BTB Forge Feedback Thread

General issues among the maps:

Scaling
Use of Hills
Issues with Particular maps:
Ice Canvas textures look flat and clayish or cell-shaded like in Borderlands.

Basin:

The map is too large. It's scaled in a way where sprint is a necessity to navigate, not an option. The changes in elevation are too steep, which lends to awkward engagements between players, as well as driving vehicles over. Solid map. Definitely not bad, but could use improving.

Guillotine :

Changes to the OS area of the map significantly nerf its utility. The lift behind the tall tower is inconsistent and sometimes causes players to clip the landing space, requiring them to manually land. The Mantis is ridiculously over powered. Awesome map all together, and very faithful to the original design. Might even player better for H5 than it did H2.

Deadlock:

My second favourite map. Beautiful bases, and for the most part the terrain blends well together. Unfortunately there are spaces, much like with Basin, where the natural terrain is used in a way where the elevation change is too steep, lending towards awkward engagements and driving. Additionally, the outskirts of the maps feel a little over scaled and baren compared to the rest of the map.

Recurved:

Easily the weakest map of the release. There is no consistency with spacing throughout the map, where some spaces will be inconceivably claustrophobic, while others will be open death planes. The bases are unintuitive with their top structures offering too much protection for the advantage they provide. The Snipe Tower is absurdly over powered, especially given the proximity of the Splinter Turrets located nearby, which can be utilized to deadly efficiency in locking the tower down. The small rock cliff approaches do help alleviate the area's choke pointed traits, but they're poorly scaled and difficult to move along. Possibly the most irritating trait of the map is how poorly the player pathing is for vehicles, as the Warthogs have little room to navigate in most areas of the map, and given their top heavy nature, are prone to flipping over. All in all, not a bad map, but certainly not the caliber of map expected for Match Making.

 

I'll be posting an extensive comparative write-up in regards to the original vision vs. dev release of Recurve soon, but I just wanted to post a few screenshots of the original vision/design mass out. While the original base structure has been somewhat preserved, the entirety of the central structure/central routes and flow was redesigned after I passed the map off.

 

Yeah, that's heaps better than it turned out. How the hell did they screw up something so simple?

When forge comes out you should go back and reforge it.

 

Overall the maps are a lot of fun to play on. They look great, and walking around them makes me excited to forge.

Getting to the problems and such though.

Ive been seeing a ton of negative feedback on the Halo Reddit (what else is new) about forge in general. The largest complaint is the spawns (343's doing), Basin (343's doing), and the simplistic textures of the forge objects/terrain. While it would be really cool to have optional sweet textures (which it seems like 343 may be thinking about), I do prefer the simplistic design. When things get way too complex, it becomes harder to focus on what you are killing. No doubt, the simple textures also help a ton with rendering and frame rate. As someone who had always struggled with the Reach/H4 forge that would kill framerate, I am fine with sacrificing textures (textures I didnt ever really like or care about) so that I can put more objects on my map and play it successfully.

Anyway.

General: I don't enjoy Slayer on any of these maps, except maybe Guillotine. Slayer on any of the other maps feels very aimless, like there is no unifying team-front. This may be because I am now used to Warzone Assault (aka H5-launch BTB-slayer), but it feels like I just don't know where to go when I spawn.

Basin: This map is both my favorite and least favorite to play on. A lot of people seemed to be expecting direct remakes, instead of this inspired-by piece. I really enjoy playing on it. CTF is super tense, and super hard to score. It plays very similar to Valhalla in this way, that if a team can get the flag past the halfway point (On Valhalla its the hill, on Basin it is past the building or through the camo-cave), the flag is pretty much safe except for vehicles.
On Strongholds and Slayer however, because the gametypes are a bit more rotational and force spawn flipping, the power weapons can be abused a bit. With Halo 5, it seems power weapons spawn extremely fast. I have had a match or two where enemy teams get a hold of both snipers and completely control the map. While this is the point of power play, it also makes the map not really fun.
I am also not a fan of rocket hogs. They feel really weak to me, especially if you are shooting from downhill, which is a big factor on this map. I would rather take a gun-goose if I am planning on killing people.

