much of a layout change is very hard to accomplish, Veil is the only balanced 4 tech point map and if you don't want to copy/paste its main features (like biodome/summit), you need ALOT of risky tries and times with heavy MT support - and the time is run out by now. Balancing a map AND having it being unique in gameplay is a master trait and I bow to every mapper accomplishing that. So I fear I can't pop out with the grand idea fixing it, maybe some suggestions (call it risky tries) but that's it and I think Jonacrab already put way more thoughts in that already than I could do now. So the only options are addressing several smaller fixes while obtaining at least a 40/60 win ratio I guess. The next NSL Custom Map Cup could generate helpful feedback on the current state and/or minor changes.
For the screenshots, Elodea just posted pictures of rooms addressing the issues, not necessarily where you would position yourself (since this is very dynamic anyways). It showcases your available options in the given areas. And I fear that southloop spot (which you unfortunetaly took as example) is actually the spot to be in when aliens are about to engage from powersub and t-junc - which again is very realistic since a comp alien team shouldn't all come from powersub. That crate and the glasses makes it hard for marines in an already very small area to cover 2 of the potential entrances.
Seems like marines have the most trouble if aliens start in eclipse, which fits to my experimence in public games that atm it's too easy to block off marines into their base from eclipse because you can use the vent to get easily and fast enought to both "entries".
Hope this post is a little bit helpfull, i'm unable to formulate it better in proper english atm.
Over all i like the map, its maybe not my favorite, after getting used to it i quiet enjoy playing it. The first rounds on it it felt like walking throw a maze.
But yeah i know what you started with and can understand fully with eclipse is like it is atm.
@blind: I'm total aware that public games differ from competive ones and i agree with mostly everything you stated as issues of eclipse in your posts. But this game is mostly played by pubs and the situation of eclipse there is that marines can't get out of their start atm, because they get killed off in the corridors in front of marine start.
Public games are hardly a good measure for this. Example why:
From what I've experienced, public players and rookies seem to be more "attracted" to going to Triad (like most rookies used to go to east wing on docking in earlier days = against departures hive insta GG). If that thesis has solid ground, it makes perfect sense why Eclipse hive is the strongest starting hive. Triad is a good spot to fight in (tons of crates and vents) and marines don't accomplish anything by going there. They build the RT, lose a fight and insta lose it again while the khamm expands eastways. If, instead, the majority would go to power sub / southloop instead they could put useful aggression towards 2 RTs and the hive expansion. Instead they end up being dead weight while the few useful marines on the rest of the map get outnumbered. The RT between eclipse and computer core is a simple nightmare for marines - 1 meter hallways with 2 entrances plus 2 vent exists. My personal award for most awkward RT spot to pressure in NS2 imo.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I think we should wait before we judge eclipse on balance.
The servers atm, especially uwe servers, are loaded with rookies. Green everywhere.
For some reason many stack marines, I often see icons & vets on alien side because of rookie stack.
And they got rolled as a result of course. Quite horribly.
I just cannot see Eclipse being played in competitive with nearly every hallway feeling like glass hallways on summit. Most of the map is a marine death trap with 5+ ambush spots in every room, extremely tight corridors, power nodes being built provides no LoS. Summit / Tram / Veil / Jambi all have nasty corridors that are marine death traps, but they have maybe 2-3 per map compared to the 10+ of eclipse.
The map itself is beautiful and the texturing / detailing is amazing, but please open up the corridors and give marines the ability to have good positioning. The map almost forces early shotguns due to its corridor / cramped design, considering how the competitive community is going (mainly international vs international ), the map is not playable on anything higher then 150 ping.
Regarding Marine premier division win percentage in your MT group, you have to allow the meta of a map to develop. I can imagine 99% of the time, your premier MT group would of played the map in the exact same style as they do in other maps with no one really going outside of the boundaries to develop a strategy to fit the map. Even on veil, there is no cookie-cutter build to deal with aliens locking down nano grid and we see many different alterations of premier level teams dealing with this problem.
It's happened many times before, a patch is released and marines feel quite OP for a short time until aliens develop strategies / techniques to deal with marine aggression.
FYI: For NSL version, please leave in teleporter until atleast NSL S4 begins. I want to see how it plays out...
I also think that the map feels overly congested. It was never a simple or open map, but the ns2 version just feels so cluttered and claustrophobic....
