Worqor Chirteh feedback

[jesseleewelch]

I have no trouble getting to nodes on time. Of course, i pay attention and keep map open.

[Xylira]

The map feels too big with too much travel time from all of the terrain obstructions. I'm also not a fan of the status effects on the map, it would be better off without them. Overall it feels like a worse version of Onsal.

[Turethir]

I agree - I think the map has potential, but it's too big. I'd like less time running around on mounts and more time fighting. If the map were about 75% of its current size I think it would feel more organic to play in.

[Enriel_Karledo]

Made an account just to bring my feedback to the pile

The map has a lot of potential but suffer from critical flaws that have somehow been missed entirely during the QA phase.

First thing : size
The map is way to big and absolutely not mobile, its form in a cavity with one way pathways could be interesting, but it feels it was designed with giants in mind and boosted movement speed
You take more than 80 seconds to make a direct beeline between a spawn and opposing nodes on the sides, the time to engagement is way too long.

This is supposed to be PVP, yet, we need to travel ages for every engagement, and if you overstay your welcome even a few seconds, you get actively punished by node spawns being missed

Second : the nodes :
The concept behind the nodes is good, i appreciate the thought of preventing the fast node steals that can be a thing in Onsal, even though i'd claim this is a skill to steal a node efficiently and have battle awareness to spot nodes and defend them amidst the chaos
Yet here, you are clustered in very, VERY long capture with at minimum, 3 players being stuck for something north of 10 seconds. Even if you have a quick skirmish of 3 players versus 1 it means the capture can drag on to 30 seconds or up to a minute which is way to long considering the pace pvp has been taking

Furthermore, the small clustered system favors one class only : tanks
While it can be understandable that small nodes favors AOE mostly, tanks all have their own very extensive AOE package and survivability package which are mandatory to even hope to survive any time not under your own shield in one of these spots.
Thus, we have a situation where you have to spent extremely long times in a small cluster of points to capture an objective, but the vulnerability is absolutely not worth the tradeoff if your team is absent, killing an entire gameplay loop of backdooring strategies


Part 1/3 (i never knew we had a 3000 items limits)

[Enriel_Karledo]

Third : pathing
The map suffers from mobility issues already pointed in point 1, but also the pathing is quite horrendous. One way cliffs can work if everyone have them (see Shatter) but the map suffers from basically not having many avenues to engage opposing to Onsal which is extremely open. Even at game start, if your team wants to cap a node and then take a flank, its going to take so long that you need to tradeoff : take your node, or hope you move fast enough to even try to engage but put your team at extreme risk itself for a very limited payout.
Middle is a terrible case especially in snowstoms where the only shortcut is well... cut by a gigantic snowman. The idea is good, but its basically the only shortcut in the map and it's not available for a good third of the match, the design decision is questionnable at best.

The map shows the idea was studied, as emphasized by the small ledges corridors, we need more of these, create small tunnels, more precarious ledges or ways to jump from mid up to sides (being blasted off by a geyser with a tradeoff of movement for taking a fall damage as an example would work great and add interesting choices)

Fourth : the map events :
Two of them exist : snowstorms and auroras
Auroras are self explanatory, they provide LB gauge boost and are, mostly, a non issue and quite entertaining to see absurd gameplay loops go out. There are some problematic lbs that should be adressed, but this is less map and more "general pvp issues"

Snowstorms are an issue on two aspects:
1/ They block key corridors and mobility in a map already plagued by mobility issues, which needs to be adressed
2/ The aoe shields are way too powerful because of the multiplicative effect of Damage Reduction (DR)
By default, they give half the player's class hp as a shield and BH does not affect them (thankfully)
But its an unequal tool, as tanks and melee (like viper) tend to have already extremely good DR and defensive suite at their disposal

For a healer, that shield is applied with an average DR of 25%, meaning 30 000 hp means in average 37 500 effective hit points (eHP)
For a melee like reaper, it is applied with an average DR of 50%, meaning 30 000 hp means in average 60 000 eHP
But when tanks enter the equation, the maths comes to its head very quickly as DR is multiplicative in PVP from tests
Lets take a very cautious approach, a gunbreaker with heart of corundum : 60% base DR and 10% extra DR
That makes for an effective 64% of damage (60% base and 10% of the 40% incoming damage remaining)

In that case, 30 000 hp will be equivalent to 84 000 (rounded up) eHP

[Enriel_Karledo]

In itself, it means that the tankier the job is you are facing in a snowstorm, the more you are striking in the absolute wind.
Then the glaring issue reveals themselves in this logic :
a/ multiple fields can appear at the same time, with no cooldown
b/ they are very wide, and hard to miss, meaning you cannot have any counterplay of preventing an opponent from getting in them and staying in them. Stuns do nothing against the debuff, knockbacks would imply you are at the center to push the opponent away, which seem easy in theory but horrid in practice if you are not tanky (as such, i challenge bards and brave machinist to try, they will meet unfortunate demises)

There is also the dopamine issue, hitting for zeros is frustrating, especially when 3/4/5 players wail on a target that takes for 10 seconds nearly nothing, depurates, rush to another ice patch and rinse/repeat. The gameplay loop doesn't work unless you bring a monk that needs to lb to hold in place the target for 4 seconds, but doesn't solve the rest of its mana pool and toolkit. Whilst experienced players will realize the engagement is pointless, this will not be common nor easy to communicate about in chat with your teammates
For many players, this map will be their first and the feeling of being cheated against a tank or a good viper will be extreme, meaning those players will decice to simply leave content after a few matches and never touch it again. An option could be to change the ice defense to be a depurate or something else, but players need to have a bit of feedback on their hits.

