Koth_Conflict

Inspiration:

My map was designed with the goal of encouraging a diverse team roster and give different roles areas to shine. Furthermore it set out to provide an engaging experience and reward teamwork and cooperation.

The map has a military theme. This was done to tie in to Soldier and Demo Man’s  established lore and provide a lore inspired and thematic map. Additionally I  included a secondary and more minor theme of an abandoned base to show age and  decay. 

This also offered some neutral colour affordance to diversify the level colour palette from outside of red and blue for the respective teams.

Challenges:

Early issues that arose within this map design was the favouritism to Long range combat and defensive strategies. The earlier renditions of this map would allow testers to safely eliminate their opponents from significantly large distances as well as making recapturing the central capture significantly harder. 

To fix this, I reworked major sightlines by introducing new structures to significantly reduced these sightlines. This was done, in order to maintain my initial goal of prioritising central team fights around point. 

Lessons Learnt:

Working on this level offered an engaging method to practice the iterative design loop, When characters become too polarizing during a playtest, I would design changes to help develop more counterplay without trying to create a new meta. The constant repetition of this development cycle further demonstrated the benefits of active playtesting to me.  

For further development I would expand the level's design in line with its thematic base and include further playtesting as a way to start adjusting the structures of the map to offer further options for character expression.