Sand

[Taketori]

Map sucks yada yada. But how bad is it really?

Despite the map's likely deserved reputation as the "worst map". I worry that the discourse surrounding it has become increasingly hyperbolic. And that same sentiment is creating a feedback loop making the experience of playing it even worse than it should be.

My experience playing it on both Materia and Aether has been poor, but not so bad that I'd rather just stop playing for the 90 minutes it's active for. This, as far as I'm aware, is not the opinion of the majority.

On Materia ranked only really occurs on Friday and Saturday nights. This last Friday, the 8th of December The Red Sands became the active map 90 minutes after the games started. The queues died within 15 minutes.

While my preferred solution would involve rebalancing the map to be more enjoyable (especially for melee and tank players), or removing it entirely. Nothing I write here is likely to impact the map mechanically. All I can really do is campaign to have you, the reader, to experiment. Develop the solo queue meta. Maybe together we can find the gold hidden beneath the Sand.

TL;DR Sand is bad, but potentially underrated. Post your experiences, discussions you've had and hopes for the future

[yaba_gabagool]

No, it's deservedly mocked for its bad design. Terrible map mechanics that double down on poor implementation.

To date, the only map they've been successful at doing this is the Bomb/Lava map (I can't think of the name right now), that gives the player the ability to reasonably dodge/or interact with the map hazards in creative ways that enhance game-play, rather than be subjected to boring/game disrupting elements (Wind map, desert map. These are trash and Square deserves to be mocked for doubling down on stupid ideas as they are wont to do).

Square developers when they're set on an idea, even if that idea is terrible, double down in the face of overwhelming justification to the contrary.

It's always been a weakness they have suffered, and will continue to do so.

Capcom on the other hand, shows real promise and for decades now continues to bring out real slappers of games that hit on both innovation as well as creativity in their implementation.

Would love to play a capcom mmo.

[Eastwall]

I am just going to enjoy the bath in oasis and throw the game as a form of protest

[RyanCousland]

the map is fine i think,but i havent seen a direct criticism of the map just vague words like balance or re-balance in your thread, im sure if you or anyone else is having trouble with the map anyone would be happy to help, aside from the oasis there's the water eruption that cancels out the heatwaves, for cactar its base dmg that splits between the number of people, guard does not mitigate, and the lunar tender is a buff.

[yaba_gabagool]

the map is fine i think,but i havent seen a direct criticism of the map just vague words like balance or re-balance in your thread, im sure if you or anyone else is having trouble with the map anyone would be happy to help, aside from the oasis there's the water eruption that cancels out the heatwaves, for cactar its base dmg that splits between the number of people, guard does not mitigate, and the lunar tender is a buff.

Water eruption that cancels out the heat wave?

No it gives a one time heal if you stand in the area.

The mechanics are super disruptive to the match, and serve no real purpose other than to just exist. They are pants on heads idiotic design.

Mechanics/obstacles like these are to enhance the main game loop of the match, or the combat in the match itself. These instead cause the match to stop or players to wait out the mechanics and are detracting to the main game play loop.

It's awful design.

Square is really, really, really bad at pvp map design (other than onsal and the only crystal map that's good), which is astounding considering the raw amount of peers in the industry they could literally just copy from and make theirs better.

But we know square, ample amounts of pride, minimal amounts of resourcefulness.

Like, this game's pvp is worse than wow's pvp, and wow pvp is bottom barrel.

Yoshi has failed utterly in this front, but let's be real, he couldn't care less about pvp.

[RyanCousland]

Water eruption that cancels out the heat wave?

No it gives a one time heal if you stand in the area.

The mechanics are super disruptive to the match, and serve no real purpose other than to just exist. They are pants on heads idiotic design.

Mechanics/obstacles like these are to enhance the main game loop of the match, or the combat in the match itself. These instead cause the match to stop or players to wait out the mechanics and are detracting to the main game play loop.

It's awful design.

Square is really, really, really bad at pvp map design (other than onsal and the only crystal map that's good), which is astounding considering the raw amount of peers in the industry they could literally just copy from and make theirs better.

But we know square, ample amounts of pride, minimal amounts of resourcefulness.

Like, this game's pvp is worse than wow's pvp, and wow pvp is bottom barrel.

Yoshi has failed utterly in this front, but let's be real, he couldn't care less about pvp.

each water puddle aoe gives a heal and the eruption lasts about as long enough for you to get the oasis, if youre standing in one place all the time with little to no movement or positioning then youre asking to get killed,

every map mech is supposed to be disruptive thats kind of the point, the mechs give some classes an advantage that are lacking

"Mechanics/obstacles like these are to enhance the main game loop of the match, or the combat in the match itself. These instead cause the match to stop or players to wait out the mechanics and are detracting to the main game play loop." This is applicable to every map

to be honest their map design is good (aside from the new shatter) im looking forward to more cc maps and hopefully better FL ones, the rest of youre post i can understand & empathize as i too have my frustrations with this games pvp but this particular map isnt one of em

[yaba_gabagool]

each water puddle aoe gives a heal and the eruption lasts about as long enough for you to get the oasis, if youre standing in one place all the time with little to no movement or positioning then youre asking to get killed,

every map mech is supposed to be disruptive thats kind of the point, the mechs give some classes an advantage that are lacking

"Mechanics/obstacles like these are to enhance the main game loop of the match, or the combat in the match itself. These instead cause the match to stop or players to wait out the mechanics and are detracting to the main game play loop." This is applicable to every map

to be honest their map design is good (aside from the new shatter) im looking forward to more cc maps and hopefully better FL ones, the rest of youre post i can understand & empathize as i too have my frustrations with this games pvp but this particular map isnt one of em

Their map design is awful.

Each water spot gives its own heal, so are you suggesting that you catch water spots the entire time the heatwave mechanic is operational? Proving my point for me, it detracts from the main loop of the game, it's a crap mechanic, just like the majority of other crap ideas they've implemented as of late.

Bomb map is literally the only map that has a successful obstacle mechanic in it. It doesnt detract from the main game loop or bring the match to a screeching halt because of its implementation, and it can be leveraged by players to gain an advantage. It has just enough randomness to make things interesting, but never detracts from the main objective of the map.

The only other map that's good is the one with no obstacles, because it's 100% symmetrical and was hard for even Square developers to mess up the math on.

[ThaCa]

Their fixation on super open checkpoint areas is so annoying, it makes both the newer maps huge pain to play.