Politely explaining why I believe the maps are poorly designed

[wolfnemesis75]

STFU…Who made you the voice of pc gamers? I like the maps…so many flanking spots and playing light jumping around the map is fun.

Yeah, I am right there with you, coolstory. The new maps have tons of flanks, vantage points. There are two places to set an HE charge on Labs. On both maps there is an outside area where some fighting can happen. Overall visuals of these two maps is a cut above the shipped maps. This is one of the times where I have to strongly disagree pretty much entirely with the Op. I feel the maps are pretty epic. Lots of strategies can play out on the new maps.

[AnthonyDa]

STFU…Who made you the voice of pc gamers? I like the maps…so many flanking spots and playing light jumping around the map is fun.

Why are you overeacting like that? I didn’t say that the maps weren’t good, they just have a huge lack of variation.

Well it’s not like exedore said that some complains about it on the OP are valids …

[Chris2]

[QUOTE=Humate;364835]Are you comming with rands, or people you know?
If its the latter, and being able to comm everything in a pub game is important to you - what you can do is actually label certain parts of the map with your mates, instead of trying to describe what you see on the map.

This is what comp teams do. Well the organised ones anyway.[/QUOTE]

That’s the point he was trying to make, it’s quite hard to come up with meaningful names for areas as many are so alike.

Well it’s not like exedore said that some complains about it on the OP are valids …

Brink Hardcore Club, what do you expect?

[zenstar]

[QUOTE=AnthonyDa;364843]IIRC, Xbox and PS3 have 256MB of RAM (ok maybe 512MB).
Any PC has at least 2GB+ of RAM, even the olds one (at least the one having a GPU supporting OpenGL 3, which is required to run BRINK).

So yeah, BRINK is dumbed down for consoles …[/QUOTE]

You’re forgetting all the extra crud that PCs run that use up memory. Like a far more flexible OS. That takes up more memory than a consol OS that’s designed to run games. Also: Consoles use their full allotment of memory. PC running windows may not. A 32 bit os will only handle up to 3.something GBs of memory and will only hand out 1/2 that to a single application running.

The xbox is basically a PC with a different OS. You could be playing on a PC with the same effective hardware as an xbox.

So yeah, your comment does not apply to all PCs / PC gamers.

EDIT:

That’s the point he was trying to make, it’s quite hard to come up with meaningful names for areas as many are so alike.

Except he’s effectively saying “come up with a name for an area without using some of the defining features”.

If you have 2 identical red rooms except one has a machinegun emplacement and one has a hack objective you would call one “red machinegun room” and the other “red hack room” but he’s saying “without mentioning an interactive object”.

[wolfnemesis75]

There are certainly key areas on the new maps and best approaches that have to be learned tactically and an effective team is gonna be able to communicate and orientate themselves faster. Some of that is taking the time to really learn the maps. To the point where you can navigate through them as an individual without taking a wrong turn. Labs has tons of different places, high and low, from which one can defend or attack an area. The design is multi-level to an extent not as present or noticeable on most of the shipped maps. Definitely the new maps improved in this area. More vertical fighting. And tons of parkour on the new maps.

[AnthonyDa]

[quote=zenstar;364867]You’re forgetting all the extra crud that PCs run that use up memory. Like a far more flexible OS. That takes up more memory than a consol OS that’s designed to run games. Also: Consoles use their full allotment of memory. PC running windows may not.
[/quote]
All consoles are running their own OS in the background. (which is used to manage achievements/trophy/whatever for example).
=>You sir are wrong.

Plus PC (at least) have something called page swapping which can be used to free the memory by using the HDD. And Windows doesn’t takes 2GB, mostly ~400MB last time I’ve checked on a 7 64bits by using rammap.

[quote=zenstar;364867]
A 32 bit os will only handle up to 3.something GBs of memory and will only hand out 1/2 that to a single application running.[/quote]
2^32 = 4G.
A 32 bits OS manage up to 4GB of memory which is shared across all the hardware components.
And you can allocate up to 3GB of RAM to a single processes on Windows x86. Dunno where your “1/2” comes from.
=>You sir are wrong.

