It’s been bugging me since Truth (which is by far my favortie map from the H5 beta ) started to show up more often in the Slayer map line up after the playlist update.
I know 343 shrunk the map by like 20% from the Beta closed, but now the power points seem to be all out of wack now.
For example. The sitelines for spawn killing are horendus now and the smaller map size seems to have encouraged base camping as compared to the beta cersion that was larger. A few other things have been affected as well due to the shirking of the map size, such as being able to kill people quite easily off the intial “game start” spawns. Now that the distance is a lot closer you can see into the enemy base from almost every vantage point in the opposite base ( so very little spawn protection ). Another thing I have noticed is that on the elbows, you shoot people from the base side ramp on the elbow before they can see you and you don’t even have to expose yourself.
In the beta since the map had longer the draw distances, the elbows were also more offset to where if you wanted to shoot people on the opposite elbow or in their base, you actually had to move up to the top of camo and risk exposing yourself to shoot at the enemy base or elbow. With the base camping, you can easily look into the bases and see quite a bit from the carbine towers and spawn camp people now. As compared to the beta you had to come down on the ramp a lot further to kill people that just spawned in the bases.
After playing many matches in the beta and the full release version of Truth, I felt like the overall flow of the map was much more balanced being larger. People didn’t spawn camp the bases as much and there was more of a equal oppertunity to fight for Carbine towers, top mid and even Elbows. Also with the larger map compared to the smaller map I don’t see any kill time improvements. In fact I feel the smaller map become more stale mate at some points because it is way to easy to kill people anywhere on the map without moving from a single location. With the larger version of the map people were forced to move around more in order to get sight lines on the enemy.
The power weapon placement also feels off. Now we all know that Midship and it’s remakes have always featured the Energy Sword as the main centerpiece power weapon that everyone wants. But the Plasma Caster being in the center instead of the energy sword I feel like disrupts player’s initiative to own that top mid section. I hardly see anyone pick up the Plasma Caster and people avoid that top mid control now because it is too exposed for a weapon that is sort of useful and not map controling. Yes it can be wuite effective in the right hands, but against good players, a BR, Carbine or a well placed nade are going to be the go to play instead of taking the plasma caster for a spin. I’ve cone across Onyx players and a few Champions on tha map and none of them go for the Plasma Caster.
Profit’s Bane was a much better centerpiece than the Plasma Caster, it was a more viable weapon and people had more incentive to control that top mid weapon spawn. Yes it was a bit OP at times when multiple ones spawned and two players had it on your team, but even a normal energy sword would still have more attention for top mid instead of being at the bottom of the yellow lift.
Everything aside from the map balance issues that I feel have come to light after the downsizing of the map, I did also notice that the textures and lighting effects/atmosphere particulates were much more detailed in the beta. Upper part of the map had more of a slight hazy moisture look to it and the beam scattering was mich better looking. It seems that a lot of the lighting effects that were really cool looking in the beta are now missing in the final release build. Same with some light reflections and shadowing on your spartans.
Not that it’s a huge thing, and the game still looks amazing, but I noticed from comparing game clips I recorded it appears that graphical textural effects that we saw in the beta were toned back significantly. Maybe this was something that had to be done to reach that 1080p 60fps benchmark… Yeah the beta was running at 720p 30fps, but the textures and atmosphere on the map was a lot more awesome “Next Gen” looking.
