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[RO2/RS] Maps are too linear

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PETERPANs

PETERPANs

Grizzled Veteran
Jul 10, 2009
505
106
#1
Listen I am not telling you to fix old stuff right now. I am just asking for more flexibility for future. Present maps are too linear. Everyone is running to hot spots like trained dogs. Sometimes it is only about who is there first. If you play it for weeks than it is OK. But after months of playing same map with same movement style, it is becoming quite boring. Still same paths, still same tactics, still same grenade throwing somewhere, because you know that they are there always.

What should be done in future?
1. city maps are great for that, buildings has lot of rooms, entrances, windows. If you are able to place fixed machine guns to random place, than why it is too hard to do same thing with doors, windows or other types of entrances. You can block them, you are able to change path or firing position if you block some windows. By doing this you are able to play one map, but still it is different map. When entrance to building is not from south (because it is blocked) but from west, than it change everything. I didnt see thing like that in any FPS game. Would be nice to see experimental map. From Tripwire or from map contest winners. I would like to see it.
2. land maps are great for it too. Instead of doors or windows, you are able to place for example tank wrecks to random places to use them as covers. You can do this with other objects too. There are many other things like this but they are harder to do for examples position of small trenches would be slightly changed sometimes.

In conclusion, city maps are easier for that. Map creation is not peace of cake business. It is just suggestion, maybe some map creators agree with me, maybe there is no one. I dont know, it is only about them. Experimental map like this would be fun to play. Maybe it unlock something new in FPS games.
 
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#2
Indeed city maps should have huge amounts of fire locations. This is something I really really miss with Bridges. Once inside Druzhina you have a very limited amount of windows and rooms that make it easy to know exactly where the enemy is at.

I changed StalingradKessel and added more passages, accesses and windows, but guess what the feedback from some was? "****, this map is ****! Now I can't reach my beloved position anymore because some ****er kills me before I reach it all the time. **** this map!"

Well, if they expect a CoD corridor which has only one window to fire from and there now are like 10 they will go nuts.

Western Front offers high expectations as there we have a lot of house to house fighting.

I do hope that future city maps feature a large(r) amount of rooms and windows. I know it is a lot of work to decorate rooms and such, but more rooms will increase the immersion and the diversity of the map.
 
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#3
Funny thing is, when you press F1, and if you see list of enemies and someone is well known to you, you know where is he, which window or spot he likes. :rolleyes:

Sometimes it is about grenade, just throw it there, because you know that he playing against you and he is there always. Seems unbelievable but it is true.

It is quite zombie style, lot of players has game pattern, due to linearity of maps.
 
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#6
RandomPerson78642 said:
Well most Attack/Defend maps are linear because that's really how the game mode is supposed to be. With a few exceptions of course like Maggot Hill.

If you want more freedom you should try Firefight. Now that's a total helter-skelter.
Click to expand...

I dont like death match style games. I am not talking about them. My point is that maps would be linear but also with more random stuff, that prevents players to run to objective by same way. For example you are running there but suddenly you see that door to your objective are blocked by ruins, so you must use another way. Because for now everyone know sure path. But what if it is not sure, what if you are storming enemy building and you dont know what is changed inside of the building by enemy. And suddenly you discover that south side of building has no entrance to stairs because enemy blocked path to them and you must run to western side to another entrance. But next map it would be different for now same path would be opened so you are able to use stairs more quickly to storm troops on higher floors. Another nice example would be Pavlovs house map. There is small bridge between buildings, near last german position. Sometimes it will be there sometimes not. It is on enemy to check it.
 
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#7
PETERPANs said:
I dont like death match style games. I am not talking about them. My point is that maps would be linear but also with more random stuff, that prevents players to run to objective by same way. For example you are running there but suddenly you see that door to your objective are blocked by ruins, so you must use another way. Because for now everyone know sure path. But what if it is not sure, what if you are storming enemy building and you dont know what is changed inside of the building by enemy. And suddenly you discover that south side of building has no entrance to stairs because enemy blocked path to them and you must run to western side to another entrance. But next map it would be different for now same path would be opened so you are able to use stairs more quickly to storm troops on higher floors. Another nice example would be Pavlovs house map. There is small bridge between buildings, near last german position. Sometimes it will be there sometimes not. It is on enemy to check it.
Click to expand...

You'll find this interesting, although there are not many Attack, attack maps, some do exist, I'm currently working on one, gonna be quite different each time it is played, also one of the only maps where adjusting ones sights is actually needed. :p
GVfbJ9Y.jpg
 
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#8
Beskar Mando said:
You'll find this interesting, although there are not many Attack, attack maps, some do exist, I'm currently working on one, gonna be quite different each time it is played, also one of the only maps where adjusting ones sights is actually needed. :p
Click to expand...

Sounds good. I know it is not easy, but I am looking forward to you. Would be nice to try it. :D
 
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#9
IMO, non-linear maps are not favored because the majority of players like "progression". Pushing a defender back through a series of caps gives a sense of accomplishment.


Then again, Attack-Attack maps like Pavlov's House and Fallen Fighters are popular campaign maps. Probably because there is no "side-swapping", and the battle usually comes down to attrition, taking out the opposition's reinforcements, then claiming victory.
 
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#10
He's talking about dynamically randomized maps. So every time you play Bridges, there's some slightly different things about it, maybe some windows are changed or some doors, maybe some trenches get moved or changed.

Essentially you would pretty much always be playing on a "new" map since you don't know exactly where everything is.
 
