My Original Vision for Recurve

I would say from their track work, they'd leave it unfinished regardless of how it played.

@fated, fair enough. I'm just saying how it was intended to be played must've not really fit for them to change that much about it.

 

@MultiLockOn I don't necessarily think so. For instance say I need to design a ramp that needs to launch a warthog to a specific point. I can calculate the angle the ramp needs to be elevated for its maximum effectiveness. A lot of the time people eyeball a situation like this but none the less its through the use of geometry

 

Your map looks good. Can't wait to play it. I agree that the walls could be more structurally integrated. Can't really say more about it until I play it.

I hope 343 makes alterations to Recurve, but I don't think it would be necessary for them to overhaul the map so that it matches your original intent. I do agree with Psycoducks video for the most part. My biggest problem with it is feeling as though I have little influence on how the map plays while on it. The scenario's are too predetermined. The scorpion is in a very set play space, the sniper is at too perfect a place, go this way for cqc, go this way for vehicle play, etc.

I'm sorry 343 changed your map so much, and I can see why it would be frustrating to have your name attached to something you don't really feel responsible for.

Maps can speak for themselves. Forgers can advertise their maps. C.S. Lewis is good at articulating things in ways average people can understand, and that's preferable.

 

@The Fated Fire quote "With my original vision for Recurve, I used design philosophies and pillars that fostered a more competitive atmosphere based on balance. My targeted audience was a more competitive, arena-focused group of the community, which I thought was perfectly justified knowing that Big Team Battle was to be included in the Arena Matchmaking experience in Halo 5: Guardians. Arena is completely based on those same design pillars."

so what are these design pillars and why would they be more competitive? and what exactly is arena btb? first time i've heard of it.

 

"vigorously rubs hands together*

Okay, so that was a lot to read and will try to keep things short as possible while maintaining my point.

It is widely received that Fated's responses are stubborn or arrogant, but I SOMEWHAT know where he's coming from. My own work has gotten looked down upon from many people on this site, and I had explained what I did, and why I made the choices I made. Most of the responses I got back after defending my map from those people were "yeeeaahhhh, but no." roughly. It is insulting and arrogant. Not everyone sees what you see when making maps, and that is where most of the backlash from the community stems from. With that being said, I am in no way defending Fated, as I disagree with many of his and Duck's opinions on BTB. At this point we all are aware that everything about everything is widely subjective. When boiled down to it, you can go in any direction you choose, you just have to make it work in-game, not on paper. I've said this to Fated before about the whole popularity vs success thing, and I can't say I support that popularity=good, but I cannot simply go the opposite direction. A map with everything right on paper can fail. A map with everything wrong on paper can still succeed. You just need to expand your mind and open up to different variations of play. Whether his original version would have played better for "sweaty BTB" or not is irrelevant. 343i didn't change the map because they thought they could do better, they changed it because Fated's vision for the map was not something they were looking for.

As a map designer, you need to look at things from a grand perspective. You cannot create a single design (Bad Blood) and force people to believe it is a superior design just because you followed every aspect of "Squad Design Theory" (which is made up) or core multiplayer design pillars. If it isn't fun, it is a failure. Some people most likely love Recurve, but in my experiences the majority don't. Is that Fated's fault? Not exactly, no. Do I believe he is wrong by describing his original design using scientific terminology? Absolutely.

I am a firm believer in letting your work speak for itself.
Not to say you can't explain your process in the map thread under "map description."
But there is a certain point when the scale starts tipping from supporting your choices, to arrogance.

When Fated releases his original version it shouldn't even be compared to Recurve. The two are meant for completely different play styles.

 

Yup, I'm bad. Good one. Funny guy.

 

"No one is attempting to force anyone to believe that one design vision is superior to another. We are passionately sharing a new vision for BTB design, and one of the most valuable skill sets that a map designer can develop is the ability to objectively criticize how successfully a map executed on its original design intent, even if you subjectively disagree with the original vision for the experience."

so then why is this experimental vision being pushed as more "competitive" then standard, traditional btb design? to push it as more "competitive" is to try and convince people that your vision is superior to the rest.

 

Laying out your vision for your map doesn't add any value. I don't need supplementary bullshit to convince me that I enjoy a map. All it can do is justify a bunch of bad design principles that didn't work. Takeaways from maps that work are generally abundantly clear to the player and are not in need of reiteration by the author. Now, you may see this as point of view as ultimately stifling progress in forging theory, but in reality, the forger's vision has no relevance to the map or the player's experience. Any discussion that is worthwhile at all is between the players and not the forger. Really, all that can and should be gained is what the community gets out of it in terms of what worked and what didn't. Whatever "design theory principles" that are supposedly floating around inside bad maps and do not get fully realized are useless unless it can be demonstrated both that they work and in which contexts they work. Otherwise it becomes useless in enriching your design theory because you don't gain any useful context in which your principles work. it's about as useful as saying "Hey, this might work in a map" except you've already shot yourself in the foot by showcasing an instance in which your idea fails.

