Let's talk Arena Maps

[madtycoon]

The arena maps in this game are bad. Deathmatch maps should be all about combat. They should promote player movement, use of line of sight, team positioning and most importantly should never feel clustered. They should be simple. A few pillars, maybe a couple of ramps and plenty of space. No cosmetics. Symmetrical.

 

So first let's talk pillars. The whole point of a pillar is to provide line of sight. Combat changes when you have access to line of sight. You can avoid incoming CC, interrupts, swaps, damage, penalize people who line their team, etc.

 

 

• An example of a good pillar. First room voidstar. Offensive-right side crate. It's not overly wide. It has clean corners. Plenty of space around the entire thing.
  

 

Arenas have no well designed pillars. They are either too small or too large; Don't have clean corners; Have some sort of object next to them; Or don't have enough space around them.

 

A pillar should be big enough to maximize kiting. Kiters need to be able to put people in dead zones with snares and CC when kiting around them. Most don't allow for this. The ones that do are too wide or poorly placed. You can't kite around wide pillars without CCing yourself in the process.

 

Most are also lacking clean edges. Corners should vertically protect players when going around them. The downed rubble in Corellia Square is horrible. This isn't a shooter where you crotch and avoid damage on slanted objects.

 

There also shouldn't be objects around the pillars. I understand that we need cover points but placing them directly in the kiting path makes kiting less effective. Sandbags, small boxes, benches, dips in elevation all hurts the kiter. Even if you cut the corners properly, you are still exposed with these obstacles in the way. Terrible LoS objects leads to less effective kiting. Player movement becomes stagnant. Combat suffers.

 

Now let's talk spacing. All classes need space to breath. You need a lot of room for eight players to effectively spread out. Only Corellia Square offers enough space for this. But even that map can quickly turn into a cluster**** when one team gets pushed back into a corner.

 

The combat needs space to flow. You do need pillars, but you don't want more than a handful and those should be spread out. The more obstacles you throw into confined places, the less pillars become effective. It just leads to bottlenecks and clumped up combat.

 

The developers are aware of wow arena. They copied blade's edge, but made it 100 times worse. Why was nagrand arena never copied? Most anyone who plays wow arena agrees that nagrand is still the best map. Four cubic pillars around a square and an open middle area.

 

What does a map like this do for team combat? Well healers can position themselves back at max range. Dps can move into the middle of the map. To reach those playing back you have to go through the enemy team. And those playing back are never trapped, because they can always rotate pillars. So you have a lot of movement going on most of the time.

 

The swtor maps are just brutal to play on. Tattoine. Who thought adding huts was a good idea? You're practically fighting first person in there. If you kite around them, you just CC yourself. They have curved corners, making humping useless. No space between the wall either. The catwalks on orbital station. Cluster****. I mean there are so many bottlenecks on these maps. It wouldn't be as bad if this was 2v2. You wouldn't need as much space. But 4v4. It's painful.

[SirMannii]

This seems lika a good post. I will perhaps fill in more later.

[TezMoney]

Yeah... you're ideal arena map sounds boring and bland.

 

The things you complain about w/ the LOS in arena's are what separates the venerable from the noobs, when it comes to kiting. Know where exactly to stand for the perfect LOS angel, where those dips and small objects can be avoided is all apart of learning the map. Not only that, but making things easier for kiters, makes it easier for melee to follow them. It's fun to experiment with all the oddly shaped debris and figure out ways to trip up the melee that pursue you.

 

Stuff like the huts and bottlenecks on the rafters are there for risk/reward purposes. AOE and melee love catching a ranged in huts, providing them an advantage. The catwalk is where snipers and other burst range dps w/ knockbacks shine, but the corners again give an advantage to melee and AOE. Again this allows for a very dynamic fight depending on the classes involved. If you don't want to play in the crapped spots you have to force or bait the other team out in the open.

 

If everything was as clean and uniform as you suggest, it would make things too neat and there would be little diversity how the teams approach each other. That's just not as entertaining in my opinion.

Edited November 20, 2014 by TezMoney

[Stryeth]

The arena maps in this game are bad. Deathmatch maps should be all about combat. They should promote player movement, use of line of sight, team positioning and most importantly should never feel clustered. They should be simple. A few pillars, maybe a couple of ramps and plenty of space. No cosmetics. Symmetrical.

