[NC2016] Map Selection

[Lord Rich]

FBTR was always 'ok' but it was never a map that had much going on. Usually lots of camping or the odd push to central forest. The extremely open flanks meant that there was never many options for teams to try to push around to be aggressive. The defensive positions around the flags were also made more difficult by the approach positions having very poor cover against cavalry.

Personally from the list I would deselect Ruins. It's a camp fest, one flag doesn't work properly (despite multiple times of me thinking I had fixed it), the hills are obscene and rangers get to sit in comfortable little forts with huge amounts of visibility.

The whole nostalgia for original maps thing keeps coming up in tournaments, pretty much all of the original ones were never designed with competitive play in mind and have huge gaping flaws. The only unmodified original map which I think still almost makes the cut is FBTR, but even then you have places on it with ridiculous cliffs, no clear map borders and in general it doesn't have enough tactical openings to make it interesting.

Of the others:

Khergit Settlement
I enjoyed playing this in some training matches, I fear a lot of people will complain about it because of the amount of open ground however. The large amounts of open space might also make the vaegirs extremely strong on this as I don't believe there is much cover to give other factions breathing room.

Reveran Village
Still good, lots of different play styles work on this, the only issues I have are the deep water and poorly marked map borders, but we have lived with them ok up to now so I guess it's fine to continue.

Castellum
Pretty solid, it has a lot of different approaches and the tower often makes for an important early objective. The main criticism I would level at it is how open the spawns are, but that is more of an issue for public play than competitive. I have seen a lot of different builds work here as well, similar to reveran.

Frosthaven
I made it so I am naturally biased, but I tried to copy the style of reveran village as much as possible as I think that's one of the most successful and popular open maps. It hasn't been through any large revisions or changes yet so I hope it plays well.

 

[Trebron]

Personally from the list I would deselect Ruins. It's a camp fest

Just like almost every other map lol

The only unmodified original map which I think still almost makes the cut is FBTR, but even then you have places on it with ridiculous cliffs, no clear map borders and in general it doesn't have enough tactical openings to make it interesting.

That doesn't mean we have to add awful pseudo-open maps like Castellum and have no place in the tournament for FBTR. FBTR did its job as open map very well, Castellum so called "open map" is basically a closed map with a bit more space for cavalry and one badly placed flag. Almost everyone i was playing with in KURWA & team Poland says Castellum is crap and they don't enjoy playin it. Because it's bad as open map but you still can't play it like closed one. Well... you just can't play it good, too much stuff doesn't work there. It makes you feel like there are many tactical openings but the only reason for it is because teams that try to show more initiative usually get punished - it's too easy for archers to set up and stay alive, especially at flag near the church.
For NC maps i'd rather put FBTR instead of Castellum.
Unmarked borders on FBTR was never big problem problem like it is on Reveran Village (map you praised so much) where we have unmarked borders near flagspawns, cavs get stopped there very often. Where are unmarked borders on FBTR? Behind the forest and at the plain where nobody ever goes since the flag was moved (and even then the border was far away). Cliffs are easy to solve - just block the space behind stone bridge. Fixing one thing on FBTR - it's all it takes to have pathetic Castellum replaced with something good.

 

[Vissy]

As for me, I don't have any arguments, only unending love for FbtR. So please put it in. 

 

[Lord Rich]

Personally from the list I would deselect Ruins. It's a camp fest

Just like almost every other map lol

Not really, people camp on other maps because they choose to, people camp on ruins because they have to. The map gives each team elevated ranger positions with huge lines of sight that are near suicidal to push. When was the last time you saw an attack on the hill by the village go well or even be attemped, or an attack on the ruins. Both reveran and castellum do see early engagements and there are no hard positions that cannot be pushed from some direction. It's not uncommon to see an early fight in tower on castellum or a push to bunker on reveran.

The only unmodified original map which I think still almost makes the cut is FBTR, but even then you have places on it with ridiculous cliffs, no clear map borders and in general it doesn't have enough tactical openings to make it interesting.

That doesn't mean we have to add awful pseudo-open maps like Castellum and have no place in the tournament for FBTR. FBTR did its job as open map very well, Castellum so called "open map" is basically a closed map with a bit more space for cavalry and one badly placed flag. Almost everyone i was playing with in KURWA & team Poland says Castellum is crap and they don't enjoy playin it. Because it's bad as open map but you still can't play it like closed one. Well... you just can't play it good, too much stuff doesn't work there. It makes you feel like there are many tactical openings but the only reason for it is because teams that try to show more initiative usually get punished - it's too easy for archers to set up and stay alive, especially at flag near the church.
For NC maps i'd rather put FBTR instead of Castellum.
Unmarked borders on FBTR was never big problem problem like it is on Reveran Village (map you praised so much) where we have unmarked borders near flagspawns, cavs get stopped there very often. Where are unmarked borders on FBTR? Behind the forest and at the plain where nobody ever goes since the flag was moved (and even then the border was far away). Cliffs are easy to solve - just block the space behind stone bridge. Fixing one thing on FBTR - it's all it takes to have pathetic Castellum replaced with something good.

I don't have much against FBTR, as I said it's ok, I just think that its a very simple map when it comes to tactics and there haven't been any major changes in the meta on it for a long time. 6Cav changed it up for a bit and it's settled more into defensive 4-2-2 builds now. Also I didn't say the borders on FBTR were an issue, I was just pointing out that it's one of the things new maps would be called out on. I don't think reveran's borders are much of an issue either despite the fact that the flags are near them, simply because everyone is so used to it now (if you want to have a drive to add fences everywhere though, be my guest).

