Designing for Big Team: Map Survey, Valhalla

A Study of Big Team Battle Maps

There have been reliable rumors that the next forgehub map competition will be for big team maps. I’ve been on the hunt for guides related to big team map design, but I’ve seen very few, and since I consider myself a veteran of playing big team battle, (being a veteran doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve won all that much…) I thought going through the many classic big team maps to describe the positives and negatives of their designs would be a good exercise. Please add comments or feedback for what I’ve said here and I’ll refine or alter these contents appropriately. I’m no expert in design, but I’ve played a whole lot of big team and I’ve read through many if not most of the forge level design guides and resources, so I’ve got the terminology going for me, which is nice. If a sentence is bold, it’s probably something I for some reason think is important.


I haven’t gotten around to studying the other maps yet, but here’s Valhalla! Let me know if you'd like to see more of this kind of thing or if you'd like to work together on making another map survey!


Valhalla - Halo 3

• Layout/Composition

1. Focal Points
   1. Central - An important question a designer must ask themselves is how they’d like to implement focal points on their map. One approach is to have a single, dominant focal point, see Valhalla, that will focus the fighting toward that area. The direct route a player will take toward controlling this central point is the most dangerous, as is shown by the heat map. To reward players who attempt to flank, the map has two lesser focal points, the pelican (8) and the turret (6). These points are essential in checking the power of the central focal point. If a BTB map has a dominant focal point, it needs to be checked.
      
      
   2. Bases - When the fighting makes its way from the center of the map toward the bases, the smaller focal points appear. For each base there is a position that is advantageous to attack from, and a position that is less so. Base 1 (using the numbers on the above image) has the slanted rock above and to the right of it. This rock is both a good position to be defensive in support of base 1, and offensive in opposition of base 1. The opposite side of base 1, where the trees are grouped, does not offer an advantageous defensive or offensive position. It should be no surprise then, that there is an elevated and slightly enclosed area just behind this location that is used for spawning. On the other end, base 2 has a side that features a snowy path leading to a waterfall. This path is ideal for attacking the base, and provides a good location to defend the base from attackers by the river. On the opposite end of base 2 is no area that is good for defense or offense, and it also features a spawning location similar to that of base 1. This structure around the bases ensures that each base has an area to attack said base, and an area that players can spawn into that isn’t a location the enemy is likely to hold.
2. Connections/Paths - Now that the main focal points have been mentioned, it should be to no surprise that the connections between them are deliberate. From each base there are three possible routes: through the middle which is the fastest (via the main man-cannon) but is the most exposed way to the dominant point, and flanking options on the sides that offer cover. The most important thing to think of when making paths is understanding their trade-offs.
   1. Pelican Paths - The paths toward the pelican focal point offer cover, but not for the whole route. The “caves” leading toward the pelican offer this cover, but open up within range of the pelican, meaning that the player is still expected to fight their way into the focal point. The areas prior the caves nearest the pelican also provide locations with which to attack the hill or enemies who have recently jumped down from the hill. Because these paths toward the pelican are made to allow for players to safely get to the main focal point, they must have varied spots of safety and danger so that they do not provide a fool-proof method into the battle.
      
      
   2. Turret Paths - The paths to the turret focal point come from each bases’ spawning zone, and they both offer cover for a short time as well, but noticeably less cover than the cave paths. This is due in part because the bases each have a side man cannon that sends the player toward the turret path. This path is more convenient because of this man cannon, but leads to a vast flat space that is extremely dangerous. This path offers the tradeoff in that it is faster but leads to a focal point that is harder to take than the pelican, and is arguably less effective a location from which to take the dominant focal point in the middle. However, this large and flat environment makes it the quickest and safest path for vehicles.
      
      
   3. Vehicle Paths - Driving a warthog near the pelican is much more dangerous than driving it near the turret. The pelican area has tight turns and the two caves both provide plasma grenade spawns that are perfect for ambushing a warthog. While the turret spawn does have single dual plasma grenade spawn, it is much more open and dangerous for players on foot. If a big team map is to have powerful vehicles, provide a dangerous path and also a less dangerous path for those vehicles. And to balance out the wide open area between the turret and the large wall, a team must capture the spartan laser in the middle of the map. Both paths toward the wide open area are large enough for a warthog, but may require the vehicle slow down or take tight turns. This balances out the best location for using a vehicle because this location is most conveniently accessed by a path that comes from the center of the map, a dangerous area for vehicles because they are surrounded on all sides. Again, for each powerful area or strategy there is a check that balances said power. If there is a location that is powerful for vehicles, make the paths toward or leading away from that location dangerous in the same way that you do for pedestrian paths.
      
