This is another ongoing personal project to design a competitively viable level for the competitive RTS; StarCraft II.
The primary design purpose for this level is to design a map specifically tailored around current game balance, with many previously published levels being used in competitive play heavily favouring one out of the three races through design decisions such as using vast amounts of dead space and narrow chokepoints.
Large areas allowing access to new mining locations, ‘Blackout’ will be designed to limit these potential areas of imbalance as much as possible whilst also ensuring that each race is able to play to their strengths in certain areas. This will be a level optimised for competitive play.
As this level was primarily designed for use in an already established competitive title. The main focus was around understanding the game and the players. This led to a lot of playtesting using in-game communities to play matches on the level and provide feedback through an online questionnaire and well as vocally. Listening to this feedback and using it as a foundation for iterative design led to a well-balanced and competitively viable final product.