Here’s my experience after the changes: There are FAR more sniping engagements in new Sands than old Sands.
Without that 0 line, people are more comfortable going out into the desert, which means more people engaging at long range.
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Didn’t think this would happen given your previous posts I’ve replied to but this time, I agree. But you know how it is, we can’t upset the attention deficient teenagers…
Yeah, Sands of Sinai is really kinda rough at this point.
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I just hate that they removed the elevation elements of the map. Just like how they removed the flanking ridge on Maginot, it simply blocks off an important section of the map and flattens out the entirety of it.
What previous posts are you talking about? As far as I know I drool over long-range maps in every thread relating to them.
“SCREEEEE GIMME MOAR FAST PACED CITY MAP!!1!!1”
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They can have those on the same maps as those of us who want longer ranged maps, which is the saddest thing.
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Going out on the A side is still all sorts of screwy because everyone is now funneled in to an open space where before you’d have some of your team split off to go to the 0 line. And the match could be decided either by caps, or by how well you did on said 0 line, because holding it means you have a positional advantage.
That advantage is now gone - for both teams. All you have now is a meat grinder where the match is usually decided by who ended up bringing more vehicles. I can’t remember the last time I had a match loss (or win) on that map where both teams still had the majority of their players when the tickets ran out.
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Flanking ridge on Maginot was necessary to be removed… I abused that every time I spawned South, and it made South an instant win due to how imbalanced that flank was.
As for Sands, I thought I’d dislike the removal, but as I said I’ve been experiencing far longer range engagements thanks to everyone being in the desert itself; it’s nice, unlike Sweden.
Take Maginot for that exact point.
That flank made it easier to fend off helicopters, as well as being open enough to counter those who sit on top of the hill. It didn’t give a direct LoS on the northern spawn, nor the southern, and it only overlooked about 1/3-1/2 of the map, out to the east side of B.
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North had a much easier lower flank along the far side of the ridge, while also having multiple spots to counter ridge snipers from… One of them being in the north spawn, too.
The only issue I personally had with it was the elevation of the northeast spawn, as well as building placement. It just invited spawn camping if your team is too incompetent to counter the flank.
On the heli front; larger maps with more terrain around them would both give AA more chance to defend, and Helis more chance to actually be effective. I’ve issues with helis as it stands at toptier because if anyone brings a remotely competent AA, they’re just a wasted spawn. The argument against this is if folk don’t have competent AA, it’d be hell. But same stuff happens already at toptier, it’d just give helis a slightly better chance.
That and wider launch paths for AAs on longer maps would help deal with CAS better if they have to choose a target instead of just loitering the entire field. It’d solve a lot of issues people complain about, really.
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The problem is to counter the flank you have to go out in the open where people snipe you from the Southern spawn, which every match had people set up there for such a thing, which made the flanker’s job at most one tank to oppose them.
It was bad, the only time I lost my team failed to protect B from A side.
I of course love flanking mechanics, just not imbalanced ones.
True, I’m not saying that sniping was outright denied, I just hate the flat divot sniping, where you simply hide behind a small dune that barely covers your tank and pop up whenever you see someone.
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Hence my other comment, I would have loved a change to the landscape on the northeast end. Not an outright deletion of the area.
Much like with Fields of Normandy (as a small scale example), there is simply a lot of places for AA to be, as well as cover for them.
For the enlarged Tunisia map, I cannot tell how many times I’d be flying my Su-25, take out AA that have been sitting near their spawn, but die to a Gepard or ADATS that are near the center of the map in a great spot.
This is entirely denied by smaller maps, as if you travel 500m outside of your spawn, you might as well be capping an objective.
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Yeah everything is getting flatter. I do hate they got rid of that ridge, even if I cursed it’s existence many a time (hull down leo 2’s were an absolute pain in the ass to dislodge from there), it did add to the gameplay. In my opinion anyway :D
Doesn’t really matter - but yes, I too drool uncontrollably when big maps are discussed. Heck, I sit and bounce in my chair when I get a big Tunisia. If they had more maps like that (and nobody mention Pradesh, that map is awful), I might even actually have actual fun playing this game.
I wish Gaijin would just point people like that at Arcade. Make Arcade the fast paced CQC maps place, the mechanics are even in favor of it since you get full engine HP and all that jazz so you can vroom vroom hit W pew pew pew within seconds. Leave Realistic to people that can actually survive without being entertained for a minute :D
But was it, though? The south end may have had more opportunities for hull down shenanigans, but it’d only take 1 or 2 people being sneaky to get side shots on whoever was parked on that flank ridge. I never saw it as being OP, even if spawning north. Actually had some of my more interesting/fun engagements there.
But that was the counter to the ridge line, basically. You get A, you come out of the village and some people swing around south, fold it up and bam you’ve got B - as soon as you have those two, the ridge becomes irrelevant.
It did require some teamwork. And that doesn’t happen too often :(
And this is why I love big Tunisia because I will drive my Lvkv 9040C around the middle of the map (because it’s also not a half-bad tank destroyer), and I will catch a bunch of CAS flyers unaware (even though their RWR should tell them I’m not where they think I should be). I feel it does balance CAS better because you now have to choose; press the attack against the AA near spawn, or take care of the mid-fielders, or loiter and wait and see if your team does anything.
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I fly particularly the Su 39 and Harrier. It is quite a bit more engaging having to pay attention to SAMs and midfield guns than just knowing some git with a VT1 is sitting in spawn and I can just drop a kh 29/agm 65 on them then go on to cause havoc.
Which I suspect is a similar opinion of other folk who fly CAS pretty often. Though they may also just want free kills, who knows.
I’d imagine it’s a 50/50 split - I mean, come on, free kills. Personally even though I am not a fan of CAS, I’m also not against it (even though I’d try a tank only mode) - as long as it’s balanced in the sense that both CAS and SPAA have a somewhat equal chance of winning an engagement. There’s always going to be some imbalance (because plane X was built to defeat SPAA Y, which lead to SPAA Z being created just to ruin plane X’s day, etc. etc.) but as long as there’s the chance, then all is well.
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I’ve found, in my time of both using and countering it, that it doesn’t have as many sightlines as you would think. The large rocks around B give great cover, and to be fully concealed you would have to be in this small sight-window between rocks.
Even then, it’s stuck out on the top of a hill in the corner of the map. It’s where everybody looks, and unless you can get enough cover or do enough shitter shuffles, you’ll probably die.
I despise you.
This is exactly why I’ll sit 10-12km out in my 25T and just wait.
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There should be a rework to heli EC and Ground Assault with PvP modes for them.
The original heli PvP would get me 100-200k RP in a 2 hour match, whereas now with over 3000% RP boosters I struggle to get 80k+ while flying around absent-mindedly shooting at broken AI.