      
   4. Attacking a base - When attacking or infiltrating a base on foot, there is the fastest route up the diagonal geometry on the nose of the base. On each base the nose points into an area where this is little cover (a section of the river) and the nose itself offers little cover when a player is atop it. This route can be attacked from many different angles. Another option is to flank one’s way into the base via the two doors on the sides of the base. The paths leading to the doors are vulnerable, but once inside the base the player is safe from attack coming from the outside of the base. The trade-off in this scenario is that the lower level of the base has tight turns, meaning that they can be easily defended from the lower middle location of the base. The corridors from the door into the lower room are also narrow, meaning that they are vulnerable to grenade throws. Keep in mind too that the shotgun does not spawn near the bottom area here, but instead in the caves toward the pelican. If a player is to take full advantage of bottom of the base they must leave the base, get the shotgun and come back. Sometimes the placement of weapons requires the player put in extra effort to best use it. Don't let too many weapons spawn in their most useful locations. The full flank is also possible, but the player will have to fight off attackers on the top of the base in order to get the back of the base. This approach seems the most dangerous as it offers no cover and takes the most time, but the trade-off is that there is a lip that blocks the view of a defending player atop the base from attacking the full flanking player on the ground. The defender can either stand still at very edge of the base, making his head a small but non-moving target, or stand atop the ledge itself, bring his whole body into view. An inexperienced defender might get impatient with these options and might instead jump down atop the attacker attempting the full flank, thereby removing their advantage, benefiting the attacker who now has an even fight. Each path into the base should have trade-offs, and the defenders should not be rewarded for lazy or careless behavior.
3. Movement/Vehicles - While the man-cannons and vehicles have already been mentioned, it bears repeating that Valhalla was one of the first maps seen that featured the man-cannon. A certain bungie vidoc from ages ago shows off the new transportation system and they talk about the satisfying experience of sniping a player in midair. An issue in previous big team maps was on-foot movement. Recall Blood Gulch/Coagulation that relied on teleporters. Recall Waterworks and its teleporters. Valhalla for big team heavies has teleporters, but we’re not going to talk about heavy big team game modes for hopefully obvious reasons. It's true that man-cannons are frequently seen in big team design today. Guillotine, a remake of Head Long, replaced the teleporters with man-cannons. Basin has man-cannons on the bases and also in the central base. Recurve and Frostbite also have their respective man-cannons. On the warzone maps there exist man-cannons on bases and elsewhere across the map to make movement convenient for pedestrians (and sometimes daring vehicles, too.) But just because man-cannons are common doesn't mean they are required. If you’re making a big map, consider movement options for your players. Man-cannons are an established option with obvious trade-offs, but what else can you do to facilitate player movement? I have plans to make a map with a pelican object that players “spawn into” (they actually spawn into a teleporter that puts them into a lift which then dumps them out of the pelican opening) and it is possible to script the pelican for movement around the map. When scripting is brought even further, it may be possible to destroy explosives on the outside of the pelican that can cripple a team’s spawning mechanism. Besides pelicans, maybe take advantage of lifts that are more involved with verticality. Think back to Ascension and the lift from rocket spawn. And now that drop pods are available, perhaps a script can be done to spawn players in the air. A good big team map doesn’t need a gimmicky spawning situation, but movement through a large map is an important concept, and understanding how you can make a map that facilitates both vehicular and pedestrian movement is critical. The main point is to provide movement options for the players. Walking on foot through a vehicle path isn't going to be fun, so make sure there are established paths for each movement method, and also more and less dangerous paths within those divisions. Provide trade-offs for these options accordingly. If your players are not enjoying movement around the map, a band-aid solution might be to add movement options, but it might be worth looking at your map design as the culprit. [1]
   
   
4. Mongooses - While not nearly as present in Halo 5’s big team games, (a particular fact that brings me much sadness, but I"ll try to put my feelings aside for SCIENCE), mongooses are prevalent across Halo 3 maps, including Valhalla, in which both bases receive two. Mongooses added an interesting dynamic to Valhalla in that they served a few different purposes: 1. Quick transportation to the fight. 2. Quick transportation for objective deliveries. 3. Anti-pedestrian/vehicle capabilities. The last function required noticeably more skill than the others, but with two sticky grenades, a brute shot, and a BR, a pair on a mongoose could deliver damage to unsuspecting pedestrians and warthogs alike. And even if a player is using a mongoose without a passenger, this fast vehicle offered a more specific option (albeit dangerous) for getting across the map quickly. While the Mongoose was arguably an enjoyable feature for Halo 3, there exists a strong argument that their presence on certain maps might be to remedy underlying map design issues. This could often be an issue with objective gametypes. It wasn't terribly difficult for a team to sneak across the map quickly with the objective in hand, or without the objective and merely a desire to flank the team and steal their banshee or sniper rifle. I would argue that the mongoose is a very vulnerable vehicle that provides the high-risk, high-reward movement trade-off, but the point still stands that you should focus on your underlying map design with a solid array of pedestrian movement options before considering smaller, infantry style vehicles to help with movement. [2]
   
