Despite how disgusting it sounds, narrows was one nearly of my favorite maps. The fact that you could set up control on the top of the map actually speeds things up; one team gets a strong enough push that they take out the other team, get the three/four positions needed to set that up properly, and are rewarded if they are successful. It does take it too far however, and a better example would be guardian/lockout. The spawns are predictable, to a point, and lend themselves to creative and interesting flow that you don't find in any Reach maps at the same time because you can always be surprised. No sprint at spawn? Thats terrible, it needs to be fixed now lol. And i agree that flag cap should be three seconds because it makes it actually possible to cap one.
OK, my turn to sigh. I hate to say this, but I feel slightly like you didn't read all of my post (which I'd have some sympathy for ) or at least that you're not directly replying to all of it. Ladnil put it in more succinct terms than me tbh, but essentially it's not about 'free kills' any more than working to control rockets is about free kills. Controlling and being able to predict enemy spawns ('spawn trapping' is possibly a harmful term here, since it implies a definite amount of kills being achieved which the enemy can do nothing about and the team in question is guaranteed) is not only an essential part of competitive play, but an unavoidable one, again dependant on map design. Saying that you shouldn't be able to understand a spawn system enough to know what is likely to happen (and the key word is likely, since even on Narrows which is the strongest spawn trap map we saw in H3, you wouldn't see the top mid sniper looking at back cannon/flag spawns and always catch a spawner, far from it), is saying that it should be random. And it's not about not knowing where they spawn, the knowing comes from an indirect chain of logic that goes something like this: We just got 4 down on a team, or 3 down and know the exact position of the last enemy. Where are the places that the game could spawn them that would be logical and fair depending on his this map is laid out? Based on our team's setup and map control that we gained by getting those kills, how do we attempt to get sight on these spawns or at least try and head off the routes likely to be taken from them? Look there.... This is how teams 'know' where and enemy will spawn, and if this wasn't ever true then the spawn system would be random. Players and teams who have just been killed could end up being spawned in a place which works out as advantageous simply to give them a safe and unpredictable spawn. Logical and fair > unpredictable. This is true of any spawn system, MLG or not. If it doesn't work on defined rules and logic, then it's quite frankly a badly designed spawning system, and if it does then a highly competitive team will seek to understand the logic and think about getting the next kill once they have gotten the last. Coming back to your former point, it is impossible to create a spawn system which people will never know is there at the highest competitive level. Respawning is a part of the game, so players and teams will attempt to work within its boundaries and use this to any advantage they can. It's like expecting people not to time power weapons, just a step or two up in how complex it is. The answer to that would be random timers, which would sometimes result in a team who have just gotten dumped on for the past couple of minutes walking by Rocket spawn and getting a set (along with the advantage that entails) through nothing more than dumb luck. This effectively works towards levelling the playing field against the tide of skill gap shown in the particular instance, since any advantage gained should be worked for, not awarded by luck. Positioning given by spawn can be roughly equated to the advantage given by Rockets. Think about this, if a spawn system wasn't predictable at the basic level, that would mean that maps like The Pit shouldn't even have defined team side spawning, is that honestly what you're proposing? We've had this discussion before, and I stand by my position. If anything, the map design of Narrows is at fault for leaving no real other option, so riddle me this: a team has 2 players at their base, one in, say, Lobby (possibly just coming off respawn) and one at Sniper/Flag/Cannon, another one at top mid and another one pushing the enemy lobby near mohawk or something. This is a reasonably common team layout on Narrows, not to say that those players will just stand there, but this is the key moment in question. If the enemy team is 4, 3 or even 2 down, where should their team mates be respawned? Should it be in your own base? Behind some players and in front of others, actually between your own team, possibly even on top of some? I'd personally say no. There are a variety of logical and fair respawn positions, and so the first team in question look towards them. It's not about actively designing a spawn system to be predictable, it's about designing one that gives fair and logical spawns, and therefore high level competitive teams will work to assess all the variables they can in a given situation and decide what is likely to happen based on it being fair.* I've seen what happens when it isn't fair, even on the Pro Circuit, when a spawn system goes a little awry (ahem, Heretic) and gives a spawn which doesn't conform to the logical and fair set of rules that it should. The team that has worked for an advantage can be spawned behind, even on top of, when they are likely a little hurt or, more important, running Flag through P1 or something. They planned and executed a push perfectly, out skilling and out strategising their opponents in split second situations to secure a Flag run. This Flag run is then shut down and the Flag returned, levelling the playing field back again and reflecting it directly in a score which only goes up to 5, through nothing more than blind luck. This is not competitive in any way, shape or form, and is detrimental to the competitive principle of any advantage, kill, cap, return or lead being worked for, not handed to you by the spawn system. The same can be true in TS game, I just used the Flag example since it's more stark with only 5 caps to win, and in this case it would actually be the respawning team being given these 'free kills' by the spawning system. It's basically the same principle at play as when assessing Pinnacle and concluding 'this is utter shite', taken to the highest level. *Not bolded to try and be patronising, but for emphasis since I think this is the single most important sentence in this post.
Youre right peg i didn't respond to most of your post. Its nearly impossible to have any type of meaningful discussion progress if one is forced to respond to 29 different points all at once I'm not opposed to having logical spawns, but I am opposed to being at a severe disadvantage upon spawn, because that's terrible for both competitive and casual play. It just seems that mlg advocates want to always psh it to that next, harmful step. Which is what I hate. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree
Then the map shouldn't have been used if it promoted spawn killing. If the map has an inherent flaw with providing safe spawns then it shouldn't be used.