High ping play on eclipse might be troublesome, but honestly playing with over 150 ping has always changed things.. it starts to become a completely different game at that point. I personally think the ease of pressuring versus the ease of ambushing could make for more interesting gameplay, and while it may be more difficult for marines initially I think people just need to learn to adapt. You can still have good positioning in small hallways, I would say it makes teamwork more important, and having your marines well positioned to assist each other, not just individually.
Played the map a bit more today, and it is growing on me a little. (though I'm still lost half the time lol)
I have to ask, is there any chance they'll "fix" the vent that runs beneath Access Alpha?
1) When entering the vent from the southern side there's a spot that I commonly end up snagged on as a Skulk. Not only is it annoying but it's already gotten me killed a couple times. (at the bottom of the "ramp" inside the vent)
2) Is there a reason Gorges can't build a tunnel in the middle of the vent (the shaft) - It's not an "exploitable" spot as Marines can very easily enter the vent from both the north and south. Seems almost like it was specifically designed to be a good spot for a tunnel...
=
2) Is there a reason Gorges can't build a tunnel in the middle of the vent (the shaft) - It's not an "exploitable" spot as Marines can very easily enter the vent from both the north and south. Seems almost like it was specifically designed to be a good spot for a tunnel...
Because, as said many times, you cannot design maps around tunnels, you can't just place pathing in there just for tunnels, or else then ai will get screwed up.
Let's be bit less naive in thinking everything is sorted out on a map just out of the oven. :P
@jonacrab
I don't have access to a PC atm, so bad name recollection combined with even worse explaining incoming!
Areas from Eclipse hive, towards CC hive. We have that one hallway thats has a pillar blocking it so you cant see it from end to end, instead of doing that you couldve elevated it to 2 hallways so instead of using a pillar to cut the rending distance, use a wall. We used to have a fence you could jump over, but the "walking way" circled further away, you could do something similar but halfway in the corridor where it now crosses towards the RT.
The whole area between Eclipse hive and CC hive, it's filled with rooms/corridors where there are no place for movement making it basicly a killbox, jump in and bite, you cant really even miss anything. Just reduce the turns, and give the rooms more widht. I think in some ways, you could just completely improvise that location and not hang on to the original design at all.
The hallway of death from PowerSub to CC hive, a long very narrow hallway. It's just bad, and it really does not need to be one long hallway either, you could just break it into 2 hallways. Or if you dont do that, atleast make it wider so there's atleast some room to maneuvor.
CC hive exit stairs to the right, again it's very narrow and make it a horrible place to engage. Could need a better solution that such narrow turns.
Theres also that really tight turns from Keyhole to Maint hive, it's way too tight turns, i get that there was bit of a space issue but small corridors like that belong to custom maps that people play when they are high.
Even in all that, i like the map it looks really nice and it's been very faithful to the original eventhough it didn't really need to in such a huge extent. I've also had good FPS on it but my computer is bit of a beast so, . I liked the way you redid station access, keyhole, and powersubjunction hallways. I haven't had time to play it in serious play yet but it looked like a very solid remake of one of the best ns1 maps. It look one runthrough of the map to not get lost and get the layout so, thanks.
=
2) Is there a reason Gorges can't build a tunnel in the middle of the vent (the shaft) - It's not an "exploitable" spot as Marines can very easily enter the vent from both the north and south. Seems almost like it was specifically designed to be a good spot for a tunnel...
Because, as said many times, you cannot design maps around tunnels, you can't just place pathing in there just for tunnels, or else then ai will get screwed up.
What exactly does gorge tunnels have to do with AI pathing?
Apart from the fact that restricting GT placement to the nav mesh is a cheap way in which to keep them out of problem locations.
=
2) Is there a reason Gorges can't build a tunnel in the middle of the vent (the shaft) - It's not an "exploitable" spot as Marines can very easily enter the vent from both the north and south. Seems almost like it was specifically designed to be a good spot for a tunnel...
Because, as said many times, you cannot design maps around tunnels, you can't just place pathing in there just for tunnels, or else then ai will get screwed up.
What exactly does gorge tunnels have to do with AI pathing?
Apart from the fact that restricting GT placement to the nav mesh is a cheap way in which to keep them out of problem locations.
