Consctructive (mostly) Thread about map balance.

[Lemonater47]

Ranting while fun may not solve issues so lets be constructive.


The issues


Song Be:
3 RPGs, 2 Hueys and very Few helicopter landing spots. Unless you want to land miles away. Not to mention this map is extremely dependant on helicopters to win.
Tickets are 400 each. Which is too damn low. If the map lasts more than 20 minutes the tickets are almost out. And its 40 minutes long. 40 minutes is fine for an SU map. But it needs more tickets.
The NVA can place tunnels in a lot of places. So extremely dependant on the Cobra and loach to deal with them. Or at least spot them so they can be hunted down.

Song be needs it's tickets increased to 600 each at least. With 2 RPGs instead of 3. They don't bother hunting the attack choppers. They will however shoot at them if they come close enough. Which only happens if they start tunnel hunting.


Cu Chi:
Main issues. Timer is too long and the Americans don't have enough tickets. If the Americans don't bumrush the cap points they will run out of tickets. This map NEVER ends with the full 40 minute timer running out. It either ends with the American's taking G or the Americans running out of tickets. Or lockdown and we'll get to that in a minute.

Americans need about 50-70 more tickets and the time reduced to about 35 minutes.


Hue City:
A map more Biased in the Americans favour this time around. Because they have all the time in the world to cap the points. The American arsenal also seems to excel in an Urban environment. As they barely ever lose more tickets than the VC. Lockdown can save the day for the VC. A little bit too easily if I may say.

Really a time reduction to between 30-35 minutes is all that's really needed.


Hill 937:
This mess of a map. With the balance change of the century right here and the only balance change from the late beta's to live release. Giving the NVA 500 tickets as a knee jerk reaction to 330 being too low. 500 for the defenders and 450 for the attackers. Because **** it right? That's probably the thought process used to come to the conclusion the defenders needed more than the attackers.
Then there's the time. 40 minutes. When the map often ends in 20 minutes. Or less. Never ever more than 25 minutes due to the fact the Americans run out of reinforcements before then. Or lockdown.
The last cap zone is also impossible to defend. That needs a large rework in its design to allow the defenders to properly reinforce the position.

Reduce the map time to between 20-25 minutes. Reduce NVA tickets to 450 and raise American tickets to 550. And have another think of how you can make E actually defendable.


An Lao:
The only map in the game which doesn't have any bloody problems. It actually works. It's balanced. It's challenging, engaging and epic. People do seem to get Glued to C a bit much but that's my only criticism and with time that will probably change with the player base changing. 687 tickets a side. Or some weird number. Which is enough for the full 40 minutes for this map. And I have seen them run out before too. But within the last 5 minutes. Within the last 5 minutes is the only time tickets should run out. Not before.





Lockdown:
Told you I was getting to this. Main issue with this is...

It kicks in far too early.

Like is it using the RO2 timers for lockdown to take effect? Because if it is it shouldn't be. RS2 is a slower paced game in terms of flow. Lockdown needs to take LONGER before it becomes active. The 3 minute warning is fine but it taking like 5 minutes of nobody taking a cap zone is too damn short in this game. To the point where more and more servers are removing lockdown entirely. Which makes things even worse. Lockdown timers need to make more sense in this game.




So there you go. Me being constructive. Very rarely sarcastic through that whole thing.

 

[hekuball]

The problem with suggesting amendments to ticket amounts and timings is that the time to victory and the bleed rate is so dependant on the type of players, the presence or absence of communication, player count, roles used/unused etc etc. You'd need hard data on it and I'd be inclined to go with Tripwire on it because they'd have that data to hand.

 

[6MILLIONPIES]

Hill 937 is the worst. Such a massive hill with cap points that are stupidly placed, enemy can run up the hill most times unseen. The only way to win is to have a superior team, the underdogs can never be heroic and fight tooth and nail, to many places to be flanked. Good SL eat up this hill in minutes. Another issue which is such a idiotic idea is the tunnel respawn system, once the GI locates your tunnel the GI camps your spawn, all reinforcements running down hill are mince meat to m16 accuracy. I am a seasoned vet and get clipped by bullets running down hill all the time, because a noob running and a legend is the same target easy!! There are no mg nests??? sure huge dshk for the choppers but where are the lanes of mg fire? You telling me the most heavily fortified hill had no fixed mg nests?? Sheet the apartments in ro2 had 3 or 4 mg nests and it was the size of Caps A/B on hill 937, such a massive hill with no mg lanes of fire is like a condom with holes in it, defends nothing. Your great idea is to add 6 million tickets to the defenders LOL LOL LOL we are going to have 6 million defenders vs couple hundred GI to fix this one?? come on, keep the defenders less but god dam it make the map great again, mg nests, safe tunnel systems like TULA out skirts where you can choose to run over the triain track and get shot or enter safe tunnel systems in the trench. This map was made by half a meatball.

