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40oz

Map Length

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There's a bit of a dispute regarding the length of maps -- whether you need a big long epic adventure, or if you need a short exciting thrill. There really isn't a clear cut answer because many of us are different people. Some are trying to kill time so they can move on to other things in their life, and others only get a little bit of time for leisure activity and don't want any of that time wasted.

I've been studying game design things from a scholarly perspective and taking notes, and found most people who are unhappy with a video game's length are usually referring to how little content they received compared to how much they paid for it. That ratio is moot in Doom levels since wads are free for the player.

I watched a conference/podcast type thing earlier today where proffessional game reviewers were discussing games' lengths and it's apparently a pretty strong contributing factor to whether or not someone will buy the game. Some players who play a game for only a few hours before completing feel gypped. However, giving the player an enormously long game doesn't always translate to making it a good game just because its so open ended and permits the player with so much to do. Sometimes when the player is faced with too many choices he ends up picking nothing at all, and fetch quests and backtracking don't positively contribute to the experience of the game.

When a Doom map or game is considered to be short, its important that its shortness does not refer objectively to the amount of time spent playing it, but rather if the map feels as if there is something lacking. As in you were presented with a bigger sense of negative space* from the start, and reaching the exit didn't feel like it concluded the map as well as you felt you were promised. This means that its definitely okay to have a short map if the beginning keeps the players expectations from going wild, and the end has a feeling of closure after killing all the monsters in it. Meanwhile, its okay to have a gigantic long map too, so long as the sense of adventure is presented early, and the excitement of completing a long quest is concluded with a brilliant climax at the end. That said, its important to remember that you don't want to just stick an exit on your map after you've lead the player to believe that there's still a lot more to do at the risk of cheating your player out of a greater experience, but you don't want to straddle the player along an interminable sequence of non-engaging rooms for the sake of creating a long journey.

I've heard some games practice the option of unlocking the extra-difficult side missions as a reward for completing the game the normal way to extend its life, and keeping the initial game short for that reason alone. I'm sure optional battles and areas can be explored in Doom maps in the form of secrets.

Sorry this post doesn't have many concrete examples and most of this is conceptual nebulous philosiphy. But I thought it was worth discussing as I'm growing older, I'm much more attracted to shorter maps, and was interested in exploring why some people may feel the same or differently.

(*) Negative Space in game design is the vacuum a game designer leaves when they do something that creates an expectation for the player. It refers to the content in the game is perceived by the player and if it's not filled, the player is more likely than not dissappointed.

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I haven't played as many levels as a lot of people here, but I can safely say that never in my doom playing years have I ever thought "Good thing this map was short like this" unless I was actively disliking the map. Some maps can drag on, sure, but I've never seen any advantage to short maps. Even if you normally don't save mid map, you should still allow yourself to save if you want or need to stop playing, and treat it like two maps instead.

There have been maps that I felt dragged on. I notice that mostly it is due to a map being longer than expected, and not simply long. Personally, if I find all the keys, I expect the map to be nearly done after I pass the last locked door. No matter how good it is, if there's a lot of map still left after all the key-related things have been accomplished, it always feels like filler to me. Well, that is, provided the map is presented as a regular type of map, not specifically exploratory or anything. An example of such a map just came up relatively recently for me - map10 of btsx episode 2. "Eureka Signs", I believe. After the yellow door I fully expected some sort of fight and then the exit, yet it went on and on, until it looped on itself once again and the exit opened in some random wall. On the other hand, a later map of that wad, map15 "Theory of broken circles", was also long as shit but it didn't, to me, feel TOO long, mostly because both of the exits were pretty much right behind the locked doors. That map had other problems, but length wasn't one of them for me.

So, I guess, there's a point to be made about the predictability of a map's length and the appropriate stages of the level progression that can be safely inflated versus ones that will feel like extra fat.

However, when a map ends quickly, to me it's often disappointing. A lot of maps I've played could've been longer, could've explored their exact style and setting for a bit more. Keeping with the btsx ep2 theme, the "Vicar something something scorched earth" map. Sure, it had a secret area that was super big, but on its own it ended really quickly (with an absolutely bullshit final fight though). I would've definitely preferred if it went on for a while more.

Come to think of it, there was a rather good example of a super short map in that same wad that I was glad ended so quickly because I was pretty much hating it - "Steeple of knives".

To summarize, to me a well-done long map is preferrable in every way to a well-done short map. If a map is good I see no advantage to ending it quickly. Of course this is not to be stretched into infinity, but I'll pretty much always take an epic journey / exploration map over a quick actiony one.

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Antroid said:

To summarize, to me a well-done long map is preferrable in every way to a well-done short map.


A more interesting comparison: a good long map and a cluster of well done short maps, where both take a similar magnitude of time to play or energy to create. Of course one good long map is usually going to be better than one good short map, all else being equal. But I don't think that tells us much.

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Yeah, that's probably a more fair comparison in some ways (even though not even nearly everyone will prefer a good long map over a good short map. A lot of people probably disagree with such an assessment).

