Hello,
I generally enjoy the new map and its new mechanics, but I will describe what, in MY opinion, is the maps biggest flaw (among others…). This is going to be from official pvp server perspective.
TLDR; good for large and active clans, terrible for small clans/people that don’t play all day.
I’ve spent about 30 hours playing the new map, 10 of which are on singleplayer scouting the map flying around. Finding hidden base spots is my expertise, I have minimum 100 hours on vanilla map doing just this (don’t judge me, I enjoy it).
I believe I’ve discovered 90% of the map (being modest here) including the ocean and tried my best to find hidden locations to build in, as well as decent spots for solo/small clans. Sure, there are some OK spots to build in for now, but after 2 weeks when people get bored/completed the content, they will be performing preliminary scouts of the map, and there aren’t any spots on the map that will survive even a basic and vague scouting run.
Generally speaking, if you are solo/small clan that doesn’t play all day, you want a hidden base spot. There’s only a few caves and they are honestly bad spots (WAY too small, etc etc). These spots are already on youtube, and at that point its a 5-15 minute raid depending how its built. I get it, you don’t want any super OP cave locations and that’s great, but to me it seems like you went to the other extreme. Looking at this map, there should be far more caves than there are now, and far more hidden places for small clans. A similar PvE argument for this is that there are not enough interesting/hidden spots on the map to discover.
No, I’m not saying I want some broken base spots that are “unraidable”, but after so many hours in singleplayer I’m really struggling to find a spot that I’d feel comfortable building in and not being discovered for a good amount of time, given how good I am at finding base spots. The map is so open, there is essentially no where to hide and this to me is terrible for small clans that don’t no-life the game. A totally open map also promotes the pvp horse meta which is another flaw of this game but that’s another story.
There are also no high maintenance/high reward base spots on this map (no, pillars don’t fit this category). I’ll give an example of this from the vanilla map: there are many spots where you can spend 5-15 minutes just climbing to your base spot. These are nice hidden spots that have a price (a LOT of time/effort), and they are only discovered if someone else puts in the same time and effort to find them and get to them. There are essentially no such spots like this on the new map.
I hope I explained myself well enough but I’m sure I forgot some things. Tell me what you think.