All water maps removed from ranked rotation
When I logged on to GPGnet tonight I found quite a surprise. Every map including any water has apparently been removed from the ranked rotation. I assume this is to balance the Aeon water advantage until the next patch.
This doesn’t seem like a very good solution though. I personally hated both Finn’s Revenge and Roanoke Abyss because I always lost on them against anyone, even Cybran and UEF players, but Finn’s Revenge is a classic map, and one of the best low resource maps. It is also a 10×10 duel map, allowing only 1v1 play, which is a rare map type. While I’m happy GPG is taking steps to fix the Aeon imbalance in the short term, this seems a bit extreme. Just removing Roanoke Abyss would have been much more reasonable.
At the same time the last of the 20×20 maps, Roanoke Abyss, has been removed from the ranked rotation. Luckily for those that like large maps, Emerald Crater has replaced it. I haven’t played this map before online, but I have against the AI, and its very flat and bland. It will be interesting to see how this land based 20×20 works out online. The maps currently in the rotation are: Emerald Crater, Open Palms, Theta Passage, Winters Duel, Fields of Isis, Syrtis Major, Sentry Point, and Arctic Refuge.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I’m thinking a better interim solution, though I don’t know how easy it would be to implement, would be to have two sets of faction preferences, one for water maps and one for non-water maps.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Oh, well this just goes to show that GPG have no intention of resetting the scores once the new balances have been implemented. I must say, I was hopeing they would, but I am sure all the top players will be much happier they wont.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
CydeWeys has a good point, two Aeon factions should have no problem battling on a water map.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
As a cybran player you might be able to imagine that any fix is welcome. However, I agree that Finn’s Revenge is a great map when neither player has the hover advantage over the other.
However, I have no interest in setting Aeon as my preference for water maps. From my point of view it would make more sense to temporarily and perhaps only in ranked games disable units’ hover ability. Hard to imagine how Aeon players would take this but it fixes the problem and not at the expense water maps.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:15 am
BRING BACK FINN’S! :-)
April 18th, 2007 at 3:26 am
to loose Finn’s is a sad thing happening :( but i didn’t like Roanoke anyway ;)
April 18th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I always hated Roanoke with a passion. Hardly ever won a game there. I almost always won on Finns Revenge though. That was my favourite map. :(
April 18th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I think that maps used in ranked games should change more often to prove that you are a good player in every one, with/without water, big, small, etc.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
a third of my wins were on roanoke =( i put it thumbs up because everyone hates it.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I actually did really well on Roanoke (I never lost on it), but at the same time, those games frequently just took so long because I didn’t take the Unconquerable route of mass-spammed Aurorae, but rather, full-on tech 2 destroyers, so it took a little bit to get the resource base to support it.