Avenue
Download from: Sn1p3r C

"Every Marine may serve a singular role in a fireteam, but we expect more from you Spartans."
-Commander Musa

Overview:
Avenue is a symmetrical Breakout map that embodies the idea of lane-based gameplay. I tried to push the idea of each spawn point having a "role," - something like Top Lane or Mid Lane in League of Legends. Players receive a different role each round, creating strategic depth as they need to learn every part of their team's strategy.

I've been working on Avenue off and on since Creative Force did its first round of Breakout maps back in late January, early February. The map's seen a lot of changes, going through 4 major geometrical revisions through internal CF testing, a few beautiful art passes by fellow Forger Randy 355, and countless small changes after receiving feedback from the ATN lobbies. All told, I've probably spent 2 solid months of Forging time, and I'm very happy to see this going into the wild. =)

Video Fly-Through:
A quick video to see the geometry without a download.

Spoiler

Theory:
My vision for Avenue is a Breakout map that touches the MOBA space by giving players a defined lane/role each round while maintaining the flexibility the gametype requires.

The design goals of Avenue are:

Goal #1: "Classic" Breakout - Tight, lane-based gameplay
Goal #2: Learning depth - individuals can't "just play quarterback" on a comp team
Goal #3: Without sacrificing #1, make the map enjoyable to casual/non-Breakout players
Goal #4: "Linear Breakout" - Winning early exchanges let teams snowball a round

In the process of building Avenue, I formulated a good deal of theory on how Breakout maps can be built. Although future maps will be the true validity test, I've written up a lot of that theory here as it relates to the design goals and would love to hear your comments.

Goal #1 "Classic" Breakout - Tight, lane based gameplay:

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Map styles
The Community Breakout playlist added a lot of maps that that changed the way Breakout felt. Some of them were in the "classic" style, like Havoc, Pylon, Epicenter, and Apparition. Others changed the way Breakout felt, Highrise, forged by Randy 355, was probably the biggest change from the Breakout feel, but Overpass, Absolute and, to some extent, Canal also departed from the Classic Breakout formula in some way. Although these maps were well received, they changed the feel of Breakout significantly... other a few areas on Canal and Absolute, I felt like I never got a chance to use my SMG. The way the sightlines were constructed were comfortable, but they placed a heavy emphasis on headshotting from a distance.

I like these new style maps, but Highrise and Overpass especially do not capture the same feel as the 343 originals. I'll get back to them in Goal #3, but I'm definitely of the opinion that "classic" Breakout has a lot of unexplored potential.

What is "classic" Breakout?:
Going for the classic Breakout feel set my direction on size and general layout. "Lane-based" gameplay has been put forward as a hallmark of classic Breakout, but even the 343 maps don't have strong identification of lanes. Crossfire and Gambol have the most, but Crossfire is dominated by the BR towers on both sides and Gambol becomes a binary fight over camo. For Avenue, I wanted to expand on the lane idea, even going so far as to designate them 1,2,3,4 or A,B, and C.

Making Lanes Work
I think lane-oriented maps avoid sprawling isolation when they push players toward each other, which lead to my tapering of the lanes in the center. In League of Legends, a key concept to early in the game is "winning lane," i.e, defeating your lane opponent early on and giving your team the advantage for the late game. This materializes in Avenue by having each lane's midpoint as a power position. Lane C gives you the DMR and a high position to use it. Lane B gives you the scattershot and/or a powerful sightline into the enemy's field. Finally, because Lane A passes through the low center of the map, turning it into a power position is difficult. However, you do earn control of the flag, which lets your team determine the pace of the gameplay if you can hold it.

In order to reward team communication like callouts and allow shifts in team strategy, I added "bailouts" before the contact point in each lane. Lane C can go to the main contact point through House... or it can go to A and pick up the Railgun. Lane A can go the main contact point through Mid, or it can take the Bolt-shot cut-through to the Scattershot room. Lane B can go to the main contact point on Platform, or it can take the high wall to BR. The "bailouts" are meant to let teams shuffle their strategies - overloading on a given lane, moving their battle rifle to another location, etc. But they also (try to) open up cross-lane sightlines, meaning teams can roll their advantage from one lane to another.

