I wasn't referring to myself being sensitive to criticism. I was simply stating that a select group of forgers told me to make specific changes to my map Olympus for example. I was told to remove the railings on the central overlook. I was told it would play more smooth without them, and people could not camp the position. In-game I showed and explained that the railings were playing a bigger role than they were noticing. The railings had open bottoms so the player on top of the tower could be shot at from any direction. the railings only crutched the person on the tower due to limited sightlines from above. When standing next to the railings, the player cannot see about the bottom 50% of his screen but can still be shot from below. The railings removed power from the top position they thought was "overpowered." Yet my explanation was disregarded and labeled bad. THAT is insulting and arrogant, to clearly showcase it is a solution rather than a crutch. I was in no way saying people have to like the same thing as me, you missed the point entirely. I was merely pointing out to them that editing the map with their opinion would break the flow of the top center and effectively overpower the position. There is a clear difference in pushing an already failed design, and showcasing how a design functions better than suggestions. I agree being sensitive to criticism is a crutch for designers, but when you are being offered solutions to non-existing problems, it is absolutely alright to defend your design; Specifically in-game, rather than creating your own design philosophy and following it without flexibility. That was quite an explanation for one vague sentence. Moving on... @Fated - I wasn't reenforcing the point of me not liking your original design, I reenforcing the point of it failing. I believe your second version will be much better than the first, no doubt. I just cannot agree with everything you talk about. @A Haunted Army brought up nearly everything I wanted to. You say you're not forcing your BTB philosophy on anyone, yet you think it is more competitive. That it will even go as far to say it will attract 4v4 players. You don't have to admit you think it is a better play style, but if you didn't then why have you and Duck been pushing it for the last 4 years? Why hasn't it caught on as heavily as you two so wholesomely believe it should? Simple. The more players you add to a game, the less competitive it becomes. You could do everything right as a player, but ultimately die instantaneously due to 4 people landing a single shot on you. You have far less map control in larger lobbies as well. Like Haunted said, making big plays off of spawn isn't necessarily a good thing. Death is a punishment or sacrifice you have to make to keep the game moving forward, you shouldn't be rewarded for dying, or make game changing plays off spawn. I am in no way saying it is a worse play style, lets be clear about that as well. I don't need you twisting my words around to further your opinion. It's my opinion that BTB is not meant to be a sweaty mode, but rather a casual experience to experiment with heavier weapons and vehicles. That is my option, I'm not telling you it is correct. I just believe that you and Duck are in fact forcing your design philosophy on the community if you realize it or not. The MYM contest, all the BTB map review videos, Bad Blood's long scientific descriptions, and more. Newer forgers are more inclined to believe BTB should follow your ideas, when the evidence goes against it. With that being said, I hope you can find a middle ground between sweaty BTB and Casual.
The majority of them happen to have this issue. There are exceptions, but most of the ones I have played suffer from the onslaught effect of it being difficult to fight out of your base if you lose control. If you think it is to much of a generalization somebody better prove to me it is not. The only person I know that makes squad maps consistently that don't suffer from this is Salty. I have yet to see the people that promote this concept actually make a map that doesn't have this issue. Because of this conversations I decided to go look at the winners for the squad contest. The top two maps at least. I found both maps to share same characteristics as the maps that suffer from this issue. I have not played the maps so I cannot say they have it, but there is the possibility of it. I just think that there needs to be somewhat of a change in approach from what is considered a good squad map because to me I just see it as players not knowing how to abuse a map and ignorance. BTB and 5v5 playlists have always been playlists that I played a lot throughout halo so I would like to see more maps with less of this issue. It really is a bummer when the forge maps that are promoted most in this style of design are just like playing an over scaled onslaught. Don't give me the layouts are not like onslaught so that don't make since. It is not a matter of a map having similar geometry to another map that makes it play like it. It is the way the players control, spawn, and move on the map that does. Last post.
