No What you do in the sewers . . . So you would prefer the halo? LMAO (that's right, I have 2 same hands)
I have an opinion, and I want to know if you really want to hear it or not. Unless you're asking why I have rules about trash talking. It's because I just need people to be clear about when I am using trash talk and when I'm not. I already know about freedom of speech, that's not the point. The point is that, in my opinion, to swear for the use of trash talk is to diminish the purpose of the swear. It's just a personal choice, obviously, the rules are for myself only.
What do your rules on trash talk have to do with this thread ahahaha maybe you could make a new thread
I'm a little confused about what you're actually asking here? Can't game/level design be both objective and subjective? Speaking in terms of personal level design, the vast majority of my maps are symmetrical, because I prefer to play in a symmetrical arena. I even tend to lean towards the rotationally-symmetric so even the player's screen is identical no matter which side you start at... that said, I know a lot of the community often favour Asymmetric as Symmetric maps to them are "boring". Now that I have my subjective base for the level design in that it's a symmetrical map, the evolution of the map must be objective. If certain areas or functions don't add to the gameplay, then it has to be removed. It's as simple as that. We've all made maps revolving around a certain feature or aesthetic, and then found that said feature is very rarely used or played around because the evolving game-play in the map doesn't match. You either put out the mediocre map that revolves around this feature, or you adapt the map to play better and be more successful - that's being objective to it. The argument on which is more important is negated. You can't have a purely objective map succeed, because it will not be unique or have anything that any other map won't already have. Objectively you're all looking to provide the same thing; an enjoyable map that works. If you were the first person to ever create a purely objective map for a unique game, then for that game only would you have succeeded in making "the perfect map"... but even so, as gameplay continously evolves, even this perfect map would have areas unused as often as others because of where player starting points are, weapons, objectives etc... which ultimately leaves room for improvement, which can either be implemented objectively or subjectively. Until you inject subjectivity into a map, there's no identity to the map but unless you have objectivity in a map, you won't have a map that succeeds outside of your own personal experiences; so which is more important, impressing yourself, or impressing others?
I don't agree with your conclusion at all. Objective design is "that which can be consistently predicted based on universal psychological truth". All designers do is influence player psychology, whether or not the player or even the designer realizes it. Subjective design is something like "That which cannot be predicted due to the unique psychology that varies for each individual". There's not really such thing as an "objective map", which is where I think you're missing the point. Certain design principles will work and can be proven to work consistlently through experimentation (making games/maps) and a detailed analysis. It's basically a set of patterns that can be learned in a myriad of ways. If we take it a step further, we start to see the proper place of creativity. It's easy to make a map work when you just make a set of rooms with ramps around the edges, but it's hard to make something work that is built with a story and setting in mind, while enforcing unique behavioral playstyles, and creating an artistically impressive space. Making something "work" is just the tip of the iceberg, but the objective design principles that are derived from universal psychological truth are what allow creativity within design. What I'm really saying is that if design was more subjective than it is objective, there would be no such thing as a good map or game. This is obviously wrong. The art, storytelling, and the unique playstyle that each map encourage, are all much more subjective than the design itself, but that's for another thread. It's not obvious where the line between design and art should be drawn, if at all.
I actually took design courses where most of this stuff was discussed, but I've avoided this thread because I don't really know what to contribute, and I'm lazy and don't feel like embedding images. So I'll just ramble for a bit. Consider the following statements: Warm weather attracts more people to go outside Warm weather is pleasant The first statement is objective; historically, people - and virtually all living things - are observed to be more lively and extroverted during warmer weather. Hell, it's coded in molecules that higher temperature increases activity and lower temperature decreases. The second statement is subjective, as not all living things (people specifically) may find warmer weather pleasant. The correlation does not necessarily equal the cause; in other words, just because more things are happening during the summer, doesn't mean summer is the preferred month for everyone. So let's go to art and design, and look at it in the simplest form: Asymmetry is more interesting than symmetry Symmetry is boring The first statement is objective; asymmetry is known to create a sense of organic intrigue and visual and aural stimulation. Our brains are wired to notice patterns and consistency, therefore, when something deviates from this, we pause to investigate why. It is the basis of almost every major design principle, specifically and especially The Golden Ratio/Rule of Thirds/Fibonacci Spiral, which focus around weighting interest asymmetrically based on importance to catch the eye. The second statement is subjective, as there is a time and place for symmetry. Again, our brain instinctively reacts to uniformity in such a way that feels comforting and familiar, and a designer may use this to their advantage where required. For example, when depicting order, tranquility, and truth, perfect symmetry may be used to convey strength and stability. Symmetry - or a repeating pattern - may also be used asymmetrically to increase tension, like a crescendo