Undesirable Maps

Servers GrangerPub Servers
1
  • Gloom2
  • utcsud
  • fort5
  • Cerberus

Are four maps that need to be removed from the rotation.

Gloom2:

Extremely human biased map unless the aliens achieve stage 3. If the humans don’t kill the aliens off prior to their acquisition of the third stage then the humans will be forced to camp in their high up stair case fortress until time limit. In pub gameplay neither team has the cohesion to properly execute an attack on the other team. The human default of this map slows down gameplay a lot and more often than not sees the game drag on until timelimit.

Suitable replacement: Niveus, Karith, or Arachnid2

Utcsud:

Aside from the poor map design, this defective pile of garbage has nearly the same issues listed above in Gloom2. It’s human biased until aliens reach s3, then humans turtle into their impenetrable bunker and wait for TL. Also, the floors on this map are so fucking dark that without gamma 2 you aren’t going to see a dretch more than 5 yards away from you. This map also doesn’t feature long hall areas much except for the halls exiting each default. Halls balance aliens because they allow humans to chase and preempt corners. With the weird bunkers and corners everywhere in each default rants are EXTREMELY powerful close up on this map.

Suitable replacement: Atcs or Sharp (provided @MaeJong balance the alien default)

fort5:

Wannabe ATCS, never liked it, never will. Seems a bit human biased across ALL stages to me.

Suitable replacement: Atcs

Cerberus: No one likes this map, big cluster fuck of bad clipping and insufficient radar detection. The alien default is horrible with that big tube that drops down into it. Dretches will be slaughtered in that tube or attempting to climb into that tube from the humans rushing through it. Humans also have an extremely powerful base option under the staircase with protective pillars. This map is almost always callvoted away from or callvote drawed on because of how much people don’t like it.

Suitable replacements: Nexus6

1 Like
2

A.T.C.S

come at me

Opinion: As much fun as I had on ATCS, symmetrical maps for a asymmetrical game never made sense to me.

1 Like
3

ATCS == Tremulous

4

heresy i say! your love for dragoon hallways and jetcamping betrays your minds!

5

Gloom2beta2 and UTCSUD are both somewhat popular maps, and if Matth would actually fix the clipping and visibility issues on UTCSUD it would be a solid map. It may not be particularly balanced, but I’ve found it has less camping than many other maps. As for Gloom2beta2, whichever team takes control of the middle room has a distinct advantage for the rest of the game, and since it’s a long, wide open room, it heavily favors humans. Nevertheless, it’s a popular map, and it has been one of the most popular custom maps since at least 2006.

As for Cerberus, the gameplay is shit, with nearly invincible bases for both teams if the builders have half a brain, but some people like it for some reason, and I’ve seen plenty of votes on Cerberus for better maps fail. Of the four maps you listed, Cerberus is the only one I actually agree should be removed from rotation.

This is actually a very popular map in rotation, and I know a lot of people love it. The gameplay is also surprisingly alright unless humans are being absolutely overrun. I would actually say it’s alien biased if the aliens aren’t utterly retarded. Furthermore, I’d have to disagree about it being a wannabe ATCS in every way except its shitty textures and symmetry. It’s more comparable to a mix between DSArena (without the shitty tight hallways) and atcszalpha (without the shitty invincible human base and vent camping). I’m a bit biased since it’s one of my favorite maps, but it’s one of my favorites for good reasons. It has a minimal amount of jank (just 3 elevators), multiple paths in case you want to get to the other base unnoticed, strong areas for all kinds of aliens, a mix of long and short range areas, and just in general a good variety of features and locations. I actually prefer fort5 to ATCS unless the server is underpopulated (small games on ATCS are more fun than small games on fort5).

And yet somehow it has consistently been statistically the most balanced map in all of Tremulous, as well as the single most popular and most played map in the history of Tremulous. Definitely undesirable. /s

2 Likes
6

not saying you’re wrong, but i’d still like a source on that.

7

Remove Mission from the server entirely, pls and ty

1 Like
8

Unpopular opinion maybe but Nano: invincible zones where humans can only be attacked by adv goon and dretches, right next to the alien base no less. Central area that you 100% HAVE to go through to attack which means rants are always camping top side at as3. Very luci spam friendly.
I fucking hate nano.