I will explain this...again...You can not just "put pathing anywhere" and you can't just "oh I want tunnels there, put pathing there" because it messes with AI pathing. When you do this you will end up with drifters under the floor, or in the ceiling, or stuck, Then people will complain about bad pathing because you put pathing where it should not be.
NarfwakJoin Date: 2002-11-02Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
I'm a little surprised that the impression is an alien bias given how difficult it is to fade or lerk on this map. Core access and the hallway from there into computer core especially are incredibly difficult to retake as alien if the marines get in there to siege the hive out. You just need to make sure people position correctly and don't block lines of sight.
i surely miss overlook vent tunnel on veil and the other 90% of the regular floor places on refinary that is impossible to put tunnels in even at FLAT FLOOR LEVEL acessible to any marine.
i dont think tunnels need to be researched by comm again, if you gonna put a tunnel anywhere better be prepared to pay for shade and take the time to build that instead. plz dont do research on them.
@samusdroid I think the question about gorge tunnels was more 'why do they need to be linked to the nav mesh, if they were unlinked like before'
Not my question you understand I'm just rephrasing as I think the original intent got lost in the wording somehow.
Comments
Needs a bit of simplification/cleanup imho.
See what i mean?
So unless you have a counter argument to my point, can we just drop it now, because it's a bit silly, and i don't want to continue this game you've created by counting every single crate on the map versus rooms and corridors - I'd rather you provide a rebuttal if you don't agree with my point, after taking the time to observe it.
Looking forward to practising this for comp games!
It is in my opinion both beautiful and well crafted. Thank you!
Anyway, am i the only one having worst fps in general with this build ? gonna try delete the workshop folder
The roof is just as flat as the floor here:
I understand you want to be loyal to the original map, but some ns1 things worked for ns1, now other ns2 things will work for ns2, and giving us more space vertical and horisontal will give marines and aliens room to be creative and not restricted wethin the bounds of the straight corridors. Im not saying add vents, this map have plenty. Just hollow out roofs or extend sides of corridoors to allow skulks to sit halfway trough, closer to their pray or heal up instead of running a full 100 meters towards next cover that is another long corridor.
Given the hallway architecture in Eclipse, I can't help myself to have the same claustrophobic feeling. Positioning options are mostly terrible and this map is a wall-jump heaven.
I can understand (or rather, imagine/theorycraft) why it turned out that Marines still won majority of games in your playtest group. You could go through all 10 Scrajm's commandments or do a little comparison to existing maps. I choose second.
Eclipse is a 4 tech point map like Veil, so let's take a general Veil gameplay analysis at start. Veil vastly plays around nanogrid control and every marine commander needs a game plan how and when to deal with it. For aliens, it is their balance savior since without it, they had a terrible res situation. Late game usually evolves around control over nano/system with constant pushes to get those gates down while a 3rd hive option is blocked by nature. Given the layout res biting as well as pressure is harder for both teams (just take an average of rts killed per minute through all matches - while for example summit goes often above 1 rt/min when aliens play well, on veil 0.7-0.8 rt/min seems to be more a good measure for excessive rt biting).
Now look at Eclipse. Most RTs are easy to access for marine pressure by traveling time in relation to alien defense distance (their basic counter traveling time to react) and there is no mechanic like nano (2 easy defendable RTs at start far away from hive) in veil. Thus I understand you had to make engagements easier for skulks throughout 70% of the map. The given result is that I just don't want to play that map as LMG marine. Kinda feels like rushing SG tech is only option to fight good skulks in most crucial travel spots. Even so, the interesting fighting mechanics in NS2 (for me at least) are game sense and positioning skills. We are used to fight in mostly clean defined hallways/rooms without the lack of space while aliens try to abuse the - rather rarely seeded - "easy engagement areas" (like glass hall way in summit). Some of the screenshots provided by Elodea show how much the skill ceiling for positioning got dumbed down in the map, especially when it comes down to maximizing distance, luring skulks into disadvantaged spots and get a nice marine spread between each other within the group (and still have a good shooting angle!). I feel like I wander 70% of the time in glass hallway with an extra crate.
Just think of how you play summit/tram/veil/jambi/biodome and need to get good team effort for ambushing/rushing marines in those maps and then compare it to the engagements you have had during your playtesting jams. I simply can't believe it felt the same for you. But again, I need to get more experience myself on that, so I put it more as a question then: didn't it feel different? Or doesn't it affect gameplay so much since PT isn't comparable to a scrim/pcw/match? I'd especially love input from the prem players who participated in it.