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#11
emcdunna said:
He's talking about dynamically randomized maps. So every time you play Bridges, there's some slightly different things about it, maybe some windows are changed or some doors, maybe some trenches get moved or changed.

Essentially you would pretty much always be playing on a "new" map since you don't know exactly where everything is.
Click to expand...

Which is impossible, I've explained this in another thread before, so I won't again. This map starts out with the russians "attacking" (the germans own all the caps at start), the russians have to push all the way to the last cap, the thing is after the center cap, the germans can counterattack all the way to the Russian's spawn, there's more to it than this, but this is the overall sense, it's more of a Attack - Defend/Counter Attack - Attack
 
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#12
Something similar could be done using kismet.

A Random Number is generated at Level Reset
A boolean gate then spawns doors at a pre determined rotation depending on the number generated
Some doors will be closed(0 degrees or however it is set up)
Some will be open(90 Degrees or whatever value is needed)

This could essentially close or open doors and thus make the building "different" each time.

I employed a similar set up on my Tank Gunnery map to get the tanks to spawn at one of three pre determined directions. By adding the random number you could make it less predictable.

The other thread that mentioned this wanted random static meshes moving every round which would be infintiely more complicated as Beskar said. But something simple like this would not be too hard.
 
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#14
Twrecks said:
Perhaps making all the blockages destructibles? At the beginning of the match a random number is destroyed. I believe there's AI markers available for those instances. That way the navmesh AI would still work for servers with Bots. You could allow more to be blown up during game play, or not.
Click to expand...

Ahh good point, so the map would start out "different" each time but could still be navigated with some effort
 
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#17
Beskar Mando said:
Which is impossible, I've explained this in another thread before
Click to expand...
I wouldn't go quite that far. Somethings certainly can't be changed easily, like different trench positions or really anything that involves altering the terrain, but with a little bit of modding you could have some dynamic elements.

When we were just starting on RS development we really wanted to have Japanese tunnels and spider holes that were randomised each playthrough and could be destroyed with satchels to dynamically change the map. It's not that hard to have magic "doors" that are randomly selected at the start of each round to dynamically change the paths through a level, but making it actually fun or worthwhile... that's another story. It's only really useful if a map is laid out like a maze rather than a battlefield. Trench complexes or urban areas are better for it while any sort of "natural" space is terrible, but conversely the more easily you can make use of randomised paths, the harder a map is to balance. It sort of spirals out of control where the more paths you allow, the harder it is to ensure that every possible combination is balanced and also doesn't break the map.

So obviously we dropped it from RS and went with more traditional layouts, some of which work better than others, granted.

In a more general (and on topic) note, I don't mind linear objective progression, but for me to enjoy a map it needs to have plenty of play area to move around in. Contrived bottlenecks for the sake of forcing an intense battle are all well and good, but they really get my blood pressure up if there's no alternative route (or objective). Good maps (in my personal opinion) allow players to spread out and move around the sides of objectives rather than forcing one team to smash repeatedly into the heavily defended front line. If you feel like you have no alternative than to charge into certain death over and over again then it leads to frustration and rage quitting.

But similarly, you can't have things too open either. While meatgrinders aren't fun, neither is total chaos. Circular capping is unsatisfying (capping a point no longer feels like it's making a difference if the enemy are just going to take it back in 2 minutes time) and nothing is more frustrating than being shot in the back no matter which way you're facing, because both teams are scattered helter-skelter throughout the map.

Truly great maps are so rare because good level design is harder than it looks! :)
 
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#18
PsYcH0_Ch!cKeN said:
I wouldn't go quite that far. Somethings certainly can't be changed easily, like different trench positions or really anything that involves altering the terrain, but with a little bit of modding you could have some dynamic elements.

When we were just starting on RS development we really wanted to have Japanese tunnels and spider holes that were randomised each playthrough and could be destroyed with satchels to dynamically change the map. It's not that hard to have magic "doors" that are randomly selected at the start of each round to dynamically change the paths through a level, but making it actually fun or worthwhile... that's another story. It's only really useful if a map is laid out like a maze rather than a battlefield. Trench complexes or urban areas are better for it while any sort of "natural" space is terrible, but conversely the more easily you can make use of randomised paths, the harder a map is to balance. It sort of spirals out of control where the more paths you allow, the harder it is to ensure that every possible combination is balanced and also doesn't break the map.

So obviously we dropped it from RS and went with more traditional layouts, some of which work better than others, granted.

In a more general (and on topic) note, I don't mind linear objective progression, but for me to enjoy a map it needs to have plenty of play area to move around in. Contrived bottlenecks for the sake of forcing an intense battle are all well and good, but they really get my blood pressure up if there's no alternative route (or objective). Good maps (in my personal opinion) allow players to spread out and move around the sides of objectives rather than forcing one team to smash repeatedly into the heavily defended front line. If you feel like you have no alternative than to charge into certain death over and over again then it leads to frustration and rage quitting.

But similarly, you can't have things too open either. While meatgrinders aren't fun, neither is total chaos. Circular capping is unsatisfying (capping a point no longer feels like it's making a difference if the enemy are just going to take it back in 2 minutes time) and nothing is more frustrating than being shot in the back no matter which way you're facing, because both teams are scattered helter-skelter throughout the map.

Truly great maps are so rare because good level design is harder than it looks! :)
Click to expand...

Yeah Level design is definitely harder than it looks, more appreciating mapper's work is something that needs to be done.
 
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