The ice phase can be entirely kept, but a system of either degressive value of shields need to be put in place or simply an immunity once you used a shield for 30 seconds, meaning you can permanently upkeep a shield if you are skilled, but avoid the feeling of facing invulnerable foes when they can just do "ice hopping"

To summarize : (TL DR)
1/ Map needs to be shrunk down and pathing between nodes need a full review, less dead ends, more mobility is required to actually be able to engage in PVP
2.A/ Capture time might need a review as it only favors a "blob" logic and less of a skirmish logic, killing what tends to make for interesting multi front engagement in favor of a simple minded blob you either follow or die alone pointlessly
2.B/The amount of nodes present at the same time needs to be reduced, its current state favors an "uber and go" playstyle and not flanking/fighting unless at mid
3/ Ice shields need a review as they create a negative feedback loop for players which will most likely lead to boredom and dismissal of the gamemode

Wishing you all a happy carnage, if you manage to find your opponents in less than 5 business days
If you read all of that, cheers, see you in the frontlines

[KBK]

Enriel's points are astute and fall in line with what I hear other Frontline players saying.

Lest there be any doubt about the current problems, all you need to do is look at the match statistics. Damage totals in many matches are startlingly low. Players who I've never seen register below 1 million damage (and usually much higher) are suddenly closer to 500K at Worqor.

There are seeds of good ideas here, but the execution is lacking. In its present form, this is a PvP map that, sadly, discourages PvP.

[Router]

Contrast this with Onsal Hakair, where it is always possible for a full team to reach a node before it is claimable, and thus fairly contest it. This produces prolonged conflicts, which in turn produce battle high, which in turn produces a more enjoyable experience for Frontline enthusiasts. With Worqor, on the other hand, prolonged conflicts are vanishingly rare. It simply takes too long to get from Point A to Point B. And by the time you get to Point B, the node is already gone, and the reason for players to battle disappears.

The fundamental issue is the mismatch between (1) lengthy travel times around and across the map, due to its design; and (2) the short length of time required to claim a node.

This pretty much mirrors my experience. My matches have been a constant repeat of "well, we would have liked to fight over this node, but it took a minute to run over here and nodes are captured ~50 seconds after appearing, so...". I think it also doesn't help that IMO the map throws too many nodes at you. How the hell are you expecting people to fight if the map is spawning more A-rank nodes than there are teams available to capture them? I've only seen a couple of prolonged node fights and generally people are just running around like headless chickens because nodes are constantly appearing and being captured and no one can keep up

[Valence]

I finally got to play with this map to make up my own mind over it. My opinion isn't that negative of it, actually pretty positive overall. I think the map could become instantly great with a couple of adjustments.


The map is not too big. I could get to any node spawn fast enough. The problem comes more from other points of grievance that people have mentioned above, namely:

- The nodes start ticking down a little too fast, but more important get captured fast as well. Overall though this doesn't seem to be a big problem when there is only one or two nodes to go for, you get there on time and you fight over it and it works as intended.

- The problems start arising when there is way too many nodes that appear at once. We're not playing with coordinated teams on voice, this is a casual mode where everybody just blobs over to whatever is closest to them. This is I feel what is the main cause of people feeling that they're getting overwhelmed and having to run everywhere at once.

- I don't think having multiple points of friction cropping up at once is necessarily bad but it becomes problematic when 3 or 4 of them pop on the edges where it's a lot harder for the 3 teams to contest, and this can swing massively in favor of the team that gets them. I think the middle points are better suited for them to have multiple spawning at once because it attracts the three whole teams there at once where they can fight over those.


On the points I actually found to be big strengths of the mode so far:

- The capture system is a lot more interesting than a game of clicking. Only downside is that the circles are small, which really, really snowballs into AoE kitchen sinks (as if FL wasn't already plagued by this...). Also tends to favor tanks way too much in a mode where tanks are already gods.

- The map layout is really interesting with cliffs and ledges to play around. Jumping down from heights right onto the teams capturing the middle points feels great. I can't speak about balance so far or if the map is truly symmetrical or not I'd need more games for this, but the layout is really more interesting than the bland, flatlands of onsal. This offers a lot more strategic opportunities for flanking, etc.

[SpritePR]

I have no trouble getting to nodes on time. Of course, i pay attention and keep map open.

It's still cheeks to go from NE to SW or anything like that. I have been doing frontlines since i started playing the game so I guarantee you I am paying attention to the map. (I've won 2/3 games on this map I still think it sucks to run that far)