Jonacrab's post helped me understand the decision making around the map structure a bit, but wouldn't it be possible to alter game balance with other tricks without changing the whole map layout? Bottom line I just dislike playing eclipse in its current state as marine and that would be a shame since it was surely a heavy effort and it generally does look very nice.
Just to clarify something : there's a play testing team, and then there's a map testing team. Map testers much more represent competitive play with highly skilled players, whereas play testers typically will reflect how pubs will play out.
Now, I'm no prim player, and I can only speak for PT, not MT, but what we saw (and the feedback given) early on was that things were too cramped in many areas. As the map began to be fleshed out more /gray boxes dissipated, this changed in some areas.. And in some it remained the same. (generator monitors, hallways from and to South loop or alpha access)
Eventually we discovered that exos and onos were less viable on this map due to either the very cramped sections (exo death) or the very very long hallways (onos death), which sort of led to putting all chips into fades and shotguns /jps (for speed, not height).
We also discovered that some areas absolutely needed more cover due to their design (hallway from hive to core access, which has none right now).
So from my own interpretation, i guess the issue stems from :
How to maintain the artistic style and layout of the original, without allowing for a) complete marine dominance b) cramped corners everywhere..
What's the lesser evil? The occasional crate in a big wide open hallway, or cramped corners? The only alternative to these two that I can tell are windy /lazy medium turns repetitively placed throughout the entire map (such as marine start hallways.)
Unless there's something that hasn't been considered, i guess?
Also, i found elodea 's screenshots to not adequately reflect actual positioning that a marine would take. For instance, I would've had my back up against the wall in that south loop shot - but again, I'm no pro. *shrug*
Thanks for the clarification, it was directed towards both groups, with focus on MT.
Whatever balance issues you go through, I wouldn't start with exo/onos - the game evolves from lmg/skulk and needs first be addressed to this. In all maps there are less favorable places for onos to be which isn't a problem at all (take warehouse in tram, flight control in summit and countless others).
But I agree that balancing a map without much of a layout change is very hard to accomplish, Veil is the only balanced 4 tech point map and if you don't want to copy/paste its main features (like biodome/summit), you need ALOT of risky tries and times with heavy MT support - and the time is run out by now. Balancing a map AND having it being unique in gameplay is a master trait and I bow to every mapper accomplishing that. So I fear I can't pop out with the grand idea fixing it, maybe some suggestions (call it risky tries) but that's it and I think Jonacrab already put way more thoughts in that already than I could do now. So the only options are addressing several smaller fixes while obtaining at least a 40/60 win ratio I guess. The next NSL Custom Map Cup could generate helpful feedback on the current state and/or minor changes.
For the screenshots, Elodea just posted pictures of rooms addressing the issues, not necessarily where you would position yourself (since this is very dynamic anyways). It showcases your available options in the given areas. And I fear that southloop spot (which you unfortunetaly took as example) is actually the spot to be in when aliens are about to engage from powersub and t-junc - which again is very realistic since a comp alien team shouldn't all come from powersub. That crate and the glasses makes it hard for marines in an already very small area to cover 2 of the potential entrances.
Seems like marines have the most trouble if aliens start in eclipse, which fits to my experimence in public games that atm it's too easy to block off marines into their base from eclipse because you can use the vent to get easily and fast enought to both "entries".
Hope this post is a little bit helpfull, i'm unable to formulate it better in proper english atm.
Over all i like the map, its maybe not my favorite, after getting used to it i quiet enjoy playing it. The first rounds on it it felt like walking throw a maze.
But yeah i know what you started with and can understand fully with eclipse is like it is atm.
@blind: I'm total aware that public games differ from competive ones and i agree with mostly everything you stated as issues of eclipse in your posts. But this game is mostly played by pubs and the situation of eclipse there is that marines can't get out of their start atm, because they get killed off in the corridors in front of marine start.
