If you're talking about 2 or 3 primary levels, that can be perfectly okay. But, I'd definitely recommend having numerous minor height variations mixed in amongst those primary levels. The main reason for this, assuming you're trying to design competitive maps, is that there's little skill required to maintain your reticle at the desired height if you're involved in a battle with someone at exactly the same elevation. When a player doesn't need to adjust their aimer vertically at all, the fun and the challenge are reduced significantly. Adding minor height variation just keeps things interesting for players, and allows players with more aiming skill to separate themselves from players with lesser skill (this is a pretty minor differentiator when it comes to 'skill', but certainly not something that should be disregarded). Another way to think about it is to compare these Rubix Cube's: Think about the skill required to complete the first, compared to the skill required to complete the last. When designing maps for competitive play, you need to allow players ample opportunity to set themselves apart from others skill-wise. There also comes a point at which a map can become too complex though, and then we start going the other way and reducing the opportunity to show skill. It's all a balancing act.
There's really no limit of answers I could give to that. Besides the obvious answer of "height advantage" verticality, every in its most neutered form, can provide subtleties like LoS breakage, differences of nade bounces, inventive to move, map progression... Honestly I'm at a loss to even make a list of benefits in fear it won't end. Verticality is by far a level designers most powerful tool in his arsenal and frankly it's all but ignored in AAA game development. I made a design series if you haven't seen them, episode 2 is about verticality but you might benefit from watching all 4 if you're new to design. I think you'll find as time goes you'll begin to crave using verticality in its more exaggerated forms, and maps that lack it will begin to bore you. Good design, in my opinion, isn't possible without it.
In H5 especially it becomes important - your jump height is increased by clamber, which makes it necessary to raise platforms higher than normal if you don't want everyone to be able to approach things from every side (which increases verticality by a good 25% in an already verticality-heavy game). At the same time you have to balance for the increased jump distance that you can accomplish with Spartan abilities (which makes those vertical places easier to jump to and from without having to give up the positional advantage by going back down to the lower ground, meaning you've gotta space everything out more, or cut it off - which leads to spamming of Spartan charge/camping). So you end up with either really 'blown out' maps that turn into killing fields that you have to sprint across, giving up your ability to fight, or these stupid-ass buildings with lots of corners that end up turning into sprint-charge-doublebeatdown spammers. The only ways to really counteract this, in my experience, is to make maps with either absurd amounts of verticality, or incredibly long sight lines - which then get abused because the pistol is so good the only thing worth using. It's hard, but always have some kind of vertical change - incremental is good.
You don't have to over-scale and you don't need long lines of sight, and you especially don't need claustrophobic buildings. You just need to convolute your pathing while making sure that your counters are still quickly achievable. It is indeed a balancing act, but there's no reason to ever have a huge divide or goldleaf styled rooms.
@I MetaBreaker I Verticality, like any common practice in level design, has its purpose. Once you understand its purpose in both its minor and major forms, you can design maps without the necessary need to have platforms looking down over eachother or minor z-axis variations on a floor. Your sketches seem to be fine, in terms of verticality. You have to learn to filter out feedback that you dont think will help you get the map to where you want it to be.
@MultiLockOn Maps like Damnation really did a great job in making use of vertical gameplay. Not to forget the catwalks combined with the fall damage. I literally died 9 out of 10 times trying to get the height advantage with grenade jumps. Ahh, good old times.
i bought xbox live which means i'm going to finish one of my maps. the number of likes on this post will determine how many days i spend on it.
Upon reading this I lol’d because you had only 1 like. I feel for those who won’t feel that same feeling once the followers flood your post with likes...