An explanation for the rankings, 100% personal BTW : Indar - The best continent of the bunch IMO. The maps are overall good, the only continent with 3 biomes and latitudes, and is on the top of the list because : Bases on the frontlines are hard to take, fun to fight in and overall very balanced for alerts - if you like big, long fights with vehicles and infantry all lanes and middle of the map are perfect. If you manage to take a large facility on the border, you have a few decent filler bases before you fight in a facility which is even harder to take. Out of all the continents, I've had the most tense and fun alerts on Indar. Great combined arms continent, vehicles and infantry is viable with enough cover to offer both close and long range combat. Every MBT can leverage it's unique advantages here. Arguably the best lattice. Enough links to flank and avoid strongpoints, but zergs can't dodge each other without mass redeployment. Looks alright, but 3 biomes does add a lot of visual and some gameplay variation, especially in between the biomes. Each biome favors certain play-styles but everything is viable if you play well. My only complaints are that the bases could use some work. Crown is a bit too much of a farmfest, Ceres is very hard to defend compared to TI and Crown, no TI Alloys-Crown rock bridge and I do miss old Scarred Mesa Skydock and Abandoned NS Offices a little, southern Indar is pretty barren and not very interesting compared to the rest of the continent. There are also tons of tower bases. All things considered, very minor issues compared to the other continents. Hossin - Has some major issues, but the good far outweighs the bad. The best three-way in the game, underground parts of bases done right and overall the best base design in the game, period. Nason's Defiance is the best base in the game, hands down. The foliage and rocks lets you be sneaky with sunderers, surrounding swamps are pretty good for vehicles and construction and the base itself is amazing for infantry play, but it still requires vehicles to push out attackers and get sundies as close to the points as possible. Other bases are amazing too - Fort Liberty, Gourney Dam, Fort Drexler, Hayd Skydock etc. even the small bases are good, only favoring defenders a little. It's very possible to have a back-and-forth with 50/50 pop. Very fun but fair for aircraft - if you just want to A2A, go above the trees, and A2G is a little more than just RM + LMB, where you have to take into account the massive trees which you can ram into, but also use as cover. Dropping routers and squad beacons on top of trees is also nice, and lets you do actual guerilla warfare. It's the second best looking continent overall, and would be the best looking continent if not for desaturation and fog. Construction is quite fun here, as you can turbo up hills and mountains to build there. It's a shame that there's nothing on the top, but they're a great place to build bases that are hard to reach. Easily the best spawn locations. I've already said that trees are good for routers and beacons, you can hide a stealth sunderer literally anywhere. It's not immediately obvious like on other continents where a sunderer could be deployed (even though there are a few obvious spots), and overall fights don't die that easily, which is a major plus for me. Has a good locking bonus - doesn't affect ranking in any way, but auto-repair on landing pads and resupply towers is a very nice convenience. Now onto the bad, there are too many barren mountains in the middle of the map. They don't offer anything except railroad you to the next base. It's strange because other Hossin lanes don't have this problem since they're more open with flat swamps and occasional rolling hills, but Acan and Zotz are just facilities blocked off by small bases and huge mountains, it's not very fun on the vehicle side of things and gets annoying as infantry as well. Construction sites, they're actually very good for a filler base, but there's too many of them, especially on the southern and eastern side of the map where there's 3 and 4 of them in a row, respectively. Finishing Hossin and having 2 construction sites stay would be a big improvement. You can even replace some of these with a construction site. Not enough of a reason to get vehicle superiority in a lot of bases, vehicles can only kill sunderers, other vehicles and the occasional lowland base and can't support infantry unless you're A2G. Facilities and satellite bases are too densely packed, which gives very little space for vehicle combat. Skilled pilots are very hard to shoot down, especially as infantry as there's a lot of cover and virtually no base turret AA. Some turrets are deliberately placed so you don't see half the screen from trees. Lattice railroads you a bit on the edges, but is very connected in the center of the map. A few new links would be great. Lastly, the plants. I've lost MBTs by gently touching flowers and yellow blobs. It's a bit better now but it's still annoying. Amerish - Plenty of good bases, but has some bad design and has too many mountains. Should've been overhauled instead of Esamir. Ascent is like Crown. A few really good spots for open field fights, I've had some of the most fun footzergs here. Great large bases - Auraxis Firearms, Crux Mining and NC Arsenal are simple but very good. Ascent is like Crown, and the bases around it are pretty trash. Ascent fight turns into a 2v1 most of the time. Most fillers are bad, favoring attackers and easily being zerged over. Some bases have cap timers that are too short or too long, with some points being right next to spawn. Too many mountains and barriers, entire sections of the map are walled off by terrain. If you want to have fun in vehicles, get a Harasser or an ESF. Construction can be cancer on Amerish, if you find a sinkhole and build a base the only way to kill it is Glaives and Orbitals. Worst lattice ever. It's a straight line from one warpgate to the other, usually with no flanking room. Ikanam Biolab is a Containment Site 0.5, fun to fight around but a bad infantry fight compared