When I first started working on Block N Load I was given the following rules to work to by the Creative/Design Director, and it’s been pinned above my monitors ever since.

As a lot of you are ‘budding’ arena builders it’s worth sharing.

Of course, rules are made to be broken! ;)

Googlyaa
Senior Level Designer

1. Increasing difficulty for each objective, taking more time and effort for each objective to fall

2. Each objective should have a different flavour or gameplay or approach, interior, vs rush, vs hardened etc. We want new tactics and have certain heroes “shine” for different parts of the map. This makes sure that there are no must have heroes that are just selected because of no brainers and the “best” no matter what the situation. An interior objective for instance is tough for Cogwheel as he excels in open areas, but Eliza is deadly in tight quarters, etc.

3. Basic line of sight breaks for all objectives, but does not NEED to be hardened. This can be solved with elevation, but hard to get out of “pits” should be avoided.

4. There should be height variance, but never go more than 4-5 blocks in elevation in “one go” (which is also conveniently within range height of a jump block)

5. Maps should “hint” at possibilities and tactics, not lay them out explicitly. Hills are natural hardened areas, crevasses natural bridge/flanking etc.

6. Use as little metal as possible, the game is about destruction as much as construction. Metal should only be used around objectives to prevent breaking of gameplay, not constructing elements of gameplay itself.

7. Any variance in “lanes” should be easy to traverse, and easy to see. Complexity should be something the player brings.

8. “combat lanes” are 21 blocks (max cube size) wide

9. Map game time average goal to be 15-30 mins for an evenly matched set of teams

10. Lastly, the map is a FPS footprint, or proto-map. We have to give players the space to make it a proper map influenced by the heroes they have chosen and the tactics they choose, not us. We only really want to control the objective itself, and even then it’s just to provide the high level gameplay, not the specifics.