As a Frigate pilot, I’ve come to utterly despise this map.
When it first came out, it was probably my favourite map by far. The warp gates allowed fast movement between beacons, and the game focused on four key points; the beacons, which were suitably far apart that you couldn’t sit on one and lob plasma at the others; and the central platform.
Now it’s dull. There’s one huge fight in the middle, and then whichever team doesn’t get wiped out gets to grab the beacons. Slower ships essentially have to pick one corner of the map and never leave, otherwise they’ll get mobbed in the middle.
My suggestion is to put the movement triangle back in - link the beacons by warp gates. Leave the centre as is if you want, but without a way to avoid the central clusterfuck, this map is not worth playing.
You don’t need to fly through the middle, just saying. Although I loved the new layout when I synergized a guard recently. Warp to the middle, kill everything, win in 2 minutes. Every time. T3 lol, they just don’t get it…
And strangely enough, I happen to agree with both of those points.
I love and hate the new map layout. It royally sucks for a frigate to be caught out of position in the middle, but it feels awesome when you’re right where you need to be. The margin for error, especially for frigate pilots, has become quite a bit narrower, and frankly speaking it’s certainly not easy to get used to it. But to reverse it and go back to the old layout… not really.
For me, the beauty of the old map was the inherent failure of the frigballs. Often I saw teams lose because they got a load of Guards and Engineers to slowly push from one beacon to the other, while their opponents just brought faster ships and took the beacons behind them.
While I would personally prefer to just roll back, I feel combining the two would work as a compromise; make the centre avoidable via the edge gate network, but by keeping the centre gates it also has value as a way of slowing down enemy advances, or offering multiple attack routes without having to run the gauntlet past enemy beacons.
A nice idea would be to have all the gates (current version + previous version) but to have them switch off and on every now and then, possibly at random. It would add some frustration but also a lot of fun I think!
I think I have seen this idea somewhere before, but maybe have player activated warp gates…
To reply to the OP, I actually prefer the current layout of the warpgates, although any map which forces me to use warpgates kind of attracts my disgust (this map and Iridium Outpost are my two least favourite maps)
If this map was used only for domination mode, I would agree. When there was a ‘gate triangle’, early setbacks were much harder to overcome in beacon hunt mode.
You can avoid the centre clusterfuck just going straight to the beacons. In a fast frigate you will arrive almost at the same time at the two closer ones. Leave to the recons the job of jumping around.
Now that the beacons are not easy mode to cap for a frigball, people have to think to win that game, which is great.
And in Beacon hunt, it is impossible to do as you could do before, just make a frigball and go from beacon to beacon in 10 secs.
In a fast frigate you will arrive almost at the same time at the two closer ones.
Unfortunately not all frigates are fast…
Unfortunately not all frigates are fast…
Trade offs my friend :012j:
Trade offs my friend :012j:
Indeed. I also have to move off a lot earlier to bunker down at the next beacon. Funny how the slowest frigate becomes the first to reach.
Bumping this because it is still painfully valid.
This map needs a total overhaul. There is no valid approach to any beacon beside the beacons - flying through empty space on a map this big is suicide. You are easy pickings for every sniper on the field, not to mention the defenders at the beacons who can hunker down in cover.
Your only option is to fly into the centre, which means you can be easily camped and farmed.
It is a terrible design. The old version at least gave you two options of approach, which halved the gate camping problem.
Bumping this because it is still painfully valid.
I’m more and more inclined to agree. I’m hesitant to bring a frigate into that map now, even if I’m the only player with an engie.
It’s much easier to mine a warpgate in a beacon hunt map. You know almost exactly where they will pop out if they use gates. Then you can EM field beside-underneath gate and laser them when they come out. Easy pickings.
the warpgate exit should vary about 1km.
This is definitely still valid. The map is wide open, which is a huge advantage for snipers, and has huge spaces to travel even if you do use the warp gates, which is a ridiculous disadvantage for frigates, unless they’re all balled up in the middle, in which case, it’s a huge disadvantage for the entire enemy team. Now, whoever controls the middle controls the game, because there’s almost no practical way to get your entire team to stick together to avoid breaking up against interceptor swarms and frigballs, and even if you do, the travel time between beacons is a game breaker if you can’t get the center back.
Thank u for the suggestion. We r now actively analyzing this issue and if this idea breaks through we will announce it as soon as possible