Ever notice how newer maps are so linear?

I agree that the maps need work. Honestly, so do the power pools. Why not do both and introduce new power pool powers that deal with things on the maps. In other games they have things like traps, locked doors that players with specialized skills are required to access. So why not have a hacker/lockpick power pool to go along with new maps that have alternate(shorter) routes that are dangerously trapped or locked? Why not have a new detective power pool that makes glowing clues(like for example, foot prints) show up that leads to a side mission( would work great on outdoor maps).

Since The fitness pool has become inherent, that means everyone basically has three new powers. Why not give us something to do with those powers. One of my favorite parts of DDO is playing a rogue because I can deal with locked doors and traps, so its more tacticle than just running through and killing stuff.

So, just to be clear, "newer maps" in the context of this thread basically refers to every map added since launch in 2004? Right, got it.

And, really, i haven't noticed that on the larger office and warehouse maps for Preatoria, just some of the lab maps.

Then again, i'm still happy that they retrofitted doors inside the mission that could open into the launch maps. i mean, those weren't even in the game until Issue 1. Oh, and the outdoor mission maps were a nice touch as well. i remember the first time after they were added and i got a "Board Train" mission. That was sure confusing for a couple minutes... "Board train? To what zone? Which zone is the door in?"

Outdoor maps are some of the most annoying maps I've seen, especially when it comes to finding a specific object or one particular enemy to defeat.

Map design is always tricky for developers. I remember all the controversy over Halo's design (the first game). Many people complained that it was too similar and felt repetitive, and the designers pointed out that architecture would be like that. I think most of the issues came from that one... Library level, I think it was called? Where you were going up one elevator after another to fight another level of hordes of enemies. The level names even joked about it, but it was repetitive (even if I was fairly tense the whole time playing it).

Still, designers run into this issue all the time... much architecture does need to repeat to some extent, though of course the best architects out there can serve both form and function. A game designer has a whole new set of rules to work with.

I really noticed the difficulty this thread is touching on when designing for the Mission Architect. The story arc in my sig has some missions where it is EXTREMELY important that some objectives are at the start, middle, and end. Getting them to work was sometimes a challenge, and I can only imagine the devs have the same issues. You can have some missions in the open area maps, but you have to be okay with those being free form for the players (and possibly skipping around for the objectives as well).

Free form mission design can also have disadvantages from a player perspective... I know things are somewhat fun, but also a little loosey goosey with the first mission of the new Admiral Sutter TF (which is basically an open map with some indoor locations on it). I kind of liked it, but it also meant that I wanted more objective targets on my screen, which I noted in my feedback about the TF. Later missions in the TF are also a little more open, but also more confusing to find your way around the first time because things aren't quite so linear.

These are the same difficulties game masters have in tabletop roleplaying, of course. Trying to make the game seem not on rails, even though you probably only designed so many things for the players to explore and do. The devs have it here as well, of course.

There are some Praetoria lab maps with more than one route, but they are quite linear, and I suppose I would like things to have multiple routes to the end objective, just to keep the illusion of not being on rails. Still, I can understand the difficulties, and rarely bother myself with statements like "hey, I've been in this layout before," unless it's two missions in a row. I'm looking at you, Citadel Task Force!

With everything else, I suspend my disbelief. Still, it behooves the devs to have more map types, layouts, and probably more options to get to the end (when the story can support that).

It's hard to mash ambushes onto players if the map is less linear.

Or, it's trickier to get 'em to do certain events in order without a lot of back-and-forth and searching.

As I said before - multiple-path locations doesn't have to entail open-surface maps with no defined paths, and it doesn't have to preclude going through specific locations. It's what I like to call a hubbed design. This is where you split your map into various checkpoints where important events happen, but give the player multiple paths between said events. In older office buildings, lifts act as such checkpoints. No matter how sprawling one storey is, you can only enter and exit it at one point.

What I mean by this is that a map can be designed with many branching and re-merging paths, but still have a linear progression of important locations if all paths are occasionally bottlenecked through said important locations. All roads lead to Rome, as it were. This gives the map a more open feeling, it makes progression through it easier to track and it gives developers specific locations that they can be sure the player will pass through in order. Other games have used it in the past.

Games have historically always had such bottleneck points, even games where this isn't obvious. Whenever you have a level which ends when you reach a certain point, you have a bottleneck. It doesn't matter how sandbox the level itself is, you can always bottleneck the player at least some part of the way directly before the exit point and force him to go through specific events. Assassin's Creed does that all the time by use of unclimable fortresses with only one viable entrance that specific missions force you to find and then play cutscenes when you do.

All I'm asking for is that a little more care be taken with map design. We're obviously not using random-generated maps (as should be obvious if you do a /whereami inside an instance), so there's really no reason why these should be done with so little regard. Remember, guys - we spend almost our entire time in this game inside instances. These are the environments we see the bulk of the time. They should be an important part of the game which receives a high priority and much developer attention, not something to knock together whenever there's time between other projects and drop it entirely.

