Add more maps in the rotation, please

I like the fact that the maps change every month but it gets old having to fight in the same 4 maps every time.

Card Hunter has had some great maps in the past, and I see no reason why they should be discarded and forgotten. Why not have a bigger pool of maps to keep the game interesting?

Here's my suggestion ( that I originally posted in some other topic):

1. Total number of maps is 12.
2. Every month we will have a poll where the community votes for their favorite maps. The poll runs for the whole month.
3. At the end of the month 4 maps with the least votes will be eliminated, and 4 new maps will be added.
4. Go back to step 1.

Alternatively we can just skip the whole voting thing and devs pick the best ones (based on what the community says about them).

This means that we will always have one third of maps that are new, and two thirds of maps that are community favorites. This way we would get best of both worlds because those 4 news maps would probably change meta a bit, but we could also enjoy bigger variation and old cool maps.

Discuss.

 

vote dust

 

Buahhahahahhaaa..

I don't get it.

 

(Neither do I.)

But good suggestion.

 

imo 12 maps would be too much. maybe increase it to 6 or 8?

 

One property of a system where users vote for a favourite map which is then retained could be that a particular favourite (or even a set of them) could become set in concrete and never leave. This might not be so bad as obviously it would be a popular one. Too bad for the minority who don't like it, it's going to stay nevertheless.

This happened in Counter-Strike. If the map rotation was put to a vote, a common reaction was that most everybody voted for de_dust. Every time. Round after round.

Post #2 is meant merely as a joking observation, not a particularly serious criticism of the suggestion. Hopefully it'll be buried in more in-depth discussion forthwith.

 

In a previous thread on this topic, I suggested a sliding window: each month the rotation contains the newest set plus the set that was new last month. And every third month or so instead of a completely new set we'd get a revised old set.

 

I think people want:
a) for the boards to affect the meta, but also
b) for their builds to be viable (with minor adjustments) on any rotation.

So I think you guys need to balance providing for both of those desires. More maps helps the latter, since a given build will automatically not be particularly good/bad on a given rotation. Fewer, more 'themed' maps will help the former, as you've already said. I'm not sure where the perfect balance is, but you definitely don't want people to be, say, unable to run wizards for a whole month just because "adjusting your build to optimize" means only running step warriors (as was basically the case on the revised Gladius maps). Just one example. I think it'd be cool if "adjusting for the boards" affected the peripherals of builds (e.g. whether to run flight aura or not) as opposed to key components (e.g. whether to run wizards or not).

 

I think having to adjust and find new strategies is a important part of the game and of the fun. IMO gets bored using the same deck over and over. I would say to increase the maps in rotation from 4 to 6

 

A single board runs into the problem of a single niche and dominant strategy running away with it. Having multiple boards means players have to avoid niche builds and account for all the boards in rotation. I think this is a good thing, as niche builds tend to lessen interesting decisions in favor of exploiting subtleties on the map.

The more boards in rotation I think the better -- but not *too* many to make it a pot luck on who wins. Definitely would like to see 6 maps with 1 ban per player or something (or even 8 maps with 2 bans per player). Having the ability to remove one or two maps would make it interesting as people could specialize a bit, but never be completely safe.

 

Having only one map would definitely have its advantages because then you could truly tweak your build based on the map. Currently Card Hunter MP suffers a bit from a kind of rock-paper-scissors deal where maps in the rotation are very different from each other. For example Celestial maps had 3 pretty balanced maps and the most unbalanced maps of all time: Celestial Koi. This kind of wizard/warrior bias makes it very difficult to optimise your deck because you never know which map you are going to get, and you are basically forced to play a balanced team. If you don't play a balanced team, and it's a battle between 3 warriors and 3 wizards, the random map choice could decide the winner even before the match starts. So yeah, having only one map would fix this problem.

Then again having only one map, or 4 maps that are very similar, would make things boring pretty quickly. I'd much rather have as much variation as possible, as long as the maps are not too biased towards any specific map or strategy. If it was up to me, we would have 100+ maps in rotation and new ones added each month

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this map thing. It all depends on how big of a role maps should have. I personally would like maps to play a very tiny role, something that makes things slightly different but doesn't straight out tell me what kind of builds I should play during that rotation.

Having to adjust to different situations is one of the most important things in a good CCG but I think this should come from new cards, items and classes, not maps. If instead of new maps each month, we would get a new card/item per week, MP would stay fresh and interesting, and there wouldn't be a need to change maps with the sole purpose of changing metagame.

 

But then if you go for the chest you're on the same map for 20+ games... you could definitely optimize but it might get monotonous.

 

I think it's a pretty awesome idea actually. It would be a great compromise between map variation and tuning your deck to a specific map. No more rock-paper-scissors with maps. Best part is that it would make the game feel fresh because something new happens every single day.

Make it happen BM!

That is true. It's not a "perfect" solution but I personally would much rather have 30 different maps in a month than the same 4. Daily variation would be zero but monthly variation would be HUGE.

 

A weekly rotation might be nice. Then the maps could change with each randimar's reset.

 

Farbs, this model might lead to people skipping the days when the map is not in favour of their preferred build to skew the odds their way, cherrypicking their way up the rankings. If many players started doing this there would be less variety in the opponents you would get. The current model makes most everyone still play even if they're not so fond of certain maps in the set.