Common Shortfalls?

I'd like this thread to be a list of things that one should avoid when making a map; problems that maps of [ ] genre often have. Allow me to start the ball rolling:

AoS: Heroes which have no purpose; say, for example, a hero with Death Coil, Water Elemental, Critical Strike and Earthquake would be a bad decision, because the spells don't work very well together. You just wind up with a hero that's not very good at everything.
Heroes should have themes, for example, Nature, Swords, Mind Control, Fire, etc.

Hero Defence: Stupidly large numbers, such as heroes with 5123-6726 attack damage and 48102 health, and enemies with 1823-2345 damage and 98233 health.
Stupid terrain design, forcing players to run long distances etc.
Isolated Waves of enemies, all of which are identical (E.G. "Wave One: Furbolg Trackers", "Wave Two: Gnoll Assassins" etc.).

Tower Defence: Ugly, poorly thought out towers; E.G. a Poison Tower that looks like a green water elemental, which upgrades into a deathPoison tower that looks like a giant spider (And loses points for the name "deathPoison").
Boring mobs with no real variation.
Stupid terrain design in VS maps that gives one team an advantage.

Maze/Escape Maps:
Poor damage radius on monsters, so they kill you without you touching them.
Boring, ugly terrain.

I think you forgot to mention stupid terrain design as such, as well as boring ugly terrain. I do highly agree with the rest.

Heh.

What you basically said is that its all about style. And that everything that craps style (boring, repetitive, simply unnecessary) has no place in a map.

However, i doubt that this information will be a significant eye-opener for all the newb developers.

Those, who REALLY want to make their maps better should read here:
http://maps.worldofwar.net/tutorials.php?id=81
and here:
http://world-editor-tutorials.thehel...php?view=17900

Those who really want to go in more detail on these things should go and buy some books on game design.

All about style?

Heroes which have no purpose; say, for example...

Stupidly large numbers, such as heroes with 5123-6726 attack damage and 48102 health, and enemies with 1823-2345 damage and 98233 health.

Stupid terrain design, forcing players to run long distances etc.

Stupid terrain design in VS maps that gives one team an advantage.

Poor damage radius on monsters, so they kill you without you touching them.

Of course, those are all style, nothing to do with gameplay...

Yes, that's what he said, no need to confirm it for him.

what about a fun map with everyting mentioned above in it? Could actually be lots of fun to have over-indulged stupid game design, hero's with 9-figured damage, and a boss with a 12 figured damage, have even more stupid game design, a lot of walking and some monsters that kill you when you're just about to enter the screen they're in. (1500 immolation radius should be fine, damage should be stupidly large of course, but having read that so often I thought I could take that for granted)

Actually, you might have a point there...
Hmmm.
The worlds crappest ma- *whisperdotawhisper* I mean, SECOND crappest map.

BBDino's Divine Judgements:

All Genres

- Poor Spelling
- Spells (triggered) that are stupidly complex (IE does Random AOE damage + positive buffs + negative buffs + waves of damage etc) [makes stratergic use hard/impossible]
- Names for spells/features that make the mapper sound retarded ("Fuckoff Device" for a TD kill-players-building-in-ya-area-function)
- Offensive content (its never done well)
- Derrivatives
- Content stealing
- Arbitrary balancing of certain gameplay elements (Agility gives a 0.001 attack speed now increase COS ITS IMBA!!!!)
- Save/load codes that make it impossible for a new player to compete (LoaP for instance)

That should do for now.

BBDino got some valid comments not covered in links i provided :)

@ Style / Gameplay
Every game design decision that make any game more playable always improves/refines/defines the game's style.
Every bad game design decision always craps the game's style.
Therefore style = gameplay.

I can't provide any logical base for it, but i can give countless examples and dare anyone to give me a counterexample.

@ Stupid map with stupid large numbers
2 words: Final Fantasy
Lvl99 with 9999 damage per hit is stupid large in most old school RPGs (think DnD and computer-game offshoots), but feels totally right in environment of any FF game.