How complex of a map would you play?

that is one thing i don't like... it is anoying when i get so many convoluted instructions at once that i have to refer to 'quest help' in the middle of playing

A good map is always new enough to attract players but follows the same basic layout of a map/game that has already been done. For instance - Final Fantasy. Its battle system is familiar and easily done for smooth gameplay, but it requires something new to attract many players. This system allows the creativity of a mappers mind but borrows gameplay to reduce too much change. Its a physcological emotion that players produce when playing a map. They're only concern is to have a good time and hope to win. If its too confusing and too 'new' to the player, s/he will get frustrated and be upset - thus making the decision of not playing it again. In a nutshell - New enough but familiar.

Familiarity eh? Maybe that is the source of the 'pokemaul' species, and the reason the main types of maps played are AOS, TD, and freakified melee.

it should be as complex and detailed as possible, but not requre every player to use every part of it. like, have it seems simple and user-friendly, but have tons of depth and complexity if the user gets further into it. a good game should have 100 times as much stuff as it is hyped up to have.

like... monster rancher (for playstation or GBA)... it seems like a simple raise your monster and battle type of game, but it has a very complex system to create monsters (for ps = creates a monster based on the information on cd's you put in, for gba = creates a monster based on a word/phrase/jumble of letters the player types in.) not to mention that simple things like what daily activities you do with your monster and what it eats will affect it's lifespan, stress level, and tons of other factors that are never really explained in-game, and requre the player to research about it themselves by playing the game, which makes great replayability...

umm and metal gear solid 2... craziness...

Hehe leppy. You are describing Norbo's War!

In 2.6, there MIGHT even be a little.. Military morale loss when their generals curse.. Maybe.

very complex, and what leppy said, but WHATEVER YOU DO, don't make it brain-damagingly difficult to figure out...

Just put tons of crap in it, stuff to figure out and discover, but it shouldn't take 2 hours to figure out how to start playing...

My $0.02

Heh volatile386, lots of people take 2 hours of hand holding to get through it because they just won't read. It is like the bunch of them are illiterates..

Pressing f9 and reading lets you master whatever you'd like to, but many people just skim it and say 'WTF Y DUSNT THIS WORKJ URE GAEY HANG URSELF PLZ" .. well... maybe occasionally less hostile.. meh.

Of course, the main theme of the game is not hard to grasp. Usually they get hung up on the ally system, trade system, sometimes the economy, or being killed too fast by some guy that went all military, lost his economy, and just went on suicide runs.

Would this map be at all inspired by the Civilization games? Sounds kinda like them. If it's like Civ, it's most likely gonna rock.
I've been a big Civilization fan since way before I started playing Blizzard games.

The game maker's motto:

Easy to learn. Hard to master.

Dataangel - Your avatar is evil. It reminds me of when I was trying to kill nihilthak and my god damned lvl 81 pally was deleted off of b.net and my computer shut down. Sniff...my lightsabre...:cuss: :bangH:

Alot of people think that the more complex the better the map, i want to know where you got this from? I could make a really complex map with crap gameplay, is it still a good map?

Alot of people wont mind having a steep learning curve. A good example is the MRP althought this wasnt exactly a sit down and learn for a hour map it confused a bunch of people but it was still a great map

A bad example is that random card game map that was hosted once wich no one knew how to play because there were no tooltips or instructions

So what it comes down to is that complex is alright if the map lives up to the steep learning curve

Norbo,

you have my deepest sympathies. My maps aren't even that complex and still about 30% of the players hate it. I make 3 unique races and 10 heroes, add multiple (creative) win objectives for both sides, and the response I get is, "d00d this sux0rz."

I LOVE GAMES BUT I HATE GAMERS!

Hakujin

As long as it's easy to understand, and lots of different features in the game to give a high replayability, I would play it.



It's pretty hard to get people to like new maps. Before you can catch their interest, you need to get them to stay in the game. *sigh* After that, all you need is interesting gameplay that's easy to follow and you got them. My map, Battleship Command, I try to make it different than other maps. First there's your ship that holds your weapons, then there's the weapons themselves. There's 22 different weapons (so far), and they fire automatically from the ship. All you need to do is move your ship around, buy weapons, upgrade your ship, press ESC to see ship and weapons status, and thats it. Problem is, people don't seem to understand the concept that when you are attacked, you take damage. They just stay there and die. Then they leave...

Apparently, no matter how obvious you make something, people can't seem to find it. *sigh* :(

Yea its amazing how people are scared of new things, I was playing one of the million footie wars the other day and the person made it so that the footies gain exp so u can get ur lv 10 footies, and straight away people saw that it was different and without even giving it a chance they left, at least on these forums we get intellegent people :D

Heh, while people in this forum enjoy complex maps, the other 90% people in Battle.net beg to differ.

The map I have is very in depth and many strategies to master and replay value is very high, but it takes a bit of time to understand the basics and most Battle.net players, spoiled by their tower defenses, rigged hero arenas, AoS's, can't take the time to read several lines of instruction in beginning of the map and in FAQ and leave in first three minutes seeing how you can't send everything you got right into the enemies hand. Most say 'this map is gay' or 'host is gay' and leave without giving it a second though. I'm impress they can even wait for a game to start without repeated burst of rage.