Lacuna

This looks awesome! Ill add you, and download it, and give my feedback today.

 

Given the challenge in making realistic landscapes without sacrificing playability in H2A, this actually looks like a fantastic outdoor map. I'll be sure to try it out when I can, I hope there aren't any framerate issues but with an object count of 420 I don't thin there will be.

 

This looks incredible man! Keep up the good work

 

Wow the forging on this is great! It looks very clean and well thought out!

 

As promised, here is my feedback. This is based from a combination of a single game on the map some time ago and a more thorough investigation of the map this afternoon.

First of all, I'll echo what others have said about the map's visuals; this map is absolutely gorgeous. The natural theme feels very refreshing and really makes the map feel much less "forgey" than most. The large structure hanging over part of the map is also very cool; massive overhanging geometry has been a quintessential part of the headspace on Halo maps since CE. The splashes on the shoreline from the stalactites is a nice touch as well. In short, the map looks incredible and the atmosphere it creates goes a long way towards immersing players.

The layout is solid for one flag games with plenty of routes to attack or run the flag, positions to hold, and interesting sightlines. The only real issue I've picked up on in terms of how the map plays flag is the placement of the flag itself. The flag is deep within the base, pushed up against the back wall of the map with approaches leading to it from only one direction. Having the varied approaches to the base ultimately funnel into the flag room from a single direction is disappointing. Typically, it is preferred for flags to not be up against the very back of a base at all as it doesn't allow defenders to spawn behind the flag and limits the approaches to the objective. When the flag is placed so far back, a strong attacker push will force defenders to spawn outside and in front of their base, giving them an opportunity to lock the attackers in the base with the flag and kill them before they can escape. If the attackers have successfully pushed the base, they shouldn't be getting punished for killing defenders by having them respawn in place to easily cut off their flag run. Ideally, a strong attacker push will force the defenders to spawn further back, still allowing them to catch up with the flag run but not giving them the opportunity to immediately cut it off. When looking at the map, the exterior top of the base seemed like the ideal location for the flag to be placed. This position can be attacked from multiple angles, but has height advantage over much of the surrounding area. It's also exposed enough to make pushes on the base as risky as they need to be. With the flag placed thusly, the old flag location could be modified slightly to act as a backfield spawn for the defenders with some negative spawn weighting where they would only find themselves spawning if the attackers were really pushing them back. The flag being placed outside would also make positioning throughout the surrounding area much more important both for the attackers and defenders. I think it would add a lot to the map.

My other complaints were fairly minor. There are some sloppy soft kill areas entering the map along the beach. Parts of the beach in soft kill areas are not visually defined as being so, leading to unintuitive gameplay where a player walks along the beach and randomly ends up in a soft kill area. The worst offender here is the part of the beach near the sniper rifle, but there are also soft kill zones poking into what appears to be playable space along the beach near the attacker spawn/flag return point. Not only are these zones unintuitve, they also cause problems when objectives come into play. When carrying the flag along the beach, I unknowingly wandered into a soft kill area on the beach which was not visually marked. When I was killed in this area the flag was instantly reset, invalidating the efforts my team and I had made to push the base and carry the flag back through most of the map. Take a look at your safe zones and try to keep soft kill boundaries a consistent distance off-shore. If you're going to have soft-kill areas on the beach, they should be clearly marked.

My last complaint is regarding the gate under the defender base. Given the already limited number of entrances into the flag room, having one entrance blocked by a gate which could only be opened from the inside was incredibly restrictive. Moving the flag as discussed earlier would make this much less of an issue (though the gate would be pointless if the flag were moved anyway), but if you keep it I would advise making the switch more accessible. At first, it appeared as though a precise grenade bounce of one of the pillars behind the gate would destroy the switch from the outside but this proved not to be the case. If you keep the gate, I would suggest making such a grenade bounce possible as it would reward map knowledge and provide attackers with an option for opening the gate from the outside.

Long story short, I'd advise moving the flag outside and tweaking spawning accordingly, revising safe areas along the beach, and removing the gate. Hopefully this feedback is helpful, let me know if you'd like me to go into further detail on my suggestions or the reasoning behind them. I look forward to playing this map again soon.

