The issues with Southside

[Fehnraal]

I must first strongly emphasize that this isn't a compilation of complaints. This should be seen more as criticism. It may be possible for these issues to be addressed if it goes back into the rotation in a few months or something. Some of these may be obvious or common points, some may not. Some might be remedied, some may permanent. Some of these are subjective, some of these are objective. Some of these are map related, some of these involve the map and the gametype.
 

The Ocean -  ~50% of the map is taken up by water. Guns don't work underwater, so if you come across a player in the ocean its a knife fight to the death. There is nothing out there except for a boat and buoys.

The Ambience - The ambient noise on this map is nearly deafening and it sometimes appears to stack the audio scripts. I have had the ambient noise get loud enough on several occasions that I was unable to hear footsteps from other players. The ambient noises also seem strange for this game type. Ambulances, police cars, dogs, loud cars, etc. don't make sense in a post-apocalyptic setting. I understand that this is just a product of the way the map was designed and isn't something that was done by choice, but it is still noteworthy.

The AI Mapping - The AI on this map tend to bug out quite frequently. The most common issues I have found are zombies despawning as soon as they enter aggro proximity, or zombies stuck in place. It is also common for players to (intentionally or unintentionally) kite the zombies to the ocean where they stay and become useless. Zombies also only appear on the streets and the boat (which are broken at the moment) instead of more challenging and common play areas like sewers, basements, houses, apartments, etc. This makes the zombies incredibly easy to avoid and nearly nullifies their purpose.

Draw Distance Issues - With enough distance, windows on this map become covered by a plain texture that cannot be seen through and allow for (intentional or unintentional) exploitation. It has also been seen that with enough distance, cover such as bushes or trees disappear and you become vulnerable to snipers as if you had no cover at all. The draw distance of the AI are much lower than that of a player character. This makes it much easier to identify players from a distance and eliminates the possibility of firing on a zombie instead. This contributes to the point I made earlier about nullifying the purpose of the zombies.

The Daytime Aspect - Having this map take place during the day seems to take away from the experience for me. A sunshine city with neon signs, a dance club, and fully lit shops all around the map makes this feel like it should have been exclusively an RP map instead of a post-apocalyptic DayZ map. A darker version of the map would be better suited, but some aspects may still feel too bright and lively. 

Item Nodes -  Items on this map have been placed in very predictable locations and encourage indoor gameplay when gathering items. There aren't many item spawn nodes in open areas. Some that I can think of are around the cars by the southeast beach warehouse, hot dog stands, and maybe dumpsters, but those are generally in fenced areas. It may be beneficial to add spawn nodes on top of buildings, on streets, sidewalks, etc. This issue can mostly be contributed to the fact that this map was clearly designed more toward indoor playing which I will address.

The Indoor Issue - This map does not seem to be suited toward gametypes such as this. Having most of the play area be indoors or on rooftops and the majority of item spawns being inside of buildings encourages camping and staying inside of buildings and leaves little incentive for open world play since leaving your building means a likely death from someone sitting on a rooftop or camping from a window. There are too many windows and rooftops across the map that allow players to set up and snipe at players playing on the streets. This also contributes to a lot of spawn killing since most of the spawns are in open areas. A map with open fields and limited high points would be greatly beneficial for balancing gameplay. 


I would greatly appreciate any feedback, additions to the list, disagreements, or suggestions. With Southside being rotated out soon, there may be time to address some of these quirks and issues before it comes back in the rotation. If there's a good enough consensus, we can prioritize these items and hopefully have the more major ones addressed. 

[Pirate [Captain]]

I agree entirely with the issues stated in this post. However, I can understand why the map hasn’t changed yet due to the setting up of the European server. I believe we shall just have to be patient and the map problem will be solved soon. Until then, try to learn some of the cheese spots and naughty boost spots that southside allows players to execute.

[Fehnraal]

2 minutes ago, Pirate [Captain] said:

I agree entirely with the issues stated in this post. However, I can understand why the map hasn’t changed yet due to the setting up of the European server. I believe we shall just have to be patient and the map problem will be solved soon. Until then, try to learn some of the cheese spots and naughty boost spots that southside allows players to execute.

Yeah, I get that completely. My intention isn't to rush the map change. It's to address some issues about the map itself before it comes back after the map change.. 

[George]

4 hours ago, Pirate [Captain] said:

However, I can understand why the map hasn’t changed yet due to the setting up of the European server. I believe we shall just have to be patient and the map problem will be solved soon.

Been patient a good minute, plus the return of chern won't fix the glaring issues with southside, it would only solve that on a bi-weekly basis.

Edited September 5, 2020 by George