Profile of Swift

Oh wow that looks very different, interesting!

Of the six maps mentioned, I only really played Westwall and Caen enough to have any real thoughts on them. I have played Bryansk Forest once and it was an absolute mess. Full of shotblockers and occasional lanes of absolutely nothing coupled with the fact that the trees are so tall they actually obscure your view. Very frustrating to play and caters a lot of short range play.

Westwall is not a bad map at all, the dragons teeth are a little odd and block shots well, and whilst I have trouble with this it is the elevation that hurts most, as many an AT gun shell has embedded itself in the mound rather than the barricade, which is not fun. The map is quite large and promotes some fairly flexible gameplay, which is a plus, but I have three main niggles.

The first: The mid is too open and apart from the low mounds, has few to no shot blockers. Ostheer love this part of the map because it's hell for USF or Soviets to cross and Paks can wall for days. I'd suggest a couple of shot-blockers lined up along the dragon teeth wall to help US infantry close more unscathed. yes, smoke exists, but with such a lot of ground to cover it makes it very hard to attack and the distance laborious to flank.

Second: The houses by the cut-offs and VPs need to go, be destroyed or be replaced with wooden ones if the tileset allows it. It's not good design having stone house by critical locations that are too easily defendable, and to be honest, having stone houses in the first place is not very player friendly either.

Third: The layout of the territory points is too "safe" and all that matters are the fuels, VPs and munitions, and whilst not unreasonable, it means that a player cans till have a steady income despite losing their fuel for a few minutes. I would push a couple of the points to the peripherals a little to ensure they play out in a way that rewards more mobile play as they are too hard to reach and too easy to recap.

All in all, good map, and whilst I would rather veto other maps as USF, it's not particularly favourable to the faction even with a good start.

Caen is a funny one. It has lots of buildings yet few garrisons as well as wide streets. This is a good way to do urban maps as it prevents building spam and MG madness as well as demos blowing holes in anything that moves. I like the map, it's fairly dynamic by being large and isn't frustrating in most cases.

What I would address is the odd little raised gantries and walkways that seem to serve no purpose other than infuriate tanks. A number of larger bombed out structures have ledges that allow squads to sit up there and shoot, and given how bad elevation is in this game tanks end up having their shots hit the walls. This is most notable just south of mid VP, behind the yellow garrison, there is a large corner of a structure with stairs going up. I played a game yesterday vs a friend and whilst I had the upper hand in tech, my Ostwinds suffered a great deal in taking out his AT gun at the top of steps simply due to elevation absorbing shots. it can happen with MGs too which cannot be properly hit with grenades due to impacting on the walls too early or simply not reaching he target. Not all are bad, but the high ones need to go.

And as a mapper on DoW II I do share your sentiments about map meta. No one gives a shit about how you designed the map and with what strategies in mind, they just do the same builds as ever and in the end you have to accept it.

[EDIT]: I know it's not mentioned, but any word on the map Crossroads? I am aware it was added a few months back as part of the rotation but it's absolutely brilliant, I really don't want Relic to remove it after rotation. It may slightly favour a couple of strategies and units but no map is perfect, please tell Relic I want to snuggle that map forever (and WhiteFlash too, if he's up for it )

As Pugancious says, the fewer insta wipe abilities the better. Ideally the demo should not function as a mass wipe ability but in this game it doesn't. Blobs might be cancerous, but every faction has ways of dealing with them.

Force mandatory playercards on all fanbois participating in these "expert" balance discussions. #MVGame

Double standards much

Cruzz not in Vet Overhaul or Balance yet people like siuking and Vindi are?

Don't get me wrong, Vindi is a good player but he's a top tier whiner too.