But then again, if we look at it in the context of a megawad or something, with limtied slots for maps, I'd rather all of them were taken by long maps than short ones. For a megawad of 30 long maps, you'd have to do, what, a wad with 90 or so short maps? Seems janky.

Splitting them could be useful for idcleving, demo recording/speedrunning, different music and whatnot (and more level names! How could I almost forget that?), but it also limits, for example, the ability to go back to places you've been... It essentially linearizes the space occupied by the map(s). And short and small maps can barely hold any exploration. For example, if "theory of broken circles" was divided into 3 maps, one per key, the result would've been, I think, kinda shit.

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As a player, I agree with the general idea: An ideal map length is as long as needed to give me a satisfactory gaming experience (and I can enjoy different types of gameplay, too).

Empathetizing with all players (even if "only" all players of a selected "target group") is next-to-impossible for a mapper, though. Satisfactory gaming experience depends on each player's preference, playstyle, amount of patience, and even his current mood. To support this statement, here are some older threads discussing people's map length preference.

So in practice, a "semi-random" choice of map length (as the mapper sees fit) is OK too. As long as there are enough different maps and mappers, it should create enough variety for every player to find what he seeks in some maps. No single map can please everyone.

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Honestly, I can't really always see a long level being automatically better than a short level, even if the pitfalls of being long are avoided and they're both equal in quality. After all, even the best designed games can become frustrating based entirely on the player, and each time there's something obvious I missed it's going to wear on me, to no fault of the author at all. 32 super long levels? That sounds like something that I play for one map and never touch again.

Honestly, I think map packs that vary level lengths constantly are nice, with most levels being in the small-ish range to accentuate the length of the longer ones. That way, the more epic, adventurous levels feel more like an epic adventure, while the rest don't wear you down and can avoid all the pitfalls of longer levels.

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I think player expectation of n amount of gameplay hours damages the game design process - if people were prepared for short vignetty games then they'd receive much stronger scripts and gameplay. Skyrim has one squillion hours of gameplay time but realistically it's all the SAME gameplay with no real thrills to be had, except for the plot-related segments of the game which have received enough dev attention.

also, frankly you can watch a lot of people stream Doom now, and you'll find players who, whenever the game demands something other than breezing through a map repeatedly firing the SSG, complain of its design being "cloggy" and "naive", or "mazelike", or not sufficiently "doomy" - the more critical side of me understands these quibbles as signs of a player getting gradually less interested in Doom, because frankly, cloggy, naive, mazy, anti-doomy maps are the core of what makes Doom's gameplay so versatile =P what such a person claims is the correct size of map speaks more of their relief to go do something else than as any useful measure! I'm digressing a lot here but what I want to say is that you can't base the size of your maps on the patience span of someone slowly losing interest... if you're mapping, then to some extent you still have a passion for the game, so suit yourself.

That said, I think if a map is sufficient in size to describe the idea you had when you made it, then it's done, or at least the core path to the exit is complete. Again, some people will give you the totally nebulous criticism, "I don't think this map achieved what it set out to do" - I've always wondered what a creator should make of this puzzling comment!

(Personally I'd be happiest if all maps were ginormous, puzzling, arty and not entirely consistent with the first theme they reveal, optimally killing once I've seen exactly half of the content so that I come back later and discover its hidden flights of fancy gradually. I realise that this clashes with teh first paragraph I wrote but that just signal boosts my plea for inconsistency!)

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I prefer short levels and I tend to lose interest if a map takes longer than around 20 mins to beat. I seem to get lost easy, which is part of it but I also associate long levels with filler game play and repetition. I can enjoy long levels but the longer they are the better they need to be to hold my attention. I guess I am just unlike Antroid in that respect. I remember commenting on a Sunlust map that is was good but there was too much of it, which is the opposite to what he was saying.

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For me, one of the most frequent sources of tedium in longer, larger maps is a sense that it's little more than a series of smaller maps stuck together, end-to-end, with no meaningful interplay between the sections. I feel that gets trickier to avoid the larger the map (and the longer its intended playing time) gets.

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Different lengths work for different maps.

I find megawads hard to get through in SP, but with friends they become far more doable. For SP I usually pick single maps or episodes of 10 maps and under. That said, there is no one "correct" map length.

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Deceiving the player is one way to make the level seem too short or too long.
The player gets a feeling for the size of the level map early.

Even if the level is large, if most of that is walk-through, there are few obstacles before the level exit, it is going to feel too short ( compared to what the player expected ).

If the third door exposes another large previously unknown area, this will add more level map than the player was expecting, and it can feel too long.
The keys are done so they know there will not be any more key action (they could be wrong, but that will be their expectation).

If the map is large, and the player is allowed to see most of it in the distance,
they will have already been expecting a long play time. If the actual play matches
the expectation, even if it is long, it will not seem too long (compared to their
expectation for that map).

There are ways to mess this up and bad design will have its effect too. But this
is what I expect to be a major factor in this effect.

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