Gloom2 is always campy and therefore bad

I don’t get the hate for utcsud, it’s better than normal utcs in my opinion, the outside area needs a rework as it’s horribly human favored but i like the new flank paths. Matth did a lot right with the utcs remake but the brightness or lack there of and the side rooms were a huge mistake.

Fort5 isn’t great but it doesn’t deserve to be put on the same list as cerberus.

1 Like
9

I don’t know why but gameplay on fort5 feels so choppy and for lack of a better word forced. The outside area is cancer, you aren’t provided with enough ground to move around on surrounding the middle building, therefore making aliens extremely strong on outside ground. The default bases for fort5 scream of cancer, esp the a default base. A good human side will terrorize aliens in their default in the early game, and a shit human side will get squeezed into their default by rants in the late game.

Cerb sucks.

Gloom2 is (imo) a nice looking and SOMETIMES fun map, but the camp it promotes is god awful.

and yeah utcsud sucks to play against tyrants on for the abundance of tight areas/corners around vital base spots, which leads to rants forcing the humans into their bunker in the late game.

10

Of the maps requested in this thread for removal from the rotation so far, I would have to say that I wouldn’t mind seeing Cerberus, and especially Gloom2 go.

Almost all of the games I have played in Glom2 on GrangerPub has lead to almost immediate halt in progress with slow painful progress after sd. Sometimes there are interesting games on it, but I find it boring most of the time. I was actually thinking of posting a new topic here about removing that map from the rotation (and maybe Cerberus as well), but @bird beat me to it.

Regarding the Cerberus map, it has an interesting layout navigation and base location wise, and I do see more variation in the matches in that map than on gloom2, but still it feels meh.

ATCS I find boring undesirable because long ago I got tired of the same old game play and ugliness. Butt ATCS isn’t going to be removed from the GrangerPub rotation anytime soon for the same reason mission one isn’t going to be removed from the server anytime soon, a sufficient number of people desire it.

As a side note, I have found that if/when the server gets empty, if I play mission one initially on my own to kill some time, within 5 to 15 minutes people start rejoining, and by the end of the match there is enough people to sustain games (usually from 6 to 12 people at that point). Of course atcs is played after mission one in that situation primarily because that it the current rotation.

But with that said, I don’t find the obsticles so interesting any more since I’m very familiar with them and they aren’t so challenging anymore (I could maybe use some refinement), and the final combat area for mission one is very low in quality game play. Mae had some interesting ideas for a way better mission map (better than even Mission Edge), and when/if he has such a map ready for playing, I would be very interested in trying it out.

Btw, I have been getting the feeling that the playerbase is getting more open minded in terms of map selection, I see atcs and niveus maps fail more often. I should probably start collecting more screenshots of that (as well as of non-conventional map votes passing). I do have this one:

I recall about 20 people being on the server at that time. there was also repeat atcs vote 2 minutes later that failed 8 to 2, but I forgot to take the screen shot of that one. I’m not saying that the people who voted against changing the map to atcs wanted to play Megaprocyan as often as atcs is played, but rather that at that time those people preferred to play that map instead of atcs.

Anyways, as I said, ATCS isn’t going to be removed from the rotation any time soon because of it is still too popular, but any other maps that might be removed from the rotation should not be replaced by atcs, and should have a decent quality non-atcs map in its spot so as to not result in the frequency of ATCS unnecessarily being increased in the rotation (if people want to play atcs more, they can always try a vote for it).

Regarding UTCSUD, Fort5, and Nano, while they do each have their imperfections and I wouldn’t say that I fell in love with them on GrangerPub, but they are popular and I think they are decent enough for their positions in the rotation.

Are there any suggestions for one or two or more new maps to add to or duplicated in the rotation in place of the removal of one or two or more maps (please include in your suggestions maps other than atcs)? I appreciated @bird offering some alternatives to consider in the original post.

11

Cerk and I spent nearly ALL day yesterday exploring different custom maps. From xmas_2007 to dryarea, we had a blast and so did others who played alongside us. I’m slowly starting to come around to the appeal of custom maps.

1 Like
12

XDXDXDXDXD JAJAJAJAJAJ XDXD

13

exdeee exdeee exdeee

14

I am not particularly against Gloom2beta2 being removed from the rotation, but I would be interested in knowing the general playerbase opinion of that before doing it, since I know a lot of people like it. As for Cerberus, it’s 100% fine to be removed from the rotation.