[quote=zenstar;364867]
The xbox is basically a PC with a different OS. You could be playing on a PC with the same effective hardware as an xbox.

So yeah, your comment does not apply to all PCs / PC gamers.[/quote]
xbox(360) is running a windows-based OS. And they are currently porting the XBOXLIVE to 8. And why? Because they know that most PC can handle xbox games just fine

And we are only talking about the RAM, same things applies to the GPU memory (256MB on PS3, 512MB on XBOX and average gaming PC).

Everybody is complaining about the lack of memory on the consoles hardware, starting by the devs themselves.
Just look at BF3, totally dumbed down for consoles who can’t run the full game, instead of having a cut game on PC because the consoles can’t handle the game fine. As a PC gamer I’d rather want a full pie instead of a slice because the consoles can’t handle everything

[Chris2]

If you have 2 identical red rooms except one has a machinegun emplacement and one has a hack objective you would call one “red machinegun room” and the other “red hack room” but he’s saying “without mentioning an interactive object”.

He meant that excluding those rooms you can’t come up with short descriptive names.

[wolfnemesis75]

He meant that excluding those rooms you can’t come up with short descriptive names.

What like Blue Room, Red Room, Green Room. Do the rooms need to be color coded or something? Is that what the Op is trying to say? That would be kind of nooby if you ask me. A good team will come up with ways to describe all the areas depending on what side you spawn on.

[zenstar]

[QUOTE=AnthonyDa;364877]All consoles are running their own OS in the background. (which is used to manage achievements/trophy/whatever for example).
=>You sir are wrong.
[/QUOTE]
Well done for missing the point that I clearly stated: Windows takes up far more memory than xbox os.
=> You sir missed the point.

Plus PC (at least) have something called page swapping which can be used to free the memory by using the HDD. And Windows doesn’t takes 2GB, mostly ~400MB last time I’ve checked on a 7 64bits by using rammap.

All current generation consoles with harddrives do page swapping. This is not something unique to windows. And while Windows itself will only take about 400MB of working memory you also have to account for all the other things you’re running at the same time (all the drivers and funcky little system tray icons and the steam client and… and…and…).

2^32 = 4G.
A 32 bits OS manage up to 4GB of memory which is shared across all the hardware components.
And you can allocate up to 3GB of RAM to a single processes on Windows x86. Dunno where your “1/2” comes from.
=>You sir are wrong.

I’ll give you the 4GB limit. I was getting mixed up between the 4GB limit and the 3GB single process limit. However:
source
“The address space is usually split so that 2 GB of address space is directly accessible to the application and the other 2 GB is only accessible to the Windows executive software.”
However, to change this to a 3GB limit you need to add switches to your boot.ini file (which most people do not do).
=> You sir are not fully informed.

xbox(360) is running a windows-based OS. And they are currently porting the XBOXLIVE to 8. And why? Because they know that most PC can handle xbox games just fine

And we are only talking about the RAM, same things applies to the GPU memory (256MB on PS3, 512MB on XBOX and average gaming PC).

You’re only talking about PCs with more than 3GB of RAM with a graphics card that is better than the xbox graphics card. The point that everyone here is trying to make is that there are plenty of PC players using older machines and your comment does not apply to them.

Everybody is complaining about the lack of memory on the consoles hardware, starting by the devs themselves.
Just look at BF3, totally dumbed down for consoles who can’t run the full game, instead of having a cut game on PC because the consoles can’t handle the game fine. As a PC gamer I’d rather want a full pie instead of a slice because the consoles can’t handle everything

Except any PC game that wants to make money will be dumbed down to run on older hardware. In fact: you’re talking about the idTech4 engine which has been around since what? Doom 3? Yes there have been updates to it and yes it requires a beefier machine to run, but without some compatibility with older hardware they’d end up with another Crysis crysis where 3 people can run the game and noone else bothered to buy it.

Back to the original point: Your comment does not apply to all PC gamers.