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Incidentally, what killed Halo for me was that its locations were BORING. Forest to indescribable tech base to forest to indescribable tech base. When your locations don't look like anything, it doesn't matter how architecturally diverse they are (and Halo's weren't), because in the eyes of the player, it's all just weird alien tech and non-descript forest. This is a problem we faced with Arachnos maps way back when. It doesn't matter what pipes and cables and consoles you hook up to the sides of your corridors when they're of this hard to describe fantasy tech. At the end of the day, all players see is "still more corridors" with different props strewn about. Locations don't need to BE diverse, they need to LOOK diverse, and in order for one location to look different from another location both locations need to look like something the player can recognise and tell apart.

This is a common problem in modern gaming, especially with the proliferation of the Unreal engine of late: Locations don't look like anything. When it's all an indescribable alien mess of stuff, is one pile of unrecognisable metal really going to look different from another pile of unrecognisable metal when all you really see is just different flavours of the same general thing? It's more important to make your locations memorable in some way, so that when players see one, they remember it, and they remember it when they see the next location, and they can tell at a glance that they're in a different place.

This is why Half-Life succeeded so well back in the day - because its locations looked like something. When you're out at the dam wall, you know it's different from the offices you were in before, and you know those are different the service tunnels you were in before that, and you know those were different from the elevator shafts you were in before still. "Where am I now?" is a question the player should be able to answer at every point in his journey, because if he can't, then every place he goes to will look like every place else.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Amen brother.

The maps in this game drive me _crazy_ what I wouldn't give for sane architecture where:

1. You didn't need to walk through someone's work area to get to a lift.
2. The floors actually conformed to the shape of the building
3. The floors conformed to the shape of each other.
4. Mission objective are placed in sane locations (ah yes the safe is in the middle of a lobby/The secret computer in on a desk in the hallway)
5. A wider selection of glowies/destroyables so they can more accurately match the mission objective
6. Clipping boxes on objects are smoothed to prevent getting stuck on plants or tables
7. NPC's doing location appropriate emotes (we got a _little_ of that with the first paper missions)
8. Mayhem style random destroyables (that don't appear on tab targeting)
9. Dynamic colouring of key element (walls etc) provides tremendous variation for (comparably) minimal work

As truly awful as most of the instanced maps are the things that surprises me most is that the are not actually random, they were individually designed (from prefabs), they possess all the negative points of random layout (does not match supposed use, repeating blocks) without any of the benefits (keeping players on their toes, freshness of challenge)

Personally I think the reason we don't get new tilesets (I only really count the troll/rikti/cimeorran caves and the Praetorian labs, the rest are so similar to existing assets or just so small) is because the devs know with their current build tools they would still need to manually generate a load of maps using those prefabs. A directed-random map generator with an extended tileset would do _so_ much for the game.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, Paragon _need_ to invest in their build tools. With all of the assets they have available it should take a day to knock up 5 new mansion-style maps (re-using offices and the midnighter building)

If they updated the build tools they could hold a competition to let players build maps for the game, hell just update the demorecord format we'd do it in text files if needed. Get us to do the work.

Yes absolutely agree with you guys. Tilesets and maps should be far more a priority than they have been. The greatest addition to this game (aside from ragdoll physics) was the transition maps (when you go from an office building to a sewer map). When the released that it blew my mind. Because maps had become so stale and repetitive. They need far more tilesets and layouts.

And why not add some interactivity to the maps? Put those sensors (from mayhem missions) in more missions. Put in more explodable objects too. Maybe have walls you have to break down. When they added mayhem missions they added a lot of good new tech and I was hoping it would eventually carry over to the game at large, but it never did. The Frostfire ice slicks were also a nice touch. More like that please!

I've always felt that every Issue should have one new instance map not associated with Issue-specific content. So if I21 has a new Trial it needs new maps of course, but it should ALSO have one new instance map that will go into the Map Queue for generic instance missions.

Even 1 new map since I10 would give us 10 new maps by now. 2 new warehouses, 1 new cave, 1 new Arachnos base or whatever.

Some of the missions now use alternate entrance doors. The first time I realized I was coming in the side door of Office 8 I was pleased because there was that feeling of being unsure. Sadly the spawn points are always the same.

I also agree that even the common instance mission needs more elements to make it interesting. Locks to pick, computers to hack and so forth. However so as to not exclude anyone there needs to be at least 2 ways to accomplish anything and one of them is generall smashing.

Example: Timed mission in Praetoria where we need to break in and steal the files before the PPD shows up. Timer is 5 minutes normally but shorter on higher Diff. Some missions should include at least one thing to slow the team's progress like a locked door or computer to hack. Anyone without those skills can either take longer to do them as a default or smash through for some sort of minor disadvantage like shortened timer or possible ambush.

That way you don't HAVE to be a thief to get it done but it helps. If the idea is more for theme than huge benefits then players will choose as they wish. Plus there is the added potential of new badges for picking locks as opposed to smashing doors.

And PLEASE can we somehow have somewhat random spawn points?

Also, and this is asking a LOT, but I want the ambush code from Left for Dead. For those who don't play it the game reads the team and how well off they are with regards to health, ammo and so forth. If the team is doing really well then they get jumped by Zombie hordes more often. If they're getting creamed the games backs off on the random ambushes.

Ever since I saw this I felt it should be the new Market standard. Factor it in as part of the Diff Slider with -1 as no ambushes, 0 as normal and so on as the team gets better/more powerful. If they're getting smeared they might see 1 unless the Diff is cranked. If they're doing well they might be buried under a sea of bad guys.

Anything to make the game less predictable is good IMHO.