People don't seem to have much time for really open maps now, either in making or playing them. Although it's questionable how fair they are on the rhodoks given how that faction performed in the WNL5 finals and also the matchup against sarranids earlier in the season. I'm not really convinced they can win an even matchup on any open map against any faction anymore, but on mixed maps there is more of a chance.

 

[Rayden]

FBTR was always 'ok' but it was never a map that had much going on. Usually lots of camping or the odd push to central forest. The extremely open flanks meant that there was never many options for teams to try to push around to be aggressive. The defensive positions around the flags were also made more difficult by the approach positions having very poor cover against cavalry.

was desocancer valley a map that had much going on?

also you are saying that you would deselect ruins because of many camper spots that cav cant reach then you shouldnt complain about fbtr having some poor cover against cav in some positions

one more thing, i dont know why you guys removed mountain fortress as well, it was good map

 

[Snusmakaren]

Yeah, MF Was a good map.

 

[Lord Rich]

was desocancer valley a map that had much going on?

Obviously more than you were aware of since Unity trashed you on it.

also you are saying that you would deselect ruins because of many camper spots that cav cant reach then you shouldnt complain about fbtr having some poor cover against cav in some positions

one more thing, i dont know why you guys removed mountain fortress as well, it was good map

Try reading, as I said I don't mind FBTR, I just think its a bit stale.

Mountain fortress isn't one I have played on but from others I have heard it involved a lot of climbing up and down hills.

 

[Vissy]

About FbtR, I'm just going to say that 4-2-2 is definitely not the only way that works on it. There are a couple of pretty cool things that you can do on the map, maybe people don't know everything about it because they're so used to it. It can be seen as stale. I just personally see it as an enjoyable, calm map that is balanced and just simply a quality map. Also being traditional, it carries a certain unique weight with it.

 

[Rayden]

was desocancer valley a map that had much going on?

Obviously more than you were aware of since Unity trashed you on it.

We are more aware than you since KURWA trashed you on it

Try reading, as I said I don't mind FBTR, I just think its a bit stale.

Mountain fortress isn't one I have played on but from others I have heard it involved a lot of climbing up and down hills.

Maybe the reason that you removed FBTR, you don't understand the map well since again KURWA trashed you on it

For MF; you gotta be ******* kidding me, the only useless hill was on spawn and that carpet area and noone even fights there

 

[Vissy]

Mountain Fortress indeed works just fine.

The bottom line is, some of the maps that were excluded work really well. But so do all of the maps that have been included so far.

 

[Rayden]

If you are talking about climbing much or sth take a look at Fort of Honour, it's one sided as hell, everything is up to flag if you get the flag then you get the round. Someone should rethink of being aware of maps.

 

[Tallie]

How about stop crying about the maps which are excluded and just train the ones which are included..?

 

[Menethil]

Mountain Fortress>>>Fort of honour for me. Foh is nice but it depends only flags 1 spawn gets graveyard other spawn gets other flag then you wait for flag but In MF you can get every flag and you may need to fight for it before flag spawned. I dont understand why did admin team removed it.
Fbtr and Deso are both boring for me but atleast Fbtr has past a lot of great matches played on it. I think captains will vote for new maps but i think you should ask for captains again for changes like these ones. If most captains says no its okay lets play but i think admin team shouldnt decide all of this.

 

[atilla_the_hun]

How about stop crying about the maps which are excluded and just train the ones which are included..?

How about stop cheating on this NC as well?

 

[Tallie]

How about stop cheating on this NC as well?

Wait, I'm cheating already? Man, you know more than me

 

[Sir Galahad the Pure]

How about you guys calm down?   

Feel free to use this thread to discuss maps

Look at the OP; no one is crying here, people are discussing. And in case some people are considered to be 'crying' it's the job of the admins to tell them to cut it, not anyone else's.

 

[Lord Rich]

@Rayden, I haven't removed any maps, I'm not involved in the map selection process. I'm pretty neutral on FBTR, I don't mind the map, I'm just a bit bored of playing on it for so many years as I think a few other people are. FoH still has changes to the meta going on, such as Freelancers approach to the central flag in the last tournament, was tricky to deal with. FBTR hasn't had any real changes to its meta in years, there have been changes to the general 8v8 meta on open maps which have had some effect, but the way you play the map has not shifted really at all, same old defensive positions every time. Even moving the flag has only changed it marginally.

Mountain Fortress>>>Fort of honour for me. Foh is nice but it depends only flags 1 spawn gets graveyard other spawn gets other flag then you wait for flag but In MF you can get every flag and you may need to fight for it before flag spawned. I dont understand why did admin team removed it.

I agree with this, I don't know why it was removed, it had some of the hardest positional play to get right. The only reason I can think of is that it was too hard to place into any particular category (closed/open etc...).

 

[Menethil]

I think we should play MF instead of FoH because we didnt played in last tournament. I think  there should be captain votes for every map not just new ones

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Didn't we also see the 'best match' on MF with Germany and Poland tying out different tactics and setups each round?

 

[Dr4g0nkn1ght]

I dont really understand this voting system tbh. We are supposed to "choose" 4 maps out of 5 which means we might aswell just have 1 vote for the map we absolutely dont want.
The 4 votes would make sense if there was a bigger pool of possible maps.  Another thing I want to mention: Where is Silk Road? I recall a discussion about ways to fix the "imbalance" that caused
it to be banned from WNL.



Captain name:Dragz
Team:Germany

Maps voted for
1.Khergit Settlement
2.Frosthaven
3.Reveran Village
4.Castellum