Multiplayer Maps: Built or Forged?

[RedStarRocket91]

One of the most popular requests for Halo 4 is that it includes a wider variety of Forgeable sandboxes, i.e. places to design and build custom maps in Forge. Judging by the popularity of Forge World in Reach, it's almost certain that Halo 4 will have at least one or two huge levels built specially for players to create their own maps in.

 

However, a level the size of Forge World obviously requires a lot more code and manpower to create than something the size of Zealot or Lockout. The more maps there are dedicated to Forging, the less likely it becomes that time can be spent on creating other multiplayer maps, which are designed specifically for gameplay rather than to provide Forging space.

 

Obviously, there is only so much that can be shipped with the gameplay disc due to memory constraints. The question is therefore whether players would be willing to tolerate fewer specially built maps like High Ground, Zanzibar and Anchor 9 in order to provide more dedicated Forging canvasses such as Forge World or Sandbox.

 

In short, would you prefer the game to ship with a large number maps, of which only one or two are huge levels made specially for Forging, or for it to be shipped with a smaller number of maps, all of which are huge Forge spaces with multiplayer being formed of levels in the style of Synapse, Asylum, and Hemmorhage, i.e. built with Forge items.

 

There wouldn't necessarily be a difference in quality (some Forge maps, like The Cage, are awful, other like Kingdom are great: some maps built from geometry instead of Forge items, like Reflection are awful: others like Anchor 9 are great), just in the way which they are constructed.

[Kurt S-501]

I would say 50/50. A lot of Sandboxes, but not enough that every map i play on is forged by somebody. But if there are lots of sanboxes then there needs to be a large variety of themes and peices.

[Quantum]

I like forge and all, but I would rather play multiplayer on premade maps.

[Twinreaper]

For me Forge was a quick ideal attempt to introduce a wider population of players to the whole developer "sandbox" toolset we real map makers use. Forge itself for me is a novelty that has lost its charm. The amount of really good download worthy maps that have come from forge....I can count on one hand. If 343 really wants to up the anty for H4 and truly compete with the other fps franchises...they need to develope a side by side PC port and distribute an HEK with it. Then give real home developers the chance to create maps and and introduce cross platform acceptable map formats so PC creaters can properly share maps witb console owners. In short...Forge can bite the big bullet in my opinion.

[Tesseract]

Forge has lost its charm...

I think the only reason all those forged map were made were just to showcase Forge World.

 

I definitely prefer maps made from scratch. Too many forged maps, lack of variety, same ass environment. Sunny, grey and rocky... Yeah.

[lazyfireball00]

Okay here's what I think should happen, We should be to make our own maps and upload them to the Matchmaking maps.

In which case should cost us how ever much CR we put into from Buildings to terrain edits.

[Choot 'em]

To answer your question (which is definately a matter of opinion), I would rather have the majority of maps developed and released by 343i. SOME (very few) Forge World maps are fairly decent but I much rather play on the maps released with Reach and those released with CEA. Opinion varies from member to member. Although I respect the efforts made by fans, I don't think the multiplayer should be targeted primarily to fan based maps.

[Turokman5896]

PREBUILT! as cool as forge is, none of the forge maps are as good as pre built maps. And twin, i appreciate the idea, but i dont think most halo fans would appreciate a PC version. Just Saying

[MasterxChiefx13]

I think that there should be mostly pre-made maps, but there should be more than just one dedicated forge map. More variety than green fields, oceans, blue skies, and forunner materials.

[Scavenger]

If 343 gives us a wider color/theme palette, then there only needs to be one forge sandbox, but if we don't get that variety there should only be three forge maps tops (one Human themed, one Covie themed, and one Forerunner themed).

[SixWaysToSunday]

Premade for competitive, Forge for casual. Really. There arent any amazing competitive forge maps, but things like the flushing toliet or Speed halo clearly outclass anything a company can create for fun. So for me: 1 large map with paste-able backdrop for forge, especially if terrain is given as objects. And the rest premade.