Sizing
The last piece of the classic Breakout feel I want to touch on is tight sizing. It's been stated many times that Breakout is supposed to emulate the feel of speed ball (paintball). I'm not much of a paintballer, but close quarters, teamwork, and quickly-resolved rounds seem to be the desired feel. (This is why Altitude feels so grindy compared to maps like Trench and Crossfire.) Although it's not strictly necessary to constrict the size of your classic Breakout map - Havoc and Apparition both have that classic feel yet maintain some pretty long sightlines - I think it's a good rule of thumb to start with a size that is either short, narrow, or both. Each configuration brings it's own problems. A narrow map, like Trident, can feel very isolated and have a messy cleanup phase as players struggle to get visibility between the blocky geometry after the initial contact. A short map, like Crossfire, runs the risk of letting the BR and early nade spam dominate a round. And small maps that aren't segmented properly can feel like there's no room for strategy, a criticism that Epicenter draws from the competitive crowd.

For Avenue, I settled on a narrow but long map for a couple reasons. A narrow map with the right amount of crossover between lanes enabled the cross-lane gameplay using the pistol that is so important to rewarding teamwork in a classic Breakout map. Assuming you open enough sightlines, the close distance actually helps in this regard. Also, constricting one of the dimensions made it easier to fit close-quarter spaces into the design where the SMG would be a viable choice, something that I felt otherwise great maps like Canal and Havoc left out. Finally, having a long map (hopefully) makes a long range grenade spam less effective - I think it's a better experience when players use their frags tactically, rather than lobbing them and hoping for a kill. I also cut down on the number of grenades on the map to punish players that decide to try their hand at the frag lottery.

Goal #2: Learning depth - individuals can't "just play quarterback" on a comp team:

Spoiler

Breakout maps, classic or not, have a problem. Namely, there's a lot less to them than Core maps. Less playspace, shorter game rounds... it makes them somewhat easier to design for, but it creates the problem that Breakout maps have the potential to become stale faster than Core maps. Here's a video from Unyshek on the "perfect game" from the Beta.. It's a fascinating video, where Unyshek breaks down the strategy used by his team on Trench to get an Immortal for the whole team. I'm a big fan of trying to reverse engineer competitive strategies to see what map components are needed to enable them.

If you don't have time to watch it, the behavior I want to highlight is that Unyshek does the same thing every single time:
Round 1 - 30 seconds - "I have a set role..."
Round 2 - 1:30 seconds - "I'm going to go back up on my platform and do the exact same thing..."
Round 3 - 3:30 seconds - He doesn't explain why he's jumping on the platform this time. Unyshek only starts narrating when the action starts, as it's clear what his role is in this strategy.
Round 4 - 4:20 seconds - Once again, no narration here except for him executing the strategy.
Round 5 - 4:50 seconds - "You don't mess with a perfect strategy..." (Unyshek does the meercat role again)

Variety and Strategic Depth
The meercat strategy is great, yet problematic. It's great because Trench is enabling his team to utilize a strategy, a setup, and respond to the other team. Even better, the strategy that Trench enables is flexible - Depending on what Unyshek sees, he'll give a callout and his teammates will respond. This allows a meta-game to develop, and is the key to Halo maps in general being successful long-term. Like chess, if you play it a thousand times, the variety ultimately comes from the strategy your opponent uses.
As map designers, we can take steps, however, to provide a learning curve for our Halo maps. In Core maps, we can lengthen the time it takes to get a map to the point where it relies purely on opponents for novelty by adding in things like skill jumps, shortcuts, and visual easter eggs. Since Breakout maps typically have less playable space, there are naturally less spaces to add these.

Lanes
This is where my non-traditional spawns come in. Namely, the spawns I have launch a player into a specific lane. And, because of the power positions being in the middle of the map, the time-delay of changing more than one lane means players are pretty much required to play the role they are assigned at the competitive levels. At lower skill levels, the time delay won't make a huge difference, but I try to balance gameplay with top level play in mind and treat the low level play like a learning experience. That time delay, coupled with the way the game handles spawns (randomizing players between lanes), means that individual players will have have to execute a different part of their setup every round. And, on top of that, players won't know their starting positions until the round starts, meaning the team will have to adapt on the fly.

This undeniably makes the map harder to learn as a team at first, but my hope is to add a level of depth to the learning of this map's metagame, which will keep the experience fresh for a longer period of time for competitive players. Although you might have mastered spawn position 1 and 2 on Avenue, spawn positions 3 and 4 can still offer room to improve, which I believe to be a big draw for the competitive crowd.

Goal #3: Make the map enjoyable to casual/non-Breakout players:

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So with all this focus on competitive depth, won't the lanes just alienate casual players?

That doesn't seem to be the case. Namely, most of the playtests I've had to this point have been casual players, or players who typically don't play Breakout. They've all been quite positive on the map, and a lot of them have said they'd prefer it to many of the matchmaking ones.

My hypothesis on why it's been working is the strategic direction the lanes give to players.

