Coagulation Map Edit Suggestions

This has been talked about in a few places but nowhere officially yet. Coagulation as it stands right now seems heavily REDD favoured in the layout and spawns of the map. There are three main issues I can see with the map in its v1 state:

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The receiver teleporters are unequally surrounded by cover. See both locations below:

BLUE Teleporter
REDD Teleporter

As it is pretty obvious, the BLUE receiver has no cover around it and so provides a very risky move to use it. The REDD teleporter, instead of also being in the open, is directly adjacent to a medium size rock as cover, the trees to hinder sniping attempts, and the cave entrance just behind it.

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The 'cover' locations of each base are also unequally covered and provide a different powerup advantage. Here's what I'm talking about:

BLUE Cover
REDD Cover

Once again, the REDD cover has much more protection to players residing inside as it is literally in a cave. All BLUE has is a set of rocks that are able to be seen through and subsequently shot through. Although it isn't shown here the cave also gets an overshield compared to the rocks having camo. Although this necessarily wouldn't be the worst of things on a smaller map, I feel that the scale of Coagulation makes the overshield a much better pickup for the match. Camo almost seems worthless especially when you factor in how slowly you would traverse the map while staying cloaked.

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Finally, the full layout of the map promotes a spawn trap on BLUE that keeps them out of their own base but also unable to retaliate and threaten the REDD side in the process. This is going to be a bit hard for me to try to explain but bear with me. Image for reference. The BLUE ridge (top left) has a wall of cover on it, blocking line of sight and giving a BLUE spawn point. Unfortunately this does not work in the BLUE favour. As you can see from the top-down image, if REDD has at least one person in the area in front of BLUE base and a sniper sitting back at their own base, they can force BLUE to spawn at the ridge, as it is the closest and most defended area for BLUE's base that is 'safe'. This makes it extremely difficult for BLUE to move out of the ridge area, as to get to their own base they are forced to go across a no man's land of open space to be easily spotted and taken out from both aforementioned REDD players. Their only other option is to push the REDD cave, which is also defended by the sniper and, if a REDD player is already in the cave, is extremely difficult to manage. Any BLUE player that spawns inside the BLUE base has no option other than the teleporter which often led to instantly getting sniped due to the lack of cover (see the point above). In the games I played, this strategy was used quite a lot and often leads to REDD gaining control of both Banshees and in one circumstance both tanks also.

Flipping this strategy to the REDD side does not yield the same results. If the BLUE players were set up in the same positions, the openness of the REDD ridge would prevent spawning there. REDDs also have the potential to spawn inside the cave if there isn't a permanent BLUE player in there. Even with a BLUE in the cave, REDDs could spawn inside the base and have the opportunity to use their teleporter to get to instant cover through the cave and could push the BLUE out with brute force and respawn power. The only other places the REDD could spawn in this situation would be in the middle of the map, which give them the ability to threaten the BLUE base or hit the BLUE from behind. This problem showed itself in a few of the objective games where BLUE would struggle to have a setup because of REDDs spawning behind them yet when REDD controlled the spawns the BLUEs did not have the same flanking opportunity.

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I recommend that Coagulation either be seriously considered for editing to fix the above and any other issues with it before proceeding to use it again, or alternatively a different (preferably symmetrical) 8v8 map would replace Coagulation as the REDD capital map. If the edit option is deemed more appropriate, I could do the editing personally unless someone else would rather do it.

Myth and I talked about the map after the BN and we both seemed to have the same idea. The map itself does not play well in Halo 5's sandbox. The amount of issues in terms of balance is so large. In my personal opinion is that it should be replaced. I will give it credit to being a faithful remake though.

This is what i posted on the WC skype chat regarding Coagulation:

[12:08:49 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: The cave just makes it too unbalanced
[12:08:54 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: the cave on red side
[12:09:21 PM] Zach "Metkil" Small (Team 420PraiseIt): I mean it was a fantastic remake of H2 coag, but holy not good in the H5 sandbox
[12:09:27 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: that, and the rock piece of cover on the left blue cliff
[12:09:41 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: is very easy for red players to sneak on that ledge unnoticed
[12:09:47 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: and have all the cover in the world
[12:10:56 PM] David Cienfuegos: Lpl I even asked myth how does the map play and do we need to replace it before the cap battle with one of the other 4 maps that we recently tested
[12:11:04 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: we replaced sidewinder due to complaints, maybe consider replacing this one for the same reason
[12:11:25 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: i had not played it in h5, so i could not atest to how it would play
[12:11:36 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: bu those two thing i mentioned severely ruin the map
[12:11:41 PM] Kevin "Guzzie" Guzman: balance wise that is

One thing that I did fail to mention is the location of the "hill 30". Coupled with the red cave, the hill blocks sight lines from blue base/teleporter, again, adding to the ease of access red has towards blue cliff.

Here are the two options i propose:

1). We open up red side to match blue. Open up red cave, remove that rock formation on blue cliff, and lower "hill 30". This would of course take a lot of forging and would of course change the map dramatically.

2). Replace the map opting for something more symmetrical/balanced; Probably the easier option.

Could we also take some/all of the spawn points out of the rocks in front of the bases? I spawned there about 90% of the time after my deaths and that felt wrong.

I say just take the easy path and replace it with one of the maps we tested this war. We got a lot of positive feedback about those maps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silko

I say just take the easy path and replace it with one of the maps we tested this war. We got a lot of positive feedback about those maps.

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Better yet, how about we find a better Coag/Blood Gulch remake?

We have several 8v8 maps already tested and ready to go. We can find a better remake during peace time.

We should focus on just finding a Balanced replacement map. I myself dislike remakes for this iteration of halo, I still stand by the fact many of these forgers are trying to make true remakes and that just screws with the current abilities we have.

True as can be remakes should be saved for a Remake war using the settings that would of been found during that era.