 

note: quotes are in bold to try and distinguish between my reply and what i'm replying to.

quote "Only if you interpret it as superior, Haunted."

can't believe i need to explain why it's intepreted that way, its an age old debate that tore the community up and resulted in the comunity moving away from the word competitive and putting more emphasize on what works and what doesn't, but, here goes.

what is "competitive" when it comes to maps? well to be realisitc EVERYTHING is competitive because you're competing to win on the map, how ever what people mean when they use the word competitive in the context of maps is something else, it refers to how well the map is balanced in relation to the games gameplay mechanics. a map that lacked map breaking exploits, well balanced and worked well with the games gameplay mechnics was typically seen as being a good competitive map anad everything else being "casual". casual maps were maps that had a lack of thought put into them, just something mostly thrown together to mess around on with friends in a none-serious manner, these maps ended up with tones of map-breaking exploits and worked against the gameplay mechanics. the word "casual" was a word used to excuse terrible design decisions. this distinction ended up greating a prety big tear in the community which resulted in a push to get away from the competitive vs casual arguments and focus on the actual design, what works and what doesn't.

so saying that your vision of the map is based on a design philosophy that is more "competitive" is the same as saying your vision is based on principles that are more balanced and work with the game a lot better which creates the superior interpretation, this also gives off the reverse impression that 343i's vision is pretty flawed. and, just to point out, what was all that you were saying about everything being subjective?

quote "It is a CTF-focused design vision that removes traditional predetermined gameplay scenarios"

ok, i'm honestly starting to get sick and tired of this "predetermined" argument, it makes no god damn sense. nothing is predetermined, you don't know if that play is going to miss a shot or 2 changing the gameplay scenario, you don't know if you're going to get a sticky in your face or what decisions your opponent is going to make, the best you can do is make educated guesses but nonething is predetermined. this argument doesn't help explain anything and his just a buzzword to justify your position. sure some deisgn elements can make it easier to predict but that doesn't make it predetermined.

quote "We believe that squad design philosophy fosters a more competitive atmosphere because the experience is realized on medium scaled, fast paced map designs with route circuits that effectively create a travel time balance between infantry and vehicles."

the medium scale sounds fine, if we're talking 5v5 -6v6 but we're not, we're talking 8v8. the medium sized scaling doesn't do well to compliment vehiclure movement and infantry movement. because of the tight scaling restriction you're left with 2 options, make the map pretty much an open field with hills, rocks and caves as your main source of segmentation and cover which is good for vehicles but terrible for infantry, or, have a lot of structure built up in your standard 4v4 fashion but on a larger scale which is great for infantry but puts too much restrictions on vehicles movement and interaction.

the specific direction that this design philosophy focuses on is the infantry side of things, great to play on if you like to run around on your feet shooting people without a care for vehicles, but if you want to use a vehicle you find yourself in a tough spot because all the paths are very tight, barely enough space to beable to take your vehicle around let alone actually menovour in them so you're left mostly sitting back playing it safe trying to peak around corners to get people because trying to move around in the vhicle is effectively a death trap from all of the grenades and teamshooting with a lack of options at your disposal to try and put up some kind of fight.

quote " and the travel time balancing empowers players to quickly influence gameplay/make big plays off of spawn."

dieing should be punished, you shouldn't be able to instantly make plays off of spawn and easily counter the other teams effort in being able to push you. you should have to cut your loses and make an effort in order to fight back, especially for "big plays" which can be completely game changing.

quote "The theory stems from the following design challenge: If you were to reimagine a smaller scale arena map design, such as Midship or Sanctuary, into a medium scaled BTB design that supported vehicular play but still managed to preserve the original CTF experience by preventing runaway flag caps in vehicles, how would you do it?"

not by nerfing the vehicles involvement to the point they're a hinderance rather then a usefull tool. instead i'd go about it by having focus on control of your vehicles and an awareness of the enemies in order to counter a run away pull with a vehicle. the problem is you can't do this on a medium scale without either over powering infantry or vehicles as i somewhat outlined above. you need a larger scale in order for it to work. it is big team battle for a reason.

quote "Squad design philosophy is the experimental design vision aimed at answering that question. The design vision is intended to appeal to the more arena-focused part of the community that competes in competitive BTB customs and tournaments, while catching the attention of the more 4v4 focused part of the community as well."

halo is an arena game so the focus should be based around arena concepts should it not? i also doubt the 4v4 crowd is ever going to be interested in something that isn't small scale, to them anything larger then 4v4 isn't usually seen as competitive but more something that is casual mess around.

quote "@Eodmg: Multiple maps have been created that fully realized squad design theory and proved that the approach succeeded in a big team context. This has been an ongoing design effort since Halo 4."

confirmation bias and its entirely subjective comes to mind...

 

I feel like I disagree and agree with a lot of what you guys are saying, but I think it's foolish to "predetermine" the success or failure of a map based on theory rather than play.

Perhaps it be more fruitful to compare and contrast existing maps that have been played, rather than speaking in hypotheticals. I see a lot of reference to Bad Blood, which I'm unfamiliar with having not participated in this community for a while. Is that an 8v8 vehicle map?

