Death of Strategy - Myth II Map Lament - by Anonymous          Now that all the cats have been shaken out of their respective bags - both Badlands, Vista, and Malkavian, the mapmakers whose releases we've all be anticipating for Myth II to ease our burden of the substandard release maps that came with Myth II. Not that there was ever a closed debate on the Myth II maps, but on the whole they remind me much of a certain mapmaking group's maps from Myth I (coincidence?) whose maps had far and away the best artwork, yet whose design and playability was severely lacking. This is not to say they are completely lacking; Dead Man's, Drowned Kingdom, and Cloudspine have some significant merit, but there are significant playability flaws in the majority of the maps and games.        What these maps simply lack is strategy - games are won on tactics rather than strategy in these maps. The distinction is that tactics are used to win a battle at hand, whereas strategy is used to ensure victory in a battle where two teams are tactically equivalent. A simple example of strategy would be games of Territories on Creep, where how two teams split and deployed and coordinated their armies determined the outcome of most battles through strategically outflanking or isolating portions of the enemy. Strategy in a map is acheived through structure - each commander must be able to discretely pick between a small set of options with a small number of variables affecting each. Suppose you're playing FFA Territories on Grave and you start in the NE; you have the choice of going to mid N, going to center, or going to mid E. From mid N, you could possibly be threatened by NW and center, going to center early will certainly bring you into combat in a poor tactical situation, and going to mid E will stretch your army and possibly be threatened by SE. So the commander makes his decision, moves his army, then evaluates his discrete options and threats, and amends his strategy. This is, of course, an oversimplification of a commander's thoughts, but it makes the point - structure is generates strategy, and many current Myth II maps are quite structureless. ÊAnd so what does the future hold? What maps do we have being thrust upon us to replace the shipping Myth II maps? Vista offers three Myth I 3rd party conversions from its members - If I Had a Yeti, Moon Shadow Cave, and, soon, Appalachian Hot Springs. Yeti has some sentimental value while also having a nicely constructed center, but beyond that its appeal is limited. Moon Shadow Cave was never a popular 3rd party map in Myth I and so the motivation for porting it baffles me. Appalachian Hot Springs was a popular map for its simplicity and playability, and hopefully that release will not detract from the gameplay while cleaning up the mesh problems from the original. Vista's new map, Tallow Abbey, however, while adding amusements like Sheep and Butterflies, is, essentially, a structureless map much like the current Myth II maps. It is a map where the terrain is too complex to allow for a larger strategic vision, and there is no discriminating between advantages and disadvantages of different starts to allow for any unique developments. There is not enough information available on Quixotism to make any predictions.        Sadly, Badlands is still up to its old tricks, only now they have Bungie-approved poor design and a little elitism to add to their repetoire of drawbacks. These comments are based solely on the overhead maps and screenshots from the Badlands website, which means, in addition to the layout flaws I will momentarily point out, there could be flag placement and unit selection flaws that also detract from playability. The first of these maps is the PRASP map, which, apparently Bungie has something to do with. Continuing the Badlands tradition of having incredible artwork that is offset by the layout on an equal scale, Leagues From Nowhere is a completely featureless, indistinct map with a hill in the center with basically identical approaches from all four corners. While I'm sure the terrain is perfectly lovely and suffices for massive death, there is very little inspiring and encouraging in this first look. Badlands has a new version of Heart of the Jungle coming, and it's an incredible mess of seemingly random hills and pools and crossings with no thought given to how one might use the terrain on the map to structure how a particular army might attempt to gain strategic advantage on an enemy through superior forethought and manuevering. The phrase "If you have trouble retreating, you have trouble" should be the watchword of all 2-team maps, as every desireable position should be vulnerable to particularly a coordinated attack.        It doesn't end yet, but you see where I'm going and my primary complaints with the Badlands maps. Structureless, indistict maps. Try and describe a starting position on a Myth II map (which were made by and influenced by Badlands representatives) or a Badlands map. Then try and describe another starting position that's in some way different than the one you just described - you can't. The maps are a homogeneous plane that offer no inspiration to any originality of gameplay. The one map on the Badlands page that looks to possibly have some promise is The Great Divide, which may be contstrained enough to have some structure, but some of the terrain funnels into what may be obnoxiously narrow passages.        One mapmaker who has always been a little too outspoken in his condemnation of Badlands maps, while not making maps of extraordinary merit himself has been Malkavian. While his Myth I maps clearly showed a desire to subscribe to his own words of wisdom, his FFA maps were unpopular and his final effort, Sieve, was hardly outstanding and the structure seemed awkward. His first Myth II map, Piled Higher & Deeper was released yesterday, and I'm pleased to say it's much improved over his previous maps. His web page states he 'made it in a week', which automatically made me doubt the viability of it. It comes closer than any Myth II FFA map I've seen to having the replayability and structure of Grave from Myth I, as well as being a reasonable tactical terrain. There is not much information available on his web site about Under A Killing Moon, but it appears very simple in structure, which is a good thing. The texture map doesn't look like anything to write home about, from the small picture, and whether the flag placements make it for as good a Territories map as he claims, remains in doubt, but if history repeats itself the flags and the unit selections should prove acceptable.        So, what's the state of the Myth II map world? Lamentable. Two large teams of 'talented' mapmakers churning out sub-par maps, and one lone leper of a mapmaker scratching out by himself the one map with any merit to it. I've heard other rumors about someone in CP making a very good World War One-type map, maybe Mormith's skills will have improved since Myth I, and perhaps there are others laboring in seclusion on a map that will blow them all away, but the independent mapmakers who have been submitting work to The Barons Keep have been laughably, embarassingly, ludicrously terrible. What do I recommend? Go read a book or get out from in front of your computer at least. These maps Badlands made took all the fun out of Myth. An unfortunate stumble for Bungie in a long line of polished products. I hope I do stop to take a look at their future offerings. I might not have the time; I might be playing EverQuest.          BACK TO MAIN ARTICLES PAGE