I am starting to like the new shatter, anyone else ?

This is an appreciation thread for the new shatter map redesign and hoping for more positive changes to frontline as I think a lot of player love to play it.

So they decided to pull Secure for a rework which is still pending and in the meantime reworked the one FL map that had no glaring issues into a worse version. I think i dislike it less than Seize and Danshig but it was an unnecessary choice when the aforementioned maps have actual issues.

It's a tough map for me. I miss the old Shatter, and the experiences from Shatter being repeatedly given garbage reworks soiled my initial thoughts on it.

After the updates, especially the changes to spawning and adjustments to points gained/lost through players kills/deaths it is a fairly solid map. It has its moments when I'm not playing against multiple Dark Premades. I don't really blame the map for it being populated with premades however.

I'm hoping they make Borderland ruins a map worth playing on again. Perhaps knock the spire down and introduce a King of the Hill, or capture the flag element in. And naturally perhaps rebalancing to the North Spawn of seal rock, their nodes have always been less defensible though not in a significant enough way to influence the outcomes of matches in a significant way from my personal experience. Allegedly more changes are to come in 7.2, so we'll see.

Can't stand it. Slow and dull.

They changed shatter from a map with interesting tactical decisions with all the chokepoints into a pure farming map where the daily roulette players farm ice while the premades farm the roulette players.

Not a big fan, really.

Take away the elixers, and I might actually give the mode a chance. Right now the map only serves to keep people busy with breaking the ice as much as possible. If you're fighting it's always to defend the big ice. There's hardly any skirmishes elsewhere.

Removing all the rng and the downtime was the worst thing they could have done to this already contentious map, making it extremely scripted and running on rails (like old secure but worst, because this one also favors 24 man blobs). Big ices cycle without interruption and you constantly have to tell your team not to go for the unsafe ices, which is a surefire way to lose the game if you do it even once (killing half your members and making you miss on your own ice coming just after). The design literally pushes novices into a gigantic meat grinder and I do not understand how something like this even could get validated by QA.

I stopped playing on it entirely. They just double downed on the big ice problem, the problem being that roulette queue NPCs will just hit the big ice over and over again even if they can never catch up to other teams' points just by doing so. It's boring and pointless as you have little influence to whether your team will just afk grind the big ice to a loss or not. It needs to be removed in 7.1/7.2

It's better having less map variety in the pool than to even have this at all.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Removing all the rng and the downtime was the worst thing they could have done to this already contentious map, making it extremely scripted and running on rails (like old secure but worst, because this one also favors 24 man blobs).....

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I agree that this map is extremely bland strategically. There are really only a handful (if even) of strategies to even think about while playing Shatter. I don't think removing the rng was the issue though. PvP maps can be infinitely more strategically engaging without RNG mechanics if the developers decide to be more creative. A couple of examples that come to mind are League of Legends' 5v5 tournament map, World of Warcraft's Arathi Basin battlegrounds.

That's not to say that there shouldn't be more things going on in a typical game. For instance the concept of timed map hazards in Crystal Conflict should also see an implementation into Frontlines. What if there was a blizzard storm that occurred at set intervals of the map where you are taking frost bitten damage until you hide away in the only available cave on the map. I think that would be quite interesting and bet that you can probably start to think of a dozen strategies with just that alone.

There is a place for RNG elements however. To lessen the effectiveness skilled players have per match vs more casual ones.

Overall it seems Yoshi and SE are trying to figure out ways all aspects of the game can be streamlined. I don't the issue of bland/boring applies only to this Frontline map...

I do remember Secure, which was a lot more interesting strategically than this, and even if we can argue that it probably had its own flaws, it was always, always the same script. Go to nodes mid, then run to side outposts, then run to the other, then to the first one, then back to mid with nodes. For instance it's not a problem in Palaistra due to the scale and the objective is fundamentally different and moves back and forth depending on what happens, unlike fixed points on the map that never change and therefore always bring the same moves with the exact same games unfolding, which feels very mechanical and soulless.

I hate the two-entrances to the outer big ice compared to the old three (quick path for one team, circle round long path for the other team, tunnel for the not adjacent team).
Now it's basically something like this.
Start as blue; red and yellow BI's spawn. Your team can jump down the cliff and fight red for their BI, stalling them, but you end up being ambushed by yellow when they move in. Or perhaps cross over the map and attack yellow, only to then be ambushed by red.
Makes it's very bad to be the single team left out at the start of the game.
Even if you went to harass red and pulled back when yellow destroyed their BI, you barely would have achieved anything since red would still get most of the points on their BI, at most you would have gotten some points from kills.

This version of Shatter you gotta make ballsy plays to get kills if you want to win. Especially if both enemy BI's have spawned. Go down their ramp and smack them from behind.

Well it will just create a new meta instead.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

They changed shatter from a map with interesting tactical decisions with all the chokepoints into a pure farming map where the daily roulette players farm ice while the premades farm the roulette players.

