I used to enjoy Sinai, I never noticed really any “spawn camping” aside from areas of the map where you need to push deep mid or any hard flank, even than it was easy to smash those players that spawn camped, as long as you had two braincells to rub together in order to create a spark of thought.
Now the matches are half the playtime, and a vast majority of the map is open desert with tiny sand dunes hardly large enough to conceal you from anywhere else on the map, Lord forbid any Helis that spawn in.
I play Germany, USA, USSR, UK, Japan… All at the same 11.0 - 12.0 BR bracket and it plays the exact same. Gaijin’s team has outdone themselves again! Taking a fun map with lots of potential as long as you have a brain that works and isn’t just for show, and turning it into a 1-minute Tik Tok clip, easy to digest for the less intellectually gifted.
I wish I could ban that map, but Map bans are only for people willing to shell out money for Gaijin to help them fun Terrorists or whatever it is they do with that extra money… Blackjack and a good Belly rub?
They made a map that used to be great and enjoyable compared to any of the drivel they’ve been spewing out in recents times and then turned it into one of those new maps…… only gaijin can fuck up this way and then simply not turn it back. I liked white rock fortress, all they had to do was limit it to bellow 5.7.
People are really over-exaggerating the changes to it, it’s not bad. The hill had issues, and I am glad it is gone.
Personally I find it much more bearable because people don’t all go to the one side. You are finally able to play without constantly looking towards the hill, and it prevents some nasty spawncamping in a couple areas.
It would be fine if not for the fact that it’s just open. Look at red desert, that is a great example of how to do a large map and yet everyone hates it for being “too big”. And yet they just slightly changed Sinai leaving it open space with no way of getting to a cap without being shot. It’s not much worse but it’s not better in the slightest, why change it when it was fine to begin with. Only good map change they made is for el alimain and all they did was use the sim variant which I’ve loved for years.
The change has brought new issues with Sands of Sinai to light. The desert portion should be less flat.
I haven’t played on Red Desert for a long time because they restricted all the super large maps to 10.0 despite them being fine at 8.7. It just really sucked at 6.7, but was fine above 8.3.
I loved red desert in my chieftain as it allowed me to take advantage of my well angled turret. And even at top tier you hardly see the fucking map as gaijin aparently think maps like swden are better for top tier…… I’m just fed up with the spoon feeding of cod like maps when war thunder is not a quick paced game that I shouldn’t have to make quick shots in.
Sands needed to change. Any map where you can control the vast majority from a handful of spots all along one vertical line of gridsquares is just not well made.
That being said, this change is halfbaked at best. Rather the fixing the actual issue with the map (AKA the horrific lack of cover anywhere outside the right half of it), they just lopped off the most egregious gridsqaures and called it done. Doesn’t even completely solve the problem, there are still spots that are inbound that both the north and south teams can camp in to completely shut down the middle of the map.
Sands needed a complete overhaul, both before and after the changes, and now that it’s been slapdashedly addressed it doesn’t seem to be coming. I don’t like this trend of spending the bare minimum of effort on maps that desperately need a complete overhaul, and calling it done.
I probably didn’t word it the best but this. Don’t give us half baked shit but instead take the time to actually change the map for the better. A cool open desert map might work out if it has lots of dunes to hide behind and maybe a river bed to split it up some.
The recent map changes are bad, but we need more open maps, the constant pixel hunting for tanks with the billion and one defilades and the 1001 city maps gets boring quick.
They ruined European Province by basically turning it into a corridor map with all the cover they have given every side.
I want to be able to fight a 2km+ distances, and not just be forced to face the enemy from 100-250m which is what most new maps do and most changed maps do. Corridors and cities nothing else.
Sands of Sinai was ruined, and now they changed the El Alamein too and removed the sniping hill, so again, no positions anymore, just corridors an hope you enjoy.
There needs to be a balance between city maps and open maps, and there does not need to be cover littered everywhere. And the new maps we’re getting are all terrible.
The only decent maps we got recently is
Fanders & Pradesh, everything else is mediocre at best. Sweden should be removed and locked to BR 5.0 and below, so should Seversk-13. And I haven’t had many games on North Holland, but again a dumb city map filled with MBTs that should be engaging at 1000m+ not around corners.
The North Holland map is a disappointment as 3/4 of it is inaccessible. Fighting in a shopping mall? WTF is that? Gaijin needs to be a little more transparent, see a map preview that displays all of this territory and then when you choose spawn location we see a large portion of the map is red/inaccessible.
If I could ban every map that has Sinai in it I would in a heart beat. But the ones I hate even more are those “peek a boo” maps with just hills and everything is wide open. Can’t remember the name of it but the one that’s in Winter and has the huge satellite in the middle. I quit any time that map comes.