to other 2 bios on the continent. Esamir - Wasted potential. Shattered warpgate area looks great, and the skybox is probably the best in the game. Some bases that were left over before SW are good. Containment sites are godawful. Super imbalanced in terms of base positions, you have two facilities and a large outpost in a row but on different lanes it's nothing but small outposts and construction bases. Having 3 construction bases in a row anywhere is bad. Having a rock every 10m with rolling hills for most of the map makes vehicle combat annoying and favors Vanguards and Magriders. Prowlers can barely leverage anchor and barrage and so every other MBT is better in this environment. Terrain has a lot of clutter that doesn't add anything meaningful. Bases either massively favor attackers or can't be capped unless you zerg. Lattice railroads you too hard in some areas. Almost every single revamped base sucks, and most of the left-overs could've used an update. Oshur Best looking continent in the game. You have some great open field fights if pop stays somewhat even. Construction bases that are actually fun to fight in. Is very fun if you only play specific play-styles. I can count the amount of good bases on Oshur on one hand - Tridents are trash, Interlinks are trash, most minor facilities get spawncamped hard, Centri is good if you get past the stairways, a lot of minor outposts would be good if you couldn't camp them and if they weren't so far away from cap points, as a defender your chances of winning without a zerg are about as good as winning a lottery. Repeated mistakes from the early days : Tower bases with A points inside towers, extremely isolated spawnrooms with no secondary teleporters... Lattice almost as bad as Amerish, your only flanking routes being Tridents (lol), Seaposts where no fights happen or zerging over construction bases. It's not like you can flank anywhere anyways with water everywhere. All of this means that flow of battle is non-existent and ends up in a steamroll, when one side gets pushed they can barely swing back. The layout forces you to play tanks, A2G and infiltrators in open fields with barely any cover if you want to have fun. Prowlers are completely broken on this continent, I've gone on insane killstreaks just because every other vehicle has no cover from your rapid fire, high velocity shells. Too many random islands that only exist so Wrel could drop dogtags on them. A lot of bases practically require ANVILs for sunderers if you want to have any fights on them. Almost no good sunderer spots in the entire continent, means fights end too quickly without some vehicle presence. Over half of terrain is completely useless water that disables your everything and gives air protection. And you move super slow in it so flanking is tedious. Plants and small rocks that flip your vehicles. It's worse than Hossin.
Hossin + Oshur are both unfinished. Oshur was a nice novelty when it was new, but that honeymoon phase is long over. Driving on Hossin is an absolute nightmare because you have to take exact paths, plus pumpkins and random bits of rotten tree root will flip your tank. Esamir has a lot of bad ideas, and was clearly designed by someone who doesn't comprehend the strategic level of the game, but I can at least pick where I want to go with my vehicle and don't randomly flip. Amerish is not without design flaws and feels a bit confined, but I like it overall. It has room to improve, but is not the priority. Indar is my personal favorite, but even it has issues. The fact that it has a predictable script for the first couple hours is annoying. East gate gets dogpiled at Crown until they lose it. East can't attack west because Regent + Crossroads + Crown are all easily defended. East goes north to piss around at Mao. Mao gets cut off. Eventually West gets caught not paying attention and loses one of Crown or Crossroads, then the game starts. Only way to not have this happen: North pounces on Howling as the continent opens, losing Indar Ex. is an acceptable loss to make this happen. Eventually the west front goes to the north's favor because any push from west can be cut off at Quartz, but no such cut off potential exists the other way because Dahaka is BROKEN. Anyways: S: Indar A: Amerish C: Esamir F: Hossin + Oshur
Mine would be: Indar>Amerish>Hossin>Esamir.(what's left of it...) Indar, The almost perfect map! Has a bit of everything, hasn't yet been ruined. Amerish, similar to indar but with a bit more canyon annoyance putting it in second place. Again like indar it hasn't yet been ruined. Hossin, lots of canyons and clutter forcing you down lanes, not the best bases, but it's 'ok'. Esamir, my old favourite map, unfortunately couldn't survive the meddling of wrel, Many of the best bases were deleted, the entire north east corner is pointless annoying construction junk, And no matter what lane you try to push down you will always seem to bump into the roadblock called a 'containment site', overly complex mess of stairs and corridors uncappable without a zerg. To say I was angry to see my favourite map being massacred would be a colossal understatement. And you might be thinking that i'm missing something off my tier list, But i just don't feel it even deserves to be mentioned on a tier list, I will NEVER play it. there are 4 maps, if none of the 4 maps are open I guess I'm logging out.
Well, i like Oshur so... Personally i am somewhat sick and tired of being on Indar. Further i dont really understand peoples problem with Hossin either.
by personal bias: S: Indar ... kinda obvious ... A: Esamir ... could have a couple more open bases but it´s pretty cool (pun totaly intended) with the various base ideas B: Hossin ... yes i personaly consider the map decent simply because it´s less about vehicle columnrushes but not entirely deemphasises them .. F: Amerish ... i just HATE this MOBAesque lanemap ... next to no flexibility on it ... maybe the ONLY positive is zergrushes being limited were they can go ... so you may counter/avoid accordingly ... ?: Oschur ... honestly haven´t played much of it to judge ...
