Why isn't map design a higher priority
Map design for a game like this should be priority 1 or close to it. I don't see how that's not obvious, especially with the release of Garden of Joy.
I don't necessarily blame the map team. I've been told there's only 3-5 people on the team at most. But why isn't Behavior investing more into it?
A lot of the games issues stem from bad design. If a killer has to spend 20-40 seconds just catching up of course they're going to be forced into piling on slowdowns or tunneling/camping.
The extremely long line of anti loop killers seems to stem from this, because you just can't make a good killer without invalidating a core mechanic in the game solely because of the wild imbalance of tiles.
And more importantly it seems like everyone is focused on perks, camping, tunneling, and gen speed. They're all important issues but once all the perks are changed the core problem is still going to be there. The randomness of the maps is so wild you may as well flip a coin to decide the winner.
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Because the game is designed so that baby survivors can walk out the gates over 50% of the time lol
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Idk honestly it should be one of the most important things when a new chapter comes out next to the actual killer itself
If maps were made smaller (preferably to the size or close to coal tower) it would be healthier and more fun overall. Smaller maps means that non mobile killers no longer have to travel a marathon each time they want to check up on a gen. It also means more survivor/killer interaction, meaning more fun since there are more chases.
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Glad more people are mentioning this because I kinda agree.
Killers with mobility and chase potential can work around this but killers that are lacking in either or both struggle a lot obviously.
You just don't have enough time to end chases and pressure gens in reasonable time. Unless you are going against people who don't understand tiles and how to run them.
If you could mindgame everything that would help of course but you can't.
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I mean I have heard the agument before that we have so many anti-loop killers because of bad map design and what not. I guess maybe there is a bit of truth in that. But I don't think that's the main reason.
The fact is, if we didn't have killers with different chase powers, chases would be always the same against all killers, which would become boring very quickly I feel. Giving different killers different forms of anti-loop abilities makes chases much more varied in gameplay and counterplay.
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To an extent. Some anti loop is fine. But if your map design prohibits or discourages base gameplay then your design space will be limited. The common trope of "m1 killer bad" points to the fact that if you dont have mobility and/or anti-loop you're just not going to be nearly as viable.
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Map design WAS a priority. They redid nearly every map.
They just redid most of them very poorly.
The old maps had a ton of pallets and super safe loops taken out over time. When the redesigned all the stages, by golly they tossed nearly all those super safe loops and way too many pallets right back in there. And going through them all AGAIN would be a pretty hefty indicator that their map balance team just has absolutely no idea what they're doing.
So I predict map changes will be extremely minor, covert changes over time. Rather than taking the time to go back through everything and correcting all the poor decisions they made on the redesigns, they MIGHT subtly take 1 pallet out of a map over the course of months. Just to see if anybody notices, or if it changes that map's stats.
Like boarding up one of the windows on the main building in Swamp. It was never officially declared, but people noticed it. Then, if it made too much of a bonus for killers, they'd say "oh that was a bug, we'll fix it," and if it didn't, they just won't say anything and it'll stay that way.
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Smaller maps would help but even then its a total coin flip. You can see 10 jungle gyms or 10 dead zones with everything in between. I know years ago they talked about having a system in place that has loops weighted but it's obvious they dont, it's been broken/outdated for years, or they just don't understand how to weight a loop
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Double post
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Double post
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That's something I've never understood. If map redesign was a big priority how did we come about with the gideon rework? How did we end up with a direct port of RPD? You would think if this was a priority they would have been careful about every change and remake they do because if they don't they would lose customers and waste money. The redesigns feel more like 1 maybe 2 people were told to make a new map in 3 months or they're fired while everyone else worked on something else.
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The Game had a slightly higher-than-average killer 'win' rate. So when they went to rework it, they err'd waaaaay on the side of survivors. 2-3 pallets in every room, most of them super safe, and more god pallets than any other map. Basically, they overcompensated, as they always do any time they look to nerf something that gives killers an edge (see also: Freddy, Billy, Deathslinger, etc)
The RCPD was just a straight-up "we spent so long asking if we COULD do it, that we never stopped to ask if we SHOULD do it." They wanted to faithfully recreate the Resident Evil map (which, incidentally, they DIDN'T achieve because they put a bunch of extra blight bloom at random points, and open holes that aren't in the RE maps). They were 100% not looking at how the game would actually play and have not listened to how much survivors and killers alike hate that stage. At this point, it's a sunken cost fallacy: they spent so much time and money trying to make it, that they CAN'T break it into two smaller maps to try to fix it. That'd be admitting they were wrong (and, honestly, would probably break some code somewhere, like how the original launch was so broken for so long).
