I like this. Otherwise no one would ever defend the cabins and would just kite around on the trails in the middle and that would make for a boring game.
As I was playing it the first time, I liked how much more fun it is setting up a static defense at the buildings instead of just kiting in big open areas, and that wouldn't happen if the whole map was lit well enough to fight effectively.
Look at Manor, for instance...no one ever defends the house, because the outdoor area is big and open and well-lit.
There's a reason that the dead of night is the absolutely worst time to be fighting a battle against anything if you don't have night amplification technology and any reasoning, thinking being avoids doing so unless at wit's end and suicidal: because tripping over your own feet in the dark and not being able to see either your allies or enemies beyond arm's reach is a stupid way to die screaming for your mother. No sane person would step foot outside in a zombie apocalypse anywhere near a population area without a tank, klieg lights, and saturation bombing rendering the lack of lighting very, very moot.
*pant pant pant* Can you tell I've been neck-deep in writing for zombie settings lately?
More directly, maps with the ambient cut that far down over the whole map just are less
fun simply because you can't see far enough ahead of your feet alone 4/5ths of the path ahead of you to walk to the next position. The paths are too narrow to kite along, anyway, though the folks Hell-bent on that technique really don't seem to care and play it so often that they can walk the path backwards with two fingers tied behind their back and think of you as a poncy dullard if you aren't a Level 5 Wonk like they are.
Note that I'm not suggesting it needs to be lit well enough to make fighting in the paths along and around the middle feasible (though even if you were in that space at bloody
noon it'd be a lousy place to try and hold given the 360o spawns you'd be facing), it just needs to have enough ambient or directional lighting along the paths to make moving through the area not an exercise in tripping over the benches and such an every-three-seconds occurrence.
It's a common thing in a lot of the non-TWI maps that just gets up my mantle, and I'm kind of irritated every time I see what would be a nice map if I could actually see where I'm putting my feet to enjoy it. The worst offender in the default map pack is Farm, but as I said it's designed not to have obstructions or the like which aren't contrasted with shadows. Second worst is the staircases in Offices which really should have a really dim red emergency light at ankle height on the landings.
Not to hijack the thread; if we go much longer we should spin off a new one.
