vorpal wrote:A good map should be designed in a way that offers players the choice of whether to proceed in a vehicle or on foot, with either option being a viable choice. That means, a skilled player on foot should not be disadvantaged in a battle against a player in a vehicle.
Look at maps like GunShop and MasterBath on CEONSS. There are vehicles, sometimes very powerful ones, but the maps also provide ways for players without vehicles to counter them. E.g. GunShop has a Kraken, which can hit the other side of the map, but it also has a narrow shortcut to the opposite base with a deemer and health/shield powerups. MasterBath has an ion cannon above the central node, but it also has teleporters that allow players on foot to quickly reach the enemy nodes. There is no such thing as perfect balance, but this is good map design that attempts to balance the desires of vehicle/non-vehicle players. It's no coincidence that these maps happen to be the most popular ones on CEONSS.
On Omni, it's a bit different because players have become accustomed to ever more powerful vehicles. I would be inclined to tone down the damage and/or hit points of some of these vehicles to restore some balance.
Camping can be discouraged by adjusting maps to gradually reduce the health of players who remain in a particular vicinity. The space above the ceiling in GunShop is an example of this.
You know, after almost 15 years of collectively improving our understanding of ONS as an admin team, evolving content evaluation, gameplay quality and both client and server performance standards, and adhering to those in a (hopefully) consistent manner across most map edits that comprise CEONSS' roster, it's pretty heartening to see newer members still notice and appreciate this effort as a successful approach to delivering good ONS enough to communicate its example even beyond that community's walls. Certainly sent a warm n' fuzzy sense of affirmation to this retired ole hand's way
.
To try and sum up that fundamental concept for the benefit of anyone interested in comparing admin content management notes, then, it comes down to aiming for a healthy "marriage" of viable playstyles - within what any map's understood design goals can reasonably accommodate, of course - all able to meaningfully contribute to the match's outcome, and engineering (via geometry, pickups/tools/superweaps, and other additional elements) a multitude of situational reasons to need to switch between them on the fly in order to push, flip objectives and eventually prevail. In that context, whether a player's preferred playstyle will leave them at a relative (dis)advantage in any particular situation should mostly depend on their tactical prowess, i.e. their choice of approach & minimizing visibility/perceivability, their overall map knowledge, use of proper weapon/gear, timing of attack, and so on. Done right, this recipe can lead to challenging n' skill-based (but still fair) play and ad hoc cooperation between players and playstyles across an expansive and bidirectionally shifting battlefront that distinguishes this gamemode from the rest - and, IMO, elevates it above all the others.
The design alternative that might see one playstyle prove clearly dominant over the other, merely supported ones (e.g., a bigger map where victory largely depends on better use of overpowered custom flyers picking off small fry) typically leads to less diverse or skillful, and thus less challenging play, causing players who don't favour that particular type of action to disengage and avoid such maps entirely, if possible, in the short-term, and, should that alternative become a server's driving content management philosophy across its roster, likely also making them gradually self-select out of that server/community altogether to go look for greener pastures elsewhere, to the detriment of everyone. It's not an advisable road for any admin team to take, even if a vocal subgroup that favours that particular playstyle might create the appearance that everyone is in support of such a preferential management style.
Lastly, in light of the examples mentioned above, and in case anyone might be interested in looking into other CEONSS-hosted maps where there's close parity between the overall potency of the duelist/pedestrian playstyle to that of the ground or air vehicular one from a gameplay PoV, I might also add to the list a few more entries, like
BitchSlap-With-Slap-SP5,
DoubleSlap-V3,
MasterShower-V3-SP3,
Dreamus2SE-T32-C,
StarReach-)o(Edition-Edit8,
StorageFacility-]I[-C,
Tyrant-)o(-Renovation-V1-2019CAE-fix, and, of course,
CaptainSors_Island_of_Pwnage_C, a brilliant remake of CaptainGordons_Box_of_Pwnage, meaningfully improved in a number of ways by previous CEONSS boss Cat1981England back in 2016. Doesn't mean there's no other worthwhile maps on the server's roster that also deserve a closer look, mind; it's just that those others might favour using a vehicle a bit more consistently than not due to, say, map size or a reduced number of paths to objectives that are relatively safe from vec attack - or they might outright just be NV/dueling-dominant fare.
Hope that helps.
PS: Hello, Omni. Again.
Eyes in the skies.
