What do you find most annoying in maps?

From day one when I started play testing original maps, and I design maps with these principles in mind.

The most annoying things I find in maps from a UT - Deathmatch perspective.

- No botpathing

- Unsourced or default lighting

- No map flow (This includes item placement)

- Improper use of lightboxes

- Map is too OPEN

- Ugly texturing



Example DM-LOLLargeLegos fails in all BUT one of these categories, which is why I dont like that level. (I give it props for the lego texturing, that was cool)

Nimbostratus said:

-Too dark. Some darkness is okay, but I'd at least like to see what keeps shooting me in the face.
-Pits of <insert toxic substance here> that you can't get out of and do low damage per second.
-Traps in main rooms/hallways.
-Things that stick out of walls and cause players to get stuck. Hard to escape Mr. Flak-in-your-face when you suddenly get stuck every five seconds.

sorry if this is in the wrong place >.>

Click to expand...

That's cool, I like sharing opinions.

- I dont mind darkness, as it adds to the strategy of the map IF done well.

- Pits of stupidity that do 1 damage per second that you cant get out of ARE annoying. I'll agree with that. Thank god these are rare, the only maps that have these kinds of traps are usually crap maps to begin with.

- Yes, sticking points are annoying. David M .even has a tutorial that is designed to make a map more smooth. I used his tutorials to smooth out SEVERAL levels of mine. Hence the remakes.

- Traps in main rooms are generally rare, as far as user made maps are concerned. I haven't noticed too many maps that had loads of traps.

- Bad use of textures. Same ones over the entire map.
- Puke lighting. Too strong, horrible mixtures and out of place.
- Box rooms. Almost no detail, just a bunch of square constructions.
No creativity. Just a collection of long corridors and box rooms...
-
A map made withouth a plan. -> targeting especially monsterhunt maps.
The second it envolves monsters/diverts from the typical dm/ctf thing, it needs serious thought. Because it's so much different. Not to mention co-op or single player maps.
If I check the readme stating "no real thought went into this map", I'll quickly delete it. Because I know it's bound to be a lousy map.

Course dm/ctf etc maps also require thought.. how else can your map flow. But it's a lot different.

- A smacktard who likes using turrets. Assault maps, which weren't the easiest to create apparently, suffered a lot from this pita feature.
Too many, out of place bah.. got real boring quickly ^_^
I also remember downloading a (what appeared to be) "promising" ctf map, but the author came up with the bright idea of placing turrets in the flag room.
Killed the map for me. Sure, I could simply go into unrealed and modify but the map didn't turn out to be that special anyway..

- Bsp holes. Errors in the geometry. Lazy mapper who didn't bother correcting the mistake, uploaded the map and failed mentioning the errors. Or maybe a small hint in the readme "most people bother to check".. "

- Fullbright areas.

- Monsterhunt again: People adding boss monsters which are way too strong, and it takes ages and many deaths to kill them. Yawn, boring and annoying.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good fight. But if a monster has 130.000-500.000 hp, the game tends to turn into a serious waste of time.
Even with 6-8 players, and more powerfull weapons...(bpak)

- Traps in dm/ctf/etc maps which just don't make sense, or are pure crap/out of place.
Traps need a hint. If you're silly enough to miss the hint, you desever to die in the trap.

Well, that's it for now....:]

Bad texture alignment/scale/choice.

messed up collision.

^^^accidents?^^^

My #2 would be lack of theme/continuity. Using one texture/mesh only doesn't count.

i have to agree with several people here that sticking to a theme is most important (and not doing so is most annoying).
a collection of rooms, poorly connected, with different lighting, and full of static meshes chosen, apparently at random.

@too dark:
mostly, i run my gamma up a bit. yes most maps are too dark, but maybe you should adjust your brightness and gamma rather than expect them to brighten their maps.
just a thought

Most of the above.
Plus using Slipknot for the background music.

Any MH maps made with UNRed3.0..(my personal opinion)

All my major gripes are already catered for ^

The spinning manta bug.

What i find the most anoying in a map?

The bots

Setting a song as an ambient sound that can be heard no matter where you are and it obscenely loud

As for botpathing, yea it's annoying when there is none, but a lot of people get confused about how to do it right

Not speaking about bot pathing, speaking about Bot programing. Aim boty fagoty bots on godlike and their infinite Dodging abbilities. Not to mention the way they dodge rockets so impossibly fast.

The guy who coded the bots for ut2004 is a terrible person and should never touch a PC again in his whole life.

I believe it was Mysterial with his SuperBots mut for 2k3
If I remember right, he was hired on to "upgrade" the 2k4 bots

Like I said, IF I remember right

And it was Eyuva that mentioned bot pathing

Well, nobody forces you to play vs. godlike bots all the time ...

If i don't play godlike then they stair at you and crouch everytime they see you.

So what i do is type 'god' in the console.

hwkwndl5 said:

i have to agree with several people here that sticking to a theme is most important (and not doing so is most annoying).
a collection of rooms, poorly connected, with different lighting, and full of static meshes chosen, apparently at random.

@too dark:
mostly, i run my gamma up a bit. yes most maps are too dark, but maybe you should adjust your brightness and gamma rather than expect them to brighten their maps.
just a thought

Click to expand...

I would have to say it depends on the map type, a theme for MH or SP maps is totally neccesary, but I don't think its need much in a DM or CTF map, what bothers me most is doorways and corridors that are too small or too low, boxes and clutter hindering flow, overdone textures that bug out your eyes and give you a headache, fence textures over every light or electrical/water pipes, overdone lighting that trys for effectivness in a theme but ruins gameplay, and my most annoying thing in a map is when no thought has gone into the flow and layout, one way in one way out maps or long dead ends to a shield belt(IE. Rankin) just sucks.

Ya well those dead ends are what ut04 players strives for, cause they have, double flip, dual backflip, two summersaults ,with a double jump, tripple jump, quadruple jump, sideflip,handstand, with a tripple dodge wall cieling floor, jump over the earth flip, along with "wow i got away, cause i cant play" LOL

So dead ends don't matter anymore, all a bunch of punks jumping and flipping around lke a bunch of gymnastic team girlys,I don't call that deathmatch at all.

There are so many stupid maps for ut04, like the big ones, yippe "wares my sucky new sniper?" , "oh wait we can run insta low grav with a zoom supershock" WOW such baby fun.