   
5. Warthogs - With a skilled driver, warthogs could be menacing. With a team in control of the spartan laser and also in control of a skilled warthog pair, a slayer game could be nigh irreversible. That being said, this group of conditions doesn’t come without a savvy team. Find ways to reward teamwork in your map. A warthog is a great implementation of a power weapon that requires teamwork and intelligence to take full advantage of. But be careful in finding ways to balance the might of something like the warthog. On Valhalla, if the teams are getting spawn killed by the warthog, they have the option of the missile pod, power drain, and two plasma pistols and grenades, all within the base. It’s obvious that Bungie put great pains into offering smart players a way to disable a powerful warthog. Make sure your map has ways for smart players to take down powerful enemy strategies. There is always an out, but sometimes it can be hard to pull off (plasma pistol and plasma grenade) but this is the trade-off when the enemy is taking advantage of a smart tactic. Don’t punish players for using teamwork and smarts by making an easy counter available for their enemies. Each smart tactic should require an equally smart tactic to defeat.
   
   
6. Banshees - F&%^@ banshees. Okay, but seriously, Banshees have a place in this conversation for a few reasons: their presence necessitates the acquisition of the spartan laser. Quick question: Did you know that there is a spartan laser on another Halo 3 map, Construct? Huh? Well, yeah, that’s true, but no one uses it because the spartan laser isn’t all that great (especially in Halo 5, *groooaaan*) But seeing that the spartan laser is in the middle of the map, and seeing that it is also killer at destroying warthogs, it’s an important piece of weaponry for controlling the map. A banshee can be very powerful, but Halo 3 made sure to provide plenty of ways for tactics to take down a banshee. In Valhalla, you’ve got the missile pods at each base, the power drains, plasma pistols, and of course, high-jacking. All of these methods can fail at defeating the banshee if the pilot is smart enough, but the map makes sure to balance the presence of the banshee with many alternatives that require different skill levels to manage. This brings us into our next topic: weapons!

[1] - Squally DaBeanz offered feedback on this section and it was changed to note that man-cannons are not a "must" on big team maps. I also added evidence explaining the plethora of man-cannons in big team maps.
[2] - Squally DaBeanz also offered feedback on this section about mongooses and so his argument as to why they may hide underlying map design issues was added

 

• Weapons
  
  1. BR - First things, first: the battle rifle. Valhalla’s size looks to be designed with the range of the BR in mind. When deciding power weapons for a map, the standard advice is to make the map first and consider how the weapon complements the map. However, the BR is not a power weapon. If the player spawns with the BR, the function of this weapon may be as essential to map design as player jump height and walk speed. For this reason, you need to think about how your design fits within the starting weapons. Let’s look at the heat map again. You’ll notice that many of the kill spots and their distance from the death spots are limited by the BR’s range. Halo 5’s BR is a different kind of beast. If you try to scale your map appropriately for said range of the new BR you could end up with a monster of map that’s going to be even worse if you ignore transportation problems. Instead think about how the shape (as opposed to size) of your map can segment the fighting into certain areas via map geometry or altitude changes.
     
     
  2. Sniper Rifle - One per base, located bottom of the base to make it harder to get to for an attacking player, and with a decent amount of ammo, the sniper rifle is a weapon that belongs on Valhalla. It isn’t an awkward addition like it might be on Guardian: it’s essential for much of the gameplay on the map. It makes the man-cannon a treacherous option. It can decimate players who take vulnerable paths toward the middle, it can be an anti-warthog weapon, and it can change the tide of a battle. It’s also something teammates kill each other for, so there’s that, too. But not matter how you pin it, the sniper rifle is a powerful tool on Valhalla. If you want it on your big team map, consider how it can be used against the spawn hives. Consider how the map geometry limits its use in certain areas. (The middle of the map on Valhalla has raised ground, meaning that sniping cannot be done across the map, and geometry exists such that sniping a player on the pelican or turret from each base is also a difficult task.) Provide locations that give a sniping player an advantage but at the same also put the sniper in a location that can attacking or flanked. This is the hill in the middle. It is above and beyond the best location to kill from, but is very exposed and is surrounded on all sides. The major downside to a sniper rifle is that there is no radar while in scope. With Halo 5’s outrageous movement speed (dare I mention that I hate sprint?) and smaller radar/motion tracker distance, ambushing an unaware sniper isn’t a difficult task. Here’s the takeaway with the sniper on Valhalla: don't always encourage the players to be defensive with power weapons like the sniper: provide locations that challenge them and allow for other players to ambush them. The geometry in the middle of the map achieves this, but the map does encourage sniping from the base, which can result in standoffs. Standoffs aren't fun. As Squally DaBeanz explains: "You should create geometry that forces snipers (or any holder of a power weapon, for that matter) to move and constantly reevaluate their position and tactics."
     