Without a team, players in Matchmaking tend to not really execute a strategy, instead preferring to go wherever they feel is the strongest place to rush. By dumping players into a specific lane, the map is telling them "Hey, you need to go forward and win this contact point." What this leads to, for the most part, is that uncoordinated players end up having a very basic strategy, which is much better than the uncoordinated base-huddling that happens in many lower-level matchmaking games. On top of that, I tried to leave the cover in the bases sparse, limiting the incentive for players to not rush and contest their lane.

A chicken in every pot, a weapon in every hand
The other piece of satisfying casual/non-Breakout players comes from The Pit. Namely, on the Pit, it felt like there was always something to do. Rockets are down? Go for sniper. Sniper is down? Maybe try sword. Sword is down? That overshield sounds tempting. In essence, players always had a clear goal in mind when they were navigating the space. I tried to apply that to Avenue by having each lane bring a different style of gameplay and offer a specific weapon.

Lane C lets players choose between contesting the DMR or picking up the Railgun. Lane B lets players choose a splinter grenade and power position or contest the Scattershot. Lane A gives one player the BR, and lets the other float, either taking the Railgun and supporting mid, or taking the boltshot and supporting Scattershot. Furthermore, the lanes go from very open (pistol gameplay) in Lane C, to moderately crowded in Lane B, to downright clausterphobic in Lane A and the Scattershot room (SMG gameplay). This change in environments coupled with the weapon differentials creates a different experience, and thus goal, for a player, no matter the lane they spawn into. Tying it all together, a player then has a set goal when they spawn in, leading to more predictable flow in games where teams don't communicate (helping with frustration for casuals) and specific strategic elements in games where teams do communicate.

Goal #4: "Linear" Breakout:

Spoiler

There was an interesting post of Reddit around the time of the Community Breakout playlist that discussed which maps a competitive player preferred, and he brought up the idea of Linear vs Dynamic Breakout.

Linear Breakout is "based on picking of players and gunfights." The name comes from how advantage in a round progresses - if I win the first encounter, I'm likely to win the next one, and the next one, and finally the round. Comebacks are not impossible, but they are difficult. Some examples he gives are Crossfire and Trench.

Dynamic Breakout is built around setting up and obtaining power weapons/items." It's on the other end of the snowball spectrum - due to powerful weapons or positions, comebacks are much more likely. Dynamic maps can really highlight the power of an individual player. The auther doesn't give any 343 map examples, but says that Havoc and Canal are good representatives.

Now, the author of the Reddit post is unequivocally in favor of maps in the Dynamic style. However, I felt that the Linear style better suited the League of Legends inspirations - I wanted someone who "won lane" in the initial encounter to be able to push that advantage for the rest of the map. There are a few elements of the map that move the map onto the snowball side of the spectrum.

First, the Railguns have only one shot each. Skilled players can almost always net a kill with one, but they won't dig you out of a 3v1 the way Camo or a Caster could. Second, the geometry doesn't provide a commanding position one any one side- you can flank into certain lanes, but teamwork is essential to cover all approaches. Third, the capture plate is actually pretty close to the flag and has a semi-protected run through C-lane's pit. By making the flag cap a credible threat, teams who are down on numbers are forced onto the defensive. Finally, weapons do not respawn throughout the round, creating a chess-like experience where teams have a limited number of resources to win the round.

The effect of all of these design choices is a very tactical, sometimes tense Breakout play. Getting a player down is a big deal because it increases your chances of clinching the round that much more. By doing this, comebacks need to start at each round, instead of in the middle of one. The match can come down to who can force a mistake, putting more emphasis on team coordination.

I think this style of gameplay fits the map's theme well, especially with the shifting individual roles. I don't think a Linear style suits every map, however, and I'm very much looking forward to trying my hand a Dynamic design my next project.

Past Iterations:
Get a look into the design changes Avenue went through as it made its way from Blockout to Beta.

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UCC Feedback:
Avenue was the first map to get the stamp of approval from the UCC lobby, the final step in the ATN network. I can't express how helpful it was to get repeated tests in the early lobbies and then have some Champion ranked Slayer and Breakout players feel out the map. Big shout out to @Duke of Mearl, @Max Extra, @iParanormal, and @Merder Smerf, and all the testers who played the early versions of this map.

You can see the two UCC videos below, or submit your own map to the ATN here.

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Closing Thoughts:

It's been a pleasure working on Avenue, and although the Breakout Forge scene is rather small at the moment, this design has given me a lot of ideas on future maps. I hope you'll post your feedback so my next effort can be even better. (Also, if you've got your own Breakout map you're working on, I'd love to see it!)
Thanks for reading,


Connor Kennelly
Sn1p3r C