 

So first let's talk pillars. The whole point of a pillar is to provide line of sight. Combat changes when you have access to line of sight. You can avoid incoming CC, interrupts, swaps, damage, penalize people who line their team, etc.

 

 

• An example of a good pillar. First room voidstar. Offensive-right side crate. It's not overly wide. It has clean corners. Plenty of space around the entire thing.
  

 

Arenas have no well designed pillars. They are either too small or too large; Don't have clean corners; Have some sort of object next to them; Or don't have enough space around them.

 

A pillar should be big enough to maximize kiting. Kiters need to be able to put people in dead zones with snares and CC when kiting around them. Most don't allow for this. The ones that do are too wide or poorly placed. You can't kite around wide pillars without CCing yourself in the process.

 

Most are also lacking clean edges. Corners should vertically protect players when going around them. The downed rubble in Corellia Square is horrible. This isn't a shooter where you crotch and avoid damage on slanted objects.

 

There also shouldn't be objects around the pillars. I understand that we need cover points but placing them directly in the kiting path makes kiting less effective. Sandbags, small boxes, benches, dips in elevation all hurts the kiter. Even if you cut the corners properly, you are still exposed with these obstacles in the way. Terrible LoS objects leads to less effective kiting. Player movement becomes stagnant. Combat suffers.

 

Now let's talk spacing. All classes need space to breath. You need a lot of room for eight players to effectively spread out. Only Corellia Square offers enough space for this. But even that map can quickly turn into a cluster**** when one team gets pushed back into a corner.

 

The combat needs space to flow. You do need pillars, but you don't want more than a handful and those should be spread out. The more obstacles you throw into confined places, the less pillars become effective. It just leads to bottlenecks and clumped up combat.

 

The developers are aware of wow arena. They copied blade's edge, but made it 100 times worse. Why was nagrand arena never copied? Most anyone who plays wow arena agrees that nagrand is still the best map. Four cubic pillars around a square and an open middle area.

 

What does a map like this do for team combat? Well healers can position themselves back at max range. Dps can move into the middle of the map. To reach those playing back you have to go through the enemy team. And those playing back are never trapped, because they can always rotate pillars. So you have a lot of movement going on most of the time.

 

The swtor maps are just brutal to play on. Tattoine. Who thought adding huts was a good idea? You're practically fighting first person in there. If you kite around them, you just CC yourself. They have curved corners, making humping useless. No space between the wall either. The catwalks on orbital station. Cluster****. I mean there are so many bottlenecks on these maps. It wouldn't be as bad if this was 2v2. You wouldn't need as much space. But 4v4. It's painful.

 

I second this. Orbital station & Makeb are just horrible! They are so freakin tiny. On makeb you cant even fight normally without having the camera zoom in on your feet. Corellia is the only map I enjoy, even though Tatooine is decent.

[Coloneli]

I like the smallboxes, some of them can be used to LOS(some not all) prevent push or pull. And in a environment like this you would make it very harder on merc heals. Too open it sounds like to me.

[madtycoon]

Yeah... you're ideal arena map sounds boring and bland.

 

The things you complain about w/ the LOS in arena's are what separates the venerable from the noobs, when it comes to kiting. Know where exactly to stand for the perfect LOS angel, where those dips and small objects can be avoided is all apart of learning the map. Not only that, but making things easier for kiters, makes it easier for melee to follow them. It's fun to experiment with all the oddly shaped debris and figure out ways to trip up the melee that pursue you.

 

I think you're looking at things from a single person kiting perception. I agree that it does take more skill to learn the kiting paths when you have a lot of different obstacles. I'm with you if this was a 1v1 or 2v2. Scenarios in solo ranked when the fight is over in a couple seconds and someone who knows they are going to be focused without any peels can kite 2 or 3 people around the map, giving their team the edge in the dps race. But when teams have sustainability, the fights don't move around the map.

 

Tattoine as an example. So most the time the fight on Tattoine ends up on or around one of the ramps, yes? Ideally where do the two healers of both teams want to position when the fight starts there? The team pushed up, the healer wants to be on one of those small pillars in the center. The defensive team wants their healer either on the pipes or ranged near one of the huts.