This thread is still going on? Geeze, you guys sure can talk about peoples intentions and the way they write... I stopped paying attention after like page two. Whats the TL;DR? Cuz I DR due to the thread being TL... Actually, nevermind. I don't wanna start another flame war. You guys do you... kbai --- Double Post Merged, Nov 25, 2015 --- srsly, dis map tho. so bad, amirite?
To be clear, Bad Blood was most certainly not a perfect map design, nor was it the most ideal representation of squad design philosophy. The map was a super linear tug-of-war style CTF experience with a vehicle circuit that empowered ghost pilots to bypass the linear nature of the map via ghost-only jumps across the chasm. Travel time balancing between infantry and vehicles was not necessary on this particular map as it was only designed for ghosts, but it still embodied many other pillars of squad design philosophy. The sniper towers went through a period of extremely overpowered gameplay early on in the balancing process, and much of the distaste for the design was generated in that earlier stage--prior to further iteration that reached an acceptable level of balance. Continued iteration made the towers extremely dangerous to hold, but still encouraged players to strafe along the snipe ramps for the risk versus reward opportunity, which was actually really cool because there was a cross-chasm snipe engagement where players were strafing both vertically and horizontally along the ramps. The map design ultimately ended up supporting neutral objective game types far better than sided objective game types, but the CTF experience still appealed to the target audience and the map still successfully executed many of its design goals. There was definitely some troll design decisions on the map, too . Speaking of which, I think this is a perfect opportunity to deviate even further from the original topic and talk about heroism! I've been thinking about it, and I think that heroism is essentially the troll threshold of risk versus reward opportunities. Let me explain. Let's say, hypothetically, that you place a pool in the center of your map, and then place a couple of space whales in various patterns across the pool . The pool is a super exposed death pit, and the only way to cross it is by jumping from space whale to space whale. Now, 9/10 times it is an extremely bad idea to cross the pool of space whales, but players will completely disregard those odds because the idea of jumping from space whale to space whale is just too exciting! I mean, who wouldn't want to jump on space whales? It's a risk versus reward experience that will surely create heroic tales of successfully crossing the space whale pool and, by some miracle, still making a big play once you cross to the other side. So basically, heroism is the player psychology concept that defines the troll threshold--the design experiment that determines just how far you can push players through risky, badass gameplay scenarios before pushing them too far. I'm not sure about you guys, but I dabble with the troll threshold all the time when I design maps. Falling off the boat on The Ark, becoming a shark with the energy sword in the acid pits on Wildfire and Venom, using the ghost to launch flag carriers across the chasm on Bad Blood, placing power cores on the man cannon landing pads...I could go on and on. Map design is all about finding creative ways to send players to their death (or not, if they are badasses and survive the space whale pool) while still creating an enjoyable, balanced experience. And, of course, fun is subjective. Sincerely, The author of the greatest map design post ever Edit: In all seriousness, the troll threshold and heroism are separate concepts. Heroism is about designing opportunities for creative, badass gameplay.
The TL;DR is *neil degrasse tyson voice* "the amount of bullshit in this thread is too damn high!" But seriously... There's a lot of bullshit going on in this thread. There's people pushing a design philosophy and effectively labeling it superior (more competitive), but it's only popular among their own little niche of friends. Then there's people lambasting the one's pushing their philosophy, and getting pretty much talked down to for disagreeing. It certainly isn't about how an individual writes or his intentions, it's about some one talking down to people. Back on topic, I keep seeing "squad design theory" and "design tenets" and "pillars" brought up, yet I've never read a manifesto that defines this supposed theory. In all honesty, it strikes me as a bunch of bollocks, with the main people that are pushing it coming up with "reasons" after the fact to support it.
This post gave me cancer. Heroic moments, to me, is about creating opportunities for players to rack up a lot of kills with minimal effort, ie; exploits, the antithesis of competitive merit. Heroic moments could alternatively be interpreted as creating moments for creative kills, like hitting a cross map mancannon and ground pounding a player a mile away. That, however, I'm fine with. My only issue with "heroic moments" is if its through what can effectively be considered exploits; something that empowers one individual beyond the normal acceptable means of power positions/weapons at the expense of other players.