[ArkadianRedneck]

what about MLG based playlists...half if not more of their maps come from the forge world in Reach. Im not saying that halo4 should be catiered to MLG (I personally hate MLG)

 

I want to see more multiplayer maps that are symmetrical ie. zealot, asylum, countdown (I hate that map), Its kind of crap that a team of four randoms can win a game against 4 team members because the randoms camp the living s### out of a single spot on the map (ie sniper spawn on reflection, the lifts on sword base)....let the skill of the players dictate the game, not the piss-poor design of the map.

[ArkadianRedneck]

and who's to say that their needs to be 5-6 maps the size of forge world...what if 343 releases 5-6 maps areas, each area would have its own enviroment, own architechure, and be the size of say the canyon area in the current forge world. Each area would also have its own prebuit map (asylum, uncaged; like with the current forge world). and the ability to completely demolish the pre-built map and created a custom map.

[firedune22]

HA! for all those saying that there aren't really any good forge maps is dead wrong. Most of the maps you see on MM are either A) not completly finished, not updated to the latest version, or C) absolutley horrible. Twinreaper, you may not have realized it, but most of the forging community do not like the maps on MM, the ones you might be referring to. There is much better content made and posted by people on forging community sites like Forgehub and Reaching Perfection, and private groups on B.Net like Blueprint. It's true that the scenery is bland, and just about every thing is so... grey, and the human, forerunner, covenant piece solution would fix it, however forgers deal with it and try and make the most out of what they can.

 

Even though i'm an avid forger, i know that i can't speak for anyone, and i won't try to. The majority of the forging community will tell you that there is some pretty amazing things out there. You just have to look.

 

And reaper, even thought that turing forge over to PC will result in better looking maps, and possible more interesting maps and will give forgers more powerful toolsets, having to switch between systems and using a full-on map editor will be a major turn-off to many people, possibly incuding myself. Forge is extremly acessable and is almost a frictonless way of getting basic map designs down, and 343i is willing, and able to keep it that way. They've stated themselves that "We belive that Forge is an important part of Halo, and we believe i using it as a tool for the community to make and manage theirs and others creations." . Basically they said (at the Halo 4 panel ant Halo Fest) that forge is coming to Halo 4.

 

P.S.

Check out my forged maps down below!

[lazyfireball00]

I make really good maps and I cant get them into matchmakeing.

I build city maps and alot of maps so I think you should have a option to upload them to the matchmakeing.

Oh and I agree with SixWaysToSunday and Scavenger

[firedune22]

Here are some basic guidelines to know if your map is decent.

First of all, do YOU think they are good maps, or do other enjoy them too?

Secondly, are they rather one-sided, or are they balanced

Thirdly, how many different routes are there on the map? A typical minimum nuber would be 3

last of all, do players spawn facing each other? if so, then your spawns must be changed

 

I know how hard it is to get maps into MM, and the truth of the matter is, sometimes the best maps don't get into MM.

It also helps to get in touch with a Community Cartographer or two, and NEVER post your map on Waypoint.

[undyinghijack]

I would strongly prefer the game to have the forging space over the unique maps. More often than not, the forged maps are better anyway. To solve the low maps problem, the game can ship with plenty of forged maps on the forgeworlds of halo 4.

[RedStarRocket91]

Are [your maps] rather one-sided, or are they balanced

 

How many different routes are there on the map? A typical minimum nuber would be 3

 

Do players spawn facing each other? if so, then your spawns must be changed

 

Unbalanced maps aren't always a bad thing, particularly if they're structured around asymmetric objective gametypes like One Bomb Assault or One Flag CtF, although in general it is better to try and have the map equally balanced, especially if it's aimed at Free-For-All or Symmetric Team games.