 

The pipes don't offer much range at all, but gives line of sight. Doesn't really encourage any type of team movement, spaced kiting or helps spread the fight out. The hut gives range, but if a team swaps to the healer, the healer has no real space to fall back to without getting his team bottlenecked if they want to peel for him. If they decide not to try and peel for him, to effectively kite that healer has to run around the entire hut to return to healing the fight. Basically CCing himself.

 

Bottlenecks and cluster****s don't give classes enough space to utilize their utility, mainly for peeling. A snare means more when your team has more range and space to work with. Kiting also becomes more effective, because if things are spread out and you get kited, you can't just turn back on another target without losing some time. You end up in dead zones not attacking for a couple of seconds until you can connect on a target.

 

All classes want space, even melee. When you have space the skill for melee starts to expand, because now you have to adjust rotations based on range, manage your gap closers better and peeling becomes more important. Marauders can't peel someone when everything is piled on top of each other, because their roots become less effective. Guardians want space because when their team is spread out they can maximize guardian leap for avoiding incoming damage. Sins want space because things like low slash on off targets are less likely be broken from random AoE. Everyone wants to be able to kite damage.

 

And one more point. There's no running with your healer on these maps, with exception to parts of Corellia Square. If you're a sniper, you want to give your healer max range to heal you. You as the sniper also want max range from whatever you are attacking. So you need roughly 60 yards, whether it be perpendicular or straight. Arena maps rarely allow for this. Teams (especially ranged dps) can't really move with their healer without getting trapped and congested.

 

Compare to a map like civil war. This happens all the time. One side loses mid and has to fall back to say snow. Well they have space to kite back and fall back together and peel for each other. You can't do this on maps like orbital station. Move as a team and maintain any sort of good positioning. So you end up with no map movement and fights stuck in one spot when teams have sustainability.

 

sorry long post

[madtycoon]

I like the smallboxes, some of them can be used to LOS(some not all) prevent push or pull. And in a environment like this you would make it very harder on merc heals. Too open it sounds like to me.

 

I disagree. The more space a merc healer has, the more hydraulic overrides benefits them. Its the difference between being forced into healing from 10 yards, because the fight is crammed up or healing from max range. When a merc is only 10 yards away, well no one even needs to use a gap closer to connect. They are in the range of most off interrupts. They are easier to CC. When they have access to max range, to awe them for example, the knight has to spend a lot of time reaching them. They need to use a gap closer to switch.

 

In my opinion. Too many small obstructions just hurts casted healers more, because it forces them to play close. Merc and sorc healers only want to break range to use knockback, stun or grenade. All other abilities they can use from distance. They benefit the most when their team fights in open areas where they can play from max range as long as they still have a pillar to work off of.

Edited November 21, 2014 by madtycoon

[Coloneli]

I disagree. The more space a merc healer has, the more hydraulic overrides benefits them. Its the difference between being forced into healing from 10 yards, because the fight is crammed up or healing from max range. When a merc is only 10 yards away, well no one even needs to use a gap closer to connect. They are in the range of most off interrupts. They are easier to CC. When they have access to max range, to awe them for example, the knight has to spend a lot of time reaching them. They need to use a gap closer to switch.

 

In my opinion. Too many small obstructions just hurts casted healers more, because it forces them to play close. Merc and sorc healers only want to break range to use knockback, stun or grenade. All other abilities they can use from distance. They benefit the most when their team fights in open areas where they can play from max range as long as they still have a pillar to work off of.

If the enemy team have a sniper or gunslinger it would only make it easier for them to use whirlwind and flash on them. Basically forcing us to use breaker early and be easy to stun lock to death. If we are somewhere close to the fight an unlucky AOE ability will break it for us. Sorcs have it a little bit easier with barrier usable as breaker but again super easy to stun lock to death IMO

 

Operatives would benefit the most out of this due to insta abilities. With merc and sorc it's just so much easier to shut down. At least for merc, can't really speak for sorc 100%

[Pearlie]

It wouldn't be as bad if this was 2v2. You wouldn't need as much space.

 

Yes please.