in music. [This is the part where I embed images to prove my point. Maybe later] Consider an electronic house song. The kick occurs on the 1, 2, 3, and 4 downbeats. Now a lot of amateur DJs and artists will throw the Bass on the upbeat (1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4 AND). This somewhat increases the tempo of the song by filling the space symmetrically with notes; the rhythm ends up repetitive because there isn't any room to breathe. Now consider a swinging groove where the bass falls on the first 1, and then it doesn't repeat evenly. So it looks something like: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and B -B- - --B B -B- - --B At :30 seconds, you can hear the symmetrical pads (and it plays behind the track). That's necessary to build suspense and tension - in other words, symmetry can be used to augment a piece and allow our brain to find something familiar. But then it's the unfamiliar - the baseline - that gives the track its identity. Now there isn't a "rule" that you can't have a symmetric bassline. Consider Billie Jean... the bass and percussion are largely uniform for most of the song, right? Well...not exactly. Because you can hear subtle open hats, and the bass even have a slight swing to it. And then of course, the way Michael sings contributes to the asymmetry of the song. He matches the symmetry one minute, but then deviates off to add interest. By the time the song ends, several instruments have been added that continue to shift the interest, but it's that familiarity that refocuses your attention. Consider the melody established by the first few notes of this piece and notice how the other instruments add interest on top. The familiarity doesn't need to be a matter of asymmetry vs symmetry though. Familiarity can be a melody that repeats admits a progressive jazz piece, or it can be a color that shows up at the top of the painting and at the bottom, or it can be a spice used in the salmon and the potatoes. It depends on how it is used according to where the interest lies, and what you set out to accomplish. And I guess that's the basis of my post: everything has its place...but not everything is placed equally. Nothing is even, nothing is balanced, and nothing is equal, and that's what makes the world interesting - searching for your place amidst all of that. This is the unspoken rule of the universe - the hierarchy of how things are arranged - and the fact that there is a design that intentionally places things based on importance. All we can do as humans is interpret and try to understand why it is designed that way. There's dozens of other design things I know more about that I could go into, like color theory, but then we get into the gray area of people reacting to certain colors differently, or being colorblind altogether (and that pun was intended). Now, their subjective interpretation of color theory doesn't devalue the observable qualities of color blending, the hundreds of years of scientific study behind mood and emotion influenced by color, or the literal arrangement of light in the visible light spectrum. It just means someone isn't going to like your piss green map as much as you thought they would, and that's not necessarily a problem with the map. But it could be if you misunderstand the rules. I don't believe rules are meant to be broken. I believe they can be bent, but I think it is more important to keep them as a foundation and build on top of them. In other words, once you understand the rulebook, you don't need to keep it open on your desk. You just need to know what you want to do, and who you want to do it for, and how to go from there. (So don't throw a pool party for a bunch of pasty nerds who would rather be inside playing CounterStrike.) There are two kinds of people: those who reinvent themselves to stay ahead of the game, and those who follow what's trendy and fall behind when it changes. Which one do you think Halo is? Hint: we aren't ahead of the game. I'd argue we aren't even in the game anymore, because chasing what's popular makes you a follower, and that's the fastest way to be left behind even if you do everything right according to the rulebook. My opinion is that people should learn the fundamentals of design: composition, color theory, lighting theory, psychology of their audience, etc., identify the experiences they enjoy, and apply those rules to their creations until the rules are no longer required. It is at that plateau where you discover your niche and you are free to experiment - to launch yourself into the exosphere and make something ordinary into something extraordinary. I'd like to go more into this but to be honest there's too much implied subtext. Everybody knows there are rules; it's just that this is a video game website for a dead game and most people don't take it seriously enough to come to any kind of consensus until it's actually time to come to a consensus. (stop putting stupid weapons on your maps)
"People should learn the fundamentals of design: composition, color theory, lighting theory, psychology of their audience, etc., identify the experiences they enjoy, and apply those rules to their creations until the rules are no longer required." My entire point is that you can learn what all audiences like by understanding universal psychological truths. Humans are more alike than they are different, which means that what doesn't work can be learned and will make itself apparent with trial and error. The rest of your post is about symmetry, which I can appreciate in music, but only because Music is supposed to be symmetrical a lot of the time. For the most part, it represents the perfect balance of chaos and order, while also reflecting life itself with texture, form, a crescendo, rythm, harmony, and melody. The downside to a symmetrical map is the arbitrary repetition of encounters and much less convincing environments. You don't have to make as many decisions, and it's less interesting to be in and look at. As far as music goes, this really isn't a problem, unless you literally made a symmetrical song that simply repeated itself when it was over, and didn't have any unique developments the second time around. It's a pretty massive stretch to try and compare symmetrical maps and music theory, so I'm hesitant to even participate, but I think you get what I mean.
