The only constant in the world is change

    And you, as a level designer, must accept change or deal with shooting in the dark.

    Let me explain myself here. I think that every mapper/level designer has some kind of idea to what they want to achieve with their level before they even fire up the editor. During the making of the first few blocks of geometry one can truly feel a hint of the divine power of creation. After all, our levels are made of what? Pure thought shaping up something: an Experience.

    It is very common for the mapper to be proud of his creation. And this feeling is so strong and the attachment to the masterpiece so deep that it is hard to accept the one constant in the universe: Change.

    My message here is to my fellow mappers, be you just a newcomer that hasn't even registered on the forums or an old fart with tons of maps under your belt. Accept change early on and let your map grow as a living being. If caged into your initial idea, or to the initial shape you gave it, it will most likely become extinct as the dinosaurs, or you will count on pure chance and luck as you shoot in the dark.

    Take the feedback from playtesters and fellow mappers seriously, and don't think that your layout is made of pure perfection, for nothing truly is.

    My own experience with ctf_aerospace has taught me a lot. I had been warned countless times by fellow mappers and playtesters that the map was too big. I judged their worries fraught and unfounded. "They just need time to learn the map" or "They need to play on a more populated server" would come to my mind as excuses to avoid facing the truth: The map was too big, some areas where confusing, and the map sucked.

    After I accepted this I could finally make it trough and create something great. The new version of aerospace has been able to amuse new players and, most importantly, break the scepticism of the very people who warned me before and where ignored. That's great, but it could have been entirely avoided if I had been more open to suggestions and accepted that the result from my hint of divine power as a pure pile of suck (gameplay-wise, visually it was, and still is kick-ass).

    Know to stand your point when you truly believe that you are seeing above the crowd, but be humble enough to change your work because someone else said it can improve.

    Bulleted list if you just skipped trough my humble apology/insight/lesson:


    • [*:1s4tqv20]Accept that your map is never perfect
      [*:1s4tqv20]Be open to changing everything
      [*:1s4tqv20]Listen to your fellow mappers and playtesters closely
      [*:1s4tqv20]If you truly believe you are right, then stick to it

    Slight change to your last note:

    - Never believe you are right. Know you are. A belief that turns right in the end is still sheer luck, not experience. Take the data you have, the playtests, the stats, and see the truth within. Being experimented means making the right choices so the playtests and stats never prove you wrong.

    Yep good stuff, I can see why it's great advise, the difference though is it's usually best to learn from your mistakes. Every skilled level designer I know has gone through stages just like yourself. It's great to try and help noobies with advise like this but there priotities will lie somewhere else. Think of it like teaching nuclear fission before learning elementary science.

    My point is, level design is far more complex than slapping together a map. It's a gradual learning curve. Attempting to understand points like you state when you don't have the knowledge or experience, will confuse the living hell out of anyone.

    Nevertheless good advise is always welcome

    The first step to become a better artist is to learn to accept criticism. People are obviously entitled to their own opinions and you as an artist have to stand to your points but some people are so protective over their work that they just skip any criticism. I'm glad people like that are scarce here at mapcore, but they do exist.

    Learning to accept critism is the easy part, learning when to say no, and be confident enough to just refuse to do something because you know it is right, is far harder.

    Knowing when you truly are right, and when you are not, that is step 2.

    My experience is: The player is always right.

    You can think your map is the greatest thing ever. But then when you watch people playing and they "don't get it" the problem is on your side only. You make the map for the players not for yourself. Don't stick with layouts and things that only you as the creator seem to understand. Be prepared to change things radically that players dont understand or even to remove them completely. Don't get angry at the players. Next time you will do things differently right from the start. You always win experience.

    Things that only affect visuals of a level are a completely different story tho. If you believe in you as an artist you should stick with what you think looks best as long as it fits in the art direction of the project. Still be open minded for suggestions. Other people can have great visual ideas too.

    Quote

    My experience is: The player is always right.

    True wisdom! Your idea might have been all so clever in your head but when the player doesn't get it or dislikes it, the idea is maybe not as much worth as you thought it was.

    But what is a player?

    If some dude who plays games once a year plays your level and gets stuck, how do you go about that? A 12 year old may have more trouble finding the solution than a 20 year old, does that mean you should make it easier? Etc.

    Of course if half of them can't figure it out, there is something wrong, but imo a player is not correct per se. I only consider changing things if it is really well argumentated, or if it really is a large group of people complaining about it.

