I have been holding off on this post in the hopes that the issues would be addressed in one of the weekly updates. they haven’t been, so here we go.
Exile - This map is lopsided. Everyone knows it, everyone prays to be Blue when they vote for it. It could be made balanced with a few minor changes. Gauss at Red spawn, the tank moves to the bridge in front of it, the banshee goes to the top-mid platform (site “B” in dominion, it has the banshee there already in that game type). Ordnance will make the difference at that point, as it does in a lot of matches, but at least the balance will be restored to the map itself.
Meltdown - This one is a little tougher. Spawn trapping is extremely easy on this map. As long as no-one actually goes inside the opponent’s base, they will spawn in there with only three ways out. 5 players can lock down a base with no escape for the trapped team, leaving 3 to steal the second mantis, and camp their own base to stop the spawn from switching over. Not sure what can be done here, but it needs to be looked at.
Vortex - Blue spawn is very weak. We trapped a team up there with the hog and wraith, with long distance DMR fire and snipe, and got 30 kills up on them before the spawn switched. Maybe it’s a respawn zone weighting issue, not sure, but I know I would be frustrated if that happened to me.
These are issues that could be addressed with some simple tweaking. The lag and ordnance balance will take time to address. I’m willing to wait for that, but the maps themselves need to be fun, and getting spawn trapped, or trapped in the tunnels on Exile by a gauss being handled by an operator and a pathfinder with no way to fend them off, just isn’t fun.