[Lab] The Art of Constructing Maps #2

Hello, Survivors!

In last week's post, we showed you how we were experimenting with maps for "Outdoor" spaces, and while there were some positive elements we talked about like "Windows" and "Roamers", there were also issues with an overlong playtime and fatigue.

This first version of the outdoor map, dubbed the "X-Large Map", was tested by a group of designers who were familiar with the game's logic but despite that, not a single person besides the level designer himself was able to complete the map (!), the average playtime for testers who were "close" to completing it was over an hour.

The problem was that this version we were testing was not trying to be some high difficulty boss fight, but rather a "standard for general level organization" for a game that would be procedurally generated, so we decided that no matter how thematic the experience, it would be hard to set this as the “standard.”

Solving this problem wasn't straightforward so today we’re going to show you the rest of our experimentation.


[h3]Second Attempt at Outdoor Maps: Reducing Space Size and Adjusting Difficulty[/h3]
The first impression of the “Outdoor” map was definitely a good one, and it fit the tone and theme we were going for, so we started looking for ways to keep its strengths and fix its weaknesses.

• Reduce the space by about 70% to decrease playtime.
  
  
• Reveal mission objective locations at the start of the map (in our first attempt, we hid mission objectives altogether to give a sense of "exploring uncharted space", unlike in EA).
  
  
• ● Enemies are now more spaced out and have less HP, reducing the amount of time spent in combat.

We named the second outdoor map "Large Map" and made the above changes.



There was a consensus among the dev team that the smaller maps were much more "doable" than the "X-Large" version.

The average playtime for the Large version was between 40 and 50 minutes, and many of our testers were able to complete it with ease. Compared to the X-Large version, the reaction was much more positive.

Except... It was still longer than we were aiming for as the “Standard Experience.” Beyond the simple issue of playtime, there was a lot of feedback about fatigue – “I don't think I'll be able to get through this and then do the next map.”

So, we thought, "What about reducing the size even further?".



[h3]3rd Outdoor Map Attempt: Smallest Size Attempt[/h3]
Actually, before moving to the outdoor maps, there was nothing particularly problematic with the “Indoor” map. The playtime was a decent 20 to 30 minutes, but we had decided to try the outdoor version simply to bring a little more variety and just see how it felt.

After two rounds of testing, the thematic benefits of outdoor maps were clear, but there was a lot of concern: "Are we making the game too inaccessible to keep these benefits?"

So, we tested a version of the outdoor map shrunk down to a similar size as the indoor map, to see if we could reduce playtime and fatigue, while keeping the thematic strengths.

Unfortunately, after testing this version, codenamed “Medium,” we concluded that it was the worst of both worlds.



We needed at least 3 squares per grid to give the outdoor map a "street like" feel, and 5 squares to give it a "spacious" feel, and if we reduced the size of the map while maintaining this street feel, we would end up with too little space for meaningful gameplay/combat.

The way we dealt with “Roamers” was that you had to take risks to get around them, like entering a building to end your turn, which became overly restrictive as the overall space was reduced.

The play of looking through a “Window” to see what's going on in a room and deciding whether or not to enter also felt pointless in a small space, as you'd have to enter every room anyway.

Eventually, we realized that the "Outdoors" theme would not allow us to use small-sized maps, so we wondered which direction we should go.


[h3]Back to the “Indoor Map”[/h3]
We’re summarizing the process here, but in any case, experimenting had already gone on for so long that we were nervous about continuing in uncertainty.

We knew that we wanted to use a combat system centered around the "Surprise" and "Surrounded" systems, but we needed to decide quickly on "What kind of combat experience do we want to provide through that system?" so that the art team and other parts of the team could work smoothly.

So, we tentatively decided, "Let's just say we never tried an outdoor map," and started designing the final experience with an indoor map style in mind.



The overall room size and design philosophy was similar to the first indoor map, and we experimented with removing the “Windows” and see if we could keep the “Roamer” element.

Also, the first indoor map had a level design that assumed mid-to-late gameplay for a moderately skilled player, with a "very large number of enemies" to navigate through, so we experimented with reducing the number of enemies, as feedback from the first version suggested that the experience of being trapped in a small space was frustrating.



The first indoor maps were designed to encourage players to take advantage of situations like the one above, where there were a large number of enemies that were "virtually impossible to defeat" and you had to "minimize your route" to get to the mission objective and then escape. We added the "stay out of sight (to avoid being attacked next turn)" rule to encourage players to take advantage of this.



On the new indoor maps in contrast, we've adjusted the enemy placement to a "I can kill them all" density compared to the initial build, assuming you're not yet familiar with the game.

At this point, once the combat experience was finalized, we planned to start commissioning full-fledged map objects from the art team to match the new narrative.

However... while the actual playtime was at the targeted level of 20 minutes and fatigue was not an issue, the feedback that the combat experience felt flat after reducing the number of enemies was too much to ignore.

The opinion was split between "this is appropriate for the early stages when you're not familiar with the game" and "it's still a problem if the game feels boring early on".

Again, we had to make a decision, whether the issue was "the team members who are constantly testing new maps are too familiar with the game and suffer from the curse of knowledge" or "we haven't yet found the right balance between tension and difficulty” ...

Fortunately, we've come to a pretty positive conclusion on this issue, but this post is already longer than intended, and there are a few more episodes that I don't want to skip over, so I'm going to save the final conclusion for next week.

Looking back at this post, we went back and forward a lot, but it's an important part of the process, so I think it was worth explaining in detail.

We'll be back next week with an introduction to our finalized map criteria!

Until then!
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