 

Routes around the map aren't always important, as long as there multiple ways in an out of each section - this is why te lift room on Sword Base is so badly designed, there are two ways in (Door and Lift) but only one way out (Door). That said, maps should flow nicely, and either have a focus on multiple routes or forcing direct confrontations, rather than feel disjointed.

 

Lastly, directly facing spawns can work, although only over long distances or with cover in between.

 

Good tips in general, though!

[firedune22]

Unbalanced maps aren't always a bad thing, particularly if they're structured around asymmetric objective gametypes like One Bomb Assault or One Flag CtF, although in general it is better to try and have the map equally balanced, especially if it's aimed at Free-For-All or Symmetric Team games.

 

Routes around the map aren't always important, as long as there multiple ways in an out of each section - this is why te lift room on Sword Base is so badly designed, there are two ways in (Door and Lift) but only one way out (Door). That said, maps should flow nicely, and either have a focus on multiple routes or forcing direct confrontations, rather than feel disjointed.

 

Lastly, directly facing spawns can work, although only over long distances or with cover in between.

 

Good tips in general, though!

 

Exactly, they can work, but those examples are the exclusions. I just recently played on a map and well, it was terrible. The principle behind it wasn't all that bad though, but the whole map was executed horribly. If some of those rules were followed, it would have been much better. The idea was to have a dectructible bridge as the main focus of the map, with one side all the way up on paridisio, and the othe side on the sandbar so that the team at the bottom could (in theory) climb their way up top, and destroy the bridge if the were about to be spawn camped. "armories" were also added... with 5-clip snipers... yeah didn't end well.

Those tips were just general rules to follow when considering a general, 2-sided symmetrical map design

 

I'm actually making a map that was originally meant to be designed like sword base, but done right. Unfortunately it ended up playing 2v2 and 5 player FFA the best, and reminded many people of lockout. It isn't ending up badly though.

[RedStarRocket91]

I'll have to try some of your maps out, then - it seems like you make big maps, whereas I prefer to keep things small-scale. It'd be interesting to see if things works differently depending how big the map is!

[firedune22]

Well then, redstar, that's where you are wrong. I specialize in everything, from 2v2 to BTB, and everthing in between inculding asthetic maps! (invasion's still a tricky ******* though). If you want to test a 2v2, i'm going to be doing so [1/7/2012] at about 9:40 EST. that would be... lemme see.. 2:26?

[RedStarRocket91]

Unfortunately I'm back at university for the next few months, so it'll be a while before I can use my 360 online again - that said, I will take a look as soon as I get the chance.

 

Not having Live sucks >_<

[ArkadianRedneck]

im also kinda hoping that 343 runs regular contests to get forged maps into matchmaking...like 2-3 new maps will be entroduced every 3-4 months.

[RedStarRocket91]

I don't know whether having set quotas of maps to be introduced are a good idea. That would mean sometimes there would be really good maps not getting in, and sometimes bad maps being included just to make up numbers.

 

Bungie mentioned they had some sort of system in place during the 'Forgetacular' contest, whereby maps that were missing certain components that meant they wouldn't work properly were automatically filtered out of those they would manually test. It might be nice to have a similar system in place alongside the ability to submit maps whenever they were finished, or for 343 to recruit a group of players to quality test any submitted maps and filter them out before being passed on, so that they weren't just bombarded with submissions.

[firedune22]

Yes, they're called Community Cartographers, and have been working hard to bring you those newly updated maps. There was a zombies contest a while back, and final test had most of the maps that are in the new zombies playlist. As of right now, we've been told to get Race and some Heavy variants out, however, i'm not too sure of the deadline for the submissions to 343i. Unfortunately, there is a slim to no chance of you seeing a Gauss 'hog in Matchmaking anytime soon, even on the Heavy variants.

 

P.S. could someone tell me if there is a variant of [midship? i forgot] in the zombies playlist? There was one version that was and adapted MLG variant with some FX filter on it. It was very fun.