Glacial was a great alternative to most of the emp maps, with high importance of height and pass-control, as trickster said already. (compare alpine_rush for instance - in total it might have more possible lanes, but it still feels pretty crammed up) I don't think there's a problem with the steamversion though, since I believe I've played it about half a year ago (when the steam release was already out). Also: what happened to that one snow map with the nuke silos and the frozen lake in middle? Or is that snowbound?
Yeah that's snowbound, which is broken sadly. To be entirely honest, I kind of enjoyed the majority of Snowbound. As people know, I hate gimmicks, but I honestly didn't mind the way the nuke was implemented in Snowbound. My main issue with it was the fact that the gates couldn't be broken through, and they were a pain to raise as well. It pretty much meant it was a necessity to get Fission or 3phase so you could jump the other team's gate, or artillery. I think if there was a solution, be it infantry paths on the outside (not that dumb one through the tunnel) that lead to opening buttons, or actually letting it take damage, the map would have played a lot better.
If you ever want to include mesa, someone should change this. Omneh should have the files. edit: the middle ref is only 1x
Mesa is a great map, but people only vote it on when there are like 10 people total on the server, which is far too few for it. 20 people on the server is too little for it sometimes.
mesa: walk for 2 minutes, get shot by scout. walk again, get shot again. get apc, kill an entire quarter of the map in one run. I don't see the fun in that.
Isle, walk for 2 minutes get shot by scout. Mvalley, walk for 2 minutes get shot by scout. Duststorm, walk for 2 minutes get shot by scout. Actually, mesa provides more cover than all of those official maps. Mvalley, get apc, kill entire quarter of the map in one run. Duststorm, get apc, kill entire quarter of the map in one run. Isle, get apc, kill entire quarter of the map in one run. Cyclopean, get apc, kill entire quarter of the map in one run. Every map without chokepoints works like that, its called dynamic gameplay. Mesa was not designed as a noob friendly choke point map it was designed as a scrim orientated map where theirs always a way to change the frontline and give both teams always a way to push back. If you like boring noob friendly gameplay, play money or slaughtered.
Idk, for some reason my mesa experience is different from Mvalley, Isle and Duststorm. Maybe because there's not much you can change concerning your route when you don't want to take a huge detour.
aka huge detour. You have to walk half the map to walk through the middle to the target spot while avoiding one single point of the map.
You know... spawn points? like haveing a rax in middle or you can always drive an apc right into middle both vehicle bridges are easily accessable from the starting bases. Both of you make it look like that its not common that you have to walk for ages in empires without doing anything. It always happens on any open map. Watch the demos of the last duststorm and cyclopean scrim and count how many times the player does nothing exept walking for ages...
Mayama, people are right about Mesa. Your counter-arguments are correct, but, for some reason it just never plays out like that.
Well i kinda do more usefull stuff in scrims when I dont fight, cause flanking, scouting and trying to get behind enemy lines usually works best if you dont kill someone dun dun dun. ...also USE THE SQUADPOINTS ZOMG !!!
Mayama, you are right, but right after start, aka initial landgrab, I'm walking half the map and getting stopped dead with a single shot. So I just wasted two minutes (or more) of my time and got nothing but frustration. If it's a pub I just go spec ><
That's why it was fun. Firing mortars off those hills made that map extremely fun to play losing. It was the siege or besieged part of the match that was awesome.
Yeah this. And on the flip-side, when you're winning, it isn't just a steamroll, you need to really fight for it, which makes it all the more satisfying when you do win. And using artillery, whilst effective, means they really need to be supported, otherwise they just get RPG/mortared from the top.
I'd like to see glacial, for the reasons mentioned - but not emp_turtlebunker_snowstorm... What about emp_blah ? Maybe not something for a small number of players, but imo it's one of the maps that works well with a mix of infantry and tanks during most game phases.
If it were up to me I'd include more new maps rather than less. The stock maps make up the heart of the game, obviously, but the bigger that pool is, and it should be established that those maps are decidedly "better" (thus being stocks) then there is less room for fucking goddamn bullshit terribad pieces of imposter shit garbage horrible game ruining shitty shitty shit maps to end up dominating vote cycles, thus leading to more consistent high quality Empires gameplay. Which in turn leads to more money for the dev team to buy expensive cars. Sorry for the obvious rhetoric, but I wanted to be clear: include some of these maps that are good but have been forgotten in favour of flashy rainbowy pieces of shitty shitty shit in order to preserve them and their valuable contribution to gameplay. Every time I wrack my brain trying to give examples I come up short, but I know there are many. I'm gonna try again to list maps that err more on the "include because good" side than the "burn because rainbows" side: (starting with the obvious) Glacial Snowbound Frozensummit Tropicvendetta Alpinerush (get the fire extinguisher) Blah4 Mesa Moors (double flame suit time - but do remember that it has been updated with rocks and navigational aids) Keefs Escort (if the bridge problem is fixed) Some variant of Money (if we fucking must have Money) Raiders (I mean come on, that map is awesome) MEarth (when Varbles does all the cool shit he's gonna do) King (stock means it gets learned) Manticore (Trickster your bias is influential around here, and in this case I believe inaccurate, although I agree Keef's planned changes would rock - plus there's a damn building named after you in it) OH YEAH BUSH (fucking right I love bush) Forest (with a face lift) even Badlands has it's merits (maybe it's cause it was the map my first game was on, and the abusable cliffs, but it still has something to offer, in a sort of TIC TAC TOE style gameplay) Oasis (if someone could orange box it, as I believe it is that old, but it had solid gameplay) There have to be more of these, I'm sure there are. For comparison, here are some really bad maps that highlight by contrast the various positives in the maps above: Rage (I think it's called rage - such repetitive and simple gameplay it might as well just go play with itself - sorry to whoever made it, we're still buds) Stalemate anything else I hate. lol. If you include more of the maps that have quite frankly stuck around as customs for years anyway there would even be room for rainbowroad to be stock, despite my vehemence towards it. If it was stock, in a pool of 30+ other stocks, the novelty would wear out and it would be played only frequently enough to still be fun. Same goes for Empirescup, which is frankly a fun-ass map, and could be a draw from the wider source playerbase, due to it's uniqueness and obvious fun factor. Basically to sum it up, maybe give these customs that have stuck around for years solely on their merit, a spot as a stock map. A little spit shine on a few of them and they're gold. I bet many of the above get played more than Arid... What's wrong with chain? I've never played it
