The Holy Grail of Multiplayer Level Design: Casual and Competitive Maps

[@cardanai]

One of my favorite GDC level design talks.Thanks Andrew!

[@talverdesign]

This talk is pure gold for a level designer. Well done, Andrew!

[@RedFactionMedia]

Great job! In Red Faction our holy grail map is Warlords. It was released with the game and despite thousands of custom maps made for Red Faction, warlords remains the go-to CTF map for RF.

[@mindblockandroid]

Former UT2k4 modder here! For me, the holy grail of death match maps is Quake 2 - the edge. It has a vortex effect to the central arena, for frantic and fun rocket battles for casuals, but these can also happen in the cargo and courtyard areas. It also allows map control strategies, and it has AMAZING flow, with multiple entries and exits to each area. The verticality is also fantastic. It allows for advanced strategies like rocket jumping, etc. EDIT: Also the music track is aggresive, which amps you up and compels you to load up and hunt your enemies relentlessly!

[@yadav-r]

Very insightful, learned so much with this.

[@byronhill6128]

Electric Fish Deathmatch 6, or EFDm6, a community map for Quake 1 by Mr.Fribbles, who also made a bunch of other amazing maps for quake, is possible the best 1v1 or 2v2 map for arena shooter ever made. Mr.Fribbles went on to do game design for "The Last of Us" among some lesser titles.

[@OGshmo]

*Dust2 eating popcorn like MJ in Thriller* watching this.

[@wombat7961]

2 games i find to both highly competitive and very fun casually Darwin Project: 10-player online multiplayer (no guns) the map design is one of the best to ever grace gaming, 7-hexagon map tiles that randomly generate different areas and versions, which creates countless (hundreds) of unique maps for players Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare (1,2,3): this series of games has a lot of character, the maps are highly unique for very large teams for a total of 24 players

[@m0dp1g21]

its so sad that darwin project sucked, it had so much potential and i loved the map

[@wombat7961]

@@m0dp1g21 Disregarding your comment, Scavenger Studios made the most unique multiplayer game in an age of generic gaming & battle royales

[@lemongummy7047]

good talk! :) each map to their own I guess

[@YourWarriorPoetCOM]

Aloha and mahalo for the info!

[@astropolski]

Easy part: listen to the talk and think you're learning stuff Hard part: actually try making a good map and pull your hair out balancing it for comp play 😂

[@ruhanbello3983]

Amazing talk! Thanks a lot for that

[@jairdeoliveiraneto605]

Great Advices! Nice video

[@prilen1]

Really interesting lecture, I like it! Very relatable.

[@yinyuetrifecta]

Infinity Ward needs to watch this lol

[@DANNYonPC]

14:42 You can put BF3's Grand bazaar in CSGO and it should work for the most part It'd be a bit big, but it'll work fine gameplay wise

[@Stone_Orchids]

Are Paladins map even good? I'm conflicted if I should actually give this talk a chance or if it's just wasted time. Paladins had a lot of potential but after years it still feels as refined as a game in a close beta and I can't tell if maps even change anything in that game experience

[@MoondogGamer]

Good talk bro

[@Test-iv4pm]

How does level design change when designing a non-FPS map? e.g. When you look at an FPS map, how would you change it so that it works for melee combat?

[@graullas8981]

Even smaller spaces? More opportunities for player to clash into each other?

[@ylfe8061]

As an ex Paladins player with +3000 hours of gameplay, I have to say that if I had participated in the design of maps like Ice Mines, Timber Mill or Frozen Guard, I wouldn't have the nerve to give a GDC talk about this subject.

[@Aqmal34]

True, the game in general is a big mess

[@THEAETIK]

Irrelevant but since we're talking about bad map design as well: I want to have a looong chat with the Level Designer who Designed Crash Site and(?) Complex in TitanFall 2, and what they were thinking when they designed level(s) that completely favors Titan Play with near Zero Pilot navigation... Was it forced on them by a creative vision / direction? Did they play the game at all? Background experience? ... Was it "A casual design" to help new players? That failed catastrophically if that's the case, as they get spawn camped and have no option to deal enough damage to titans.

[@Xorgye]

I think you make a point here, possible without realizing, that a launched game with players (successful or not) is not an indication of good map design. The problem is that much in gaming isn't proven that well, so finding speakers that are 'right' is nearly impossible. It is up to us as the listeners to decide for ourselves what the talk is worth, how to rate individual points the speaker brings forward, and how to (not) execute on these individual points.

[@wolfdr3ams257]

Facts. I clicked on the video out of sheer shock that any hirez related thing would be on gdc

[@m0dp1g21]

@@THEAETIK i personally like crash shite (as some of my friends lovingly call it) and complex, both of those maps are, as you said, built to focus on titans since some other maps focus almost exclusively on pilots, so the overall balance occurs. a map that i WOULD like to talk about with a designer is rise. fuck rise.

[@zarbaboiarchive1680]

doesnt mention dust 2 as goated L talk edit: nvm W talk

[@herblewis6250]

Didnt cover a single thing that doesnt come up with a simple google of "basics of fps map design". Most, if not all of this talk is taking directly from that. Gamasutra isn't a secret.

[@kairon156]

BOO! I love casual games.

[@DANNYonPC]

Cashmoney

[@heavyflamerheresy2581]

Overwatch map designe beyond bad.

[@fcat2148]

This guy is just wrong. I had to stop watching once he listed off the "properties of competitive maps" and tried telling us that competitive maps had to be a bunch of bland empty corridors. The real competitive maps are based around exploiting the games mechanics itself to change the way the map is played. Just look at Siege or CSGO's map designs. The best maps are built around large arenas where you fight for control of one of the bombsites and the rest of the map is used to provide supporting positions and rotations for these arenas and positions. None of this garbage corridor fighting crap.

[@maxwinzar7928]

Lol what? He literally explains one of the main ways of supporting competitive play is through providing multiple options in strategic approach, he also shows an example of where they public tested a 'garbage corridor' map for Paladins and got poor feedback. Also exploiting game mechanics is not really something you can intentionally design a map for, that's where the community themselves develop the meta. Not sure why you chose to get aggro at a video you didn't watch in full but for anyone else coming along I'd suggest watching the entire talk.

[@barfjavelin]

you mean like those competitive maps he talked about, specifically mentioning that they're arenas fighting over objectives/power items? Did you even listen to the guy or were you too busy frothing at the mouth with excitement at the idea of getting to be contrarian on the internet?

[@Nitrousoxide2k]

Pete Davidson???

[@Daniels2l]

Those map examples at the beginning are just lul, honestly, counter strike 1.6 maps were amazing regarding first person shooter player positioning and strategic pathing variability

[@SerhiiUshakov-p7q]

says the dude who didnt watched the video to the end))) Dust2 on 13:08

[@iyankov96]

Paladins is a horrible game competitively speaking. This GDC talk doesn't provide much value.

[@nudl4668]

Kneejerk balance changes, bugs, low tick rate server, nerfing high level playstyles that didn't affect low level play. It's not so much the maps in my opinion as it is everything else. With that said, it was always a great casual game.

[@vatsalyayd]

Fix the servers lol!

[@DogieParsley]

Of course, yell at the map designer to fix the servers, you must be some sort of genius