[Chris2]

What like Blue Room, Red Room, Green Room. Do the rooms need to be color coded or something? Is that what the Op is trying to say? That would be kind of nooby if you ask me. A good team will come up with ways to describe all the areas depending on what side you spawn on.

There needs to be enough distinction for areas in order to be given proper names, this is tricky in some areas of the maps. Colour can be used yes, not so much the the whole room but say you had a red box on a balcony and another balcony near by with a blue box, you have two unique identifiers to help distinguish from, saying left or right balcony doesn’t cut it in most instances, what if you’re facing wrong way

There’s loads of simple tricks you can use in the placement of map objects and in the shaping of world geometry to help craft out areas that are distinct enough but still part of an over all theme.

Going back to the balcony example, one balcony with boxes on it and a broken railing, and another one with gas cylinders on it and a fully intact railing. So if the enemy uses these places you can either say “box balcony”/“broken balcony” for one and “cylinder balcony”/“unbroken balcony” for the other.

[wolfnemesis75]

[QUOTE=.Chris.;364906]There needs to be enough distinction for areas in order to be given proper names, this is tricky in some areas of the maps. Colour can be used yes, not so much the the whole room but say you had a red box on a balcony and another balcony near by with a blue box, you have two unique identifiers to help distinguish from, saying left or right balcony doesn’t cut it in most instances, what if you’re facing wrong way

There’s loads of simple tricks you can use in the placement of map objects and in the shaping of world geometry to help craft out areas that are distinct enough but still part of an over all theme.

Going back to the balcony example, one balcony with boxes on it and a broken railing, and another one with gas cylinders on it and a fully intact railing. So if the enemy uses these places you can either say “box balcony”/“broken balcony” for one and “cylinder balcony”/“unbroken balcony” for the other.[/QUOTE]

Some of the visual cues and clues for a room are there. Good communication, practice, and familiarity with the maps through multiple play through is the best way to discover these visual cues. No two rooms are the same on these new maps. Practice makes perfect.

[FrankieGodskin]

[quote=AmishWarMachine;364664]Frankie,

What you describe is exactly that I like about the two new levels.

You’re right. Right now, it’s nigh impossible to describe where you were, where you are, or where you’re headed. Wait until people familiarize themselves with every nook and cranny of the map (like they did about a week after release). Wait until the meta-game establishes tactics and tendencies.

At that point, if we’re all still clueless as to how we differentiate one place from another… then I could probably agree with you. But I truly think time and experience will fix the seeming ambiguity.[/quote]
I tried to reference “old” maps in my post to demonstrate that it’s not an issue of familiarity. Trying to describe an attacker’s location on Shipyard is almost impossible, for example.

[wolfnemesis75]

I tried to reference “old” maps in my post to demonstrate that it’s not an issue of familiarity. Trying to describe an attacker’s location on Shipyard is almost impossible, for example.

Seriously? Perhaps the impossible is very possible depending on who’s playing.

[Cep]

Maybe they could put up roadsigns?

Health CP this way ->

Warning Choke Point Ahead!

[FrankieGodskin]

[quote=Exedore;364778]I actually agree with a lot of points that the OP makes, but it’s not as simple as calling it poor design… it’s a encompassing production issue. If overall visual fidelity of the maps was reduced, more memory can be dedicated for unique assets per area, differentiating them better… memory is the key constraint with what you’re asking for. Overall both of the DLC levels push the technical limits of the game a lot harder than the shipping ones, because we had more experience polishing and optimizing them.[/quote] Thank you for the clarification. I can understand how technical limitations could hold things back, but there are plenty of titles, both this generation and last, that accomplish what I’m describing.

I’ll give Halo 2 as an example. On the map Zanzibar, there are dozens of unique locations which allow an enemy to be called out. The dome, on top of the wheel, gate-side top floor, broken door, top ramp, the three rocks, the hole in the wall, fence, on top of the fence, fence doorway, front hallway, etc… THEN the interactive objects are added for further clarification: sniper spawn, invisibility tower (invis tower), shotgun spawn, ghost spawn, capture point, flag room, etc… At the end of the day, there are probably 50 different locations on that map that I can call out and my entire team will know exactly where I am describing.

