Honestly, we're all about the maps. The sandbox experience and gameplay is already unique when it comes to halo but the map is really the telling factor. We enjoy maps that are not too big and not too small, it's gotta be just right. To you an example of what we think awesome map design is, it would have to be https://www.forgehub.com/maps/illadris.1759/ Illadris line of sights and multiple levels gives it a distinct feel when you're in the heat of the battle especially with what we're trying to achieve with 16-player FFA's.
16 player FFA sounds horrifying, especially on a map that size. What am I even supposed to say to this.
I hear ya man. I guess it's not for everyone. Most people enjoy the traditional 4v4's or the 8 player ffa's. We enjoy the constant chaos and the feeling of always having to be on your toes. As soon as we spawn, we wanna be in the battle. But you ought to try it man, add me on xbl: Diefullah
It is alright I play 3 player ffa on 1v1's for initial tests most of the time. Nothing wrong with stress testing something. Some people enjoy it.
ffa should be 6 players on reg sized maps if yyou ask me. cuz you start to get players spawning right behind you even at 7 or 8
I think 8 player FFA is fine because part of the skill gap in shooters like Halo is understanding how to control and manipulate spawns. That is why some players hate walls with **** sticking off of them because they hug walls to avoid this happening.
true, but you are a team of one and cannot control or know the location of the other 6 players while the 7th is spawning... I find it annoying. nothing annoys me more, except maybe multi-team dummies, than having a game spawn a player right next to you who i sset up to already kill you.
But most FFA maps are like midship and most maps in general can be split into a number of areas. So based on what you see and what you see in the kill feed you can make a decent judgement of whether or not someone might spawn on you.
Take an idea that is ambitious. REALLY ambitious. Push the envelope of what is expected from a Halo player. Surprise them. What does that idea look like in its natural form? Now build it. Then every five minutes, just run around on it and see if it flows together. Go back and make it work. If the idea was as ambitious as I have described, try and ground it in reality with some familiar faces. Sew it together aesthetically and slap a name on it.
I wish that a map could have gravity set towards or away from a point or a line based on zones. I'd love to have a map that is literally inside a rotating space station that players can literally walk in a straight path infinitely without teles/lifts/launchers. Imagine CTF on that map, the only problem I can see is orientation, but if the mechanic is common enough then they should be comfortable with the concept pretty quickly.
I think you did a great job defining what you mean by "succeed.," (in your case, creatively) but I think it depends on what the goal of the map is. When I design levels, my goal is different every time, and so I don't have static philosophies. I think Warren Buffet or Ben Graham said something along the lines of, "The key to intelligence is the ability to rapidly destroy your previous understandings, once you know they are wrong." I think that, similarly, the key to becoming a better map designer lies in the ability to rapidly change one's "philosophies." I would even extend this to say that one should try to design against their design philosophies for the purpose of learning, in the same way one can play the Devil's advocate in an argument. I personally only enjoy forging when I'm learning something new, so sticking to a design philosophy hinders me in that regard. Next: Your AoE + root example is pretty interesting, but I don't know that I would describe that so much as creative freedom. The player can choose to use the root ability in conjunction with the AoE, or not, which does certainly give them a choice. However, the AoE ability (it sounds to me) really suffers when it's on its own. A parallel analogy, I think, is like giving a player in Halo a weapon that is fairly underpowered, but that also receives a bonus from another weapon. I wouldn't use the underpowered weapon alone, so my ability to decide whether or not to carry the second weapon is kind of made moot by the fact that I really have to carry it to keep up with the other players, anyway. I think the most interesting creative freedom comes from choosing a few, out of many, abilities. Imagine now that the player must choose between either the root ability, or one that turns AoE attack into a multishot, so that there are two AoEs. And now instead of an AoE attack, imagine that the player can bring in a sniper rifle. By expanding the options, a player can now choose between: AoE + multishot AoE + root Sniper + multishot Sniper + root There's actually a formula called "x choose y," which basically figures out the number of combinations of size x that occur within a sample y. I think this is why I'm very drawn to card games. Some card games force you to assemble a deck of 30-60 cards from a pool of 1000 or 100,000 cads. The possibilities are outrageous. Halo is different, because the base player abilities can overcome creative options that people have. For example, I once made essentially a little cart that had a shield and a flamethrower on it that people could move into position. However, all players already have the ability to just jump over, or around, the cart, making it pretty useless. Halo doesn't always allow for these outrageous possibilities, but there are definitely more subtle ways to allow players to have creative freedom (I think almost all of them are based on position, line of sight, and movement).