thoughts from gav & jof

I wish more developers would build their games using this symmetric map design that Supreme Commander uses. Take DICE for instance. Battlefield 2 is an excellent multiplayer game and has some great maps. It also has some average and down right boring maps too (I’m looking at most of the PLA ones here). Now I’d class BF2 as an arcade/action game. It’s certainly not realistic. If you want realism go and play ArmA (and no Project Reality is a sorry excuse for a mod. I’d rather play any game other than spend half the time in game waiting to spawn.). Anyway, I digress. Of all the maps in BF2 I cannot see any of them having any real symmetry apart from Zatar to some degree. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it means you need to learn the whole map and its little intricacies.

There are some instances where these unique maps make the gameplay seem a little one-sided. Most of these involve one team spawning on an aircraft carrier trying to gain a foothold on the land. I don’t mind some of these maps. In fact Wake is possibly my most played map ever. It’s great fun trying to work as team to capture all of the island. The problem is most people don’t work as a team. They go “John Rambo” or queue for a jet. That’s another flaw in the games design – weapon/unit balance. I don’t care if the J10 is a better machine in real-life than its US counterpart – I want them both to fly the same so that the game is balanced! The fact that the J10 has a smaller collision model or whatever is one of the reasons I don’t fly very often. It’s biased to one side.

I remember the good old days of BF1942. Where both sides would get a fighter & bomber which were roughly equally matched. You had maps such as Battleaxe that were almost symmetric apart from the fact that the Axis had a more raised base unlike the Allies that meant the Brits were constantly spawn camped the keep them from getting airborne.

I’m not saying symmetry makes a good game (although I think this is very true for RTS titles such as Forged Alliance) but what I am saying is that I wish games designers would at least take it into consideration when building their maps.