but does anyone else ever start making a map with one idea in mind and somewhere along the way it changes and your map looks nothing like you intended? I do this all the time even when my original idea is so good, at least in my mind it does. Another thing I do is make a map for 4v4's but overestimate how big it is and the final product always ends up for 2v2's and below.
Yup. I started Vadmont's Ossuary as a reimagining of Helm's Deep, but it got awayfrom me pretty quickly. Still probably going to change the name again to something more Halo-y.
I always do this. My maps are always at least half-improvised - I'll start with a basic concept and an idea of how I want to accomplish it, but both might change. And even if they don't, the specific details always end up being different from how I initially imagine them. I like to let the design come together from some elements that I simply couldn't imagine on my own - like how two pieces look cool merged together, or how a particular landscape feature can be integrated into the map, that sort of thing. I've done the size thing as well. I think when you're moving huge pieces around and flying through the air it's easy to lose your sense of scale. The first map I put together on Forge World I thought would be mid-sized and it ended up being enormous; and the one I'm finishing up right now I thought would be tiny (I deliberately picked a small part of Forge World to build it in) but I squeezed a lot more geometry into that space than I thought possible, which will make it closer to a Chill Out (Cold Storage)-sized map.