For replacing Cerberus, I would put Nexus6 in the third rotation in the same slot, then move UTCSUD to be after Nexus6 (to help maintain a somewhat even spread of default and custom maps).

If the community does indeed wish to remove Gloom2beta2 from the rotation, I would recommend putting arachnid2_mjed in its spot, then replacing arachnid2_mjed from rotation 4 with specula_b4, and swapping nexus6 and wrecktify_b2 in rotation 4 to maintain an even spread of default and custom maps.

Another map I would like to bring up is narrow_edge. It’s an unfun map in my opinion, and just badly designed in a lot of aspects, but I don’t know how other people feel about it. Almost every time I see it, it gets voted away from, which may be a sign.

15

I’m against Cerberus too. Other maps are good.
The only replacement for UTCSUD is UTCSb2.

Atcszalpha and Urbanp2?
I prefer custom maps than default maps.
Even because on Arachnid and Nexus I get (and I think not only me) 50 fps.

You did a good post, but you failed when you wrote “ATCS”.

2 Likes
16

Yet you adore ATCS. Utcsud provides countless anti rant spots or at least areas with high ground for reduced damage.

To replace maps that have got stale and have garnered complaints, I ask that the rotation topic is updated to reflect the current rotation ingame rotation.

17

The original op in the rotation topic has been kept updated whenever the rotation was adjusted:

I’m no sure what point you want to make with that pie chart. I can say that the number of players on the server throughout the day and the rotation heavily influences that particular data. For about a third of the day the server population doesn’t get over 10 players which would have the server fall into rotation 1 which is all atcs. Then for a little bit over a third of the day the population of the server is from 10 to 19 players falling into rotation 2 which has nano, atcs, utcsud (which also shows up in rotation 3) , tremor, and fort5.

But there is something interesting that that chart says, which is that Tremor is played significantly less often than the other rotation 2 maps. Perhaps Tremor should be replaced in the rotation by Tremor_2016 which imo has some better game play most notably the lift between the underground and the crates making those areas more useful and allowing an additional route of navigation, not to mention has a much better look to it. Plus almost all the times I’ve played it, the other players on the server seemed generally very pleased by it (at least regarding the most recent version).

18

I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas from because Tremor_2016 has objectively worse gameplay than Tremor and is the worst designed remake currently on the server. Plus, almost all the times I’ve played it, the other players on the server agree with me that it’s shit and we vote away from it within a minute (regarding all versions, including the most recent version). I’ve played a full game on Tremor_2016 a total of 1 or 2 times, shortly after it was added to the server. Nobody votes for it, they always vote for Tremor instead of it, because Tremor is just so much better. But, since I’m sure that’s not enough to convince you, I’ll list a handful of problems Tremor_2016 has:

  • Terrible clipping jobs all across the map:
  • The pots in garden are clipped with squares and dretches can hide inside some of them. Humans can walk part way into at least one of them and see through and shoot through it.
  • The pipes outside the front of human base mess up wallwalk drastically.
  • Dretches can hide behind the pipes that line the lift walls and be hidden from almost all angles.
  • Numerous other detailed parts of the map are just let unclipped or clipped badly.
  • The underground area looks terribly ugly, almost entirely being one color and looking like puke stained pipes. The lack of sufficient clipping also results in a shitty experience for any alien trying to wallwalk down there. There are also weird pillars that some classes (and maybe humans) can get behind, and that’s just stupid.
  • The lift ruins the only other potential base locations humans had on the map (box room) and pretty much locks both humans and aliens into their default base locations for the entirety of the map. Along with that, it’s slow as dicks, and lifts should only be used when there is absolutely no alternative, as they are generally buggy and annoying in Tremulous.
  • Most of the changes to the map seem completely pointless and only serve the purpose of making it “look prettier”, whereas no changes should be made unless they serve some purpose when it comes to fixing the problems of the map.
  • The end result is a map that doesn’t even feel like Tremor anymore, and it’s just so much less fun to play than Tremor.

If I felt like burning my eyes out long enough to go scan through the map I’m sure I could find other problems and even document them.

19

That says a lot.

20

Some might agree, some might not,

but i personally think tree cannon should be in rotation :wink:
JK
But I really dislike NANO!