I'm speaking directly about Indar here. It is no surprise to me that nobody is ever fighting near the north Warpgate. It seems that everyone is constantly fighting between the SE and SW of the map. Before the patch, TR held most of the north side of the map, completely unchallenged. Now, since the patch, it is NC who has the whole north side of the map, completely unchallenged. The majority of battles seem to take place between the Southeast and Southwest teams, and the North just comes in and cherry picks whatever they want. Why is this? Well for one, the entire north side of the map is a desert with no cover from airplanes. This, coupled with the fact that there aren't many satellite bases with air support mean that rolling tanks and sundies up there is straight suicide. Does anyone else think this is the case?
Agreed. Warpgate rotation made the problems even more glaring. NC really was gimped with their old warpgate, but now it's VS that's gimped. Whoever controls the north wargate will always have a ton of fun though.
Before & after the rotation I've had awesome fights there. I don't think the terrain is imbalanced at all, a wide sprawling area treats you all much the same whether you're attacking or defending. It's as though people rarely bother to go there or something. I don't know what the actual distances are like but it feels very far away from the rest of Indar, and I think a lot of people are probably wary of it for fear of overextending. I notice a lot of players (myself included) tend to spawn their vehicles at the warpgate, which is often a good idea since for whatever reason they bug less that way, and I'm guessing that the travel rather than the terrain causes a lot of it.
SE warpgate sucks because you have to travel and defend bases within canyons. This allows enemies to camp above you and have a good time sniping and farming your vehicles....land or air. The canyons are high enough that jets flying out of the SE warpgate have a hard time finding a flight ceiling away from shots, and at the same time people can lock-on rocket any vehicles passing through down below within the canyons. This warpgate has sucked for NC for 3 months since launch, now VS is feeling the same burn. It's possibly the biggest reason why VS population are going down on many servers.
For the SE warpgate, it's easier for the invaders to get on top of canyons than defenders. An additional access would be greatly appreciated, at least on foot, I mean, you have to go through all that without getting blown up ? I'm surprise NC didn't rant about it earlier
I don't entirely believe this is a problem until the update bringing warpgate locking is implemented. Though it limits resources, an active team would find ways to work around it while maintaining their battlefronts. I do agree that the Southern warpgates do tend to bottleneck the amount of troops sent to the northern territories though.
On Helios, this wasn't an issue before rotation because the TR had the lowest average population percentage on Indar during prime hours (and probably off prime hours too) so holding the middle of the continent was possible, but then you had to go do other stuff in another hex and that just left security holes. They didn't have the manpower to throw around, is what I mean to say.
I think once they implement the change where you can take over a warpgate entirely, this issue will be lessened to the extent that once someone captures a warp gate, they can control the territory. The fact still remains though, if all population is equal, the north warp gate has a big advantage over the SE and SW gates.
Fix it, but only after every faction has spent 3 months stuck in the SE corner. After all TR/VS weren't interested when NC was pointing out the problems with it.
To be fair, some NC did rant about it but were generally showered with 'L2P' comments from people who had never experienced the SE warpgate.
You can also at least jump up to the southwest with the jump pads (doesn't really help with the rest of the positions) on foot, which is something I bet hardly anyone ever does. Same for that back road, I don't think most people even realise it is there.
Playing from the SE is good for you it forces you to be a better player. It will be interesting to see how TR does. Will the better TR dps negate the geographic disadvantage? I'm guessing not, the accuracy and mobility of the VS hasn't helped much.
I think all sides are starting to get better at working around the pitfalls of the SE warpgate. I think the biggest hurdle is avoiding the Copper Ravine - Arroyo - Tawrich vortex that always seems to leave your empire stuck in the SE constantly fighting in the same crappy canyons all the time. Typically in the past this just ends up in SW fighting the SE while the N faction takes over most of the map. Although I used to actually enjoy the tech plant meat grinders from a couple months ago, they made things even tougher for the SE faction by basically making Tawrich untakeable during primetime.
It's not like this became a problem when VS switched warpgates. If NC hold the north unchallenged- then why don't you go and challenge them? I spend more time up there while the rest of the VS always stagnate around crossroads/crown.
Look on the bright side. It highlights that the problem is with the map, not the balance of the factions. So we know which bit needs to get fixed now.
I complained about Indar map balance since Beta. That particular problem was part of it. But nobody was really interest in listening. "L2P" excuses are way more interesting. Oh please wake up. This is known since the beginning of Beta. Indar had 2 warpgate switch. The biggest change out of all this was the massive canyon next to the Northern Warpgate to slow defender tank rush going west. They would have to redo most of Indar to fix that continent. It's not going to happen.
On Mattherson we probably won't notice, as we would rather do the foot zerg anyway. If it gets bad enough TE will just crash the blockade anyway. It may bother AOD or BWC though.
We have been ranting about it, however we we're kicked down by a lot of people claiming it was balanced, we should just suck it up, or the classic response of L2P, etc. It's the same problem along the SE/SW border we're there is no way for the SE to get a high ground.
