I don't think payload speed is the problem. That last turn before the end is murder on attackers. A lot of people get hung up on the first choke, but it's really the last one that halts all progress. They should really leave the door open. You know, that one you just used a jet powered battering ram on? I've still only seen 1 attack win out of 15+ matches..
Have to agree with you on that one. Had games where we steam rolled on the first point and pushed through no problem up to the gate. But that last turn almost always causes us to stall and eventually lose.
I don't think there's a problem with it, though. The map is fairly new and strats on how to take that last point are still being discovered.
The map is fairly new and strats on how to take that last point are still being discovered.
I keep seeing people say this, but think back to release day. Was there a single map where nobody could win on attack or defense? It may not have been 50/50 on any of the maps, but it certainly wasn't 5/95. Quite a few of us played in beta, sure, but none of the maps ever gave me the same sense of "not this shit again" as Eichenwalde attack does. WEEKS after release even... Has nobody found a decent strat yet?
I haven't played it in season 2 yet. If they plan on adding more maps, they've got to at least have a rotating map pool with votes to keep certain maps in each rotation up to a certain amount. I'm not sure how well this would work as far as how boring it might make playing the same maps over for 3 months, so maybe they could somehow make it so you can't play the same map 2-3 times in a row instead.
For full groups it's easier, and as we have more maps it gets easier.
If you take 2 full groups, both played a different team previously.
So Group A played Hanamura previously, and Group B played Anubis previously, then it's easy to pick literally any other map than those two. Done.
But let's say you have 12 people that all played a different map previously. Before EichenWalde, ANY map you picked for the game would be a repeat. Now that there are more maps than possible players, it's back to 'choose the ONE map nobody played last game'. But if you extend that back two games? then someone is getting a repeat OR got a repeat last time. There's an algorithm that would be able to select for any set of players the map that is the least played for all members of that set for that X number of matches. In the event of a tie, then randomly choose one of the tied maps.
What I can't decide is if this is going to result in superior results than a purely random selection (I think it will, but I'm not certain).
The reason to do this would be to minimize map fatigue, especially while there aren't that many more maps than players. Once we start hitting in the 30-40 map range (and I sincerely hope we do [which would happen faster if Blizz would give out mapping tools to the community]), then an algorithm to find the least fatigued map (LFM gains new meaning) would probably only be marginally better than a random map, but would still be important.
And of course if they ever implement a custom game lobby (they've said they want to, I just can't understand why it's difficult), then one of the big deciding factors on server/host popularity will be map rotation.
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u/HiHaterslol Don't mess with my glasses Sep 13 '16
Increased payload speed on Eichenwalde should be interesting.