Re: What do you prefer, new maps or map changes?

I'm personally torn, I like both ideas - new map a lot of new experience to explore and is cool, but I do like changing the same map to tell a story of what is going on with the game. 

/Atic 

While cool, new maps or game modes will split the playerbase. Kings Canyon is a pretty complete map, with areas for all sorts of strategies and play styles, it's difficult to design a map as well balanced as this one, that also brings something new to make it different. 

This being said, I liked the original map more than the new one. The ideal map for me would be one that changes during the match, with leviathans running across the island in round 2-3 and shake things up, making random buildings or tunnels collapse. Or an anomaly that causes a huge explosion at a random moment after round one, with just a few seconds of warning, projecting all players onto a future / past version of the map.

The things I would like prioritized:

1. Netcode

2. Netcode

3. Cheat detection, swifter banning

4. Netcode

Everything outside of this is just fluff to me.  You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.  

I am optimistic though because I hope the network engineer hire can make a huge impact on the netcode for the better and in a hurry.  I would hope they have a mini team dedicated to this to get it on par with other successful games like BFV and Overwatch.  

And as for the cheat detection and swift action on that front I can only see Blizzard as the example to follow.  They definitely have a strong track record of dealing with cheaters.  They obviously have a lot of resources and revenue to do so but any game maker should be striving to their level.  I mean they squashed one of the more advanced and undetectable bots that was used in WoW!

However, saying all that New maps, weapons and legends would be cool! 

@Koochi-Q In my opinion game performance trumps everything.  When it effects outcomes of enemy encounters it especially becomes game breaking and mostly annoying to deal with.  Multi-player FPSs are not casual games.  Well, they are with poor netcode when skill isn't always the deciding factor.  I am not even that good at the game but it is fun when I have proper server performance and things happen as expected.  When issues are present I play maybe 3 or 4 games but when all things are as they should be I can play for pretty long sessions.  There needs to be more consistency in how the game performs.  Plain and simple.  That is important feedback for a game dev, at least it should be.

I do love to hate the flaws because in this type of game they shouldn't be what players with 20+ years of FPS experience focus on but when they are evident they will get pointed out until fixed or just move on to a game that does it better.  That is how it always been.

I feel like 2 maps one of these being the current map, and a second larger map would be cool. It would also keep everyone happy as i've seen a fair amount of grumbling about constant third partying, not enough loot etc etc. A larger map would allow for a slower rate of play and leave the smaller map with a more aggressive play focus keeping more hands on players happy. But hey that's just my thoughts on the matter, quite happy with things how they are...apart from cage. Cage should be nuked.

@Koochi-Q You got me there, I suppose I should understand that the art/content team isn't necessarily a team taking resources away from the team that should be optimizing all things.