[TezMoney]

If the enemy team have a sniper or gunslinger it would only make it easier for them to use whirlwind and flash on them. Basically forcing us to use breaker early and be easy to stun lock to death. If we are somewhere close to the fight an unlucky AOE ability will break it for us. Sorcs have it a little bit easier with barrier usable as breaker but again super easy to stun lock to death IMO

 

Operatives would benefit the most out of this due to insta abilities. With merc and sorc it's just so much easier to shut down. At least for merc, can't really speak for sorc 100%

 

This guys has the right idea. Healers don't necessarily want to be at max range. I'd like to be somewhere between 10-20m if i'm not being focused, cuz it allows me to run in for a grenade or jet boost if someone needs a peel. Too much space is also bad because it's to be caught to far from a LOS spot, and again that debris slows down the none leaping melee.

 

That 60 yards or I guess you meant meters thing would never work in an actual battle. In reality the sniper would be just over 30m from the main fight, and the healer would be somewhere in between.

 

Your assertion of tatoonine fights mostly ending on the ramp is also not been my experience. I'd say they end on the flats at the bottom of the pit just a much. However in between the beginning and the end the fight is often moved several places round the map. The reason this happens is dependent on who's being focused and how effectively the pursuer are peeled or kited. In fact tat is a good example why too much space is bad, because it's the only arena where you get two teams staring at each other from across the pit waiting for the other to make the first move. The other maps allow for you to approach without the need of stealth, the bottlenecks and obstructions encourage the teams to engage instead of moving around each other, waiting for one person to slip up and get pulled or something. That's what I feel is most lacking in you design. Fights will ALWAYS start with the teams staring each other down for a minute, unless one has stealth, when a team finally approaches the other the fight will ALWAYS end around one these clean LOS locations. Ho-HUM

 

You say bottlenecks are bad for kiters, but that's not always true, those bottlenecks actually allow for effective peeling. Other times, healer gets caught up and killed earlier than would be expected. That's the risk/reward I was talking about.

 

Finally your civil war example is both confusing and irrelevant. Strategies employed in 8v8 rarely translate to a 4v4. Secondly, I've never seen people lose mid and fall back to snow. The fight generally happens around the nodes, not in the large fields around them.

Edited November 21, 2014 by TezMoney

[madtycoon]

I'm bored in class. This is a very long post with pictures. LOL

 

Yeah I meant meters, my bad.

 

I completely agree that healers don't always want to be at max range. Standing on top of the fight when you think you're going to get mezzed. You're right. Can be beneficial. Coming in to use short range CC, yeah. Helping burst on an operative. Also can't do from distance. But you can't argue that a healer doesn't want to have access to max range.

 

If I'm a sin and you're a commando healer and I'm killing your teammate. You standing 10m away from the fight makes my job a lot easier. Because now I can interrupt you or stun you or knock your casts back or grenade you or low slash you, spike you. If you're max range, I have to blow a gap closer and sacrafice dps time to control you. You also can take unnecessary splash damage standing close sometimes. You are a lot easier to switch to. It is a lot easier to double awe, carbonize or grenade you and the tank if you are close together.

 

Scenario: You are sitting 15m from the fight. Your tank gets awed and they are swapping to you with no guard. When they connect you are going to be stunned. If you are 30m from the fight, you have more time to cleanse your tank before the swap plus you gain full benefit from an ability like hold the line to kite away. It gives your dps more time to peel for you before the swap hits. So I don't get why people are arguing that having access to range as a healer is a bad thing? Or maybe you're not necessarily saying its a bad thing?

 

Slanted corners and small debris all over the place. Yeah you can line of sight still on the rubble and avoid leaps. Slanted pillars like that protect you against grips, because you end up getting gripped into the obstacle. I didn't explain well why clean corners are better for the kiter than slanted objects. When you are running around the rubble and have someone attacking you, you have to kite around the slant. So you can still take damage running around the slant. Slanted corners don't protect you until your character is fully out of line of sight. Compare to a box with a straight vertical corner. Once you cut the corner, you don't take damage, because you are immediately out of LOS.

 

When you are positioned on a pillar and trying to heal your teammates, you want clean corners for weaving in and out of LOS on instant casts. A good pillar makes it a lot harder to CC someone who is good at pillar humping. DPS also want to position themselves in areas so the pillar protects the healer from swaps, CC and interrupts while still being able to be healed. If a dps has to kite back or push up, the healer wants a pillar that offers protection for both these scenarios. That's why polygons or cubes make the best pillars, because the healer can shift as the dps kites or pushes up.