    By "player" i dont mean a single player. More like "the average player". If a couple of people (QA for example) test your map and they all run into similar problems thats what i meant. Then something is wrong with your map from a gameplay perspective and it needs to get fixed. But sometimes its even enough to only see one person playing your map to identify problems. This person who has never played your map before will do strange things that you never thought of but that you rather not want players to do.

    Quote from Hourences

    But what is a player?If some dude who plays games once a year plays your level and gets stuck, how do you go about that? A 12 year old may have more trouble finding the solution than a 20 year old, does that mean you should make it easier? Etc.

    Of course if half of them can't figure it out, there is something wrong, but imo a player is not correct per se. I only consider changing things if it is really well argumentated, or if it really is a large group of people complaining about it.

    What you talk about is difficulty though. If as the first post mentioned, the level is too big, it doesn't have to do with difficulty but gameplay quality. Difficulty is subjective while quality is relative. Quality can be better or worse while difficulty can just be "different".

    I agree that all feedback should be filtered. Often I use feedback from individuals but transform it into an implementation very different from what the person first suggested, in order to improve the quality without taking too much away. I find it important to try to pinpoint the "essence" of feedback and find the best solution to it rather than to blindly follow suggestions. Sometimes the suggestions are exactly what I end up doing, other times not.

    I agree but quality is subjective too. A 12 year old simply does expect different things than a 40 year old, and I am not talking about the difficulty level, but about core features they expect or value more. We game developpers will look at a level differently than an average gamer. And so on.

    Finding the balance between what everyone demands, and trying to find a quality standard to work to, even while there is no very strict and obvious standard really, is the hardest thing to do imo.

    I don't think you can measure this and honestly i think its overcomplicating things to find a "standart". I just follow my intuition.

    Easy example: When i see that someone has a problem to find the right path in my map i will add something to point him in the right direction. It becomes obvious to me that many other players would face similar problems. It would be foolish not to fix something like that. You want to entertain people with your map, not frustrate them. At least that seems logic to me as long as the path is not part of a puzzle.

    what you said above is the reason one has demographics for games. you tailor a game to a specific age, gender, etc. to make sure they like it. sorry this is a bit off topic, but none the less i think it somewhat relevant to the discussion..

    I completely agree you should try not to be too precious of your creation. But I don’t think you should always listen to what a player thinks, often you will get more benefit investigating why the player thinks that.

    The average player is not going to have the grasp of level design the author does, their opinion will be narrow-minded or based on little experience. This sounds demeaning but I don’t mean it to, if you’re there studying layouts, reading into design philosophy and slaving over Hammer/Radiant/Whatever for days on end, you will have a much stronger knowledge of your levels workings and intentions. Aspects such as game-flow and balancing are very delicate, and need careful adjustments.

    And clearly if you take everything on board you won't simply please everyone because the players interests will naturally conflict and you will make bad design decisions. I think player feedback is one of the most important tools out there, for a variety of reasons past the obvious ones, but be careful with this “the player is always right” attitude.

    Quote from Hourences

    Learning to accept critism is the easy part, learning when to say no, and be confident enough to just refuse to do something because you know it is right, is far harder.Knowing when you truly are right, and when you are not, that is step 2.

    I agree but when starting out I think the most important thing of all to remember is to keep going, It can be very demoralising when you have worked on something that you think is great and then have people says it’s not so great. But critism is by far the quickest way to improve yourself. My most recent map and the first one I posted here has a lot of issues but it was far better IMO to find that out now rather than a lot later down the line. It gives you the opportunity to take a step back to see where you have gone wrong and in this case not to waste much more time on it.

    About people saying that a map is "too big", i think it's important to determine if the problem is with the physical size of the map, or the "psychological" size of the map.

    If the problem is with not having enough time to get to a given point in the map to complete a certain task (ie: In a CS map not having enough time to get to a bomb site after the bomb is planted), then the problem is with the physical size of the map, but i think that most of the times when players say that a map is too big, what they are really saying is that its boring, or not entertaining enough. If the paths of the map are dull, or too claustrophobic, or too repetitive, the player might get tired of them faster than the time it takes for him to reach the end, and that could give him that feeling that the map is too big, but if you challenge the player throughout the path, and give him something to do (or just watch) while he is crossing it, then the players will probably not get that feeling at all.

    I think this is also one of the reasons why players never like puzzles that make them go back to the beginning, they already saw that part of the map, they don't want to see it again unless you give them a great reward for doing it. If you think about it, when you do this, for the player the map will feel to be twice has big has what it is in reality , because he had to go from point A to B and back to A (and sometimes back to B again).

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