Portions of the continent (right in the middle of it, a shame) are walled in like that, but edges of Hossin have some very open swamps and rolling hills. TBH, it's the same on every continent, it's just easier to notice on Hossin because you constantly feel like you're walled in by skyscraper trees, and there are some annoying rocks that wall off parts of the map at times. That said, when Hossin opens up it's surprisingly good. Oshur isn't a terrible continent, it can be quite fun but it does force you to lob tank shells 500m away or die. Infantry only exists to be fodder for vehicles which is a shame. I'd get sick from playing only 1 continent, and sometimes even something which makes my preferred playstyle useless is refreshing. Tell them chief! Real chads drive a magrider up a mountain to ram A2G farmers
I cant say I agree with some things on your list (Hossin's trees being a balanced idea for aircraft rather than making G2A more useless while aircraft's largest threat is their own flight skill). But since its mostly your own opinion... yeah sure. Good list I guess!
Thank you! If your base literally needs arrows to show people where to find the point then its overcomplicated trash. Ive been playing since shattered warpgate and I still get lost in those stupid bases. The spawns are in a really stupid place making it hard to quickly react to outside vehicles. And the crouching vents seem like a cool idea on paper, but they just turn into a death trap as the enemy is firing into the exit preventing escape.
Ye this is the vote that would win. If everyone polled. Indar wins 1st due to Impact Site being dope & a map that infantry & vehicles like evenly (however the top left Suarva area needs editing, its meh, too open fielded & always gets abandoned if trailing north of Quartz. As the NE Suarva Bio is too easily cut off, so top left of Indar if attacking, always gets lost & cut off. Making the top left regions of Indar nearly pointless to attack. North of Crown hill road is still lame for sunderers, LA rain c4, dead sunder, everytime. TI north hill also needs editing for patio parking, & the people want triple rock bridges. While the devs took a way the rock bridge everyone liked. So learning how to reuse the environment for infantry fights, would be wise. Lastly I'd rework Tawrich area, its a area I find so boring, yet the zerg outfit always tries to take Tawrich regions, I mean the area has good boulders & paths, I just don't link how it's linked, it doesn't lead to the enemy warpgate & it always gets retaken as the enemy path to Crossroads. So Tawrich is just a meager base for outfit zerg leaders who want to ghostcap zerg it for outfit resources. So Ye I'd alter ALL the links of ALL the Tawrich regions or regions near Tawrich. The base links. & Lastly people ignore Impact Site mid north of Indar Links too often, they'll take Galaxy Solar & ignore the rest of north mid. I'd also give more boulders near the open fields around Hallow Pass) Amerish is 2nd due to pleasant grass scenery (mid has too many hills, Ascent is fought at too often, ARX needs a better road to Jagged. & Chimney Rock to Hurakan to Bastion base, those links are lame too, its like 4 regions of Ghostcapping Hurakan just to get to a good Bastion mid fight. I'd re-do all the links from Chimney Rock to Hurakan amp to the Bastion base, it's a lame ghostcap walk to 4 or more bases. Just to return to mid, the Bastion, no thanks) Esamir is above average (The main bio fights were at Esamir, they took that away, & now bios fights rarely happen for more than 10 mins per month. Now always short lived bio fights after Esamir ridded them. Fields are too open everywhere, perhaps needs more boulders. The top right of esamir is meh. All of the north is neglected, not just the top right, but the north mid & north east as well) Hossin (has Nasons fights WAY too often & ye has so many lanes its the lamest map for vehicle fights. Hossin requires a random event. I'd actually be fine with Nasons having to be edited or altered. People ignore C there all the time, nobody defends the underground area, they only tunnel farm leading to a base loss. I'd suggest random lattice base link switches for Hossin, ways to switch the map links from base to base. Hossin would be a good map to experiment with) Oshur is below average (When you arrive, the map seems objectiveless, the tridents dont even seem apart of the map not bridged good enough, the seaports are barely used & need to be bigger platforms, nobody swims with vehicles even during a 2 hour bridge stalemate fight, people forget to swim, they reduced sunder swim speed so swimming vehicle armadas are pointless now, many bases don't have vehicle terms, the lane fest needs to be altered to having more random base links, not enough trees, most of the beach sand isles are too much of a hill making ocean warefare able to shoot land people obsolete, infantry don't have enough big infantry bases, & mid isn't interesting enough also requires some event like capture the flag. Also Wakan & Astira need highlighted mid as they are often ignored for Pommel Gardens or Mirror Bay (so the left 2 regions of mid are not as popular as the right 2 regions of mid, for Oshur) Pretty much mid is fought at too often for every alert & populated hours would require events to shift this. Then the purple trees of the top right of Esamir, I'd suggest those trees to be added to other maps, as those trees are for infantry fights outside gorilla style. & that Esamir NE area usually doesn't supply infantry fights. Meanwhile Oshur barely has any jungles. Simply isn't dense enough. Oshur should have been a vine wacker jungle explorer, instead its mostly a ledge hill sand isle laner. Beach Hills that 80% of them a vehicle isn't able to drive to the top of them, why even have water combat, if most of the water approaches just lead you to a wall of isle ledge unattainable to travel further.
