Multiz on paper seems fun. In fact it can be quite good when it comes to expanding flanking options or making the map bigger. However in my experience multiz combat is just awful. It’s janky and unnatural. I doubt anyone enjoys having to spam look the look up button so you dont get acided/shot/sniped/naded/gassed/grabbed/hugged out of nowhere with zero agency on your part because you were not looking up. And if you were looking up and something engages you on the level you are on - now you have no time to respond because your head was stuck looking at the ceiling.
Multiz should be used for things like allowing vtol or other craft to fly around or have areas that are underground (maybe how tunnels should work instead of teleporting you around) however these levels should not be able to engage between eachother and if they can it should be around specific spots so as to prevent bottlenecks when moving between areas. As it is currently implemented multiz combat is just not fun to engage with and ive found myself actively avoiding maps that have it implemented. It just doesn’t seem to fit the 2D combat style that the game had for so long.
Multiz combat could be the biggest piece of dogshit and it would still be peak, if you think it doesnt ‘’ fit ‘’ you are a misguided soul. PS… xenos should b e able to climb on the ceilings and walls BTW.
For me personally the biggest issue I’ve run into is the fact that hijack has now become more marine favoured than groundside combat, particularly on lowpop. Marines will find an excuse to evac at the earliest possible moment and then stomp xenos by shooting down from catwalks at hangar. And before you say, “go clear catwalks”, marines are faster and can then drop down to hangar and laser you from below. Not to mention it’s a wide open space doesn’t have any good chokes for xenos, so unless marines failed to properly evac, or xenos got king and a billion larva groundside, they can generally guarantee a xeno minor. This also extends hijack (generally considered the least enjoyable portion of the round) greatly. I really like thoughtful implementations of multi-z, and I’ll glaze the fuck out of tyrargo, but I think that the hangar desperately needs a rework and I’d start by preventing marines from shooting up into catwalks, or giving them a massive accuracy debuff. Not the only option I’m sure, but the best I can think of.
I also think solaris is confusing and offers way too many flanks, making combat feel very awkward near the north lz. The areas with a second floor seem pretty random, why does open space have catwalks above it, but some buildings don’t have a rooftop? After many rounds on it I still feel absolutely lost whenever fighting in that area, I feeling I don’t even have on tyrargo, a much bigger map I’ve played way fewer times.
Haven’t played a ton of marine lately, but when I imagine myself as a rifleman I can empathize with feeling like a lot of xeno abilities working between multi-z feels like bullshit. Learning that queen screech only affects the current z-level pissed me off when I was playing queen, but was probably the correct idea. Huggers probably shouldn’t be hugging people from above without them having counterplay, and warriors should probably not be able to lunge both up and down, I’d pick one and limit them to that, so their lunge at least carries risks. And just in general, I’d really try to look at limiting the AMOUNT of space that has multiple z-levels. Especially older maps, I really would not be trying to have full maps stacked on top of each other, but instead use multi-z sparingly. Certain buildings get rooftops, maybe there’s like one tunnel (you know the way chance has a tunnel between lzs? A straight line tunnel UNDERNEATH the map would be really cool for flanking, but it shouldn’t be a full cave network. Literally just like one tunnel that would allow for dope flanks.).
This is getting long, but we also need to consider new players’ experiences. This game is a fucking confusing nightmare to navigate (see: lv being the most voted map despite being hated by most veterans) and I really feel like overuse of multi-z will increase this issue. It’s really really hard to have perspective when you have a dozen years and 10k hours on this game, but even finding your way from fob to the front is near impossible for a new player, imagine doing that with three maps per map.
To be fair to Multiz much the issues with the combat can be fix to degree given time.
Like we just had Idea guy thread bring up some ideas that could help fix a few of the issues. BUT yes as its is right now its not so great and still needs quite a bit more cooking for it be to Good.
One way to fix the catwalks in hangar is simple. Just destroy them when the impact occurs alongside most other catwalks. They are probably built of sheet metal or something simple so not like they should take much to get thrown around.
Would also be funny to see marine get flung off said catwalk when it’s destroyed.
Edit: if you want the multiz guys to read this, then I highly recommend making a PR feedback post.
there’s been a different post regarding multiz causing some people’s fps to lock to 1 FPS, but thats about 1% of cm’s playerbase, including me, CMSS was a peaceful place, but then…the multiz improvements PR arrived…
Now that we have multiZ it would be fucking awesome if we had vents as a separate floor.
Or burrowers actually making a tunnel instead of just clicking a button.
How do you purpose to make this happen? Not saying I do not agree with you. This is a genuine question. I have seen both sides of the argument and am still on the fence.