 

Try hard paint skillz

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#6

 

I didn't do a good job explaining my civil war example. So ignore objectives for a moment and just imagine a scenario where a sorc healer, a sniper and a jug are kiting away from mid into the open area of grass. Just focusing on combat. Say a zerg is following them. Something like this:

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#5

 

The sorc has range to heal both the sniper and the fight. This is what I meant when I said 60m. There is 30m between the sorc and sniper and 30m between the sniper and enemy front line. Because of this positioning the sniper has space to control the fight with legshot, grenade and interrupt. The jug can protect his teammates with snares and roots. The sorc can heal freely and has plenty of space to kite and be peeled for if they try and connect to them. The sniper has space to kite around the healer. The healer can kite around the sniper. They can help each other. The jug can intercede to either teammate to avoid damage. See all the movement I'm talking about? You don't get this type of movement in arena. There's not enough space.

 

Compare this to my example before on Tattoine.

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#1

 

Similar scenario, but look at what happens. Dps gets trapped. Things get cramped up. Healer can't really kite without actually leaving the fight. Its just not designed well. The map forces the healers on both sides to stand in the clumped up area. So yes sometimes that's good. But a lot of times you don't want to be standing there. Players should have the option regardless.

 

Space gives healers the ability to max range, kite and also heal the fight. Especially when teams split dps. If you're a healer on the backline of novare south and a couple dps gets on you. Well you can kite them and still heal the main fight.

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#2

 

Yes there's no pillars to work with here. Please understand I do not want to remove pillars. But the problem you have in arena is that you have to either choose. Stand there (or barely move), heal team, tank dps and blow through your defensives hoping you can just outheal the damage. Or kite, keep yourself alive, but take yourself out of the fight. I think everyone can agree. We don't want to encourage people just standing there? We want people to use the whole map?

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#0

 

Star is healer. Its a cluster**** lol. You cram eight players on these maps and there's no space. It just encourages faceroll. Take this bottleneck for example. Say the blue ranged dps needs to kite. Well the blue healer needs to run through the corridor first. The healer gets stuck in the mouth of the bottleneck before the dps gets all the way through. The ramp also kills LOS so the blue healer will probably have to stay in that confined area anyways. What happens when the melee and red team follows through? They're all clumped up. Blue melee tries to root or snare red dps in the corridor. Red dps just swaps to blue dps. Blue dps can't really kite now because of the bottleneck. Blue healer either incredibly close or goes down the ramp in which case now blue dps are stuck without healer LOS.

 

You're right though. Sometimes bottlenecks can be good for peeling. When things are grouped up aoe CC can be more effective. But please understand that slows and roots don't do much when there's no space. If someone gets rooted without a cleanse or out, and there's adequate space for everyone on the opposing team to avoid their attacks. They are put in a deadzone. When you don't have enough space to spread out, you don't gain the full benefit of roots or slows.

 

I still have some time lol.

Here's the pillar I mentioned in my first post on voidstar.

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#4

 

The healer can heal the fight. Dps can kite around the pillar and healer while still maintaining range. You can deadzone things behind it. Its wide enough to give the kiter full benefit of their escapes, but not too wide that kiting around it doesn't put you out of the fight. A bonus is you can jump ontop of this pillar. Good or bad thing? I don't know. An enemy healer can also follow the fight or push up and still have LOS.

 

What is the best pillar in arena? The middle box in corellia square maybe?

 

http://imgur.com/QzTt6oS,60haMrY,DdhLgBl,MqEPPYl,w3mHcHp,FZ7bgcu,Tjka9Qx#3

 

At least there's space in corellia square. But even on this map there's bottlenecks. Etc. This is also an incredibly small pillar. When kiting its more a kite point instead of what you have in that voidstar example.

 

As for space causing stalemates. You're right you see a lot of stalemates on Tattoine. I don't know if this is because of space though. Teams can move up via the slender pillars in the middle of the map. Or maybe I'm missing something?

 

I've seen a lot of stalemates happen on Orbital when a team doesn't want to fight catwalks and stays behind the screen. Seen stalemates when both sides don't want to cross the bridge on makeb. Corellia when one side b-lines for the top platform. Passive players cause stalemates. Mainly passive melee. If your team's melee goes running all up in there. It usually turns out better.

[funkiestj]

completely disagree.

 

At least you put a lot of thought into your post which is more than I can say for a lot of other posters.