 

[Lemonater47]

The problem with suggesting amendments to ticket amounts and timings is that the time to victory and the bleed rate is so dependant on the type of players, the presence or absence of communication, player count, roles used/unused etc etc. You'd need hard data on it and I'd be inclined to go with Tripwire on it because they'd have that data to hand.

Or the other possibility is the level designers didnt have a clue.

We have all the hard data already. From all the beta tests that they didn't act on.


Every single map in the game excluding the skirmish ones have a map time of 40 minutes. Every single one. Sorta implies they didn't really think about time.

And their hill 937 adjustment was beyond hilarious. From wave 8 to now. NVA had 330 tickets. Which wasn't enough. So they decided to give them 500 tickets for release. Solving one problem while creating another. So a net total of zero problems solved.

You get that "hard data" by playing the game on 64 player servers. Something many of the testers have done more than the developers for obvious reasons. They're busy. We ain't. Play the game enough and you begin to see patterns forming.

 

[Floyd]

https://www.sofmag.com/vietnam-war-b...hill-hill-937/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8PWmjT0Xo

 

[MeFirst]

Song Be:
I agree that the combination of 3 RPG's, the AA ability, the MG placements and the very small amount good landing zones is a bit too much in favor of the NVA team at the moment.


Cu Chi:
I agree that the tickets. I think they should keep the time as it is and boost the american tickets slightly.


Hue City:
I don't agree here. I think that C is still problematic, especially with the lockdown (if enabled) that starts pretty fast after ypu captured both A & B.


Hill 937:
I agree that the tickets need to be bumped in general and they need a slight buff for the attackers. Apart from that the last point is too hard to defend for the NVA. You can hardly setup a good defense and your reinforcement route can ganked quite easily by helos or artillery etc.

An Lao:
It's fine

 

[nymets1104]

Lock down times
Hill 937: 8 mins all caps but last one
CuChi: 4 mins all caps but last one
Hue: Lock down is enabled but not explicitly set in the map itself, so this would be whatever the default time is for the game (Im guessing 5 mins but cant confirm)

 

[Lemonater47]

Lock down times
Hill 937: 8 mins all caps but last one
CuChi: 4 mins all caps but last one
Hue: Lock down is enabled but not explicitly set in the map itself, so this would be whatever the default time is for the game (Im guessing 5 mins but cant confirm)

4 minutes on cu chu? On a 40 minute map. With 7 cap zones.

AMG LDs have to learn how to do maths lol.

 

[Lemonater47]

Hue City:
I don't agree here. I think that C is still problematic, especially with the lockdown (if enabled) that starts pretty fast after ypu captured both A & B.

It's the lockdown which kills the C objective. Needs to be a longer time before it kicks in.

 

[MeFirst]

C on hue hue hue hue city is pretty problematic. I was playing on one of the 40-1 servers yesterday and that had lockdown disabled. It doesn't get better without it. I think C on this map is impossible to loose as a defender. You can only loose it if your team is going completely stupid. Even if they are "worse" than the US team, they still have a very easy job holding this.

All the odds are against the us team and in favor of the nva. From the way the map is structured and the abilities both teams have.

 

[Lemonater47]

C on hue hue hue hue city is pretty problematic. I was playing on one of the 40-1 servers yesterday and that had lockdown disabled. It doesn't get better without it. I think C on this map is impossible to loose as a defender. You can only loose it if your team is going completely stupid. Even if they are "worse" than the US team, they still have a very easy job holding this.

All the odds are against the us team and in favor of the nva. From the way the map is structured and the abilities both teams have.

I dunno. 40-1 has sorta zero communication. The clan members who play on it stick to teamspeak and their server rules kinda discourage people from using the mic.

Majority of games I play on hue we get past it. Just gotta have balls and have a TL who knows what he's doing. Dropping artillery designed to get did of tunnel networks and area Denial.

 

[Gladius]

Song Be:
3 RPGs, 2 Hueys and very Few helicopter landing spots. Unless you want to land miles away. Not to mention this map is extremely dependant on helicopters to win.

[...]

Song be needs it's tickets increased to 600 each at least. With 2 RPGs instead of 3. They don't bother hunting the attack choppers. They will however shoot at them if they come close enough. Which only happens if they start tunnel hunting.

Song Be has actually a lot more areas suitable for helicopter landings, than An Lao. 3 RPG's is perfectly fine.

 

[Lemonater47]

Song Be has actually a lot more areas suitable for helicopter landings, than An Lao. 3 RPG's is perfectly fine.

No it doesn't. Not unless you want to land over 500m away from the nearest cap zone. Then yeah song be has more map that you can land on.

But landing within 200m of a cap zone. An Lao takes that by a long shot. Much safer landing zones too.

 

[Gladius]

No it doesn't. Not unless you want to land over 500m away from the nearest cap zone. Then yeah song be has more map that you can land on.

But landing within 200m of a cap zone. An Lao takes that by a long shot. Much safer landing zones too.

