All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

[kushcompany]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

Its public relations! The more popular the map, the more players, thus the more clout. See the cycle. I only play Karkand, but it boils down to preference. After all it is ur bf2 birthright~!

[FlyingEgg]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

I still believe (since the game was released) that the majority of maps have too many flags. Daging, Dragon Valley, Gulf of Oman, etc.

A prime example is Gulf of Oman. Everyone remember playing the demo (however buggy and incomplete it was) with 64 players on the current 32 player format? It was brilliant! Concentrated battles, hard fighting between points along the beachfront, etc. And what happened upon the realease of the game? They added two flags. That's all it took to turn the map to rubbish. The action is divided, the battles less intense, vehicles more plentiful, all because of such a minute change.
This also serves as an example of the potential gain from lessening the number of flags and concentrating the conflict.

I'll put forward the notion that the number of capture points in various maps should be questioned... of course nothing will be changed, but it's just a thought.

Just my opinion.

[Ghilleman]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

I think oman is fine. The battles are still strongly concentrated on the beach, and still just as vicious.

[govedob]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

This seems to be a scenario that happens in every online game nowadays: Developer releases game, gamers find the best maps in the game and stick to them, while the rest of the maps are long forgotten except by the few hardcore players. Of course CS is the best example of this. How many servers do you see that play maps like compound, piranesi, or tides compared to the immortal favorites like dust, dust2 and aztec? Are Level designers getting sloppy nowadays and carving a few maps out of genius while the rest are just afterthoughts or are gamers just to stubborn to learn a new map?

Obviously the most popular maps in BF2 are karand, sharqi and wake. It also appears that the same trend is present in BF2's expansions and the euro forces booster pack. I've played neither of them but I've seen plenty of people complaining on here about how a couple maps are great while the rest are mediocre at best. Now that the Armored Fury booster pack is whetting everyones appetite it begs the question: Is $10 really worth 2 mediocre maps and one map carved out of genius? If all 3 maps aren't of the same calibur as wake, karkand, and sharqi, then EA has a dud on their hands. This is not meant to bash EA specifically but it's something that has become apparant in every game I play.

I don't agree. I think that most of the vanilla maps are excellent. I personally don't like only Songhua Stalemate and I would put Karkand as a second least favorite map only because it's the points/medics whores favorite. As far as SF, I like all the maps except Devil's Perch.

[Sir. Shpox]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

Urban Maps give you a good FPS feel, and bf2 rewards Karkand, with all its "point" oppurtunities for a start, basically, its fun, don't need to walk far and theres plenty of action, people play their favourite maps, some maps are more favoured than others, simple as it :p

[imported_SnowControl]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

I don't agree. I think that most of the vanilla maps are excellent. I personally don't like only Songhua Stalemate and I would put Karkand as a second least favorite map only because it's the points/medics whores favorite. As far as SF, I like all the maps except Devil's Perch.

I agree with you on most of that. Karkand is a very intense map, something the fog over the city helps to build up.

The other land and sea map (dalian, oman, wake) are also great, but offers much more freedom to those in the air. Some like this more strategic type of gameplay, while other prefer maps as karkand.

To some other guys about Karkand = Warlord. They are indeed quite similar, but warlord has many more sniping-possibilities. I love lying on one of the roofs sniping. Thanks to the grapple hook and the zip line, you can almost go anywhere on the map.

[RocketChild]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

A lot of the maps are very good. When BF2 came out, I instantly gravitated to Clean Sweep and Oman, because they were the closest to DC. But, aside from that, I thought that Sharqi had the best "balance" between air, infantry, and armor. It was a tight map and ranged with distance well.

Fushee and Dragon were good, but they fizzled out. Really, I think they are all good, but some are just hard to ground-pound like Karkand, Mash, and Sharqi. The other are for those that appriciate vehicles.

Talking with my friends, it is my feeling that DiCE should release their next booster pack for $10 with nothing but maps. No new renderings of airplanes, skins, or armor. Just maps. And, if they wanted it to sell better, then make it have a 3rd tier of unlocks that can be used in all maps like SF. I know people will buy an unlock pack for sure.

That is my idea, because it is clear, a year since BF2 was released, that we are not going to see DiCE santion several community maps for ranked play.

[The_Misfit]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

I'd tend to agree with most of the posts defending the idea that people tend to "like" certain maps. On Q2 it was all about Wharehouse, LostHallways, and the classic - TheEdge. Other maps rocked, but as a general concensus only a few were in constant rotation.

CSS is hurt by the lack of the ability to use CS maps on ladders like TWL. No hostage play hurts those maps, and you end up seeing D2, D, etc.. in rotation.

Some maps are just better put together, and the public is drawn to them. Its not as though the other maps aren't good...these are just better.

[Sheeple Police]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

Most of the maps are pretty good. Some have obvious biases, but most can be played and be competitive while having fun. The problem is there are two "versions" of fun in this game:

#1. Raking in points.
#2. Playing to win the map.

Unfortunately since a lot of people like #1 more than #2, what you end up with is Sharqi/Wake/Karkland/Mashtuur being popular.

[Gav]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

I think people tend to prefer maps where you can always do something no matter what situation you find yourself in. The urban maps are good for armour, good for infantry, good for the choppers (on those maps that have choppers). You can almost always spawn at a flag and be close to the action, without the need for a vehicle to get you there or necessitating a long tab to get there - only to be killed as soon as you arrive, forcing you to repeat the long boring walk to your death all over again.

Whilst I'm not saying other maps like Daqing Oilfields, Dalian Plant, FuShe Pass etc aren't good, they do rely on vehicles more than the urban maps. If you don't have a vehicle, you're in for a long walk, and you're easy pickings. What that means is that when you spawn and find no vehicles around because your team-mates have driven off with them, you have a very boring and frustrating time.

I'm not saying that always happens on these maps, and I know that proper teamwork, spawning on your squad leader etc helps overcome this... but if you play on public servers, there simply will be times when you experience this... and when you do, it's no fun. The popular maps, by contrast, are popular not because they're fun and the others aren't, but because they can more usually be relied upon to provide fun however you find yourself.

IMO, of course. Please don't read this as an intended statement of fact, or as a flame against those who don't like the urban maps. I take the point about them being a point-whore's favourite because it's easy to score well, and that sometimes you want a change from infantry combat... but the reason it's easy to score is because the battles are intense and packed into smaller areas (eg if you compare Karkand with Zatar - all of Karkand is a vicious battlefield and close together with lots of cover, but Zatar has a small number of key battlegrounds around the widely separated flags that one team can spawn straight into and the other has a long trek to get to through very exposed territory), and intense, exciting battles are what people like, not five minute walks through open terrain praying that no chopper flies over your head making it all a waste of time.

[Jemme101]

Re: All high quality maps or 3-4 excellent maps while the rest are junk?

...timelless classics like Prodigy, Assault, Nuke and so on ...

Christ that takes me back, could you plz not do that again :laugh:

Btw Dragon Valley is still good, at least it has some variety between all the different CP's :)