Should I continue to create Siege maps?

[j3rk]

I always have ideas tossing around in mah head, but I'm wondering if my efforts are better spent on MB2/NDA mapping or if there's still a place for custom Siege maps. This is only referring to Siege maps, not Zomb0rz or anything. Siege maps take a lot more time to do.

[§ Vail §]

If you have the time and if you have fun making them, go ahead, im always up for more maps, seeing as there are only 2 maps being played atm. You can't really expect people to play it though. Take silly room for example, its a great map and it never really gets played

[piipe]

who the fuck vote no ?????

[tens0r]

Custom maps suck...

[Duo]

I think you should keep making siege maps, because they look awesome, but if you want them to get pugged on I think you need to change some aspects of them, mostly in terms of size/scale and layout.

USM had potential for puggery(as I recall we did pug on it a bit) but I wasn't a fan of all the narrow hallways on the first objective, and then the next few objectives were gigantic. I played through Mygeeto and the layout just didn't really strike me as siegey, I seem to remember it being too big; maybe it was too complex also.

Bomb1b or whatever it's called also had pug potential(another one we pugged on to an extent) but again the size/scale and layout detracted from it. The first objective was a bunch of tiny rooms, and I remember the "can" as we called it being placed in a corner of the room, which meant that you couldn't shield it properly(since shields only go up-and-down or left-and-right, not diagonally). The objective with all the huts was simultaneously really big and really small; the outdoor area itself was giant, whereas the rooms with the objectives were small. Also there were a lot of random unnecessary huts you could enter.

I remember the 2nd obj of Cargoth being even harder for the offense than on the original: mostly because of the layout, but also because there was no wookie trick. It also just seemed awkward with the big platforms on each level.

I think if you shoot for a happy medium between massive areas and tiny rooms, and yews simpler layouts(no alternate routes, no unnecessary places, stuff like that) you can have some puggable maps. Also maybe just hold some small test pugs on early versions of objectives to see how they work when people play them.

I had to scrap a lot of objectives I had designed for Nar Shaddaa because they seemed good when I sketched them out, but upon blocking them in and running through them ingame, picturing where the enemy would come out from and where I would want to take cover, they were awful. Then there was one objective that passed my solo test runs, but when we got to test pugs it turned out to be horrible. If anyone remembers the original third obj from the test versions of my map, that's what I'm talking about -- I envisioned three "CC's" next to each other that all had to be killed; once we tested it we found that you could just run through them, tagging each one a little bit, making it really difficult to defend.

For my objectives I usually started by just thinking about a square or rectangular space with spawns on each side and an objective thrown in somewhere too. Then I would just go from there, i.e. try adding another space/room on the side and maybe think about moving either the obj or one of the spawns in there, or neither. By starting as simple as possible like that I think you can avoid the insanely complex nature of some objectives, i.e. on USM. Most of the base objectives that people like are really simple if you think about them in terms of fundamental layout (i.e. bridge or hangar)

[piipe]

wtf why ppl vote no!!!
im going to create fake accounts and vote like 1000 yes

[Max Rambone]

H3H was epic, but sweet.

We should actually start pugging that more again.

But, I have to agree with duo that maps like USM were a lot of running and not much action.

One reason why desert is semi-boring and harder to defend.

~archi

[j3rk]

Duo, that's an incredibly helpful post. Thanks dude. Imma let you finish but I'm going to apply those ideas to my next project. And thanks for the support piiippppeeee, arch, vail and whoever else voted (yes and no).

I'm a dog.

[Magyk]

I voted yes, but I encourage you to only make maps if they aren't going to go to waste like some of your others. (Jhoth in particular)

[j3rk]

Impossible to tell what's going to go to waste... I wish I could tell, tbh. I still think that Theed is puggable. .shrug.