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Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one. BHVR says 2 Kills 2 Escapes is what they want. BHVR balances strictly around low MMR. Makes sense maps would also follow this strategy.
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Because the developers are incredibly bad at their jobs. I'm sorry, but the dev team has shown time and time again over the past 6 years that they are completely out of touch with the game, making ridiculously bad decisions constantly and needing multiple years to do simple, good changes (hatch rework, Trapper default +1 bag etc).
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I dont think simple answers like devs bad or because new players are good because they don't entirely make sense. If the devs are just bad you would expect some improvement over the years and if anything it's gotten worse. The new map has at least 2 windows that have to be entity blocked. How did we go from removing infinites to here's 2 in one map?
And if we're arguing we're balancing it for new players even they wouldn't find this extreme randomness fun. If you tell someone they lost solely to the map it's just as infuriating as losing solely to perks because both are totally out of the players control.
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imo all of their latest maps have been duds. RPD sucked, Eyrie of Cringe sucked, Haddonfield rework sucked, and this new map, Garden of Pain sucks. All of them have unfair loops with no counterplay for M1 killers and are designed in a way to have no risk as Survivor. There is no skill or fun in running to a pallet/window that can't be mind gamed and dropping/vaulting it. Additionally, breakable walls "allow" for stupid designs like this, and are unhealthy. If the wall is up, the Survivor can't be caught. If the wall is down, the Survivor is downed in 3 seconds. Why are we making such bad maps, when BHVR seemingly learned in the past not to do so? Look at the 3.7.0 patch, they literally changed a bunch of maps that they knew were problematic. Why are we undoing all that hard work? The game's maps are unbalanced, unfun and frustrating for both sides.
The patch in question:
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I just want darker & scary maps. No more Cold wind or in the sun light kind of maps. Ruin's the atmosphere for me.
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The devs seem to care more about making maps look good than to be fun for both sides.
Cuz while I dislike the Haddonfield rework for the houses and that nearly every available pallet is unmindgameable the rest of the map has nothing which is technically balanced but just not fun.
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This is probably the thing that frustrates me the most - the implementation of breakable walls is just so so bad and we've been telling them this for years. There are almost no (not saying none in case I'm forgetting one) cases where a breakable wall is not either objectively good to break or objectively bad to break. Badham school walls? Don't ever break (which is why we see some survivors try to force a break by interfering with removing someone from main building if the hatch isn't there). Groaning Storehouse wall? Have to break it or the old almost-infinite they actively removed is back. And they're all like this! Either you open a god loop or you stop a god loop from existing, there's no interest in that. You don't load into Badham and wonder if you'll see the killer break the school walls, you don't load into Groaning Storehouse thinking if you're the last survivor being chased you get to use the window of the storehouse with the wall up. It's just not engaging design and they actively reintroduced so many infuriating map elements to "justify" putting breakable walls there. It's probably my least favorite part of the game right now, loading into a map and knowing I need to waste time breaking the wall or lose a chase later, or knowing X wall is going to be down or up by minute 3 if I'm survivor.
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I think a large part of the issue is that most maps have pseudo-random layouts, which are hard to fine-tune. Player's opinions about maps are largely subjective, which leads them to consult survival metrics to determine whether a map is fair even if it includes some very strong looping potential.
Like for example, I love the new Haddonfield - ESPECIALLY by comparison to the old one. I'd love to see a carbon copy of Hawkins return, but with a theme swap to the No Kill chapter - even though Hawkins was generally reviled up until the moment it was announced to be going away. I also think Sanctum of Wrath and Temple of Purgation are my favorite maps to play as killer.
The journey to ultimate fairness by map layout seems to be this ephemeral, undefinable thing.
I do agree that breakable walls being an always good / always bad thing is kind of rough. Thematically, they're fun. In practice, it's X number of additional palettes to kick but they're down as soon as the match starts.
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