If you think Fateds new map could benefit from wider lanes, I think that is beneficial feedback, but having yet to play the map, it seems like a pre-judgment. If everything is subjective it stands to reason that people will disagree about what works, and if someone wants to base their map of a theory of design that's fine. Let's play the map and find out if the theory is sound, rather than having a clash of ideas which is ultimately fruitless without the evidence of play.

Edit: 2 more cents. I get what you are saying, haunted, about the frustration that occurs when Fateds philosophy is pitched as more competitive. If that's the real issue, I think this is more about symantics. Perhaps it would be better if his idea was pushed as one that empowers the infantry off spawn, which isn't necessarily good or bad compared to what you are saying, just a different theory. A variety of theories is a good thing, and people will inevitably favor certain ones over others. It is detrimental when one theory over powers others. Midship clones are a great example.

 

So what? Does everybody have to like the maps you like? How could having a differing opinion ever be considered "insulting and arrogant"?

Being sensitive to criticism is a crutch for a map designer.

 

Hi all. Long time watcher from afar and part time Forge dabbler here. I figured that now seemed to be as good a time as any to make an account (thanks to a little prodding from Doju) since the BTB offerings being so thin on the ground in Halo 5 leaves a pretty big space for bigteambattle.net to offer players something they may be missing.

As someone who very firmly falls into Fated and Duck's target audience for "Squad Design" I'd like to put forth a few counterpoints to its detractors (apologies in advance for appearing to pick on A Haunted Army, but his posts encompass all the points I wish to address):

Reading this got me thinking that there might be a few too many boxes that people here are trying to force maps into. Variety is important on both the most serious and most casual sides of the opinion spectrum - a BTB playlist which consisted entirely of "Squad Design" maps or entirely of "Heavies" maps would feel diminished either way. The whole point of different maps as I see it is to provide different gameplay experiences; if that manages to include gameplay pace and sandbox variety in a natural way then the playlist as a whole only becomes stronger for it - the mastery ceiling grows at the same time that the sheer variety of it can keep the game from growing stale as quickly for everyone.

Complaining about map designers overly nerfing vehicles relative to this game is a bit ingenuous given that vehicles have been imbalanced ever since the Spartan Laser debuted in Halo 3 where both the vehicles and the Laser were significantly more powerful than they had any right to be all the way onto the butchery of light vehicles in Reach and Halo 4. Now in Halo 5 we have yet another health system change to contend with (damage to the vehicle is not transferred at all to the occupants) which will likely see that balance shift a bit further, but so far I can't say it's looking good for the Warthog in particular since the BR in this game makes it so incredibly easy to remove the gunner with little effort.

If we define "more competitive" as a shorthand way of saying "better at allowing two teams to compare skill without enabling cheap plays" and then go off the evidence from the last 5 years I would say that as a competitive BTB player/fan this vision of map design does seem to support competitive play better thanks to the aforementioned vehicle/Laser imbalance in which light vehicles weren't worth using (2 rifles is more useful and manouevrable than a Warthog and has been since Reach) and the Scorpion was simply irredeemably overpowered.
This may not be the case in Halo 5 as it's a bit early to tell until we can get Forge ourselves and run some serious tests, but that doesn't mean that trying out an alternative in the mean time is definitely a bad thing, especially not when it would be ideal to see it alongside more traditional BTB offerings too (which can still be balanced much better than the mishaps we've received as our starting point for a BTB playlist).

 

This is still happening? I think an admin should create a second thread to put the majority of this discussion in.

 

These squad design maps people say worked didn't work with players that new what the hell they were doing as everyone of these maps had way to predictable of spawning and anyone with a good understanding positioning could completely make the game very boring as it turned into one team having a couple guys at the base while there teammates stood around the outskirts of the base and watched their backs as they spawn kill. These maps always only had three general spawn areas with very apparent spawn away areas. You guys say it works but you have never had anyone who is actually good at btb play the maps. Just all of us scrubby forgers. Put these maps in the hands in the hands of people that actually play btb competitively.

 

@purely fat I feel that is a little to much of a generalization of all squad maps. As long as they are competing to win people are playing competitively. However at many points some of us have brought in a wide variety of testers for quite a bit of our play tests and I don't feel it fair to generalize all the squad design maps into the same pot

 

Yes to all of this!

There's nothing wrong with discussing why you think a vision or draft may or may not work, and there's been a lot of good discussion about that here. I just hope everyone reading through the thread keeps the discussion in perspective. Ultimately, it's all speculation until the map has actually been built and tested.

One of the biggest traps I've seen people fall into historically is allowing their preconceptions about how they think a map will/should play to impact their perception of how it actually plays. To some degree this is inevitable, but being aware of it can only be a good thing. In an ideal scenario, designers would be able to implement their vision and then set the vision aside and judge their map on how it actually plays, and testers would be able to play a map and give feedback that's based upon how the map actually plays rather than having it be colored by how they expected it to play.

TLDR - Speculative discussion is wonderful, but don't mistake it for reality.