Guillotine: I haven't really played Halo 2, especially this map. The map does seem fun however. There is a lot of open air, and the map in general feels huge. Every time I play on it I discover new areas. I can't comment too much on positives or negatives. I enjoy playing on it, and I don't mind the grey theme that everyone else complains about. Its a city. It feels right to me.

Recurve: There are two obvious negatives with this map. The first is that the sniper tower ridge is definitely the central area of combat. If I ever end up playing Slayer on this map, I know that when in doubt, head there, because half of the enemy team is usually there. The other main negative is that there is really not much room for vehicles. And with the bit of room that there is, it is cramped, and full of easy areas for pedestrians to board and take the vehicle.
Despite this however, I still enjoy the map a lot. I think Strongholds plays really well on it, except that sniper tower can be super hard to take.

Deadlock: First off, I don't like the name of it to be honest. It doesn't really fit at all. Recurve = Longbow, makes sense. Headlong = Guillotine, okay they both are heads/chopped. Basin = Valhalla/Gulch, sure, why not, the map has basins at the ends. But Deadlock? Doesn't fit.
Anyway. Plays pretty much the same as Standoff, except a lot smoother. This is a positive and a negative. Standoff is a great BTB map, but at the same time, because of the up-scaling for sprint, it means it is even more open, which means it suffers from the same issues Standoff did (which anyone who played the MCC got to experience again and again and again). It is super open, especially with some of those spawns. It is definitely the best out of all the maps for vehicles though, which I enjoy.


As I said before, this is only the first 5-6 hours of gameplay, and reading comments on the reddit. I enjoy the maps a lot, despite the issues they may have. I also disagree with the popular, negative opinions about the textures and forge.

 

I thought it was a perfect name. Wish i had thought of it.

 

Just sayin

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 19, 2015 ---

Sorry Nok, didn't notice your Hyperlink

Well at least I learnt how to take screenshots in Linux and relearned how to post images direct from Dropbox.

Today was a good day.

 

Except your image is not publicly accessible @Preacher001. So the image doesn't load for the public.

I'll give my feedback on the maps when I'm done drooling in custom games over the Forge pieces. Seriously... sooo much awesome right now.

 

My main feedback on the maps has more to do with vehicle play which I'm sure 343 played a big hand in. Generally I wish there was more original machine gun turret warthog play in the playlist as I've always enjoyed the balance brought by a vehicle that takes at least two people to operate fully.

Recurve: This simply doesn't feel like a Fated Fire map to me, so I'm not surprised 343 mutated the map. I remember when I first started forging and Fated warned me against a strong central tower. It is definitely a more infantry based BTB map which is fine with me, but the abundance of turrets combined with the weak vehicle lanes is a little too much. I think this could be a great map though. I actually love how the map offers little room for the scorpion, which naturally nerfs it. This good so that it doesn't turn into a snowball for the team that controls it. The fact that it's flanked by two rocket turrets though makes the bottom of the map a no mans land, because the risk reward just doesn't seem balanced.

Guillotine: A very honest reproduction. Needs warthogs badly though, and I think the Mantis is just bad vehicle design even if it isn't overpowered on this particular map. The only thing I would think to change is perhaps make the jumps in the hanging bits require a bit more skill, but that's nbd.

Deadlock: I hate those rocket mongeese. They are single driver warthog killing machines. i think the three weapon pads are enough to counter the warthogs. Spawns on this map are the worst of all the maps IMHO. I've had my starting spawn be on the enemy teams side, it was near camo, so at least I burned thier camo before I died. In general the openness of the map isn't great with hitscan BRs. That all being said, this is a faithful successor to a map I enjoyed and it feels the least like a forge map to me other than the glowing floor in the back hall. I'd like to see how this and all maps play with magnum starts and the precision pick ups treated more like power weapons if placed at all.

Basin: I think 343 achieved their goal of making a Valhallaesque map. That being said, I don't know how I feel about the rocket hogs in ranked BTB, even though they are fun as hell for social BTB. I actually don't mind the steep inclines on this map too much. Strongholds is a boring CQC fest in the middle tower though. The ridges that flank the bases seem a little lazy but effective.

Haven't played every objective on every map yet (hardly played any CTF come to think of it). So I might have more feedback later.