 

The new flag placement is great, love how the most obvious and immediate option (dropping the flag in the creek) is also the most dangerous. It really encourages teams to coordinate and be more thoughtful about how they pull the flag. It seems the problematic killzones have also been removed.

Last night, you described your philosophy on the gate; you want attackers to have an option which takes coordination to execute but can make their job easier in the long run if executed properly. I like that philosophy, however I do not think that the gate's placement on this map plays into that much at all. Perhaps it did when the flag was placed in the back room, but with the flag's new placement the gate is merely restricting an already somewhat undesirable route for the attackers. Honestly, it seems like more of a hindrance for defenders spawning in the back room than anything. The only time I saw any reason to bother opening it was when I spawned in the room behind the gate as a defender. A better option if you're dead-set on including a gate might be to have the gate closer to the center of the map, obstructing the route through the creek. This would restrict an important route (both in pushing and pulling the flag) for the attackers, meaning that it would have significantly more impact on the outcome of a match than the gate you currently have. And don't forget that one-sided objective games can still create a ton of meta-game in terms of positioning and coordinating offense and defense without a clear "secondary objective" like opening a gate.

Shoe will talk more about our concerns with the flag return point so I'll leave that to him. My other concerns were minor and could be addressed through small tweaks. Several respawn points are awkwardly facing towards walls; make sure to stand on each point you place and make sure that they all give respawning players a clear idea of where they are on the map immediately and remember that players' first instinct off spawn is to move forward. If there's a wall in their face, they'll walk right into it or have to abruptly turn off of spawn. Nothing five minutes of tweaking spawn placement can't fix. The overall spawn weighting seemed reasonable from our game last night, but I'd need to play more to see if that's the case over multiple games. My other concern was that with the primarily natural texture palette on the map, it looks rather homogeneous. I'd spawn along the beach but not be able to immediately know where I was along the beach, making it a bit difficult to get my bearings at times. This also made callouts difficult. If you could visually differentiate areas (make one tunnel look noticeably different from another for example) it would go a long way towards improving player orientation and callouts.

Anyway, Shoe should have some more feedback for you before long.

 

First off, I like the concept for the map a lot. The rocky canyon setting is gorgeous and lends a sense of story to the space as a 1 sided objective map. Here is what I thought might be improved after the test last night:

1. The Flag Cap Point: Right now the cap point is out of the way in the far back of the map. The further back the flag gets, the harder it is to see the carrier, to the point where any flag that gets around the last bend has essentially already been scored. I think that it is important for the fight to continue all the way to the cap point, with the potential for fierce stand-off's inches from the capture point. To do this, the area around the cap point must be more visible from various parts of the map, and the fastest route to the cap point must be open and dangerous. The goal of this is to make sure that attacking team not only has to take the flag and move it across the map, but that they must also control the map when they capture the flag. I've attached an image below of one of my own maps where I attempted to do this. The left side platform is highly visible and requires the flag runner to move around it and then back towards mid to score. I can't suggest a place to move your flag to, but I figure I'd just bring up this as a possible design strategy.



2. Visual Homogeneity: Something Duck brought up during the game that I agreed with was that parts of the map could look really similar and start to blend. Once I learned the map this wasn't a huge issue, but it was still a bit of an annoyance that 99% of the textures on the map were pure rock. I think it would help with callouts as well if some parts of the map were more differentiated from one another with different piece usage. Having a tunnel made more of concrete or metal, adding in support struts, etc... would just help define areas. On top of all of that, it might make them more memorable.

3. The Back Door: I love the idea of having a secret door you can sneak into the base and open, but the one on there right now makes no sense. It opens into a back spawn for defense team and requires offense to push up the most open, least favorable route to even use once open. On standoff the secret door offers a shorter distance walk to get inside, and one that allows a new flank to be pulled off. Longshore's secret door allows an attack from above in a similar fashion, though it is a one way trip. If you are going to have such a door, I'd make sure that it allows an easily accessed flanking route, not one that is in the middle of a no man's land. It should also probably be 1 way for your map, as pulling the flag back through a tunnel out of the base would make it very easy to lose track of them.

 

Had a blast playing this. Looks amazing too.

 

looks really good. I'll download it today