Public games are hardly a good measure for this. Example why:
From what I've experienced, public players and rookies seem to be more "attracted" to going to Triad (like most rookies used to go to east wing on docking in earlier days = against departures hive insta GG). If that thesis has solid ground, it makes perfect sense why Eclipse hive is the strongest starting hive. Triad is a good spot to fight in (tons of crates and vents) and marines don't accomplish anything by going there. They build the RT, lose a fight and insta lose it again while the khamm expands eastways. If, instead, the majority would go to power sub / southloop instead they could put useful aggression towards 2 RTs and the hive expansion. Instead they end up being dead weight while the few useful marines on the rest of the map get outnumbered. The RT between eclipse and computer core is a simple nightmare for marines - 1 meter hallways with 2 entrances plus 2 vent exists. My personal award for most awkward RT spot to pressure in NS2 imo.
The servers atm, especially uwe servers, are loaded with rookies. Green everywhere.
For some reason many stack marines, I often see icons & vets on alien side because of rookie stack.
And they got rolled as a result of course. Quite horribly.
Lets let the rookies settle down first.
The map itself is beautiful and the texturing / detailing is amazing, but please open up the corridors and give marines the ability to have good positioning. The map almost forces early shotguns due to its corridor / cramped design, considering how the competitive community is going (mainly international vs international ), the map is not playable on anything higher then 150 ping.
Regarding Marine premier division win percentage in your MT group, you have to allow the meta of a map to develop. I can imagine 99% of the time, your premier MT group would of played the map in the exact same style as they do in other maps with no one really going outside of the boundaries to develop a strategy to fit the map. Even on veil, there is no cookie-cutter build to deal with aliens locking down nano grid and we see many different alterations of premier level teams dealing with this problem.
It's happened many times before, a patch is released and marines feel quite OP for a short time until aliens develop strategies / techniques to deal with marine aggression.
FYI: For NSL version, please leave in teleporter until atleast NSL S4 begins. I want to see how it plays out...
/tldr
OPEN THE MAP UP, ITS SO CRAMPED
Yeah. I prefer the beta in that regard... http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=77383474
I have to ask, is there any chance they'll "fix" the vent that runs beneath Access Alpha?
1) When entering the vent from the southern side there's a spot that I commonly end up snagged on as a Skulk. Not only is it annoying but it's already gotten me killed a couple times. (at the bottom of the "ramp" inside the vent)
2) Is there a reason Gorges can't build a tunnel in the middle of the vent (the shaft) - It's not an "exploitable" spot as Marines can very easily enter the vent from both the north and south. Seems almost like it was specifically designed to be a good spot for a tunnel...
Because, as said many times, you cannot design maps around tunnels, you can't just place pathing in there just for tunnels, or else then ai will get screwed up.
@jonacrab
I don't have access to a PC atm, so bad name recollection combined with even worse explaining incoming!
Areas from Eclipse hive, towards CC hive. We have that one hallway thats has a pillar blocking it so you cant see it from end to end, instead of doing that you couldve elevated it to 2 hallways so instead of using a pillar to cut the rending distance, use a wall. We used to have a fence you could jump over, but the "walking way" circled further away, you could do something similar but halfway in the corridor where it now crosses towards the RT.
The whole area between Eclipse hive and CC hive, it's filled with rooms/corridors where there are no place for movement making it basicly a killbox, jump in and bite, you cant really even miss anything. Just reduce the turns, and give the rooms more widht. I think in some ways, you could just completely improvise that location and not hang on to the original design at all.
The hallway of death from PowerSub to CC hive, a long very narrow hallway. It's just bad, and it really does not need to be one long hallway either, you could just break it into 2 hallways. Or if you dont do that, atleast make it wider so there's atleast some room to maneuvor.
CC hive exit stairs to the right, again it's very narrow and make it a horrible place to engage. Could need a better solution that such narrow turns.
Theres also that really tight turns from Keyhole to Maint hive, it's way too tight turns, i get that there was bit of a space issue but small corridors like that belong to custom maps that people play when they are high.
Even in all that, i like the map it looks really nice and it's been very faithful to the original eventhough it didn't really need to in such a huge extent. I've also had good FPS on it but my computer is bit of a beast so,
What exactly does gorge tunnels have to do with AI pathing?
Apart from the fact that restricting GT placement to the nav mesh is a cheap way in which to keep them out of problem locations.
@Remedy So uh... where've you been???
i dont think tunnels need to be researched by comm again, if you gonna put a tunnel anywhere better be prepared to pay for shade and take the time to build that instead. plz dont do research on them.
Not my question you understand I'm just rephrasing as I think the original intent got lost in the wording somehow.