Forgers: I'd love to know the original intent of all the forgers, and whether or not 343 followed that intent, or if generally their is anything you were particularly happy or unhappy with.

 

Last night reminded me of why I never liked Headlong. It's not due to the map itself tho it's because I am not that good at Halo & I was even worse in Halo 2. Brought back so many memories of friends telling me to back out so they could win

 

For the record, the spawns are bad because the spawn system is garnered for 4v4s, meaning that the radius of influience for players is a relatively "small" size. Small radii like these don't mesh well with large BTB maps. I'm fine with this too, because the alternative is they design the radius size for BTB, which would screw over forge for 4v4 and smaller maps.

 

Oh, I had no idea to be honest. Well that makes much more sense then.

 

do we know if LoS has an influence on spawns? if not i would think adding it in with a mild negative weighting might help without wrecking 4v4 spawning. only for spawn points that are in direct exposed view though so with the amount of segmentation we have on 4v4 maps i don't think it would have much of an impact.

 

It probably does considering it was in previous Halo games. Things like the spawn system seem to be something they don't alter too much from game to game.

 

I've really enjoyed Guillotine and Deadlock, and my time on Basin hasn't been too bad either, however when playing Strongholds, it suffers the same issues as Recurve. Speaking of which, Recurve is unplayable to me. I hate the map. Whenever it comes up, I close Halo, restart it, and then search for another map again. Not only did 343 make a complete atrocity out of what looked like would have been a good map originally, but the overall look of the map is absolute crap as well. The colors don't mix, the rocks are pieces of playdoh clay, and the mixing textures of the terrain pieces are barbaric. I know aesthetic is the last thing on anyone's mind, but in whole, Recurve is a massive thumbs down from me.

PS: Headlong misses its warthogs </3

 

i assumed the same thing but after playing h5 it honestly doesn't appear to have any impact on spawning, h5 is happier to spawn me in the LoS of an enemy then tmcc and h4 were.

 

Thx. Actually what happened is I appended the "raw=1" and then tested the link, which worked, but then I didn't notice that it loaded under a temp link and I copied and used that. Of course the temporary link worked in the forum immediately after post and so I was caught all unawares.

Still learning stuff, saaaaalll good.

 

I love the base layout for Recurve and how there's a basement for a Warthog to drive through, a first level for some CQC, and a top level with some good sightlines and a turret to guard the flag. The Headlong remake was pretty to look around, but I immediately noticed how empty a lot of the hallways and rooms are. Deadlock has some spawn issues as noted above, but otherwise a solid map. Basin is a bit too open, but I love the tower and how it's crucial to have control in order for your team to be successful.

Also, I remembered my password after a year. Yay!

 

I think I've decided my map preferences out of this new lineup.

1) Headlong - My favorite overall map - that I will never play cause it is so huge.
2) Recurve - My Favorite map in schmexyness and mostly likely to play based on map size
3) Deadlock - Not a huge fan of standoff but this makes me want to give it another go.
4) Basin - I feel like this one is just short of greatness - due to my small party I will unlikely ever have to worry about it.

In the end I still prefer these maps to the stock forged maps.

Though unlikely, I would love it if 343 allowed for map tweaks if the community called for it. Something battle tested on Forgehub by the community (everyone welcome) and then green lit by 343 for updating/replacing. Sure we can just tweak it in Forge, but it's not like these are original professional works, and what's important is that we have the best gameplay possible.

 

Guillotine:

• The mantis can enter interior areas including Tower 1, Tower 2, Red Base, Bunker, and others
• Some spawns in Blue Yard are extremely exposed and spawn players out in the open with little chance to survive
• Players can hide inside the crane vertically oriented on the wall between Terminal and Armory
• Players can hide inside the crane vertically oriented on the wall above Cargo
• Players often clip their feet at the top of Bunker lift
• The planters hanging off of Blue Ledge provide advantageous sniper perches
• In Strongholds, Blue Yard and Cargo are quite close together and near blue team initial spawn, giving that team an advantage

Deadlock:

• At initial spawn, it is common for one player to spawn away from the rest of their team, even on the opposite side of the map
• The Flags' proximity to the Sneakies make that route the obvious choice
• The sun is blinding when pushing up to the area above Red Base
• There are several nooks along the cliff edge which players can hide in