My weather example addresses your point. And I didn't say anything about symmetrical maps. I said the human brain is wired to pick up repeating patterns, which is what symmetry is in its purest form. I then extrapolated on how symmetry is and can be used asymmetrically to create interest. Asymmetry stimulates the brain more than symmetry - or in other words, the organization of things will always fall to a hierarchy. True balance lies not with equality and uniformity, but with each part functioning where it belongs in the whole. That is the universal truth and an observable trait.
It's not a theory that symmetrical maps arbitrarily repeat encounters. That's an observable fact. It's more of an opinion that symmetrical maps make less sense environmentally, but come on, this thread was never about semantics. It's pretty obvious that something like symmetrical terrain doesn't make sense and at the very least makes the space less believable and unique. Also, your weather comment doesn't really address my point at all. All I've said so far is that there are patterns about human psychology that can be interpreted and put into practice, and will more or less work every time, because we are all psychologically more similar than we are different. The "warm day" example falls right into that category. What does it matter if we can't actually prove that warm days are preferable to most people? First of all, we can prove that, as far as the scientific method can prove things, but for the sake of argument, why does it matter? If you run that experiment over and over and find that people seem to prefer warm days, we can extract useful information out of that experiment and basically treat it like objective principles until something comes along and changes that paradigm. We all do this, no matter if we're designing, or making music, or conducting a study. At the end of the day, something has to be at the foundation of our thought processes, or else you risk falling into the trap of "everything is subjective and you can't prove anything." I understand how people get to that point, but you can't operate in the world at all without implementing patterns of what works and what doesn't into your actions, whether or not the ideas can be terminologically proven. There are an infinite number of ways to interpret the world, but a very constricted number of viable ways to interpret the world. It's really a silly mindset to say otherwise. You can't know everything, so you have to take some things on faith and recognize patterns to the best of your ability. The people who say you don't need to do that are doing it themselves just by talking. We can get more into that in another thread, but it's all very annoyingly contradictory. To make any claim about anything ever, is to say that you believe in some sort of axiomatic principal.
I believe there is objective truth and I don't dare put a boundary around it or define it myself. I can only observe it. So while I observe that asymmetry is more stimulating than symmetry, wherever that is applied and however it is interpreted is a matter of perspective. So yes, independent of the fact that things exist, everything else is subjective. Time and speed are relative to the observer - the only truth is that they can be observed.
Maybe its the use of the terms Objective and Subjective I'm not getting here then... To me, Objectivity is something that isn't directly influenced by your personal feelings, and Subjectivity is something that is directly influenced by your personal feelings. To quote @Goat Asymmetry is more interesting than symmetry -This is your opinion, and is isn't necessarily Objective. Unless you obtained that Asymmetry is factually more interesting than Symmetry, then you can't really make that statement objective because your own personal feelings towards symmetry are defining the statement. Throughout history, there are a hell of a lot of things made that are Symmetric and are praised for being symmetric in appearance... also, people that are classed as "beautiful" has the definition based on how symmetric their facial features are, and how well in-proportion of one another they are. For me, to be truly objective about something is to have an observation in the statement that cannot be debated from either side; The pie is circular - objective The pie is well-presented - subjective Symmetry is boring - Again, this is your opinion, but is rightly so being Subjective because its your personal feelings towards symmetry shining through the statement. @Xandrith Now I don't really understand what you're getting at having objective and subjective design being based both on predictability as well as personal preference. To both of you (a little off-topic, but I'm curious to see the responses); Was the Great Pyramid of Giza a subjective or objective design? It's symmetric and one of the wonders of the world. It's assembly is a technological wonder because of its pin-point precision and scale. It has significant meaning to Egyptians and a lot of civilisations of the same era... EDIT: Forgot to actually update based on what you both responded with initially... I agree, you cannot have a completely objective map design, I only proposed that on the hypothetical basis that you could so that we can differentiate how maps are designed. If you have an objective basis, and inject subjectivity into it, the map will likely be more successful because it will have the winning traits for the many, where as if you have a subjective basis and try bring in objectivity, the basis of the map is designed for you and not for the many, therefore it likely won't be as successful to a wider audience (which is probably why my maps weren't always favourites of everyone because I often did the latter) (Subjective viewpoint, of course).
I don't think you're asking the right questions. I don't think that you can say whether the pyramids are objectively or subjectively good, because as far as I now, the pyramids weren't designed with a purpose in mind other than religious burials. It wasn't made to be played on, or to be walked through. It simply serves a purpose as a tomb. As far as symbolism and burial sites go, it has served its purpose extremely well, and was built from the ground up to be symbolically representative of their traditions and the afterlife (I think). I guess you could point out that the pyramids were engineered extremely well, but that's still not "objective". This whole thread is about player psychology, and you can't really even have a conversation about that without a player. There is such thing as an objectively good map, but there is no such thing as and objective map. I'm not even sure what you think the latter means, but it's not what I've been talking about.