I don't think you're even disagreeing all that much. Peg isn't suggesting that it's good that the map spawns players where they can be shot right away and where they're at a disadvantage, he's saying that it's pretty much unavoidable if the spawn system makes even a little bit of sense. Good teams that understand the spawn system will always be using the time between kills to move towards the next set of kills, and that means moving to where the spawns are going to happen. Since teams at that high level communicate well enough to have nearly perfect information about locations of allies and enemies, they can predict the next spawn with incredible accuracy and move towards it. That will happen regardless of the map, and the only thing that made Onslaught or Narrows worse than anything else was the number of spawns visible from power positions. I think everyone here is in agreement that maps shouldn't contain any position where a significant chunk of spawns are visible like Onslaught and Narrows have. That's poor map design and will spawn players in dangerous locations repeatedly. Both of those maps have their major respawn hives in positions that are immediately threatened by top mid, and they absolutely should not have been that way. The problem wasn't entirely the predictability of spawns though, it was the fact that a lot of the spawns were vulnerable to the same power position.
Bolded: hence my sympathy . Maybe so, but I maintain that the way they set it up was still preferable to the way you suggested (by that I'm referring to your comments last time we had this discussion, ie. closer or identical to the default spawn principle). I guess part of the problem with 3 was arguably the same as we're now seeing with Reach, in that MLG didn't have enough default map designs that they were truly happy with to make up the necessary number of gametypes. Though tbh people often forget the alternatives, apparently simply because H3 gave MLG the chance to alter spawn systems themselves and so all the blame automatically went to them. It's like they forgot some of the ridiculous stuff that previous games saw, because at that time it wasn't something that could be controlled and so dealing with it was seen as just another skill. Now I've said on many occasions that I didn't play H2 extensively, let alone even know about MLG at that point, but as an example: I played a 1v1 with my housemate on Middy not that long ago. He kills me when he's at Car 2 and I'm at Red Bubble, H2 somehow sees fit to respawn me at Car 1, directly ****ing below him. But when I bring stuff like that up in the face of die hard H2 fanboys on the MLG forums, they simply say that 'highly punishing spawns made the game harder and thus more skilful'. Present them with an almost identical situation in H3 and they either resort to 'H3 sucks' or blame MLG spawn system design. Anyway, /rant, just wanted to clarify that even MLG Narrows isn't that bad in the great scheme of all things Halo. These things. I don't think we're disagreeing too much overall, Lights, and I far from want people to be given free kills. It's why I think 'spawn trapping' can be considered an inappropriate term since it gives an outside impression that MLG wants to promote perpetual advantages as a reward for one successful initial push. Narrows and Ons both played quite badly as well, inclined to agree, but in both cases I maintain that the design was at fault in that it necessitated an overly harsh spawn system, rather than the system itself being at fault.
I'd akin Onslaught to a small CoD map where it's a lot of to spawn trap the other team, but awful when it's happening to you. @Peg, I think MLG Narrows is more competitive than Default Narrows by far. It was either a miscommunication on my part or you misunderstood me. The strategy for any map is to control the middle and it's no exception for Narrows, well it actually is on the default version because the spawn system is so unpredictable they other team could be coming from any direction. I think Guardian was a more competitive map than Narrows simply for the fact that it provided safe spawns to where a team could take a moment to regroup and actually make a solid team push. Same with Construct, Pit, and Heretic (to a degree). It would have been nice to see an MLG Isolation. I've been thinking over the past few days about what could truly be the pinnacle of competitive gaming. I don't think it's Halo, but it is a far step ahead of CoD. I can't wait to see CoD fail again at MLG. The only way for it to work is to pick objective game types or have it just be SnD.
Probably the latter, I apologise for furthering my assumptions in this thread too, then. MLG Iso existed in v2, though that was before my time so I never got to see how it played out. I still hear a lot of trash on the forums about it, though tbh I don't trust the opinions of many of these posters based on disagreeing with them over stuff I'm more confidently opinionated on. Also Insane was determined to get Iso working for MLG up until late in H3's lifetime iirc. Tough one, especially since the plus points of game mechanic are all too often offset by bad map design or the other way around. ATM, I think it's SC2 by a massive way, though I assume you meant FPS.
I think Anchor is pretty good, They should obviously block/zone space but the general layout looks like a Pit style game. I don't think Noble is completely useless to MLG, dunno yet though.
I really want to get some 4v4 on it, 6v6 isn't quite the same and so getting a good impression of how it might play 4v4 is harder. For anyone who hasn't checked, Shield door, Small 1 and Shield Door, Large 1 are effectively windows for blocking off the space area. It's basically guaranteed to be in MLG simply because they need the maps and it fits the bill, but I genuinely have high hopes for it. Whack a couple of Snipers on it, move the Rocks inside, undo the horrendous monstrosity that is Reach-era Bungie spawning, and we have ourselves a pretty nice map if I'm any judge.
I had people abuse the space area within a couple of hours of jumping in to the playlist. Sure it's nothing close to Zealot, but shield doors = exploitable. You can hover outside them, ducking in and putting shots on vulnerable enemies when you like, then ducking back out to relative safety. Sure the other team can come round behind you, but that's an awfully focused route simply to take out someone who's effectively managing to camp in the most open areas of the map (the two canyons in the main hanger), and the low grav makes a skilful flank on a player there a bit harder since jumping is basically out of the question once you've engaged them. It could possibly work without the shield doors, but I still suspect that the drastic change in basic movement dynamic just won't be what MLG are looking for. Though I still hope that KC tries it out when testing, it'd seem a shame not to.