There hasn’t really been an update on this since my post at the end of April, so we wanted to flesh out the vision of how we want to the maps to play and where we are on the road to achieving it.
I’d mentioned our pillars for the game, and this is what they have to say about where we’re going with our maps and the specific gameplay that we want to foster:
WE <3 OBJECTIVE-BASED GAMEPLAY
This has been one of Splash Damage’s gameplay hallmarks for over a decade now. Objectives help to create an ebb and flow to multiplayer gaming that resembles a strength of single player content (3 act structures in single player games, film, theater, etc.), and create a naturally fertile ground for interesting player stories.
KEY POINTS
- [li]Objectives should advance and change the battlefield[/li]Advancing through a map means that the layout changes over the course of a match, allowing for changes in gameplay and tactics and variety overall.
[li]Secondary should objectives relax chokepoints and open up new tactical possibilities[/li]Because objectives draw players to particular locations as attackers or defenders, they create chokepoints in the surrounding geometry. Secondary objectives should strengthen or weaken these chokepoints, based on the tactical decisions of the attackers and defenders.
At a high level, secondaries should be away from the primary routes, so that teams interacting with them pushes and pulls the action away from the primary objectives. We’re not where we want to be with this across all the maps as they exist now, but we’re taking steps to get there.
WE WANT TO CREATE EMERGENT ASYMMETRICAL EXPERIENCES
One team attacking while the other defends creates an asymmetrical multiplayer experience, and the structure of our characters and roles combined with story-based primary and secondary objectives creates matches which have uniquely themed narratives that still play out differently every time.
KEY POINTS
- [li]Maps should support a variety of viable tactics[/li]With different characters available, routes to take and objectives to target, there needs to be a space rich with tactical choice.
[li]The battlefield situation should evolve to challenge players to react with different characters and strategies[/li]Progressing through the map should change the nature of the objectives and the spaces, which helps keep a match from feeling repetitive.
[li]Players who utilise the array of available characters should have much greater success and tactical possibilities[/li]Maps and objectives need to be designed to minimise the effectiveness of particular characters above others, so that tactical possibilities are magnified by considered character selection.
This is the logic that has been driving the way that we’ve been altering the maps, and will continue to do so… we have a lot more planned!
A wireframe highlight of a work in progress Whitechapel
THE MAPS
WHAT HAPPENED TO HACKING OBJECTIVES?
You’ll also notice that in the latest patch Hacking has been removed as an objective type. We did this because mechanically it was identical to other objectives, and we’re making a concerted effort to avoid prolonged “stand in one spot looking at another spot” interactions. It’s why you’ll now only find repair objectives as secondaries or EV repairs; they’re always relatively short, and especially so for Mercs with blowtorches.
SPAWN CAMPING
We definitely agree that this is a major issue in some areas of the game, and will be looking at adding more viable exits from spawns where these issues are occurring. Our ultimate goal is that spawn camping rarely occurs in matches.
WALL-HOPPING, LONG-JUMPING & TRAVEL TIMES
As we work on targeted improvements for each map, we’ll also be looking at how we can better support wall-hopping and long-jumping, and normalising the average travel times to objectives for attackers and defenders to better fit the newly fixed spawn wave timers. We do want the attackers to have a slight advantage to help drive the progress on a given map.
[center]A blockout map used to quickly iterate upon larger design elements
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Here’s a bit more detail about each map in particular:
UNDERGROUND (AKA CANARY WHARF)
Since we’re not using Hacks anymore, the Hack objective has been replaced with a C4 plant. We’ve removed one of the secondaries on the initial capture objective, as essentially at least one of the secondaries needed to be completed to complete the primary, and this wasn’t quite in line with the guidelines that I’ve posted above.
We plan to adjust the positioning of the doors so that they’re not in such close proximity to the primary objective, as well as add more routes out of the spawns areas.
WHITECHAPEL
We’re looking at adding a secondary objective to the escort segment to help relax the chokepoint and create some back and forth away from the EV itself. We’re also adding some markers to the escort route to denote the spots where the spawns switch based on the EV’s progress.
We plan to adjust some of the geometry in the final section to work better for the Carry objective, and have the secondary have more meaningful impact in that section as well.
TRAINYARD (AKA CAMDEN)
The Hack objective in the first section will be replaced with a Capture objective. We also feel that this map is a little short for our targeted play time, so we’re looking at adding a Carry objective before the final C4 plant, and then iterating on the geometry in that area to support the new gameplay.
TERMINAL (AKA WATERLOO, VICTORIA)
We have a lot that we want to do with Terminal, so it is a lead candidate to be taken offline for major surgery in the near future. We need to ensure that the secondaries are better fitting our stated goals, and do some substantial geometry adjustments to alleviate the chokepoints for the attackers at the start of the map.
BRIDGE
We want to only have one live version of Bridge, but we thought the alternate Carry geometry from Bridge_Alt was an improvement, so we’ll be implementing that in Bridge in the future. As with Whitechapel, we’ll also look at where we can add effective secondaries to address the chokepoints along the escort route.
DOME & DOCKYARD (AKA MAP06 & BATTERSEA)
We’ll continue to test Dome and Dockyard in blockout form for a while longer, as they’re much easier to iterate and improve on in that form. Dome’s second half is particularly targeted for improvements, and we’re looking at adjusting the first half of Dockyard to improve the angles of the front.
I hope this gives everybody a better picture of where we feel we are with the maps in Dirty Bomb right now, and in what direction we want them to head. They’re probably the most labour-intensive aspect of the game and therefore take the longest to manifest changes, even though you all are living and dying in them on a match to match basis… and that’s why we need them to be great!