     
  3. Spartan Laser - Yeah, yeah, it’s in the middle and it’s an anti-vehicle and anti-personnel weapon with little ammo. It’s mostly just a counter to vehicle domination and has a pretty high respawn count if I can recall correctly.
• Gameplay
  
  1. Worst Case - It’s important to visualize how a big team map plays in different scenarios. Let’s get the bad one out of the way first. Let’s imagine a powerful and organized team that has a deadshot sniper, a vehicle-killer with a splazer, a passive and yet deadly banshee player, and a pair of punks rolling deep in the warthog. They have map control, which means they have most of their team on the hill and a few players in the enemy territory to engage in a big team battle tradition: spawn killing. How does Valhalla handle this? The answer is that it doesn’t do so hot. There are spawn hives outside the base but they don’t offer a strong defensive or offensive position. The base itself can be surrounded, so while hiding inside might be an option, it’s still a dangerous proposition. Either way you look at it, there’s only one out: the defending team has to work together. They have many assets at their disposal, including many of the things I’ve already mentioned, but Valhalla doesn’t offer easy outs for an overwhelmed team. However, it ought to be said that easy outs may not always be ideal for big team where teamwork is essential. Another map like Rat’s Nest, for example, has corridors and pathways leading away from the map that allows players to avoid spawn traps pretty effectively, so if you’re considering a map that can’t be spawn camped, consider maps instead of Valhalla, or consider movement options to get players away from their spawn or into positions that they can be defensive if they play it smart. Spawn switches are the devil. A good map needs to have spawning zones that offer relative safety. If it's possible, I'd love for big team maps to not have spawn switches. It isn't a solution. It's a jarring departure from the problem that creates erratic and unpredictable gameplay.
     
     
  2. Best Case - The ebb and flow of a great, tight Valhalla game is something spartans (Vikings?) dream of. Valhalla offers a small variety of events that alter the course of the match, but they still do so in interesting ways. Consider this too for your map: think about how the spawn times of weapons and vehicles can create times where vehicles might be dominant, or when sniping might alter the way players move around the map, or when the team converges on the hill for the lazer, or when a squad takes a position against the base and tries to spawn kill. I’ve noticed in some community made maps there is the middle area, "the no man's land", that has small, safe passages, and bases in the middle, and hills, and these focal points don’t interact with each other but instead act as isolated areas where fighting occurs. This creates gameplay that is scattered and the range of the BR makes fights unpredictable and therefore irritating. Segmented combat is good, but the segments should be integrated and should flow from one area to the next. A good map should have locations that are clearly vulnerable from certain sightlines, and locations that are clearly advantageous to different, other locations. Lines of sight are important when the BR has such a long range, and breaking up large spaces with needless rocks or added geometry makes the environment less intuitive (as the sightlines change quickly with the extra, added cover, and the cover itself can be ambiguous as to when it is safe or not because the enemy also has many areas to hide and attack from.) Valhalla has simple areas and focal points and is still very wide open in certain areas, and is very closed in other areas. Take all of this into account...
• Final Notes. Valhalla also has something of a figure eight going on. It doesn't just have a track going on the outside of the map for vehicles (Rat's Nest is great but does a lot of things right to pull that off). It has paths for vehicles and players that intersect and interact in interesting and dynamic ways. It has map geometry (not added cover!) that creates natural focal points and intuitive sight lines. It has weapons that don't allow for one player to unilaterally change the game entirely, and has a size that complements the typical methods of combat. I hope all of this has been useful... let me know if things aren't clear or if I ought to add more images or explanations. Thank you so much if you've read this far. Again, let me know if you'd like to see more things like this...

 

Definitely! I also never got around to giving you that feedback on your Rat's nest interpretation... I'm sorry about that. I really enjoyed the map and I liked the changes you made to it and how it was expanded a bit in certain areas. I guess maybe I didn't provide feedback because it was late when we played it and so I don't recall much... but that it was fun! The rocket spawn area was kind of awkward and that might need some playtesting to refine it but I like the creative liberties you took with the map.

I'll throw you a message about collaborating on future posts like this. If anyone else is reading this and also wants to collaborate on this stuff, hit me up in a message or post in the thread.