I disagree. On An Lao one single RPG operator can cover the whole defensive side (Bravo + Delta). On Song Be there are landing zones along the whole north side or south side of the map. So you need 2 minimum and then the area these two have to cover is so wide that chances are good that they dont make it to the helo, when the pilot knows how to land fast. Even when they wait in the center of the north/south AO. 3 RPG's are absolutely reasonable on Song Be. Actually it's just 150 meters to walk from the landing strips to the objectives. And those helicopter insertions aren't about dropping the soldiers directly at the front.

 

[Lemonater47]

I disagree. On An Lao one single RPG operator can cover the whole defensive side (Bravo + Delta). On Song Be there are landing zones along the whole north side or south side of the map. So you need 2 minimum and then the area these two have to cover is so wide that chances are good that they dont make it to the helo, when the pilot knows how to land fast. Even when they wait in the center of the north/south AO. 3 RPG's are absolutely reasonable on Song Be.

By that logic one RPG can cover the D and B landing zones on song be too. Because they are rather close to each other and they only gotta sit in that treelike between the two.

Landing in the river is risky. You can land at E fine. But that's E why would you want to land there. Landing at C. Every man and his dog can see you and will take a shot at you with something. Which also includes a DshK. They all slawn back there. And for some reason there's also always a tunnel in the river betwen A and C.

Landing further south of the river and you're miles away. Plus all your men suddenly have to cross the big open river.


D on An Lao has two sides to it. Which can get you close to B as well and C for that matter. Landing on the left side of D. Rager than the right side. If you know there's an RPG there.

There's also several landing zones at C.

Used to be one at A but that was too OP lol.

 

[Gladius]

I marked the most relevant landing sites for illustration. On An Lao one single RPG operator can cover the relevant spots alone. On Song Be the area is much larger and when the Americans get a hold of the south side of the river, they can directly go for Alpha and totally cut off the Vietnamese from getting any points. So you need one RPG in the south. And the north is too much for one RPG alone. So 3 is really alright.

 

[MeFirst]

I dunno. 40-1 has sorta zero communication. The clan members who play on it stick to teamspeak and their server rules kinda discourage people from using the mic.

Majority of games I play on hue we get past it. Just gotta have balls and have a TL who knows what he's doing. Dropping artillery designed to get did of tunnel networks and area Denial.

Well I can not confirm that. I guess that some people don't like the server because they are not too fond of "harsh language" and other things. You can obviously dislike it, but it is their server and nobody is forced to play on it. In my experience, the level of gameplay there is not bad in general and above the "normal" random server.

 

[Lemonater47]

I marked the most relevant landing sites for illustration. On An Lao one single RPG operator can cover the relevant spots alone. On Song Be the area is much larger and when the Americans get a hold of the south side of the river, they can directly go for Alpha and totally cut off the Vietnamese from getting any points. So you need one RPG in the south. And the north is too much for one RPG alone. So 3 is really alright.

I see the zones more like this.

Red = Dangerous zone.
Yellow = Standard zone.
Green = Safe but not very useful zone.

http://imgur.com/a/TekET

 

[Gladius]

I see the zones more like this.

You marked pretty much everything where a helicopter can land (and some more - Song Be B4 is out of combat area). But I'm talking about the relevant landing zones. Landing just 100 meters in front of the main spawn is pointless. Troops can walk over there without taking the risk of being shot down in a helicopter. Specifically landing on the helipad of An Lao Charlie is a really bad idea. The helipad is within hand grenade throwing distance of the vietnamese that approach from the other side of the hill. Every vietnamese in or around Charlie will shoot with small arms at a helicopter at the final approach, what makes it like a flying pinata. So in this area a RPG is not needed for air defense and that's what I mean with "relevant LZ's". Helicopters are not just for comfortable transportation. Purposeful employed they are for deploying troops at flanks, without making teamleaders to walk a long distance through dangerous areas. And that narrows it down where RPG's are practical.

 

[Lemonater47]

You marked pretty much everything where a helicopter can land (and some more - Song Be B4 is out of combat area). But I'm talking about the relevant landing zones. Landing just 100 meters in front of the main spawn is pointless. Troops can walk over there without taking the risk of being shot down in a helicopter. Specifically landing on the helipad of An Lao Charlie is a really bad idea. The helipad is within hand grenade throwing distance of the vietnamese that approach from the other side of the hill. Every vietnamese in or around Charlie will shoot with small arms at a helicopter at the final approach, what makes it like a flying pinata. So in this area a RPG is not needed for air defense and that's what I mean with "relevant LZ's". Helicopters are not just for comfortable transportation. Purposeful employed they are for deploying troops at flanks, without making teamleaders to walk a long distance through dangerous areas. And that narrows it down where RPG's are practical.

Thats why I colour coded them. Also literally The only reason I marked a zone in B4 on song be was because you marked it as a landing zone.

The green area's are pointless areas to land in. The red areas are places you can land but under most circumstances shouldn't even try.

Most of your song be landing zones that you marked are miles away.