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The Single Biggest Flaw in Map Design

Monlyth
Monlyth Member Posts: 982
in Feedback and Suggestions

I see a lot of talk about bad map design, but I think it's best to get into some specifics with bad map design. What makes bad maps so bad?

For Killer at least, some are extremely pallet-dense, extremely large, have very strong pallet loops, have an abundance of strong tiles that can easily chain together, or have poor visibility (Looking at you, Toba Landing), but what I want to focus on is windows. Specifically, "god windows". Which I define as "Windows where the Killer has to let the Survivor vault it 3 times to get a hit".

God windows are perhaps the only map elements that can single-handedly force a Killer to drop chase. God pallets can be broken, but a window can be used almost infinitely. With the end result that a god window can force the Killer to invest 30+ seconds of chase for a single hit, and then every future Survivor who gets chased near that window can do it again. Needless to say, that time wasted adds up fast for a well-placed god window.

I wouldn't be surprised if well-placed god windows were one of the single biggest sources of variance in kill rates on maps where they may or may not spawn. It's hard to overstate the impact they can have on a chase, and by extension, the flow of the entire match. Many of my toughest games that legitimately felt unwinnable have involved a conveniently-placed god window that Survivors ran to over and over.

And, of course, the presence of god windows makes it much more necessary to play Killers who can either mitigate or ignore the power of windows if you want to win with any consistency.

For future map design and changes, I think windows are an element that the devs always need to handle very carefully, and part of what makes maps like Garden of Joy feel frustrating to play on for many Killers is the consistent presence of one or more god windows.