Here's the new map peepz! Red Sands of Love

Yoyo!

Here's a graphic explaining the Red Sands how it has been shown to us in the Live Letter. I don't know Japanese so I don't know any additional info besides what I've seen:

https://i.imgur.com/oEFsXVM.jpg

There is also gonna appear a Lunatender Queen as we could see in the trailer, however she was absent during the gameplay section! She seems to spawn in the same area that Antlion and Sabotender do, but not as dangerous?

https://i.imgur.com/TrCDprI.png

Interesting map layout, however just like Cloud Nine the map has a really heavy chokepoint in the middle.

There are three to four openings you can do here at the initial midfight:

• You rush as a full group over the speed lane for an early foothold and ideal positioning. Unless followed by option 4 is countered by #2
• Whole group goes Oasis and then probably splits Ranged going to second to watch mid corridor and melee/tank takes speedsand to have a corner to play on
• Job dependent: ranged going early middle corridor, tanks melee buffing on Oasis, recommended if your team has good defensive utility
• Job dependent: any variations of the above but more bumrushy, going past the middle point early and draw someone out for early advantage; needs a WAR / DRK + a stun source / a very brave team

Heatwaves might get brutal if SCH Bio spreads or SGE deploys LB in a brutal scenario where you cant afford leaving point. Also wondering if it will pierce invulns. Water puddles on 2nd is gonna be fancy tho.

Antlion will be Bind heaven and Sabotender can be tactically soaked or used to nuke someone. Cool options.

8-8.5/10 map, deducting for giving us another brutal chokepoint AND extremely open 2nd point. Also yet to see actual map randomizing on match join rather than schedules.

Another map where MNK will be disgusting/SSS+ tier on.

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

Another map where MNK will be disgusting/SSS+ tier on.

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Elaborate how compared to other jobs?

I'll preface by saying that I have not played ranked in a couple of seasons.

MNK is the one melee that can be very difficult to take down because of the large self-healing it gets off of RoE, and when played most optimally, can basically play the game by itself without having to participate with the team to secure kills or hold objectives.

This map compliments that even further by;

- Giving even more survivability with a very generous oasis heal over time.

- Giving another map hazard the MNK can push a target into for a free kill.

- Giving additional sources of damage compilation to Riddle of Earth for an even bigger Earth Reply AoE nuke. (Will need to wait and see how RoE interacts with the heat waves)

Not wrong, but what you listed benefits more than MNK. A job like Warrior or Dark Knight will heavily benefit from the Oasis regen, same with making use of the map hazards. Other jobs that will benefit from abusing map hazards will be Dancer with LB, Machinist with shotgun, Reaper with LB and basically anything with a ranged Bind like RDM with Black Shift: Resolution.

As someone mentioned in another thread, the regen usefulness will depend heavily on the skill tier you play in. In tiers that already have drawn-out fights it will definitely play in favour of MNK, above that MNK will struggle for similar reasons as other maps where proper focus-fire will make short work of them.

Definitely looking forward to how Heatwaves interact with a lot of abilities (Riddle of Earth, Eventide invuln, Phalanx invuln, SGE Mesotes, HP shields and %-mitigation in general)

Never understood the hate for chokepoints, as long as they're not the sole currency.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Never understood the hate for chokepoints, as long as they're not the sole currency.

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Team Fortress 2 ptsd for me. Having no alternate pathing is a nightmare to play into.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Never understood the hate for chokepoints, as long as they're not the sole currency.

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It forces teams to engage in very pigeon-holed manner, and depending on your team composition your advantages and disadvantages become more apparent.
I myself prefer maps with various routes where the team can position and engage according to what's best for their makeup. As a reaper player, having many avenues to go in, nuke an HP bar, and escape is very helpful for me; in chokeholds, I only have one pathway to go down which makes it more difficult to disengage cleanly.

I despise cloud 9 for this reason.

I see choke points in a PVP mode -> hard past and horrible design so far.

It's like they learned nothing from CCT where routinely half the player base will disconnect from the absolute crap load of effects going off at once. Can't wait for the salty posts about the 90k spam ruining gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

It's like they learned nothing from CCT where routinely half the player base will disconnect from the absolute crap load of effects going off at once. Can't wait for the salty posts about the 90k spam ruining gameplay.

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Best thing about all of this, there is a lot of discussion about this on the forums even on the Japanese , and obviously they didn't read any of it at all... they literally don't care, and everyone can see the people who redesign the maps have no idea how a competitive game works... Shatter is the perfect example when one team needs to jump down and die to get to the crystal, same thing is on this map or almost any CC map, you can't position yourself in alternate ways, and they design everything in a way to have a bunch of choke points, and it's the most disgusting thing you can do in PVP... it's probably time for everyone to give up on PVP being good in FF14, they said their plan is to make it good, but if that is true, you hire people who know how PVP works, and don't put people who never did anything PVP related to make and balance things and do it as a side job...

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Originally Posted by Hik3n

Best thing about all of this, there is a lot of discussion about this on the forums even on the Japanese , and obviously they didn't read any of it at all... they literally don't care, and everyone can see the people who redesign the maps have no idea how a competitive game works... Shatter is the perfect example when one team needs to jump down and die to get to the crystal, same thing is on this map or almost any CC map, you can't position yourself in alternate ways, and they design everything in a way to have a bunch of choke points, and it's the most disgusting thing you can do in PVP... it's probably time for everyone to give up on PVP being good in FF14, they said their plan is to make it good, but if that is true, you hire people who know how PVP works, and don't put people who never did anything PVP related to make and balance things and do it as a side job...

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You realize this is only a design choice because people are trash and toxic. They don't play with their team by default, nor are we able to type in pvp. You don't have a choice but to pidgeon-hole people to have them on somewhat of the same page teamwork wise. Even with the pidgeon hole'ing design forcing people in the same area, most data regions have issues targeting the same person so it fails. You can't talk about flank routes and choices in engagement that would disjoint an already bare minimum functioning team that can't communicate.

My schedule apparently didn't line up exactly when the new map was up for que, and there is no random map draw. Can't even try it out until later on tonight now whenever it rotates back in, GG.

Well it's out now. After playing a few matches I think the map is unique but not my favorite.

I think map is too big. Not too big in the sense of there's too much map, but some of the corridors itself feel really wide. I find it works really well for a classes like BLM, but not so much for melees as a whole.

The heat wave mechanic is a neat addition, and not one I mind. The refreshing rain mechanic is a little beyond me right now, but I been pushing the crystal more of late, so that might just be me. Stepping into the oasis (depending on the current situation) negates the heat wave

The Lunatender shield.. it's mind boggling seeing the shield numbers coming from that. I have seen the shield shrug off LBs like it's no ones business. Something to play around I guess?

Having played quite a bit of this it's exactly what I expected. Same people for the entirety of the queue and most of them act like they forgot everything about the mode. I don't know what's funnier this or the Fall Guys cross over in terms of not a good fit for the game's capabilities.

Honestly feels like C9 The Sequel. I'm kind of disappointed. Hopefully next map is closer to Clockwork.

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Originally Posted by SpritePR

Honestly feels like C9 The Sequel. I'm kind of disappointed. Hopefully next map is closer to Clockwork.

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Clockwork is my least favorite map. I can't stand that map more than Cloudnine.