I hate the notion that BTB can only be casual (also, piss off with the term "sweaty"), thus allowing it to be removed from all critical design analysis since its "casual". BTBs that play well, play well because they are designed well. BTB discussion as a whole should be encouraged more. Glad we have @MATCLAN contributing now to prove this correct, and hopefully we seen more effort to BTB maps as we do 4 v 4, and 2 v 2.
Also, love the excessive amounts of stonewall fallacies in this thread. There's way to much "you're wrong because of Wall of Text", or "so-n-so agrees with me, they get it".
You've thrown several passive agressive jabs at people there mate, less of that please, considering you were the one to derail the thread first. And certainly less comments like that.
For the record, no one is insinuating in the slightest that BTB is "casual" only, or "not competitive".
"BTB is not meant to be a sweaty mode, but rather a casual experience to experiment with heavier weapons and vehicles."
You're english and clearly can't do sarcasm. Good on mate. Look, I know I'm the popular guy to **** all over because I'm the only guy with a real sense of honesty, but if we're going to nitpick over how people are "passive aggressive" or "throw insults", how about we look at all parties. I know I'm coming off harsh on your friend, but he's my friend too.
I clearly missed that one then. That's on me. Perssonally, I'm fed up on all of this "casual" and "competitive" merit bullshit. All that matters is a map is free of game breaking exploits that ruins the experience for either party. If there are eexploits on a map, you can't enjoy it for a casual experience. If there are exploits on the map, it ruins the competitivve experience. Now, I'm gonna back out of this thread. I don't enjoy heated discussions because there's clearly a target on my back. I get involved and I'm under a ****ing microscope, and you know what? It gets old. You can't tell me one day that you like me for being honest and forward, then turn around and nit pick about me being too agressive when all I do is offer brutal honesty.
hey @MATCLAN long time no see. welcome to forgehub. quote "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." completely agree, diversity is best and provides the best experience, but, it does feel like @Psychoduck and @The Fated Fire are trying to push btb into a box of their squad theory as its "built on a more competitive design philosophy and design pillars", its pretty reminiscent of how the competitive community would try so hard to push 4v4 maps into 2 base 2 tower with the same argument. quote "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." good point about the sandbox, but, i think its also a reason why trying to force vehicles and infantry into a the same medium sized space throughout the entire map is a bad thing. with how weak the vehicles are and how easy its been to shoot people directly out of them since reach, and now shooting people out of vehicles is even easier, trying to move around a map that's designed in a way to force you through constant heavy infantry onslaught is just going to result in the vehcile getting destroyed or you taken out of it before you can really do anything. the effect of this is that vehicles essenitally end up removing a player from your team while they're in it because of how ineffective the vehicle is. quote "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)." to be clear, this isn't all hypothetical as others have mentioned, i have played on these squad maps and my critique of it is based on my analysis of how they've played in relation to gameplay mechanics, i haven't really seen the spawning comment that @purely fat mentions but at the same time that spawning problem has been a consistent characteristic across halos good portion of halos life. how this design philosophy sounds on paper does sound pretty good but sadly its not how it actually turns out in game. it might work with h3 and h2 vehicles because of how much stronger they are against infantry fire, but, at the moment it just ends up killing the vehicles role in btb. @The Fated Fire go to thanksgiving already
I thought about jumping into this... discussion, for lack of a better word, but I thought better. Instead, I'm just going to make some maps in H5, some of which will be based on principles of squad design, and we'll see how they play throughout the testing and revision process. I really don't think there's a point to arguing whether squad designs function well or not in Halo 5 when we haven't actually made any Halo 5 maps yet.
This is exactly what needs to happen. If you ever want some fairly high level gameplay testers let me know and we can try to get some BTBnet teams to run games on your maps (this applies to anyone making BTB maps, please don't be shy - I for one am always looking for new content). December's update can't come soon enough.
God damnit Schnitzel. People do respect your honesty. It's your word choice that gets you the negative attention, and this quote is a perfect example of that. --- Double Post Merged, Nov 26, 2015 --- That's awesome to hear. I don't design for BTB, but having dedicated testers would be a great help for them.