Not a big fan, really.

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It wasnt any tactical decision, it was always the same rotation depending on which ice was spawning first. Japanese player would simply have theyre team wait at the next ice and win easily, it was broken.

I only started PvPing this season so unfortunately I'll never get to know what the old Shatter was like. I have been enjoying this map a lot more than Onsal Hakair though. The PvE elements seem to work better for people who are unfamiliar with PvP or hate it and are just there for the daily exp. I notice less people standing around aimlessly, waiting for someone else to run by who seems to know what they're doing. It may not be terribly useful for people to be attacking ices when they could be joining a strong flank, but they're doing something and not just waffling at the edge of an engagement.

Generally I don't support the removal of any game modes and even if they're not my favorite I like map diversity. Would've been nice to see how old Shatter played!

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Originally Posted by Birdbrain

I only started PvPing this season so unfortunately I'll never get to know what the old Shatter was like. I have been enjoying this map a lot more than Onsal Hakair though. The PvE elements seem to work better for people who are unfamiliar with PvP or hate it and are just there for the daily exp. I notice less people standing around aimlessly, waiting for someone else to run by who seems to know what they're doing. It may not be terribly useful for people to be attacking ices when they could be joining a strong flank, but they're doing something and not just waffling at the edge of an engagement.

Generally I don't support the removal of any game modes and even if they're not my favorite I like map diversity. Would've been nice to see how old Shatter played!

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Old Shatter map was a big larger and had more terrain diversity. It also had enemy bases which could be captured by your team to passively generate points. However, since it was bigger it was also easier to AFK, and harder for the average player to understand what it is exactly they should be doing at any given time. Frontline commanders were prominent on this map, most of the time I remember playing there were commanders on all sides during peak hours.

I have some recorded games of the old Shatter if you are interested. I'll link them below.

https://youtu.be/D_zRhwcuA90?t=22&si=QRsolnH3K8Wllw_u

https://youtu.be/BGbAdyU5DZU?t=69&si=mF6yLfGzlplqPrXG

I don't like it at all personally. Almost every change they've made make it worse in my opinion. 99% of the time it feels like trying to invade another teams big ice is a bad decision cause you have to go in a choke point and then get pinched by the other two teams.

In general I hate that frontline has 3 different teams instead of two (having two would solve a LOT of my issues with FL)
Also Dark Knight pull in large scale pvp is very problematic and often feels hard to separate the inherent imbalance it brings from actual issues with the map.

Setting those to general FL complaints aside, I think there are a couple things that would make Fields of Glory more enjoyable.
1) The first is to have 3 entrances to the non center big ice nodes: 2 side ramps and the entrance from the middle of the map (similar to the old map layout). This would make invading other teams more viable and less likely to end in you feeding 1 or more teams because your team tried pvping in a pvp match.

2) Have the small ice nodes activate more frequently and more randomly. This creates choices for the team and individual players. Having multiple objectives make it so you can be rewarded for spreading out but also you're more at risk. Basically this helps break up the monotony of roaming from your team's big ice to the middle big ice as a big clump of blue/red/yellow. With how formulaic the map currently works it makes it feel incredible long and dull IMO.

I was wondering if it would work better if the only big ice was central going off every 4 minutes and there were ~5 small ice phases that also utilized the current locations of the team big ices. The small ice phase is the only part of it I find remotely engaging.

I miss Old Shatter so much.

New Shatter is trash, I'd rather have secure back.

I just want a mode with Capture Base back and fulfill my destiny of "All your bases belongs to me"
It is getting boring for just doing this Horde Stampede type of PvP

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

https://youtu.be/D_zRhwcuA90?t=22&si=QRsolnH3K8Wllw_u

https://youtu.be/BGbAdyU5DZU?t=69&si=mF6yLfGzlplqPrXG

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That actually looks like fun.

Love how large the map is and all the uneven terrain, scenery, and various chokepoints and bases. It's a very pretty looking map too. I can see the new version of Shatter is the devs trying to streamline people into a more constant, fast-paced mob clash while also giving people who hate PvP more to PvE with, but I don't see why both versions couldn't have existed at the same time.

The oldest Version of Shatter deserves to be returned to the game. As a seperate map. It was my favorite map, and still is.

Borderland Ruins also wasn't an awful map. The nodes in the middle were a stupid idea, I'd have preferred if a base point was at the top of the map that granted extra points if held. There was always incentive to be sneaking around taking enemy bases while people were up top farming nodes, just holding 4+ nodes was enough to significantly boost your teams points. Most of the current maps just encourage death mobs, and there isn't really any side objectives for any brave players to chase.

Old Shatter was a cool map, but the pve Ice were still as garbage and anti pvp as they are today. People complained about it already back then and it hasn't changed. They just made the map a lot worse.

New Shatter really depends on having a good commander. I know you can do some good pinches on all of the big ices, but I'm still working out strategy for the smalls.

It's definitely a map of low lows and high highs.