I don't like this statement. Sure you won't typically find someone beautiful who's body looks like it should be 2 different people depending on which side of them you look at, but then most people start to feel uneasy the closer to perfect symmetry the idealized person gets. This may be because for the most part mother nature doesn't manufacture perfect symmetry, that's our bag. The problem we get into is that people are subjective about most instances of how they define physical beauty. What we agree on is that someone needs to be basically symmetrical as a start but then we use "flaws" to offset that symmetry to enhance that beauty to our personal liking. Going back to this statement, like I said above symmetry is our bag. It is the ability to construct perfect symmetry in an asymmetrical world that makes it such an accomplishment. Order from chaos. In no less way chaos in order is also appreciated. Everyone sits on a different spot on that fence but the majority sit closer to the middle. The best designers will utilize knowledge on the benefits of each of these aspects to enhance a maps appeal, much like Goat was saying above
I didn't include my feelings or opinions in my post. I'm not using the word "interesting" in that context. I believe asymmetry is factually more interesting than symmetry in the sense that asymmetry intrigues the mind by being strange and not symmetric. Yes, our facial features are symmetric, and most of our bodies are, therefore we value symmetry and uniformity. Yet we are hardwired to notice asymmetry; our brain is designed to tune out patterns and repetitiveness, and therefore humans have sought to explore asymmetry in artistic design to facilitate that mystique and intrigue. I didn't say symmetry is objectively boring; boring is an emotional response based on feelings, and I didn't enter this thread to discuss feelings. I simply posted to state balance is universally achieved through harmony of imbalances, and furthermore, we are innately drawn to imbalance because our brain focuses on things which are strange more than things that are familiar. Yet those are simply misnomers to illustrate a larger point. Because I could argue that trees growing symmetrically in an orchard are strange. Our mind is used to the organic and chaotic happenstance of nature, and therefore we would find the artificial symmetry of trees more intriguing and strange. Our mind is accustomed to the familiar (asymmetric trees) and latches onto the familiar (symmetric trees). Therefore, symmetric trees intrigue the mind. Where is the asymmetry there? In the experience. Because it's all a matter of perspective. I'd argue this same fact on a symmetric multiplayer map. Players will always gravitate towards an asymmetric advantage because this is how you win the game. If you put two evenly matched teams on an inversely symmetric map with the exact same weapons, then whoever controls the imbalance wins. If the map is literally "perfectly balanced" without any advantage at all, then the imbalance is created through player decisions, and the rest of the players will be drawn to those moments where they can exploit advantages to win. Again, perspective. If you narrow this down to something inconsequential like a layout of a Halo map, you're just limiting the principle. The only truth is that the shape exists. Whether it looks one way or another to you - and whether you like how it looks - is a matter of perspective. And you can go on to show that people think blue is a more appealing color than orange, but that will never be more than theories (hence color theory), and outside of context they are meaningless.
No, I know you can't accurately define whether they were designed objectively or subjectively without actually speaking with someone who designed it, however from my observations I'd lean towards them being constructed objectively over subjectively. I just wanted to see what your input was... I'll explain my observations below; For one, the pyramid is quite a complex shape to build, having all four sides equally incline upto a singular point on that scale is in itself a great achievement, so you have to ask yourself, why would they build it with this specific shape? It can't purely be because they just fancied the idea of having giant triangles pierce the sky... In contrast, their belief of the afterlife and the whole process of mummification and burial tombs were to allow their pharoahs to ascend to the afterlife which would suggest the vertical point of the pyramid due to the ascension process. Obviously there's the whole "Pyramids as ancient alien landing sites" thing too, which whether you choose to believe that or not, would slide the pyramid's design into the objective category as the shape of the pyramid would have undoubtedly served the purpose over being built that way for show. Also... I don't know if this is true or not, but the pyramids apparently line up with certain star constellations as well based on their placement, so even the location of the pyramids aren't subjective and based on the architects choice of location. This is probably where I didn't understand what you were referring to in your original post then (as I stated in my first response). I'd classify a map as being an objective map for design, as if it were to be constructed without any personal preference being utilised in it's initial design... which ultimately I don't believe to be possible. To refer back to your original post, your argument with your brother was about which was more important, objectivity or subjectivity, and ultimately neither is more important in my opinion, since you need to have both in order to create a successful map. (** I put Objective in italics because you can have an Objective map built for Objective game types lol**)
I'm more confused now... how do you get a symmetric map that is stacked to one side? It wouldn't be Symmetric if one side has an advantage.