Mind you, Halo 2 had flaws as well- the map Midship is very similar to Resort, in that it has many similar assets and a single color pallette. It did have some structures that stood out, such as a bridge or “above” and “below” bases, but it was frustrating to describe some positions on that map as well.

[quote=Exedore;364778]And… Terminal has a hangar? [/quote]I meant Refuel. Oops. :o

I originally had an example in my first post where I explained the difficulty describing where an enemy is in the last part of Terminal when they’re making the final delivery, but I deleted it before posting to avoid “wall of text” accusations.

[RabidAnubis]

[QUOTE=Cep;364925]Maybe they could put up roadsigns?

Health CP this way ->

Warning Choke Point Ahead![/QUOTE]

That would be hilarious.

[FrankieGodskin]

I’ll reply to Wolf in one shot:

Some of this is a case of not playing the maps enough to learn them. And venting about it. Spend a bit more time letting the new stuff germinate in your mind before writing a book report on what you believe is “poor design”. The flip side to that coin is, so far I feel the DLC maps look, and play really well. I have little trouble figuring out where to go.

If 5 or 6 paragraphs is considered a book report where you’re from, then I apologize for the public education system failing you so completely.

What like Blue Room, Red Room, Green Room. Do the rooms need to be color coded or something? Is that what the Op is trying to say? That would be kind of nooby if you ask me. A good team will come up with ways to describe all the areas depending on what side you spawn on.

That’s a real interesting example that actually proves exactly what I’m saying. I wouldn’t have used such “elementary” examples as color, but you actually prove my point. If you told me someone was camping the entrance to the blue room, or that you saw someone planting a mine in the red hallway, I’d know EXACTLY where you were describing.

I understand it’s unreasonable to expect maps to be color-coded (and it would be fugly), but something giving similar visual cues would accomplish the same purpose.

Seriously? Perhaps the impossible is very possible depending on who’s playing.

Nah, I think we’ve moved beyond the point where we blame skill–especially if a dev posts and understands these concerns/ The “you’re not good enough” argument doesn’t hold water here.

And since you jumped in–please describe 5 locations in the first section of Shipyard that the attackers are coming from without describing interactive objects. Then tell me 5 places the defenders could be.

[FrankieGodskin]

[quote=Nexolate;364788]I have to admit, I still get a little lost due to the similarly styled environments. That being said though, once I got my bearings it became much easier to navigate and the maps really do look fantastic at times.

Regards,
Nexo[/quote]
You’re not alone.

[FrankieGodskin]

[quote=Humate;364835]Are you comming with rands, or people you know?
If its the latter, and being able to comm everything in a pub game is important to you - what you can do is actually label certain parts of the map with your mates, instead of trying to describe what you see on the map.

This is what comp teams do. Well the organised ones anyway.[/quote]
True, but those organized teams usually have a point of reference for naming locations. Usually it’s, “In the barn,” or, “on the high roof,” or, “down the hill.”

[Shinigami]

sigh
when i clicked this thread i was expecting a smart conversation about how the levels where designed in terms of objective location and attack/defense balance. Instead its a thread about poor aesthetics lol. Oh well, if anyone wants to discuss the level design objectives wise, not aesthetics, here are my two cents:

Labs- Pretty good overall. I like the general feel to this map, and the fact that there are plenty of different ways to reach the objective. Plenty of flanking opportunities. I especially like fact that the HE has two different doors to plant the charge. It gives new dimension to the objective and it makes it harder for the defense to defend. Last objective also has some room for camping but its not as bad as the founders tower since the respawn for defense if furthest to this last objective.

Founders Tower- Didn’t really like this map. It feels like a map specifically intended for camping. Im specifically talking about the first objective where you need t hack, and the objective where you need to plant the HE charge. Once you get into the room with the objective (both) you pretty much set up camp with the new medic ability, spam mines, and start spreading out buffs. And don’t forget that now plenty of people are rocking the heavy. And even worse, these 2 objectives only have two entrances so it makes it all that much more harder to attack, easier to defend.