The new map changes and how they made them worse for little in return

[MASTER DOGE]

As we all (should) know by now, Gaijin lied about the maps just getting visual updates like abandoned factory did, and has made them worse overall. Almost all the changes we got are bad for the maps and seems to have made them far more likely to end in a one sided stomp that determines the winner in lest than 5 minutes.

I mostly play around the mid tiers since I find the higher ranks unenjoyable for my play style and habits, so i don't have the ability to comment much on the changes made to Sands of Sinai. I also can't comment on all the areas of the other maps do to having not enjoyed them as much and therefore not knowing the game flow and how the changes affect them as much. Despite this, I would like to list all the changes I have found and comment on how they change the flow/key positions, and would invite others to share their opinions and any unlisted changes, especially for Sand of Sinai.

For Sinai I noticed the added rock formations between the oil camp and the hill left of the town, as well as a change to the added things around the camp. while i can't comment of these position i can say that at this point the west flank has to be hands down of the most one sided flanks of any map in game. This is extremely noticeable in the Conquest #3 variation of the map, as all three matches played the exact same. both teams spawn in, south team win the flank, north team has no defensive positions to fall back on, north team get backed into spawn, north team loses the match. over the past 4 years that flank has gone from greatly favouring the north spawn, to greatly favouring the south spawn. the only time i have seen the north side win the first fight for the flank on Con #3, they still had no way to hold ground in an extended fight with the south due to the south having both a sight line from spawn and a much shorter drive time than the north.

Meanwhile, Advance to the Rhine got a bunch of smaller changes that lead to the overall obliteration of the west side as it now plays as well as trying to substitute wood for freshly dipped, wet paper towels in a scale bridge competition. all the rubble piles got changed for these now one that just suck to try and use for cover. Instead of tapering off like the used to, they now round off and end early, preventing any hull down plays. A few sniping angles that could be used to cut off key routs to the cap were also removed, leading to a total removal of the main reason to use TD's in the area that don't fall into front-line brawling.
monument was also changed in a negative way in the form of the removal of the wrecked tank hulls, with there replacement being these poor 2x2 Lego brick looking squares of bricks. They would suck less as a replacement if there was some cover next to the monument other than the monument itself, making the only safe spot the corners of the monument, with little to no other options than the 2x2 Lego bricks. They also made the rubble piles north of monument near impossible to traverse, making wide flanks harder to do while staying concealed, or to ambush flankers from.

The final map that got changes was Jungle, which was officially gone from a raging dumpster fire, to a burring landfill that has spread to the nearby woods that's threatening to spread to the nearby town. If you ask me, the changes this map has been getting have been a sing that the original map team left a long time ago, and that the new guys are eventually going to manage to mess up every map in the game, be it legacy or there own spoiled trash, for the sake of catering to bad players that can't think outside the box when a good player takes up some weird, off meta, dumb position, that only punishes you for driving out into the open with zero support, or that gives them an off angel to the stupid hull down you have been sitting in for the past 5 minutes. Both the north spawns now have 3 corridors to exit from, and the anti-spawn cap hills where put in backwards, making it easier to spawn camp. They removed the rock wall on the south side of the bunker hill, making it harder to deal with sniper at mid than it already was. Removed the climb to the east of the nest that gave the east side a nice spot to snipe from. Added a bunch of stuff around the radio tower, deceasing the usability of HE/HEAT/BESH slingers at the start of the match in that area. Removed the perch on the southern point of the middle island BC people are bad at the game and can't plan around a position that could mess up your team. Removed a position from both sides of the southern flank because paying attention to the game is to hard for some people. Made the backside of the hill at the middle of the southern flank flat, because having a risky position that's hard to hold in tanks with bad gun depression is a bad thing. They added 2 new routs for the west side into mid, but didn't give east side any. Made the hills around the south east spawn taller and put rocks on top of them so that you have to use one of the 3 lanes to exit spawn while also limiting sniping positions and ambush angles for people flanking is apparently a good thing. And finally, a great reduction of foliage which would be good thing if not for the fact that without it it's near impossible to hold/push the majority of off meta positions.

Now this is going to be a hot take here i get that, but the need to greatly extend the range at which you can start making the majority of foliage not render. if were getting map graphics overhauls that are already making the game run terribly on low end machines, why should we let players on high end machines see people 1K out behind 30 different bushes because they have no life or friends? it makes tanks like the ASU-57 that rely completely on visual cover useless in lobbies with thee wanna be pro's and stat ♥♥♥♥♥♥. this problem is amplified by some maps using foliage as a form of cover, making these positions completely unplayable in the current state of the game, bringing there entire existence into question. do we add hard cover so that it's at least usable against these wanna be pro's and stat ♥♥♥♥♥♥? or do we just remove them entirely since more and more people will start turning off foliage to deal with these guys to prevent people who are playing casually from having to deal with them?

[Ranold Arzenschwegger🕹]

These lousy maps are unbearable anyway. City cards are absolutely unplayable. In addition, they systematically remove all good positions, so that no fun can arise at all and you are forced to fight with other tanks in close combat like in a stupid arena. Gaijin has finally lost all sanity. Realism is abolished. The maps were already extreme garbage before and now they are even worse, although I didn't think it possible that these maps could be made even worse. But gaijin surprises me again and again. They can really make things worse. It would actually be time to uninstall this miserable game. It just upsets me.

[Alukat]

City maps belong into CS2 or CoD, but not into tank games.

[676]

On advance to the Rhine you can shoot straight through all destructible ruins with APHE.

[Ezkith]

I simply leave all maps that are small and had all the stratgic positions removed.

Now it feels like they could as well place us in a corridor 100 meters long and a wall in the middle.
No dynamics at all, completly dumbed down.

So... just leave all small ♥♥♥♥♥♥ maps and refuse to play them.

[Toomski2000 - Recovery Guy]

9+ years in the game and I'm more cynical than ever at the map changes and with Gaijin as a whole, the rounded off cover debris and the APHE etc rounds that now go clear through destructible ruins for me are a sign of many more maps that will be nerfed in the future.

In my opinion this kind of thing is being done - dare I say it - for the consoles, who have fixed items like processors, graphic cards etc etc and they don't have a lot of squeezing room if you will, unlike a PC which can always get an upgrade.
I don't mind the consoles but it seems Gaijin forget it was the PC's that got them to where they could take onboard the consoles - and as we all know there a massive massive amount of consoles out there now compared to decent or better PC's and that ratio won't get any better - a good example was Fight Simulator 2020 I think that only sold 110k copies ( it was PC only ) and nearly made Microsoft ditch the whole Flight Simulator series for good